Using Velocity to Auto-regulate Training

23:52 - Velocity Loss % and Training Goals

so velocity loss we just touched on it at the start Damien there but you know if we're doing a power training exercise a jump or a medicine ball throw or something like a bound try and make sure limit your velocity loss to about five to ten percent within the set five to ten percent and it'll be 10 in general prep and maybe five percent in season or in specific prep or when you're peaking strength training for the lower body it's somewhere between 20 to 30 plus upper body 30 to 50 plus so the higher the percentage this means you've done more reps probably and it's going to be more fatiguing definitely hypertrophy training over 35 over 45 those are the velocity losses we should be looking at and I'll just give you an example in a moment uh of those but why 20 and 30 for the lower body as a sort of a cut off is a lot of research shows at an intermediate level athletes which will take us high school athletes they can still gain strength for lower body exercise it's a squat a bulgarians deadlifts Etc 30 for pressing and and pull-ups they can still gain strength but the recovery is quicker it's within 24 hours sometimes so and our lead athletes or our stronger ones they can maintain strength easily in season looking at 20 velocity loss so if you're thinking you've got a Friday night football game what can I do on uh Wednesday well we can try and pretty explosively um on our power exercises or dynamic exercises five or ten percent lossy loss if you want to do some strength work okay as long as it's a squat that limits to 20 velocity loss they should be recovered by Thursday let alone Friday so we know that the lower the velocity loss the quicker the recovery the greater the velocity loss though the greater the hypertrophy stimulus so we might want a big hypertrophy stimulus on a Wednesday for a Friday night game so we limit the velocity loss uh because that big velocity losses means longer to recovery means 20 uh 72 hours at least so if we're playing Friday night football and Wednesday lifting we don't want uh to impact our game by doing you know High Velocity loss training on a Wednesday like I said uh Power training you know five to ten percent depending on what type of year is it specific power exercises so here's just an example using I pressed behind the net so you're an athlete is it says a shot put up you know on a power day they might do uh here they're doing eight reps the graphs cut off but they're doing eight reps and it's only eight percent velocity loss um it's a lightweight 40 kilos boom boom boom boom boom on a strength day that here they're doing uh they actually did uh seven or eight reps um a bigger velocity lost 40 percent and here's our perjury day it's 50k but they're doing 12 reps and a big velocity loss so these velocity losses are tied into your objective on the same exercise so pressed behind the neck for a shot putter low velocity losses power training and a lighter weight heavier weight this moderately High Velocity loss and then hypertely we've got a bigger velocity loss so that's just an example so if you had that background information that helps us program then so just remember that uh you know 20 velocity loss for lower body excise and 30 percent allows us to develop strength and lower level athletes um without too much fatigue and maintain strengthen are better athletes so we might use this in season in the pre-season and off season we can have bigger velocity losses um Etc and these bigger velocity losses are associated with greater muscle size or a quicker gains to muscle size basically you're just going closer to failure

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27:41 - Velocity is there to Support Programming, Not Replace Itso like I mentioned right at the start velocity loss should supplement your programming not replace it I'm going to go through a few ways now to look at that

