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I read Brets' book and while I applaud him for attempting to take a scientific approach to his research about glute involvement I am pretty sure that most of his EEG research was conducted on a sample size of 1 - Bret Contreras. Now obviously Bret has written a book about glute involvement in athletic movements, in particular sprinting, and this may have meant some bias in the either the way he performed the exercises or the way he interpreted the results.

I am not discounting his work at all by the way, I am just saying it needs further study with a broader range of subjects before I would abandon deads etc in favor of heavy glute bridges or whatever he calls them.

in my own training programs I find them good as a warm up to squats and deadlifts but not as a replacement.

The Barry Ross system for training is minimalist to the extreme and has a few interesting points to it. I think when I read the book he talked about never doing more than 10 total reps of the deadlift per session and also to drop the bar after each rep (no eccentric) to reduce muscle soreness. He also talked about doing zero warm up sets and just getting straight into the heavy lifting which I thought was a bit dangerous.

Back to the topic at hand whether or not you do strength work after plyos or before will depend on a bunch of factors including the focus of your current training block, and also the intensity and volume of each. Both of the last two things are easily adjusted to make the program more suitable and safe in achieving the desired goal.

I am with Eric, I love the SSQ Bar and use it extensively. However as Andrew said you will drop down in how much you can squat with it. When I first got mine I was squatting 135kg x 5 on a straight bar and I could barely do 105kg for 2 on the SSQ Bar.

After a while you get used to the different positioning of the weight though and now it feels more comfortable to use it than the regular bar.

Some thoughts on my time with the SSQ Bar

1) It is more comfortable than a straight bar
2) You have to use less weight
3) It makes a nice change to a straight bar
4) if you have thorasic or shoulder flexibility issues it is a really good choice
5) it is easier to maintain an upright position (see above)
6) works your core like a bastard due to the way the weight is forward
7) In terms of results - probably makes very little difference

Then you say above parallel squats are safer for the knees than full squats.

I think he was saying box squats are safer for the knees than full squats. I don't know about safer but they are certainly easier on the knee joints.

Hi Guys

I just read an interesting article from Daniel over at free to fly about short versus tall athletes.

http://www.thefreetofly.com/2011/01/short-vs-tall-athletes-jump-training.html

It is a pretty small sample size being used (just Daniel and a mate of his) but it is still an interesting theory.

I would love to hear your thoughts coaches about what Daniel has to say.

Cheers

Jack

Some very interesting selections. The only one I really agree with is Blake Griffin, and even then I think his dunks totally rock because they are done in games and on defenders heads who are legitimately trying to stop him. Not necessarily the sort of thing you see in a dunk contest. Although that would be cool.

JW

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