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As coaches, we love to be in control. We work hard to minimize variables and create scenarios for our athletes that we can rehearse and repeat. After all, “we are what we repeatedly do so excellence is a habit.”

This mindset is definitely seen in most off-season training programs, as coaches use closed chain movement patterns and traditional lifting patterns to improve performance. While many of these movements are great tools to build an athletic foundation, we need to assess if they are the best use of our time for improving performance. Time is our biggest limiting factor in improving performance, so we want to make sure our exercise selection and programming give us the greatest amount of transfer to our sport.

Time is our biggest limiting factor in improving performance, so we want to make sure our exercise selection and programming give us the greatest amount of transfer to our sport. Share on X

It is this thought process that has led our staff to look at using asymmetrical training methods in our off-season training. Sports, particularly team sports, demand that athletes create force in a variety of planes with asymmetrical forces. Athletes need to be equipped to create these forces in a variety of scenarios, including:

1. Running on a curve that requires athletes to use different forces on the inside/outside leg.
2. Transferring weight and changing directions.
3. Working through contact forces found in sports like football, lacrosse, soccer, and basketball.

Traditional training methods that lean heavily on bilateral lifts and linear plane movements often don’t meet these demands. As coaches, we had to make a choice: prepare our athletes to win at our off-season exercises or prepare our athletes to win on the field. To us, the choice was simple. The question was how to best implement this in our training.

While there are countless ways you can incorporate asymmetrical training into your program, we settled on these five easy-to-implement methods for ours.

1. Use curved runs in our speed development.
2. Add partner forces to apply pressure in different planes.
3. Use bands in our speed/agility work to create asymmetric loads.
4. Choose more unilateral movements.
5. Use unstable loads.

For this article, we will focus on methods 1-3.

Curved Runs for Complete Speed

We have incorporated curved runs in a variety of ways to help our athletes. We love how they make us navigate different forces and also compel us to learn how to change postures in our running mechanics. With that in mind, we looked to progress our athletes from:

1. Curve to upright (e.g., curved approach flying sprint).
2. Curve to change direction (e.g., three-point run to coach signal, tennis ball drop).
3. Upright approach to curve (e.g., straight fly to full speed curve).
4. Upright to curve to upright (e.g., approach to three-point run to finish).
5. Reactive based on partner (e.g., three-point chase, curved fly to chase, etc.).

We love how curved runs make us navigate different forces and compel us to learn how to change postures in our running mechanics, says @LUCoachTreske. Share on X

We look to make our speed work as reactive as possible, so all runs are based on a key movement or partner movement.

Key coaching points for the curve:

• Lean into curve.
• Head leads the body.

Video 1. Running a few sprints tracing the three-point line on a basketball court is a great way to feel asymmetrical centripetal forces to the body. If you want to add athleticism to the drill, include variations like tag or chasing.

Partner Forces for Immediate Feedback

As a football coach, I love utilizing partner force runs because they definitely replicate the contact we encounter on the field. However, as we’ve worked with our other team sports, we’ve found great ways to create drills that simulate the uneven contact basketball or soccer athletes encounter as well. Contact on the upper platform changes how the body needs to navigate movement. From face-to-face contact at the line of scrimmage in football to an offensive player looking to disengage a defender trying to cut them off on a sprint to the hoop or goal in basketball/soccer, upper body contact is a common occurrence, and we want to train our athletes to navigate movement through the contact.

As with the curve runs, we looked to create a progression that increased the variables and difficulty for our athletes.

1. Linear sprint against partner in front/offset.
2. Linear sprint with partner on side.
3. Curved run with partner in front/offset.
4. Curved run with partner on side.
5. Partner-resisted sprint to reactive finish.

With all of these methods, we look to use a few coaching points.

Cue 1: Drive Out

This was something I learned after talking with Chris Korfist a few years ago. We were discussing the start of the sprint and how too many athletes often focus on keeping their shoulders down (trying to “stay low”). It hurts their stride length because they are applying force in different directions. Chris shared that he cues his athletes to “drive out.” He explained that the key to the start was for the athlete to project their hips out as quickly as possible. This is true of a push-resisted sprint as well, as the forces needed for both skills are horizontal.

Cue 2: Pop the Ground

Sprinting against forces is no easy task. As with traditional acceleration mechanics, ground contact times can be long, particularly for athletes with a weaker foot/ankle complex. This is even truer with resisted sprinting. As a result, we want our players focusing on strong, quick contacts. We use verbal cues, calling of the hands, etc. to reinforce. We also use elevated surfaces (e.g., a thin rubber mat, piece of track, etc.) placed through the run to force them to contact quicker if it is still an issue.

Cue 3 (for Side Forces): Lean into the Force

When our athletes work against side forces, we want them to treat it like a curved run. We want them to lean into the force and drive the off arm and leg as hard as they can. We feel this gives two benefits for one cue: It helps them continue to accelerate into the force, and it also provides a reduced contact area for an opponent to push them.

Resisted Sprints for Learning

We have found bands to be an incredible tool for biofeedback and body positioning. We also like that we can localize the resistance point. This is especially useful to help our athletes feel/focus on the key coaching points rather than just hearing a verbal cue from us.

Video 2. It doesn’t matter if you are pushed or pulled, adding asymmetrical force to conventional sprints or acceleration works very well for athletes in team sports. A small amount of chaos is great for preseason conditioning when practice time is unavailable, but you still need to be ready to play sooner than later.

There are a variety of ways to use bands within speed and agility work, but the framework we begin with is proximal to distal. We want to begin with the resistance closer to the athlete’s center of mass so they can control the movement and have strong patterns. As they improve, we work further out, usually with the band strapped around the opposite shoulder. Here are a few examples of the ways we incorporate bands.

• Band-resisted sprints with the band on hip and behind.
• Band-resisted sprint start with the band around hip and to the side.
• Band-resisted sprints with the band across the opposite shoulder and behind.
• Band-resisted sprint start with the band around the shoulder and to the side.

We use similar strategies with bands for change of direction mechanics, but that’s for another article.

Unilateral Movements – Bridging Maximal Strength for Transfer

Asymmetric training isn’t just for the field, gym, or track. We love to use asymmetrical movements in the weight room as well. While we still utilize bilateral movements such as the deadlift and squat variations to improve acceleration, we believe in supplementing our training with asymmetrical methods to aid in COD, top-end speed, and nonlinear movements on the field/court.

Video 3. A combination movement like the rocker is more than just a single leg squat, it’s also a mobility exercise and an activation drill. You can put the rocker into a lifting program, a warm-up, and even a recovery day.

When using asymmetrical methods in the weight room, we begin with simple unilateral movements and loading. From traditional movements like lunge variations and single leg deadlifts to single arm presses/rows, we’ve found that using asymmetrical training helps us improve performance. One thing to note when programming is that we look to progress the athlete to unilateral movements with single limb or variable loading due to the challenge in stability and execution. As you design your program, just know there are myriad options to solve the puzzles your athletes present, and you’re only limited by your creativity.

Here are a few of our favorite asymmetric weight room movements to start with.

Single Limb Lifts

Single leg RDL

PNF raises

Kneeling step-up

ISO RDL to step-up

ISO RDL to one-arm row

Single Leg Plyos

Rocker jumps

Kneeling jump

Video 4. The band-supported (or assisted) rockers are great for ankle range of motion and learning the motion. Assisted rockers are not explosive or strength exercises.

Variable (Unstable) Loads

Asymmetric training in the weight room is not just limited to your movement selection. In addition to the movements I talked about, we also love the use of variable loading in our movements. We feel using uneven loading or variable loading compels our athletes to problem-solve to execute fundamental movements. They learn body control by handling different forces throughout the duration of the movement.

Asymmetric training in the weight room is not just limited to movement selection. We also love the use of variable loading in our movements, says @LUCoachTreske. Share on X

We believe that using variable loads more closely mimics the situations our athletes encounter on the field and court. Contact and force change as the game is played, and we want our athletes to be prepared for that. One thing to note: This is a more challenging method and one we progress to over time. I will also say the training age of our college athletes allows us to progress a little faster than if we were at the high school level.

Loaded Movements – Details That Matter

As I mentioned previously, only your creativity and equipment limit you in developing unstable loads to solve your athletes’ problems. We have used a wide variety of movements with variable loading, but here are a few of our favorites.

Phantom/Uneven Weights

This method was first introduced to me by Eric Donoval, the Associate Director of Sports Performance for Football at the University of Wyoming. We utilized a “phantom step-up” by performing a traditional barbell step-up using uneven loading on the bar. By loading the side opposite the step leg, we forced more glute med engagement and lateral hip/core stability. You can utilize this method with a wide variety of movements to help the athlete learn to stabilize and control a load. We progress the movement by increasing the load disparity.

Video 5. The use of a phantom step-up adds variety with a purpose to any training program. The asymmetrical loading pattern is very mild and just enough to keep athletes honest.

Medball Catch to Redirect

This method is great because it’s easy to teach and implement, especially in large group settings. We begin by placing the athlete in a critical position (start, toe off, COD position, jump landing, etc.). The athlete then receives a medball toss from a partner and has to display the sequential movement.

There are a variety of different movements you can do following the catch, but we typically progress it as follows: catch to throw, catch to jump, catch to sprint. To progress the loading, we change the plane, location, and velocity of the initial catch. This has been a great method to target upper body rotation, particularly with our change of direction work.

Video 6. Many coaches get bored with using the same routines so spicing things up without getting silly is the name of the game. Add important movement patterns by learning to load and release with asymmetrical patterns.

Aqua Bags (Banded PVCs with Weights)

Frans Bosch and Chris Korfist have popularized this method. Aqua Bags are phenomenal tools for providing variable loading, and I learned firsthand how challenging they can be to control when shadowing one of Chris’ track workouts. If you aren’t able to purchase Aqua Bags, there are alternatives.

If you are handy, one option is to purchase a thick PVC pipe, fill it with water, and seal it. Another option is the method we utilize with our athletes, and that is to wrap bands with light weights looped in around each end of a PVC pipe. The slack in the band allows for the weights to move as the athlete moves. It is an effective method that we love to use with any movement that requires hip stability, though admittedly the Aqua Bags are the easier option to use for athletes.

Mastering Banded Movements with Athletes

Bands are a tremendous way to add variable loading in the weight room. This method is by no means new, as the Westside Barbell and powerlifting community has utilized it with great success for quite some time; however, the method is often overlooked as a way to address asymmetrical needs and individual weaknesses. There are a ton of great resources on incorporating bands in the weight room, but there are a few things that have worked for us in progressing the movements and loads.

The incorporation of bands in the weight room is often overlooked as a way to address asymmetrical needs and individual weaknesses, says @LUCoachTreske. Share on X

Movements: We progress the banded weight room movements from bilateral to unilateral, both for movement difficulty and for the challenge in implementation.

Example of Bilateral Movement: Band-Resisted to Band-Assisted Broad Jump

We are big fans of using bands with our broad jumps, especially from a pause start, as it forces the athlete to generate power from a start position with no countermovement. From this position, we execute both a resisted jump (to emphasize the initial push phase) and an assisted jump (to emphasize hip extension). We add hops or small depth drops to the approach as well.

Example of Unilateral Movement: Band-Aided Pistol Squats to Assisted Single Leg Jumps

The band has been a great tool to help teach single leg motor control and ankle mobility. Once we can get the athlete to demonstrate strong positions (shin/torso angle parallel), we implement jumps and transitions from the position. We start with holding the band during an eccentric on the descent to releasing it on a jump. We then progress to bodyweight movements and later to band-assisted jumps where athletes have to learn to control greater forces from a single leg stance.

Loads: We progress the bands from the angles we attach first (proximal to distal) to higher resistance bands. We love this because we can do the same movements with a different effect and intent.

Example of Proximal to Distal Load: Band-Aided Pistol Squats/Assisted Single Leg Jumps

Utilizing the same movement we described before, we can use the band location to force the athlete to handle the load differently. When we want to emphasize the ankle and foot’s ability to handle the load, we place the band further in front of the athlete. When we want to target lateral hip stability, we begin to work the band further to either side of the athlete. As we mentioned before, we progress to bodyweight transitions and assisted jumps. We also alter the planes we begin with and the type of approaches we use as the athlete progresses.

A Few Recommendations

The demands of sport don’t require preparation in one plane; nor do they require balanced loading and transfer of force. Asymmetric training is one way we can prepare our athletes—particularly those who encounter contact—to excel in their given sport. In addition to the exercises discussed in this article, we aim to use the weight room to address asymmetric needs as well.

Our staff feels we are only scratching the surface for ways to incorporate this method, and even a quick glance at Twitter shows others are as well. I look forward to sharing more of what we do and learning from great minds in the coaching world.

Since you’re here…
…we have a small favor to ask. More people are reading SimpliFaster than ever, and each week we bring you compelling content from coaches, sport scientists, and physiotherapists who are devoted to building better athletes. Please take a moment to share the articles on social media, engage the authors with questions and comments below, and link to articles when appropriate if you have a blog or participate on forums of related topics. — SF

Back when I taught forensics, I used to tell my students that they needed to understand their opponent’s argument just as well—if not better—than their own. In the sports realm, an ongoing issue coaches continue to debate is strength training as it relates to both sprinters and distance runners. As you’ve perhaps noticed, most coaches have strong opinions on the subject.

Although health issues caused my unanticipated retirement from coaching, I still enjoy being part of the discourse and sharing views with colleagues from around the country, as well as the current members of the Lisle High School coaching staff. In this post, I’ll present the strength training argument from different perspectives.

There is no Holy Grail of #StrengthForSpeed. The perfect training, like a perfect cup of coffee, is always going to be subjective, says @Zoom1Ken. Share on X

In this regard, I’ve covered two positions on this issue. Neither of these sides actually represents my current thinking on the debate, but they do highlight that there is no Holy Grail of strength for speed. The perfect training, like a perfect cup of coffee, is always going to be subjective.

Barry Ross, Allyson Felix, and Breakthrough Training

I began my pursuit of strength training for speed in the 1970s with exercises performed on a Universal machine—that’s all the school owned, and they wanted coaches to use it to justify the expense. Later, I experimented with Olympic lifts a few years after Valeriy Borzov’s success in the 100m and 200m dashes in 1972. I paid a lot of attention to the outstanding translations of Russian research, thanks to the efforts of the great Dr. Michael Yessis, for whom we all owe a debt of gratitude for translating such an important body of research. After that stretch, I went through a period of no lifting, believing that some of the fastest sprinters at the time, like Carl Lewis, didn’t follow any strength training protocols. My next run at the high office of elite sprint coaching involved no lifting but lots of jump training and plyometrics.

That changed in 2004 when Barry Ross—a high school throws coach and renowned garage lifter from the 1960s—contacted me about a strength program he had been using at LA Baptist with the legendary sprinter Allyson Felix. That approach, which involved heavy deadlifting, was based on his interpretation of the seminal research on ground support forces conducted by Dr. Peter Weyand at Harvard University. Many criticized Ross’s method, which he highlighted in his book, Underground Secrets to Faster Running: Breakthrough Training for Breakaway Running.

Part of the interest he generated, as well as some of the criticism, was because of his link to a genuinely elite young sprinter, Allyson Felix. Some wondered if the Holy Grail he claimed to have found was not a specific strength training program but simply Felix herself—a rare talent who would have performed brilliantly under any coaching regimen.

Though it seems Barry capitalized on the performances of such a gifted athlete, the reality—as he points out in his book—was that Felix approached him, saying “I want to lift weight with you.” Felix made that decision after returning from a US Junior National Championships event where, even though she was just a high school freshman, testing revealed that she already ranked at the elite levels in almost every category—except her strength, where she was below the minimal rating scale.

Rather than relying on the established “garage routines” he had learned from the great George Wood and Dave Davis, Ross carefully studied the seminal works of Dr. Peter Weyand and Leena Paavolainen. Weyand’s research introduced him to the concept of mass-specific force, and Paavolainen’s study pointed out that reduced contact times were a significant factor in faster running speeds.

The Barry Project: Applying the Ross Method with High School Runners

During my numerous and lengthy conversations with Barry Ross—via a phone my family referred to as the Barry Hot Line—I proposed a challenge: I would train a single subject, a fairly successful distance runner (10:03 two-miler), who had never touched a weight his first three years of high school. The challenge required that I follow Ross’s procedures to the letter and send him video clips of the athlete’s progress. The results were quite astonishing. The runner, who struggled to deadlift slightly more than his body weight (119 lbs.) in the first two sessions was pulling 300 just seven weeks later and maxing for the season at 340.

The plyometrics routines also showed dramatic improvement, to the point that, on a fairly warm day in January (a 50-degree day in Illinois being an oddity), we went to the track to test his fly-in speed over 75 meters. He improved from a career-best of 9.56 to 9.26. That spring, while suffering from a pulmonary infection, he struggled in both the 3,200 and 1,600, but in the 800, he went from a best of 2:18 to 2:08. For the first time in his prep career, he ran the opening leg of our state-qualifying 4x800m relay.

That performance was certainly impressive, but when we later adopted the program with our entire team, I began to wonder if his dramatic improvements could have been achieved without any specific protocol simply because he had no prior strength training experience. Dramatic gains in novices are not that unusual. Nevertheless, I stayed with the Ross protocol because all our athletes had impressive strength gains and enjoyed trying to make Ross’s deadlifting Hall of Fame by pulling 2.5 x body weight. I had to send Ross images of my athletes at different points of their qualifying lift to validate that the lift was indeed authentic and not just staged, a requirement that further excited team members.

