Question about Power/speed training.

[CC dad]

When training explosively with lighter loads(jump squats, speed dead lift, plyo push up, medicine ball throws) what kind of set/rep scheme should I follow? Should it be many sets of low reps or a few sets of high reps? I have seen people doing both.

[Lisa~]

I do not have an answer for you, but Nick Grantham recently did a review of the literature regarding plyometrics and injuries, which might be relevant to your question. It's very long and I don't have a link to it, but I would be happy to email it to you. Please pm me with an email address if you're interested.

[karky]

what i have heard is that to get good power you should keep sets as short as possible. but then again, ive seen explosive endurance training too, so i guess its what you want.

i train olympic lifting, which are all exposive speedy movements, and the max number of reps i use is 3.

[DEMON_OF_MASS]

Well when i used to train for powerlifting i used to lift the weight slow on the way down but explode on the way up with 55% of my 1rep max,also i used to do 3 reps mostly however i would think you could go as high as 5reps??Thats just me,but no doubt some of the pros will give you better advice!

[Eric Cressey]

It depends on the load. The heavier it is, the few reps you should do.

For unloaded movements and med ball stuff, you'll see up in the neighborhood of 8-10 reps (even moreso on short-response plyos).

For speed-strength stuff (e.g. jump squats at 30-40%), your best bet is 3-6 reps (power output is actually maximized with three reps, according to previous research).

When you get up in the 45%+ range (strength-speed), stick with sets of 2-3. Any more reps than that and you're just conditioning yourself to move for longer rather than faster.

I cover this in the sample programming in my off-season training manual.

[CC dad]

Thanks guys. Eric I think that I'm going to get that book.