There are thousands of single muscle fibers in each muscle arranged in functional units (motor units – a nerve cell and all the fibers innervated by it).  This varies from 5-10 fibers/unit in the eye muscles to up to 2000 per unit in large leg muscles.  The motor unit functions as a whole either in complete contraction or relaxation.  Thus the greater number of units active and the greater frequency of action of individual units, the greater the degree of contraction of the whole muscle and thus the degree of tension generated.   – The Body Movable by David Gorman

My definition of sports performance is to help the athlete achieve high levels of relative strength!    You want to get stronger; you want to improve sports performance?  You have to teach the body how to recruit more motor units.   One of the best ways to do this is by using a method called Cluster Training, by Carl Miller.  Use 80 to 95% of your 1RM and use a rest pause of 10 to 15 seconds between reps for 3 – 5 reps, the a really fast twitch fiber athlete may need 15s rest pause, for 5 or 6 sets.  Make sure you take adequate rest between sets of at least 4 min.     What this method does is hypertrophy fast twitch fibers with will improve explosiveness, speed and strength.  Which is highly sought after by the athlete or if you want to break a lifting plateau.   When doing clusters its best to cluster every muscle group. Note, if you are doing it right you may have trouble sleeping at night due to the over stimulation on the nervous system. Only use cluster training once every three months.

 

What I find nowadays is a lot of strength coaches don’t take the time to get their athletes strong! Stronger you make an athlete the better that athlete will be in their given sport, find out how strong and athlete should be for a given sport, then get them there as fast as possible with a well planned training regime.     When my athletes go through a cluster-training phase they immediate fell the difference in they’re given sport, they fell explosive, faster and stronger.    The athlete that can recruit more motor units when called upon has an edge, period!

Here is and example program:

 

A. Front Squat, 5x(1,1,1,1,1), (4010, 15s,) 340s

B1. Bench Press, 5x(1,1,1,1,1,) ,  (4010, 15s) 120s

B2. Wide Grip Chin ups 5x(1,1,1,1,1), (4010,15s) 120s

 

Clance Laylor