Acceleration: The Middle Path

By Charles Staley, B.Sc, MSS
Director, Staley Training Systems
http://www.staleytraining.com

Do some people-watching at the gym during your next workout. At first glance, it may seem that people have very little in common when it comes to their exercise habits and techniques. But upon closer inspection, you might notice that they have two things in common:

The first thing that most exercisers share in common is slow movement speed, regardless of exercise, set/rep scheme, or magnitude of load used. People tend to fall into one or both of two categories when it comes to moving weights slowly:

Of course, in any other aspect of life, you would never deliberately move more slowly than you had to, because it’s inefficient. More on this later.

Oh yeah— the second thing your gym peers have in common? Very few of them ever make any discernible progress. Can we draw a correlation between slow movement speed and lack of progress. I certainly do! In the remainder of this article, I’ll show you why.

More specifically, I’d like to explore a “middle path” that few trainees ever travel. This path isn’t the only approach that can lead to success, but it certainly has considerable benefits which warrant closer consideration from those wishing to acquire strength and power. My use of the term “middle” refers to a slice of the so-called “force-velocity curve” that every exercise physiology student knows by heart. You should too. I had considered stealing a great analogy from powerlifting guru Louie Simmons, but given the fact that he squats 900 and benches well over 600 at 50-plus years of age, I felt the possible consequences weren’t worth it, so here’s Louie’s take on the force-velocity curve:

“If I throw a wiffle ball, it won’t go very far, because it’s too light for max force to exist. Now if I throw a shot put, it does not go very far either, because it’s too heavy; thus no velocity is developed. However, if I throw a baseball, it will go a great distance because I have found a balance between force and velocity.” (1)

In this analogy, the baseball represents the middle path.

Simmons trains his athletes in a manner which is strikingly different from the rest of the powerlifting community. While most powerlifters use very heavy weights for 2-3 reps per set, Louie emphasizes 60% weights for multiple sets of 2-3 reps, using as much acceleration as possible on every set. The results?

At the time of this writing (and it's probably more by now!), Simmons has produced 36 athletes who have bench pressed 500 pounds or more, and 23 lifters who can squat 800 pounds or more.

Why Acceleration?

We know that the more tension a muscle experiences during exercise, the greater the training adaptation. But the weight on the bar is only one factor to consider when designing your training program. Acceleration is the other.

I vividly remember a conversation with Dr. Fred Hatfield (Co-founder of the International Sports Sciences Association and first man to officially squat 1000 pounds). Hatfield, who at the time weighed 265 at 5”6” at 10% bodyfat, relayed the following analogy: If you place a 10 pound weight on top of your foot, no problem. If you drop that weight from 6 feet in the air, BIG problem. The weight is the same in both instances. Acceleration is the difference. How can we translate this lesson into making better progress from our lifting? Compare the following two scenarios:

Scenario #1: You lift 135 pounds for 3 sets of 10 repetitions. In keeping with the “no pain, no gain” philosophy, you take the set to momentary muscular failure, as advocated by many fitness experts. Here is a hypothetical breakdown of how much force you apply to the bar on every rep:

Rep 1: 154 pounds
Rep 2: 152 pounds
Rep 3: 150 pounds
Rep 4: 148 pounds
Rep 5: 146 pounds
Rep 6: 144 pounds
Rep 7: 142 pounds
Rep 8: 140 pounds
Rep 9: 138 pounds
Rep 10: 136 pounds

As you can see, fatigue accumulates during the set which progressively limits your ability to accelerate the bar. If we add all these numbers and divide by 10, we get the average force per rep: 145.

Exactly How Does This Work?

First off, let’s get something straight: by acceleration I’m NOT talking about the mindless, high-speed slop that many trainees employ as they attempt to impress their gym peers by lifting the heaviest possible weights. In fact, the technique I’m advocating involves using only about 70 percent of maximum on any given set.