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27:54 - Using Velocity to Guide Weight Selection (6a on Slide 1)so here's one way we can do it is is we sort of link a percentage of one RM rough or an rpe to a certain velocity score for an athlete say okay on this day you know we're looking at roughly 70 percent of eights maybe RP 7 what it is the best record of set should be 0.65 and this is here now if we get this workout and the app is getting 0.6 instead of 0.54 we're down the first set hey whack on some more weight and I want to tell you right now what that amount is for every change of 0.05 add two and a half percent one RM to the bar two to two and a half so if this athlete is 0.54 and actually it's supposed to be 0.54 of the weight but they're getting 0.6 in the first set I don't think oh that's a 10 Improvement in velocity I should add 10 weight it's not about the percentage change here it's the absolute change in velocity 0.05 equals a change in absolute strength of about two to two and a half percent that's what we change so doing this we can modify our weights on the day if an app is a bit fatigued from practice and instead of getting 0.54 this way they're getting 0.49 let's take off two and a half percent one RM they're coming in here and they're feeling great coach I'm smashing this weight my first set with this weight I'm supposed to get 0.47 I've got 0.57 well let's put five percent more weight on that bar five percent one RM uh more weight on the bar it's that simple we can Auto regulate to that degree it's beautiful certain exercises as well people do a lot of us can't do power cleans we've got an injury and a desiccated shoulders elbows you know a lot of footballers wrestlers Etc we get some injuries so you know instead of being our power clean we might do the power strip jump and it's great evidence from uh Dr Tim sukumel about this and Dr Paul comfort about doing these exercises so what weight do we choose well we're going to paralyze it and just use velocity this is mean velocity so week one I'm going to get 1.2 week two you know 1.1 so if the athlete does a first set it gets 1.3 and it's got 225 pounds he's getting 1.3 on the best rep yeah cash I've got 1.3 yeah when you best put another uh 10 pounds on the bar then for the second set what do you get in the second set either 1.25 coach put an extra 10 pounds one by the third set then athlete and that's how we use it well they come up here uh coach I've got a 265 pounds on the bar supposed to get 1.1 I got one point uh 1.0 okay you're a bit fatigued today from practice let's take off uh 10 or 20 pounds simple so the weights then will guide uh the selection because there's no one RM on track bar jumps power shrug jumps jump squats you know we're going to use velocity to help guide what weight is on the bar knowing that you know in week in every end of a block we want this one meter per second or just under it you know 0.9 something because that's the same speed as our 1rm jump squats it maximizes power uh for power cleans uh for line driving football for a lot of exercises so now that's our goal in this is a dynamic effort three week waves you can see so week three and week six we want that you know to be peaking or that velocity which allows us to maximize power so here's an applied example this is not high school athletes that actually Australian senior rugby team uh I had to take a camper from many years ago before a World Cup and I never trained any of these athletes never met them but I had to take a three-week camp and uh basically you know we had a strength day and a dynamic effort or power day and you know I said okay well we're gonna warm up and on our first set you know eight reps and I want your first rep at 0.65 and uh if the weight you've chosen or I'll choose the first weight looking at your warm-ups and talking to you about you know your previous one RMS and if we get 0.65 we'll stay in that weight if not we'll adjust it so I think at point seven well gonna go up to an FK if you get point six I'm gonna go down two and a half or five k and it's that simple so in here uh you know we put 60 on and it's you're gonna get 0.85 and if the athlete says coach I've got 0.9 put some more weight in the bar very simple so there's our goal we're trying to maximize the amount of weight you can lift on this day getting that white uh that velocity so what's the most amount of weight I can lift while still getting this velocity so we've got five or six sets there first two you might be getting uh that velocity the third set you're doing better your Prime okay let's put some more weight in the back let's go that's great same here we're working up to a five RM if the second set and uh they got 0.54 we say we're going to put even more weight on here we're gonna put seven half percent on because this is two and a half percent over what you should be if you've got 0.54 here and we're going to go up five percent RM anyhow so that's real simple way of of doing it you know of using this programming

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33:10 - Using Velocity to Guide In-Session Loading Changes (6b on Slide 1)so like I mentioned uh 0.05 is our magical figure and it doesn't matter what exercise for strength training squat deadlift press bench press rows 0.05 for two two and a half percent seems to be the consistent amount obviously there'll be individual differences but that's a that's a magic amount if I can use the word magic don't worry about changing weights if it's 0.01 to 0.04 so if someone's supposed to get 0.5 and they've got 0.54 or 0.46 I don't change it's in that normal Gray Zone yeah 0.05 is my minimum change the weight thing okay but only if it's also uh Falls within my retin reserve and RP uh framework so if I said this is you know rpe 8 Etc

