Compensatory Acceleration: How We Use it To Build Dominant Athletes

Our FieldStrong Class is designed for High School and Middle School athletes to get bigger, faster, stronger, and more explosive. But what makes this class different than just traditional lifting? One of the things that makes it different is a principle that is applied in every workout we program, no matter what. This principle is called “Compensatory Acceleration”, or in English, “move as fast as possible with heavy weights”.

Most people lift weights either at the same tempo throughout the lift, which is great for building muscle. The other way people lift, typically less experienced lifters, allows the bar to push them down, so the eccentric (lowering portion) of the lift is faster than the concentric (raising) portion of the lift. This is good for almost nothing. 

The sweet spot, especially for athletes to not lose speed as they get stronger, is to maintain control on the eccentric, then lift as explosively as possible on the concentric. 

This is such an important tool for athletes that most D1 Strength Coaches are using barspeed trackers to make sure athletes are putting out the most amount of power possible, and using that as a tool to gauge how heavy the athlete should go. 

While barspeed trackers are a great tool, they are a little impractical for many people, so we recommend and teach athletes to make sure that the “up” portion of the lift is faster than the “down” portion of the lift, and our coaches make sure to not let the athlete go heavier than that rule allows. 

Want to learn more about how this works? Come try a sample class with us! Click HERE to schedule yours today!