When it comes to sport, we all (the adrenaline junkies) love to see the big tackles, world record attempts, head-to-head finishes as well as ultimate tests of maximal strength. But for any of this to be achieved these athletes need to be beyond just ‘good’ instead they need to excel in strength, speed and power based movements.
As a strength coach myself, I am always looking seeking to find new methods and training styles to optimise specific qualities needed for my athletes to be at the top of their game. One method that has helped me do so, is French Contrast Training. This training system is a combination of complex and contrast training methods.
Complex and contrast training are based around post activation potentiation (PAP). PAP is a short term response that positively improves the ability of a muscle to generate force. Over time this will lead to a long term adaptation which will lead to increased rates of force to be applied (rate of force development; RFD for short). This is hugely beneficial to various sporting actions which require high rates of force to be recruited in very limited time frames.
Typically, complex training is focussed on coupling a heavy movement followed by an explosive plyometric movement which follows a similar movement pattern to that seen in the heavy compound movement. Whereas, contrast training is performing a maximal/ near maximal (90%+) compound movement, followed by a short rest period before completing a higher velocity based set (same movement) with a lighter load (50-70%). The big daddy, which is French contrast, is based on 4 movements performed back to back, with short rest periods between each exercise (20-30 seconds between exercises, 3-5 minutes between sets). Exercise 1 will be a heavy compound movement performed at 80-90% of the 1 rep max, moving into a plyometric jump, before moving back to a drop set or weighted jump movement (30-50%), and finishing with a second plyometric or an accelerated plyometric movement. Below is an example of how this looks when prescribing movements for French contrast couplets.
| SESSION 1 | SESSION 2 | SESSION 3 |
|---|---|---|
|
Deadlift x3 @90% | Bench Press x2 @90% |
|
Broad Jump Rebounds x3 | Plyo Push Up x2 |
|
Trap Bar Jump x5 @50% | Single Arm Med Ball Throw x5 |
|
Sled Sprints | Banded Plyo Push Up x5 |
In my opinion, French contrast isn’t a style of programming which athletes with a low training age should perform, due to the high demands it requires. If you have a longer training age (12 months +), with a good base level of strength and power development, this program will excel you to the next level, and I would highly recommend you giving this a go.