Gonna Make a Comeback.....

I know, I know it's been a while but now that I'm done with Summer School I'm ready to get back to helping people become healthy, bigger, stronger, and faster.... I'm teaming up with Paleo Chix, Gorilla Pit, and CrossFit affiliates to bring you the best information on training that I can... Until next time check out this new Ad from Nike for women....

Understanding Sport Specific Exercises

I get a lot of questions along the lines of, "Is this exercise specific for _____(fill in the blank) sport?" "Do I need to be doing all these unstable sport-specific exercises on bosu balls and other assorted unstable training?"
With that in mind I thought I'd write this article on general to specific training.

What is a sport specific exercise?
Let's start off with a definition of sport-specific. A truly sport specific exercise must:
A: Duplicate the exact movement witnessed in certain actions of the sports skill
B: The exercise must involve the same type of muscular contraction used in the skill execution.
C: Develop strength and flexibility in the same range of motion (ROM) as the actual skill.
As an example, alternating bounds duplicate the extension witnessed in the sprint stride over the same ROM. They also duplicate the type of contraction found in the sprint. The difference is, the magnitude of force and tension in the bound upon both landing and toe-off is greater, which can provide a positive training effect to the extension and plant that occurs in the sprint stride.
There are basically 3 classifications of exercise along the general to specific continuum.

Classifying Exercises
General strength exercises - These exercises are necessary to develop general muscle strength (force component of power) and do not need to duplicate sporting tasks. (Squats, front squats, deadlifts etc.) These exercises are heavy and slow in nature thus do not replicate the exact demands of sport and power events. They are, however, specific to the sport of powerlifting. Anything that increases general strength could be considered a general strength exercise. Exercises that best impact general strength are the best general strength exercises.
Special strength exercises - These exercises attempt to convert general strength to power but are still "strength" oriented. Most explosive oriented loaded lifts and movements fit in this category. Some examples include Olympic lifts, jump squats, heavier sled towing, and various kettlebell swings and exercises.

Specific strength exercises- These exercises attempt to provide power improvement in a way which is very specific to the required technique of an athlete. Examples of such exercises would include unloaded and lightly loaded plyometric exercises, sprint drills, and towing a very lightly loaded sled. The most specific strength exercise for any given movement is the actual movement skill itself.

A loaded specific strength exercise should not be loaded to the extent that an athlete's technique is compromised much at all. So, someone using loaded sprints as a specific strength exercise would not use a load that causes his sprint times to drop off by more than ~10%. In contrast, someone using loaded sprints as a special strength exercise could use more weight as he's seeking more of a general effect on explosiveness. He would not need to worry so much about the load interfering with his technique.

Exercises typically are described as either general or sport-specific. However, there is a range along which all exercises fall. It's probably more accurate to describe exercises as either more or less specific in relation to one another. Where a particular exercise falls on this continuum depends upon how well it meets the criteria for a specific movement for a particular sport.

So What is Sport Specific Again?
Based on that information it should be obvious that unless you're a skateboarder, surfer, or trapeze artist, most unstable implements and exercises are not really sport-specific at all! Wobble boards, bosu balls and the like would be general training movements..just not very potent general training movements (due to the lighter loads they inherently entail).

The Recipe
To improve athletic performance, general strength exercises should be used in the initial stages to build a base. The goal of these movements is to stimulate and strengthen the same muscles involved in the sports skill. Once a strength base is in place, exercises that are truly specialized (sport-specific) can be incorporated to zero in on targeted weaknesses involved in the sports skill or to help enhance the transformation of general strength into specific strength. In this way, maximal strength is developed initially and then used to enhance explosive strength that can be incorporated into the sport action.
I think there is a time and place for exercises in every category depending on the situation of a given athlete or coach, however, there's also not exactly anything wrong with taking the straight line approach.

The Straight Line Approach
The straight line approach would entail taking the most direct approach to boosting up the general strength (lift heavy and get stronger in basic movements), and engage in and hone the technique of the most specific strength exercise. Or practice the specific movement you're trying to improve in order improve the capacity to express strength in that movement, whether it's sprinting, jumping or whatever. With this approach you have both ends covered. Although simple, this can work well because a lot of people already do plenty of sport-specific exercise just by virtue of playing their sport. In fact, many people are apt to regress by partaking in an excessive volume of sport specific work while neglecting general supportive work.

