Hello and welcome to The Progress Theory, where we discuss scientific principles for optimising human performance.

I am Dr. Phil Price. And on today's episode, we are joined by Powerlifter and S&C coach, Rob Palmer. Now, I've known Rob for many, many years and I know he knows a thing or two about getting as strong as possible. He's won many national titles and international titles in Powerlifting and was an S C coach in professional rugby for over 15 years. So I wanted to know a bit more around his processes on getting as strong as possible and see if we can use that to improve our bench press.

In this episode, we discuss:

0:47 - Introduction
7:20 - The importance of a strength culture
14:19 - Learning from programming for rugby and powerlifting
19:00 - Multifactorial approach to programming
22:46 - Common mistakes in strength training
25:35 - Variability in strength training & Programming
32:27 - Identifying limiters of bench press performance
34:01 - Rob’s bench press training
37:00 - Reflecting on Rob’s powerlifting career
50:07 - Common mistakes in powerlifting skill
55:35 - What is 969 strength?

Key Findings

The Challenges of Professional Sport: "The job in professional sport, you're challenged to make lots and lots and lots of decisions every single day that realistically could have a very negative outcome for the player."

"The Value of Strength Training": I still think people don't value strength training as much as they should, because things come in and out of vogue, don't they? So when I first came to the sport, strength training was massive in terms of the thought process of what strength training can do for you. And I'm talking about basic strength training, getting good at deadlifting, getting good at squatting, getting good at being able to bench press, overhead press as much weight as possible, you had this kind of culture.

Viral Topic: The Importance of Recovery in Rugby

Quote: "In rugby, it's all about the recovery. It's got nothing to do with because the guys who are obviously aerobically really well developed, they're not particularly strong, but they can come in and hit 80% plus, 90% plus. It doesn't seem to affect them the same way that it does the guys who are less fit now, if you take them out of that context, say they get injured and they come out. The guys who are less aerobically developed as soon as they start the weight training. And obviously this is a bit of what you're born with, isn't it?"

The Future of Sports Science: "My biggest learnings from rugby are more that kind of truly holistic kind of programming where you have to consider you have an appreciation and consider all the facets of what make an athlete good."

"Improving Strength in Training": "Are you applying a stimulus? And is that stimulus great enough to elicit some sort of adaptation as you come back up?"

Injury Prevention in Sports Training: "So you do lots of volume and you work on lots of different muscle groups in isolation down here, so you can deal with the amount of stress is greater, although it's not on the higher end of the intensity spectrum."

"The Importance of Variation in Strength Training": With the squat you'd use lots of variations, so you get total leg development and it's the same kind of principle. You get total development of all the muscles required to enhance your, in this case, bench press performance. On that isolated muscle side, you get this kind of every single muscle gets developed to its maximal ability or its maximal potential there in isolation. Then you start to strip away, don't you?

Periodized Training: "Yeah, it would be the longest phase of all the phases. But within that so one of the key things for me within all of this, so if you were to use some common language with sort of periodized planning, so you've got, for argument's sake, we'll say accumulation intensification realisation."

The Importance of Exercise and Failure in Strength Training: "You obviously want, on the basic level, this accumulation phase is total development, isn't it? It's total development of the skill and total development of the individual muscle groups that go into giving you a top bench press."

Bench Press Technique: "So I think the first thing starts with the position you have to get your body in to reduce the stroke of the bench press. So you want the bar to move as through a shorter distance as possible."

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The Science of Hybrid Training

It was originally thought that you could not effectively train for both strength and endurance at the same time because they required different adaptations which were not compatible with each other. It was claimed that ‘an interference effect’, blunted the adaptations for strength if you simultaneously trained for endurance. However, recent developments in sports which require both strength and endurance have really challenged this idea, with hybrid athletes producing impressive performances in both strength and endurance sports together. This had led scientists, coaches, and athletes to rethink what is humanly possible and suggests the interference effect is not as influential as originally thought. But what is a hybrid athlete? What is the ‘interference effect’? And how can we maximize our training to improve at the same time our strength and endurance performance? In this book, Dr Phil Price provides insight into the misconceptions surrounding strength and endurance training by distilling the past 50 years of research and drawing on the conversations he had with great scientists, coaches, and athletes on The Progress Theory podcast. This book is essential reading for hybrid athletes and coaches who are looking to understand the key training variables and their effect on the simultaneous development of strength and endurance performance.

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