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Jump squats have always had a place in performance training. That’s because the exercise is a variation of the popular and effective back squat. A jump squat consists of performing a traditional squat while moving at a high enough speed to leave the ground and jump in the air. Intuitively, it’s an effective performance training exercise because the movement is explosive and ballistic. What makes the jump squat even more appealing is that we can teach and learn it at the same time as the traditional squat, so it’s a two-for-one deal.

With the challenges that come from teaching and learning Olympic lifts, jump squats would seem to be a particularly good alternative because of their simplicity and effectiveness. The exercise does, however, have limitations and shortcomings that curb its training effects. Consequently, rather than being a core lift, it’s considered a supplemental one.

I’m going to discuss first what limits the jump squat from being a staple, go-to movement for performance training. Then, I’ll talk about how the limitations have been overcome so we can look at the jump squat as a staple movement when developing power, explosiveness, and speed.

Two Limitations of Traditional Jump Squats

1. High Impact Ground Forces

I was introduced to the jump squat in 1996 during my sophomore year of high school, which also happened to be the year I had the greatest strength gains in my life (on a per year basis). Beginning the previous year as a freshman, I had maxed out at 135 lbs. on the bench and power cleans and squatted 200 lbs.

By the end of my freshman year and the beginning of my sophomore year, I had increased my one rep maxes for the bench press and power clean to 240 lbs. and squatted 350 lbs. That was an incremental increase of 77% on the bench and power cleans and 75% on squats in a matter of a year. My incremental strength increases then started to slow down drastically following that initial burst—to say the least—which is normal.

During this period, even though my strength levels had skyrocketed, it was not until we started doing jump squats as part of our lower body regimen that I experienced a significant increase in my explosiveness, speed, and jumping ability. Unfortunately, those results were short-lived. After doing jump squats for about a week, the landing forces blew out my hamstring to the point to where it came off the bone. It was a serious injury, and I had to deal with the repercussions for years afterward. It also discouraged me from ever wanting to do jump squats again.

It makes sense that when you increase the amount of ground impact forces an athlete has to absorb, the risk of injury also increases. The nature of playing any sport means there’s going to be an inherent amount of impact and wear and tear the body will have to withstand. And high impact situations occur in any sport.

Theoretically, reducing the wear and tear or the ground impact forces in training will reduce the risk of injury. That’s because a lot of injuries are caused by the accumulation of the heavy workloads performed during training and competition.

As I learned the hard way, traditional jump squats put the body through enough substantial ground impact forces that they can lead to injury. Landing with the load on the lifter’s back sends the forces of the falling bar through the body’s center mass. One small breakdown in landing technique could cause a serious injury, as in my case. But even with the soundest landing technique, the increase in the volume of ground impact forces puts any athlete who performs the traditional jump squat at a higher risk of injury.

2. The Inability to Effectively Train a Balanced Mix of Speed and Strength Simultaneously

In studies that measure a jump squat’s power production, there is a very consistent trend. When the load exceeds about 30% of your one rep max, the power output starts to decrease (see Figure 1 below). Contrast that with Olympic lifts and their derivatives, where you can continue to increase power output up to about 70 to 75% of the one rep max. This means traditional jump squats (having to land with the loaded bar) are nowhere near as effective as training peak power output with heavy loads.

This limitation is a big reason why jump squats aren’t used as a staple lift in performance training; they don’t effectively train a balanced mixture of speed and strength, which comes from training power with heavier loads. This reduces the ability to develop functional power that translates to competition: when jump squatting with lighter loads, there isn’t enough strength training, and when jump squats are performed with heavier loads, there isn’t enough speed training.

In theory, mixing lighter jump squats with the heavier ones will train more balanced levels of speed and strength. But that’s a far less efficient use of time and energy than performing Olympic lifts, which train speed and strength simultaneously.

Another reason traditional jump squats are not as effective in training power relates to the high impact ground forces athletes have to absorb when landing the jump squat. As humans, we have a protective mechanism that preserves our body, or at least helps us avoid injuries. If the body naturally senses that we’re at risk of injuring ourselves, it subconsciously begins to shut down muscle activation to preserve itself.

A perfect example of this is the impact force of a tackle generated by an American football player in pads compared to that of a rugby player without pads. This video shows both scenarios—an American football player and a rugby player both giving their greatest amount of exertion to deliver the biggest blow. The rugby player is arguably bigger and more powerful than the American football player. But the American football player can deliver a far greater level of force (more than double) on impact than the rugby player.

A plausible explanation is that that the pads deactivate the football player’s self-preservation mechanism, as opposed to the rugby player whose lack of protection exposes them to the impact. You can do this experiment at home. Actually, I don’t want anyone to really try this, because it could lead to serious injury. So instead, imagine yourself mustering the force and speed to punch a brick wall as hard as you can, barehanded. Simply thinking about that pain and potential for injury makes me cringe. Next, imagine throwing the same hard punch against a softer surface, like a punching bag or a mattress.

We don’t need a measuring device to know which scenario would produce the greatest amount of force on impact. Unless you have no regard for your wellbeing, the greatest amount of impact force will be produced by the scenario where the body is not feeling a greater risk of injury.

The same self-preservation mechanism kicks in on jump squats when the lifter begins to place more than 30% of one rep max onto the bar. The lifter subconsciously reduces their effort during the concentric phase, knowing very well that what goes up must come down, and the landing will place the body under an immense amount of ground impact forces.

Basically, the body’s response is to diminish the impact by slowing down on the exertion (concentric) phase of the movement. The consequence of the subconscious shutting down of muscle exertion during the concentric phase is the limitation of speed and force levels that relate to power production with heavier loads.

Two Ways to Overcome the Limitations of the Jump Squat

 1. Reduce the Jump Squat’s Ground Impact Forces

One excellent way to reduce the ground impact forces in jump squats is to eliminate having to land with the loaded barbell on the lifter’s back. The most straightforward way to do this is to simply release the barbell off of the lifter’s back so they don’t have to catch it. It’s something you can do on a platform with bumper plates. But when you want to do multiple repetitions one right after another, getting the bar back onto your shoulders will be a whole other challenge.

Video 1. Jump squats using the XPT, a power rack that catches the bar for the lifter at the top of the lift.

As an alternative, you can use a machine that has a safety catch. I invented the XPT, a power rack with a safety catch, for this very purpose. I experienced both the positive and negative effects that come from jump squatting. Can you blame me for learning from my past when I blew out my hamstring? That moment was a big motivator for me to come up with a way to do jump squats without having to land with the weight on your back. A power rack that can catch the bar for the lifter diminishes the negative effects of ground impact forces without compromising the positive effects of jump squatting.

2. Effectively Train Power by Jump Squatting with Heavy Loads

As established earlier, as loads greater than 30% of your one rep max are added to the bar, your power production incrementally decreases. The lifter’s self-preservation mechanism kicks in because the body senses the landing will increase their risk of injury.

Turn the jump squat into a safe lift to effectively train speed and power simultaneously, says @BradyPoppinga. #jumpsquat #powertraining Share on X

This changes when the lifter has full confidence they won’t have to land with the loaded barbell on their back. As displayed in the graph below, peak power output increases when the lifter does not have to absorb the free-falling bar above the 30% one rep max threshold to about 80%. This adjustment turns the jump squat into a lift that trains both speed and power simultaneously, which arguably places it in the same category as Olympic lifts for developing power effectively.

From my experience, jump squatting with the ability to release the bar at the top of the movement and reducing ground impact forces, allows for optimal power production and development. I believe in the theories about jump squatting with no catch—not only because they make sense, but also because I’ve personally put them to the test.

Releasing the bar at the top of a jump squat offers safe, optimal power and speed development, says @BradyPoppinga. #jumpsquat #powertraining Share on X

For about six years, I’ve exclusively trained power by performing different variations of jump squats with varying loads without having to land with the loaded bar. I’ve increased my power production at a greater rate than any other point in my life. And bear in mind that this is six years removed from when I trained obsessively with Olympic lifts and other methods that are common in performance training while playing college and pro football.

It’s hard to argue with these results, particularly considering my age (39 years old ) and my injury history (three knee surgeries, including two ACL reconstructions, a herniated disc, and chronic knee pain), along with the wear and tear that comes from playing college football and almost a decade in the NFL.

Training power exclusively with jump squats without catching the bar transfers to the platform, says @BradyPoppinga. #jumpsquat #powertraining Share on X

I’ve also concluded from my experience that exclusively working power through jump squats without catching the bar transfers to the platform. I don’t work power clean technique at all—I don’t even train on the platform. I only get on the platform to demonstrate the level of proficiency I’ve been able to attain just by doing jump squats with no catch.

Video 2. As you can see in the video, I was able to power clean 308 pounds three times in a row after training exclusively by jump squatting with heavier loads on the XPT.

In the video above, my technique is horrendous, and I’m sure all the technique gurus out there are cringing just watching it. But the reality is that I’ve never in my life been able to power clean 308 pounds that many times and at that speed. So from my experience, there’s no way I can sit here and say that jump squatting with no catch is not a comparable developer of power as Olympic lifting, especially with how well it translates to the platform.

Final Thoughts

What if a jump squat without catching the barbell is just as effective as Olympic lifts in terms of power development but with less wear and tear on the body? Ultimately, this is the question we have to answer.

What coach or athlete wouldn’t love to train optimal power and decrease injury risk? Imagine from a trainer’s perspective that teaching proper lifting was as simple as teaching the basics of the bench and squat and their variations and then adding explosive movements built on these fundamental movement patterns—like jump squats with no catch.

It would optimize the athlete’s learning curve and increase the proficiency of implementing a fundamentally sound training program. These are questions and ideas that should always be in the back of the mind of any trainer or athlete who is serious about getting the most from their time and energy invested, either in training themselves or others.

We no longer need to look at jump squatting as a supplemental lift. With time, and as we begin to pull back the layers, jump squatting will become a staple performance movement—as long as there’s a way to release the barbell at the top of the lift without having to catch it. That’s where the jump squat’s properties will evolve from a supplemental lift to a foundational performance-enhancing movement.

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

An increased vertical jump is possibly the most important developmental goal for a basketball player. I have worked in basketball for over a decade—including at the professional and international levels—and no matter what you do in training and what S&C program you look to put in place, the same question comes back from players: Will this increase my vertical leap?

I’ve seen a lot of training advice online and in magazines, and it usually focuses on very high-volume plyometric activities, without much thought behind logical progressions and long-term impact. The usual problem is based on the fact that most players are not physically developed well enough to tolerate high-volume plyometrics without risk of injury.¹ Anyone who has worked in basketball or other jumping-dominant sports will know that knee injuries are all too common.²

The problem is that most basketball players are not physically developed enough to tolerate high-volume plyometrics without risk of injury. Share on X

Studies have shown that basketball players can make more than 60 jumping movements in a game, with perhaps more in daily basketball training sessions.³ Do they really need more jumping on top of that? And a more important question: What will this increased jumping do to their bodies?

I am reluctant to prescribe high-volume jumping activities for a new athlete solely because they’ve requested them. Instead, I try and get them to buy into a long-term program that I know will get results. This isn’t always easy, as the foundational basis of training isn’t as desirable and doesn’t offer an obvious direct transfer to jumping ability. Expedience is not my aim, however, and it shouldn’t be for an athlete, either. We are often too quick to offer a fast solution to athletes, rather than taking the time to work with them and get them to understand that most things that will benefit them take time and effort.

Specific Jumping Ability and the Performance Chain

The evidence is quite clear with regard to the optimal progressions required to develop an increased vertical jump.^4-8What I am talking about is the application of force, and what we find with many athletes is that their ability to generate force is limited because they are not very strong. Over my years of testing, I have used 1RM scores/estimates as well as an array of jump protocols. These include a squat jump (SJ) with a pause at the bottom, a countermovement jump (CMJ), and a drop jump (DJ) from a 30-centimeter box. Each of these jumps, along with the 1RM score, tells us something different about how the athlete generates force and is therefore a great diagnostic tool.^9,10

My common findings with basketball players are that they have a relatively low 1RM, along with a large difference between their SJ and CMJ scores. I also often look at a jump using a step-in and an arm swing, like they would when jumping in basketball. This is where you suddenly see the skill application of jumping ability. While the basketball player shows modest SJ ability, their basketball-specific jump is very impressive, sometimes as much as 100% higher than their SJ.

What this tells us is that they have already trained their specific jumping abilities a great deal, and there are limited gains to be made by purely focusing on this aspect. It doesn’t matter how much more jumping they do—they will not improve their jumping ability more because they have reached their ceiling. Instead, then, we must look at the weakness (which, in this case is literal weakness). By increasing their strength and overall force-producing ability, we will increase their overall capacity to jump higher. We are, in effect, increasing the ceiling. To put it another way, all things being equal, the strongest athlete will be the one who can jump the highest.

Once athletes hit their ceiling on jumping ability, increasing their strength and overall force production will increase their overall capacity to jump higher. Share on X

So, we can now use our knowledge of S&C to work backwards along the performance chain. We start with the vertical jump and look at what physical qualities it requires. We then work backwards to power, then to strength, and then to hypertrophy and movement ability. Of course, the labels that I use here are not true physiological variables, since what I am really talking about is the ability to produce force in a limited period of time. (Less than half a second for a CMJ, but different jumps in a basketball game might need to be performed in different time periods. It therefore makes sense to develop an array of jumping abilities).¹¹

The rationale, therefore, is that to perform a vertical jump, you must go through a flexion and subsequent extension of the ankle, knee, and hip. This must be done with high levels of force, in a relatively short period of time, in order to propel the body into the air. This means that we need to produce a high-impulse or take-off velocity.

Now, in order to create a large impulse, we need to get our high threshold motor units to fire very quickly. We also need to use the spring effect of our muscle-tendon unit and coordinate the movement as efficiently as possible. The graphic below highlights some of the variables we may wish to consider.

First Steps to a Higher Jump

The performance testing that we have already carried out gives us an indication of what we need to work on first. We know that the athlete already has good jumping skills and has trained this jumping movement a lot during their sport, so we can infer that there may be limited benefit to performing more jumping drills. We also know that they are relatively weak and that their force-generating capacity is limited. So, we should certainly look at developing their levels of muscular strength. Research tells us that this can be done through high-intensity resistance training (>85%) to improve neural drive and develop the type II fibers.⁴

However, force-producing capacity is also determined by the cross-sectional area of the muscle, and therefore, if our muscles are relatively small, our overall ability to produce force is limited.¹² So, we must also look at increasing the size of the muscle. This can be done by introducing moderate- to high-intensity resistance training, with higher volume. But we must also be mindful that the mass of the athlete will affect jump height, so overall hypertrophy should be kept somewhat minimal, with a focus on the type II fibers.

