Today I'm reposting one of favourite pieces! I really enjoyed writing this one, as I was able to incorporate my own knowledge, experience and love for lifting into an article that I think is pretty interesting and enlightening to read! I'm also reposting this one because I have BIG NEWS: Small But Mighty will now be offering Semi-Private Women's Basic Barbell and Powerlifting in the Queen West area beginning Saturday November 5th! Check out all the details on the 'MIGHT IS RIGHT' program and grab your spot here!

Batman is one of my favourite superheroes, not only because of his dark and stormy mystique but also because he is just a 'regular guy,' with no innate superpowers like x-Ray vision or superhuman strength. He relies on both his mental strength and physical will to defeat his enemies, and often undergoes quite a beating doing so. Every time I lift heavy, I'm reminded of a quote from the Dark Knight, when Batman and the Joker come face to face in the 'final showdown' for Gotham City: "...This is what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object..." It took me a few years of lifting to realize (and gain the confidence to be sure) that I am that unstoppable force, and though lifting is always a physical and mental challenge, the barbell is certainly not immovable.

I think that the first paragraph of this post highlights one of the main reasons why I love lifting myself and programming it for my clients: confidence and empowerment! There have been too many times to count when faced with a mental or physical challenge I've thought to myself, "if I can squat 200 lbs, I can certainly do this"... And I'm not the only one! I've had clients report similar experiences in their daily lives, in situations ranging from moving furniture to surviving pregnancy, labour and delivery! With every kilo lifted, there comes a sense of accomplishment, of having done some 'work', of having put in time and effort towards a bigger goal or purpose! While you may leave a lifting session both mentally and physically exhausted, it is there, that little spark that keeps you coming back to the bar for more.

In addition to building strength, a periodized resistance training program will also positively impact your body composition; it will help preserve your lean muscle mass, and may also lead to an increase in your basal metabolic rate (i.e. the rate at which you burn calories while resting). For women specifically, regular weight-training will also positively impact your bone health, and help prevent osteoporosis; this is very important in times of peak bone growth, as well as in the elderly.

Also, a well-organized lifting program will decrease your risk of injury by improving your balance and coordination, and may also benefit your sport-specific performance (Healthline 2013). In fact, studies have shown that in as little as 8 weeks, a heavy squatting routine can improve running economy and time to exhaustion at maximal aerobic capacity in highly-trained male and female long-distance runners (Storen et al, 2008).

With regards to sports participation, a prospective study of over 1200 high school athletes demonstrated that untrained female soccer, volleyball and basketball players had a 3.6 greater incidence of knee injuries versus female athletes that underwent a neuromuscular training program including weight-lifting, plyometric movements and flexibility training (Hewett, 1999). In the elderly, periodized resistance training has been shown to increase quality of life, improve power, body composition, and energy expenditure, and reduce the difficulty of completing acts of daily living (Hunter et al, 2004).

Finally, on a personal note I have to say that through lifting I have met some of the most awesome and life-strong ladies I know! Girls that can lift heavy, run fast, eat burgers and rock a summer dress like the best of them! I mention this because there is an expectation that lifting will automatically make girls bulky! This is NOT true! While aesthetics is certainly the last reason I would promote as motivation to lift, resistance training is certainly figure-friendly. My female lifting pals and I get compliments on our figures all the time...funnily enough, the women providing the compliments often don't ask how I train, they only ask how-often. Its one of my favourite things to fill them in on my little iron secret! Seriously though, if you're all about that bass, squats are for you!

I also love lifting because its cathartic, quiet and focused. In the weight-room, there is no pressure to look pretty, to move in a 'lady-like' way, or even to play the most up-to-date music! There is just you, the bar, and if you're lucky, some other awesome ladies to cheer you on and spot you when you need it! In short, lifting is an awesome way to make new friends, build mental and physical strength, increase the resiliency of your muscles and joints, and improve your sport-specific performance. So head on over to your local gym, grab a rack and get lifting. If you're looking to get strong, your barbell will be your new best friend.

Healthline, 2013: The importance of strength training for women.

Storen 0, Helgerud J, Stoa E M, & Hoff J. Maximal strength training improves running economy in distance runners. American college of sports medicine, 2008.

Hewett T, Lindenfeld T, Riccobene J, & Noyes, F. The effect of neuromuscular training on the incidence of knee injury in female athletes. The American Journal of Sports Medicine, 1999.

Hunter G, McCarthy J, & Bamman M. Effects of resistance training on older adults. Sports medicine, 2004.

There is no doubt about it.... if you want to get bigger and stronger, if you want to move heavy weight and make gains, it absolutely requires hard work, consistency, and perseverance. But, this doesn't mean that there is not a place for SMART training strategies, and one really great one is drop sets.

Drop sets, down sets, bro sets, whatever you want to call them they do more than just boost your ego. To prove my point however, requires a little explanation of exercise and neuromusculoskeletal physiology.

Breaking Down Muscle

The Contractile Unit

Watching someone squat heavy weight, and seeing the muscles in their legs firing like gangbusters, it's hard to imagine what is happening at the level of each individual fibre, but believe it or not, this is really important to overall function. After all, the summation of work of each of these muscle cells (fibres) is what creates that large, powerful muscular contraction. Each muscle fibre is made up of several contractile units called sarcomeres, and basically serves at the pleasure of our nervous system. To put it bluntly, each muscle fibre is connected to command central (our brain) by a motor nerve. Sometimes a single motor nerve innervates one or very few muscle fibres, and sometimes a a motor neuron innervates many many muscle fibres. In either case, the motor neuron and all of the muscle fibres it innervates are collectively referred to as a Motor Unit. Smaller motor units are easier to recruit, and tend to be found in higher concentration in muscles that control fine or discrete movements, such as those of the fingers. Larger motor units are found in higher concentration in our bigger, workhorse muscles such as our quadriceps or gluteals and while they require a greater stimulus to be recruited, they are able to generate quite a lot of power!