Additionally, research comparing groups of people who use a very multifaceted approach to development to those who use the simple straight-line approach to development, don't tend to demonstrate many advantages for the multi-faceted approach. In other words. Let's say we take 2 groups of sprinters:
Group A: Squats heavy, engages in explosive lifts (cleans or jump squats etc.), pulls loaded sleds, engages in plyometrics, and sprints.
Group B: Simply squats heavy and runs sprints.
Despite the more holistic and multifaceted approach implemented with the group A, you don't tend to see a consistent variance in improvements between the 2 groups.

The ability to properly administer the more multifaceted approach takes more knowledge and skill. Ideally, you'd individually evaluate and assign target exercises based upon individual needs.

Some people are in situations where they'd benefit from a general lean towards more or less specific exercises. For example, most people that run training studios do not have a sprint track in their facility so they might use more specific exercises for training the sprint.....Basically boosting speed without doing any sprinting at all. The same athlete or coach who runs a facility in the north where it's cold all winter might also engage in and assign more "specific" exercises during the winter months. In contrast, the guy who has year around access to a track or football field in a warm climate is in a different situation and wouldn't have much, if any, need for so many specific strength exercises. An athlete who plays sport year around would also be in the same boat.

Are Cleans and Other Olympic Lifts Necessary?

Just like any other explosive movement, the clean (or snatch) can help bridge the gap between total strength and total useable strength, if that is an area lacking. However, by itself it isn’t a miracle exercise. I love performing hang cleans myself, but a good clean is really a demonstration, or indicator, of explosiveness, just like a fast sprint and a good vertical jump are good demonstrations of explosiveness.

Let's just say for the sake of argument that the clean correlates perfectly with your on-field explosiveness (running and jumping etc.) So, any improvements you make to your clean will be transferred into your running speed and jumps. You'd obviously want to get your clean poundages as high as possible right? Let's say you choose 315 pounds as the magic number. Now, what is the best way to get your clean up to 315 pounds? Can the guy with a 200-pound squat build his clean up to 315 pounds by just performing cleans? Hardly. Can the guy with a 300-pound squat clean 315? No. Can a guy who practices cleans every day of his life, yet only squats 300 pounds, clean as much as the 700 pound squatting powerlifter who comes into the gym and does cleans for the first time in his life? Usually not. My point is this: How much you can clean is highly dependent on how strong you are overall and cleans aren't as good as movements like squats and deadlifts at making you stronger overall. Regardless of how good your technique is on cleans and how much you practice them, the only way you're gonna clean 315 is if you get your overall body strength up to the point where you are capable of at least a ~400 pound squat and 400 pound deadlift minimum.

Once you've mastered the technique in the lift and learned to express your strength in the lift, the only way to continue driving your clean poundages up is to get stronger overall. The clean is really about 1/3 technique, 1/3 explosiveness, and 1/3 strength. Initially, clean poundages will increase as you master the correct technique. Once you've mastered the proper technique, you'll continue to make some gains as you better learn to express your strength, or become more explosive in the exercise. If you're the guy who squats 500 pounds and only cleans 175, you have a big gap between your overall strength and useable (explosive) strength and obviously have a lot of room for improvement. You'd probably be able to take your clean all the way up to 315 by doing nothing but cleans. But if you're the guy who squats 300 pounds and cleans 225, you'd probably never get any better at cleans by just practicing cleans. At some point, you'd have to pay your dues in the power rack getting your strength up on basic movements like squats and deadlifts so that you’d have more raw strength to express.

Now, let's look at a sprint or a jump the same way we would the clean. They're both demonstrations of explosiveness. Since actually practicing the clean is the best way to learn to express your strength in the clean, wouldn't it make sense that practicing variations of the sprint and jumps (and things closely related to that like plyometrics), would be the best way to learn to express your strength in those movements? There is a lot of specifity involved with improvements in speed-strength movements and the carryover from one activity to the next is fairly small. If you couldn't express your strength very good in the sprint or jump what makes you think you'd best improve upon that by engaging in cleans?
Improvements in a sprint or jump are just like improvements in the clean. Initially you'll improve as you master the correct technique. You'll continue to improve as you are better able to express your strength in the movement. If you're the 175 pound guy who squats 500 and only runs a 5.2 40 yard dash, you will probably have a lot of room for improvement. But if you're the 175 pound guy who only squats 250 and already runs a 4.55 forty yard dash, you're probably not gonna get much faster by just sprinting. At some point, just like the clean, you're gonna have to pay your dues with the heavy iron and get your strength up so that you have more raw horsepower to tap into.

