159: Erica Lowery: Strength Training for Women — The Plyometric and Isometric Tools Most Programs Are Missing
Your program is probably not the problem. What it is missing is.
Most general fitness programs give you a lift, some sets and reps, and call it done. What they almost never include is what collegiate strength coaches are doing with their athletes every single week — the tools that build explosive power, prevent injury, break plateaus, and develop the kind of body that actually performs. Plyometrics. Isometrics. Tempo work. Contrast training.
Not complicated. Not exclusive to elite athletes. Almost certainly absent from whatever program you are currently running.
In this episode I sat down with Erica Lowery, MS, CSCS — Director of Athletic Performance at the University of South Alabama, former D1 volleyball player at Texas A&M and Liberty, and APEX athlete who broad jumped 9 feet 4 inches from a complete standstill. She has spent her career coaching young female athletes through the exact fears and patterns that hold most women back from ever lifting the weight they actually need to be lifting. And she brought all of it to this conversation.
The "Toned" Reframe Every Woman Needs to Hear
The first thing most young female athletes say when they walk into Erica's weight room is some version of "I don't want to get too big." Her response is not to argue with them. It is to reframe the goal entirely.
Toned is not the result of avoiding the weight room. It is not what happens when you stay light and do more cardio. Toned is what happens when you have muscle — real, built-through-strength-training muscle — and your body composition reflects that. Small and weak is not toned. It is just small and weak.
The body most women are after requires them to actually lift. And to lift progressively heavier over time.
Why 75% of Your Results Happen Outside the Gym
Erica sees her athletes three hours a week. The other 165 hours are what actually determine how they recover, how they perform, and what their body does with the training signal.
Sleep. Nutrition. Stress management. These are not lifestyle bonuses on top of a training program. They are the majority of the equation. When those things are dialed in, training hard produces results. When they are not, you can train perfectly and still feel like nothing is working — because you are asking your body to build while simultaneously running it into the ground.
The gym is the 25%. The rest of your life is the 75%.
What Plyometrics Actually Build — and How to Add Them
Erica jumped 9 feet 4 inches from a standstill — and she will be the first to tell you that the jump did not come from practicing jumping. It came from foundational strength. When she progressively overloaded her training at Texas A&M, her vertical went up because her body finally had the capacity to produce the kind of force explosive movement requires.
The mechanism matters here. You cannot jump your way to a better jump. You have to build the strength that makes the jump possible.
For women who are not competing in anything, plyometrics still belong in the week. Not for performance — for durability. The movements you do in daily life involve jumping, stepping, dropping, and landing. Training those patterns means your body is prepared when they happen, rather than vulnerable to them. Erica makes the case simply: you do not want to be scared of stepping off a curb at any age. That is a training problem, not an age problem.
Her prescription for adding jumps to a strength-first week is straightforward. A few deep-tier jumps and pogos in the warm-up. A broad jump or box jump paired with a main compound lift. Nine max effort jumps per session total. That is it. Kept simple and done consistently over time, it works.
What Isometrics Are and Why You Are Missing Them
An isometric contraction is a hold — maintaining a position under load without movement. It sounds simple. Most programs skip it entirely.
What isometrics do that standard rep schemes cannot is build strength at every point in a movement's range of motion, not just the top. When you do a squat, you are strongest at the top and weakest at the bottom. Isometric holds at the bottom position train you to be strong there too — which makes the full movement stronger, reduces injury risk, and builds the kind of functional capacity that transfers everywhere.
Erica's application of isometrics spans three scenarios:
For injury recovery: when she pulled her hamstring, she did not stop training. She used long-duration isometric holds — a single-leg glute bridge hold, a split squat hold — to send blood flow to the area without causing further damage. The muscle relaxes under a sustained hold rather than being forced through a full range it is not ready for. She recovered faster every time she used them compared to the times she just waited it out.
In warm-ups: body weight iso holds for 20 to 45 seconds in the positions you are about to train. It prepares the muscle at the length it will be working and reduces the risk of injury during the session.
As a plateau breaker: if you have been doing three sets of ten for months and stopped progressing, add a five-second eccentric or a three-point hold. Same exercise, same weight, more time under tension. Erica ran an eccentric block with her athletes and watched women who could not do a single chin-up come back doing two or three. That is what tempo work does.
What Most General Programs Are Missing
Two things, according to Erica: tempo work and athletic movement.
Tempo work — slowing down the eccentric, adding holds, training through the full range — is almost never included in general programming because it is less immediately satisfying than moving heavy weight quickly. But it is the thing that builds the foundation that makes heavy weight possible.
Athletic movement — jumping, sprinting, anything that asks the body to be explosive — is left out because most programs are designed for the weight room and nothing else. Erica's recommendation is direct: train more like an athlete. Add a jump. Add a tempo run. Your body responds to those signals regardless of whether you are competing in anything. There is no reason to leave them out.
The Last Thing: Failing a Lift Is Not Failure
Erica made a point at the end of the conversation that I want every woman who trains to hear.
If you are actually pushing yourself, you are going to fail a lift at some point. Not because something went wrong — because you found your edge. You now know exactly where your ceiling is, and you have something specific to train toward.
Failing a squat is not evidence that you are bad at lifting. It is evidence that you pushed hard enough to find the limit. The women who never fail a lift are the women who never push hard enough to find theirs.
Most women are training harder than they need to and smarter than they think they can. The gap is usually not effort — it is the tools nobody told them about. Apply for BroadsCOACH nd get programming built around the woman who is done leaving results on the table.