Fibre Type and Order of Recruitment

In addition to our muscle fibres varying in their innervation, they also differ in fibre type. There are three different types of muscle fibres, Slow Twitch (oxidative), Fast Twitch (Glycolytic) and Fast Twitch (Oxidative). On top of recruiting smaller motor units first, our nervous systems also tend to recruit slow twitch fibres first; as intensity and demand increase, we progressively recruit bigger and faster twitch muscles. As mentioned above, these bigger motor units, especially those with fast twitch fibres are very powerful; these are the guys that allow us hit 1-RMs and generate huge power outputs. And the great news is once these big guys get going, they tend to keep working. And that brings us back to...

Drop Sets

I'm hoping you haven't tried this...but theoretically, if you walked into a gym, threw your 1-RM weight on the bar and tried to squat it, you would fail (unless you're superman). In addition to the order of muscle recruitment, our body has other built in safety mechanisms like tendon and stretch reflexes which stop us from ripping our muscles in half, or off our bones by generating too much force or too much of a stretch too quickly. This is why we cannot access those large, powerful motor units right from the get go or squat our max weight without warming up: we risk injury when we use them, especially if we don't prepare our bodies properly. However, if you take advantage of the order of muscle fibre recruitment and gradually work up to your 1-RM weight you'll find you can move quite a lot of weight.

One other thing you'll likely notice is that some of the later warm-up sets that were challenging on the way up to your working weight feel much easier when done as drop sets. Some of this may be psychological (knowing that you moved heavier weight in your work sets) however, a great deal is due to the fact that the big guns are still firing! Those high capacity, powerful fibres are working on the way down, allowing you to generate more force and enabling your body to more strongly groove that motor pattern and engage in a greater deal of neuromuscular learning. In fact, this whole phenomenon has a name: Post-Activation Potentiation(PAP). Explained simply, PAP refers to a muscle's performance being influenced by its previous contractions. Brett Contreras, a blogger and researcher with a Ph.D in Sport Science unpacked this ideas really well in a recent article(1):

PAP is a phenomena by which muscular performance characteristics are acutely enhanced as a result of their contractile history. The underlying principle surrounding PAP is that heavy loading prior to explosive activity induces a high degree of CNS stimulation which results in greater motor unit recruitment lasting anywhere from five to thirty minutes.

You'll notice from Dr. Contreras' explanation that this phenomenon applies not only to (explosive) drop sets, but also to explosive movements that are biomechanically similar to the prime movement: for example, doing squat jumps after barbell squats.

So What Do I Do Now?

If you're looking to change things up, there are many different ways to integrate drop sets or the PAP principle into your program. In fact, despite widespread agreement that PAP is a thing, theres no real consensus on exactly how to use it. I personally try to take advantage of this phenomenon in two different ways in my own training, and in the programs I write for my clients:

Explosive Movements Before the Main Lift

When I really want to get those big motor units prepared and firing for a heavy lifting session, I place an explosive movement similar to the primary lift immediately before the strength/power portion of the training session. For example, I might use medium to high box jumps (step down, no eccentric) before a heavy squat session, or heavy kettle bell swings before a heavy deadlift session.

There are 3 really important things I consider when using this strategy. The first and most important is a proper warm-up to ensure the athlete does not get injured. As I mentioned, use of bigger, faster-twitch motor units can more easily result in injury (likely because we do not access them as frequently, and tend to be fatigued by the time we get there, meaning form may not be 100% on point). Thus, these explosive movements such as box jumps should be placed AFTER a dynamic warm-up that takes the athlete through progressively higher threshold iterations of the movement. All of this is to say, don't just walk into the gym and do a 36' box jump without doing some tissue prep, joint mobility and dynamic movement.

The next two important things revolve around fatigue. Because I'm using these explosive movements to prep for a heavy lift, I want to make sure the athlete has enough fuel in the tank when they get to the main strength portion of their training session. As such, I keep the reps of these explosive movements low (3 sets of 2-5 reps max), and program plenty of rest between them (45s-120s) such that the athlete has time to 'refill' their PCr system.

So here is an example of how to take advantage of PAP via explosive movements before a main lift:

Box jumps: 3x3@ 24' (step down) 1,0,1,0/60-90 sec rest
Barbell Back Squat 5x5@85% 1,0,1,0

Drop Sets

The second way I take advantage of PAP in my programs is, (you guessed it) drop sets. Again, there is no tried and true way to utilize drop sets, and some people suggest different methods based on your genetic muscular make up. Here is what I do: Take 10-15% of the weight off the bar, and do a few more reps per set than the prime lift, in an explosive (but controlled!!!) manner.

For example:

Back Squat Work Sets: 5x3@185 1,0,1,0/2 min rest
Back Squat Drop Sets: 3x5@165 1,0,1,0/60-90s rest

This is a great way to keep things simple and easy, and also allows the athlete some wiggle room based on the numbers they hit in that session. Having said this, you can really nerd out with this principle and fine tune it to your body type and strength levels. Charles Poliquin offered a number of pretty in-depth strategies in an article he released in 2014, based on muscle fibre type etc. You can access it

Here

So if you're looking to gain size and strength, try these two simple ways of incorporating PAP into your program. Make sure you have a sufficient warm-up, and continue to focus on form and positioning!

Happy lifting friends

(1) https://bretcontreras.com/post-activation-potentiation-theory-and-application/

Blog

Breaking Down Muscle

The Contractile Unit

Fibre Type and Order of Recruitment

Drop Sets

So What Do I Do Now?

Explosive Movements Before the Main Lift

Drop Sets