Debate—A Regulated Discussion Between Two Matched Sides

Some of the things below you’ll agree with; others you won’t for good reasons. The title of this post, “The Politics of Strength Training for Speed,” refers to something Senator Eugene McCarthy once said about politics being a lot like football: “You have to be smart enough to understand the game,” he said, “but dumb enough to think it’s important.”

My version is slightly different. Strength training for speed is indeed a lot like politics: You have to be smart enough to understand the best approaches by which strength training can improve speed, but dumb enough to think coaches will all agree on the best way to achieve this end.

I’ll begin with two insights, one that addresses Weyand’s contribution to Barry’s thinking, and the other that highlights why Paavolainen’s insights made sense to him. Dan Cleather noted the following: “Many of the capabilities that people train for (e.g., acceleration, velocity, agility, power) are just variations of a person’s ability to express force.” According to Cleather, it’s critically important to remember that the capacity that determines the ultimate performance within a skill is the ability to express force.

Dutch coach Frans Bosch has very strong opinions on strength training for speed. Because he believes that distance runners are just sprinters with bad coordination, his insights reflect that endurance runners should take strength training seriously for their events as well. “When highly trained endurance athletes reach a ceiling in their oxygen uptake,” Bosch said, “greater mileage will not improve it.” He believes the best way to further increase V02 max is through maximal strength training.

So, here’s my point and counterpoint on strength training. While these do not reflect my current views, I present them as viable arguments.

The Argument for the Ross Protocol: Should the Future Look Different than the Past?

Should the future look different from the past? I recently raised this question—and the next question below—after considering how contemporary views on strength training are moving away from the reductionist thinking that seemed so attractive to me years back.

If I were coaching for another five years or more—understanding that the focus is moving toward co-contraction and velocity based training—would I change my approach (deadlifting protocol) to accommodate a growing body of evidence corroborating the efficacy of taking into account the coordination of muscles groups as well as the speed of movement?

My conclusion: I would continue with the deadlift as we have in the past. The Ross protocol I used with my high school athletes accomplished what Ross believed is critical for strength to have an impact on speed:

• Athletes need to produce superior strength with minimal mass. According to Ross, athletes who can deliver additional ground force of 1/10^thof their body weight would realize an increase in maximum speed of one full meter per second.
• The strength training program takes into account the appropriate regeneration of the phosphagen pool; athletes have to recover to sustain intensity.
• The lifts should engage multiple joints and muscles.
• High school athletes have varying degrees of skill and, to achieve the mechanical adaptations necessary for faster sprinting, they need to sprint. The program should be efficient as well as effective in getting the athletes running fast on the track.
• For our situation, the program required minimal equipment and reduced preparation downtime. We were able to deadlift right on the track during good weather and in my classroom on inclement weather days. Like a traveling circus, we could set up and take down quickly.

In terms of results, our athletes got stronger without getting bigger; Ross believed that the disadvantage of added mass was a greater gravitational pull. As Dr. Mike Young often notes, “fat don’t fly.” If the goal is to generate and transmit muscular force to the ground, and if increased forces result in greater speed, our results were similar to those Rory Fawley found with his University of Idaho athletes (see Image 4 below).

A focused, high-intensity workout using just the bench press and the deadlift resulted in significant gains in strength and significant increases in speed. He concluded that “this program could be greatly beneficial to any coaching staff that wants significant gains in strength and speed in an abbreviated time frame.”

Ross believed that his training method for increasing mass-specific force “should be preferred until it is proven wrong, while every aspect of training that is irrelevant should be removed.” His formula for success is indeed attractive in its simplicity:

• Base all sets and reps on 1RM’s, staying at or above 90% and 100% as often as possible.
• Randomly select between intense days and high volume days.
• Keep pushing to establish a new max when you can easily do three reps of your current max.

Many coaches who struggle to add more aspects of contemporary training into their programs appreciate the simplicity of a strength protocol like this. For the level of athletes my colleagues and I coach, the actual training ages of these athletes, and the results they achieve in terms of moving metal—and moving faster—Ross’s breakaway training can result in breakaway running. As the great Russian strength coach Pavel Tsatsouline might say, it’s a program that is “simple and sinister.”

The Counter-Argument on the Ross Protocol: Although the Ross Method Initially Improves Some Aspects of the Rate of Force Development, Is This, In Fact, the Best Approach?

I’ve made the argument for continuing the Ross protocol, but here is a very powerful argument as to why a reductionist approach in terms of strength for speed might not produce similar results as athletes increase their training age.

In fact, there are good reasons for considering that heavy strength training might limit the potential for speed improvement, and the early successes can mask long-range problems. As Mel Siff used to say, “Any idiot can train another idiot for the first year successfully.”

Although strength gains in an exercise do occur as a result of conventional heavy lifting, these gains don’t transfer from the exercise to sprinting movements. In other words, we need to focus on what the muscles are actually doing while our athletes are trying to sprint faster.

Research shows that the hip extensors (gluteus maximus, adductor magnus, and hamstrings) and the hip flexors (iliopsoas and rectus femoris) are the most significant contributors to lower body power. Since this is the case, we should concentrate on what happens during a sprint’s swing phase. Knee extensors (quadriceps) and knee flexors (hamstrings) contribute most to lower body power during the swing phase, and ankle plantar flexors (soleus and gastrocnemius) contribute most to lower body power in the stance phase.

Despite beliefs to the contrary, what happens in the stance phase is not associated with running speed. So, if we want to run faster, hip extensor and flexor power, and knee extensor and flexor power need to increase.

The best way to improve the ability of the hip extensors and flexors to generate power in the swing phase is to use high-velocity exercises, like jump squats with light loads and kettlebell swings (for the hip extensors). Over the past several years, I’ve moved to more kettle activity and trap bar jump squats.

The best way to improve the ability of the knee extensors and flexors to absorb power in the swing phase of the sprint is to use eccentric training that involves activities like reverse Nordic curls (for the knee extensors) and either Nordic curls or lying leg curls with eccentric overload (for the knee flexors).

With this in mind, here’s my conclusion for this side of the debate:

Heavy strength training is not the best way to produce the adaptations that contribute efficiently to force production for faster sprinting. It can work—and it appears to work well—with beginners and athletes with lower training ages. The argument I raised years ago about the neural adaptations I believed were taking place can be just as easily attained by high-velocity or eccentric training. High-velocity strength training for the hip extensors and flexors, combined with eccentric training for the knee extensors and flexors, may be a superior approach.

And that’s why I was excited about Bar Sensei for analyzing the lifting velocities. Though the simplicity of the Ross protocol for improving sprint speed remains popular, I’m not convinced it improves intramuscular coordination. And we know that even the slightest drops in intramuscular coordination can result in a huge drop-off in performance.

The most effective methods for training muscle groups used in sprinting may be those that target key muscles in the way that they will perform during high speed sprinting.

Closing Arguments

I hope these points reinforce that strength training is a lot like politics in that coaches—like candidates—have strong opinions on the best ways to help athletes achieve faster times in their events. But according to Bosch, strength is not an independent phenomenon. “The strongest athletes are by no means the fastest,” he said, “and evaluation of training always shows that, in technically complex sports, increasing force production does not automatically lead to improved performance.”

Coaches will continue to confront the negative relationship between overload and specificity, says @Zoom1Ken. #StrengthForSpeed. Share on X

Bosch once described conventional strength training as a “dead-end street.” Though seemingly controversial, he was pointing out that coaches will continue to confront the barriers presented by the negative relationship between overload and specificity. This central and peripheral model poses challenges. Strength activities that target the movements of sprinting—the central approach—are more specific, but difficult to overload. And strength activities that focus on overload—the peripheral approach—are not as specific to sprinting but are easily loaded. It’s like a teeter-totter.

The coaching conundrum is that exercises that achieve significant overload but are less specific, and exercises that are very specific but provide little overload, are “pointless.” And this leads Bosch to remind us, “There are no holy grails in training.” As a result, the choices we make in terms of strength training are often a cup better to keep passing on, knowing that we’ll never resolve the arguments either way.

I will conclude with one of my favorite insights from Mel Siff: “Science is not perfect; practice is not perfect; but together they have a greater chance of going a great deal further than separately!”

I believe the same applies to coaches. Our approaches and concepts may not be perfect, but by sharing our ideas without completely dismissing divergent points of view, we can accomplish more for our athletes than we would by working separately. I’d like to believe that, though none of us can lay claim to having found the Holy Grail of strength training, we’ll find some common ground, and, in the spirit of collegiality, “take a cup of kindness yet.”

Since you’re here…
…we have a small favor to ask. More people are reading SimpliFaster than ever, and each week we bring you compelling content from coaches, sport scientists, and physiotherapists who are devoted to building better athletes. Please take a moment to share the articles on social media, engage the authors with questions and comments below, and link to articles when appropriate if you have a blog or participate on forums of related topics. — SF

Additional References

Bosch, Frans. Strength Training and Coordination: An Integrative Approach. 2010.

Cleather, Dan. The Little Black Book of Training Wisdom: How to Train to Improve at Any Sport. 2018.

The purpose of this article is to explain the equipment and setup needs for an authentic youth athletic development program. In my training facility, training young athletes is not simply just an extra revenue stream. Athletic development for the youth athlete is what we do! We believe in long-term athletic development; therefore, our programs start with very young children learning with simple movement ABCs and physical literacy all the way through the high school, college, and adult athletic realms. The age group I spend most of my time with is between the ages of 9 and 13, which is late preadolescence to early adolescence.

An athletic development program for preadolescents and early adolescent athletes is not the same as a program for teenagers and adult athletes. To put it into the simplest terms, when you think about the typical strength and conditioning program exercises, exercises like deadlifts, squats, and Olympic lifts typically come to mind. For a youth athletic development plan, on the other hand, you should think in terms of exercises like jumps, hops, skips, and rolls.

A youth conditioning program should look more like a gym class from the 1950s than a 2018 strength and conditioning facility, says @JeremyFrisch. Share on X

Whereas the goal of the adult program is to develop qualities like speed and strength, the youth program aims to develop coordinative abilities like spatial awareness, balance, and movement adequacy. Although an introduction to strength training is an important component in any youth program, equipment like barbells, kettlebells, and trap bars are not must-haves when it comes to working with youth. A youth conditioning program should look more like a gym class from the 1950s than a 2018 strength and conditioning facility.

The following list contains some of the equipment pieces needed to develop all-around athleticism in young athletes age 6-13, and ideas on using them.

Gymnastics Mats

Fold-out or roll-out gymnastic mats are No. 1 on my list of equipment needs for youth athletic development. First and foremost, as a safety issue, they provide a soft surface in case someone falls. When working with kids, especially younger kids, falls happen all the time.

Video 1. Getting mats in the gym is a priority—both in terms of safety and for teaching needs. Good mats add value for all ages and activities, not just kids and gymnastics.

We have quite a few children who are just starting to play contact sports like football, hockey, wrestling, and lacrosse, so we introduce them to games like kings and pawns that have a rough-and-tumble component. Although looked down upon by some cautious parents and school administrators, rough-and-tumble play, especially for boys, is both completely natural and beneficial to developing long-term emotional control.

Second, mats provide a fantastic surface for doing what we call “floor work.” I consider floor work to be any movement or exercise done on the hands and feet. Kids can do these movements in place or as a form of locomotion.

Crawling will always have a place in my youth athletic development program because it trains so many qualities at once: namely coordination, systemic strength, and core stability. Share on X

The best-known floor work exercise that probably comes to mind is the bear crawl. Although crawling has become a bit over-sensationalized by the fitness industry and bastardized as a form of conditioning by crappy coaches over the past few years, it will always have a place in my youth athletic development programs because it trains so many qualities at once: namely coordination, systemic strength, and core stability.

Crash Pad

The crash pad is easily one of the most popular pieces of equipment with our young athletes. My facility is small, and the crash pad against the wall allows the athletes to sprint to full speed and not have to worry too much about decelerating too quickly or tripping into a brick wall. The kids often run hard into the pad, have a laugh, and continue on.

The crash pad is also a wonderful piece to use for landing from a dive, vault, roll, or flip. These movements provide the young athlete with a great opportunity to develop a better sense of where they are in space. We often combine sprinting, jumping, and diving with catching a ball, which is a movement seen in many sports. We believe these movements are trainable.

In the book “The Athletic Skills Model,” the authors mention a form of balance called “air balance”: “Maintained balance while in the air is important for running and sports involving jumping, hitting, smashing diving, rotating, falling, swaying or moving in the air while throwing, hitting, catching or kicking.” The book goes on to say, “These skills are also necessary for maintaining balance while rotating in the air in, for example, volleyball, baseball, basketball, handball, American football, rugby, and football.”

Mini Trampolines

Mini trampolines offer the young athlete the ability to increase air time. With increased air time, the athlete has the unique opportunity to practice various combinations of jumps and turns/spins along with creating efficient landing solutions. The first time I saw the use of mini-trampoline work was in the book “Refining Human Movement,” written by Paul Uram in 1968. The book had a progressive series of jumps consisting of 90- to 180- to 360-degree turns, as well as pike and tuck jumps.

It only took a few sessions of playing with the mini trampoline to see the wealth of movement opportunities it could offer the developing athlete. For jumping purposes, we combine continuous bounces, which are more vertical in nature, into a jump and landing off of the mini tramp, which is horizontal in nature. While the athlete is airborne, we look to slowly add progressively bigger turns.

Video 2. We love using trampolines with kids, as it encourages them to take flight and not fear falling. Athleticism in the air sometimes requires assistance and many key sporting actions occur off of the ground.

One of our favorite movement combinations consists of three consecutive vertical jumps, making sure we attain maximum height with good body control, into a jump off with a 180-degree turn and landing. Immediately upon landing, the athlete executes a backward shoulder roll. This combination of movements is called linking, where we combine different movements into one complex movement pattern to improve all-around coordination.

Blocking Pads

Anyone who ever played American football knows these pieces of equipment are a staple at football practice. These versatile little buggers are often used for teaching blocking or tackling techniques. When I had the chance to purchase a set of these pads for cheap, I jumped at the opportunity. Just one look at them gave me hundreds of movement ideas for young athletes.

Video 3. You can use Block Pads to make the environment more dynamic and exciting while still providing purpose beyond the teaching and training. Block Pads are the right combination of protection and firmness for nearly all exercises.

We often put them flat on the floor and use them as a warm-up tool to develop different fundamental movement skills like shuffling, backpedaling, and high stepping. With our older athletes, they work great as barriers for plyometrics-type activities. With our young children, we often stack them on top of each other and combine them with mini trampolines to create jumping and vaulting patterns.

Adjustable hurdles can also be a staple of youth training programs. With young athletes, flexibility training is not a huge concern. Kids, by their very nature, cannot sit still for very long, so holding long static stretches with any intent is not happening. Instead, we focus on moving through large ranges of motion.

Video 4. Stepping, ducking, crawling, and jumping using the hurdles provides a fun and challenging task that hits those large ranges of motion.

Tennis and Foam Balls

No youth training program would be complete without some type of safe ball catching and throwing. Catching and throwing has crossover into many, many sports, like baseball, softball, and football, so it is important to include various aspects of those movements in any coordination development program. And let’s not forget two of the most epic catching/throwing games: pickleball and dodgeball. These two classic games not only train throwing and catching skills, but also other physical skills like reaction and agility.

Video 5. Kids should throw, catch, and dodge soft and safe foam balls such as the Gator Skins from Gopher. Their performance site also sells great training equipment for sports development.

No youth training program is complete without some type of safe ball catching and throwing, as it has crossover into many, many sports, says @JeremyFrisch. Share on X

The Patch

The Patch is an adjustable indoor/outdoor obstacle course. Its lightweight but seemingly indestructible design with large beams and wide bases allows for multiple setups to practice many different fundamental movement skills, like crawling, leaping, jumping, and vaulting. When you break it all down, using the Patch allows for three basic activities: go over something, go under something, and go around something. This is a very simple but powerful concept for young athletes to understand.

Video 6. One of the most creative ways to get athletes balancing athletically is to use the Patch. Build endless patterns and challenges, all while making it safe for young athletes to play on.

Most of the time, I simply set up a series of obstacles and then let the kids figure out how to navigate through the course. The variety of different combinations is endless, and when combined with other equipment, it exposes the young athlete to a variety of movement challenges.

Stackable Trapezoid

Usually used in gymnastics academies, these Velcroed foam blocks are a great addition to any youth athletic development program. Similar to the Patch, the blocks provide endless variety. They can be broken down into separate pieces to run around and jump over. Stacked together, they provide varying heights to teach climbing and vaulting skills. Laying on their side, the children can run up the ramp or roll down the hill, both of which are great fun.

Video 7. Barriers and vaults are great for kids and are versatile for different activities. Older athletes can use them as well, provided you have the right plan.

Slant Boards

I was always a huge fan of “American Ninja Warrior,” especially the beginning of the race where the athletes have to leap back and forth from diagonal boxes without falling into the water. I thought it was such a great idea that I made a smaller version for the young athletes I work with. Although the Ninja Warrior setup is still a fan favorite of the kids, we’ve played around with the slant boards quite a bit and have come up with many other uses.

Video 8. Lateral agility and creative problem-solving activities radically improve when you add slant boards into the equation. They are perfect for all sports and age groups—but make sure you know how to safely set them up.

