Broads: The Bold & Badass Fitness Podcast for Women

159: Erica Lowery: Strength Training for Women — The Plyometric and Isometric Tools Most Programs Are Missing

Episode Summary

For women who strength train consistently and feel like something is still missing, it is probably not the program or the effort. The tools that elite collegiate strength coaches use with their athletes — plyometrics, isometrics, contrast training, tempo work — are almost never included in general fitness programming. In this episode, Erica Lowery breaks down exactly what those tools are, why they work, and how any woman can start adding them to her week without overhauling what she is already doing.

Episode Notes

For women who strength train consistently and feel like something is still missing, it is probably not the program or the effort. The tools that elite collegiate strength coaches use with their athletes — plyometrics, isometrics, contrast training, tempo work — are almost never included in general fitness programming. In this episode, Erica Lowery breaks down exactly what those tools are, why they work, and how any woman can start adding them to her week without overhauling what she is already doing.

Erica Lowery, MS, CSCS, is the Director of Athletic Performance at the University of South Alabama, where she oversees strength and conditioning for volleyball and women's soccer. A former Division I volleyball player at Texas A&M and Liberty, Erica has spent her career on both sides of the barbell — competing at an elite level and coaching young female athletes through the fears and patterns that hold most women back from ever touching a weight they actually need to be lifting. She is also an APEX athlete and has trained for the USA Bobsled team.

What's Discussed:

• What it is actually like to coach freshmen athletes coming in scared on day one — and how Erica builds the relationship before she builds the program
   
• Erica's own athletic background: D1 volleyball, how the weight room at Texas A&M changed everything, and the moment she realized training was the one thing she could always control
   
• What Erica tells young female athletes who are scared of getting bulky from lifting — and the "toned" reframe that actually lands
   
• Why nutrition and recovery account for 75% of results — and what that means for women who are working hard in the gym but not seeing it translate
   
• Plyometrics and the 9'4" broad jump: how foundational strength — not endless jumping — is what actually built Erica's explosive power
   
• Why women should add jumping to their training even if they are not athletes — durability, daily life, injury prevention, and why being scared of stepping off a curb is a training problem not an age problem
   
• How to start adding sprinting and jumping to a three-day strength week without increasing injury risk — the progressions, the order, and how slow is actually fast enough
   
• Sprint progression timelines: four to six week blocks, short to long, slow to fast, and why Erica pulled her hamstring multiple times before she followed her own advice
   
• What isometrics actually are, why they speed up soft tissue recovery faster than rest does, and how Erica used them to train around injuries instead of stopping completely
   
• How to use isometric holds when you are not injured — warm-up applications, tempo work, building strength at the bottom positions most people skip entirely
   
• Why isometrics build muscle and why they are one of the most underused tools for women who have plateaued on standard rep schemes
   
• Isometrics for travel and bodyweight training — how collegiate athletes train on the road with no equipment and still make progress
   
• What most general training programs are missing: tempo work and athletic movement — and why just doing three sets of ten forever is quietly capping your results
   
• Following a plan, tracking your training, and why switching programs every few weeks is one of the most common ways women accidentally stall their progress
   
• Erica's personal training right now: Apex prep, sprinting focus, and what she is going after once the competition season is done
   
• Recovery, mobility, and why sleep and nutrition are still the 75% — even for an elite-level athlete
   
• The perfect warm-up structure: 10 minutes max, foam rolling to mobility to low intensity to max effort, and why more is not better here
   
• What it actually means to fail a lift — and why it is a sign you are pushing yourself, not a sign you are bad at this
   
• Creatine: safety, energy output, cognitive recovery, and why Erica has been taking it since her freshman year

Ready to have programming that builds on itself the way it is supposed to? Apply for BroadsCOACH at https://www.broads.app/broadscoach.

Learn more about Broads: https://www.broads.app/ https://www.instagram.com/broads_coach/

Check out more from Tara LaFerrara: https://www.taralaferrara.com/ https://www.instagram.com/taralaferrara/ YouTube: @TaraLaferrara TikTok: @taralaferrara

Check out more from Erica Lowery: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ericalowerystrength/ Links: https://linktr.ee/ericalowery