Now, let's assume that you already spend a significant amount of time in the weight room getting stronger overall. Let's also assume that you spend a fair amount of time performing a nice assortment of sprint, movement, and plyo work. So, in the weight room you're driving your strength and baseline levels of horsepower up. On the field, you're better learning to express that strength in the most direct way possible - by engaging in the very things that you're trying to improve (sprinting, jumping etc). Since you're already addressing your baseline strength and you're already directly addressing your ability to express strength in the specific movements, what are cleans gonna give you that you're not already getting?
I hope that makes sense. One other drawbacks to cleans and other olympic lifts is they are technical lifts that do require some coaching. I know a good coach can teach someone how to do a proper clean or snatch within minutes, but judging by the technique I've seen in most high schools there is a big shortage of good coaches that can properly teach these lifts. It’s not that cleans will hurt you by any means, I like them too but it’s not like you need them.
Having said all that, the best utility for the cleans and other explosive weight room movements would be for someone like I mentioned above who had a big squat and slow running times. His maximum strength is already there and it need not be a big focal point, so, instead of just getting him stronger in the weight room, we could focus on getting him to express his strength better in all his activities, including the weight room. He could use lots of speedier type exercises like cleans, speed box squats, and jump squats while also working on getting more explosive in his field activities. Where cleans and related exercises would REALLY be more beneficial is for this same “strong but slow” type of guy who also, for whatever reason, isn’t able to get out and engage in much specific sprint, movement, and plyo work. They wouldn’t be as effective as the specific sprint, movement, and plyo work, but would at least allow him to train his nervous system to produce faster contractions with some type of accelerative emphasis.
One other good utility for the clean and associated movements is this: Assuming that one has pretty good technique in the clean, it can also be used as a pretty good gauge to ensure that you're building useable strength, or strength that you can use in a fairly high velocity manner. In other words, let's assume that I determine that a person that can clean 75% of his best back squat is doing a pretty good job utilizing the raw strength that he has. So, assuming that technique is good, a person squatting 200 pounds should be able to clean 150, while a person squatting 400 pounds should be able to clean 300. Let's say you have an athlete that squats 400 pounds but only cleans 200. From that information, we know that he's not able to utilize his strength in a high velocity specific manner very effectively, so he would best work on bridging the gap between his strength and useable strength. In other words, instead of continually trying to push up his squat weight, he'd be best to focus on more explosive oriented work in his training. In contrast, the guy squatting 400 and cleaning 300 is already doing a pretty good job using the strength he has, and, assuming his field related tests didn’t show any explosive deficiencies, he’d know that in order to improve he could just get stronger overall.

How Body Structure Influences Expressions of Strength

I am often asked how natural body structure can influence things like the ability to jump high, run fast, lift weight, or anything else. The truth is, your body structure and the way you are built can have a significant influence on not only the way you express your strength in all sports, but more importantly, it will influence the type of training that you tend to respond to.

When it comes to body structure, we can classify people as either long limbed, termed brachiomorphs, or short limbed, termed dolicomorphs. In weight-lifting, long-limbed individuals are prone to think that they're genetically disadvantaged while short limbed people tend to think they're disadvantaged when it comes to something like jumping or running. But are they really? Depends on the sport or movement. Expression of strength is variable. Long-levered athletes tend to express their strength much more successfully on the playing field than in the weight room. For example, Michael Jordan at one time had a startling vertical jump and was very strong, yet when compared to a person his same weight and a foot shorter he has a large disadvantage in a parallel squat and I doubt if you would ever see him setting any lifting records. When you're 6'6", bending the legs to parallel is a long way down!

Those in sport often say that short limbed people are cursed on the field and while their long limbed counterparts often appear to have an advantage the "short limbs" curse is hardly a rule. If anything, those with short limbs tend have an advantage during the initial phase of an explosive movement or when agility is of paramount importance. Nobody ever accused former world record sprinters Maurice Greene or Kelli White of being long limbed yet it didn't seem to hold them back any and it definitely doesn't seem to hold Kansas City chiefs return man Dante Hall.

In a sport like powerlifting, athletes with short limbs tend to have an advantage over those who possess long limbs because the weight is moved through a shorter distance. On the other hand, if an athlete requires a long powerful stroke, such as in swimming, sprinting, jumping, or rowing, then a longer lever, provided it is accompanied by the muscular power needed to propel it, - has an advantage in these types of sports because of the speed those longer limbs can generate at the end of their range of motion.

