High performance training

You often see us talk about PAP, post-activation potentiation, especially in strength and conditioning for sports. This is when you pair up a heavy load with a sport-specific movement or skill, or as close as we can get to it. For instance, doing a heavy squat a few minutes before doing a sprint or a jump will potentiate or «activate» the neuromuscular system into performing better for the sport’s specific skill. Still, more research needs to be done on the matter, but the most rewarding frame for resting time intra set, between the strength and the explosive/plyometric/sport’s specific move, lies between 20 seconds to 5 minutes, and even more.

This type of effect can also be achieved with wave-like loading with rep schemes of 15,12,10,8,20. Taking your 15 rep max weight on the first set, increasing the weight with each subsequent set would trick your nervous system into thinking that on the 5th set, you would keep increasing the weight, but in fact, you can now grab your 15 rep max weight you used on the first set and now crank out 20 reps with it.

Tricking your nervous system into thinking that it will perform near max effort and then follow up with a sport-specific/similar movement that only requires bodyweight or +-50% of the weight, will improve performance of the task at hand.

Coach Eric