In order to train at this required volume and to develop an athlete who will be as robust and injury-free as possible, we must also consider their tissue capacity and resilience, and ensure that the basic movement skills are in place. If we have an athlete who has done very little work with weights and does not display good mobility through the ankle and hip, then we must first look to develop these skills. This can be done using an initial block of training at a lower intensity, with slow controlled movements, through a full range of motion. This should help ensure that optimal muscle balance is in place, which could be a factor in future injury occurrence.¹³

What we have done here is work backwards from the endpoint of the vertical jump, ensuring that all of the relevant prerequisites to performance are in place. So, we can now start by training the foundational movements, such as full squat, split squat, deadlift/RDL, and step-up. This ensures a balance of squat and hinge movements with both one and two legs. We implement this with some relatively high-volume training and moderate intensity and look to develop these movement qualities first.

Once our athletes are competent and have developed some muscle size and tendon/ligament strength, we can then increase the intensity of the training and focus on developing the output from the high threshold motor units and type II fibers. It is important by this stage of training to emphasize maximal intent when lifting. Even if the intensity/load is high, meaning that the observed velocity is low, the intent should be that they’re going as fast as possible.

Following that, we can then look to recruit this new, higher level of force in a shorter period of time and look to coordinate the movement as well as possible. This will involve:

1. Loaded and unloaded jumps, initially through a full concentric portion of a movement, and then progressing to incorporate the countermovement/ stretch-shortening cycle.
2. Next, we can develop a reactive element through bounding and repeated jump activities.
3. The final stage may be to try and sustain these improvements while under fatigue, while also looking at developing different jump strategies.

A good analogy for this process is to think of our muscle fibers as individuals on a sports team. Now, if that team has no individual star players but is drilled so well that members outperform their expectations, this is the equivalent of the basketball athlete with relatively weak muscle fibers. Even though the individual force-generating ability of the muscle fibers is relatively low, the coordination and skill element are trained well enough to display good overall results.

We want to train our athletes so they have the all-star team of muscles, but also drill them well enough with jumping movements so they outperform their own expectations. Share on X

Now, you can think of the opposite scenario, which would be an all-star team with superstar players who have never trained together, and therefore underperform in competition. This would be the situation where someone is very strong and powerful but has never trained the jumping mechanism sufficiently, and therefore the overall measure of their jump is surprisingly low. What we want to do is train our athletes so that they have the all-star team of muscles, but also drill them well enough with jumping movements so that they outperform even their own high expectations. This is the Olympic-level athlete. This is the Dream Team.

A One-Year Plan

If we now consider a full season, we can plan how to develop these qualities, and we can perhaps predict that if we stick closely to this plan, we will increase our jumping ability by 3-6 inches by this same time next year. I have found exactly this with many of the athletes I have worked with, and the great thing is that they then become role models for others the following year. Players see the athletes who bought in and the results that they have achieved, which serves as motivation for them to also buy in.

The following training plan that I present offers a rough guide that would be suitable for most basketball athletes. However, it does not incorporate exercises for other parts of the body, and it does not consider individual needs or the demands of scheduling. Your athletes may require different intensities or volumes, which can be judged through good monitoring and coaching. Exercise selection could also be different.

The individual coach may prefer a different squat pattern exercise or a different power exercise, such as a clean. The specifics of this are not as important as the thought process behind such programming. However, the ideas presented here can be successfully implemented into the training schedules of most athletes. This is the basis of what I have used with hundreds of basketball athletes over the past decade, with excellent results.

(I should also note that some low-level jumping and stability work should be done right from the start of the training cycle. This can include hop + holds and box jump + land type activities.)

May–June: Movement + Hypertrophy

This block will develop the foundational movement patterns and tissue quality, which will be required for the season ahead. It will use unilateral and bilateral leg exercises, as there are different benefits to gain from each type of exercise. The seated calf raise is included to enhance the calf musculature and, in particular, the soleus and Achilles tendon. The intensity is not the most important aspect of this phase, but it should ideally be over 60% max.

July–August: Strength + Hypertrophy

Using similar exercises as the previous training block, this phase will look to develop higher force outputs and elicit some gains in lean muscle mass. This will be achieved through higher intensity, possibly up to 80% max.

September–October: Strength

This is the final block where strength gains will be the main priority. This will be achieved through intensities of around 85% max. This should develop the high threshold motor units and type II fibers.

November–December: Strength + Power

This is where we begin to incorporate the higher velocity (power) exercises, such as loaded jumps. Initially, this is done using a full range of motion, with a focus on the concentric portion of the lift. This will enhance neural drive, synchronization, and overall contraction velocity. The intensity on the jump squat would be up to 40% max and the intensity on the back squat up to 90% max.

January–February: Power

This next block looks to develop the counter-movement aspect of the jump, which means an improvement to the functioning of the muscle-tendon unit. You will likely be able to lead to a higher intensity with the trap bar jump in comparison to the squat jump, which is useful as we are hoping to develop force across a range of velocities. Notice that key lifts such as the back squat and hip thrust are still included to help maintain muscle balance, strength, and mobility. The use of the bands on the back squat means that we can overload the top portion of the lift more, which relates more specifically to the vertical jump.

March–April: Power + Speed

In this final phase, the goal is to work on the reactive capacity of the body, with a focus on velocity and more specific basketball movements. The jump squats would be loaded minimally, with perhaps just the 20 kg bar used. The plyometric and basketball-specific jumps would be unloaded. This would also be a good time to incorporate other speed or agility work, if desired.

Understanding Long-Term Power Development

As a final note, I would emphasize that this program is suitable for the “typical” basketball athlete, which, in my experience, is more than 95% of all basketball players. There may be situations where the athlete is well-trained and developed in the hypertrophy and strength areas and would therefore benefit more from direct power training and jumping activities. However, this is the exception, not the rule.

I have, however, encountered athletes like this who have transferred from one sport to another. An example, which is common in rugby, is an athlete who displays good 1RM strength and a reasonable SJ, but a comparatively poor CMJ or DJ. This may be an athlete that you can program for differently, but this should be determined through proper diagnostic testing and evaluation.

We often start by being too specific in what we try to achieve with basketball players, instead of looking at the prerequisites that need to be in place. Share on X

To summarize, the framework and rationale outlined here are appropriate for the vast majority of basketball athletes looking to increase their vertical jump. While this does not go into specifics regarding the types of jumps and plyometrics to perform, this outline does justify a sustainable and effective approach to vertical jump development. The point is that we often start by being too specific in what we are trying to achieve with basketball players, instead of looking at the prerequisites that need to be in place. I would hope that coaches and athletes consider these elements when designing and developing training programs, and that they will appreciate the long-term benefit of training in this manner.

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

1. Brazier, J., Bishop, C., Simons, C., Antrobus, M., Read, P.J. and Turner, A.N. “Lower extremity stiffness: Effects on performance and injury and implications for training.” Strength and Conditioning Journal. 2014;36(5): 103-112.

2. Arendt, E. and Dick, R. “Knee injury patterns among men and women in collegiate basketball and soccer: NCAA data and review of literature.” The American Journal of Sports Medicine. 1995; 23(6): 694-701.

3. McInnes, S.E., Carlson, J.S., Jones, C.J. and McKenna, M.J. “The physiological load imposed on basketball players during competition.” Journal of Sports Sciences. 1995; 13(5): 387-397.

4. Kraemer, W.J., Fleck, S.J. and Evans, W.J. “Strength and power training: physiological mechanisms of adaptation.” Exercise and Sport Sciences Reviews. 1996; 24: 363-397.

5. Cronin, J.B. and Hansen, K. T. “Strength and power predictors of sports speed.” Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. 2005; 9(2): 349-357.

6. Wisløff, U., Castagna, C., Helgerud, J., Jones, R. and Hoff, J. “Strong correlation of maximal squat strength with sprint performance and vertical jump height in elite soccer players.” British Journal of Sports Medicine. 2004; 38(3): 285-288.

7. Baker, D., & Nance, S. “The relation between running speed and measures of strength and power in professional rugby league players.” The Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research.1999; 13(3): 230-235.

8. Markovic, G. “Does plyometric training improve vertical jump height? A meta-analytical review.” British Journal of Sports Medicine. 2007; 41(6): 349-355.

9. Bobbert, M.F., Gerritsen, K.G., Litjens, M.C. and Van Soest, A.J. “Why is countermovement jump height greater than squat jump height?” Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise. 1996; 28: 1402-1412.

10. Nuzzo, J.L., McBride, J.M., Cormie, P. and McCaulley, G.O. “Relationship between countermovement jump performance and multijoint isometric and dynamic tests of strength.” The Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. 2008; 22(3): 699-707.

11. Cormie, P., McBride, J.M. and McCaulley, G.O. “Power-time, force-time, and velocity-time curve analysis of the countermovement jump: impact of training.” The Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. 2009;23(1): 177-186.

12. Chavda, S., Bromley, T., Jarvis, P., Williams, S., Bishop, C., Turner, A.N., Lake, J.P. and Mundy, P.D. “Force-time characteristics of the countermovement jump: analyzing the curve in Excel.” Strength and Conditioning Journal. 2018; 40(2): 67-77.

13. Newton, R.U., et al. “Determination of functional strength imbalance of the lower extremities.” The Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. 2006; 20(4): 971-977.

By William Wayland

The squat has become a contentious issue of late, and the questioning of its applicability has been explored extensively across this website, including these two must-reads by Carl Valle and Bryan Mann.

Squatting is an important athletic development tool and it should absolutely be trained in conjunction with unilateral work. This is not an either/or scenario, but an optimization through intentionally programming the concurrent or sequential application of both. The back squat can often stymie athletes and coaches coming to it late in the game, especially if steps were skipped during development phases for the athlete.

If you are after extensive guides on the anatomy and physics of the barbell back squat, I’d suggest going to read other articles on SimpliFaster or Greg Nuckols’ über guide on squatting. This article will focus on applied coaching challenges and how to overcome them.

Let’s get the squat depth talk out of the way first. Squat depth has been shown to have a significant effect on muscular development at the hip and knee joints, particularly with respect to the glutes. For instance, with on-the-road squatting, working with a population of traveling athletes means variance in the availability of equipment, so having the door knob squat or solid bodyweight squat as options opens up a world of possibility and consistency.

The key takeaway here is that movement quality drives loading strategy and not the other way around, says @WSWayland. Share on X

The key takeaway in this article is that movement quality drives loading strategy and not the other way around. This may require “going back to school” for some athletes, but the longer-term payoff is worth the investment of time, even if this means mastering the bodyweight squat for a short period of time before moving on to loaded variations. To quote Carl Valle, “Barbell squatting is relevant, so if you can do it right then continue using this king of exercises.”

Having a rough plan for progression is a fundamental key to getting an athlete up to that clean, desirable back squat. I’ve seen instances of athletes rushed from a respectable bodyweight squat to a mediocre partial squat in a matter of weeks, primarily for the sense of progression, but also to feed the coach’s (and possibly the athlete’s) ego.

The Bodyweight Squat

The bodyweight squat is an absolutely overlooked exercise on the path to achieving a squat. You will occasionally come across athletes who can’t achieve this otherwise simple ask. The propensity is to progress people straight to a goblet squat or to entirely skip any sort of unloaded skill work and jump straight to a barbell squat. This is where the quarter squat phenomenon (to be covered later) in otherwise active trainees/athletes comes from. Coaches often talk about the necessity of bodyweight basics, but overlook this entirely to chase barbell numbers.

The bodyweight squat is an absolutely overlooked exercise on the path to achieving a squat, says @WSWayland. Share on X

This inability to perform a simple bodyweight squat is often seen in outsized athletes dealing with big body weights or leverages that rob them of stability. This is also a skill I find lacking when we run new intakes of youth athletes; the inability to bodyweight squat often rides along with an inability to perform other simple bodyweight skills. The simple act of proper generation of tension in the upper extremities can often alleviate perceptive instability.

Video 1. Simple mobility exercises that teach posture are foundational to squatting with a great pattern. Bodyweight movements are about teaching control, so make sure the athletes value them and don’t rush to add load to a bar.

Things like reaching have positive and negatives outcomes, as reaching helps provide counterbalance but can lead to excessive torso lean. Crossing the arms in a faux front squat can also be useful, but what I’ve found more useful is a position akin to a volleyball spike held at shoulder height and then focused on screwing the elbows downward, switching on the pecs and lats. Another novel strategy is having an athlete tightly hug themselves or something else, like a foam roller or med ball.

These are all strategies that require adjustments, then retests, and then further adjustments. Further progression can come in the form of simply loading the bodyweight squat with a vest or chains or both, and it’s entirely possible to make solid progress using this approach with very large athletes.

Anchored Squat

There is a subset of squatting that really doesn’t get the recognition it deserves as the squats aren’t considered true strength lifts in any meaningful sense. I’m calling this class of movement “anchored squatting,” but I’m probably not the first to think of this. By anchored, I’m suggesting that a single point—either the lifter or the load lifted—is in contact with anything external to the closed chain squat pattern.

The anchored squat ranges from door knob to band-supported to hand-supported safety bar squatting or supported belt squatting. The commonality is this: Giving an anchor eliminates the primary block to the full squat, which is compensatory shutdown due to perceived or real loss of stability. The doorknob squat is generally a great starting point for the absolute novice or the squatting-averse. By allowing a backward weight shift and a tall torso, it encourages the athlete to sit deeper into their squat.

The doorknob squat is generally a great starting point for the absolute novice or the squatting-averse, says @WSWayland. Share on X

This can then be progressed a number of ways, introducing the suspension squat using rings or a suspension trainer. Both these movements allow for backward weight shift. More-advanced anchored exercises mitigate forward weight shift, which is a limiter to stability once the athlete becomes more confident with their squat pattern. Movements like landmine squats and hand-supported squats place support anteriorly, but that is about as far as the similarities go.

Landmine squats are often touted as a useful squat alternative, and they are, to a point. The positioning of the landmine means the athlete can lean into the movement but still be challenged from a lateral stability standpoint, as the landmine arm still has a large degree of movement. It does come with one drawback: It can’t be loaded in a meaningful manner (much like the goblet squat). But it does make a good option when stuck in a gym with no rack or means of doing a moderately loaded squat variation.

Video 2. Healthy athletes can benefit from a heavy dose of anchored squat patterns. Some coaches add breathing elements or other skills, but make sure the movement is done properly.

The hand-supported squat or the Hatfield squat is a full circle of sorts: squatting with a safety bar and holding on to the rig, handles, or a bar set in the rack. This then allows the athlete to overload an already well-established squat pattern by taking out the limiting factor of anterior stability. It’s not uncommon to see athletes using 25% or more on top of their conventional back squat. I’ve increasingly seen it used as crutch to get athletes under a bar at the expense of good-quality movement; this is often demonstrated by dramatic hip shift, overuse of the arms, and a collapsed position.

Anchored squatting sits on a spectrum of options, but is always inherently inferior to traditional closed chain squatting. This is why this type of squatting can be used as a learning tool and discarded when viable; as an accessory movement to target specific facets of the squat pattern; and/or at its extreme, a means of novelty/stress reduction while maintaining a squat pattern in a training program.

Back Squatting in a Meaningful Fashion

The path to better back squats often lies in achieving a better front-loaded squat. Anterior loading acts as great way of achieving a smooth squat pattern. This can start with doorknob squats, move to plate-loaded front squats, progress to goblet squats, Zercher squats, and finally front and then back squats. This is because resisting anterior load is easier than trying to resist axial load for the uninitiated.

