I’m doing an Every Other Day lift specific split. Also using the Triple Progression for my main lifts and really like the set up. My strength is really increasing.
I am wanting to add a few sets somewhere of explosive work to keep or even increase speed/explosiveness. I also feel like explosive work before heavy sets has a positive impact on my strength.
I was thinking of just doing 3 to 5 sets of 3 reps with 40% or 50% of max on my main lift of the day.
Example: Squats - do 4 sets of 3 with 185 lbs then make jumps up to 340 (main work set weight)
Or would a few sets of box or vertical jumps be just as good?
the easiest thing to do is as you mention: do speed sets of your main lift. This can either be done before or after the heavy sets.
BEFORE
Has the benefit of increasing CNS activation and motor-units recruitment, making the heavy sets more effective. It’s also a good way to be even better prepared/warmed-up for the heavy sets
AFTER
You can have a contrast effect: the light weights feeling lighter after having done the heavy work and because the heavy work will also increase neurlogical activation, it can boost explosive performance. Another benefit is that the explosive work done after the heavy work could lead to more hypertrophy in the fast twitch fibers as the intermediate ones will be too tired to contribute. BUT the downside of that is that it could increase the conversion of the more explosive IIx fibers into the less explosive ones IIa.
I would say that if your main goal is being explosive and strong, doing the explosive sets first will be a better option.
If hypertrophy is your priority, doing them after the heavy sets might be better.
Adding a few sets of jumps as part of your preparation routine also works pretty well.
Thank you for the answer! I am going to start doing them first as part of the warm up for the main lift for increasing strength and for helping cns activation for main lift.
Do you have any specific set rep and weight that work best?
Or is 3 or 4 sets of 3 explosive reps with about 50% 1RM a good starting point?
I would include a progression so that it doubles as preparation for the heavy sets.
2 sets of 3 reps at 50%, 2 sec pause on chest
2 sets of 2 reps at 60%, 2 sec pause 1" from chest then lower fast to the chest and explode up
2 sets of 2 reps at 70% normal speed reps
All with as much concentric acceleration as possible
I obviously used the bench as an example (yeah, I know you don’t bench) but you get the idea