Think about it. A guy whose upper legs are 20 inches long should be able to come out of a 1/4 squat and generate more velocity at toe off in a vertical jump then a guy whose upper legs are only 12 inches long. However, the guy with longer upper legs will also have to work harder on his strength whereas the guy with short upper legs will probably need to work hard to maximize his rate of force development so that he too can demonstrate superior speed at full extension. The same point can be made in other sports where hitting or throwing are important. For example, speed in a tennis serve, volleyball spike, or a baseball pitch can all be higher for long-levered athletes as long as they have enough muscle power to extend the longer limbs.

Legs Like a Kangaroo
By the same token many athletes who can jump high and run fast have physical characteristics such as long lower legs, high calves and a long achilles tendon. The length of the achilles tendon gives them a leverage advantage for reactive strength because it acts like a long rubber band. Recall that in a plyometric movement the muscles and tendons are stretched and energy is stored and released in greater quantities. Having long tendons in the lower leg can enhance this process. The achilles tendon is amazing at storing elastic energy and giving it back to you; it's an adaptation to make activities like walking and running more efficient. In the animal kingdom kangaroos probably have the longest achilles tendons and are also the best leapers. They can literally bounce around over small buildings with hardly any muscular effort.

This doesn't at all mean that just because you might not have long legs and tendons that you won't be able to run or jump, it just means strength and agility will probably come easier for you and that your leaping ability will likely be naturally more dependent on pure strength and your reactive ability will come less easy. Maximize your attributes and develop your weaknesses and you will definitely overcome someone who has the right attributes but doesn't train correctly.
On the other hand, if you have long legs and tendons,- strength and the ability to demonstrate that strength in the weight room, jump from a pure standstill, or fire off the line like a bullet in a sprint probably won't come as easy for you, - yet being bouncy, having good top speed, and having good reactive ability will. If this describes you and you one day desire to be a powerlifting champion it can be done but you're just gonna have to work a little smarter then others who are gifted with a structure geared towards lifting.

Since there is obviously nothing you can do to change your body structure once you're done growing besides adding muscle (despite what some people may want to sell you!), the only thing you is work with what you have and train to maximize your natural attributes and strengthen your natural weaknesses so that you can perform to the best of YOUR ability!