Scott Thom, writing for Just Fly Sports, said: “Why front squat first? The front squat:

1. Forces you to keep your elbows up and pointed straight ahead, teaching you what it feels like to keep a big chest and maintain vertical posture through ROM of squat.
2. Teaches you how to push your knees out and point your toes in the same direction as your knees. Thus, helping you to understand what it feels like to open up your hips.
3. Forces you to sit back, or your heels will come off the ground. Helping you feel what it means to have your weight balanced. If your weight is too far back and you’re not clawing your big toe into the ground you will feel off-balance.”

The front squat is preferred as a starting point for the back squat because it encourages a movement-strategy-first approach. I can always spot the athletes who have spent time front squatting versus those who have not just from looking at their back squat. The athlete who has not taken these steps will approach squatting with trepidation and, at worst, turn every back squat into a partial one.

The front squat is a preferred starting point for the back squat because it encourages a movement-strategy-first approach, says @WSWayland. Share on X

Notice that I make no mention of wall squats and/or overhead squats as progressions. Wall squats are often ugly movements that wind up with an athlete having to reach, but also lean, excessively anteriorly to achieve a good squat position. This is the same reason the overhead squat gets no mention, as it primarily becomes a shoulder/t-spine mobility challenge, which is outside the scope of this article. Overhead squats are often a display of mobility rather than a means to improve it or load the lower body in any meaningful fashion. The overhead squat must be earned, and in my experience, it has limited meaningful transfer. It’s an impressive display of strength, but that’s all it is—largely a display.

Video 3. Eccentrics are not just for stressing the body, but also challenging the brain. Heavy eccentrics provide major benefits to athletes by challenging upper centers of coordination while also training the general nervous system.

The partial squat is often the calling card of an athlete who has missed out on much of the aforementioned preparation. Partial squatting is often a subconscious compensation for unfamiliar joint positions and, importantly, a loss of balance. We know the benefits of loaded partial squats, but the majority of people perform them as a protective strategy rather than a performance-oriented one.

Idiosyncrasies are the common explanation of the partial squat apologists. But it is easy to differentiate an athlete who is comfortable in the squat at any depth from an athlete who lacks confidence, which is usually denoted by an inability to harness any sort of rapid eccentric action and a slowing tacking to a depth they feel is deep enough. Thus, the subsequent concentric phase is usually ropey as a result. This is often a case of loading strategy driving movement quality, rather than movement quality driving loading. I’ll explore this idea with two further examples.

Pragmatic coaches like Alan Bishop make extensive use of squat wedges. Cry and moan about it being a crutch all you want—it works well in populations typified by ankle stiffness limitations such as basketball.

Squat Progression

– Movement quality drives loading strategy
– Range > Load

Squat Low, Jump High
⬇️⬇️ 30 days of training ⬇️⬇️ pic.twitter.com/hUmDArVroF

— Alan Bishop (@CoachAlanBishop) February 13, 2019

The squat wedge ostensibly acts to artificially lengthen the Achilles tendon and reduce “excessive forward trunk flexion.” Much like the thinking behind weightlifting shoes, this allows for forward knee translation and greater knee flexion. This isn’t the crutch some think it is as it patterns good movement. The wedge can be employed in various fashions: I’ve seen athletes who can squat perfectly well with bodyweight without a wedge, then as soon as they are loaded, compensatory shutdown for whatever reason stops them from achieving meaningful depth.

The introduction of the wedge allows for a positive flow to training. This is an example of movement quality preceding loading, even if that movement quality is assisted in a sense. Because athletes have greater movement availability, they can practice using it, which will further grease movement capability. Contrast this, however, to the “fix” below, which often causes more problems than it fixes.

The bench/box squat is an example of an approach that is a crutch that can pattern bad movement. Divorced from the powerlifting or accelerative strength context (usually for those who can full squat or a return-from-injury case), this often becomes a recipe for problems. The thinking is sound: Lower the height of the box/bench until the athlete can perform the movement with a full squat. However, this doesn’t ever seem to play out as progression strategy. Why? Because it is often a loading-led approach rather than a movement-led one.

Because it is often loading-led rather than movement-led, the bench/box squat is an example of an approach that can pattern bad movement, says @WSWayland. Share on X

Rather than dropping the load and focusing on good mechanics, a shoddy loaded squat to a box is still a shoddy partial squat. The then subsequent introduction of greater depth at crucial angles with the same loads means complete system failure more often than not. I’ve seen otherwise stable squats to a high box reduced to panic-inducing mornings with the mere introduction of an extra inch or two of depth. This is because the inherent pattern is still faulty, and more range of movement won’t fix that. Things like proper forward knee movement and minimization of trunk lean are abandoned in favor of “finding” the box.

As you can see, there are two strategies here that try to improvise pathways to a better squat: One manipulating simple mechanics to allow for greater movement, the other incremental to foster movement under load. Movement-led approaches to fundamental movement patterns allow for long-lasting capabilities rather than shortsighted compensations.

Here are a few strategies for tying all this thinking together:

1. Have a Written Strategy for Navigating the Path to a Back Squat

The one we use at Powering Through Performance looks something like this.

6 Point Kneeling > Bodyweight > Bodyweight+ > Anchored Squat > Anterior Squatting > Back Squat

Because we have a number of coaches coaching different athletes over time, we can pick up where another has left off. Having an agreed-upon progression framework prevents us from undermining each other’s work. Do we deviate from this structure as needed? Of course we do—a path allows for deviation from that path.

While yours could be different from mine, having progression strategies in place for most exercises is not a bad thing. There is also no harm in selling the progression strategy to athletes so they can see a viable pathway to achieving outcomes both they and the coach want.

2. Understand the Difference Between Building Dependencies and Competencies

This sounds outwardly simple. But it is easy for coaches to make what seem like logical deductions to tackle problems and end up building further compensations that hinder the athlete in the long run. I’ve seen this in athletes who have been coached into a corner with dependencies on things like landmine/goblet squats (usually stemming from fear of load) or partial squats (load addicted, but unwilling to step back). The trickiest dependency to navigate is the one built from injury or injury anxiety, either real or imagined, or enforced through a poor choice of words from another coach or physio.

3. Have a Regression Strategy

A lot of traveling athletes who often conduct training alone and/or see their coach infrequently will, on occasion, need regression. Athletes will often build dependencies all on their own. I have had terse conversations with athletes unwilling to try anything other than their chosen, unproductive squat variant, sharing a regression plan and a subsequent follow-on progression strategy. You are more likely to get good buy-in if they understand why regression occurs and the benefits of doing it.

4. Understand That Anchored Squatting Is a Pathway or a Plan B, Not a Holding Pattern

The general population can thrive on novelty and modest difficulty, so the rationale of anchored variants makes more sense here than in athletic populations. Anchored movements can be learning movements—a supplementary/plan B exercise as circumstances dictate. Problems start to creep in when they’re used as a crutch movement because, generally, loading isn’t really high enough to manifest any meaningful lower body stress.

The aim of this post wasn’t to coach back squats per se, but to think about how we get there. A lot of coaches do this intuitively, but it’s clear, evidenced by what we often see on social media, that not everyone is quite so intuitive. While this acts as excellent fodder for disparaging others, I ask why these situations occur.

There are a number of steps between taking someone from being squat-deficient to a full bodyweight squat to the finally axially loaded endgame. For the strength training inclined, it’s easy to be full of answers. However, when you are confronted with populations of athletes that are perhaps less inclined towards lifting—especially those willfully combative when it comes to change or progressing/regressing—having a plan in place is part of winning the battle.

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References

Charlton, J.M., et al. “The Effects of a Heel Wedge on Hip, Pelvis and Trunk Biomechanics During Squatting in Resistance Trained Individuals.” The Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. 2017;31(6):1678-1687.

Schoenfeld, B. “The Biomechanics of Squat Depth.” NSCA

In the grand scheme of things, most technology gets in the way of both the athlete and the coach. If you had to break it down, most technology winds up being a distraction, is difficult to integrate, or simply doesn’t deliver on its promise for one reason or another. In fact, this website exists in part to sort through this technological white noise and provide a distillation of what really works where it counts—in the trenches.

Preamble aside, occasionally you come across a tool so profound, it changes you as a coach. Not many things have ever done this for me. After having researched, experimented, refined, and refined some more, I can say that the NeuFit Neubie electrical stimulation device has been a game-changer for helping me deliver best practices to my clients. I remember, years ago, my curiosity watching transformations with certain trainers using the device and their training system to seemingly train athleticism into clients.

The NeuFit Neubie electrical stimulation device has been a game-changer for helping me deliver best practices to my clients, says @coopwiretap. Share on X

I wound up delving further down this rabbit hole, and so here we are. I’m thankful to say I’ve integrated the technology into my workflow. The benefits address such areas as dramatically accelerated performance rehabilitation, enhanced dialogue between nervous and musculoskeletal systems, shortened corrective exercise time to effect (enhanced neuromuscular activation), enhanced contract and relax cycles, pain relief at the “source,” and beyond.

The bottom line is that most training systems are output-based, but the Neubie electrical stimulation device enables you to get in at the input level.

The Technological Difference

In previous articles, SimpliFaster has done a great job articulating how EMS has been used in human performance throughout history, while also providing concrete examples for going from theory to practice.

The Neubie (“Neuro-bio-electric Stimulator”) is my chosen device type in this space, but it’s not the only player. There are two main differences compared to existing technology. These differences allow us to use the Neubie within training systems to improve outcomes for athletes in a wide range of situations.

The first difference is that it uses DC (DCEMS) as opposed to AC. The therapeutic benefits of DC, particularly on tissue healing, have been known for many years. But there had always been a limitation because DC would also burn the skin. The device offers a solution to this problem, using a combination of waveforms that includes a carrier frequency that enables the DC signal to penetrate the skin and fatty layers of tissue and penetrate to where it’s needed to have a meaningful effect.

The second difference has to do with its effect on the neuromuscular system. The Neubie has a unique combination of frequencies and waveforms that reduce the protective contractions normally seen with traditional e-stim units. At a therapeutic level of current, where an AC device would cause the body to lock up and be unable to move, this technology still permits users to actively move and allows us as practitioners to combine it with our own library of movement protocols. This effect allows us to emphasize eccentric contractions, amplify the sensory/afferent inputs to the nervous system, and create an opportunity for accelerated neuromuscular reeducation. Because of the unique artifacts of the waveform, we can use the device to create outcomes that are vastly superior to what can be accomplished with traditional devices.

The neurophysiology of the vast majority of tech on the market (e.g., TENS, Russian stim, interferential, etc.) is, again, that of alternating current (AC). When turned up to a high enough level to net change in the neuromuscular system, these devices cause the body to engage in protective co-contractions. There are plenty of benefits to be had with this type of technology, which have been covered on this site previously. Though there can absolutely be some positive in-the-moment neuromuscular activations, as well as in the mechanical pumping of blood, lymph, and other fluids, this approach ultimately creates more problems in the neurological control of movement.

The current from traditional devices actually reinforces many compensatory and dysfunctional movement patterns that impede the body’s healing processes and ideal movement strategies. This can contribute to the cycle of pain, reduced mobility, and movement deficiency.

The Neubie’s technology allows me to almost ‘feed’ information into the nervous system of the athlete, says @coopwiretap. Share on X

The net effect is that you, the coach, are almost able to tap into the athlete at the software level when everyone else is trying to do so at the hardware level. You’re weak? Try harder in this way! You’re imbalanced? Shift more to this side. You get the idea.

The technology in the Neubie has been a game-changer in that it allows me to almost “feed” information into the nervous system of the athlete. From there, your creativity is the only limiting factor.

Corrective Exercise and Reconditioning

There are many concepts within the rehabilitation, reconditioning, and movement prep worlds that need reconstitution. Whether you subscribe to PRI, FRC, DNS, neurokinetic therapy, or classical PT exercise, the same complaints about inconsistency of regular benefit acquisition and time to profit are repeated at least some of the time. In each case, this iteration of EMS provides a solution for enhanced quality of work and accelerated rate of desired results taking effect.

When you’re dealing with an athlete post-rehab, it is often the case that they are presented to you with requisite mobility and range of motion access, but are not yet ready to be loaded and/or engaged in a ballistic fashion. A quality return-to-play program can substantially accelerate results. A quality return-to-play program in conjunction with DCEMS can push these boundaries even further.

Rather than give a singular example of a reconditioned athlete, I’ll just put it out there that I regularly get feedback from physical therapists that the athlete is anywhere from 30-50% ahead of schedule and is pushing new boundaries in their athletic function. Furthermore, the same PTs are often confused as to what “new” exercise prescription to assign clients when they go in for their mandated checkups after hearing what we’ve been doing in our sessions. I’ll be fully transparent in that this can alienate you from those in the rehabilitation setting with a scarcity mindset, but it also has the potential to make you best friends with those who truly work in the interest of best practices.

I regularly get feedback from PTs that an athlete is anywhere from 30-50% ahead of schedule and pushing new boundaries in their athletic function, thanks to DCEMS, says @coopwiretap. Share on X

Athletes on the injured list can have the dialogue between their nervous and musculoskeletal systems stimulated, which cuts down on time out. A big reason that this type of current works well is this simulation of the body’s own internal “current” signals. Though forward-thinking trainers and coaches can absolutely affect the nervous system, ultimately this is done through “hardware” manipulations of the body’s soft tissues. The ability to mimic the athlete’s own internal neurological signaling artifacts makes corrective exercises, movement prep work, and specialty reconditioning exercises take effect more dramatically and at a more accelerated rate.

This is huge because I see so many trainers and coaches ultimately turning their athletes into patients. You spend HOW much time on movement prep and corrective exercise?

Experientially speaking, I have dramatically cut down on the amount of time it takes me to get an athlete to kinesthetically “feel” and inhibit or activate a certain muscle. Almost every movement-therapy-oriented practice has been criticized for issues with repeatability, difficulty of implementation, and getting said corrective exercises to become staples in clients’ movement strategies (“downloaded” into the nervous system, in other words). Let me repeat that. I’m not saying that there aren’t systems that are easier or better or more efficient than others—I’m saying that there are gaps in everything, and these are the trees to bark up that constitute a quality movement therapy system. If you could improve the best movement therapy program and save time doing it, that’s a no-brainer to me.

Look, you’re never just doing rehab/injury prevention or performance—you’re doing both. Health drives performance and solving these baseline mechanical/structural pathologies is often a missing piece in unlocking performance ROI. For me, if I can hack my workflow by outperforming my previous standards while concurrently accelerating them without cutting corners, that becomes a win for my athletes, which in turn is a win for me.

It’s not that you become reliant on a certain tool, but like anything, you dose it where you need to. Prometheus and fire. In this case, this tool allows you to deliver best practice here and also gives you more time to focus on performance, which is what we, as trainers, should be doing at the end of the day.

