Thread on Barry Ross training

[Johnny Mnemonic]

I got this thread from the DB Hammer trainging forum. I thought it was interesting.The thoughts of Track & Field trainer Barry Ross regarding getting stronger without gaining size and his opinion against squats.

dbhammer.proboards43.com/index.cgi?board=links&action=display&thread=1103337508

[Boris]

I haven't read everything yet, but I like some of the ideas presented.

The article that sparks the discussion is at Dragon Door: www.dragondoor.com/articler/mode3/269/

Thanks for posting it Johnny. What are your thoughts on it?

[Johnny Mnemonic]

The article is very interesting. I like his idea of utilizing the deadlift for strength building and immediately following them with plyos. Performing an absolute strength exercise followed by an explosive or dynamic exercise has been shown to work for many according to old soviet and bulgarian weightlifting literature. I even used this to a point with deads and my max did go up. However the view of not doing squats at all for athletes I don't agree with. I know he has definite safety concerns but these can be minimized with proper instruction and precautions taken. Any athlete though wanting to get better on the field,court or platform can benefit from them. They don't necessarily have to be done to max effort to improve athleticism.

[Boris]

I agree with you. I think totally ignoring squats is a bad idea. It's an interesting program in that it's different from the usual "squats are the end-all, be-all of training" approach you see a lot of.

While I was working w. the swim team in the weight room, I honestly considered dropping squats for a while because they were so weak and it just seemed to take them so long to get the exercise. I'm glad I stuck it out with them, but with the exception of the breaststroke/individual medley specialists, they could probably replace most squatting w. DLing. I'll have to give it some more thought.

As far as the advice he gave Erik, what does he mean do "power lifts" every other session? I'm assuming he means lower %s w. greater speed?

Somebody said it was "a little to Pavel" and after reading "Power to the People", I think that's probably true.

To summarize:

DL's every session
Pushing motion every session (push-ups, etc. if you do C&J in a session,
that is your pushing motion for that session)
Power lifts every other session
Don't exceed 4 sets, don't exceed 3 reps, don't lift to exhaustion, don't
lift quickly.
Don't add other exercises or routines. Learn to love boredom in lifting
Rest 5 min between sets (most important for lifting 4 days per week)
Increase weight as often as possible
Recycle after 10-12 sessions, dropping down to about 10% over your previous
starting weights. Try to exceed your best previous session by the 6th to 8th
new session

Now, for supercompensation, do plyos immediately (within 1 minute or forget
it) after every DL set. Your 5 min rest comes after the plyo. Pick from 1
leg hops, standing triple jump, standing long jump, or box jumps (especially
depth jumps). Do a set of three jumps out and 3 jumps back to where you
started from when doing the non-box jumps.
The key for depth jumps is the rebound speed. As you get stronger your
ground contact time will diminish as you run, even in basketball, so you
need to train your neuromuscular system to increase the speed of power
delivery to maximize your jumps. Typically, you will be taking 1 or 2 to
several steps before elevating so you want learn how to gather and release
stored energy as rapidly as possible.

Hope this helps!

Barry