elitefts™ Sunday edition
Using the Dynamic Effort Method Dynamically
In the "By the Strength Coach for the Strength Coach" article series, I try to begin conversations and discussions that affect strength and conditioning coaches. While I could continue the discussion from the previous few articles on how we can motivate and educate our students, staff and administration, I wanted to change gears a bit. Instead, I think it's important to discuss how we can use the dynamic effort method in training our athletes.
According to Vladimir Zatsiorsky in his book Science and Practice of Strength Training (we should all know these and have heard about them a thousand times), there are three methods for increasing muscular tension—the repetition method, the maximal effort method, and the dynamic effort method. The repetition method is something simple like 4 x 10 at 60 percent, and the maximal effort method (you can throw the modified max effort method in with this one, too) is pretty much just moving something heavy for one, two, or three repetitions. Then, there's the dynamic effort method. To me, this is the least understood method in practical terms. As I see it, there are quite a few issues that a strength coach must deal with when training athletes using the dynamic effort method. I'll cover each of these issues from a team training setting, but first I want to cover some basic physics with each of these methods.
Methods
Let's look at how each method fits into Newton’s second law (force = mass X acceleration):
1. Repetition effort: With this method, we don’t create a lot of speed with the bar or implement that we're using. We're just looking to fatigue the muscle. So, we really have little force equaling little mass (relatively speaking) times little acceleration.
2. Max effort: Using this method, we create force by moving a large weight with little acceleration. There should still be an attempt to move the bar quickly or it won't move, but the actual acceleration is slow (0.3meters/second or less). So, we have force equaling a large mass times little acceleration.
3. Dynamic effort: With this method, we attempt to move a small weight (20–60 percent of a 1RM) as rapidly as possible. So, we have force equaling a small mass times a lot of acceleration. Depending on the movement, this acceleration could be anywhere from 0.8 to 1.4 meters/second. (If you want more information on the actual speed, look up Bryan Mann at the University of Missouri because he knows more about this than most.)
Now that we have some background on how these three methods fit into Newton's second law, why is the dynamic effort method the topic of this article?
Well, in order to use the dynamic effort method with an athlete, we must have some idea of what the athlete's training age is as well as that athlete's ability and strength level with the lift that we intend to use. This isn't always easy when you're a strength coach who has to deal with and create programs for a large number of athletes. Let’s look at a college football team as an example.
We'll assume that you're programming for all linemen and that you have guys who can bench press 225–450 pounds (sorry, we all have weak freshman linemen). If we wanted to use a classic speed bench press, we would assign maybe 55 percent of the 1RM and do 6–10 sets of 2–4 reps. This means that your weak guy would be benching 135 pounds for his speed work. One problem here is that the stimulus isn't great enough to elicit a response. The 450-pound bencher will have 250 pounds on the bar and this may be enough stimulus to increase his strength speed, but the weak guy doesn't have a good grasp of the basic motor pattern and will therefore struggle to control his speed. This is a huge mistake that I see when doing dynamic effort work. Control your speed! I see athletes just throw the bar and it gets way out of their normal range of motion. How can we deal with this issue?
Dynamic variation #1: Timed dynamic effort work
One way that I've dealt with this issue is by doing timed dynamic effort work. Instead of the classic 8 x 3, we may do six sets of eight seconds. Before everyone gets upset and argues that this isn't true dynamic effort work, I know that it isn't. That's why it's a variation.
Let's take the above scenario and go a little deeper. Let's say that one athlete gets 135 pounds and the other gets 250 pounds. We have them perform as many reps as they can in eight seconds. For the weaker guy, his work capacity is so poor that he probably can't finish this work while still trying to move quickly, so in the end, he's really just doing repetition work. So what? He just needs to work. The stronger guy will be learning how to move the bar fast. The caveat to this method is that you must coach the movement. Don't let it get sloppy and don't allow the athletes to touch their chests. Not touching the chest achieves two results—the athletes must reverse the bar hard, so they learn to create force and they can't make their chests springboards. We only have one sternum, so let’s try to keep it healthy.
