Dear Christian,
Thank you so much for all of the time you give educating and helping people.
I have a question about Sprinting and also Wrestling. Generally speaking, out of all the programs you have written over the years, which program would you recommend the most for a Sprinter (60m and 100m) And then same question for a Wrestler? I know that this is highly dependent upon the individual, but generally speaking I’d like to get your thoughts for Sprinters and Wrestlers.
Thank you so much!
For a sprinter I’d go with the Fast-twitch machine program from my Thibarmy website. For Wrestling, I honestly couldn’t tell you.
Here’s the thing, with complex sports like wrestling, MMA, football, etc. the proper program is dependent on the individual needs of the person. Some wrestler might need more strength work, others more power work, others more conditioning.
Typically the programs that I write for general consumption (e.g. on T-nation or my website) are aimed at more general goals like getting stronger or more muscular.
As such they never apply that well to very specific goals, like training for a sport. I DO train and have trained lots of athletes (from 28 different sports) but I build programs specifically for those sports. But I do not sell them or publish them online as they are too specific and would not target a wide audience.
The Fast twitch machine program is different as originally I wrote it for a sprinter.
Thank you very much for the detailed response. The Fast Twitch Program looks very exciting.
Two immediate questions come to mind: (1) Would it be preferable to complete this program in a caloric surplus or is a slight deficit/maintenance okay too? Not sure how that influences fast twitch development…
And (2) would it be advantageous to perform a Hypertrophy program following this Fast Twitch program since Fast Twitch Fibers would be firing/high after this program?
If your goal is maximum improvements, you should always be in at least a slight surplus.
If your goal is mostly performance/speed & explosiveness, then ingesting maintenance calories is sufficient to get most of the gains (strength and size would be a different story).
Being in a deficit is less bad for a speed/explosiveness plan than a strength or hypertrophy one, but it is still going to limit progression.
Not really… I mean, even now you can recruit the FT fibers just fine when doing hypertrophy work if you go close to failure or to failure.
Plus, a pure hypertrophy phase will reverse some of the adaptations from the fast twitch plan. That plan is not just about developing the FT fibers but also on increasing the ratio of FT fibers. This is done only when the VAST majority of your workload is explosive. Hypertrophy work tends to convert FT fibers into intermediate/hybrid fibers.
Thank you so much for your detailed answers!