Scan and Treat

The emphasis on the sensory/afferent side of the nervous system also allows us to do a scanning, “diagnostic” process known as mapping. In this process, we scan an electrode around on the athlete’s body to identify areas of neurological dysfunction, which manifest as “hot spots.” The concept is that the scanning process picks up the dysfunctional patterns associated with protective responses in the body, including patterns like excessive tension and muscle inhibition.

Once identified, these hot spots can be cross-referenced with a table test, strength tests, and movement screens for further validation. In my experience, these hot spots are in line with what we’ve teased out via the above—only with more efficiency and precision. From here, stimulated treatment over the target area in conjunction with the requisite manual muscle neural therapy techniques, corrective exercises, and movement prep work almost always nets improvement in pain relief, increased range of motion, better strength expression, and greater ease or quality of movement (exercise economy)—even in just a few minutes of active treatment.

The ability to hit the scanning process is huge because it results in less time wasted and leads to a more surgical plan for best results. This is not where the benefits of the diagnostic piece end, however—these neurological glitches often help identify governors that the brain has placed on the neuromuscular system.

I’ll give you an example: A basketball player gets injured and has completed his rehab and is reasonably far along into his reconditioning training pipeline. He’s been fully cleared to play, yet his vertical is still not what it was—let’s say 25 inches, to use an easy number. It used to be near 40 inches. When the athlete is structurally ready and has had ample time to recomp his athleticism via training, yet still isn’t maximally expressing his athletic ability, it’s time to look at the brain.

A governor or limiter in this context refers to the brain fearing for the safety of its host athlete organism. The brain works on a protect-perform continuum. If the brain fears that the safety of the athlete is in jeopardy because they cannot “survive” the landing from a 40-inch vertical, then guess what? Their vertical isn’t going to be 40 inches even if they have the innate ability. This is akin to driving with one foot on the gas and one foot on the brake, neurologically speaking, and the athlete’s inability to fully express/fire their nervous system will be impaired. This is essentially the key variable in many instances of replicating transfer of training and is referred to in many classical training research studies, including those from Verkoshansky, Bondarchuk, and Marinovich.

Back to the point. The Neubie has allowed me to pinpoint and dissolve many of these neural limiters in my athletes.

Rewired Isometric Holds

Isometric hold variations occupy a valuable piece of real estate in my training system. That being said, I feel most coaches have a “black box” understanding of isometric holds. In other words, you do this input and you get this output. It’s important to remember that the reason we introduce isometric holds is because they ultimately grant the athlete deeper and more controlled access of the nervous system, which in turn enables proper recruitment of the musculoskeletal system.

With that warm-up out of the way, it’s not difficult to see how you can use this type of EMS to further deepen, enhance, and customize isometric holds. I’m not here to argue theory of application, either. Your own creativity is the limiter here. Let’s hold some varying ideas in the same arena. You could take Jon Bruney’s long-duration isometric holds for strength sports and hypertrophy and use the Neubie to dial up the muscular contraction level to forcibly overload the involved muscle groups. You could also take a Yuri Verkoshansky approach and overload the requisite muscles for a much shorter period of time. I believe it was Verkoshansky who warned that excessively long isometric contractions could cause excess muscle tone or tension.

It’s not difficult to see how you can use this type of #EMS to further deepen, enhance, and customize isometric holds, says @coopwiretap. Share on X

In fact, I like to think the machine actually can unite varying schools of thought. When you are holding near the end range of motion, the body typically tightens to protect itself from injury. This is why such isometric holds can lead to increased tension. With the Neubie, you can send a signal to balance muscle tone and ensure the appropriate activity. This dynamic helps reduce the body’s need to “protect,” allowing it to move more efficiently through greater ranges of motion and optimize the muscle tension-length relationships in training.

In the example provided, I’m rewiring a simple wall sit. Instead of a quad-dominant endeavor, I’m using the technology to force the athlete (myself) to pull themselves into position with their posterior chain like a bow and arrow. My goal is to create more repetitive tension (and relaxation technically) in the posterior chain while keeping the quads relaxed. The resultant effect is optimal posterior chain neuromuscular function, bringing with it speed, injury prevention, and explosiveness (reactive strength).

If you’re a sadist, there’s an added benefit to dialing up the current while using breathing as the remote control to your remote control (your nervous system), to maintain a parasympathetic state and respond to the exercise and electrical current combo instead of reacting to it and seeing the brain “bail” on a neuromuscular level. I’ve seen a benefit with this in conditioning work and performance anxiety, believe it or not.

High Stim Trap Bar Deadlift

The use case for this technology with strength work is huge. You can use it to pattern in appropriate muscle activation grouping and, to some extent, muscular firing sequences. The use case with this trap bar deadlift example is a bit easier to unpack.

Instead of working with the typical muscular activations here, I add stimulation to the hips and glutes and thus augment the athlete’s movement strategy. By emphasizing certain muscle groups, we can train proper form into the athlete more efficiently, make exercises safer, and increase strength types via total and accelerated contraction velocities. We can reprogram previously learned improper form and movement strategies as well.

Stimulated Sporting Movements

A major use case for this type of electrical stimulation is tuned sporting movements. By allowing the athlete to perform movements they see in their sport with the attached current, you can positively affect a number of factors relating to human performance.

Video 1. The use of EMS with shadowboxing training isn’t going to transform anyone into a champion overnight, but it does provide a learning opportunity for everyone. Don’t look to EMS as being sport-specific; treat it like a diagnostic for coaches who need to design better training programs.

In the example here, we have an MMA fighter shadowboxing on proprioceptive pads while concurrently being stimulated by the Neubie. My evaluation process also includes simple film analysis (really the first movement screen you should start with). This athlete had issues with fluid movement in his hips, including striking, takedown, and sprawling needs. Issues with keeping hands up, shoulder fatigue, and maintaining “snap” in strikes as the fight/training wore on were also all previous problems.

In addition to isometric holds, corrective exercise, and movement prep work, the current here enables proper muscular activation and overloaded contraction and relaxation cycles. Furthermore, the current on his shoulders, again, contracts at rates of hundreds of times per second. Both of these are beyond what will be seen in the fight, especially if this exercise is done in an appropriate intra-fatigue setting. Please note that muscle oxygen monitoring should be done here as well to help identify physiological performance limiters.

The net effect was better performance on takedowns, clinch work, sprawls, striking posture, and distance management, with the athlete specifically expanding movement range and quality in the hips. The shoulders also became more or less a non-factor limitation in training. Yes, these things improved with a proper training regimen, but I believe the Neubie enabled this to happen better and faster.

Manual Overload Technique

One of the simplest use cases with the Neubie technology is muscular overload technique. The concept (as with many other examples provided here) can be extrapolated and inserted into many exercise modalities. The idea here is to place the electrodes on the key muscles involved to promote a greater muscular contraction than can traditionally occur at the given weight.

If an athlete is dealing with some type of injury, nagging pain, strength deficit, or anything in between, you can use this technique to manually stimulate the muscle fibers to contract at a higher degree than the given weight used. In addition to providing a greater stimulus to the muscle for more strength and/or power, this also has a seat at the table in programming deloads. If you’re able to maximally stimulate muscles without unwanted CNS costs or functional systems stress when you’re, say, chasing supercompensation or unfavorable Omegawave scores, this can be a great, creative workaround.

A simple use case with the Neubie is muscular overload technique, where electrodes placed on key muscles promote a greater muscular contraction than typically occurs at the given weight. Share on X

To further riff on the deload concept, Charlie Francis and others have notably used EMS during both deloads and rest days while sleeping to stimulate muscle fiber without weight-bearing load. If an athlete comes in to the facility on a rest day or conditioning day, we can have the extra benefit of muscle stimulation without adding excess stress and potentially disrupting the adaptive processes of the body. This is also a great peaking tool if you want to stimulate the dialogue between nervous and musculoskeletal systems without DOMS close to competition and/or in season.

Once again, the limiting factor is your own creativity.

Speed Strength Eccentric Overload

Why is it that when eccentric overload gets discussed, it’s always done at slow, maximal strength? In non-iron sports, the eccentric is almost always done in the speed-strength continuum. Failure to feature these in program design is failure to introduce the athlete to both high-velocity neuromuscular contractions—a key applied stretch shortening cycle need—and sport-specific tendon adaptations, which are the load-bearing features and storage-release of kinetic energy.

Video 2. Eccentric strength of the legs is valuable in sport and jumping off a box onto two legs is great for many types of athletes. Make sure you progress carefully, as it’s a demanding exercise.

In this example of speed strength eccentric overload with altitude drops, we don’t address all of those, but we do use gravity to transmit a high-velocity force into the body for high-speed deceleration training, bulletproofing tendons, training timing, coordination, kinesthetic awareness (propriospinal process), and high-speed force absorption.

I use the EMS to uncork some added overloaded muscular tension. This is key for athletes who have a less favorable tension-length relationship and fall more on the latter side.

Plyometric Bench Throws

I learned this one from Nick Curson of Speed of Sport and the Marinovich Training Systems from their work with combat sports athletes and MMA athletes. This is a plyometric exercise for bench pressing that’s both safe and highly effective. It allows you to train a pressing movement for the upper body at plyometric speed.

Video 3. At first glance, bench throws and stability ball exercises can look a little gimmicky, but trust that they’re great for athletes who need upper body power. Use the right equipment and trust the ball is for challenging the body and not for excessive balance.

Though funky-looking and simple, pay attention to both the movement itself and the posture of my feet and hips. Though the bench press is great in its own right, it often results in poor neural adaptations and fragments the athlete’s body and movement into isolated sections. Bondarchuk, Verkoshansky, and Colgan all discuss the need to introduce a specific link of muscle firing sequences in training, but it’s my opinion that most coaches and mainstream schools misinterpret this literature into non-holistic exercise modalities in program design.

The posture adds a component of full body involvement as seen in the muscular recruitment on the football field. The ball adds a proprioceptive component for controlling the trunk, limbs, and load in space. The speed of the load allows us to empower the athlete with the speed of sport in the gym for upper body plyometrics—something that’s hard to come by.

There’s also a “power endurance” neural and physiological component at play here, which matters even more in combat sports. In fact, many combat sports athletes report that this is a novel supplement to their training programs that not only provides neural adaptations for punching power, but also is helpful because it doesn’t freeze their scapula in place. Football players love it as a supplement to their bench pressing. Many have gone so far down that maximal strength combine protocol that they have poorly developed changeover speed and slow contraction-relaxation rates. It only makes sense that if you’ve plateaued on combine-style maximal bench pressing, you dose in some varying neural looks.

The Neubie charges this exercise by providing maximal muscular contraction overload for additional power. The unique current also provides a great stimulus for the relaxation component of the stretch shortening cycle by driving the relaxation abilities and rates of athletes.

Video 4. Quad strength is about smart closed chain movements that focus on specific overload. You don’t have to do leg extensions to get development— just know how to recycle equipment the right way.

Remember, this technology isn’t the answer for everything, but it can absolutely serve as a catalyst for your own training concepts to take shape, as well as an empowering tool for healing. In my experience working with the Neubie, I feel like I have a significant advantage when it comes to keeping my athletes healthy and performing at a high clip. Using this iteration of EMS is almost akin to having a direct line of communication straight to your athletes’ nervous systems.

Using this iteration of #EMS is almost akin to having a direct line of communication to your athletes’ nervous systems, says @coopwiretap. Share on X

If you have the opportunity, I recommend trying this technology from a client perspective first. I encourage anyone equipped with this Promethean tool to follow the advice of the Soviets: Use your creativity with the Neubie to raise the ceilings of health and performance in your athletes.

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

In a 100m sprint, the fastest athlete wins. That is to say, the person with the highest maximum velocity almost always takes the gold. Hence it’s obvious to see why improving this quality is of prime interest to sprint coaches. But what is the best way coaches can squeeze out these improvements in their athletes?

We’ll often hear phrases such as:

• Train fast to be fast.
• Spend all your time running above 95% or below 75%.
• Train maximum speed all year round.
• Sprint as fast as you can, as often as you can, while staying as fresh as you can.

It seems pretty logical. If you want to get faster, you must frequently run at maximal velocities in training. This makes total sense, and I want to agree with it—but lately, I’m not sure I do.

Over the past year, I observed some interesting patterns with an athlete I coach. When I dug a bit deeper with further analysis, I realized many of my previous athletes matched these patterns. This article is effectively a presentation of my findings so far. While incomplete, the findings raise some salient points about how we approach speed as sprint and horizontal jumps coaches. So let’s call this the start of the conversation, a conversation I’m hoping other coaches will contribute to.

Typical Seasonal Observations

Below are the general observations I’ve made while collecting speed data over the past five years, explained in the context of my typical training setup.

Autumn and Winter General Preparation and Specific Preparation Phase. Athletes spend time running at submaximal velocities (80-95%), focusing on improving their technical model and building various physical capacities.

Spring Pre-Competition Phase. The natural increase in outdoor temperature means it’s now more sensible to do maximal speed work. We get out the Freelap timing system, and athletes run maximally in training. This typically means complete runs over distances of 40-80m or flying runs over 10-30m, with full recoveries.

Summer Competition Phase. Throughout this phase, we typically do maximal speed work 1-2 times per week. Looking back at all the Freelap data I accumulated, I found athletes appeared to fall into two distinct groups: those whose times steadily improved on average every 2-4 weeks and those whose times either plateaued or got slightly slower. Let’s refer to the former as racers and the latter as trainers (I’ll elaborate on these distinct groups later).

This pattern occurred with almost all post-pubertal sprinters and jumpers, who I trained within a consistent setup of 4-6 days per week. These are retrospective observations based on the speed data I collected, which was part of my normal record keeping process. I didn’t test different training modalities to see the results, which obviously would give a stronger evidence base for my assertions. What I do have, however, is an in-depth case study of an athlete who I currently work with.

Case Study

I am in year two of working with an athlete who I’ll call Sophie. Sophie is a long jumper who fits into the trainer category—she ran fast training times in pre-competition phases, but failed to improve on these throughout the year following the maximal speed work. I performed this case study with a long jumper rather than a sprinter because I had the logistics to control what I needed to (indoor facility, stable technical modal, stable lifestyle factors, etc.).

Really, though, this doesn’t matter. The information works for sprinters: substitute an approach run for an acceleration run over 30-40m where the athlete reaches a maximum of about 95% of their peak velocity (more on this later) and all the same assertions apply. Our case study covers 14 weeks from October 18, 2018 through to January 23, 2019. Throughout this period, the only significant change in her program was from her sprint- and speed-based sessions. You can see her typical setup below.

This training week’s set up is designed specifically for Sophie as an individual. It is ultimately one of many setups I use for speed and power athletes. Explaining any further why certain components were selected would detract from the point of this article. Sophie’s case study provides a genuine attempt to reliably note one athlete’s response to different speed stimuli over 14 weeks.

Weeks 1-7

Sophie’s sprint and speed session for the first seven weeks was an alactic short speed endurance (ASSE) session. To determine her speed capabilities, I chose to measure the velocity of her long jump approach run in training. Approach runs provided a great insight into her expression of speed capabilities without having to perform a stand-alone test regularly. And given how stable her technical model was during her approach runs, there was less likely to be noise in the numbers.

