Build The Strength Skill
by: Josh Bryant
Josh using a form of de-inhibition training with Johnnie Jackson.
You don’t go parading around in your birthday suit to fetch the mail, unless you’re eager for a free stay in the county’s crowbar hotel.
Now, picture this: that one night at the world-famous Kentucky Bar in Juarez Mexico, after a whirlwind of wine, women, and song, you wake up buck naked next the mechanical bull outside of Motel La Cuesta. What’s the deal, right?
Blame it on your frontal lobe, that bit of gray matter that usually stops you from turning into a total social circus act. But, toss in a bit too much booze, and suddenly, it’s like that safety switch goes kaput.
And speaking of switches, did you know your body has its own built-in governors on maximum strength? Yep, showing off muscle power is like a skill, not just something you can flex whenever you feel like it. So, here’s the million-dollar question: you aiming to be stronger than the average poodle’s paw or a powerhouse pit bull?
If you’ve got pit bull ambitions, you better get cozy with something Dr. Fred Hatfield dropped on us four decades back – a little thing called de-inhibition training!
De-inhibition Training
De-inhibition training is a process of pushing back the threshold at which some of your proprioceptors (e.g., the Golgi tendon organ and the muscle spindles) are stimulated to send an inhibitory message to the CNS. In other words, your body is receiving a signal to halt before things go haywire and you get injured.
Of course, the CNS is conditioned through learning to shut the muscles down when stress becomes too great. The problem is your body waves the caution flag like it’s the Indy 500 when you are cruising around on city streets at a lawful speed. This is great for safety but sucks hind tit for displaying or building limit strength.
This shutdown mechanism is, of course, one of your body’s important defense mechanisms, designed to keep you from ripping yourself apart by the strength of your own muscles. Experience and research show that the shutdown levels are very premature. That is, there is a ton of wiggle room to push the throttle back and build higher levels of strength output.
Now, listen up, ’cause we’re diving into a wild ride of training here. We’re talking the kind that could give your mom a heart attack just thinking about it – yeah, that’s how crazy it can get. But hey, if all you’re after is a Zen moment and lower blood pressure, this ain’t your rodeo. We’re talking about strapping in for the big guns – the type of training that’s like throwing nitrous into a muscle car engine. So, buckle up, champ, ’cause we’re here to maximize that brute strength of yours.
Applied
De-inhibition training does not require a liquor cabinet at the gym, smoking PCP, creating crises or a hypnotist on retainer!
This type of training can be extremely dangerous, but anything totally safe is totally useless. Today, we are going to show you how to maximize the benefits of de-inhibition training while relatively safely minimize the risks.
This is effectively accomplished with the following four strategies.
Explosive movements of a high magnitude so that the initial kinetic energy far surpasses the normal level of the muscle’s contraction strength. Practically applied, this means explosive jumps, explosive throws, upper body plyometrics and lifting submaximal weights as fast as possible through the full range of motion, what Hatfield has coined compensatory acceleration training (CAT). Hatfield championed this technique long before a landmark study revealed that fast concentric contraction evoked greater motor unit recruitment than slower concentric contraction speeds.
Supramaximal loads are often associated with the ego-driven, testosterone-fueled high school lifter attempting absurd weights 100 plus pounds over his true max on the bench press. While this certainly classifies as de-inhibition training, the risk is greater than the reward. Powerlifters can opt for weight releasers (eccentric hooks) with five to 10 percent over their one-rep max, lowering the weight at a normal max lift cadence, then explosively lifting the weight to completion. Bodybuilders can elect for a similar strategy with super slow eccentrics, simultaneously igniting hypertrophy. Other ways are reverse band training with 10 to 25 percent over a lifter’s max; this offers many of the benefits of a partial and complements the strength curve of the squat, bench press and the deadlift, while incorporating a full range of motion movement.
Other methods include a method from the playbook of powerbuilding demigod, Chuck Sipes, by using static holds. This just means holding a supramaximal weight for five to 10 seconds at the beginning of a lift.
Partial range of motion lifts are very effective for de-inhibition training. Partials not only strengthen a specific under-stimulated range of motion but they physically and psychologically condition a lifter to heavier weights. If your bench press max is 350 and you have done a 5 board press with 410, next time you attempt 360, your GTOs will get the memo that says, “I have lifted 50 pounds more than this and did not get injured.”
Isometrics
Often, when one touts the effectiveness of isometrics, objections pop up like pills at a Charlie Sheen party because they transfer specifically to the range of motion where they are trained and not the entire range of motion. While the haters consider isometric a terrorist, they are your freedom fighter if you have a specific sticking point you are targeting. By eliminating that sticking point, voilà, you can lift more in the full range of motion—makes them drop their argument like an acid tab at a Timothy Leary lecture!
Isometrics are also a form of de-inhibition training because you can produce 15 percent more force than you can concentrically. In other words, when you lift a weight up and hit a sticking point, you are training your CNS not to send a message to your muscles, relax and cease force production or even hold the position. Take the strategy of General Patton with sticking points, in his own words, “I don’t want any messages saying ‘I’m holding my position.’ We’re not holding a thing. We’re advancing constantly and we’re not interested in holding anything except the enemy’s balls. We’re going to hold him by his balls and we’re going to kick him in the ass; twist his balls and kick the living shit out of him all the time. Our plan of operation is to advance and keep on advancing. We’re going to go through the enemy like shit through a tinhorn.” And that is how to approach sticking points and push back the GTO throttle.
Mental Movies
Your central nervous cannot tell the difference between an inner experience and “real one” as long as the inner one is vivid. Inner experiences are created with mental movies, Billy Graham preached hundreds of sermons to tree stumps in Florida swamps before ever taking the pulpit and Napoleon watched movies of himself and his troops on the battlefield long before ever going to war.
A plethora of studies confirm mental movies with regularity increase strength. By mental rehearsing yourself lifting supramaximal weights on a regular basis, you practice de-inhibition training without lifting a finger.
Final Thoughts
De-inhibition training is only necessary for serious strength and high-force athletes. If your goal is to calm your nerves, lower your blood pressure and feel better, take a pass. But if you want to surmount your body’s “speedbumps”, truly unlocking your body’s high-performance supercar and shatter PRs, know it starts with de-inhibition training.
Use de-inhibition training properly periodized with one of Josh’s Program HERE.
