CowPimp said:
CowPimp said:
he is pretty into Thibedeau and Cosgrove, speaking about the t-nation crowd.
everyone has their own way of doing things and you can see a lot of parallels between him and cosgrove at times. espcially with the undulating periodization.
Sure man. that is what i am hear for. to spread the word on new and interesting training ideas.....
Quad sets....Here is what he had to say. I will paraphrase from my notes:
Why waste time in the workout with rest? Why sit there? I want my athletes to get the biggest bang for their buck. We have an hour to get in everything we need to do so I want to use all of that hour and get the most density I can. His set up for a program is this:
pre-warm up
a) tissue density- foam roll
b) tissue length- stretch
mobility
resistance training
The resistance training was broken into quad-set pairings. His basic reasoning for this was that it makes the athlete work and do active rest, instead of just sitting around and wasting time. He said unless you are a competitive powerlifter or olympic lifter then there is no reason to just sit around and rest when you can be training other muscles or using time more effeciently. He would do one lower body movement, followed by an upper body movement, followed by a core execise and then by a dynamic stretch. By the time you get back to the squat, it has been about 5min (typical rest period for strength work) and you are ready to go. Your quads will be rested enough to complete the work needed and you accomplished more than just sitting around. He does 2 quad sets per workout.....one goes hip dominant, upper press, core, dynamic stretch and then the other would be quad dominant, upper pull, core, dynamic stretch. And then you are done. Workout is over. You already did all your stretching and abs during the workout. he also said he tests athletes strength every 3 weeks in the 1RM front squat, 1RM hang clean and 1RM bench press so that he can adjust his program which is a 12 week lay out. During the program they never do bilateral leg work. he said that he doesn't care if his athlete can squat 400lbs. That doesn't have crossover to a sport where 99% of the time he is on one leg and needs to be strong. So, he likes to keep it specific like that (can't argue with the results of his athletes either!! Lots of Olympians and Boston Bruins and ofcourse college basketball and Pro basketball players). As I said, the periodization is undulating using total body workouts....so day one might be 10RM, day two 5RM and day three 12RM.....or something to that effect. he said the only things that don't get quad sets are power exercises because they are to dynamic and require to much technique so they get tri-sets.....it would be something like hang clean followed by two different dynamic stretches. Power and strength are trained on the same day.
Okay, for the stretching pre-workout....again, paraphrased from my notes:
He said that in 25yrs he has never seen someone pull a muscle because they were stretching it cold. He also said that even though people always say it will decrease force output, from a prehab standpoint it is a great idea. When ever you go to physical therapy for an injury guess what the first thing they make you do is..."stretch this guy out. strech his hams, his calves, etc..". So, why wouldn't you do that all the time? The important thing is to increase the muscles plasticity. If the muscle is always stretched when it is warm then you are only allowing yourself to stretch that muscles fascia instead of sretching the collagen fibers.
It is funny though because when I think static stretches I think like 30sec holds. He was only doing 1sec holds....and here is the kicker....they were what he calls "3D stretches". He said that muscle fibers aren't completely in a straight line. So, if you only stretch one way (say, the typical hamstring stretch) then you are only stretchign the fibers that one way....in this case the fibers running more sagital. he then did this demonstration of the 3D stretches for the hams, piraformis and hip flexors with their 1sec holds and how you do them moving through all three planes (hence the name 3D). So, are they really static stretches? I gotta tell ya though....they felt fucking great!
hope that gives you guys something to think about.