Sophie started training in a good place before this case study. Last season she had an approach velocity personal best (PB) time of 8.85 m/s, achieved during an outdoor session in August. We used an ATS II Stalker radar gun for this measurement and all of those performed in the case study. Data for Sophie’s approach velocity from weeks 1-7 is presented in the graph and table below.

Coaches who have used speed gun technology extensively have suggested to me that about 0.20-0.25 m/s was a meaningful change in velocity, which supports the assertion that an adaptation has taken place. Summarizing the data from Figure 2 and Table 1, Sophie improved around every 3-4 weeks, equalling her best from last season by week 4 and eclipsing it by week 7.

Transition to Speed

Sophie was running faster on the runway than ever before. With the indoor season approaching, we had a perfect opportunity to intensify the ASSE session to a maximal speed session. Remember, this was the only change in the programming—all other training components (exercises, intensity, and density) stayed relatively similar, with only micro changes in volume for fatigue management. The maximal speed session consisted of 6x50m with full recoveries, in line with typical maximal speed training prescriptions.

 

Weeks 7 to 10

In speed session 1, Sophie reached a maximal speed of 9.65 m/s in a 50m run. From research, we know that the maximal velocity value reached in a 100m race has a near perfect correlation with 100m time performance. We can calculate the time an athlete would likely hit in a 100m race if we know this maximum speed value using a formula supplied by PJ Vazel. Sophie’s maximal speed of 9.65 m/s translates to a 100m time of 11.92s.

In session 1 with no previous maximal speed work, it looked like she was in good shape given that her season best was 12.15 the previous year and her PB was 12.05. Not only was she faster on the runway, but her flat speed appeared to improve as well.

• • On the Monday of week 8—5 days following speed session 1—there was a slight drop in approach run velocity to 8.90 m/s.

 

• • This was accompanied by a slight decrease in velocity achieved on Thursday in speed session 2 (9.50 m/s).

 

• • Neuromuscular fatigue measurements collected using MyJump countermovement jump data stayed consistent, suggesting Sophie had sufficient central nervous system (CNS) recovery and had plenty of the resources required to sprint fast.

 

• • On the Monday of week 9, her approach run velocity (9.00 m/s) was again slightly below the pre-intervention value.

 

• Then on the Monday of week 10, her approach run velocity was the lowest it had been for six weeks (8.85 m/s), even following a recovery week, which in previous training cycles had resulted in a bump in velocity.

If maximal speed work is such a potent stimulus, why wasn’t it making her faster? Various periodization textbooks suggest maximal speed adaptations have a neural nature and that we should expect some change within 1-2 weeks upon initial implementation of this new stimulus. If this were the case, I should have seen a positive change by this point.

I deloaded volume in the recovery week between weeks 7-10 the same way I deloaded the ASSE component in weeks 1-7 since I had given her body a reasonable chance for supercompensation from the max speed stimulus. But by week 10, her approach run velocity was back to where we were six weeks earlier.

I can accept the argument that two weeks of dosage might not be enough to see a reasonable change. In previous seasons, however, we continued this speed phase for long periods—up to 3-4 months—and similarly saw no improvements. We just weren’t willing to risk the same thing happening this season, given that she previously did so well up to that point. Therefore, Sophie and I agreed that it was time to pull the plug on the max speed sessions.

On the Thursday of week 10, the ASSE session returned and replaced the maximal speed runs in the Thursday session. By week 11—5 days following the ASSE session—her approach run velocity again reached 9.10 m/s. This was the level it had reached before the maximal speed phase. Two weeks later in week 14, before Sophie started her competition cycle, she reached a new approach run velocity PB of 9.20 m/s.

Following this at the peak of her indoor competition season, she was measured in training at 9.30 m/s and in competition at 9.50 m/s by the national team biomechanist (Table 4). More importantly, Sophie achieved an indoor PB performance in the long jump, improving her best by 26cm. It appeared we had made the right call to stop the maximal speed sessions.

Some of you might think that the increase in velocity was due to supercompensation from the maximal speed training. I contend this was not the case because of the time period that elapsed between these points. It took 25 days following the last maximal speed stimulus before her approach run velocity returned to pre-speed phase levels (Thursday of week 8 to Monday of week 11) and 42 days before she had a worthwhile increase (Thursday of week 8 to Monday of week 14).

Programming

In the past, when I saw athletes respond in ways similar to Sophie after introducing maximal speed work, I asked myself a lot of questions:

• Did I do too much or too little volume?
• Were densities too high or too low?
• Should I have done flying runs or completion runs?
• Did their technical model deteriorate?
• Did they need more time to recover from races?
• Did they lose physical qualities they were reliant on like max strength, elasticity, and endurance?

Ultimately, there are so many variables that can influence sprint performance in a training program. Over a number of seasons, I tried addressing the questions above by playing with different variables. Over and over again I saw little change, which brought me back to one key question: Does every athlete need to run maximally in training to get faster?

Maximal Intensity vs. Maximal Effort: Not All Speed Is Created Equally

I’ve got some thoughts on why Sophie’s velocity data changed in the way it did.

If you ask an athlete to run at maximal effort in training, they’ll likely attain anywhere between 90-100% of their competition race velocity. This could occur in either a completion run of 40-70m or a flying run over 10-30m, off a 30m build up.

Some coaches claim sprinters will not hit within 5% of their highest race velocity in training, but that simply isn’t true. I’ve witnessed this happen at all levels. I even saw two very elite athletes who both ran 6.5 consistently during an indoor season and went head to head regularly in training where one hit multiple 0.84s splits while the other struggled to dip under 0.90s.

How close an athlete gets to their maximum will, of course, be affected by components such as the weather, the competitiveness of the environment, fatigue level, and whether timing devices are used, etc. It’s important to note that this maximum is also theoretical from race data and is ever changing.

Some athletes can’t get above 95% of their race speed in #training no matter the stimuli, says @ross_jeffs. #racespeed Share on X

This is a broad general overview, and we can take it further. My theory is that you can potentially divide sprinters into two groups based on an estimate of what percentage of max speed they can hit in training:

1. 1. Athletes who can’t normally get above 95% of their race speed in training no matter the stimuli they are given—the racers.

 

1. Athletes who tend to be able to reach >95% and can attain race speeds relatively easily in training, provided they are fresh—the trainers.

Let me give you a typical example from my junior group this year. Two athletes I coach recently ran indoor 60m PBs of 7.22 (Athlete 1) and 7.20 (Athlete 2), respectively. Two weeks earlier, I’d used Freelap to time a 60m rep in a training session, and Athlete 1 ran a flying 30m split of 3.05s while Athlete 2 ran 3.21s.

Using Ken Jakalski’s sprint projection chart, which can reliably convert split times to race times and vice versa (Table 5), Athlete 1 was at the same pace in training as he was in racing. Meanwhile, Athlete 2 was off the mark and visibly slower in training. There was always a clear difference between the two in training. Undoubtedly, Athlete 1 was a trainer while Athlete 2 was a racer.

I had played down how important this was previously, assuming certain athletes were lazy trainers. It was only when I started collecting detailed velocity data that the relevance of this hit home. It has helped me to explain the patterns I’d observed from previous years.

Some athletes should not run at maximal velocities in #training because they overstimulate their CNS, says @ross_jeffs. #maxvelocity Share on X

I believe the trainers are doing themselves a disservice by running at maximal velocities in training, as they stimulate their CNS beyond what is necessary for adaptation. Whereas racers are unintentionally training at a sweet spot of somewhere between 90-95% where adaptation can take place, preventing them from frying their CNS to the same extent as the trainers. It’s worth noting that since the race in question, I restricted how fast Athlete 1 ran in training, and he managed to take his time down further to 7.14s three weeks later.

The Why and the How: Insights from the Field

When I came to these realizations, I did some research looking for support for the idea that running at maximal velocities regularly in training can be detrimental to sprint performance. I struggled to find much available to support my theory. There are, however, a couple of quotes that I think are worth highlighting.

“One of the things we found to increase overall speed qualities was that maximal speed runs had to be done at least 88% maximal velocities, with better results around 92%.”—Dan Pfaff (conference video circa 2005/2006)

“It’s very costly to try to run at top speed (100% as in PB velocity) even once a week. Psychological fatigue and strain on CNS are too much. Maybe once in the pre-comp phase. But ideally, use the competition instead. The training effect of pure speed training is poor. It’s the icing on the cake in pre-comp phase.”—Paraphrased conversations with PJ Vazel.

It was very interesting that Dan made such specific prescriptions, which provided some support as to why Sophie was getting so much from the ASSE sessions. After hearing this, I went back and measured the velocity of one of these sessions with the radar gun, and most of the time she was hitting between 90-93% of her top speed. PJ’s comments echoed what I found when I introduced maximal speed work to Sophie and so many other athletes: it was an enormous strain on the CNS and exceeded what they required for adaptation.

Training Recommendations

It seems that doing regular maximal velocity sessions—where about 100% of an athlete’s PB speed is reached—can be overkill for the CNS. If any athlete (racer or trainer) did 4-6 60m races at PB speed in one day, how long do you think it would take them to bounce back from that? I used the analogy of maximal strength in a previous article. Do we ever lift maximal to get stronger? Rarely. Max sprinting is another form of maximal expression of the CNS, so why would it be very dissimilar?

#Maximal speed training does not mean it's necessary to run at maximal speed, says @ross_jeffs. Share on X

It’s not a case of whether you do maximal speed work, but rather how you do it and define it. Maximal speed training does not mean it is necessary to run at maximal speed. I am sure outliers exist, and for coaches out there who don’t like working in absolutes, I’m not suggesting you go and tell your athletes to run at 92% because how can they internalize that? Coaches can be intelligent about manipulating training variables.

• • Lower the arousal levels in practice, keep them out of competitive runs, and don’t let them think they’re being timed or tested.

 

• • If you decide to test, use very low volumes and implement a post-race recovery training strategy if they hit PB times.

 

• • During completion runs of 40-70m, focus on mechanics, race modeling, rhythm, relaxation, fluidity, and implement incomplete recoveries as we used for Sophie in her ASSE runs.

 

• Try sprint-float-sprint or use Charlie Francis’ intensity limits with shortened acceleration zones of 10-30m or less to cap the top speed attainable in these runs.

Final Message

I was able to draw a better conclusion on this topic only after collecting reliable data. As a community of athletics coaches, we have to do a better job of breaking through bias and assumptions to refine what actually makes athletes faster and what is noise. It’s the crossover lines on a Venn diagram between the art and science of coaching. It is easy to make assumptions based on the successful programs we see online. But are those programs made up of pre-pubertal high school athletes? Did the coach win the genetic lottery with all his athletes? Or, more worryingly, was it drug-fuelled in a world where CNS fatigue doesn’t exist?

I concluded that sprinting at actual (not perceived) maximal velocity is not necessary to get faster, and essentially, doing it regularly in training can be counterproductive. Train the underpinning qualities of velocity, chase the relevant speed numbers not the maximal ones, and don’t worry about those athletes who can’t ramp it up in training because come race day, they will show up.

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

Many people don’t think golf is a sport, never mind that golfers need performance training or sports science. On the surface, it is hard to argue with them. In the world of golf, we don’t even use the terms “sport science” or “performance training.” For some reason, we decided to call it “golf fitness” instead.

The historically based image of golf is that of a game where people smoke and drink, and their biggest challenge is getting the club around their beer bellies. The only reason a golfer sweats is if it is hot outside. Golfers don’t even need to walk! They can just sit in a cart for the over 6 miles of course and only need to stand over their ball for 10 seconds or so at a time. They make a single swing of a stick weighing less than 2 pounds, and then get back to sitting.

Could you imagine athletes like Usain Bolt drinking a Bud Light between races? Of course not! John Daly? Of course, yes!

The golf performance training world is quite young compared to other more-established sports such as track and field, football, and basketball. When you talk to professional golfers from the ’90s, ’80s, and earlier, they will tell you that there was one Tour trailer at an event and there were more guys in there with a scotch in their hand than a weight. Then came Tiger Woods, and everything has been changing for the past 20 years.

Some Context on the History of Golf Performance

In order to understand how golf performance training has progressed to where it is today, it is important that you quickly understand how technical golf swing instruction has developed. The reason for this is because golf instruction has heavily influenced the course of golf performance over the past two decades, with the latter industry mirroring much of the former in how information was passed down.

To understand how golf performance training has progressed to where it is today, you need to understand how technical golf swing instruction has developed. Share on X

The technical side of golf (how the golf swing is taught) is entrenched in theories and the experiences of great players and great coaches. There was minimal scientific basis in much of the early teachings; rather, it was more along the lines of “a mentor taught me this way so I will teach you that way too because he worked with a great player.” Today, instruction is light years ahead of where it began, but only because there are more instructors producing scientific research and data than ever before.

The point of this digression is to demonstrate to you where instruction started and emphasize the fact that “good ol’ boy science” based on what the great players and coaches were doing was rampant in the early years, much like golf fitness.

Great golf players are determined by wins, just as in any other sport. If they won a lot and had a “good looking” swing, historically, teaching professionals would coach their amateur golfers to swing like them. This started with 2D video and has continued into the 3D kinematic and force plate kinetic worlds to an extent. Similarly, in the golf fitness world, if a winning player works out a certain way, it has often just been accepted that all golfers should be working out that way too.

Great coaches are also historically determined by wins, but not their wins—their players’ wins. If a golf coach worked with a single great player, oftentimes their career would be made, and they would be considered a great coach. More players quickly followed and their “stable” of players multiplied.

This is how many of the early golf fitness coaches and authorities came to be as well. As with the early years of instruction, little actual science or testing was done to confirm whether the majority of the methods actually worked. They were just accepted and passed down to each generation because they previously worked with great players. While that pattern is changing today in both instruction and performance, “good ol’ boy science” is not even close to extinct.

To return to the golf performance world, it all started with a number of early adopters in the golf fitness field who worked with the world’s best players. It has continued to gain steam as a legitimate field and area of expertise since. Unfortunately, the tradition of how golf instruction developed bled heavily and predominantly into the development of this field and led to a lot of bad information and poor results along the way.

Luckily, there has been a minority of sport performance coaches and scientists who actually started looking at the science and physiological demands of golf early on. They began developing the resultant training that would be required to elevate the game to where it is today.

While the minority was doing that, however, the majority of the field went with the “it has to look like a golf swing to be a golf-specific approach.” We also were drawn heavily into the idea that if an exercise is hard, it must be even better when we make it complex too. Hence, the “swing a golf club while standing on a Bosu ball” exercise was born and even featured in Golf Digest, one of the major publications in golf, with the No. 1 golfer in the world doing it.

Some of my other personal favorites include the Bulgarian split stance jumps with rotation and transverse medicine ball slam for “maximal rotational power development in your swing” or the myriad or “max strength” exercises on a physioball. But perhaps my all-time favorite is the “hold a 5-pound dumbbell in both hands and swing with the same motion as your swing to strengthen your golf swing and clear you to return to play after surgery if there is no pain.” These are unfortunately still happening today…a lot.

