I was thinking of varying the type of speed work I do. I was thinking of rotating speed band bench with ballistic bench in a smith machine. With squat, I was thinking of rotating speed band box squats with jumping squats.
It’s just I feel like I’m not getting faster so I was thinking variation might help.
Thoughts?
smith bench throws could help but i think the jump squats have totally different mechanics. and most people are already strong enough at the top of the movement where you accelerate the most for the jump. band box squats seem perfect in theory. but hey, try this out and see if it works.
Are you getting stronger with the way you have it set up now?
My opinion on this is that unless you are already strong, speed work at 60 odd % is a waste of a good training day. I think it just ends up servings as a lighter day of training which isn’t bad at all, but it seems unnecessary unless you are already strong enough where doing another heavy day of training will lead to under recovery.
I still think a lot of people, including myself, are better off training 1-3’s for 8-12 sets with a heavier load than what is recommended for ‘speed’ work once a week. I like adding chains and bands on these days too, but also going with heavier bar weight.
[quote]Fletch1986 wrote:
I was thinking of varying the type of speed work I do. I was thinking of rotating speed band bench with ballistic bench in a smith machine.[/quote]
You won’t really be able to let the weight drop fast enough to do that on a smith machine. Plus even if you did how is this really any different than doing regular speed benches against doubled mini / monster mini bands. I’m assuming you do use bands to speed bench?
[quote]Fletch1986 wrote:
With squat, I was thinking of rotating speed band box squats with jumping squats.[/quote]
Maybe try free squats against bands, triples have worked well for me. If you’re used to doing “the standard” 2 reps this will be way different for you and have direct carryover as opposed to box jumps.
[quote]Fletch1986 wrote:
It’s just I feel like I’m not getting faster so I was thinking variation might help.
Thoughts?[/quote]
You can only train the muscle you have to be “x” percent efficient. If everyone could get faster and faster, everyone would run like Hussain Bolt right?, or whatever his name is… IOf you think you’ve reached your speed threshhold, swith it up to a RE day and do speed work on your deload weeks. Ive done that before with success. Good luck Fletch
At first when I was incorporating speed days, I felt like it really was making more explosive and not linger in my sticking points as badly on ME days. But after a while, it felt more like conditioning and form work.
So a RE day would probably be better for form and conditioning anyway. I’ll rotate between RE and DE days. And yeah, I use bands for box squats and bench press on speed days. I think it would be good to get some repetitions on squat and bench (I working ME dl variations hard atm so I don’t want to tax myself with RE or DE dl’s). I was thinking something like a not overly taxing 5x5… I think if I do more sets I’ll never recover properly. I’ve always found that I recover faster from fewer sets more reps/set than more sets fewer reps/set.
Knowing the way my body responds, there’s no way I could recover from an ME day and a heavy day. Now I just have to nurse a hamstring strain or pull that only God knows how it occurred (went to bed one night fine, woke up in the morning with it feeling strained) before I can implement this.
just curious how long have you been training explosiveness?
May