ONLINE DRIVERS MEDIA

Bench press bros, listen up! You better push that weigh up fast, if you want to make maximal strength gains - O-lifting says "Hello" ;-)

Do you train deliberately slow? If so, you may be limiting your strength gains. A recently published paper in the European Journal of Sports Science shows: "Movement velocity can be considered a fundamental component of RT intensity, since, for a given %1RM, the velocity at which loads are lifted largely determines the resulting training effect" (Gonzalez-Badillo. 2014).

Before we take a closer look at how "large" the effect of training the training velocity actually is, I would like to invite you to take a closer look at the design of the corresponding experiment that was conducted at the Pablo de Olivade University in Seville, Spain.
The experiment was designed in an attempt to clarify the influence of repetition velocity on the gains in strength consequent to isoinertial resistance training. To this ends, the scientists conducted two separate studies:

• Study I compared the effect of two distinct RT interventions on strength gains using movement velocity as the independent variable. Two groups that only differed in actual repetition velocity (and consequently in time under tension, TUT): maximal intended velocity (MaxV) vs. half-maximal velocity (HalfV) trained three times per week for 6 weeks using the bench press (BP) exercise, while the remaining programme variables (number of sets and repetitions, inter-set rests and loading magnitude) were kept identical.
• Study II was a complementary study that aimed to analyze whether the acute metabolic (blood lactate and ammonia) and mechanical response (velocity loss) was different between the type of MaxV and HalfV protocols previously used in Study I

Of the 24 men who volunteered to participate in Study I, only 20 successfully completed the entire study (mean ± s: age 21.9 ± 2.9 years, height 1.77 ± 0.08 m, body mass 70.9 ± 8.0 kg). Therefore, the scientists recruited 10 additional participants (25.3 ± 3.4 years, 1.77 ± 0.08 m, body mass 75.2 ± 8.7 kg) for the follow up study (Study II).
The participants were physically active sport science students with 2–4 years of recreational RT experience in the bench press exercise - a fact that may be important if you take into consideration what I wrote about the Pereira study in the red box above.

Figure 1: Schematic timeline of study design (Gonzales-Badillo. 2014)

"Based upon pre-test 1RM strength performance, participants were allocated to one of the two groups following an ABBA counterbalancing sequence: MaxV (n = 9) or HalfV (n = 11) [the non-random allocation to the two groups ensured that there was no significant strength difference between the two groups at the beginning of the study].

The only difference in the RT programme between groups was the actual velocity at which loads were lifted: maximal intended concentric velocity for MaxV vs. an intentional half-maximal concentric velocity for HalfV [note the difference between doing each rep at maximal velocity and trying to do so!]."

Both groups trained three times per week, on non-consecutive days, for a period of 6 weeks using doing nothing but bench presses on each of the workout days. In that, Study I and II were performed 3 weeks apart using a different sample of participant.

Figure 2: Changes in bench press 1-RM over the course of Study I. The relative changes are 16% increase in the maximal 9% increase in the 50% velocity group (Gonzales-Badillo. 2014)

As you can see in Figure 2 the scientists are right, when they say that it seems as if "[m]ovement velocity can be considered a fundamental component of RT intensity, since, for a given %1RM, the velocity at which loads are lifted largely determines the resulting training effect" (Gonzalez-Badillo. 2014). A corresponding difference in lactate production during the workouts was yet detected only if the exercise was performed at low intensities and high speed, i.e. 3 × 8 with 0.79 m/s at ?60% of the 1RM and with 3 × 6 with 0.62 m/s a ?70% of the 1RM.
References:

• González-Badillo, Juan José, et al. "Maximal intended velocity training induces greater gains in bench press performance than deliberately slower half-velocity training." European journal of sport science ahead-of-print (2014): 1-10.
• Ingebrigtsen, Jørgen, Andreas Holtermann, and Karin Roeleveld. "Effects of load and contraction velocity during three-week biceps curls training on isometric and isokinetic performance." The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research 23.6 (2009): 1670-1676.
• Pareja-Blanco, F., et al. "Effect of Movement Velocity during Resistance Training on Neuromuscular Performance." International Journal of Sports Medicine EFirst (2014).
• Pereira, Marta Inez Rodrigues, and Paulo Sergio Chagas Gomes. "Effects of isotonic resistance training at two movement velocities on strength gains." Revista Brasileira de Medicina do Esporte 13.2 (2007): 91-96.
• Sakamoto, Akihiro, and Peter James Sinclair. "Muscle activations under varying lifting speeds and intensities during bench press." European journal of applied physiology 112.3 (2012): 1015-1025.

Voluntary & NMES contractions for Monster Quads?