Forget the scientific fact that if you stand on an unstable surface, your movement recruitment and sequencing patterns totally change and you train a totally different pattern.¹Forget the fact that if an exercise is too complex, you lose the ability to train maximal strength or power.²Disregard that in order to develop maximal strength, you want as little as possible of your body’s energy focused on not falling off a ball, and instead focused on exerting maximal contractile force.²The No. 1 player in the world had a golf club in his hand, was standing on a physioball, and was featured in Golf Digest doing it, so this must be the way we should train golfers.

The golf fitness industry has historically failed to accept that the only true sport-specific training is the sport itself. Share on X

The golf fitness industry has historically failed to accept that the only true sport-specific training is the sport itself. The mantra, instead, became “the more exercises we can invent that look like the golf swing, the better golfers we will produce.” While this line of thinking is slowly dying off, it is still very present in mainstream arenas such as the Golf Channel and social media. I personally can’t keep up with the number of new training devices and products that continue to come out daily from this line of thinking. Unfortunately, the average golfer is still very much drawn to the idea of “golf-ish” exercise to improve their performance.

The New Age of Golf Performance Training

As the field has matured over the past two decades and the minority has been able to educate and share their findings with more strength coaches and medical professionals, we have begun to see a shift in the field and the golf community. It’s slow, but it is shifting. Both are moving toward accepting and understanding the value of golf performance training and its importance to delivering results on the increasingly competitive and lucrative stage of golf.

Take a look on the PGA or LPGA tours and you will no longer see beer bellies as the norm, but the exception. There are now two trailers on tours, and they are busy from sunrise to sunset.

If you watch the Golf Channel whenever Dustin Johnson or Brooks Koepka play, you will undoubtedly hear comments from the commentators about their workout regimens and how “fit” they look. They will also talk about how far they can hit the ball and the new generation of golfers who are “fit and explosive.”

The reason? We are now seeing a direct correlation between how far a golfer can hit the ball and how much money they make.³

Having data showing that if you create more power, there is a correlation to making more money, aka playing better, is great! However, we are also seeing an increasing number of high-profile players who swing the club really fast getting hurt. Resiliency and longevity are starting to become higher profile concerns as the sport continues to evolve.

For golf as a larger industry, longevity should be the No. 1 concern, as the industry is combatting the baby boomer generation aging out of playing due to injury, loss of distance off the tee, and subsequent loss of enjoyment. This leads to them dropping club memberships and shifting their attention and dollars to other activities.

These elements, among others, are starting to drive an increased desire among golfers as a whole to “show me the data.” Because of this, we are in the most dangerous time for golf performance training since its inception.

Golf fitness coaches, new companies, and new products are coming out of the woodwork with the “latest and greatest” exercises and protocols to improve your golf swing speed at deafening volumes. They know golfers want to see data, so they use phrases like “we have found” and “our research shows” but there is rarely any actual research shared. Sure, they share general numbers, such as you will increase by “x” amount in your first session alone, but if you ask them to share how they found that, the science behind it, or other answers to probing questions, there will usually be crickets. If you do get a response, it is typically along the lines of “our research is proprietary.” There certainly are exceptions to this, but they are rare.

If you know a golfer, you know they will not blink at dropping hundreds or thousands of dollars on a quick fix or improvement they are told will help them play better. They also are conditioned to see a Tour player using a device or doing an exercise and immediately think they should be doing that too. Put these two things together with deceptive data marketing and you have a recipe for poor outcomes based on “good ol’ boy science” and the potential for easy money.

The Science Behind Golf Performance Training

The ultimate sport-specific expression of power in golf is club head speed. Every mph increase a golfer is able to achieve with their swing speed equates to just about 3 yards of added distance, assuming similar launch conditions.⁴

The average elite golfer age 17-30 swings the golf club at 113 mph.⁵The length of time it takes their downswing to accelerate from 0 mph to 113 mph is under 1 second, and this is only the 50th percentile. From our research here at Par4Success, of over 600 data points, the 90th percentile is above 120 mph.⁵We have compiled percentiles for all ages/sexes, and all of these numbers are available at our website for free if you are interested in how speeds change over life and development.⁵

Golf is an anaerobically driven sport with incredible accelerations and max speed and 3-5 minutes on average between swings in competition, depending on pace of play. Hip rotational speeds on the PGA Tour are around 600 degrees per second, torso rotational numbers are in the 800 degrees per second range, and hand speeds are in the 1500 degree per second range or more.

The best players on Tour are some of the most explosive rotational athletes on the planet. What increases their need for solid strength and conditioning is that they have to do it week in and week out, playing 5-6 days per week during a season that spans over 11 months! It also includes travel around the world, which makes recovery and resiliency a huge issue as their “off” days are more often than not spent traveling to the next event.

The four elements that influence how fast a golfer will swing are equipment optimization, technical efficiency, mobility, and power. Share on X

There are four elements that need to be considered that influence how fast a golfer will swing. The first two are outside the realm of strength and conditioning: equipment optimization and technical efficiency. The second two that need to be considered are mobility and power.

Mobility in Golf

Mobility for golf can be quite complex if you get into the weeds of wrist angles, elbows, etc. At a minimum, you should look at the overall athletic movement competency of your golfer.

Whatever your preferred system is doesn’t matter to me, just have one. It could be a formal system such as the SFMA or just generally looking at squatting, hinging, and overhead mobility. I honestly couldn’t care less what you use, but please have a system to consistently assess and objectively place your athlete at a starting point. This is a critical step that gains you an understanding of where your performance plan needs to start.

Look at the overall athletic movement competency of your golfer. Look at the critical rotary centers: hip internal, thoracic, shoulder external, and neck rotations. Share on X

What I do care about, however, is that you look at the critical rotary centers of your golfer. The areas of rotation can be condensed into four main centers: hip internal rotation, thoracic rotation, shoulder external rotation, and neck rotation. Any limitation in one of these areas leads to unwanted lateral movement and loss of posture in the golf swing.

A decrease in internal rotation of the lead hip in a golfer is highly correlated to low back pain.^6,7The fact that more than 50% of golfers experience back pain at any given time makes it the most common injury in golf.⁷In our clinic, we have also seen limitations in any of the rotary centers lead to technical compensation and injury in other parts of the body that end up taking up the slack.

One recent example in a golfer was an injury to the lead hand thumb at transition. This was due to limited trail arm shoulder external rotation and thoracic rotation to the trail side. It ended up placing increased stress on the lead hand thumb. The added stress ultimately led to injury, as well as decreased distance and accuracy. We also noted a significantly weaker grip strength on the lead side. This suggested decreased resilience to the vibratory stresses experienced during impact, likely also contributing to the injury.

Once the trail arm shoulder external rotation and thoracic rotation were fixed, the thumb was treated locally, and the decreased grip strength was trained up. We ended up seeing an increase in speed compared to prior to injury and an increase in accuracy without any future return of the injury.

Golfers need competency in all four rotary centers. If competency doesn’t exist, the compensations they have to make often lead to decreased performance and injury. Share on X

This example illustrates perfectly the importance of competency in all four rotary centers. If that competency does not exist, the compensations that will have to be made often lead to decreased performance and injury. It is very common in golf for a back injury, the most common injury in the game, to be caused by a lack of rotation in one of the four centers.

Identifying a fail is the first step, but the real impact will be made by determining why the fail is occurring. Identifying why allows you to quickly implement positive change and deliver improved results. When you are successful with this, you will see positive changes in the golfer from not only a power perspective, but also a longevity one.

Power in Golf

Creating power in golf boils down to the same physiological requirements as any other sport: how much force the golfer can create and how quickly they can deliver it. At Par4Success, our questions initially centered around figuring out what types of movements were most important for golfers to develop power in. This led to a three-year-plus study looking at 600+ data points to determine which tests would correlate most highly to club head speed with golfers.

Figure 1 shows the three power tests and the anti-rotational test that we found to have high correlations to club head speed. It is important to note that the table of 600+ data points is for golfers ages 10-70. Do not take this overall table to be reflective of all golfers at all ages, as there were stark differences within the age brackets and the corresponding r-values.

We have broken down the correlations by age brackets for more age-reflective and actionable data in our full research report and noted a significant change in each test’s r-value based on the age and developmental level of the player.⁵I would encourage you to look at the full report if you work with golfers and/or are interested in how the r-value for each value changed in relation to the age of the athlete.

Figure 1. Par4Success conducted a 3+ year study looking at 600+ data points to determine which tests correlated most highly to club head speed with golfers. This table shows the four tests—three power and one anti-rotational—that we found to have high correlations to club head speed. (Note: The table is for golfers ages 10-70. Do not take this overall table to be reflective of all golfers at all ages, as there were stark differences within the age brackets and the corresponding r-values.)

As evidenced by the data, it is critically important to train golfers as a whole to be able to express power in ways that would improve performance in these tests (vertical, linear, horizontal, and rotational force generation). What this means is that as coaches, we need to assess where a player lacks power creation and work to train those areas up without neglecting to continue to improve their strengths.

As coaches, we need to assess where a player lacks power creation and work to train those areas up while continuing to improve their strengths. #golf Share on X

I want to be clear that this data does not mean that we should train the specific tests, however. In fact, we rarely have our athletes do any of these tests in their actual training programs. Instead, we train the strength, speed, and skills required in the sport of golf as demonstrated by these tests.

How to train power is very well-researched in other sports and needs to be looked at and understood by any coach deciding to work with golfers. A player’s location on the speed-strength continuum, their training age, their goals, and even what they will be able to accomplish genetically should all be considered.

I believe it is also critically important to the development of golfers that we base our training systems, particularly with our elite athletes, on the science around peak power production such as the incorporation of Olympic lifts. Unfortunately, incredibly popular but unproven training ideas dominate the golf fitness world (i.e., throwing a 6-pound medicine ball against a wall will produce insanely powerful and resilient golfers).

Traditional and proven methods are more often the best option to train power than the new shiny thing that caught your attention or the movement that looks like the golf swing. But if the new shiny thing ends up being proven, don’t be close-minded and refuse to try it.

The Future of Golf Performance

The future of golf performance lies in my above statement. We need to prove that the traditional golf fitness methods we use really produce meaningful performance gains. When doing this, we need to challenge the traditional methods at a scientific level, not a case-by-case level, to determine which produces better performance objectively. Progress needs to be rooted in the true sports science of power and speed development without ever losing sight of the importance of empirical evidence.

The future needs to be wary of new methods and products with bold claims but unshared proprietary data. Traditional methods that fall short in quantitative results must be reconsidered. We need to focus on asking ourselves: How do we really know this works, and how do we know this is the most efficient way to achieve our goal? Is it because science showed us or because “x” expert or professional said so? The future is in researching and proving that what we are doing works.

Progress in golf performance must be rooted in the sports science of power and speed development without losing sight of the importance of empirical evidence. Share on X

For instance, we ran a small 20-golfer preliminary study in 2018, looking at the effect different types of rotary training might have on club head speed. We compared Exxentric’s kPulley eccentric flywheel to traditional bands and cable machines (the accepted industry norm) and saw some interesting results. We found double the increase in club head speed when utilizing eccentric flywheel rotational training compared to bands and cable machines over a six-week period. This should lead to questions of potentially more efficient rotary power training.

We also took a look at the incredibly popular overspeed training phenomenon that is helping golfers across the globe increase their swing speed. The system utilizes a 20% lighter club, a 10% lighter club, and a 5% heavier club. We assessed kinematic data with each of the clubs and also looked at a 66% lower training volume protocol to see what it would bear.

Our initial study of just over 20 golfers showed undesirable kinematic sequence changes with the 20% lighter club. It also demonstrated almost double the club head speed improvement with the lower volume protocol. This suggests only using the single 10% lighter stick, while requiring strict rest-to-work ratios adhering to glycolytic recovery needs to assure quality of repetitions, might be a more-efficient and more-effective training option.⁸

This study led us to do a follow-up study, which we are currently in the middle of. The initial study only spawned more questions as to the most effective ways to impact positive speed improvements.

Another one of our studies over three years looked at the relative benefit of triphasic training versus traditionally periodized training (higher reps with lower weight progressing to lower reps with higher weights) on club head speed in different age groups. We noted that traditional training produced a 50% greater increase in clubhead speed in juniors (10-16 years old) relative to the expected 12-week average.⁵

Comparatively, traditional training produced a 10% worse result in adults 50 and older. We essentially saw the inverse results with triphasic training relative to each group.⁵The numbers in this study are quite a bit larger and therefore more easily expandable, but nonetheless, my hope is that this sparks follow-ups and future research into the area of golf performance.

These are just three examples of the studies we have completed in an effort to put some publicly available information and data behind what golfers are doing and be able to show them why. In the coming years, the idea that kinetic sequencing and power profiles for each specific player can maximize training program effectiveness will likely emerge. This might be based on what some would call a golfer’s “swing DNA,” and we could then look to develop training protocols to support the kinetic forces they most utilize in their swing. Theoretically, it makes a ton of sense, but we will have to wait and see if it pans out.

As we push forward in the golf performance industry, we need to continue an incredible emphasis on meaningful data. Share on X

To wrap up, the golf fitness industry has turned into the golf performance industry on the backs of some insanely smart and driven individuals early on. While we are a heck of a lot further into the realm of sports science and data-driven performance results than when we started, we still have a long way to go.

We need to display the discipline and drive to continue to push forward with incredible emphasis on meaningful data. The greatest thing I can hope for 20 years from now is for someone to send me this article and tell me that I was dead wrong on every single point I brought up. The email would come attached with all of the data from their research proving me wrong. That would be a great day for the world of golf and golf performance!

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

1. Sternlicht, E., et al. “EMG Comparison of a Stability Ball Crunch with a Traditional Crunch.”Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. 2007;21(2):506-509.

2. Cressey, E.M., et al. “The Effects of Ten Weeks of Lower Body Unstable Surface Training on Markers of Athletic Performance.” Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. 2007;21(2):561-567.

3. Dusek, David. “By the Numbers: Distance Off the Tee Really Does Pay Dividends.” Golf Week. 4/22/18.

4. Tutelman, Dave. “What Is a MPH of Clubhead Speed Worth?” Swingman Golf. 7/7/15.

5. Par4Success Public Research Data.

6. Vad, V.B., et al. “Low Back Pain in Professional Golfers: The Role of Associated Hip and Low Back Range-of-Motion Deficits.” American Journal of Sports Medicine. 2004;32(2):494-497.

7. Murray, E., et al. “The relationship between hip rotation range of movement and low back pain prevalence in amateur golfers: An observational study.” Physical Therapy in Sport. 2009;10(4);131-135.

8. Prengle, B. Cassella, A. Finn, C. Graham, T. “The Effects of Reduced Overspeed Protocol Volume on Club Head Speed in Golfers – A 6-Week Study.” 10/18.

Interest in physical education (PE) is very high at the moment, almost like a rebirth. It seems that the foundations of child development are now getting confused with sports performance training. Last year, the blog on developing physical literacy excited a lot of coaches and was well-received, but I see a disturbing trend of practices in strength and conditioning that need to either change or stop entirely. The goal of this article is to cover some misconceptions and provide a few tips for helping young athletes get better with practical and fun activities.