From an injury prevention standpoint, I really like jumping on and off these boards. The ankle complex gets challenged in different ways than from flat ground and jumping can be done in multiple planes and directions. To work on eye-hand coordination like catching, we often throw tennis balls off the boards.

Wrecking Ball

Football and strength coaches may be familiar with this oversized medicine ball, which looks like a round Mexican punching bag, and is used for specialized practice and contact drills. A giant boulder may look intimidating, but the shape and padding will not cause injury if used properly. Years ago, the military used large, oversized medicine balls for physical preparation, but youth athletes can benefit because it creates a simple constraint for games and other activities.

Video 9. You can use rolling pin style options or just an oversized medicine ball for fun and games. Here, the wrecking ball is a nice way to get kids to race and jump as an alternative to competing against each other.

For older athletes, change of direction drills can be more chaotic without increasing risk beyond what is necessary for sports preparation. Buying brand-new balls isn’t expensive, and it can be tricky to take in old equipment from outside sources due to bacterial risk from sweat and high use. Choose a ball that you can easily clean and maintain. While they are heavy, they do roll, so you can store them easily. Carl Valle started using them again after seeing videos on Twitter, and now believes they should be a staple from age 8 to pro levels.

Scooter Boards

Rounding off this list is a fan favorite of old-school physical education occupational therapy: the scooter board. Scooter boards are a fantastic tool to develop gross motor skills and functional strength in children. With wheels that roll and swivel smoothly, scooter boards offer plenty of freedom of movement. Children can move themselves along on the knees, supine, and prone, strengthening both the arms and legs.

Video 10. Scooters are a timeless, cost-effective option that can be incorporated in numerous activities.

One my favorite positions is the prone crawl. Many children these days present with poor posture, weak upper bodies, and poor visual tracking skills. In the prone position crawl, the child must alternately pull with the arms, which provides plenty of tactile feedback and arm strengthening, as well as eye tracking from side to side. The child must also keep their head up and extend at the spine. This is a fantastic all-around movement for young children.

Do Your Homework Before You Buy

This is by no means exhaustive as to the equipment needed for a youth athletic development program. It is simply a list of equipment that I have found useful working with children from the ages of 4-12 over the past 10 years. Our main goal when working with children is to improve coordination and fundamental movement skills. Thus, we lay a foundation to develop other athletic skills on top of later on.

There are too many facilities trying to train children like miniature adults, says @JeremyFrisch. Share on X

There are too many facilities trying to train children like miniature adults. Strength training for children is great, but let’s not put the cart before the horse. We need to first make sure children enjoy movement, and then become good, coordinated, all-around movers. After that, we can worry about organized strength and conditioning programs.

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When I was getting into this field, being an intern was simply a fancy word to describe the worst jobs in the gym. We had to set up the weight room or wherever we were running that day. Clean up everything once the athletes were done. Wash and fold towels. Clean and organize the facility at the end of the day. And please don’t forget the paperwork that needed to be entered into the computer.

One of the best things you can ever do to advance your program is to set up an internship program. However, in order to have it survive more than a semester, you will have to structure it so it’s more than simply having interns show up, clean, and fold towels. A position like this at a school may have been fine 20 years ago, but with the growth of our field, there are more entry-level internships than ever before. We have to be able to offer prospects more than just our grunt work.

One of the best things you can do to advance your program is set up an internship program, but make sure interns do more than show up to clean and fold towels, says @CarmenPata. Share on X

Don’t get me wrong—all of the duties I mentioned are important and need to be done. You just can’t expect people to line up at your office door to do these jobs simply because they get to work with you and have the name of your university (or business) on their resume. Well, maybe you can if you’re at a D1 program that competes for national titles every year, but the rest of us don’t have a line of people waiting outside our office.

The question comes back to: How do you get quality people to apply for your internship? The answer for this, like most things in life, is to have a well-thought-out plan. Here’s mine.

Begin with the End in Mind

In my nearly 20 years’ experience, I’m sure I’ve gone through situations very similar to what you are going through. I understand that when you start an internship program, you just need someone to take care of some of the busy work for you so you can focus on bigger picture problems. Here’s some advice. It’s something we have all heard before, but need to keep on hearing. Begin with the end in mind. Since we are talking about developing an internship program, when someone has completed the program, do you know what skills you want them to have? It’s a simplistically difficult question to answer, I know.

At first, I wanted the people leaving my program to be good coaches. That’s hard to do, since becoming a good coach is something that takes much longer than the semester or two that people are in the internship program. So I took a step back and decided that, at the end of the internship, these people needed to be ready to step into a graduate assistant position. That idea might mean different things to different people, but from talking to other coaches, I noticed these same skills kept surfacing.

• Ability to talk to all sorts of people.
• Ability to explain the basic concepts in strength and conditioning.
• Programming experience.
• Ability to coach groups without direct supervision.
• Some supervising or mentoring experience.
• Ability to critically think about different exercise programs.

At the end of their internship with me, I want interns to be ready to step into a graduate assistant position, says @CarmenPata. Share on X

With these ideas in mind, I started laying out a plan to develop undergrad interns with the help of our assistant coaches. The first attempt at this was simply too much thrown at people too fast, and it was very unrealistic. We kept refining these ideas over the years and came up with this current version of the progression for interns.

First Semester

We coach up the interns on how to talk with the athletes and help the interns fix their nonverbal communication. These interns eventually take group warm-up, cooldown, and stretching sessions while being supervised by our professional staff. During formal and informal staff meetings, the interns must be able to explain the basic ideas of the force-velocity curve, the size principle of motor unit recruitment, and the basic ideas behind energy systems. Ultimately, the interns have been successful if our pro staff feels comfortable to “accidently” not show up for the workout and the interns have to do everything themselves.

Second Semester

Building off the previous semester, now these interns will have a new level of responsibility. The second semester interns have to complete an annual plan for a team and create their own workout templates. They need to explain some of the more abstract theories, like the stretch shortening cycles and the sliding filament theory, then apply their use in training sessions. These students also supervise the cleaning of the gym and make sure any collected data is entered correctly. Finally, the second semester interns are in charge of specific teams or groups.

Third Semester

The few times that we have undergraduates who have been in the program for this long, they get treated the way I treat a graduate assistant. They create content for our social media channels, they are invited to all meetings with the sport coaches and the athletic department, and they are given full responsibility for one of the lifting groups. What I mean by full responsibility is that these interns create the lifting, agility, conditioning, and nutrition programs. Of course, nothing is implemented without first being approved by the professional staff.

Create the Curriculum

The majority of the interns we get are in the program because they need class credit. It took a long time for me to understand that, to help put the academic minds at ease, I needed to talk their language. My formal education is rooted in biology, not education. I knew what I needed from the exercise science department on my campus, and that was student interns. I knew what the interns were going to get out of their time with my staff and the athletes. What I didn’t know was how to communicate all of this in a way that career educators could easily understand what I needed or how the students would benefit and be evaluated.

There was one word that I needed to learn that would have eased the frustration of failing to communicate. That one word was curriculum. Developing a curriculum—writing down the course of study for these interns—changed everything for me. All of a sudden, I was taken more seriously by all the department chairs I talked to in order to get interns. First, it started with exercise science students, and then it progressed to people who studied nutrition. Now I am talking with our psychology department to get students who can help me set up mental health data and RPE scores.

Developing a curriculum—writing down the course of study for these interns—changed everything for me. All of a sudden, department chairs took me more seriously, says @CarmenPata. Share on X

Whatever direction you want to take your internship program in is fine as long as it saves you some time and effort. Just take some advice: When you are talking to academic departments, make sure you at least say the word “curriculum” as you describe what your plan is. Even better, have something written out on paper. There are all sorts of examples and templates you can find if you do a quick Google search, and they all have these three things in common:

• Expected Outcomes: What the students will have learned when they have completed their program.
• Learning Experiences: How the students will have chances to apply what has been learned.
• Assessment: What and when the students will have their knowledge tested to make sure they have retained what was learned.

Don’t Make It Miserable

Were you ever miserable working in a job? I’m not asking you if you had to work a bad job, but whether you were actually miserable while you were working. I had a bad job in college working in a woodworking factory. I worked there during the summer months in an old building. Since there was a lot of machinery and hazards, we had to wear steel-toed boots, heavy jeans, protective jackets, and a mask over our face, and there was no air conditioning in the building.

Now that was a bad job. It was hot and dusty, and I did mindless assembly line shift work. Yes, it was a bad job, but I wasn’t miserable. There were some great people I met there, the management was involved with the labor force, and we had a competition between shifts for the group that was most productive. Sure, the job sucked, but at least the eight hours I was at work were enjoyable even if the work wasn’t.

It was an amazing learning experience for me. Sure, I learned the value of taking pride in your work, but even better, I learned how to make sure your staff is not miserable. Starting right off the bat, no one felt anonymous there. Everyone was involved in some way with everyone else.

Everyone, from the janitors to the board of directors, ate together in the dining hall at lunch. At the shift change, some, if not all, of the management group would come down to the punch clock and either welcome the people punching in or thank the employees punching out. It seemed trivial at the time, but the owner of the company came up to me at the end of my shift, looked me in the eye, shook my hand, and told me “Carmen, I appreciate the work you are doing.” No one felt like a nameless face in the crowd.

People felt relevant there, too. As part of the training process, they told us how our job on the factory floor impacted the delivery drivers and the teams that set up our products. Everything that happened on the factory floor impacted our sales force, which rightfully bragged about the quality of our products and how we fulfilled our promises. This ultimately affected the amount of sales they made, which impacted our bank accounts. We all understood our part in the grand scheme and how what we did affected everyone else.

The final thing that was not typical in this woodworking factory was that the management actually asked the labor force for their feedback and suggestions. There wasn’t the stereotypical quota that we had to fill each day—there were high expectations that we would get our work done on time and correctly, but we were given chances to assess ourselves and find better ways to do things. It was evident right away that the opinion of the management team was not the only way we would be evaluated on our successes or failures.

I left that summer job a little over 20 years ago, but I still use the ideas that I was taught there to make sure my staff are not miserable during their time with me.

• No one is anonymous: The interns are recognized on our main athletics web page, they go to all team meetings I’m invited to, and they are promoted on our social media accounts.
• No one is irrelevant: The interns are shown how their work contributes to the success of the athletes and their teams.
• No one is solely dependent on my opinion: The interns are taught how to critically evaluate their own actions and results, then decide if they need to adjust what they’re doing or continue.

Attract the Right People

The more experience I get in hiring people, the more I believe in the old adage that you reap what you sow. When I hear other coaches complain about their interns or staff, I often wonder how they recruit these people and why they hire them. After all, if the job posting is basically asking for anyone to fill the spot, don’t be upset when anyone applies for it. You reap what you sow. On the other hand, if your job posting is written so people with more than just the basic qualifications and with the right mindset and drive apply, then you are planting better seeds.

Write your job posting so people with more than just the basic qualifications and with the right mindset and drive apply, says @CarmenPata. Share on X

One of the best examples I have of this is what happened a little over a 100 years ago in England. As the Age of Exploration was drawing to an end, there was one last hurdle that mankind had not cleared: reaching the South Pole. On his second attempt in 1914, Ernest Shackleton needed to recruit a crew of men to undertake the perilous journey to Antarctica with him. Although he was well-funded and well-supplied by the British government, he needed the right kind of men to take the trip. Legend has it that he ran an ad in the London newspaper The Times. All it said was this:

MEN WANTED. For hazardous journey, small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful, honor and recognition in case of success.

Looking at this posting through the now-standard HR posting style, it seems laughable. There isn’t any language about the minimum or preferred requirements or education. Intentional or not, this job posting was written brilliantly. If they had tried to list all the duties and expected skills those recruits needed, the posting would have been much longer and would probably have turned off some of the people it was meant to recruit.

In fact, the expedition ran into difficulties that nobody expected. One hundred days away from their intended arrival location, their ship was encased by pack ice and eventually crushed. While some members of the crew left with Shackleton for an 800-mile trip to try to find help, everyone else waited on the ice-covered ocean with high temperatures of below-zero degrees for five months before they were finally rescued. It’s an amazing story about the human will to survive, and even more amazing when you realize that at the time of their rescue, the entire crew had survived.

You’ll reap what you sow. Shackleton didn’t just need a crew of 56 men for his trip. He needed the right 56 men. The right men were the ones that wanted this job for more than money, experience, or a safe return—they wanted it because it would give them excitement, danger, honor, and recognition.

When I decided to run my internship program, I put what I learned from the Shackleton expedition to use. The posting for my internship is written to attract the people who are the right fit for us. The people who are willing to work long hours in a loud weight room with minimal compensation and the expectation that they are constantly learning. These people will make a long-lasting impact on the student-athletes’ lives and the quality of the athletic performance program itself. Since I started using language like this, we have had fewer applicants for the internship, but the quality of the people who do apply has significantly increased.

So folks, these are some ideas to help you set up your internship program. Looking back at the way I began my program, I wish I had heard this advice before I started. Unfortunately, I was so desperate to get some help that I just took on anyone who showed up. Was that ever a mistake. Sure, I had a few people who were there helping, or at least they thought they were helping. All the issues that happened in those first few semesters of my internship program were my fault because I didn’t understand the principles that I just shared with you.

When I began my internship program, I didn’t take the time to hire people who would fit in with what we were doing. Now the job posting is written to attract the right people, says @CarmenPata. Share on X

I was so busy that I didn’t take the time to hire the people who would fit in with what we were doing. They complained about the hours, the music, not working with the teams they wanted to work with, and not letting them coach highly complicated movements like a power clean. They were miserable and so was I.

Then, suddenly, I didn’t have any applicants for the upcoming semester. After talking to the Chair of our Exercise Science program, I discovered that the department was not advertising our positions anymore because of the poor experiences their students were having. Finally, I heard back from the coaches and employers that the former interns had gone to. It was heartbreaking news: These interns who I had mentored were not prepared to be coaches. That was a professional low spot for me. But I changed all of that with the same ideas I just shared, and I know they will work for you, too.

As spring sports begin winding down, high school athletes will shift their focus to enrolling in a summer program. This extra 8-10 weeks of organized training may give them a leg up on their competition in the fall. They devote time to getting stronger or to competing in summer league games in the hope of getting recognized by scouts. Getting stronger will help all athletes, as will actually playing their sport.

But what about the rest of the year? I see a trend of more and more athletes specializing in sports at a young age. To me, this puts a ceiling on their overall development as an athlete. Without the improvement/experience of strength, speed, general movement, and motor skills, the sport-specific skills will never be optimized.

Whether you play football, soccer, basketball, or baseball, inside every high school lies a great off-season program that can help your sport—track and field, says @grahamsprints. Share on X

Whether you are a football, soccer, basketball, or baseball player, inside every high school lies a great off-season program that can help your main sport. Depending on an athlete’s main sport, indoor and/or outdoor track and field can be an excellent way to get to the next step on the field or court.

Simple and Intelligent Warm-Ups

Some days, I utilize really long warm-ups. This isn’t because I think a high school athlete needs a long warm-up, although after sitting for six hours and shifting between anterior and pelvic tilt all day, I can say that they do not come in ready to work out.

Many of the warm-up items are simply a chance to work on gross motor skills, general movements, and posture. This makes athletes, well, more athletic. Learning to practice mindfulness, breathe correctly, maintain posture, and develop lower limb stiffness are all important concepts in addition to playing the sport. In my experience, these things do not always create speed by themselves, but make it easier for speed to take hold.

Since speed is a complex mix of muscles and nerves, eliminating poor movement patterns will allow limbs to move better. Speed drills don’t have to be overly complex tasks and most high school track coaches program warm-up drills that are simple and repeatable enough that a player could use these during their main sport as part of their warm-ups.

Honest Speed Development and Assessment

There are five biomotor abilities: strength, endurance, speed, flexibility, and balance/coordination. Improvements in these other areas are commendable to be sure, but increases in these qualities are not as transferable to the field of play as improvements in speed.

After nearly a decade of coaching, I can say without a doubt that speed is the hardest ability to develop. If we know that speed is really hard to develop, why don’t athletes/coaches spend more time working on it?

Speed is the hardest ability to develop, so sometimes it is easier to point to endurance, strength, and flexibility gains as proof of a coach’s value, says @grahamsprints. Share on X

I think the answer is fear. Sometimes it is easier to point to endurance, strength, and flexibility gains as proof of a coach’s value. Gains in speed may take time to reveal themselves in actual data, or may be so small that the significance is lost on athletes and parents alike. In an eight-week summer program, you must be careful not to oversell your abilities as a speed coach, lest you want to appear as a fly-by-night salesman.

It is easy to dismiss someone as lacking speed if there is no initial success. You cannot be sure of the exact rate of development for each athlete. An example of this is in one of the athletes I coach. As a freshman, he ran a painfully slow 8.05 in the 55m dash. Now a junior, a week ago he ran a personal best of 11.82 f.a.t. in the 100m dash. He has achieved 21.3 mph on the Freelap timing system in a 20m fly. I don’t think he would have surpassed 19 mph as a freshman. This is not an uncommon progression to see with consistency.

Video 1. Athletes get enough chaos from games and practices, so it’s okay to have very simple and linear training and competition. Track and field is a great balance between novelty and simplicity that athletes can have fun doing year to year.

The middle school and high school years are prime years to devote to getting faster.

One study looked at the development of basketball players and discovered that the ages of 7-17 are the best time to develop speed and agility, with ages 12-14 being optimal for acceleration ability.