7 Modern Day Myths About Plyometrics

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Myth #1 - Plyometric ability (reactivity) is a distinct, separate quality =======================================================
Pull a rubber band back, stretch it, and let it go. It has long been thought that muscles behave the same way. When you pre-stretch them force is stored in the tendon which allows you to exert more force. The pre-stretch is why you jump higher when you precede a jump with a short dip or you throw harder when you rear your arm back. This "plyometric action" exists in just about all movements and in most strength and conditioning texts has been though to be a separate, distinct quality. This might be partially true, however, more recent evidence indicates the reason we produce more force when we pre-stretch our muscles isn't due to a lot of magical stretch like plyometric action, it's largely due to the fact that preceding a movement with a countermovement allows us to position our limbs and muscles in a way to better exert force. (1, 2) It allows us to take up the slack in the muscle and gives us more room to build up force. The force is still voluntary and is still impacted by the same things that improve any other movement. Build powerful, strong, and efficient muscles and you improve plyometric action as well as everything else.
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Myth #2 - Plyometric action is a highly trainable quality =======================================================
How much additional force you get from a "plyometric" movement is mostly genetic and unique to you as an individual. True plyometric ability isn't something you can really impact through training to a large extent. In fact, it's likely to get less as you grow as an athlete even as you progress as an athlete. HUH!? Before everybody goes off the deep end with that statement let me explain:
Let's say your standing stationary vertical jump is currently 20 inches and your 3 step countermovement vert is 26 inches
That basically means you're getting 6 additional inches from plyometric action.
What I'm saying is you're unlikely to ever see that difference grow much. It can (and usually does) get smaller, but it rarely grows much, even as your overall performance gets better. The general trend in any developing athlete is to get more proficient at exerting force under smaller windows of opportunity so he finds over time he doesn't need as much wind-up to generate the same amount of power. This is even true for people like high jumpers, who seek to benefit as much as possible from plyometric action.
In sticking with this same hypothetical example, lets say you improve your stationary jump from 20 up to 35 inches. You're still unlikely to find more than a 6 inch difference in your running countermovement jump (41 inches), regardless of what type of training you did to get there. Generally speaking, the longer your limbs and legs (particularly lower legs), the greater you'll benefit from plyometric wind-up. The shorter your legs, the more likely you are to jump just as high or move just as well from a virtual standstill.
That brings us on to our next myth:
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Myth # 3 Plyos work because they train "reactive" ability ========================================================
If you've followed much of my writing the last few years you know I love to break all athletic movement down into 2 basic qualities:
A: Movement Efficiency
B: Horsepower
Movement efficiency is how efficiently you carry out your athletic movements and is impacted strongly by things like coordination, flexibility, posture, and practice. Horsepower is simply how much power you have behind your execution and is impacted strongly by things like muscular strength.
Plyos can effect both qualities. They directly enhance the movement efficiency aspect because they allow you specific practice and rehearsal carrying out a variety of jumps, bounds, and hops, which closely rival sporting movements.
With regard to the horsepower aspect, power in most sporting movements is a result of how much force you exert at the hips, knees, and ankles. The ankles are most important for absorbing forces allowing your quads and hips to drive your movements. Most plyos provide a low degree of overload to the muscles acting on the hip, a moderate degree to the muscles acting on the knee, and a HIGH degree of overload to the muscles acting on the ankles, due to the constant eccentric forces involved in landing.
Many athletes are less than stellar because they lack "stiff ankles". By stiffness I'm referring to how much your muscles "give" when you move. You want to be like a racquetball and not a flat basketball. Practicing plyo drills on their feet allows them to improve their coordination and ability to quickly engage and generate force thru the ankles. This is an example of good ankle stiffness:
So, in a nutshell plyos work primarily because they improve your feet; They make the muscles acting on your ankle (plantar flexors/calves) stronger, more powerful, and help you become "stiffer." They also allow you specific practice performing jumps, hops, and bounds.
It's also worth noting that people with longer, slender legs often inherently tend to be more ankle dominant. People with thicker builds and shorter legs tend to inherently be more hip and knee dominant. Great athletes often put all 3 together very well.
In my opinion tests such as the consecutive bounce jump test (designed to measure elastic/plyometric ability) really measure how proficiently and powerful your plantar flexors are in relation to your hips and thighs, or simply, how good your feet are. Here is a video of Mike Boyle demonstrating the test and talking about the concept:
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Myth #4 - The "shock" method gives supramaximal muscle recruitment =========================================================
The shock method primarily refers to the use of depth jumps as a training strategy. Read any russian text on the shock method and you'll likely come away thinking all an athlete ever needs to become great is a couple of boxes to do jumps with. The magic of depth jumps is explained by the notion that they give involuntary muscle recruitment.
Muscle recruitment refers to how well you use or "turn-on" your existing muscles. The explanation is that great athletes are great becuase they can utilize, or turn-on, more of their existing muscles in a given task. However, because of the shock method all hope is not lost for the average Joe athlete. Most exercise variations are limited by the force we can voluntarily exert. However, imposing a high amplitude forceful stretch on a muscle, such as what happens when you drop off a box, hit the ground, and jump back up, (the shock method) causes the muscles to involuntarily stretch and in an effort to protect the joint it causes the involuntary recruitment of ALL existing muscle cells. Over time this allows the average Joe to become like a superstar. Sounds great eh?
Unfortunately, we now know this is partly a myth. It is true that great athletes get more out of their muscles but not because of muscle recruitment. Even beginners can recruit all their muscles. Anything equivalent to around 80-85% of max voluntary effort will do it. The reality is great athletes can really ramp up something called rate coding and this is largely due to the inherent excitability of their central nervous systems.
Rate coding refers to the frequency that your brain sends messages telling a muscle to contract. The faster the frequency the greater the intensity of any given muscular contraction. Rate coding is similar to beating the heck out of a drum with your hands. The faster and harder you move your hands the stronger the beat. Rate coding appears to be highly related to the excitability of the CNS. Activities that cause a great psychological arousal fit the bill here. This explains why we're capable of exerting more force in our movements when we're excited or slightly nervous. A highly excitable nervous system can produce greater force at a faster rate due to the positive impact on rate coding.
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The Stimulation Method

