Adarq.org

Love Rippetoe's Interview series! He has great guests, asks intelligent questions and I like that those are conversations and not some dull Q&A stuff like you see all too often. One downside is that sometimes the balance in speaking time is clearly shifted towards either host or guest - depending on who Rip is talking to.
But seriously, those interviews are real gems and there is interesting stuff on the table in every one of them!

Good post!

I am with you Adarqui, I thought it was a great project from a respected coach. I am hoping to interview Alan Stein about it. The only issue I had was that Alan, who is oviously a damn good trainer and knows his stuff, and who has, like me, got his knickers in a knot from time to time about vertical jump scam artists, and who interestingly has posted in various blogs about the need to customize your training, is now ironically selling the programs used in the can he dunk project.

Why should he not sell the program? It's something he created and I think it is legitimate to make money from it - presumed that it is a solid program, which we don't know I guess.

Can't wait to see the two-handers! Although I find hard-slammed one handers aesthetically more pleasing, dunking with two hands is pretty impressive, too...

Quote from: zginphil on September 16, 2010, 04:54:13 pm

i dont think the programming was very good. they only 2 max effort attempts per week? wtf is that.   also, i didnt see any plyos besides box jumps :/ and didnt see any form of squatting.   nontheless, most got pretty good gains. especially this one kid i saw.

i'll check the episodes soon, but from the trailers i saw trap bar, squatting, and lots of reactive work.

pc

Yes, they got a pretty versatile mix of things!

As for only 2 max attempt jumps per week one might argue that you should not wear yourself out during testing if you have a lot of training volume. Some of those guys had heavy work schedules (basketball practice) besides their performance training - obviously not optimal, but it makes sense in that scenario not to overdo test attempts and allow for better recovery so that effective training can happen.
But yes, normally I would go for more trials at least toward the end of the training phase.

Quote from: BMully on September 13, 2010, 10:51:24 pm

his vertical has got to be high no matter what his weight is

i asked a while back, brozknoz guy said it was measured at 30.

I think 30 is not all that bad for a guy that probably never jumps, but I would have expected a little higher VJ still. Shane Hamman for example has been reported to have had a VJ PR of 36", really good in and on itself, but also at a bodyweight of much over 300 lbs. He was also witnessed to do 5 back flips in the OTC right after a heavy single with 804 lbs...

I actually like CT's autoregulation better than the old inno model.  Basically it is about listening to your body.  When you hit a set that you have to grind out you either:
Stop the exercise
do another set or 2 at that weight
drop 10% and keep doing sets until you start to grind the lighter weight.  No you dont need a calcualtor.  Squatting 435, take 40 or 50lbs off the bar, not 43.5lbs.  Just round to the nearest/easiest weight to remove

Pick which route you go based on goals and how you feel that day.

What is CT?

I don't think I would like AREG for beginners, which evidently the majority of trainees consist of - maybe not your clients though. The reason being that there is no need for it if basic training variables are taken good care of and there is always the danger of people picking the easier route, which is not always the best in the long-term. If the last squat for that day is a grinder, so be it. If your program is decent enough you will have the means to recover until the time you will need to PR next time.

This is the paper: http://zachdechant.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/apre-mizzou1.pdf

Some interesting things to note about this study:

1. There was no pre-test. For comparison they used the numbers from the end of pre-season of the previous year.
2. Look at the group differences listed in table 1. While no statistical differences have been found, it is apparent that the APRE group on average was 7 kilogram (15 lbs) heavier than the LP group. While maybe not a statistically significant weight difference, it might very well still be a relevant difference.
3. The LP group on baseline was stronger in both bench press tests than the APRE group despite being slightly taller and less heavy on average - those differences were significant, one even being highly significant. It is therefore very plausible that improvements for the LP group were harder to come by than for the APRE group, simply because they might be closer to their maximal genetic potential.
4. In accordance to point 3, the LP group actually performed the same in post-test compared to baseline in the bench-press repetition test, actually the difference was even slightly in the negative. There must have been several athletes whose performance actually declined. Remember how the baseline levels were determined in the first place...
5. The differences in improvement between the groups can easily be attributed to the specific application of linear periodization vs. autoregulatory training. Despite the fact that the authors claim to have been utilizing very similar protocols, this is not apparent from the little information they actually give. One thing I can tell however is that the APRE group regularly went to failure and the LP group did not. Therefore the APRE group had the chance to train close to their actual potential while the LP group did not - because their training numbers were determined based on tests from a year before, which might very well have had little to do with their actual ability.

To summarize this... If you make a program based on the concept of linear periodization and have a very, very poor grasp of what you are doing and how you assign training numbers to your athletes, this is likely going to be inferior to training a group of athletes based on what they are actually capable of doing. Big surprise.
As a scientific paper this study is a complete failure and it has very little application for everyone who understands the slightest bit about training.

However, that does not take away from the fact, that AREG might be effective for certain things. As Lance pointed out this approach can be effective when dealing with reactive or power exercises because they are so much more susceptible to even slighter changes in constitution and because doing them correct and fast is probably more important than doing a certain number of them.
I found that not to be true for performing heavy resistance exercises where bar speed might in fact drop, which however says nothing about if the repetition or set can be completed or not. Strength exercises are for strength, power exercises are for power. That's my idea of it.