Most kids ages 7-12 are not doing sprint-/acceleration-based training, nor do I think it is entirely necessary or a good idea. On the flip side, if someone takes up soccer or football at age 13—having never routinely skipped, crawled, hopped, raced, or played tag—expecting instant success would be foolish. However, speed training can be fun and should be age-appropriate.

Speed work will always raise an athlete’s change of direction (planned) and agility (reacting to a stimulus) ceilings. Much as it isn’t possible to be really powerful without having great strength, it isn’t likely that an agile athlete doesn’t also possess at least good speed.

Video 2. Another quality of sport is rhythm, an area of development lost with rushed coaching. Track and field allows for a lot of cyclical or manipulations of temporal timing in running, jumping, and throwing.

If there is one sport that prioritizes speed development, it is track and field. Most high school track coaches operate under the premise that acceleration is the base of speed. When they note proficiency, they progress to maximum velocity work and then speed endurance. All of this is done with attention to appropriate volume and rest periods.

Acceleration is important across all sports, as I will discuss later. As Vince Anderson says, “The purpose of acceleration is to aggressively push yourself into a tall, running posture.” Field sport athletes often need to accelerate from awkward and disadvantageous positions. Track and field helps teach athletes the rules of acceleration, and they can break them as needed on their field of play while still trying to self-organize and find the optimal line of attack.

One way we connect the dots for our field/ball sport athletes is through the use of various position accelerations once basic acceleration mechanics are taught. It is something that you should work on multiple times weekly.

Areas of Need for Different Athletes

Without being too redundant, I will try to make a case for several sports and how they can uniquely benefit from a season of track and field. All sports will benefit from the strength work and speed work. Some athletes will also benefit from speed endurance workouts, while others will benefit from becoming more coordinated. All will benefit from reducing injuries and learning to compete in meets and at practice.

Likewise, track teams need a population of multisport athletes to be successful. This can be a harmonious and fruitful relationship.

Nurturing Soccer Players

I have lots of soccer players and their parents approach me in the summer, asking to help their “endurance” or to prep them for a 2-mile VO2 max test in the fall. I think these tests are bit archaic and not a good way to measure field readiness.

One study of a 90-minute professional soccer game found the following data. Players spent:

• 17% (15 min.) standing
• 42% (38 min.) walking
• 16% (14 min.) jogging
• 25% (22 min.) running, with less than two minutes of this sprinting

Looking at this data, 75% of this is low-intensity aerobic work. This doesn’t mean that aerobic training doesn’t benefit a soccer player. Of course, it does. But if an athlete lacks speed, they are essentially the best at running around unfatigued but never getting the chance to be part of a game-breaking play.

So, what is thought to be a great aerobic demand is actually not that great. Soccer players go through short bouts of high-intensity running followed by rest in the form of low-intensity aerobic work.

The aerobic/anaerobic system contribution in a soccer game is more closely aligned with the 200m, 400m, and 800m than a 5K, says @grahamsprints. Share on X

This is why many good soccer players are naturally predisposed to running the 200m, 400m, and 800m. The aerobic/anaerobic system contribution in a soccer game is more closely aligned with these events than with a 2-mile run or 5K, which by comparison is 80% or greater of an aerobic demand.

I do prescribe and advocate tempo running or VO2 max intervals for aerobic work for soccer players, but if speed and coordination are a need, then those are the things to tackle first. Devoting a large chunk of the week to long, slow distance running would be a mistake, just as having no aerobic capacity would. But speed is special. Speed is a performance enhancer. The aerobic system can help sustain it, but without a base of speed, we are not sustaining much.

An increase in speed and coordination will yield less of a breakdown later in games and leave a reserve akin to a turbo boost for big play ability. Simply put, improving an athlete’s single sprint speed also improves the average of the repeated sprints. A soccer player looking to run circles around their opponents will benefit greatly from joining the track team and competing in long sprints or middle-distance events. Acceleration, max velocity, intensive tempo, and special endurance workouts are an excellent way for a soccer player to stay field-ready.

Video 3. Athletes crave the chance to express maximal effort, and most sports on the field or with a ball rarely give them an opportunity to do so. Track and field is pure, and it rewards peak output or performance all the time, in countless events. 

Many soccer athletes also come in lacking general strength and moving very awkwardly when it comes to their linear speed mechanics. Soccer is heavy on lateral movement and deceleration. Some common issues are arms crossing the midline, hands crossing above the hips, and crossover gait. Addressing these mechanics, which seemingly go hand in hand, keeps players healthier and stops them from fatiguing early by improving their efficiency.

Overall, a quick look at some of our top sprint performances in the last two years reveals a positive relationship between track and field and soccer. Soccer players help our team and we help them move better.

• School record 4x200m boys, 1:32.22 (45 degrees and rainy) – 3 soccer players
• 2 All-Time 4x400m girls, 4:04 – 2 soccer players
• 1 and 2 All-Time sophomore boys 400m hurdles, 58.5 and 59.43
• School record 400m hurdles boys, 54.58; girls, 69.75 – both soccer players

I think wasting too much time on training agility and change of direction in gyms in the off-season is not a good idea. They already get this in the form of soccer tournaments and practice in a more authentic setting. What they are often not getting is the speed work.

Football Players – The Perfect Fit

The holy grail for football players is undeniably the 40-yard dash. The average 40-yard time in the NFL for wide receivers, running backs, and cornerbacks is eye-popping. I used the data on nfl.com to find the 40-yard averages from prospects at various skill positions at the 2019 NFL Combine.

Obviously, high school athletes cannot be held to this standard, but if a high school player is looking to crack their team’s starting lineup or get more reps, then getting faster is a great place to start. If NFL players are fast, good college players shouldn’t be far behind and neither should high school players. Some people are born with more of a “speed gene” than others, but if you aren’t training it, don’t be surprised if the needle doesn’t move.

Good track coaches prescribe their teams 12-24 weeks of speed training spanning across two seasons (more if postseason), with two days per week being acceleration- or maximum-velocity-based. Often, coaches track data using timing systems or stopwatches on a weekly basis. A football player who runs 1-2 seasons of track from freshman year to senior year trains for speed 48-96 extra weeks in their high school career.

The term I have the biggest issue with is “game speed.” I have heard it phrased as, “He plays faster than he is.” It is especially common for someone to reference Jerry Rice with regard to playing faster than he was. Jerry Rice was reported to have run a 4.59 40-yard dash. Not blazing, but also not slow.

Either someone possesses speed, or they don’t. Improving max velocity raises everything else. In this case, if the ceiling goes up, so does the floor. Tony Holler says it best: “Train at 100 mph so 80 mph feels easy.” Games are played mostly at 80 mph, save for the occasional game breaker. If each ball carry or route is at a lower percentage of max speed, then game speed will certainly be greater and more sustainable.

Consider the fatigue felt on the 10th play of a drive. With an extra “20 mph” in the tank deep in the fourth quarter, a high school running back may just take one to the house in the game’s waning moments. Football players who play skill positions are often most successful in the short sprints or on a 4x100m/4x200m relay.

A block start is the most difficult form of acceleration there is. Progressions leading to this pay dividends both on the track and on the football field. When football players spend time on blocks, they learn how to balance and project maximally with rhythm. Doing this makes other forms of acceleration become much easier.

When football players spend time on the blocks, they learn how to balance and project maximally with rhythm, says @grahamsprints. Share on X

Whether using a plyo step to get off the line quickly or giving chase to an opponent from a nearly prone position on the ground after being knocked down, these things become easier to do once the rules of acceleration have been taught. Athletes need to be able to find order and stability in the chaos of the game. Consistent acceleration work can help with this.

The mental component is an often-overlooked aspect of track and field. An opportunity to compete on a 4x100m relay team allows a football player to develop the intangibles that create great competitors. Things like mindset, confidence, and responsibility that are commonly preached by football coaches are also desirable traits in relay teams. The pressure, precision, and electricity needed to succeed here can often make no moment too big for a multisport athlete. I love competitors on my team and football coaches do too.

I have seen a lot of debate on the value of 7v7 tournaments, which I will not go too deep into in the scope of this article. There is value there. Route running, catching, and passing in a competitive atmosphere are absolutely beneficial and probably fun without the extra impact. I still think nothing replaces the opportunity to move faster and better. At the end of the day, game speed still isn’t top speed. Play in the tournaments if the schedule permits, but a few tournaments don’t replace what track and field can do for gridiron athletes.

Basketball Players – Better Without the Ball

By now it is clear that my point about speed and alactic training will also extend to the basketball court. However, ask any basketball player what they want to work on in the off-season and you will most likely hear, “I want to jump higher” or “I want to increase my vertical.”

Track and field training also incorporates plyometric training that aims to increase jumping power by training the stretch shortening cycle. Starting with skipping, hopping, and galloping, athletes typically progress throughout a track season to items like depth jumps and bounding. These all have a wide range in their length of ground contact times. This allows an athlete to work on getting stronger, becoming more powerful and elastic all at once.

The combination of the high jump, triple jump, and long jump will ready a basketball player for every type of jump imaginable, says @grahamsprints. Share on X

There are three jumping events that are perfect for basketball players: the high jump, triple jump, and long jump. All require tremendous rhythm and timing, but are unique in their own way. This multimodal jumping experience and training will ready a basketball player for every type of jump imaginable. To get better at jumping, you need to jump and become well-versed in a wide array of leaps. Some of our best high jumpers (6’-6” for boys, 5’-8” for girls) had backgrounds in parkour and gymnastics.

The curvilinear approach to high jump requires much grace, rhythm, and dedication. Likewise, layups and dunks are rarely straight-line maneuvers. Someone who is patient and willing to work through this technical event could see payoffs on the basketball court as well.

The penultimate takeoff phase of long jump gets the takeoff leg in the best position to act as a lever to maximize horizontal velocity and vertical velocity at the point of takeoff. When you think of Michael Jordan’s famous foul line dunk, it is easy to draw the parallels between long jump and layups/dunks.

The triple jumper is tasked with sprinting near max velocity and completing a “hop, step, and jump” in left-left-right or right-right-left fashion. The first two phases should be off their dominant leg. This means they exert forces on their body many times their body weight. They must self-organize through repetition and find the perfect blend of speed and height necessary to apply meaningful/purposeful force to the ground. This allows them to find some semblance of balanced distribution between phases.

Video 4. Motor skill acquisition is a fancy term for learning, and it’s our goal as coaches to get athletes comfortable with being uncomfortable. Expose athletes to general and different activities that promote athletic movement, not just different motions for variety’s sake.

All plyometrics and jumps are beneficial because movements in basketball are quite unpredictable. It may be necessary to jump unilaterally and bilaterally from all manners of positions. As with acceleration, learning how to jump and land correctly can allow an athlete to find optimal lines of attack and positioning in the fray of the game.

Baseball Players – Winter GPP?

This is always the hardest sell. We have not had a lot of baseball players join our track team, so I can’t speak to individual success stories. Baseball players are bigger and stronger these days. Lots of high school athletes follow suit and spend time in gyms developing rotational power, and preventing shoulder/arm injuries, as they should. Looking at this week’s MLB injury list—there are still lots of hamstring injuries popping up. Why is this?

While baseball is a sport that requires a tremendous amount of torque, force, and talent, it is pretty sedentary. I do not have a baseball background or understand all the nuances of the sport, but I can imagine that all the rotation present in baseball can cause compensation patterns elsewhere if careful care is not paid to these imbalances. If mobility isn’t great and there is too much anterior pelvic tilt, the hamstrings could end up paying the price. This isn’t to say that this is the only injury that athletes sustain during baseball games.

I would advocate sprinting to any baseball player, and lots of good baseball trainers seem to be getting on board with this idea as well. The weight room is so beneficial for baseball players, but it is impossible to prepare the hamstrings for forces of sprinting just in the weight room alone.

Lots of time must be devoted to the skill of the game. Hitting is a complex task that I assume needs lots of reps and balance to make sure the nervous system and joints aren’t overworked over the course of a long season. There are often doubleheaders and multiple games a week.

I would urge high school coaches to make sure their players are just as physically prepared to sprint out of the batter’s box to first base as they are to hit and throw a slider. You can have your cake and eat it too. First base is 90 feet, or about 27.5 meters, away. This is the length of a decent acceleration phase for a high school athlete. No sprinter would walk onto a track and immediately do a 95-100% acceleration, but I have seen a few area teams go right into batting practice without much physical preparation.

High school coaches should make sure their players are just as physically prepared to sprint out of the batter’s box to first base as they are to hit and throw a slider. Share on X

In addition to the speed training, joining a track team can also expose baseball players to the importance of a proper warm-up. We never do the same exact warm-up, but we always do the same format. I think it helps the athlete to first rely on a generic warm-up routine that they can slowly take ownership of as they grow aware of their needs. On meet day, they should do their own derivative of these and scale the ladder to something maximal before their race.

• RPR/breathing
• General drills
• Mobility/dynamic stretching
• Sprint drills

After sitting for 20 minutes, a batter in the on-deck circle or a center fielder could ready themselves better during the transitional periods between innings.

Moving better will help a baseball player. Getting faster can reduce the incidence of hamstring pulls. As with the other sports, max velocity improvements could make the difference on the field as well. A 10m fly improvement of just .05 can make a difference when running out a ground ball or catching a flyball deep in centerfield. Indoor track and field during the winter months would be a perfect fit for a baseball player looking for a supplement to their gym work.

Rethink Track and Field in the Off-Season

If you are a coach who is still unsure of the value of track and field for your field sport athletes, I recommend catching a track practice in the near future. You will see sprinting, jumping, and even lifting in the weight room. Track and field athletes need to be complete athletes and an increase in athleticism means an increase in several biomotor abilities. This is more transferable to the field of play than just adding strength at the local gym.

In conjunction with continuing to practice sport-specific skills like dribbling, shooting, and catching, 10-12 weeks of speed training on a team can give athletes a competitive edge over a rival school.

A few closing points…

• The best football teams also typically have great track teams and 4x100m relays.
• Great jumpers can be made. Jumping breeds athleticism and the best basketball players can and need to jump well.
• Soccer players looking to be game breakers should run track and get faster. In our league, a lot of the best players also run track.
• Baseball players need to not only hit, but also sprint, steal bases, and keep their lower limbs healthy.

Make it a goal for the next school year to incorporate indoor or outdoor track and field into your training program. Approach the track coach and see what they have to offer your program. Either way, prioritizing speed development is always a great idea.

Since you’re here…
…we have a small favor to ask. More people are reading SimpliFaster than ever, and each week we bring you compelling content from coaches, sport scientists, and physiotherapists who are devoted to building better athletes. Please take a moment to share the articles on social media, engage the authors with questions and comments below, and link to articles when appropriate if you have a blog or participate on forums of related topics. — SF

Social media has been both a curse and a great tool for the sports performance community. As anyone who is in my network of “contacts” knows, I spend a great deal of time both reading and posting. While it can be time-consuming, it has led to a lot of positive things in my life. I’ve been able to network and grow as a coach.

I’ve also spent my fair share of time involved in Twitter “battles” and debating many topics at length. That sounds like a negative. Sometimes it can be, but other times it is a learning experience. In fact, I’m pretty sure SimpliFaster first asked me for an interview because of an approximately 200-tweet debate I had with a few friends on “chasing numbers.” (We all chase them—it’s the process we use to pursue numbers that can be flawed, not the actual pursuit.)

However, even a person who loves to debate on social media can’t always take on every agitating topic that pops up. Luckily for me, I’m blessed to have a forum outside of traditional social media in which to share my thoughts. The problem is not everything that irks me has enough “meat” to fill an entire article. So instead, I decided to brainstorm a few big issues and attack them with smaller rants, rapid-fire style. Not all are actually things I saw on Twitter. Some are just observations I’ve made over the years.

My real goal here is to start a discussion and thought process that advances and protects the S&C profession, says @YorkStrength17. Share on X

My disclaimer here is that these are the issues that personally offend me. You may agree with all, disagree with all, or land someplace in the middle. My real goal here is to start a discussion and thought process that advances and protects the profession. As Socrates said, “I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think.” So here is my (not even close to complete, but I only have so much space) “list” of issues I commonly see on social media and other outlets that I believe hold back our field.

The ‘Demo’ Man

I saw somebody post, “A demo is worth 1,000 words.” Amen! I agree with you totally. I just don’t agree that a coach can’t be effective if they can’t currently demonstrate the movement. Yet there is a post about once a week saying, “If you can’t demonstrate the movement, you can’t teach it,” or something similar. That’s simply not true.

This is an irresponsible statement to make as well. Why are we putting out into the world a claim that severely limits a strength and conditioning professional? Saying things like,“If you can’t demonstrate a movement, you can’t be effective,” basically tells the world that any strength coach with any type of physical limitation is not capable of being successful. How is that helpful in bringing legitimacy to our role in the high school setting? It’s not and it sets a bad precedent.

Not to mention, it’s offensive to the many coaches who do an outstanding job despite physical limitations. What we don’t need in our field are extremists. This is a perfect example of short-sighted, extremist thinking. I’m guessing most of the people making a blanket statement along these lines are also in their 20s or early 30s. Because this old beat-up man is in his very late 40s and subscribes heavily to the “just because you can, doesn’t mean you should” school of thought.