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In this regard the Russian "stimulation method" in my opinion is better at doing what the shock method/depth jumps are supposed to do. Here you perform one exercise to really activate or excite the CNS. You then follow it up with an exercise to take advantage of the CNS excitability, which temporarily boosts rate coding. Over time your body becomes more sensitive to the neural discharges from your CNS and learns to accept a new level of force as being normal for a particular movement. Think of a baseball player swinging a bat loaded up with weights before he steps in the batters box. The loaded bat allows him to swing a regular bat with more speed and power. The stimulation methods are also known as post-activation potentiation methods. Here are a few examples:
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Squat x 2-3 with 90% load - rest 5 minutes jump squat- x 6-8 with 20% load
Depth jump x 5 from 24 inch box rest 3 minutes running jump x 3
Loaded sled sprints x 20 yards with 50 pounds rest 5 minutes bodyweight sprint x 10-40 yards
Jump with weighted vest x 3 rest 5 minutes regular jump x 3
Bench press unrack and hold 110% of 1rm at lockout x 5 seconds rest 3-5 minutes 1rm Bench press
Snatch grip partial deadlift from blocks with shrug - x 5 reps rest 5 minutes Hang Power snatch x 2-3
Squat 2 x 2 at 90-95 % - rest 4-6 min depth jump- 2 x 5 from 24-30 inch box.
*45 degree back extension Iso hold with toes pointed x 7 seconds - rest 3 minutes - jump variation
* This one is the brainchild of Coach Andrew Darqui who had excellent results with it.
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Getting back to depth jumps, what they really are is:
A: A form of loaded jump training
B: Specific strength training for the plantar flexors and to a lesser extent the knee extensors (quadriceps).
Depth jumps enable you specific practice jumping while simultaneously providing a HIGH degree of eccentric overload to the plantar flexors (ankles/calves). Anytime you practice an activity you optimize qualities such as rate of force development in the task. As a lone training method depth jumps have a weakness in that they are quad and calf dominant and don't affect the glutes and hamstrings strongly, thus aren't effective for long in isolation. (4) You can still use them though, but just know what they're capable of and what they're not. You need good strength at the hips and knees (a.k.a.- a good squat) before you can really benefit much from them. Think about it - If shock methods were all they were cracked up to be all these guys doing this new age "parkour" would be jumping out of gyms.
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Myth #5- Plyos/Depth jumps don't improve standing vert ==========================================================
This is one I hear a lot. The reality is anything you do to improve one form of vert will likely improve the others. Providing you can benefit from them, in my experience depth jumps do a good job of improving standing vert. Squats will also improve running vert. The reality is it's about impossible to improve your running vert without improving your standing and vice versa. The exception is increased strength in squats won't always impact your running single leg jump.
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Myth #6- One must do plyo activities =========================================================
If you want to optimize your jumping efficiency you need to jump. If you want to optimize your sprinting efficiency you need to sprint. The best way to improve horsepower for most muscle groups is through strength training with weights. You can certainly jump high without ever performing a single plyometric drill you just need to optimize your jumping technique and get stronger. The same goes for sprinting. You can certainly add in some plyos for enhanced effectivness if you want, but don't think you NEED to.
In my observations more people screw up by doing too many plyos than those that don't do enough. Plyos are kinda like dating the Hooters chick. She might be better than what you have on your plate, but you better be careful or you're just setting yourself up for a fall! Many athletes border on overusing their ankles and knee extensors already and plyos surely don't do anything to help that. In the last few years I've had the privilege of working with 5 athletes who achieved a 37 inch vert or better while improving at least 8 inches. Most of them did very little plyo training. That's not to say they wouldn't have benefited more from plyos, but with practice, games, and other qualities being more important, plyos are the first thing I'd put on the backburner. If you're 100% structurally sound and you've determined you can benefit from them and you're in offseason mode and don't have practices, games, or frequent conditioning seassions to work around, you might be the type that can get away with more plyo work.
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Myth #7- Plyo workouts should be fatiguing and exhausting =========================================================
Most young guys think a plyometric workout should be as fatiguing as an Army Ranger obstacle course. The reality is completely opposite. In general you should finish any plyo workout just as fresh if not fresher than you were when you started, or you did too much. You should keep the reps low enough so that each rep is a quality rep. With regard to rest intervals, you should pretend that each set you're going to do is a test of some sorts and rest long enough to be at 100%. For depth jumps a workout of 20 foot contacts is usually plenty and for most athletes I would keep the box heights at no more than 18 inches. Personally I prefer to use plyos as sort of a warm-up to strength training. See my Ultimate Split article for some ideas on how to implement plyos to your strength training workouts.

Have a Purpose behind Training....

Human performance is something that is very near and dear to my heart. I can see through the eyes of a strength and conditioning coach as well as through the eyes of a head football coach. The balance for how best to prepare for battle on Fridays and Saturdays lies somewhere in between.