You are always looking for new ways to improve your training outcome? Scientists from the Department of Physiotherapy at the University Cardenal Herrera-CEU might have something for you, then. In their latest study, V. Benavent-Caballer, P. Rosado-Calatayud, E. Segura-Ortí, J.J. Amer-Cuenca, and J.F. Lisón tried to elucidate, whether conducting low intensity resistance training in conjunction with  neuromuscular electrical stimulation (NMES) would provide not just an additional growth stimulus, but also corresponding increases in physical performance, muscle cross-sectional area (CSA) and the capacity to perform daily tasks 22 in exactly those subjects researchers will resort to, when theyre looking for generous funding for studies the outcome of which is not going to pay off in form of scripts for a new patentable drug: Older adults living in a geriatric nursing home.
What? Yeah... I have to admit, the subjects are not exactly bodybuilders and a regular high intensity control is missing, but even if it wasnt for the necessary fact that youll belong to the group of "older adults" in 50 years from now, the results of the study at hand would still have a certain relevance for younger trainees. Why? Well, something that makes the elderly grow will certainly do the same in young people. Whether it does so at the same or even higher rates than "regular" strength training will obviously have to be elucidated in future studies.

Table 1: Subject characteristics;  VC = volitional contraction; NMES = neuromuscular electrical stimulation; NMES+ = NMES superimposed onto voluntary contraction. SD = standard deviation (Benavent-Caballer. 2014)

For now, all I can tell you is that the three weekly supervised 30-35 min exercise sessions the 89 participants of the study at hand performed in the course of this 16-week study lead to significantly more pronounced strength and size gains, when the exercise was performed using both voluntary contractions and the forced contractions, the researchers produced by attaching their subjects to the surface electrodes of a portable NMES devices (TensMed S82).
The four adhesive surface electrodes (5 × 5 cm) were placed on the distal medial and proximal lateral portions of the subjects anterior thigh, when they performed their three sets of knee extensions (15 reps each) in a single-leg fashion with 3-minute rest between sets.

Figure 2: Changes in muscle strength (hand grup) and size (rectus femoris), as well as changes in parameters of physical functioning in response to the three training modalities (Benavent-Caballer. 2014)

The participants were instructed to raise the weight in 1 s (concentric phase), keep a full knee extension for 3 s (isometric phase) and slowly lower the weight in 2 s to the starting position (eccentric phase). Each contraction was followed by a 2-second rest period, and the training intensity was set at 40% of 1RM... and yeas, this sounds pretty much like peak contractions, an intensity technique which may in fact be the reason that the old trainees in the study at hand recorded highly significant increases in muscle size even when the peak contraction or rather the whole movement was not superimposed with NMES which was delivered with a ramp-up time of 1 s increasing intensity as the knee was extended from 90° to full extension that was followed by 3 s keeping the knee in full extension and 2 s of a ramp-down with gradually decreasing intensity (see Figure 2, yellow).
References:

• Babault N, Cometti G, Bernardin M, et al. "Effects of electromy ostimulation training on muscle strength and power of elite rugby players." J Strength Cond Res 21 (2007): 431-7.
• Bezerra, Pedro, et al. "Effects of unilateral electromyostimulation superimposed on voluntary training on strength and cross?sectional area." Muscle & nerve 40.3 (2009): 430-437.
• Brocherie F, Babault N, Cometti G, et al. "Electromyostimulation training effects on the physical performance on ice hockey players." Med Sci Sports Exerc 37 (2005): 455-60.
• Delitto A, Brown M, Strube MJ, et al." Electrical stimulation of quadriceps femoris in an elite weight lifter: a single subject experiment." Int J Sports Med 10 (1989): 187-91.
• Dervisevic E, Bilban M, Valencic V." The influence of low-frequency electrostimulation and isokinetic training on the maximal strength of m. quadriceps femoris." Isokinet Exerc Sci 10 (2002): 203-9. 
• Hortobágyi, Tibor, Jean Lambert, and Kevin Scott. "Incomplete muscle activation after training with electromyostimulation." Canadian journal of applied physiology 23.3 (1998): 261-270. 
• Maffiuletti NA, Cometti G, Amiridis IG, et al. "The effects of electromyostimulation training and basket practice on muscle strength and jumping ability. Int J Sports Med 21 (2000): 437-
  43. 
• Malatesta D, Cattaneo F, Dugnani S, et al. "Effects of electromyostimulation training and volley practice on jumping abilities." J Strength Cond Res 17 (2003): 573-9.
• Herrero JA, Izquierdo M, Maffiuletti N, et al. "Electromyostimu lation and plyometric training effects on jumping and sprint time." Int J Sports Med 27 (2006): 533-9.
• Paillard, Thierry, et al. "Effects of two types of neuromuscular electrical stimulation training on vertical jump performance." The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research 22.4 (2008): 1273-1278.
• Pichon F, Chatard JC, Martin A, et al. "Electrical stimulation and swimming performance." Med Sci Sports Exerc 27 (1995): 1671-6.
• Venable MP, Collins MA, O’Bryant HS, et al. "Effect of supplemental electrical stimulation on the development of strength, vertical jump performance and power." J Appl Sport Sci Res 5 (1991): 139-43