In this very practical episode, Chris and Rob talk about how athletes can increase maximum strength without gaining weight (or without gaining too much muscle mass). 

Following directly on from last week's podcast episode on potentiation, Chris and Rob talk about contrast training from a physiological perspective. They explain why in most cases, a more traditional approach to athletic strength training workouts (starting with high-velocity exercises, moving on to heavy strength training exercises, and finishing with plyometrics) is much better than doing contrast training methods that mix the various types of training up into complexes.

Potentiation is a temporary and reversible increase in exercise performance as a result of a previous bout of exercise (note that this is the exact opposite of the fatigue definition). In this episode, Chris and Rob explain the physiology behind potentiation and describe the most effective ways of using the various different potentiation mechanisms in strength training workouts.

Following on from the previous episode about muscle strain injuries, Chris and Rob talk about the physiology of tendon damage and how it likely leads to both tendinopathy and tendon ruptures. Afterwards, they describe how isometric training is probably the best training method for reducing the risk of such problems and Rob goes into detail about how he currently programs isometrics.

Chris and Rob talk about how muscle strain injuries happen, and what we can do in strength training programs to help reduce the risk of them happening.

Chris and Rob talk through what the literature says about the relationship between track sprinting performance and the muscle volumes of the hip extensors, hip flexors, knee extensors, knee flexors, and ankle plantar-flexors.

Chris and Rob continue describing how their proposed workout plan template (speed, maximum strength, stretch-shortening cycle, and eccentric strength) can work even when speed exercises are varied greatly over the week.

Chris and Rob talk about the popular strength and conditioning idea that there multiple strength qualities across the force-velocity spectrum, from maximum strength to strength-speed to power to speed-strength to maximum speed. They also introduce the High Performance Physiology method for building strength training workouts for athletes.

Endurance running performance is determined by three components: [1] maximal aerobic capacity, [2] lactate threshold, and [3] running economy. In this episode, Chris and Rob talk about how strength training can contribute to improvements in running economy.

Chris and Rob chat through what strength ratios between exercises can tell us (and what they cannot tell us) about writing athletic training programs.