The 4-Hour Body_ An Uncommon Guide to Ra - Timothy Ferriss [167]
Here’s how he does it:
Barry has his athletes drop the weight at the top of the kneecaps (fourth photo in the series) to avoid hamstring injuries, which is also illustrated in the below pictures:
His athletes are taught to avoid straightening the legs prematurely and to also maintain a perfectly straight back,5 as if pinching a wallet between their shoulder blades.
This strength training protocol allows running immediately after strength training,6 eliminating the need for a time-consuming split training. No lifts are done to failure.
Besides “over-unders” performed prior to the first exercise, there are no warm-ups in the workout.7 Over-unders are executed as follows:
Using a power rack or hurdles, set one pin/hurdle to approximately 30–32 inches and the other at waist height. Squat low enough to step sideways under the lower pin/hurdle, then immediately step over the higher one.8 That is one repetition. Do not use your hands or put them on your legs. Repeat six to seven times. Then move directly into work sets. Barry has his athletes lift the heaviest load of an exercise first, followed by sets with lighter loads, if needed.
To estimate your 1-rep max (1RM) in a given exercise, just multiply your 5-rep max weight x 1.2.
The Basic Rule: Less Than 10 Seconds
As a general guideline, we don’t want time under tension for exercise sets to exceed 10 seconds, as we want to minimize lactic acid production.
Though lactic acid (often felt as muscle “burn”) can be helpful in some circumstances, it can also delay recovery. In cases where athletes need to hit benchmarks in short periods of time, Barry wants to retain their ability to do the same workout for five straight days.
This approach is not limited to sprinting.9
One nonrunner example is Skyler McKnight, who needed to bench 225 pounds 20 times to be a starter for the San Jose State football team. There was just one problem: he could only complete three reps and had three weeks until the test. He had only 15 workout days to make the mark. Five days a week, he did five sets of two repetitions with five minutes’ rest between sets. He increased the weight but did not increase the repetition range.
On test day, he completed 18 reps and, yes, the coach was shocked enough to give him a starting position.
Consider another set of results from Greg Almon, strength consultant to the Chinese national speed skating team:
Dear Barry,
I would just like to give you an update as to how my skaters have performed this year from switching to a Deadlift based protocol;
The Chinese women’s team has won more than 10 gold medals in the sprint categories (500, 1000m), as well as 10 more silver and bronze combined. We now have 5 skaters that skate 44 seconds or better in the 500m and broke the world record in the last competition.
It was tough to convince the coach to switch, but after several days of conversation, she agreed to try it. Our women skaters have increased their deadlift by an average of 115 pounds over the last 3.5 months and the results speak for themselves.…
Thanks again,
Greg
The New and Improved Trinity
What has Barry refined and improved since Allyson’s record-breaking performances in 2003?
Based on the latest research, he has narrowed his sprint-specific program to three simple and sequential training goals:
1. Competition conditioning
2. Maximal strength
3. Maximal speed
For each, Barry relies on the core philosophy of coach Henk Kraaijenhof: “Do as little as needed, not as much as possible.” All three objectives require (that is, demand) less workload than commonly thought necessary.
COMPETITION CONDITIONING
Training for the first goal, conditioning, draws heavily from a study titled “Energetics of High-Speed Running: Integrating Classical Theory and Contemporary Observations,” first published in 2004.
This study