That being said, I do agree that there should have been a time in your life when you did have mastery of the movements you teach. That’s not to say there are no exceptions, but having knowledge of, and experience with, the intricacies of the movements you teach is imperative. I also agree wholeheartedly that there needs to be a demo when teaching movements. I just do not believe that it’s the coach who has to do the demonstration.

I agree wholeheartedly that there needs to be a demonstration when teaching movements. I just don’t believe it’s the coach who has to do it, says @YorkStrength17. Share on X

Personally, I still have the physical ability to demonstrate any weight room movement I teach. I still demonstrate most movements that I am physically capable of doing at the moment, and I will continue to do so as long as I’m able. The ability and the body don’t always agree on when those demonstrations can take place. I can still absolutely do a full snatch from the floor—as long as I get about 20 minutes to warm up before I do a set. I don’t always have that time.

So, should I just not teach a snatch even if I feel it’s appropriate for the situation? No, I need to be a teacher. I need to be able to articulate and teach an athlete to demo for me. Why is it bad to show a video of a correct movement, then verbalize your teaching and use a more experienced athlete as the demonstrator? The fact is that the time when we can no longer do everything we need our athletes to do WILL come. When it does, will that mean we are done coaching? That is just a naive way of thinking.

What do you think takes more skill or shows the type of teacher and coach you are: snatching or being able to teach and cue the technique so that an athlete or younger coach can demonstrate? When doing speed work, I can still show the basics, but when we get to full demo, I pick out an accomplished athlete with a level of mastery and use my teaching ability to demo it.

There is little doubt that my athletes will gain more from watching an athlete in their prime doing a bounding drill than a man in his late 40s. (Plus, a torn Achilles is one explosive movement away—just ask Coach Gary Schofield!) Simply stated, from my 23 years in the field, I can tell you I’m more concerned with being a master teacher than a master lifter.

What will build confidence in our field is sports performance professionals moving past the “meathead” persona and being seen as high-performance masters of our craft, says @YorkStrength17. Share on X

The image of the “meathead” coach grunting and snorting while they lift won’t build confidence in our field as we move forward. What will build confidence is sports performance professionals moving past that persona and being seen as high-performance masters of our craft. For the sake of all strength coaches, let’s get past this “demo coach” thought process and instead assume the role of master craftsman with our intellect being more important than our physical capabilities.

You Must Look the Part

Here is another opinion that makes ZERO sense to me. As with the “demo” situation, it hurts all strength coaches by making generalizations with no basis seem factual. Maybe if you are a personal trainer in a highly competitive setting it would help get you clients. It won’t make you a better PT, but it may help you initially. In strength and conditioning at the high school level? Who cares? You know how many big, muscular people know absolutely nothing about sports performance? Just go to any local gym and point out a muscle head, and chances are they are one.

Now, again, I personally still “look the part” and although I’m looking more and more like an old powerlifter than a bodybuilder these days, I am still a big guy who lifts heavy stuff. That has nothing to do with what type of strength coach I am. Absolutely nothing at all. If I stopped training tomorrow and just downed pizza and ice cream all day, I wouldn’t look like a strength coach. But I’d still be the same coach (and only eating pizza and ice cream maybe three times a week).

Your day one physique may get the athletes to look at you and say, “Man, that guy is big, he must know his stuff.” But then you have to open your mouth and coach. Your intellectual ability and ability to master your craft are unrelated to your physical appearance. You have to show your knowledge and how much you care. Looking like Magnus Magnussen will gain an initial “wow” factor, but it won’t get the athletes to trust or believe in you.

Your intellectual ability and ability to master your craft are unrelated to your physical appearance. You have to show your knowledge and how much you care, says @YorkStrength17. Share on X

I hate to keep beating a dead horse, but this is another young coach’s mistake. I used to believe the same thing. Then I worked in the field for years. It didn’t take me long to realize the most important part in a sports performance professional’s body is the brain.

A shaved head and a beard will never, ever replace an educated and capable brain or make a coach a master teacher. The solution is simple. Judge your colleagues based on merit, knowledge, and ability. For the same reasons I stated above, we need to project information that brings legitimacy to our profession, not opinions that could keep a great coach from getting a job.

Training While Coaching Athletes

Another thing I see and hear about occasionally is coaches who actually train with the athletes. Who knows, maybe I’m off base here, but I don’t see how this is a best practice. How can you focus on your personal workout while supervising and coaching a group of athletes? This goes directly back to raising the professional legitimacy of our field above its current level.

How can we possibly be seen as professionals when we act like the athletes? Am I being a grumpy old man here or do you see my point? Seriously, when I’m on the floor with my athletes, I am on the move and coaching on the run from whistle to whistle. I usually feel like I’ve worked out by the end of the day, but coaching is my purpose for being there. Not just from a practical professionalism standpoint, but also from a liability one, it’s not good practice.

What happens if one of the athletes does something they shouldn’t, and someone gets hurt, and you missed it because you were doing a set of bench presses? I’m no judge or jury, but I’m guessing the second that tidbit comes out, the case is over and you lose. It’s our job to COACH. We need to be viewed as operating at the same level as athletic trainers and other sports medicine personnel. I’ve never once seen an AT participating in a workout or practice. Why? Because they are professionals and they have a very important job to do.

Strength and conditioning coaches need to be viewed as operating at the same level as athletic trainers and other sports medicine personnel, says @YorkStrength17. Share on X

How are we any different? I don’t claim to be the best coach alive, but I can promise you I’m invested and aware of the room from start to finish. You can’t do that and work out at the same time. Motivate the kids, hug them, coach them, jump around if that’s your thing, but never remove yourself from the role of coach by knocking out a workout with your athletes. You owe the athletes your best.

If you walked into your child’s math class and the teacher was at a desk doing the same worksheet as the kids and not teaching anything, you would be unhappy about the level of education going on. Don’t be that coach. It’s not fair to your athletes. It’s also not fair to your colleagues who strive to be seen as high-performance professionals in the field.

Whiteboard Workout While You Sit in Your Office

This is something that happens way too often and literally defines the word “incompetent” for me. The coach who writes up a workout on the whiteboard and then goes with other coaches and talks about anything other than the current session. This is the very definition of poor, lazy coaching in the weight room, and another example of a complete lack of professionalism in our field. There is no way to defend or excuse it.

How is this a thing? Even if you don’t coach, you must at least supervise. And that is pretty low on the coaching effort scale. I don’t really feel the need to get into a whole lot of detail on this one. Don’t, under any circumstances, do this. If you are so uninspired overseeing a team in a strength and conditioning setting, hire someone who IS inspired.

I have said this in a few places in this article already, but it is unfair to your athletes and to the profession. They may not even realize it, but you are being neglectful in your duties. Maybe someone out there will take offense with this opinion and disagree. If so, please feel free to reach out and explain to me how this behavior is anything but wrong. Coach your kids, keep your kids safe, teach them the way to do things, and help them improve. Raise the level of excellence in the field of strength and conditioning.

No Differentiation of Training

There are far too many situations in the high school setting where freshmen and seniors do the exact same workout with no variation based on training age. This is a real problem and it shows a lack of professional standards. It’s also a big reason that so many sports coaches, athletes, and parents have a skewed view of the importance of strength and conditioning.

Part of being a professional in any field is seeking out the best, most effective, and safest practices and mastering them. When you refuse to do that, you hurt us all, says @YorkStrength17. Share on X

Part of being a professional in any field is seeking out the best, most effective, and safest practices and mastering them. When you refuse to do those things, you hurt all of us. It’s that simple. It shows a lack of depth of knowledge and leads to injured and frustrated athletes. That results in a lowered perception of all strength programs by those athletes and their parents. That, in turn, spreads to others and can affect how they view us as a profession.

I understand that, in some situations, the coaches just don’t know any other way, just as I didn’t. On the one hand, I give those coaches a little bit of a pass and think, “They don’t know what they don’t know.” On the other hand, is ignorance of the law an excuse for breaking it? In my experience, it isn’t.

It’s up to the coach to seek out knowledge and best practices. It goes back to the question: “How many years have you coached? Many years or one year many times?”

This topic could be an article in itself if we get into the specifics of a “blocking” program. I’ve outlined the early stages of my program in other articles. For this, we will just stick to the really big picture. Regardless of how you do it, you need to have an evidence-based progression and regression system in every program. If you don’t, you’re asking for trouble.

“Do no harm” has to be our top goal. We build from that point. The athlete’s health and safety must be the priority, not rushing them into movements they are not prepared to do safely. If you have not learned the term “Block 0,” you need to. It’s time for all coaches who oversee athletes in a sports performance setting to dedicate themselves to a long-term athletic development program. While it may not seem to provide the immediate results from a lift total standpoint, it will ensure the well-being of your athletes. In the long run, they and your program will see better results.

You don’t put a student in college-level Calculus if they haven’t taken Algebra I first. That seems ludicrous to even consider, as it would ensure their failure. Why is our strength program any different?

The Research Says

This may be an unpopular opinion with some, but just because there is or isn’t supporting research for something we do, doesn’t mean it works or doesn’t work for what we intended it to do. Please don’t get me wrong—I believe in research. What I don’t believe in is the “sports science bullying” that seems to be gaining more prominence in our field.

In the book “The System,” the authors discuss the differences between American sports performance programs and those of the former Eastern Bloc. They mention that in the Soviet system, sports scientists and sports performance coaches worked together in a very symbiotic way, while in the American model there is often a disconnect. I see this playing out in our field, and it has a negative effect on all of us.

Too many sports science people don’t spend a minute coaching and it shows. We also have way, way too many coaches who pay no attention to the science side of the profession and guess at everything they do. Both of these groups hurt our profession. By acting against each other, it gives an illusion of incompetence. That is a bad thing for those of us who value both sides.

The crazy thing is that we have many, many coaches who excel as both sports scientists and coaches. Those coaches actually bring great value and legitimacy to the field.

My program motto, for example, includes the fact that everything we do will be “evidence-based.” I don’t believe in doing anything without knowing why and being able to defend that why with an evidence-based argument. I’m not a sports scientist, but I do believe in the value of research and the role of sports science in preparing athletes. The problem I have is when people want to argue about something that is common sense for most coaches and say, “Well, there is no research to back that up.”

Over the last month or so, I’ve seen multiple debates about some of the protocols used in a Block 0 program to prepare athletes for higher complexity movements. The one that really got me was, “Do we really need to teach kids to jump and land correctly? They jump and land in play, so they should naturally learn to absorb force efficiently.” Seriously?

I have no idea if there is research that proves or disproves the fact that young athletes need to be taught proper jumping and (especially) proper landing techniques. I never looked it up because I don’t care what it says. I work with young athletes and I watch how they jump and land when they come to me. I watch how they improve as we “slow cook” those techniques through a progression. That’s “evidence” enough for me.

Joe Kenn said in a post, “Jumping as play and repeated explosive jumping are not the same.” He nailed it in that sentence. Sure, playing will develop skills, but not everyone will use efficient technique when they play. I can’t imagine any coach who works with young athletes on a regular basis believing that it isn’t necessary to teach kids the proper and efficient way to land and absorb force prior to repeated explosive jumping. My point here is that sometimes it doesn’t matter whether there is or isn’t research on a topic.

There are aspects of sports performance that are driven by common sense. Don’t overthink everything. Research is an important aspect of sports performance, but sometimes research and evidence are not the same thing. Sometimes the “eye of the coach” is what matters most. After all, eyewitness testimony is considered evidence in a court of law.

Sometimes we use our coach’s eye to judge things a success in our particular situation. That’s not wrong, regardless of what an organization writes in a book and declares right or wrong. Never underestimate the human element in any field of study when it comes to practical application. I’m not advocating guessing; I’m advocating repeating what you, as a coach, have seen produce results without relying solely on “what the research says.”

Embrace sports science, but also embrace being well-rounded and mastering the coach’s eye, says @YorkStrength17. Share on X

Embrace science, but also embrace being well-rounded and mastering the coach’s eye. Push back against the “science bully” and the coaches who ignore evidence-based programming. Once again, strive to raise the public perception of a sport performance professional and be a person who helps push our field forward.

Let’s Educate One Another

I probably sound like a grumpy old man in this article. To some extent, I probably am. My intent, however, was not to be that, but instead stimulate thought and help advance our growing field. We need to be seen as multidimensional and well-rounded to be recognized as professionals on par with our colleagues in the area of sports medicine. I believe this is a realistic goal.

How can we move forward as a profession and eliminate things we see as hindrances to success for all athletes who step into a program? What can we, as sports performance coaches, do to help educate coaches who may not quite be reaching what we would consider best practice? It starts with us. I plan to continue to speak, write, and practice the things I believe in, in the hope of helping educate coaches who may not know how to reach their goals.

Nobody wants to do the wrong thing for a student-athlete. I encourage you to use this list or make your own list of things that you see happening that you feel are not the best. Then, strive to educate those around you who may not know they are doing anything wrong. To raise our professional legitimacy (which, in turn, will raise salaries, opportunities, etc.), we must add value to our field. WE do that by getting rid of the “demo coach” attitudes and the sports science “bully.”

We are all in this together. Let’s make it a priority to work together to raise the standard and overall level of coaching at the high school level. The bottom line is that a rising tide raises all ships. Raise the tide for somebody who needs you. We all benefit in the long run.

Since you’re here…
…we have a small favor to ask. More people are reading SimpliFaster than ever, and each week we bring you compelling content from coaches, sport scientists, and physiotherapists who are devoted to building better athletes. Please take a moment to share the articles on social media, engage the authors with questions and comments below, and link to articles when appropriate if you have a blog or participate on forums of related topics. — SF

Outside of making statements about nutrition, I’m not sure there’s a quicker way to get enemies in the training world than to talk about proprioception training—specifically, instability work. At best you bore people: minds drift to images of old-school physical therapy exercises on balance pads. At worst, you conjure up images of Neanderthals performing barbell back squats on BOSU balls, passing this along as “functional training.”

If you haven’t stopped reading or begun writing hate mail, please understand that there is a happy medium here. Just because you can do a lot of stupid things with proprioception training doesn’t mean that you can’t also use it properly. Done right, proprioception training can be a game-changer for raising the athletic ceiling. In fact, if you’re not incorporating the requisite dose and appropriate style of proprioceptive training, you can bet you’re leaving a lot of performance money on the table.

If you’re not incorporating the requisite dose and appropriate style of proprioceptive training, you can bet you’re leaving a lot of performance money on the table, says @coopwiretap. Share on X

Not only can you integrate proprioception into training systems, but it should honestly be a foundation of athlete remediation and a principle for continuously progressing the nervous system.

Theory to Practice: What Does the Research Say?

Before we dive in further, let’s take an inventory of just what has been established about proprioception training. I think it’s worth addressing both sides of the argument before the villagers mistakenly start knocking on my door with their pitchforks.

One of the main issues with instability training is that coaches, as people tend to do, make everything too black or white. The pendulum swings too far to one side or the other. Can’t we have properly dosed proprioceptive training while also accomplishing the other fundamentals? I believe so. I think the research can support this, too.

There are two fundamental problems most coaches have with proprioceptive training. The first is using it as a form of load progression—as a means to make exercises more difficult, rather than looking at resistance, load, speed, velocity, etc. The second issue seems to be conflicting research as to its benefit. Some coaches, like Bob Alejo, have quite eloquently advocated against proprioceptive training. For the record, I’m largely in agreement with that article and am fundamentally against instability training the way people execute it most of the time. I think a different understanding that yields a proper application is the remedy here.

Let’s talk load progression. As Bob Alejo cited, instability training as a means of making an exercise more difficult is not the answer and has mixed results, at best. This is the birthplace of the back squat on BOSU ball—a concept that needs to die off. But it doesn’t have to be one pipeline or another. What if we dosed enough instability, yet invested more of our time in more conventional exercise progressions?

Who’s to say that instability exercises can’t be a form of setting the table, neurophysiologically speaking, for the bread and butter performance movements of your training program? Might this be worth investigating?

As I’ll dig into later, I see trainers spending endless amounts of time on corrective exercises, movement prep, and other movement therapy work designed to ignite elements of neuromotor control/ability. Many of these overlap with proprioceptive abilities, as they stand. Why are people so averse to revisiting proprioception when they’ll just as easily throw an athlete down an endless, often system-less, chain of corrective chutes and ladders with no progression/exit/minimum effective dose strategy? That’s not to say that everyone doing these is doing them poorly, but it does happen with fewer side eyes than instability work.

The takeaway here is that these should not have been classified as exercise progressions, but rather as corrective exercise and movement prep.

As far as the research question goes, let’s take a look. As the aforementioned article and others have suggested, there is research against proprioceptive training. There is also research in favor of proprioception training. This data stratification in the form of a meta-analysis found that proprioception—and strength training—substantially tilted the deck for prevention and rehabilitation (flexibility stretching was the item found to have minimal effect). Proprioception training decreased injury by 45%, while strength training decreased injury risk by 69%. Here is another example demonstrating mechanical health.

Proprioception training can enhance performance, as well, such as developing speed and power. Proprioception can enhance explosive power via neural excitation, requisite input stimulus, and overall development of biomotor abilities during power and stretch shortening cycle activities (i.e., plyometrics). Even a poorly designed proprioception training program can drive these adaptations.

Confused yet? It’s okay. Yes, there is conflicting research with proprioception training, but then again, there is conflicting research with many other modalities, methods, and principles in the athletic performance world. Sensory training is hardly a four-leaf clover here.