Training philosophy
You must be efficient in your training: From a coaching standpoint, you must be efficient at teaching so that you maintain your audience’s attention. From the athletes’ standpoint, you must be efficient because you’re balancing academics, time needed for developing sport-specific skills, and perhaps other sports. This doesn’t even include texting and messing with your iPod. You must be efficient in implementing whatever it is you want. Time is the only thing you and your opponent share. Who will use it most wisely?

What this means in regards to training is that you may want to implement many different movements when in reality you don’t have time to teach them or do them justice in the short time you have. This also includes following someone else’s routine. Being efficient is “performing or functioning in the best possible manner with the least waste of time and effort.” It isn’t “no pain no gain,” but “no brain no gain.”

If you can’t teach it, don’t implement it: There are literally thousands of exercises and movements that can be considered beneficial. You have to decide wisely what is best for you and your program. A perfect example is the Olympic lifts. Don’t stick them in your workout if you have no idea what triple extension is or how to perform these movements. I’m not saying that you have to be able to perform them at the highest level yourself when demonstrating. However, you do need to be able to communicate and understand why they’re in your program.

The coach wouldn’t install a screen play if he didn’t know how to draw the play on the board, verbally communicate it to players, evaluate it once executed, give feedback after running the play, implement it in practice, and call it during the game. Why should the insertion of a new exercise be any different?

Never stop learning: This applies to coaches and players. The first step to gaining knowledge is to realize you don’t have all the answers. With that said, let me be the first to admit that I don’t have all the answers, and I love the journey of continually searching for ways to do things better. Seek out experts in different areas, watch videos, read books, network with others, and always ask questions. With the progress of the internet, there is a resource for every component of training—nutrition, flexibility, conditioning, and so on.

There are many different yet effective ways to skin a cat: Before training, you must understand that there isn’t one single best way to train. You can get great results from a variety of methods and programs. During your training career, it will also be beneficial to utilize a variety of these to avoid physical and mental burnout. Don’t get caught up in what someone else or some other program is doing. You may not be prepared to engage in that type of training. You may not have the resources and or proper equipment.

Different athletes respond differently to training as well as to how they learn. When dealing with high school and college athletes, an incoming freshman is very different from a senior or fifth year student. As a result, both athletes will be at different points in their training age and will respond and require different types of training. As a coach and player, I’ve used three-day splits, four-day splits, Olympic lifts, speed equipment, no equipment, circuit training, linear periodization, and conjugate periodization. I’ve had results from all of them. Developing the best training plan is like a puzzle. Find where the pieces go.

Your peak will only be as high as the base: Athletes can play any sport because they possess abilities that can translate to all movements. Just like the fundamentals of blocking and tackling are necessary for success on the field, basic strength, flexibility, and speed mechanics are necessary for a player’s success. Sometimes too much time and energy is spent on fancy or “in vogue” things that an athlete isn’t ready for or doesn’t need.

Players need to be motivated: In a dream world, all players would be intrinsically motivated. Because this isn’t the case, we need to find a way to motivate the extrinsic type as well. For example, have T-shirts for award winners. I’m always amazed at how much T-shirts mean to players or what they will do to earn one. Try having 1000-lb Club T-shirts, Iron (mascot) T-shirts based off of the strength index (clean, squat, and bench divided by body weight), or 3 X 3 Club T-shirts for set gains on the three major lifts over an off-season or summer.

A record board is a must. It will get athletes competing with each other to have their names on it. Include videos of weight training and speed work on your team’s highlight video. Include pictures of award winners in your summer manual. Have daily competitions to teach athletes how to be seven-second competitors. Write personal notes encouraging players and recognize great effort in front of the team. Be creative in how you motivate. You could have the best program in the world on paper, but if the player isn’t motivated, it’s useless. Like the old saying goes, they don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.

Developing High School Physical Preparedness

Over the last month I’ve been working with the local high school to develop a program to physically prepare the athletes for their given sport. The significance of this school is that it is particularly small. This makes athletics dependent on athletes participating in multiple sporting competitions. So the most important consideration is the induced fatigue almost year round from sport practice and competition. This made frequency and recovery highly important when designing a program for athletes that are exerting such high efforts throughout the year.

All that being said, the focus was on a program that didn’t require high frequency of training but was still able to develop advancement in the preparedness of the athletes. This meant that proper alternation in workouts was needed. Exercises in consecutive training sessions should minimally involve the same muscle groups and thus repeat the same pattern of muscle coordination (Zatsiorsky 1995). Also, when large muscle groups are worked, rest periods of 48 hours are optimal. For optimal recovery from training and competition, a three-day per week program was implemented. The lower body was worked on day one, the upper body was worked on day two, and the full body was worked on day three. This allowed for optimal recovery between large muscle groups, and muscle groups were worked twice a week.

