Something I have really discovered over the last couple of years is that explosive weightlifting is a valuable tool in priming the nervous system in short term planning. I always used to think that doing something like lifting the day before a competition would be a terrible idea…. until I noticed my jumpers setting near PR performances when we would do a medium lifting session the day before that was focused on olympic lifts.
I watched a great lecture from Dan Pfaff earlier this year and discovered that world record high jumper, Javier Sotomayer did 8×3 heavy snatches the morning he set his first big high jump world record (he did snatched in the morning and jumped that afternoon). Apparantly, he wasn’t even expecting to do all that well that given day, but you can believe, after that, he didn’t shy away from heavy explosive weightlifting on the mornings of big competitions. After hearing this, I thought to something that had happened to me just earlier that week; I had set a nice personal best in the classical snatch from the floor, and when I went to play basketball that night, I was jumping out of the gym! I actually ended up dunking on a full court break and landing on my face (22 stitches) but it was an awesome dunk! Long story short, explosive lifting can really set you up for solid speed/power training sessions shortly thereafter.
With doing lifting to ramp up the nervous system in respect to later workouts, I feel that olympic lifts work significantly better than static lifts. I have noticed this in my own training, as well as when I look at the example of a track and field world record, olympic lifts happened to be the stimulus of choice. On top of all this, recent research by Andrews (JSCR 2011) has shown that hang cleans are superior to backsquats when considering the effect that will be had on immediate vertical jump performance. There is no research out to my knowledge that compares olympic lifts vs. squats when it comes to a 24-hour effect on vertical, but I would imagine that olympic lifts have the advantage there due to their explosive nature. Of course, when looking at the long term development of athletes, it is important to use both types of lifts.
Bottom line, don’t be afraid to get some explosive lifting (and maybe even some not so explosive lifting) in within a few hours of your competitions, it won’t hurt you as bad as you might think! On top of this, the ability to lift more often in a training week will help teach your body to handle higher frequency loading to a greater degree, which many trainees are lacking.
Below is the article reference:
Effect Of Hang Cleans Or Squats Paired With Countermovement Vertical Jumps On Vertical Displacement
Tedi RAndrews – Theresa Mackey – Thomas AInkrott – Steven RMurray – Ida EClark – Robert WPettitt – Journal Of Strength And Conditioning Research – 2011
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