Let’s also look at the issues with these studies. There are actually a number of factors at play here that I feel may unfairly stack the deck against properly executed sensory training. First, we have to consider the population—whether we’re measuring trained individuals or not. Physical therapist Fabrice Gautier states that, “Many studies have been made on strength-type or fitness athletes—obviously, you’re not going to ask a powerlifter to do a eurostep in traffic at full speed. Most athletes across basketball, soccer, football, hockey, rugby, etc. will agree that while the game is played on a stable surface, once the game starts it’s no longer a stable environment.”

Second, there’s poor program design. Many of these studies pit instability training exclusively against another exclusive type of training (e.g., strength training, agility). Is this really how anyone reading this would actually train an athlete? This doesn’t answer whether proprioception training is good—it just answers whether it’s better than some other modality as an isolated variable. That’s hardly useful for drawing meaningful conclusions.

Next up, we have poor exercise modality selection and inferior equipment. In both supportive and detractive studies, many of the exercises are what you would call dumb—scientifically speaking, of course. When we test whether something is valid, shouldn’t we test the best of the best?

I believe the research, fractured as it may be, does still support proprioceptive sensory training as a singular component within the framework of a larger training system. Share on X

Regarding the training equipment, I’m actually not a fan of most proprioceptive devices. But we shouldn’t extrapolate this to mean that all sensory training is poor. If you drove a car from 20 years ago, you wouldn’t assume that all cars are lacking or that driving a car in general is bad. Build a better mousetrap. A BOSU ball is hardly the same thing as a Waff or similar device.

I believe the research, fractured as it may be, does still support proprioceptive sensory training as a singular component within the framework of a larger training system.

Building a Better Nervous System

Any athlete who wants to be on the path to true fitness must accept that nervous system training is essential.

“There are basically three aspects of nervous system function that can be improved [in an athletic sense]: processing more information, processing more information faster, or processing more information faster to and from the brain. In some cases, the information can circumvent going to the brain altogether and move to and from the spinal cord, making the processing of information even faster yet.”–Marv Marinovich & Dr. Edythe M. Heus

In order to improve in these ways, the nervous system must, in part, gather information about the position, movement, posture, tension, autonomic readout, and changes in equilibrium of the body. Your internal awareness of your body’s place in this context IS proprioception. Kinesthetic awareness is technically proprioception in space. (Please note that some people, including me, occasionally use these terms interchangeably.) These sensory nerves are located throughout the body, including in the middle ears, ocular nerves, muscles, ligaments, tendons, skin, and joints. These proprioceptor sites are responsible for collecting this key athletic information.

Once the brain has data collected, it sends out control orders in the form of signals to muscles. As sporting movement continues, these sensory nerves located throughout the body continue to transmit new information about the body’s changing position to the brain, which sends out new orders to fine-tune the movement. The more refined these proprioceptors are—potentially through training development—the better the information network and the better the movement.

I believe it was Heus who first likened proprioception to walking in the woods at night. Imagine you have little flashlights all over your body. The more developed your proprioceptors are, the brighter the light. The brighter the light, the better you’re able to see what’s around you. The better you can see, the better you can respond to your environment and move through the world.

“Success in a particular event depends on the motor programming that initiates a proper biofeedback signal to the motor pool.” –Gideon Ariel

Trainers tend to think outward in terms of chosen exercise modalities. In other words, they have a black box understanding of concepts. Protocol X nets us Y result. Input X=Y, but what about when it doesn’t? What’s going on in the middle of that equation? Maybe if we can mine that physiological understanding some, we can extract some gold. I think it was the Eastern Bloc sports scientists and later Dr. Ariel who first compared athletic performance to a computing system—a complex interaction of physiology in the body known as biocybernetics.

I bring this up because most people tend to flip past the real learning in favor of the sets and reps tables. Hell, we’re all guilty. But the truth is that the things we are trying to affect with this programming—motor unit recruitment, innervation, rate coding, motor engram coding, myelination, etc.—are all prefaced by foundational proprioception. This is why I believe program design models should give a distinct preference to the development of physiological qualities (some quantitative, some qualitative) in various phases.

Physiological Program Design: Honing the Athlete’s Reactive Ability

From here, the human machine can do its thing and respond better to additional training and instructions. The intricate arrangement of muscles, bones, connective tissues, and neural control accounts for all muscular activities. Performance starts in the nervous system (or stimuli that cause activity in the nervous system) and propagates outward from there, according to physical cause and effect laws. As we’ve covered, this is first determined by central and peripheral sensory programs.

Now for the fun part—going from theory to practice. This is where we can convert physiology into actual work in the trenches.

You’ll recall from earlier that the more accurate the information the brain has, the more accurately it can tell the musculoskeletal system to accomplish a task efficiently. This allows you to improve your reaction time. A singular reaction is made up of sensing time and decision time: the time demands to sense the need to move and the time demands of actually making that move. The better the proprioception, the quicker the sensing time. The more accurate the nerve circuit pathways used here, the quicker the decision time. The absolute hairline-trigger decision times use the reflex arc.

This is also known as the propriospinal process. This means that instead of information taking a longer route from the sensory nerves of the peripheral nervous system (PNS) to the spinal cord, then the brain, then back again, it will circumvent going to the brain and go from the PNS nerves to the spinal cord and back again. Taking this neural detour and eliminating the travel time to the brain trims down decision and reactive ability time demands, making movements even faster. In other words, the nervous system has been highly developed to react as quickly as if it were a reflex. You have no doubt witnessed this hairline-trigger nervous system response in professional sports.

Video 1. Here, I use proprioceptive pads in the early stages of program design—the athlete remediation phase, as it’s taught by Nick Curson. This is not dissimilar to what Steffan Jones and Frans Bosch would call skill stability work.

Following assessment, we are essentially developing biomotor abilities. There are plenty of ways to attack this, and in some ways the only limits are your own creativity. Here, the goal is to layer an athlete’s sport-specific motor skills over proprioceptive biomotor development. The resultant effect is the heightened development of aforementioned neuromuscular integrations due to central nervous system (CNS) and PNS awakening. Obviously, this isn’t where the train stops, but this alone often causes athletes’ sporting movement, positioning, and posture to improve. You have to play around with various angles and progress the athlete through different positions here.

According to Gideon Ariel, in 1935, one of the founding fathers of modern biomechanics, N.A. Bernstein, first compared the inner workings of the athlete and their movements to a symphony orchestra:

“Each instrument plays its individual score. So in the act of walking, each joint reproduces its own curve of movements and each center of gravity its sequence of accelerations; each muscle produces its melody of efforts, full with regularly changing but stable details, and in a like manner the whole of this ensemble acts in unison with a single and complete rhythm, fusing the whole enormous complexity into a clear and harmonic simplicity. The consolidator and manager of the complex entity—conductor and at the same time composer of the analyzed score—is, of course, the central nervous system.”

By extension, I have found it useful to include proprioceptive training as a wake-up drill for practice and game play. Conceptually, by purposely throwing the body off-balance via instability, we destabilize the athlete. The aforementioned sensory nerves monitor what needs to occur in the muscles and then sends rapid-fire messages to the spinal cord and brain. In context, the message is, “Help, I’m going to fall!” The body then directs the musculoskeletal system via motor nerves to carry messages back to the muscles to make minor muscular adjustments. The more challenging it is for the systems of this nerve grid to find balance, the more efficient they become at finding it, training the body to react and self-correct faster.

Remember, the brain works on a protect-to-perform continuum and is hardwired for survival. The added element of danger helps switch on more neural “triggers,” priming the athlete for future movement. This is based on the nervous system’s propensity to stagnate in training. If left unchallenged or understimulated in one area, the brain will always use the least amount of resources possible to get from point A to point B. Overstimulation or development in one type of training or movement pattern (e.g., maximal strength, sagittal overemphasis), as well as understimulation via one set of environmental stimuli conditions (flat plane, surface, speed), are examples of how the nervous system can stagnate in training.

Remote Controls

Bulletproofing the body from injury, as well as proper rehabilitation and reconditioning, requires this foundational development of the nervous system and its dialogue with the musculoskeletal system. Without putting a blanket term over every single practitioner, traditional PT models obviously integrate the nervous system, but often either slow its development or feature poor proprioceptive exercise modality selection. This is one of the reasons there is a gap between rehabilitation and return to play.

We’ve identified how tuned proprioceptors create a foundation of integrated human movement. If you look at many modern corrective exercise and movement prep methods, these are all various ways of taking output-based training (non-direct lines of communication with the nervous system) and using them to manipulate the input (nervous system). Functional range conditioning, Postural Restoration Institute, functional patterns, dynamic neuromuscular stabilization, neurokinetic therapy, and others all advocate for athlete integration and proper groups of prime mover and intrinsic muscles firing in sync, as described earlier.

Innovators such as Da Vinci, Ariel, Marinovich, Bondarchuk, and others have all had their own unique way of describing this concept. If you truly read Transfer of Training cover to cover, you’ll see Bondarchuk put it quite eloquently in that it is necessary to mimic specific muscular firing sequences in training.

Many quality practitioners today are taking this information and ensuring that athletes train in an integrated manner. Nick Curson’s work at Speed of Sport is an excellent example of this. Dr. Pat Davidson is also great at translating this into quality biomechanical training models for the human athlete.

A major piece here is not just engineering higher performance, but also the concept that if the athlete trains their muscles, planes of motion, and positions in more of an integrated manner, they will present with fewer postural, structural, movement, performance, and overall mechanical pathologies. This has significant downstream implications on injury resilience.

“Most sporting injuries are a proprioceptive issue—muscles fire at the wrong moment of a movement or change of direction when they should be protecting the joint,” says Nick Curson. “If the majority of your training is purely in a linear and controlled manner in the gym over and over, yet the sport is not controlled nor linear, you are asking for trouble.”

ACL tears are seemingly becoming more common in pro arenas like the NBA, as well as in youth sports. In fact, the number of ACL tears in student-athletes ages 6-18 has been on the rise to the tune of about 2% per year for the last 20 years.

There’s plenty to speculate about. Evolving sporting demands? Cushy shoes? Fear of properly loading the athletes? Overemphasis on traditional, flat-footed lifts? Poorer food quality leading to chronic inflammation? Who knows? It’s difficult to triangulate with precision, but there seem to be some clear advances in research and technology. Yet they aren’t necessarily leading to better exercise modalities and training systems.

In the image above, I’m working with an athlete on reintegration from a major injury using a top-down, inside-out approach. The use of novel proprioception training is just an ingredient in the recipe, but as part of a larger training system, it can help mitigate injury, promote proper muscle activation patterning, ensure less time is needed for corrective exercise, and lap traditional rehabilitation time.

As part of a larger training system, proprioception training can help mitigate injury, promote proper muscle activation patterning, and lap traditional rehab time, says @coopwiretap. Share on X

 

Neuromuscular Assessments and Profiling

In addition to it being a rehab and performance method, presenting athletes with instability can also serve as an assessment tool. Muscular co-contraction, relaxation, muscle chain recruitment preferences, balance, breathing, and asymmetries are some of the things to look for during assessment. Fabrice Gautier, the main private NBA physical therapist, has developed sophisticated athlete neuromuscular profiling assessments.

“I have been using the Waff in athletes for nine years now—primarily as an assessment tool. Proprioceptive pads allow me to see many motricity preferences of the person—it ignites sudden archaic reflexes that reveal many underlying postural and/or neural deficiencies. We then can go into a properly progressed corrective and loading program from here. I think proprioception training is mistakenly thought of as pure balance work, when in reality it’s about the ability of the CNS/PNS to integrate challenges in reaction, performance, and postural awareness.” –Fabrice Gautier, PT

Nervous System Progression and Potentiation

Properly executed proprioception training can seriously raise the ceiling of performance in athletes. The neural excitation and potentiation produced during both static and dynamic positions of instability can help athletes develop or reclaim lost athleticism.

“You’re never purely doing rehab or performance training. You’re doing both.” –Garrett Salpeter

Coaches often conform to wholly traditional exercises alone at the expense of neural dynamism. This can do more harm than good. So, the question is, what does a quality loaded or performance proprioceptive exercise look like? I’ll offer dynamic and static examples.

I’m a fan of positional and isometric holds with requisite breathing patterns. The use of isometric hold variations for neural excitation, muscle activation, strength, power, and athletic ability has been well-documented. By injecting the instability component in certain cases, we can potentially provide a more global and complete nervous system stimulus.

Post activation potentiation using proprioceptive isometric holds followed by plyometrics is a phenomenal combination for athletic development, says @coopwiretap. Share on X

I’m also a fan of various positional instability holds as an on-ramp from the prehab portion of training sessions into the working sets. Post activation potentiation using proprioceptive isometric holds followed by plyometrics is a phenomenal combination for athletic development with measurable quantitative and qualitative improvements (e.g., muscle EMG, vertical jump, speed metrics, velocity, etc.).

Video 2. Isokinetic load—an example of a proper way to load instability.

A loaded proprioceptive exercise? Blasphemy! Before the villagers come to my door with pitchforks, please note that this is a hydraulic, adaptive isokinetic resistance, not a barbell back squat. The goal here is to not only provide the neural stimulus, but also develop the micro muscles in the lower leg and other smaller, stabilizing muscles that contribute to sporting movement. This also helps develop the tiny intrinsic muscles located along the spine that are responsible for controlling the other limbs in space and overall athletic ability.

The athlete is also able to perform this with some degree of speed in a safe environment. The load does not involve bracing a weight. In fact, it’s more about the force the athlete can apply against the machine as seen in iso-inertial training (e.g., proper sled work). This has a different neural adaptation and gets the brain out of its protectorate mode seen in the default mode network.

After stimulating this biomotor ability floor, we can go a number of ways. In really young athletes with minimal development, this provides a great training stimulus in heavier doses. In my own practice, I’m careful to identify when to load a certain position versus when said load (or threshold of load) may result in a decreased neural adaptation. One direction to go with this is to first load the athlete in this manner and then go into a loaded exercise (e.g., rear foot elevated split squat or hand-supported safety bar split squat). The idea is that you go into that subsequent loaded exercise with a full deck of cards, neuromuscularly speaking.

Regular dosing of proprioceptive biomotor development in key training movements enables the athlete to capture the benefits of both the loaded exercise and the unloaded proprioceptive one. Share on X

Another protocol I use is regular dosing of proprioceptive biomotor development in key training movements. This enables the athlete to capture both the benefits of the loaded exercise and the benefits of the unloaded proprioceptive one. I find this ensures that the athlete does not overdevelop the prime mover muscles from heavy loads at the expense of the smaller, synergist muscle groups.

Video 5. Here is a quick example of a perturbation core exercise in MMA athletes.  Yes, one athlete falls off at the end, but that’s part of the game in this case. I don’t mind seeing this in a few of the dynamic exercises I’ve used over the years. The element of “play” in this drill and stimulated danger in the sensory nerves heightens the neural excitation.

My advice here? Use your creativity, but also your common sense. 

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: When Not to Add Instability

If you’re still with me, I appreciate you taking the time to read this all the way through with an open mind. Of course, no proprioception article could be complete without a “do not try this at home” section, right? With that said, let’s go through a quick commonsense primer on what proprioception training is not and when not to use it.

First of all, do not be the guy who barbell back squats on a BOSU ball. There’s intelligently using proprioception training and then there’s dangerous idiocy. Substantially loaded movements on instability are just asking for trouble.

Start simple. There are many ways to drive proprioception/sensory training and the simplest may be training barefoot. This is the place to start with athletes. According to strength and conditioning coach Paul Fabritz, “This alone can cause significant change throughout the body because our feet are the foundation. Even minor dysfunction can cause catastrophic problems in the knees, hips, and back.”

There are many ways to drive proprioception/sensory training and the simplest may be training barefoot. This is the place to start with athletes, says @coopwiretap. Share on X

Don’t be the guy who thinks EVERYTHING can be improved by adding instability. You still need ideal turf conditions to generate the maximal amount of force. Hard, flat surfaces generate the right type of kinesthetic feedback for you to maximally express that nervous system. So yes, continue to do things like sprinting, Olympic lifting, etc. as you were. Don’t think that doing a hex bar deadlift off of a cushy box is the answer.

At the same time, don’t be the guy who neglects a powerful tool just because it’s often in the hands of morons. Proprioception training (and “functional training” on the whole) has gotten a bad rap because of its practitioners. This doesn’t mean that everything this arena has to offer is impossible. Fireworks can be awesome, or a few idiots can ruin them for everyone.

Think critically about the research. As you’ve seen, there’s a litany of unstable surfaces, tools, and exercise combinations to use. Thus, it’s pretty hard to parse through research and assume that the different conditions and variables being tested are going to directly transfer or not transfer at all to your own programming results. Use research to guide your training, but don’t be afraid to do some safe, intelligent, informed n=1 citizen science.

Above all, be safe. Don’t neglect common sense to develop your sensory nerves.

Please note that this was a mere toe dip into the world of refinement of the athlete’s kinesthetic sensory system. Many more exercise modalities and iterations of sensory training exist. This was meant to convince you to reexamine this type of training, not serve as its Bible.

Since you’re here…
…we have a small favor to ask. More people are reading SimpliFaster than ever, and each week we bring you compelling content from coaches, sport scientists, and physiotherapists who are devoted to building better athletes. Please take a moment to share the articles on social media, engage the authors with questions and comments below, and link to articles when appropriate if you have a blog or participate on forums of related topics. — SF

When reading about the latest innovative approach to speed training, legendary Dutch coach Henk Kraaijenhof would often use the phrase “old wine in new bottles” to suggest that the concepts introduced had, in fact, been around in different forms for quite a long time. In other words, it may be that many of these groundbreaking methods and technologies reflect not so much a new school of thought, but rather a creative refinement of old concepts in a convenient way.