With athletes of this age range (14–18), certain qualities need to be prioritized for further development. Enough power related work must be done during the early years to maintain the genetically determined levels of white muscle fibers. However, until the desired somatotype is developed, methods to increase cross sections of muscles must be emphasized. After this, the reverse is true (Francis 1987).

The choice for power exercises ranges from a snatch/clean variation to a plyometric/medicine ball progression. To promote maximal strength, sets are held at five reps and will sometimes drop to three. Using more than five reps per set during the learning phase of a new exercise will usually make correct technique harder to reproduce. Enough weight should be used so that force production increases but not so heavy that the cardiovascular component is completely absent from the exercise (Rippetoe 1997).

Single repetitions could potentially be dangerous for some younger athletes because the high percentage requires a lot of coordination to perform the movement.With so many athletes participating in multiple sports, exercise variation can have a heavy influence on adaptation and thus lead to soreness. If you have played a basketball game with fatigued legs due to training, you know what I’m talking about. In the end, performance in competition and injury prevention are the main goals. So exercise selection of “core” lifts will remain the same while supplementary ones will change. This will induce as little soreness as possible when transitioning to a new mesocycle.

Example of core lifts include the front squat, Romanian deadlift, bench press, and rear foot elevated split squat (RFESS). Some may think that not alternating core exercises will ultimately lead to stagnation or plateau. However, every time you complete a performance goal that passes previous results, your body is introduced to a new stimulation and will be forced to adapt. The avoidance of stagnation is how intensity is set. The training principle known as progressive overload is key. As Mike Boyle once stated, if you take an athlete and have him front squat 135 lbs for ten reps while only adding two and a half pound weights to each side each proceeding week, by the end of the year, he could potentially be at 395 lbs. Many problems with programs fail because athletes miss reps. So in selecting weight, the athletes started at a moderate load and used progressive overload at small increments throughout the training cycles. The athletes have shown improvement each week and PRs are already being set.

Example:

Freshman: Football, basketball, track, and baseball

Weeks 1–4 (last set recorded each week)
Front squat X 5: 165, 170, 175, 180 (PR)Romanian deadlift X 5: 155, 160, 165, 165 Hang clean X 3: 170, 175, 185 (PR)RFESS X 10: 100, 105, 110, 115Bench press X 5: 145, 150, 155, 160Warm up/activation should address coordination, preparation for training, and the undoing of the poor postural habits throughout the day. Taking into account that students are sitting for almost the entire day while at school, a build up of stiffness and tissue creep may occur. When students are sitting for upwards of an hour and a half at a time only to get up to go to another class, stiffness issues will undoubtedly follow. When sitting, hip flexors stiffen, which inhibits gluteal function. This should be taken into consideration when developing a quality warm-up program.

Warm up (10–12 minutes)
· 4 hurdle/dynamic routine continuous (twice each way or one time right and left)
· Right/left step over/inch worm
· Lateral over/high knee pull
· Backward over/lunge elbow to instep with knee extended
· Alternating over–single leg Romanian deadlift
· Lateral under–crossover walk
· Leg kick/quad pull
· Activation (1 X 10 each)
· T-spine mobility
· Glute bridge
· Lateral band
· Front/back monster band walk
· Shoulder PNF
· Band pull apart
Phase 1,Day 2
· Linear unilateral, lateral bilateral
· Short box single leg jump (2 X 3 each)
· Medicine ball, side tosses (2 X 15 each–kneel)
· Lateral jumps over short hurdles (3 X 6 each–stick landing)

All in all, the entire workout never takes more than an hour, which works perfectly for those who do this during physical education class and prior to school. The key to a successful youth training program is supervision. Fortunately, the athletes have set times and sometimes multiple coaches to observe technique, motivate, and ensure safety practices. A well-designed program can go a long way in terms of youth athletes having a good experience in sport competition. Seeing improvements is not only motivating but also goes a long way in building character and confidence, which are beneficial far beyond the spectrum of sports.

References
1. Zatsiorsky VM (1995) Science and Practice of Strength Training. Champaign, Illinois: Human Kinetics.
2. Francis Charlie (1987) The Charlie Francis Training System.
3. Rippetoe Mark (1997) Starting Strength. 2nd Edition. The Aasgaard Company