Jump higher
Jason Hartman likes to wow new bobsledders with his magical jumping drill. First, he tests their maximum vertical leap. Then he has them do a set of heavy squats before jumping again. Without fail, they'll jump several inches higher after blasting their legs with the squats.
"It's called post-activation potentiation," Hartman explains. The theory is that the squat activates bands of last-resort muscle fibers called "high-threshold motor units." Your body keeps HTMU fibers in reserve for emergencies and only the most strenuous jobs, so the trick is to recruit them voluntarily.
Unlike with the training regimen Hartman typically uses, you don't want a lot of reps here. "I tend to make sure the resistance is high but not maxed out. Just do a small amount of volume to wake up your muscles." And once you've recruited that HTMU oomph to leap those extra inches, Hartman says, the gains remain; after your body learns that it can jump 32 inches instead of 30, you can do it all the time, even without the squat-rack warmup.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35239197/ns/health-fitness/?ns=health-fitness&pg=2#Health_MH_GoldStandard
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