One of my favorite books is Rick Brunner’s Soviet Training and Recovery Methods: For Competitive Athletes co-authored with another track legend, Ben Tabachnik. What fascinates me about Brunner’s insights is how he uses a very creative analogy to establish his point using the popular film Rocky IV. The film highlights the difference between the Soviet and American systems of training.

For example, Rocky works out in a barn, strength training with crude pulleys and pressing wooden handles attached to a wagon loaded with his training crew. His Russian adversary, by contrast, is portrayed as having a body of scientists gathering all kinds of data from sophisticated computerized monitoring systems. It certainly fits our stereotype that the Soviet Union is way ahead of the rest of the world in terms of sports research and technical innovation.

Brunner, however, pointed out that the reality was just the opposite. “The Soviets are training in barns and basements,” Brunner said, “and the equipment is forged from old railroad car axles.” Soviet athletes thought snow running was a great form of resistance. And in terms of equipment and monitoring devices, Brunner explained that (at the time) “most Soviets have never seen a computer, let alone a computerized Cybex machine, a Lifecycle, or a Stairmaster.”

The kind of equipment they used was what American athletes might have used back in the 1950s. In fact, Soviet athletes had shortages of all kinds of things American athletes would have taken for granted—like running shoes, bicycles, weights, and even proper clothing.

“Soviet athletes,” Brunner noted, “would be happy just having a set of free weights and a good bar.”

Everything Old Is New Again

Over my 43-year coaching career, I’ve noticed things supporting Kraaijenhof’s suggestion that certain aspects of current training might simply be conventional concepts put in better bottles. What we do today, however, certainly improves on what we attempted to do in the past.

For example, the Freelap timing system has changed many things for coaches and athletes the world over, but is the concept all that different from what coaches tried to analyze years ago?

Our interest in assessing the capacities of our athletes is certainly not new. The best example of this is the concept used by the famous exercise physiologist AV Hill over 90 years ago. Hill measured the acceleration of sprinters by using large wire coils set up at intervals alongside a track while athletes wore magnets. Now think about what Freelap accomplishes by way of electromagnetic fields. I think Hill would be impressed.

Another example is the focus on qualities like hip flexor strength. Back in the 1980s, Leigh Kolka, an aerospace engineer interested in speed development, introduced me to his Thigh Trainers, which were basically cuffs that wrapped around the thighs and were harnessed to a waist belt with garter-like straps. Various pockets in the thigh wraps were designed for inserting small lead plates.

Thirty-five years later, we now have the Exogen compression shorts, a far more sophisticated version of Kolka’s concept. I showed Kolka’s Thigh Trainers to an old Czech Olympian several years ago. “Ah,” he said, “we had the same idea, but we used rolls of coins Duct-taped to our thighs.”

Video 1. We have great products for sophisticated resistance training like the Exxentric kBox, now used by coaches and athletes worldwide.

Some of the many benefits of kBox flywheel training are that it’s efficient, effective, and safe as it adjusts the resistance to each athlete’s intensity. I keep wondering if I’ll hear Kraaijenhof’s voice whispering his old wine refrain. And if it’s not Kraaijenhof I’m hearing, perhaps it’s the ghost of Mel Siff, reminding me about aqualand circuits—lifting weight against the resistance of water. And how can we forget that classic image of the famous Vasily Alekseyev, holder of 80 world records and winner of two Olympic gold medals, rising from the Volga River with a loaded barbell across his chest?

As Siff noted, “One of the advantages of exercise in water is that the resistance offered by water increases with the velocity of movement.” Sound familiar? Siff goes on to note that, “since the resistance to movement is also directly proportional to the area of the limb pushing against the water, resistance may simply be increased by closing the fingers or wearing paddles on the hands or feet.”

I began this post with Kraaijenhof’s “old wine in new bottles” analogy. Kraaijenhof, who has returned to coaching track after a 14-year absence, notes the following: “I am a fan of the no-school approach, a mixture of old ideas that stood the test of time, and new concepts that are the result of increased knowledge, experience, and technology.” He says that “old vs. new” is not the right way to describe the way many coaches view contemporary speed training concepts.

Additional Thoughts

As a kid growing up in the 1950s, I loved reading Dick Tracy comic strips, and the highlight was always the opening frame of Tracy wearing his two-way wrist radio.” Eventually, that changed with the times, and Tracy began sporting a “two-way wrist TV.” That was even cooler, but not so for a generation of kids who have grown up with cell phones. In fact, most of the high school kids I taught never wore a watch, and those who did considered it jewelry rather than a timepiece.

When I started my teaching career in the mid-1970s, I was the first track coach in our league with an electronic stopwatch (probably because I was the youngest coach in the league). That Cronus watch had an LED display, and it required three AA batteries.

My considerably older colleagues teased me about that watch, believing that I didn’t know how to read or translate a thirty-second Swiss timer like the ones they were using. Maybe they weren’t far off in their analysis of younger people being confused by older technology.

In my years as a classroom teacher, when students would ask me what time I would be dismissing them for an afternoon assembly, I would tell them “when the big hand is on the twelve, and the little hand is on the two.” It always got a laugh. But just a year before I retired, one of my students, who had transferred to our district from another state, actually thanked me. It turns out, he couldn’t read an analog clock. In his old school, all the clocks were digital from first grade on. Though that seems unusual, many of us have seen video clips of kids who, when they’re presented with a rotary dial telephone and instructed to make a call, have no clue how to do it. They are certainly tech-savvy, but antique addled.

One thing was clear from my having that Cronus electronic stopwatch: I was able to save split times, and with later versions of that watch, I could capture—and recall—both cumulative and lap splits. With that ability, I began thinking about ways to capture 10 meter segment times (yards back then) for the sprinters on my team.

My technique was crude but effective. I put two hurdles on either side of a lane and taped a piece of finish line yarn from one hurdle gate to the next. I then draped a red bandana over the yarn. As athletes ran between the two hurdles and broke the finish yarn, the bandana would drop, and I would start my watch. I would do that for each segment, provided I had enough bandanas! Many years later, when I had two optical timing systems (Brower and Microgate), sprinters still had fun trying to set up that “old school” technique.

Technologies allow us to explore new ideas—and sometimes they provide new ways to apply old ideas, says @Zoom1Ken. Share on X

Technologies certainly allow us to explore new ideas—and sometimes they give us new ways to apply old ideas. Like Kraaijenhof, I’m glad I’m still around to experience the benefits of advanced technology that products like Freelap can provide.

Since you’re here…
…we have a small favor to ask. More people are reading SimpliFaster than ever, and each week we bring you compelling content from coaches, sport scientists, and physiotherapists who are devoted to building better athletes. Please take a moment to share the articles on social media, engage the authors with questions and comments below, and link to articles when appropriate if you have a blog or participate on forums of related topics. — SF

References

Kraaijenhof, Henk. (2019 January 10). Helping the Best Get Better. Sprinting Mechanics: Old School New School…or No School (Blog Post).

Siff, Mel Cunningham. Supertraining: Strength Training for Sporting Excellence. Third ed., Strength Coach, Inc., 1997.

Coaches are in constant pursuit of peak performances, personal records, and maximum efforts. With all these superlative focuses, consistency often gets overlooked. Yet coaches should always strive for consistency. In track and field, one area in which reliability and precision are absolutely essential is during handoffs in a 4x100m relay. Tony Holler, whose Plainfield North team recently set an Illinois all-time best of 41.29 in the event, has developed the “bang step” to add consistency to the handoffs.

In this article, we’ll go over the bang step and why you should consider adding it to your program and then proceed with a comprehensive look at key factors for success in racing the 4x100m relay.

I. What is the Bang Step?

Every quality 4x100m relay uses a “go” mark, which for most high school athletes is a tennis ball cut in half. The challenge lies in defining what the go mark actually means. In the simplest possible terms, the outgoing runner starts sprinting when the incoming runner hits the go mark. Most coaches, however, agree that the outgoing runner has to anticipate when the incoming runner will hit the go mark. This can be an inconsistent guessing game, which is why the bang step is so important.

In the words of Tony Holler, “The bang step defines go.” No more hoping, no more guessing. With the bang step, you can review video (you absolutely should video record your handoffs in practice) to see if the athletes leave on time.

Video 1. Here’s a great example of a perfectly executed bang step by the middle legs of Lake Forest High School’s 2016 4x100m relay in a late-season practice. The incoming runner, Jonathan DiValerio, hits the go mark (the tennis ball next to his left foot) just as the outgoing runner, Chris Meng, takes his first sprinting step—the bang step. (See Image 2 below for a still shot.)

The video has a simple indicator to look for: As the incoming runner hits the go mark, the outgoing running should have his very first step (the bang step) hit the ground. The outgoing runner is still anticipating the incoming runner hitting the go mark, but now he has a tangible, reviewable goal to shoot for.

Video 2. Brandon Stryganek (Illinois ’15) receiving from Austin McIlvaine (John Carroll ’18).

The bang step also gives the incentive to be aggressive. In the past, when I reviewed videos of my athletes to see if they left on time, I would watch to see if the outgoing runner’s back foot left the track when the incoming runner was at the go mark. That was great for consistency, and we did have great handoffs with this method. But the bang step adds an aggressive component by emphasizing when the outgoing runner’s first step hits the track rather than when it leaves the track. The step now becomes the focus, instead of the toe-off—an important distinction.

The #BangStep gives athletes an aggressive mindset as they fixate on putting the first step into the ground appropriately, says @LFHStrack. Share on X

The distinction may be subtle, but focusing on the step instead of the toe-off gives athletes a more aggressive mindset as they fixate on putting that first step into the ground appropriately. After all, a lazy step can get off the ground at the same time as an active step, but a lazy step will never hit the ground as quickly as an active step.

The placement of the bang step is nearly as important as the timing. The outgoing runner’s first step must be made heading down the track to execute the bang step properly. Too often, an athlete will step out more than necessary toward the middle of the lane, which requires compensation and sacrifices distance and often power. Stepping out toward the middle of the lane also starts the outgoing runner toward a potentially dangerous handoff since it compromises lane discipline.

By using the bang step, you communicate to your outgoing runners that their first step is hugely important, not just in timing but in execution.

The rest of this article will focus on the 4x100m relay as a whole, hopefully leaving no stone unturned. First, we’ll discuss the givens, then the options, then finally the extra odds and ends, including drills and strategies even the most seasoned coaches can learn from.

II. The Givens

While there are many debatable parts of the 4x100m relay, some aspects are set in stone.

1. Lane Discipline

• 1st runner runs on the inside of the lane with the baton in the right hand
• 2nd runner runs on the outside of the lane with the baton in the left hand
• 3rd runner runs on the inside of the lane with the baton in the right hand
• 4th runner runs on the outside of the lane with the baton in the left hand (may switch hands upon receiving the baton)

The basic principle is that the baton stays in the middle of the lane. Since the first and third runners are sprinting around a corner, they’ll run the shortest possible distance if they stay on the inside of the lane. The second and fourth runners are competing on a straightaway, so they gain no advantage by running on the inside. When the baton stays in the middle of the lane and the athletes exhibit proper lane discipline, the handoffs are much cleaner, significantly reducing the risk of getting tangled up. 

You might assume that running on the inside of the lane would not be an issue for the first and third runners, since running on the inside is a major advantage, but several teams have been disqualified because a curve runner was inexplicably running in the middle of the lane and, therefore, running extra meters. This makes some sense if the incoming runner has to move out to avoid interfering with another athlete (see Image 5, stance C2). Yet some teams—most notably the Great Britain men in the 2012 Olympics—have nobody racing inside and don’t maintain lane discipline for whatever reason. This video from the 1997 World Championships shows all eight athletes demonstrating great lane discipline on the second leg.

2. Passing Within the Zone

What used to be the acceleration zone is now part of a 30-meter exchange zone, according to a new rule that goes into effect for the 2019-20 season. The rule has extended the old 20-meter exchange zone into the old 10-meter acceleration zone. Now, both zones are part of the exchange zone (the acceleration zone has been eliminated). It’s also important to note that the baton needs to be in the zone, not the athlete.

Eliminating the acceleration zone makes passing the baton within the exchange zone a significantly easier task, says @LFHStrack. Share on X

Eliminating the acceleration zone makes passing the baton within the exchange zone a significantly easier task. Since outgoing runners are now required to start within the exchange zone (just like in a 4x400m or 4x800m relay), the chances of disqualification for passing off early are virtually eliminated. Runners must complete passes before the end of the 30-meter exchange zone, and again it is the baton that counts, not the athlete! The outgoing runner can be outside the zone, but if the baton is inside the zone when they complete the handoff, the exchange is legal.

Just because you can start at the very beginning of the exchange zone does not mean you have to. In all but the rarest of cases, however, every outgoing athlete in the 4x100m relay will start at the very back of the acceleration zone (see Image 4). This gives the athletes time to get up to speed before receiving the baton.

I’ve only started an athlete ahead of the zone once in my career, and it was only by two strides. In this situation, the incoming runner was significantly faster than the outgoing runner, and the two had consistently been handing off very early in the zone. To maximize the speed of the incoming runner, I started the outgoing runner up a few strides. 

III. The Options

While lane discipline is a given, coaches still have many options for the 4x100m relay. Your decisions on the following options will depend mostly on your athletes’ ability levels, experience, and familiarity. Uniformity can be great, but don’t be afraid to let athletes make their own choices, as long as those choices benefit the team as a whole.

1. Stance

The way the outgoing runner stands in anticipation of breaking into his bang step is incredibly important. While the main consideration is being able to sprint, the athlete must also be able to see the incoming runner hit the go mark. 

Most high school athletes will start with stance A or B. I highly recommend stance A over stance B due to the leg placement. Stance A allows the athlete to open up the shoulders much more, making their view over their inside shoulder much more comfortable. Technically, the two-point stances are the slowest of all the stances shown in Image 5 (nobody running a 40-yard dash starts in a two-point stance). However, they’re the easiest to learn and also the easiest to view the incoming runner. Look at the head placements of A2 and B2 as compared to D2, E2, and F2. Once the eyes pass a 60°tilt, perception drastically changes.

Never teach stance C. I only include it in this post to point out the foolishness of having athletes in this stance. First of all, look at the position of the feet in C1 in relation to all the others in Image 5. To maximize acceleration, the runner’s feet should aim down the track in the direction the athlete wishes to go, as demonstrated in A1, B1, D1, E1, and F1.

Notice that in C1, the feet are positioned at a 90°angle to the direction the athlete wishes to go. To sprint, the athlete first has to shift his feet in the correct direction. Also, look at how far the athlete’s butt protrudes into the next lane. This problem is either negligible or non-existent in all the other stances. Do not teach stance C and avoid contributing to “butt interference.”

In the 4x100m relay, most high school teams are better served when the outgoing runner uses a two-point stance, says @LFHStrack. #4x100mRelay Share on X

Three-point stances like D, E, and F give the outgoing runner more ability to accelerate but limit their vision. For very elite high school teams, college teams, and professional teams, these stances or their variations can be very beneficial. The runners can sacrifice the reduced vision for the increased acceleration. The majority of high school teams, however, are better served using a two-point stance shown in A and B.

Regardless of the stance you choose, a great piece of advice for the athletes is to make firm contact to the track with both feet as they get into their stance. Some athletes are jittery and will bounce around a bit, others are more timid and will only have soft contact with the track as the incoming runner approaches. The ground contact needs to be firm, just as if the athlete was putting pressure on the starting blocks. Firm contact will not only allow the athlete to be faster out of the stance but also will increase consistency.

2. Go Marks

Since the timing of the 4x100m relay handoffs is critical, the use of a go mark is essential. The mark offers a visual cue for the outgoing runner to start his acceleration. When using the bang step, the outgoing runner aims to land his first step on the ground at the same time the incoming runner reaches the go mark.

Though there are many items you can use as a go mark (in a pinch, I’ve seen athletes uses dandelions or even their own spit), the standard items are a tennis ball cut in half or a piece of athletic tape. Certain tracks and competitions have rules for what is allowed, so be sure you know going into a meet what marks are available. Most high school meets allow tennis balls or chalk marks, while most college meets allow tape. The Olympics allows one piece of tape. Image 6 shows what some of these marks look like from the outgoing runner’s point of view.

One decision you have to make is whether to use one mark or two. When using two marks, the athletes look at a zone versus a single mark. Generally, this zone is between 3-5 steps long. When using a zone, the outgoing runner goes when the incoming runner steps in the zone.

As you can see in Image 6, the zone is significantly easier to see when using tape than when using tennis balls. As a coach, I have my athletes use one mark because that gives the outgoing athlete only one object to focus on instead of two. If I had to look at a zone, especially if the zone was just a tennis ball, I’d end up at the back tennis ball instead of the zone between the two tennis balls.

If you choose to use tennis balls for your go marks, keep plenty on hand at all times. I suggest going to the tennis coach and asking for all the old tennis balls they’re done using. Cut them in half, draw your team logo on them with a marker, and keep at least two dozen on hand at practice. Give one to the athletes who consistently need them at meets, and keep plenty in your coaching bag for meets. An athlete scampering around before a race trying to find a tennis ball is not in the state of mind you want heading into a very technical event.