Here’s a hypothetical upper body workout that implements an accelerative approach to lifting. Your training weight for the first exercise will be 70% of your 1RM (which stands for one rep max, or the most weight that you can lift in good form for one rep, but not two). If you’re not sure what your 1RM is, your training weight is one that you can lift 10-12 times in succession. As an example, if you can bench press 192 pounds for one rep (1RM), your training weight will be 135 pounds.

One last point: always use a capable spotter whenever you bench press.

Here’s how the workout stacks up:

Notes:

Notes:

Notes:

Notes:

This sample workout requires 60 minutes or less to complete. It successfully develops greater explosive strength (particularly during the first 10 sets), maximal strength (through the heavy singles), and muscular hypertrophy (through the sets of 5 and 12 toward the end of the workout). It should be performed once a week for 4 weeks, and progression should be attempted by either completing the same workout in less and less time every week, or by using gradually heavier weights on weeks 2 through 4. After 4 weeks, you’ll want to completely change your workout, by selecting a new set of exercises. This helps to avoid habituation (and stagnation) through the introduction of new training stimuli.

Is Acceleration Safe?

I do realize that the fitness intelligentsia scoffs at accelerative lifting— you must lift slowly in order to avoid injury, they say. However, I think it’s a sad state of affairs when walking is considered the best exercise (rather than what is it— locomotion); where one must be careful not to move too fast or breathe at the wrong moment, or let one’s knee flex too far, for fear of injury. Give it another 100 years, and the “fitness” community will advocate almost total inactivity in the interests of safety, while those in the know will continue to shatter World records in the power sports, while incurring far less injuries than their more “knowledgeable” fitness peers.

The cold hard fact is that danger is relative to preparation. Some people incur injuries from doing next to nothing; others experience no injuries despite regular intense physical activity. So if you’re new to the concept of using accelerative lifting technique, resist the temptation to go from A to Z in one fell swoop! Instead, implement the technique gradually and progressively. In this way, you’ll avoid the possibility of unwanted surprises.

Is Acceleration Efficient?

The phenomenon known as the stretch-shortening cycle (or SSC) strongly hints that the body is in fact designed for ballistic and accelerative stress. To better understand the SSC, imagine your muscles as elastic bands that stretch during eccentric activity, and contract during the concentric portion of the movement.

For those interested in the physics of the matter, what happens is that the muscles develop potential kinetic energy during the eccentric phase of the movement, which is then released during the concentric phase, creating a more powerful action than what could be accomplished through concentric activity alone (2).

If you watch people carefully in various situations, you'll notice that, whenever there is an option to accelerate a load, people will take that option. On stairclimbing machines, people will (especially as fatigue sets in) tend to step in a bouncy, choppy manner. When a heavy box must be lifted from the floor to a high shelf, a person will accelerate the box throughout the lift. Further, wherever possible, the motor cortex will prefer an acceleration path where the largest possible number of muscle groups can participate in the effort, in order to conserve energy and avoid dangerous levels of stress to any single muscle involved in the movement. Deliberate attempts to move slowly or to ”isolate” any particular muscle during a challenging task (whether it be in the gym or in everyday life) contradicts this reality.

Final Considerations

I’ll finish with a few points that you’ll need to know before employing acceleration in your workouts:

The Technology of Acceleration

Conventional barbell training, although effective, can be improved upon when it comes to accelerative lifting. Here are a few of the more effective strategies which have emerged over the past few years:

References:

1). Simmons, L., What If? Milo: A Journal for Serious Strength Athletes.. Vol 4 No 1. (c) 1996. Ironmind Enterprises, Inc. p.p. 26.
2) Komi, P.V., (Ed.), Strength and Power in Sport. (c) 1992. Blackwell Scientific Publications, London. p.p. 169.
3) Hatfield, F.C., Power: A Scientific Approach. (c) 1989. Contemporary Books. Chicago. p.p. 123.