hey what's up everyone! Morey Croson here and today we're going to be going over the
benefits of contrast training and why i do it i'm going to start the video right now
all right so contrast training just to give you the technical definition is a hybrid strength
power modality that involves pairing a heavy lift with the high velocity movement of the
same pattern an example would be squats and then following that up with the box jump it's
physiological foundation is based on its ability to elicit post activation potentiation which
refers to the acute enhancement of muscle force capabilities following maximal or near maximal
muscular contractions so the idea behind contrast training is that after you do a squat you start to
activate some of the muscles that you're going to be utilizing for a box jump then you go and you do
the box jump and it helps in increasing your ability to recruit the muscles necessary to be
able to perform the box jump so for me obviously going deep into sprinting the big thing that i do
is a lot more to do with lunges and and the good thing with lunges is there's such a wide
variety of variation that you can do in your lunges to be able to elicit the same type of
response within the body but also make it so you can have a significantly higher amount
of variation in the workouts and then be able to utilize that in a wide variety of different types
of exercises to help improve overall force production so here we're going to go through
uh walking lunges here you know big thing with the locking lunges that i'm trying to work on after
watching that usain bolt video is i'm trying to land a little bit more onto really like the front
part of the foot ball of the foot as i'm going through so you can see most of my weight is on on
the front side really i'm trying to keep my heel up a little bit more you know just overall you
know this isn't a great example you can see how more of my weight is forward you can't really see
that i'm really trying to keep my heel up in the air uh just a good amount of weight here i think
it ended up being an impact on it you can see my heels just not going down the ground and i'm
not keeping my weight into my heel as i'm going through and so you know this is an example of the
walking lunges and then for here i transition that into single leg box jumps i really just wanted to
be able to work on on getting the range of motion within that back foot so this ended up being a big
part of it as well is getting all the way up onto my big toe right and i've talked about that in the
videos as well where i'm really trying to focus on being able to get a little bit more verticality
in my feet and being able to really utilize that in improving my push-off
and making sure that i'm able to cycle my leg right up through as after i push up
so i cycled this with single leg box jumps also you know just
went and got a person to come and do some videos for me and so i thought
it would be good to be able to get some some cool uh jumps here and i thought
single leg you know 30 inch single leg box jumps would be not a bad thing to do
next thing is going to be step back lunges so here i'm stepping all the way through
again landing on more of the ball of my feet controlling my knees
shifting all of my weight forward as i'm going through on each one of these movements here
i'm gonna quickly interrupt this video just to say if you like the information go ahead and
click that thumbs up subscribe to the channel and we're gonna hop right back in the video and then
partnering that up with single leg broad jumps right all the way through again trying to make
sure that i maintain all of my weight onto the balls of my feet not letting my heels go down
and just really trying to be quick as quick as possible and i did that with single leg cycles
at this point i had um you know kind of had some tightness in my lower back just from
you know doing some different workouts and so i didn't want to go in and push the sprint too
much but i already had this this day kind of planned out and so i really put a focus on
single leg cycles because i still wanted to be able to do a video on the contrast training and
the benefits of contrast training um but you know still being able to work on on that so now
i went and i did reverse lunges you can see same idea keeping the weight more forward onto my front
leg keep my chest up you know so i did walking lunges here i did step back lunges i did reverse
step back lunges so just getting a wide variety of different movements being able to control the
feet and then i partnered that up with just regular starts right so i just came around in
my you know backyard and just worked on being able to get again down onto my my foot quickly and
then push right back off i made a video recently about my starts and this ended up being you know
most of the running that i just did i was able to at least get some degree of speed going here and
just being able to work on having that good fast twitch movement pattern to follow up some of the
other you know movies that i did primarily lunge patterns partnering up with different plyometric
patterns ends up being the name of the game here obviously squat with the box jump would
be you know a very easy thing to be able to do but lunging and any type of running pattern also has
a very very similar correlation because of the high velocity that is in a sprinting pattern so
anything that really partners up with more of a strength based exercise to a power based exercise
is going to be something that's going to be able to fall within the contrast training i
really really recommend this is anybody that works out with me knows that when you work out with me
or even do my workouts on my online program it's a lot more of a flow type of a situation it's not
too much of like uh do one thing and then stand around and then do another thing and stand around
or rest or something like that i'm always flowing i'm always going from one exercise to the next
exercise the next exercise it's not always going to be just you know a direct partnership with like
a strength exercise to a high velocity exercise you know sometimes i'll do a couple high velocity
exercises after one strength exercise or i'll do a couple different strength exercises and then
partner all that up into a high velocity exercise so it's not always the same it just depends on
what the flow is like and how tired and fatigued the athlete is so you know a little bit earlier on
it's going to be more like the high velocity type exercises where as we get further and further into
it you start to get a little bit more fatigued then we get more of like a strength based type
exercise and then you know not as many of the high velocity you know type exercises so that's
generally how i do my programs overall and you know i think i've seen a lot of really really good
improvements in athletes in speed i mean really that's where the the most improvement has been in
you know all the athletes in the program has been from a speed perspective just because when you
start to get a better understanding of where your mechanics need to change and how you can change
them then we start also adding in exercises and drills and things for you to do to be able to
actually make that change it really allows the athlete the opportunity to be able to make a lot
of big improvements very very quickly so we'll probably queue a couple videos here just to show
some improvements from the screening perspective but you know big thing here is just put a focus on
technique you know it's super important here to be able to improve speed and then also add some
variability within your training don't only do strength training don't only do you know printing
training or don't only do stuff on the field or stuff in the gym you know you want to be able to
vary where it is that you're training you know sometimes i do field work sometimes i do you know
more of a gym type session sometimes i do more of a plyometric type session so it always depends
based off how my body's feeling and what ends up being the main things that i want to be able
to focus on on that time so make sure that you're changing things out making sure that you're doing
the right research to be able to actually get the improvements that you're looking for from a speed
perspective and as always guys if you like the information go ahead and click that thumbs up down
below subscribe the channel if you haven't already and like i said if you are interested in improving
your mechanics check out that speed breakdown down below that really helps you out a ton you can
either do the speed breakdown or the speed program either one puts a huge emphasis on your ability to
improve your mechanics and just get a coach to be able to actually help you out understanding
what are some of the main things that you need to do within your you know stride length your foot
contact time your start your drive phase your top end speed phase your arms you know your posture
there's so many different parts that go into running a lot of people don't even understand
the complexities that it can actually bring to being able to perform at a high level now you know
we obviously don't want to be able to or even keep crossing over your legs ends up even being a thing
that is a very very common part of not being able to get as much distance per step right because
you end up stepping over but anyway you know big thing is being able to connect to what is it that
we need to be able to change and again not a lot of people think that there's a lot of complexity
within sprinting i think it should be a very very simple movement pattern and at the end of the day
it is very simple right but in order to form at the highest level you have to be able to do all
the correct parts of sprinting and so a lot of us are not able to compete at a high level not
because of our inability to you know lift enough weights or jump high enough or you know anything
just not having the proper teaching and proper understanding of what are the right mechanics when
running is really the primary reason why that ends up being an issue so as always guys check
out the description down below speed breakdown speed program either one of those are going to
provide massive value for you and really make it so you can improve tremendously within your
sprinting so as always thanks for watching the videos if you're still watching right now click
that thumbs up that helps us out a ton subscribe to the channel and we'll talk to you soon