3. Commands

Since 4x100m handoffs are blind, the outgoing runner needs to know when to throw their hand back to receive the baton. Some coaches like verbal commands, while others prefer silent exchanges. Both options have their positives and negatives.

For a verbal command, the incoming runner will yell out Stick! when they’re ready to hand off the baton. Your athletes can yell out whatever they want, but Stick! seems to be the consensus. The timing of this command is critical, as many beginners yell too late when a little anticipation is needed. Correct your athletes in practice if they’re yelling the command too soon or too late. I ask my athletes to yell the command when they feel they’re two arm-lengths away from their teammate.

The 20-meter exchange zone made silent exchanges rather easy to execute. The outgoing runner would throw their hand back as soon as they entered the exchange zone. This eliminated the need for them to say anything at all and virtually guaranteed a team would not get disqualified for handing off too early.

Now that the entire 30-meter zone will be one big exchange zone, coaches who use silent exchanges will have to vary their strategy, says @LFHStrack. Share on X

Now that the entire 30-meter zone will be one big exchange zone, coaches who use silent exchanges will have to vary their strategy. Until the tracks are repainted, the old zone marks will remain, but the need to throw the hand back at that mark has been eliminated. Coaches who use silent exchanges will now have to find a reason behind the timing of their outgoing athlete throwing their hand back.

Several coaches I talked to who use silent exchanges gave a few possible adjustments they will make to the new zones. Many pointed out that the old exchange zone triangles will still be present on most tracks for years to come, which means they won’t have to change their strategy at all. On tracks where the old exchange zone triangles are removed, coaches suggested such strategies as throwing the hand after ten steps, throwing the hand once the athlete feels they’re up to speed or putting a tennis ball down as a mark where an athlete is supposed to throw their hand.

There are positives and negatives to both the verbal and silent exchanges. Many coaches who swear by the silent exchanges tell me they’re worried their outgoing runners will have to pick their teammate’s voice out of a crowd of eight different athletes yelling Stick! at the same time, not to mention the teammates and coaches yelling from the sidelines. That may be a valid point, but in my 17 years of coaching track, I’ve never once had a kid tell me, “I couldn’t hear him say Stick!” If that ever did happen, maybe I would change my strategy, but for now, my athletes use verbal commands.

Regardless of whether you use verbal or silent commands, you need to have a standard to keep everyone on the same page, says @LFHStrack. #4x100Relay Share on X

What type of command is best for your team? That’s up to you and your athletes to decide, but I do recommend coming up with a standard for your program, so everybody is on the same page. I choose to teach the verbal command because the main complaint against the verbal command—that your teammate will not hear the command—has never happened to my athletes. The verbal command also allows the outgoing runner to keep their arm focused on acceleration until the moment before they’re ready to receive the baton.

While many coaches focus on handing off as early in the zone as possible, the best handoffs I’ve seen came near the end of the zone. On an exchange late in the zone, athletes using the silent exchange run with their arm thrown back for about 15 meters. The same athletes using a verbal command use both arms to accelerate in the 15 meters. Adjustments could be made for the outgoing athlete to throw their hand back later in the zone, but what happens if the incoming runner is ready to hand off earlier? As far as I’m concerned, verbal commands are beneficial, especially for younger or less experienced athletes.

Verbal commands in the exchange zone allow for two-arm acceleration and are especially beneficial for younger or less experienced athletes. Share on X

It’s also important to note the commands required if the outgoing runner takes off too early. You need these commands whether you’re executing a verbal or silent exchange. Incoming runners who believe they won’t catch their teammates should yell, Slow!, which of course means the outgoing runner should keep running but slow down. If the outgoing runner went out way too early, or the outgoing runner is almost at the end of the zone, the incoming runner should yell, Stop!

Some coaches teach their outgoing runners to peek over their shoulder if they hear the command to slow or stop so they can gauge where their teammate is and execute a better exchange. While this certainly helps in many situations, one main problem is that athletes who peek over their shoulder almost certainly move their target hand. Again, you should practice this. Sometimes in practice, I’ll instruct my outgoing runners to leave early so we can see how the incoming runner will react.

4. Hand Placement

You can have the fastest athletes who follow lane discipline and take off at the right time, but that could be all for naught without proper hand placement. Regardless of which hand placement you pick, the main priority is to keep a steady target. A moving target is much harder to hit than a stationary target, so you want your outgoing runner to give a target that’s steady and easy to see. Image 7 shows a variety of different hand placements.

The stop sign method (A) is the most desirable because of the large target it presents. Many athletes with lower joint flexibility may need to flex their elbow more than the athlete in Image 7. Variations of the stop sign include D and E. Some coaches choose D because it’s a more natural position—you can see the athlete is not as crunched up in his shoulders. I’ve found, however, that because the shoulder in position D is not in a natural running position, the first few arms swings after the athlete receives the baton are less than ideal.

For position E, the athlete leans forward, which has two benefits: 1) many athletes are still accelerating at this point, which means they’re already leaning forward, and 2) the lean helps get the hand higher in the air, thus giving a better target. In 2017, the second leg on our 4x100m relay was about five inches taller than our third leg, who was also hampered by poor shoulder flexibility. By using position E, our third leg gave a better, higher target, which allowed for significantly better handoffs. We qualified for the State Championships by 0.01 seconds that year, so this seemingly minor change allowed us to achieve our goal.

While the stop sign is the most desirable hand placement, the flat hand feels more natural to most athletes. If it works, I don't change it. Share on X

Position B shows a flat hand, which feels more natural to most athletes than the stop sign. I’ve found that in the heat of the moment, many athletes forget about the stop sign and revert to the flat hand. Honestly, the majority of athletes I’ve coached are most comfortable with the flat hand method, and if it works, I don’t change it. 

Image 7, position C shows underhand or upsweep passing. The underhand pass has been around for a hundred years—Jesse Owens’ team used it in the 1936 Olympics—but was eventually phased out before recently coming back into vogue thanks to the success of Japan’s silver medal 4x100m performance at the 2016 Olympics. The benefit is that it most closely mimics proper sprint form. An athlete’s hands in a sprint do not naturally come as high as you see in positions A, B, D, or E.

There are two negatives to this handoff style, however. First, the handoff is given lower, so you lose a few feet of space on each handoff because the athletes have to be closer to each other to make a proper exchange. Even if you only lose a total of one meter during the three handoffs, it probably equates to a tenth of a second or more. The second issue is the baton spacing, which I’ll discuss in the next two paragraphs.

5. Reach

The last aspect of the handoff is the incoming runner’s placement of the baton into the outgoing runner’s hand. While this may seem—and should be—incredibly simple, a great many botched handoffs occur exactly at this point.

Video 3. Carly Fehler and Brad Fortney demonstrate four reach techniques for the sprint relays, including the push, flat, above, and swing techniques. With very few exceptions, athletes should use the push technique (also called candlestick). In no instances should any athlete use the above or swing techniques.

Many inexperienced athletes begin their reach before giving the Stick! command, and this is a mistake. Athletes should yell Stick!, then see the outgoing runner’s hand, and then begin their reach. The problem with starting the reach too early is that the outgoing runner could knock the baton out of the incoming runner’s hand, or the baton could end up on the outside of the arm. To eliminate these issues, the incoming runner should not begin the reach until the outgoing runner has already thrown their hand. Only when athletes become very familiar with one another should the incoming runner begin the reach before the outgoing runner throws their hand.

Another important note is that the incoming runner needs to keep running at top speed until they have handed off the baton. I discuss this in more depth later in the “Run Through the Zone” section.

6. Picking a Lineup

The art of the 4x100m relay comes into play when picking your lineup. While there are some general guidelines behind lineup orders, the ultimate decision rests with the relay coach. A standard guideline is to put your best starter on lead-off, a left-handed athlete on second leg, a great curve runner on third leg, and your fastest athlete on anchor leg. You can find a more detailed article on using time trials to select relay legs here.

Far too often in my coaching career, I’ve seen coaches put their fastest athlete on second leg because it’s the longest leg. Well, you can make the second leg the longest leg if you want, but you can also make it the shortest leg. Due to the 30-meter exchange zones, you can manipulate the exchanges to have any leg be the longest or shortest leg, though there is more flexibility with the two middle legs. With very few exceptions, however, each athlete will end up running between 95-105 meters.

Minimum and maximum distances for each 4x100m relay leg:

• 1st leg—80-110 meters
• 2nd leg—80-130 meters
• 3rd leg—80-130 meters
• 4th leg—90-120 meters

Our 2016 4x100m relay team at Lake Forest is a great example of how to pick an order that works. After running a 42.79 with four seniors to open the season, we knew we were in great shape to compete very well in Illinois. I decided to switch up the order for the next two meets to see if we could maximize our lineup.

Following traditional guidelines, I put our best starter (Chris Meng) on lead-off, our left-handed athlete (Jonathan DiValerio) on second leg, our best 200m runner (Quinn Julian) on third leg, and objectively our fastest kid based on 10m fly and 100m dash times (Matthew Mick) on anchor leg. Our next meet, we ran 42.9 hand-time, and although the handoffs were okay and we won against our biggest rival, Zion-Benton, Mick was noticeably getting reeled in on anchor leg. We tried the same lineup for one more meet and ran a disastrous 44.01 with terrible handoffs.

Upon further review, our original lineup of Mick-DiValerio-Meng-Julian was better, even though it did not fit the traditional guidelines. DiValerio was the only athlete who ran the same leg (second) on both lineups. He had run second leg on our top Frosh/Soph team as a sophomore, and second leg on our varsity team as a junior. Not only was he comfortable running with the baton in his left hand, but he offered a great target and was great at handoffs, so having him on second leg made perfect sense. Meng, a true student of the sport even though he was only in his second year on the track team, would have been great on any leg. The real decisive factors were Mick and Julian.

Mick was new to the 4x100m relay as a senior. He did not have much experience coming out of blocks and therefore was just average at the start. But Mick was a chaser, which is why lead-off was the perfect spot for him because he was guaranteed to have somebody in front of him to chase. When running with a lead, he was just not as good. Julian, on the other hand, scored 42 touchdowns as the running back on the Lake Forest football team and was very adept at running away from people and not being caught. Also, Julian had trouble leaving on time when he ran third leg. He said it had to do with perception because the go mark on third leg was placed on a straightaway instead of a corner, meaning the incoming runner did not appear to cross the tennis ball.

Don't be afraid to be unorthodox in your relay lineup. All that matters is the time at the end of the race, says @LFHStrack. #4x100mRelay Share on X

When we switched back to our original lineup, we broke the county record, broke the conference record, won the Sectional Championship, earned All-State honors, and ran a best time of 42.15. Do not be afraid to be unorthodox in your relay lineup. All that really matters is the time at the end of the race.

Video 4. Running in lane five, Lake Forest High School breaks their own Lake County 4x100m relay record with a time of 42.45. Note how late in the zone most of the handoffs occur and how well the anchor leg, Quinn Julian, holds off an athlete with a 0.30-second advantage in the open 100m dash. As a two-time All-Conference running back, Julian was an expert in not letting people catch him.

Another important note for picking a lineup is that the easiest legs to replace are the lead-off and anchor legs. Ideally, you’d enter the outdoor season knowing which four athletes are going to be on your varsity 4x100m team, select an order, and keep those four all year. However, injuries and a variety of other factors make this a very difficult task. I suggest that you pick two fast, reliable, experienced athletes to handle the middle two legs. Switching up one of these legs would mean switching two handoffs instead of one.

Finally, consider what other events the athletes need to practice. You should ideally place athletes who also compete in the hurdles or field events on either lead-off or anchor. This means they’ll only practice one handoff instead of two, which will allow them more time and energy to devote to their specialty events.

IV. Odd and Ends

1. Run Through the Zone

The cardinal sin of relay running is slowing down while still holding the baton. I preach this to my athletes dozens and dozens of times, yet I still see it quite a bit, often when athletes slow down after giving the Stick! command. The main issue is that the outgoing runner rapidly picks up speed at this point, so any slowing down by the incoming runner will almost certainly jeopardize the exchange. You’ve undoubtedly seen this with your athletes in the 4x100m, 4x200m, 4x400m, and even 4x800m relays. You need to emphasize this with your athletes every single day that you practice handoffs! Even if the handoff is successful, remind your athletes not to slow down in the zone.

A great way to emphasize running through the zone in practice is to have the incoming runners continue running at top speed even after they’ve handed off the baton. If you have multiple athletes doing handoffs at the same time, start the incoming runners all at the same mark at the same time; the hurdle mark on the corner works great. And let them know there are two races going on: 1) the outgoing runner crossing the end of the exchange zone with the baton, and 2) the incoming runner crossing the end of the exchange zone. If you work on this early in the season, you should not have a problem with athletes failing to run through the zone in meets.

The two things I tell every member of my 4x100m relay team before every race are, “Leave on time and run through the zone.” If they all do that, we should be good.

2. Focus on the Mark, Not the Man

I give this advice to the outgoing runner who’s waiting in a proper stance for his teammate to hit the go mark. Rather than focusing on the incoming runner (a moving target), focus on the go mark (a stationary target). It’s easier to focus on a stationary target than a moving one. Teach your athletes to watch their mark rather than watching the incoming runner.

4x100m tip for the outgoing runner:

“See the MARK, not the man.”

Notice @usainbolt is focusing on the mark on the track, not the man coming in. Much easier to focus on a stationary target than a moving target. Focus on the mark and leave on time, every time. pic.twitter.com/tRQoBghGRt

— LFHS Track & Field (@LFHStrack) November 20, 2017

3. Distraction

Although simulating meet conditions in practice can be difficult, your sprinters need to know that not everything will go as planned in competition. Often, athletes only practice 4x100m handoffs one exchange at a time. This can be beneficial because the coach can focus on just that one team, but races are run with up to nine teams competing at once. There are many distractions you’ll have to prepare for in practice, so your team will know what to expect in competitions.

There is a team in our conference notorious for “butt interference” (see Image 5, stance C2). When we know we’re going to be one lane outside of them, we practice having an athlete purposely stick his butt into our lane. Another distraction strategy is to have athletes in accompanying lanes purposely leave early to try to throw off the outgoing runner.

Video 5. To create a subtle distraction, the outgoing runner on the inside lane leaves marginally before the outgoing runner on the outside lane should leave.

 4. Relay Runs

A great method for teaching 4x100m handoffs without having the athletes worry about go marks or leaving on time are what I call Relay Runs. For Relay Runs, two athletes start on opposite sides of the lane about two arm-lengths apart. They both start running at top speed at the same time and exchange the baton at a given point.

Overall, Relay Runs mimic regular top speed handoffs as much as possible, but the athletes don’t have to worry about leaving on a mark. The outgoing runner still has to stay on the correct side of his lane, give a great target, receive the baton, and keep up his speed once he has the baton, etc. Everything about performing a top speed handoff is the same, with the exception that the athletes leave together, rather than having the outgoing runner worry about the delicate timing of leaving when the incoming runner hits a certain mark.

Relay Runs are also great for teaching athletes to run through the zone. When we do Relay Runs in practice, we expect the athletes to sprint a certain distance (usually 40-50 meters) regardless of whether they’re handing off or receiving the batons. You can find an in-depth look at Relay Runs here.

Video 6: Brandon Stryganek and Austin McIlvaine demonstrate a perfect Relay Run.

5. Racing Multiple Teams

Practicing 4x100m relay handoffs takes care and time. Many high school teams will have their varsity A team and maybe their top Frosh/Soph foursome practice 4x100m relay handoffs and leave everybody else to practice their field events or other specialties. That’s how I used to operate.

I encourage all of you to make sure everybody who at least has a shot of being on your top 4x100m relay teams gets a lot of practice and races throughout the season. Have a varsity B team work on handoffs in practice and compete either in dual meets or JV meets. Very few of us know exactly which four of our athletes will be on our A 4x100m relay meet at the end of the season, so giving as many athletes as much experience as possible on the relays can only be a benefit.

6. Drills

There are many drills you can do for the 4x100m relay, and plenty of them can be done indoors with little space. A good place to start is the wall drill, shown in Video 6. All you need is a wall. Athletes will stand one arm’s length away from the wall, pump their arms, and on command will reach back and touch the wall with their open hand. The drill mimics the stop sign hand placement shown in Images 7 and 8. It’s important to have your athletes pump their arms as if they’re in a race rather than just reaching their hand back from a motionless position.

Video 7. Carly Fehler demonstrates the 4x100m wall drill.

Other great drills are demonstrated in Video 7. The standing tap, standing catch, and jogging catch teach lane discipline, proper hand position, proper reaching motions, and proper commands if you wish. Since they are low speed, athletes can also work on them with eyes closed.

Video 8. Carly Fehler and Brad Fortney demonstrate the standing tap drill, standing catch drill, jogging catch drill, standing catch drill with eyes closed, and jogging catch drill with eyes closed.

V. Conclusion

The 4x100m relay is the most exciting race in track and field. By using the bang step, you’ll give your team a distinct advantage in speed, execution, and consistency. Remember that 4x100m handoffs take time, patience, and skill. As a coach, you must emphasize to your athletes that handoffs need to be taken very seriously in practices and competitions. Both speed and quality must be at 100% at all times. Now go win some races!

Did I miss something? Feel free to get a hold of me on Twitter at @LFHStrack. For more information on the bang step, you can locate and purchase a presentation Tony Holler gave on the topic here.

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