The Difference Between Physical Education and LTAD

Long-term athletic development (LTAD) is not the same as physical education. While they have similar needs and may look alike, the purpose of scholastic-themed PE is to help transform a child into an adult, not just provide a starting point to becoming an athlete. Coaches tend to look at the fundamental movement patterns of PE and artificially try to place them into progressions for young athletes, or sometimes older athletes. This is not a great idea.

The purpose of scholastic-themed PE is to help transform a child into an adult, not provide a starting point to becoming an athlete, says @JeremyFrisch. Share on X

The best example is bear crawls: A 45-pound child having fun in a gym is not the same as a football lineman, and the exercise literally doesn’t scale up. If an adult or teenage athlete need remedial work, coaches tend to rush to the bottom with movements that are not appropriate. Fundamentals are not a time machine, and just look at the “stuff” kids should have done. While it’s never really too late, athletes who have been exposed to activities after their “learning window closed” need to train with skills that teach a framework of coordination to the level of their strength and sport.

LTAD starts where PE ends, and some overlap certainly exists. You should not rush into any sports at all, and some kids should wait before starting organized sports until they are able to be athletes without the “balls and rules.” Don’t force athletes to do PE exercises from when they were kids as a way to fix what may not actually need to be changed much. The belief that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks is a myth, but when an older athlete misses out on foundational work, they may run out of practice time or fail to close a gap.

Youth Training Is Not Miniature Strength and Conditioning

As an owner of a private facility in a small town, I understand that to make a living you can’t just wait for elite athletes to come in the door. My facility trains everyone, from busy moms who need health and wellness, to a high school football player who needs to add size and strength. Our youth training programs are not repackaged strength training courses that the high school kids do. In fact, elementary school kids look different than middle school kids, and high school kids train with a different purpose and methodology. Being able to slowly develop a kid from 8 years old to adult allows our program to introduce the right training at the right time. What we see are a lot of strength programs that were likely not well-designed to begin with being recycled with lighter loads and simpler movements.

Lots of people warn about not adding strength on dysfunction, but many are quick to add strength before coordination, says @JeremyFrisch #youthtraining. Share on X

Take a medicine ball exercise against the wall with a middle school kid. That exercise may be great for a high school athlete working on rotational power, but you are basically taking a kid who still needs exposure to more dynamic and chaotic activities and making them face a wall like a time-out. No matter the weight or size of the ball, it’s still a loaded exercise when they really need more internal exercises with their body. The same can be said for prowlers: We have heavy sleds, but kids should learn to connect their arms and legs with coordination, not try to strengthen their legs before they have control. Lots of people warn about not adding strength on dysfunction, but many are quick to add strength before coordination.

Recess or Free Play Is a Priority

Kids need more play time outside or actual activity inside. Physical education supports play—it doesn’t replace it. A modern kid plays less than kids in the past, and you can’t blame video games since board games, video games, and other distractions didn’t interfere with playing in our generation. Most of the problem we see is parents trying to get their kid ahead with extra academic activities or pushing them too hard with child sports.

Kids should be playing and having fun, not being taught how to play tennis. If they are young enough to play on a slide or jungle gym, leave the organized sports alone. Sports are not fun if you are on the bench, not interacting during a game, or not good at them. Free play allows for kids to climb trees, build a snow fort, and even make up their own games. Creativity is an endangered activity, mainly because parents are often overbearing and sometimes overzealous. For safety, an area with adult supervision is a good idea, but keep the parents on the sidelines—not the kids.

Now comes the talk about volume. A few minutes of PE sprinkled into youth sports is not the answer. Physical education is the framework of play, and it can’t replace play. Play time is homework and school work, and PE is concentrated tutoring. In the past, kids got more PE, but without general play the access to PE isn’t enough to fully evolve a child. The dangerous period is where kids are athletic enough to do sports, but not developed enough to leave play out of the equation. Play is not just for kids; all athletes should find a way to keep a few games in their life that don’t focus on keeping score.

Teach Athletes to Decelerate Themselves and Not Exercises

A high school kid needs to learn how to decelerate their body, not pick up a landmine exercise or rehearse high speed patterns slowly because these patterns are too static and constrained. There are plenty of age-appropriate activities that help with eccentric control to stop or change direction, so leave the watered-down stopping drills and dumbbell and barbell movements for someone else. Deceleration is about eccentric capacity and coordination, but it’s also about reaction and decision-making.

When you have kids do reps of an exercise like a strength training set or a slow-motion agility drill, it dulls their coordination. They may get better at the drill or the prescribed exercise, but it’s unlikely to help them stop on a dime or evade a defender. Change of direction and agility is a high-load/high-velocity activity and should be trained as such. Being able to stop on a dime is followed by an acceleration in another direction. Working on just stopping is only the half the equation. Before the invention of sports performance training, athletes developed agility through years of play and practice in game-like situations.

Video 1. Deceleration development is about having familiarity with braking, not using external strength exercises. It’s fine to include plyometrics and strength training as an athlete advances, but the kids need to know how to control their bodies in time and space.

At older ages, you need to reinforce the basics with technique and make sure athletes have the strength to actually perform what they are attempting. The worst thing kids can do is disrupt their power and skill ratio, where they attempt to do things they see on TV or social media without any actual rehearsal and strength training investment. The YouTube generation of athletes is not really at fault; we just need to do better at supporting them with teaching and training.

Don’t Turn Your Weight Room into an Obstacle Course

Our training area at Achieve is a multipurpose room, so we can train anyone from 8 to 80. When coaches ask what they can do in the weight room for younger athletes, I get worried about safety. Most weight rooms are organized racks and barbells, so moving those around is probably not possible. If you only have access to a weight room, it’s likely your school or facility sees athletic development as strength training.

A good coach can create challenges without buying any equipment, as an obstacle course should be about the way a child or athlete responds to a coach’s layout, says @JeremyFrisch. Share on X

With certain age groups and environments, you can only find time to keep athletes going during the season with basic strength, but those are professional situations, not developmental periods. Many of the videos at Achieve get coaches excited and they are the highlight of what I do, but we also focus on teaching smaller pieces of movement and don’t just let the kids run wild. A good coach can create challenges without buying any equipment, as the course should not be about what apparatus you buy, but how a child or athlete responds to a coach’s layout.

A research study on obstacle courses was published last year, and the conclusion was that you can use obstacle courses to appraise movement. Some studies show that obstacle courses can be used to help test aerobic fitness with young children, but I prefer using them to challenge kids with coordination and speed. America Ninja Warrior and all other courses we see in law enforcement come from challenges that can be linked to child games or military training. Focus on getting access to wide open space and giving the kids challenges. You just need a few cones to organize a fun challenge, as the equipment is not as important as the creativity and planning.

Let Athletes Have Fun—Give Them a Choice!

Activities that are open and loose engage kids because they give them freedom. Most coaches who get too caught up in programming forget that choice is one of the most important gifts you can give to a child who is used to being told what and how to do things. Having fun is expressing and making up their own games or rules. Physical education is guided discovery and has a lot of joy involved because teachers are educated on what makes an activity exciting for a child.

Choice is one of the most important gifts you can give to a child who is used to being told what and how to do things, says @JeremyFrisch. Share on X

When a coach sees a deficit, they are sometimes too quick to try and fix something and forget that an athlete usually struggles to do an activity they don’t find enjoyable. When you spend time doing something you love, you’ll likely improve it. It’s sort of a chicken and egg concept with talent; meaning, are we good at what we like or do we like what we are good at? It’s hard to say.

Video 2. Giving kids an option to choose what they want is wise, because kids have instincts for what games they can succeed in. With enough encouragement, they will modify existing games with rules that make it fair and fun.

Voting is sometimes popular, as simply asking the group what they want to do is a great way to see what they want. Exposing kids to other activities they may not be aware of is important, because if a child or athlete is not experienced in an activity, they may not know whether they like it or not. You don’t need immediate passion from kids, but you’ll know in a matter of minutes by the smiles on their faces and laughter. Coaches may want to rethink practices when the interaction between getting work done and the enjoyment of it is not in balance.

Dodgeball Is Great and Timeless

Dodgeball is one of the most fun activities because of the speed involved. A good game can spike the heart rates of a group of high school kids up to the roof, while it keeps young kids engaged and sharp. Not many other games bring such fun and excitement. Of course, there are some who think dodgeball isn’t good for kids, but they likely just don’t understand why the game is unique.

Dodgeball is one of the few activities that transforms physical literacy into #sportsperformance, says @JeremyFrisch. Share on X

Dodgeball is one of the few activities that transforms physical literacy into sports performance. Catching an errant throw in sport happens all the time. In dodgeball, the ability to catch a throw that is fast and designed not to be caught is a way to get a great out. Not only does it make you more valuable in the game, it teaches athletes to catch at overspeed with difficult throws. Dodging another person becomes easier when you are dodging multiple balls traveling fast. It’s basically taking a bunch of sports and blending them, with the result of better athletes and more fun.

Video 3. Dodgeball is one of the greatest games, period, as it includes throwing, catching, deceleration, and even conditioning. Using the right equipment makes it safe and engaging.

Safety is a factor that is brought up all the time by those who think it’s a politically bad idea to allow kids to throw balls at each other. The first thing a person outside of sports will recall is a time period when the game used hard rubber balls, but now ultra-soft balls are easily purchased from Gopher Sports. Non-contact injuries are unlikely because the game is more about quickness than change of direction demands like in field sports. Dodgeball is that perfect game that seems to do everything without any real baggage.

Games of Tag Are an Advanced Activity

Tag is a great game for the development of the Vision-Decision-Action cycle. The problem comes when the game is played with athletes of varying ages and abilities. Most of the time, the best athletes will dominate, and the less-athletic ones will get less exposure to the game. Playing with athletes of similar abilities can remedy the situation but that’s not always possible.

Putting together mixed teams with athletes of different abilities can be a fun and creative way to play, as the stronger athletes can protect the less-athletic ones, giving the athletes who need it most more play time. Another way is to play team tag for time instead of elimination. That way, even if the athlete gets tagged, they are still in the game and can self-assess on the fly.

Any group of kids can play Duck, Duck, Goose or freeze tag, but very young kids don’t have the deceleration demands of college athletes. Playing tag is popular, and videos of the Celtics playing tag have gone viral and this is a good and bad thing. Not all games of tag are easy on the body and some athletes are not prepared strength-wise or skill-wise to handle tag games. If you start off with tag too early, you can accelerate the problems you have with fundamentals, reinforce what is lacking, and reward the talented.

Video 4. Tag is pure joy for kids and very easy to get started without much teaching or setup. Don’t forget that tag becomes less specific as the athlete becomes more evolved, so take that into consideration when designing training.

Tagging is a combination of speed and tracking. Fleeing and chasing are a part of physical education, but most practitioners in strength and conditioning think about the capacity or demands too much or create the wrong games that misinterpret reaction. A lot of drills and games done with young athletes are caught in limbo between wannabe PE and watered-down strength and conditioning. Merging two fields can work, but sometimes it compromises the benefits of both fields.

If you want to improve agility, don’t play games that confuse an athlete who is already matured and playing sports. To further develop an athlete, coaches should recognize that they are not position coaches and are not just weight room specialists either. Expand athletes’ capacities, and if you work with them during practice, remember not to add training that doesn’t help the sport and cuts into the development of their athletic ceiling. Rehearsing “moves” with cones and drills is limited, and most of the time it’s fatiguing and placed at the wrong time of year.

Let Athletes Jump Naturally Before Plyometrics

Remember prerequisites. Jumping is a natural expression, and only when you have a wide skill set should you think about training jumps. You instruct and guide athletes on plyometrics, but they are mainly training options for athletes. Teach jumping and let’s move on from box jumps and get to what kids need.

Treat jumping as a set of challenges and let the athletes self-discover and develop their own style, says @JeremyFrisch. #physicaleducation. Share on X

How many horizontal jumps do kids do now? Moving away from the transfer of bounding and hopping, focus on how kids can create natural locomotion. Running and then jumping is a lost technique, but when a basketball player goes for a layup or an athlete does a diving catch, they are doing something far more athletic than box jumps.

Video 5. Jumping is fun and athletes should jump for joy with challenges, not artificial progressions like older athletes. Embrace their low body weight and make jumping, hopping, and even bounding part of the equation.

It’s lazy to just grab exercises from track and field manuals or PE books—you need to learn the principles and how to coach the movement. Sometimes the movements and activities are easily picked up, but you don’t coach the group, you guide them. Treat jumping as a set of challenges and let the athletes self-discover and develop their own style. Like a sheepdog herding the sheep, you just need to worry about the slow learners.

Giving a Good Task Is Better Than Cueing

The wisdom of the body is just years of Mother Nature working smarter than a coach. Cues are fine, but what happens when you are in a group? When training athletes, realize you can’t give everyone feedback for every rep. Feedback, and sometimes correction, is a verbal exchange that may not always work or need to be done at all.

Coaches who want to help and see the problem with their eyes want to intervene. Don’t think that just because you are not cueing, the process is silent, or you can’t make a few corrections. The process of coaching is instructing an athlete to improve, not do what you see and say. An experienced coach knows what to say, what not to say, when to say it, and when to wait to say it.

Video 6. The Royal Rush game is all about natural acceleration and deceleration. Kids will find the best and smartest path movement-wise, so don’t overdo the coaching.

Failure is not losing a game. Exploration in physical education is a student trying to do different things and learning. If a student or athlete is making “mistakes” from trial and error or experimentation, they are discovering a lot about how their body responds to their environment. Repeated mistakes coupled with stagnation is where a coach should intervene with either a reminder of what’s happening or a cue to possibly correct what isn’t working.

An experienced coach knows what to say, what not to say, when to say it, and when to wait to say it, says @JeremyFrisch. Share on X

Later in Part 2 I will outline the cues and art of communicating, but planning and experiments that focus on the learning of the athlete or student versus teaching from the coach are generally a better experience. Not having to talk isn’t just about talented athletes who grasp concepts easily; it’s about experienced coaches who know what to give in order for athletes to not have to be cued.

End of Part 1 and Wrap-Up

This article was cut in half, as a massive post would just overwhelm most coaches who are looking for a few nuggets of wisdom. In the next part I cover more common issues that strength and conditioning coaches should think about, and share solutions that can give answers for tough problems you face. Before I go, here are a couple of resources you may want to think about buying or at least reading to learn more about physical education. One warning though, having a few books in your library will not make you a PE teacher, as that is still a profession that requires formal education and experience in the gym.

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

Elite and professional athletes enter every workout with purpose and an unrelenting resolve to increase preparedness and their resultant performance. Athlete monitoring has become essential in high-performance development to ensure the training plan targets the desired physiological adaptive responses that will culminate in competitive readiness. With this in mind, near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) devices allow the visualization and quantification of physiological and biomechanical responses to exercise by offering real-time feedback on muscle activation, physiological distress, state of recovery, and overall fitness levels.

