Explosive Strength Training with Bench Press Bands and Speed-Strength Improvements

Explosive Strength Training with Bench Press Bands and Speed-Strength Improvements – Raw strength is a very important physical ability for a firefighter to posses. Related to that ability, and maybe even more important – is the ability to apply that strength at a high rate (speed-strength) and to do so repeatedly. It follows that any training method that can help develop that ability would be an important part of the training process for firefighters.

The graph below depicts the changes in Bench Press 1-RM and in Bench Press Average Rate of Force Development (RFD) for Fire Cadets (N-8) through four test periods (4-7). The Bench Press 1-RM is self explanatory. You can see that the Bench Press 1-RM gains through the four test periods were relatively small. At test period 4 they had already been training for five months, and as would be normally expected, the majority of their total strength improvements had already been made up to this point.

At test period 4, I began testing their speed-strength or RFD by having them do as many reps as they could, as fast as they could, for as long as they could with 50% of their current 1-RM Bench Press. We recorded the reps done in 15 seconds, 30 seconds and to exhaustion. I computed the RFD by dividing the reps performed in 15s by 15s and so forth. I then took the square root of that product x 50% of 1-RM x 2 (this allowed me to present the data on the same scale) to get the final RFD number. For example: Cadet A did 14 reps in the first 15 seconds; 14/15 = .933 squared = .966 x 50% of 1-RM x 2 = 193.2 pounds a second. Depicted below.

Results of Bench Press Bands Training - Bench Press RFD Test Graph

The important thing for me to point out here is that it was at test period 4 that they were introduced to free-weight variable resistance explosive strength training using the BNS Bench Press Bands. You can see by the graph that their average RFD improved at a rate similar to the Bench Press 1-RM from test 4 to 5. From test 5 to 6 the RFD improved at a much greater rate then the Bench Press 1-RM rate of improvement. However, the thing that really stands out to me is how the average RFD continued to climb between the last two test periods ...even though the Bench Press 1-RM's did not improve at all. These findings suggest that a training adaptation took place that increased the Fire Cadets RFD abilities independent of their maximum force abilities.

Please, feel free to contact me (Mike) with any comments or questions you may have about the Fire Cadet Bench Press RFD test.