I had an idea for a training exercise and wanted to see what everyone thought if if they had tried it. It’s basically a heavy, slow eccentric squat, into an iso hold and the bottom into a weight-released concentric, done in pure cluster fashion, probably in an intensification phase. You’d unrack the weight in a squat rack, lower the bar, which should be more than your 1 rm and lower it as slowly as you can.
Once you reach the bottom, you’d hold for 5-10 seconds. During this hold, your training partners would simultaneously pull off the same amount of weight at the same time ad you’d explode up for the concntric, re-rack and wait 10-15 sec. for you next rep. If you trust your partners and have the timing worked out, I think it would be a solid move.
Also, how many sets does Thib recommend to do when using medium-rep clusters and pure rep clusters? Thanks.
I think the weight releaser would be a lot safer than having a partner strip the weight off while it is on your back. That sounds like a recipe for disaster. Be sure to put in on youtube if you try it.
If I wanted to do the same thing in a safer way, I would probably go the way of additional manual resistance. But how would you do it in a squat? Is it possible?
There’s one technique in which you will descend in the squat and pause in the stretch range (femur parallel to ground) while a partner applies manual pressure to the bar to keep you from rising while you strain as hard as possible to overcome the resistance. After 3-5 seconds in this position, your partner releases the bar and you perform an explosive concentric.
I think Inno-Sport would refer to this as an isometric parametric (IPM) technique.
If you wanted to incorporate a supramaximal eccentric into the deal, you’d probably want to use about 90-95% of your 1RM in bar weight, with about 15-25% on weight releasers. Descend until the weight releasers pop off, then start the hold as before.
Bands probably wouldn’t offer enough resistance in the stretch range. Plus, they probably wouldn’t allow as explosive an eccentric. After 5 seconds of maximal straining, you’re not going to want to have to fight the bands all the way up.
Of course you could try it and tell us about your results. That would be a pain to set up, though, with weight releasers and bands (assuming you wanted to incorporate the supramax eccentric).