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34:05 - Using Velocity ‘Indicator Sets’ to Gauge Strength Readiness & Load Selection (6c on Slide 1)now I want to talk about something called indicator sets and I've got a couple of slides in this a lot of people use a can of movement jump at the end of uh warm up once a week to gauge recovery and that's really good it gauges recovery for Speed speed what we're seeing now it's not a good indicator is of is your strength recovered So and I've always used this uh indicator sets the last warm-up set and or the first working set and then each subsequent set to fine-tune the resistances for each subsequent set so this is research by someone from Australia called Callahan and they looked at okay uh doing bench press and squat using the last warm-up set about 60 one hour and between 50 and 60 and using that then to help select um the training weights and gauge recovery and they found that's a lot more efficient and better predictor of the recovery of strength as opposed to a counter movement jump so I've always advocated using a last warm-up set to help you understand are you on song are you ready to lift the weight that's planned for you so for example say this athlete has a 150 kilogram one iron Squad that's 330 pounds we may use 100 kilograms or 225 pounds as their last warm-up set uh one or two reps just you don't need to do a set of five or ten just one rep because two reps just to see is there school with that weight where it should be today and then we're going to do our first training set the first training set might be 80 Max 120 kilos so uh 265 pounds um this gives you confidence yep I'm on song I should be where I am at I'll give you a couple examples of that now so here's an athlete doing pressed by the neck on a strength day uh it's first exercise it's a dominant exercise for them they're an overhead athlete and we can see in this mode purple color on that day they're using 45 kilos about 60 percent and it's a ramping weight because they're going to go up to 55 60 or 65 kilos but it just tells them yeah you're on song your strength levels today with this lightweight at 60 uh where they should be you know your first rep or best rappers point five five point five four point five eight it's very very consistent but when they do this press on the neck as uh the first exercise or the third exercise so maybe on this day here they've done it after floor press and rows or they've done it here after squatting um and Romanians that score with the same weight is lower which tells us on that day they're not as strong they have acute fatigue if it's third exercise and also even when it's first exercise in the workout but it's later on in the week the score is different it says okay you're carrying some fatigue from the training week uh so your strength here uh say yeah 0.48 compared to 0.55 and yeah you're two and a half three percent weaker today so on that day uh you know 45k is just stays with the high priority exercises you know three sets of 12 RPS seven or something so we're using these these weights to tell us you know is the structure of my training week right Amway is strong on the dates I set aside for max strength for that exercise is that right yes it is the structure of the training week is right on that day when I want to do my heavy weights my velocity was 60 is highest and then later in the week when I I uh that becomes more the third exercise in the workout I am actually weaker because I've done floor press and rows or whatever first so just using these sets to help fine-tune your exercise selection on which days and then adjust the resistance here's another example so this is two weeks apart an athlete coming into peaking they're doing looking here second of July they've done uh 140 kilos of first rep 0.48 then I've done they've gone to 155 kilos just one or two reps uh 0.42 on the first rep then they're done 165k four ramps 0.28 means they're getting close to Max effort remember 0.25.26 is Max effort so 0.28 they're at 9.5 or maybe 9.75 they could have done a fifth fret but maybe they could have done 167.5 kilos okay but the next week they think okay I want to go to full rpe 10. and I think the thing that could do 170. they do their first set Yep they're point zero five more two and a half percent stronger so they go up two and a half percent which is five kilos here yep boom so they are extremely confident that you get 170 for four because they did 165 for four here but they're two and a half percent stronger than 140 and they're the same velocity here with 5K more so they're extremely confident they're going to get 170 for the four it's just a it's written so as long as they don't do something stupid with technique they're gonna get one step before the athlete knows it the coach knows it so that's beautiful it gives us confidence we know exactly where we're going to be sweet

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39:30 - Using Velocity to Control ‘Effort’ and Fatigue Accumulation (6d on Slide 1)yeah now let's talk about uh in align with that it is uh linking uh this uh idea of the last rep to the rpe or reps and Reserve so we can see these are gross areas okay so somewhere between 0.25 to 0.3 would be zero reps in reserve or rpe 10. now I just gave an example where the athlete thinks it's 9.75 yeah we can quibble about those fractions but you know this is a good idea so at this end you know three reps from failure your last rep or something like that we're building strength we're really building strength up here uh you know if our last rep in a set of squash is 0.5 I'm nowhere near failure I'm doing probably Dynamic effort training or I can it's strength training with an easy recovery so you know I got these zones obviously we need to individualize for athletes but this gives us an idea same for upper body you know so if athletes hitting anywhere in there uh they're they're pretty close to maxing out if their last rep is 0.22 uh you're probably one rep away from failure that's what we you might want them on this day or if we're playing Friday night and it's Wednesday hey let's finish our last rep around here we can be explosive um well up here we're even you know we'd be exploding like we're going to recover quick so we go to these scores now that link effort and velocity and what we've seen in research before I go on this slide is research has shown if we take a percentage-based program and use the percentages written only and compared to percentages dialed in to rpe so here's a percentage but also use this rpe because you'll have days where you're feeling strong or there's exams or you're feeling a bit weaker the program that takes both rpe and percentage into account gets a significantly better outcome than the program that just dogmatically uses percentages there's a Grime and clever study now there's another study by Doral that's very similar that says what if I just compare using percentages to percentages and velocity and in that study the same thing if we link percentages and velocity we get a better strength outcome than just saying stick to these percentages so my point was if you can use percentages or just wait on a bar you know 300 pounds or whatever it might be and Link rpe and percent one RM and um velocity together that gives us the strongest best way to select your appropriate overload for an athlete on a day because we know that during exam time our athletes are under stress from exams uh the strength decreases Dr Brian Mann has shown this in University college students uh we'll see this also in high school students during exam time strange schools can decrease so we start linking rpe and velocity to their training weights that's the best outcome