Dynamic variation #2: Timed Olympic work
For those of you who have an aversion to Olympic lifts, you should have stopped reading ten sentences ago. I understand that any lift can be done explosively, but without writing a master's level thesis here, I will say that the Olympic lifts are different because they're inherently explosive. An explosive clean takes about 0.1 seconds to create force while an explosive squat takes about 0.5 seconds. So from this, we can see that Olympic lifts can have their place in a good strength and conditioning program.
As with the first variation, we must coach this movement heavily. I will use cleans for our second variation. Have your group perform as many cleans as possible in any given time period. We use eight minutes. So, after a solid warm up, we set up with three to four athletes per rack and 55–65 percent on the bar. One athlete does one clean and then moves quickly to the back of the line. The next athlete does one clean and then moves to the back of the line and so on and so on, until our eight minutes are up. You must make sure that technique doesn't fall apart, but if you can do this, you will create a competitive environment where the athletes are attempting to move the bar explosively.
At the end, each group writes with a dry-erase marker on the mirror their names and the total number of reps that they achieved. As the next group comes in, they have a goal to shoot for. This creates a ton of competition between the teams. Sometimes, we will continue this without any changes for three weeks. I'm always amazed at how many more repetitions they can achieve. Our guys get between 20 and 30 reps, and I can honestly say that most of the reps are good reps. Again, you could argue that this type of work becomes too slow to be considered dynamic for the out-of-shape or weak athlete. My response is that you're correct, but who cares? That weak athlete just needs to train.
Dynamic variation #3: Entire dynamic effort timed workout
I'm writing this after we just performed this method with our groups today. As with the other two methods, some will read this and think that it isn't dynamic effort work. That's correct—it's a variation. I will use the bench for this example because that's what we did today and it's the easiest to use to illustrate this variation.
Set up with a group of three to four athletes per rack and tell them that they have 30 minutes to get 30 sets of three reps on the bench press. I let them choose the weight. With our teams, we go with any weight between 185 and 275 pounds. To add a pull into this, we add three reps of pull-ups between each set. So basically, the athletes will achieve 90 reps on the bench press and 90 reps of pull-ups in 30 minutes. I'll use one of my corner's numbers for an example of how we accomplished this.
ZW is a freshman corner who benches 275 pounds. His weight is 185 pounds, which is roughly 65 percent of his 1RM (I know that this isn't exact math). ZW was able to get through all his sets in 25 minutes with decent speed. He focused on accelerating the bar and had to push his teammates. Let’s look a little closer at the math. ZW did 185 pounds for 90 reps. He lifted 16,650 pounds on the bench press and did 90 pull-ups. Think of everything that occurred during this lift. He began to understand speed of the movement, he had to work within a team, and his work capacity increased.
Something I touched on in all three of these examples is team work. This is something that separates us from those in the private sector. While Joe DeFranco does a great job at creating a team atmosphere in his weight room, he doesn't deal with each and every person on a team. This isn't in any way an insult to Joe. I have the utmost respect for him and the program that he built, but his guys come to him because they want to improve. Ask yourself this—does every athlete you have come to you because he wants to improve or because he has to go to lifting?
Bob Sepsey (the strength coach at California University of Pennsylvania) posed a great question to me about this. Is lifting a "have to" or "want to" for your athletes? Because this article is about dynamic effort work, your athletes won't attempt to move the bar quickly if they're in "have to" mode. They'll only move it as fast as they have to move it to get out of the weight room. This is where the mentality and focus of training attaches itself to the programming.
What I demonstrated above are ways to get your athletes to learn and use bar speed to their advantage and yours. As I made very clear in this article, there's some gray area here. Please remember that we live in the gray area. At what point does dynamic effort work become repetition effort work, and at what point does repetition effort work become max effort work? In my opinion, the intent to move the bar quickly is more important than actual bar speed. I'm not saying that you should just add weight, but if there isn't any intent to be explosive, there isn't any explosive movement at all. In addition, motivation and teamwork should be taken into account in all the training you do with your athletes.
I hope you have some new ideas on how to implement DE work into your program. These are just a few examples of how we do it. As with anything in this profession, we're only limited by our imagination, so please feel free to show me how you add DE work into your programs. I would love to steal from everyone else out there!