Post-Activation Potentiation (PAP)

[cubby2112]

Anyone heard of this? Basically, it is phenomenon where your nervous system and muscle fibers are "primed" by a heavy set, followed four or more minutes later with a lighter one. This allows you to pump out more weight in a certain rep scheme than you would normally be able to. Russian strength trainers used to (and still do) use it in their programming. Charles Poliquin has a system called 1-6, where he has someone pump out a rep at or near their 1RM, then do a 6 rep set five minutes later, and repeat, usually two more times. Their weights apparently go up each wave. His system seems far too taxing, though. Here is a good research review on PAP:

 

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16026172

 

If you have access to Medline, you can get the full text, which I would recommend. It is a good read.

 

So, have any of you done a heavy single, double or triple, then went to a higher rep set and felt like the weight was far lighter than usual? I am going to experiment with this today on squats. I plan to use as my final warm-up set a weight that is significantly heavier than my work weight, along the lines of 10%, but only do a single with it. Then, I am going to do a three rep working set five minutes later, and see how the weight feels for me. I will then follow that with another five rep or so working set, at a lower weight, then probably call it good for squats.

[cubby2112]

Found a good video demonstrating it.