Testing Neuromuscular Efficiency

[Nate Mielke]

Hey Rip,

Thanks as always for the informative podcast on training women. I subsequently read your article: Training Female Lifters: Neuromuscular Efficiency. Obviously neuromuscular efficiency has serious implications on programming the lifts. The less neuromuscular efficient you are, the heavier you will need to go and the more volume at those heavier weights you will need to induce an adequate stress.

You discussed that the standing vertical jump is a great way to measure this. However, most people do not have the access to obtain an accurate measure of this. What would you recommend people do as a substitute to this? It seems to me that people should generally know how explosive they are, but people have a funny way of deceiving themselves when it comes to this stuff. I once trained someone who was in his early thirties. He's 5'7", overweight, not the least bit strong or athletic, and when I asked him what his goals were he told me with a straight face he wanted to play collegiate basketball at THE OSU (he was applying for grad school there).

One way I can think of testing this is by simply using a % of a 1RM and seeing how many reps you can get with it. So, if someone tests their max and then waits at least 10min and then performs about 85% of their 1RM, the amount of reps they get should give you a pretty good idea (if you have good reference data). What do you think of this approach?

[Mark Rippetoe]

Depends on whether you're testing power or conditioning. The SVJ can be tested with chalked fingertips and a wall, much easier that a bench press reps test.