French Contrast or Insider Contrast Training

Explosive Contrast training has been around a while and by itself is a very productive training method to develop strength and power in athletes.  This type of training consists of lifting a heavier weight for low reps.  This is then followed by lifting a lighter load, but lifted explosively.  An example is Heavy Box Squat for 3 reps at around 85 % of your Max Effort, this is then followed by dumbell jump squats, hurdle hops or box jumps.

Lately I've been reading some work by Gilles Cometti, a french sport scientist.  I had seen a powerpoint entitled French Contrast Training awhile back.  Having never heard of French Contrast, I did some reading and found that most people  call it Insider Contrast Training.

With Insider Contrast Training your taking some of the principles that have been proven with the Explosive Contrast and manipulating the reps/tempo/weight within the set, hence the name, Insider.

So an example would be 2 reps done with heavy weight (85%) strip the weight off quickly or have a partner do it and do 2 reps explosively (40%) and then do 2 reps slow(3-1-3 Tempo) with the same weight.  This would be one set.  Rest 3 minutes and do 3-5 sets.

The idea is to create adaptations for strength and power and some hypertrophy.  Try this for a period in your training program when you're looking for a nice change up.