Using muscle oxygenation as an athlete-monitoring tool can benefit your day-to-day training and provide insight on chronic adaptations. Share on X

Using muscle oxygenation as an athlete-monitoring tool can benefit your day-to-day training and provide insight on chronic adaptations. These devices are most often utilized by endurance athletes to monitor steady state or repeated bouts of exercise. However, considerable evidence has provided a case for the use of muscle oximetry within the strength and power realm.

What Is Muscle Oxygenation?

Muscle oxygenation is a representation of the amount of oxygenated hemoglobin compared to total hemoglobin within the muscle. Simply put, as work intensifies, muscle oxygenation decreases, and as exercise intensity decreases, muscle oxygenation increases. The beauty of being able to monitor muscle oxygenation lies in the more-complex physiologic implications that ensue when repeated bouts of guided training are performed. For more insight, check out these articles on muscle oxygenation and NIRS devices.

What you should be tracking:

Maximal Oxygenation: Once you begin to use muscle oxygenation as a tool for training and monitoring, you’ll notice that after warm-ups or intense bouts, muscle oxygenation exceeds baseline values. This is an athlete’s physiology super-compensating for the previous workload. Better-trained individuals are capable of achieving higher maximal oxygenation as part of their enhanced muscle metaboreflex, and the body’s ability to react and reestablish an exercising homeostasis.

Minimal Oxygenation: The ability to use the oxygen in the muscle. Even though oxygen may be present, it does not necessarily mean the muscle is capable of using it. Just like a car running efficiently, a person may have the ability to produce more energy if they are able to utilize all parts effectively. Strength and power athletes tend to neglect the importance of their aerobic health; however, recovery is an aerobic process. Neglecting to enhance aerobic metabolism is no different than disregarding that eighth play in the third quarter.

Neglecting to enhance aerobic metabolism is no different than disregarding that eighth play in the third quarter. Share on X

Oxygenation Utilization and Recovery: The metrics of intensity. Once you establish an athlete’s minimal and maximal values, you can begin to prescribe workouts based on the specific adaptations to enhance athletic performance.

Rates of Reoxygenation: After an intense bout of training, this variable speaks to how quickly oxygen levels return to baseline. Rates of reoxygenation have been linked with improved recovery of power output and phosphocreatine (PCr).¹

Normalization: Training status creates variation in maximal and minimal deoxygenation levels. I find it helpful to normalize values during data analysis. It is important to note the raw maximum and minimum values as an indication of training status. If a trained and untrained person both deoxygenated 20%, this could have very different implications. A trained person may reduce from 80% to 60%, while a less-trained person could reduce from 60% to 40%. Not only may the ceilings of each athlete be different, but so may the floors. If the trained athlete’s minimum is 10% and the untrained athlete’s is 20%, there is a massive difference in the amount of oxygenation reserve.

Traits of Team, Strength, and Power Sports

Field and court sports require a spectrum of performance characteristics to succeed, though the crucial moments of every sport occur during bouts of high-intensity efforts, which are often repeated in rapid succession.^2,3Team sports require a minimal threshold of endurance to be able to compete for a game’s duration, so training should be focused on increasing an athlete’s ability to complete repeated bursts of high-intensity efforts.

Typically, these traits are developed with extensive, exhausting sprint sessions that achieve the physiological distress needed for adaptation signaling. However, these sessions often tend to be excessively exhausting, leading to chronic fatigue management issues. In the paradigm of periodization, training should transition from general to sport-specific characteristics with decreasing volumes throughout the training cycle.⁴In these crucial time frames, programming must be executed with surgical precision to ensure enough stress has been administered to maintain and/or promote adaptation without leaving the athlete unable to perform in the game later in the week.

Repeated and Intermittent Sprint Training with Muscle Oxygenation

Repeated sprint ability (RSA) is a fundamental component of field and court sports that is best executed with high levels of repeated force production and is true in other forms.³Carl Valle discusses RSA to a great extent here. Limiting factors of repeated sprint ability include neuromuscular fatigue, energy production limitations, and metabolic by-product accumulation.³

Energy Production Limitations: PCr-ATP – High Quality and Power

The Phosphocreatine-ATP pathway supplies a massive burst of energy during the first 6-10 seconds of high-intensity activity. The rate at which this energy is released allows for rapid rates of muscular contractions, creating peak power outputs. You may be asking yourself why muscle oxygenation is important to an energy production mechanism that operates independently of oxygen. The answer is in the ability to set the stage for the next burst of high-intensity effort.

While using muscle oxygenation to guide high-intensity short-duration sprint work, you can assess, compare, and direct other training parameters to improve muscle oxygenation recovery. Share on X

PCr resynthesis is completely dependent upon oxygen availability.^5,6McCully et al. demonstrated that, with the assumption of blood pH as not acidic, PCr and muscle oxygenation recovery are similar. In a practical setting, you may use muscle oxygenation returning to a baseline value after an intense sprint as an indication of PCr replenishment.¹Following this guideline will create work-to-rest ratios smaller than typically thought for RSA training; however, it allows for extremely high-quality sprint repetitions in which technical and tactical aspects of the movement can be addressed. While using muscle oxygenation to guide high-intensity short-duration sprint work, you can assess, compare, and direct other training parameters to improve muscle oxygenation recovery.

Anaerobic Glycolysis and Buffering Capacities: Repetitive Power

Every athlete has been put through the wringer at some point in their athletic career. In team settings, athletes often dread hearing the words “on the line” or “on the boards,” as that usually means a storm of metabolic acidosis will soon erupt. What is more interesting is that while coaches are directing a storm of metabolic disturbances, they are often conducting a “survival of the fittest” test.

Every team has three classes of athletes: A) those who complete every repetition of the repeat sprint session with good form and stature; B) those who start off looking strong but rapidly decay; and C) those who seem hopeless. The true purpose of these types of workouts may be up for debate, but let’s assume that their primary purpose is to instill metabolic disturbances, and thus adaptations and performance enhancement.

Athlete A may enter each of these sessions very aware that they can coast at a minimal effort and still look good. With good theatrics, they may even sell the fact that they look tired. Athlete B will likely show a trend in oxygenation kinetics that seems to be beneficial, but during the last several repetitions develop substantial fatigue that may become a chronic issue interfering with progression. Athlete C likely needs to build a better base consisting of sprint kinematics and low- to mid-intensity exercise endurance.

Muscle oxygenation is a new variable and, as coaches, we want to use new technology to boost our training sessions. However, when we see confusing numbers, we are quick to dismiss the use of the tool. We need to review the evidence and rewrite the curriculum base utilizing technological advancements.

The above-mentioned practice scenario is commonly used to “get our athletes stronger.” Coaches commonly think of those workouts as building sprint endurance, but evidence suggests otherwise. This can lead to an in-depth conversation about the training principle of specificity and its true meanings. However, we will keep the review short.

Repeated sprint efforts in a competition scenario are comprised of several highly intense efforts followed by a rest interval that’s typically due to a substitution or to the location of play changing. On average, an ice hockey shift lasts for approximately 45-60 seconds of near-maximal exertion skating. As a coach, you can use NIRS devices to analyze patterns of oxygenation kinematics, identify muscle oxygenation profiles in response to competition scenarios, and program to match the specific demand. Evidence shows that there are two trends in improving glycolytic energy production and buffering capacity that differ tremendously.

Greater glycolytic metabolism tends to lead to greater initial sprint performances, though they are also coupled with a greater fatigue index.⁷If your athlete is strong at maintaining their efforts, but struggles to make it to the play first, an increased glycolytic capability may be a high priority. Increasing glycolytic energy production while promoting or maintaining other important characteristics, such as rates of force development and technical proficiency, requires extensive activation of glycolytic muscle fibers paired with adequate rest to maintain force-producing characteristics.⁸

If your athlete is strong at maintaining their efforts, but struggles to make it to the play first, an increased glycolytic capability may be a high priority. Share on X

When your athlete performs repeated sprints—maybe 10 repetitions of 15 seconds with 15 seconds of rest—you will notice that a delay in muscle reoxygenation will develop, accompanied by decaying maximal oxygenations between sprints, as seen in Figure 3- 1:1. This represents two main concepts: 1) the Bohr effect and 2) an increased reliance on oxygen to produce force. If, in this scenario, your athlete’s oxygenation response resembles Figure 3-2:1, you should make an alteration in intensity either through speed or rest intervals.

• The Bohr effect is a physiological phenomenon in which increased acidity and carbon dioxide reduce the hemoglobin’s affinity for oxygen. This principle allows us to interpret muscle oxygenation responses; in particular, rates of muscle reoxygenation and the number of repetitions until a plateau in oxygenation occurs (Figure 5-1:1, blue box). When working with your athletes and monitoring their sprint workouts with muscle oxygenation, you can qualitatively guide a training session by observing sprint to sprint oxygenation patterns. Chronically, you should calculate rates of reoxygenation or assess the shape factor and how many maximal exertion repetitions to complete until a plateau is observed.
• The increased and consistent reliance on oxygen, which is represented by a plateau of oxygenation, displays a continued Bohr effect—but also a greater reliance on type 1 (aerobic) muscle fibers. When an athlete continues to rely on type 1 muscle fibers, it blunts the amount of glycolytic activation and dramatically decreases the amount of power produced, leading to slow athletes training to be better at being slow. If you are leading a session and one athlete begins to display a plateaued muscle oxygenation accompanied by delayed rates of reoxygenation, it would be best to allow that athlete to recover and begin a new set once muscle oxygenation has gone through a super-compensating recovery and established a resting baseline. Incorporating real-time monitoring allows a coach to confirm their programming tactics or allows them to make educated adjustments that are objective and easy to explain to their athletes.

We have discussed monitoring and directing training for maximal power production with the PCr-ATP system and multiple high-power exertions with the glycolytic energy system, and we will move on to prolonging your athlete’s ability to continually repeat high-power exertions. Increased acidity resulting from high levels of glycolysis has been found to impair repetitive high-power exertions. In an attempt to prolong the time course of performance decay, athletes and coaches target mechanisms to increase the blood’s buffering capacity. An increased buffering capacity allows for a great accumulation of acidic by-products without altering blood pH to a great extent.⁹

Typically, routines that target increasing muscle-buffering capacity include a multitude of time intervals and intensity levels surrounding and exceeding VO2 maximum. Little is known about time interval optimization for interval training targeting high-intensity endurance, though some researchers have shown notable improvements using percentages of the maximal sustainable time running at VO2 max.¹⁰Work intervals can be established by simulating game work-to-rest intervals, or by creating work-to-rest ratios that allow for rapid, substantial muscle deoxygenation with incomplete reoxygenation.¹⁰

As metabolic acidosis builds and muscle reoxygenation rates decline, maximal reoxygenation will decrease from sprint to sprint. If the athlete performs too high of an intensity, they may not be capable of finishing the prescribed work-set and may present a response similar to Figure 5-2:1. This athlete’s training needs an intensity alteration of either speed- or work-to rest ratio. If the athlete does not display a regressive reoxygenation rate and/or further minimal muscle deoxygenation in response to the sprints, the athlete may need to increase the intensity.

The Two-for-One Deal: Strength Training

Strength training is widely accepted as being beneficial for athletic performance, but the rationales and ideologies of optimal training strategies are strongly debated. A common theme that exists, or at least should exist, is that different variables are emphasized throughout a training cycle depending upon which traits they desire to train. In the paradigm of block periodization utilizing phase potentiation, fitness phases are planned along a timeline to allow for the emphasis of concentrated loads. This planning method is all-encompassing and considers sport-specific and resistance training and all the variables that influence the process. By understanding the physiological implications of training and the stimuli required to elicit certain adaptations you can create a platform to synergistically integrate your resistance training program with your sport-specific training.

Muscle oxygenation kinetics have not been thoroughly researched in resistance training for the athletic population, but the groundwork that exists allows for a short conversation about specificity and long-term fatigue management.¹¹Training, in general, is extremely taxing on the body and you must incorporate planned recovery time into your training plan.

Muscle oximetry has been available to the consumer market for over 10 years, though it has been slow to gain popularity in the sports performance field due to cost and a lack of supporting literature allowing for ease of integration. With a small bit of physiological awareness and coaching creativity, you can apply muscle oxygenation to your training paradigm to add precision and reduce unnecessary fatigue in your athletes. Strength training has been found to produce similar metabolic and oxygenation disturbances as high-intensity skating and sprinting.¹²

With a small bit of physiological awareness and coaching creativity, you can apply muscle oxygenation to your training to add precision and reduce unnecessary fatigue. Share on X

During a general preparation phase or a period in which you are looking to remove the impactful stress of running, you may be able to maintain or improve the physiological mechanisms that potentiate sprint training later in the cycle. General preparation phases including higher volume work at lighter intensities related to 1RM are utilized. Those workloads reduce muscle oxygenation with an accompanied slow rate of recovery similar to the example provided for increasing muscle buffering capacity. Hoffman et al. demonstrated a 44.1% longer day to initiate reoxygenation when performing sets of 15 repetitions at 60% 1RM as compared to sets of four repetitions at 90% of 1RM, accompanied by slightly greater lactate concentration 20 and 40 minutes post exercise.¹²

As previously discussed, to preserve the skill and technique of more intense runs to improve glycolytic energy production, a greater amount of rest is recommended. When targeting absolute or maximal strength, you may follow the same concept in an attempt to prevent excessive acute metabolic stress from impairing your ability to produce force rapidly.

Muscle oxygenation monitoring can be applied during individual sessions or chronically. Variables such as minimal oxygenation, maximal oxygenation, oxygen utilization, recovery, and their prospective rates provide insight on exercise intensity and athlete training status. Near infrared spectroscopy could provide an individualized method to fine-tune and optimize training.

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

1. McCully, K.K., Lotti, S., Kendrick, K., Wang, Z., Posner, J.D., Leigh, J., et al. “Simultaneous in vivo measurements of HbO2 saturation and PCr kinetics after exercise in normal humans.” Journal of Applied Physiology. 1994;77(1):5-10.

2. Ben Abdelkrim, N., El Fazaa, S., and El Ati, J. “Time-motion analysis and physiological data of elite under-19-year-old basketball players during competition.” British Journal of Sports Medicine. 2007;41(2):69-75.

3. Girard, O.R., Mendez-Villaneuva A., and Bishop, D.J. “Repeated-sprint ability – part I: factors contributing to fatigue.” Sports Medicine. 2011;41(4):673-94.

4. DeWeese, B.H., Hornsby, G., Stone, M., and Stone, M.H. “The training process: Planning for strength-power training in track and field. Part 1: Theoretical aspects.” Journal of Sport and Health Science. 2015;4(4):308-17.

5. Harris, R., Edwards, R., Hultman, E. Nordesjö, L., Nylind, B., and Sahlin, K. “The time course of phosphorylcreatine resynthesis during recovery of the quadriceps muscle in man.” Pflügers Archiv: European Journal of Physiology. 1976;267(2):137-42.

6. Kime, R., Katsumura, T., Hamaoka, T. Osada, T., Sako, T., Murakami, M., et al. “Muscle reoxygenation after isometric exercise at various intensities in relation to muscle oxidative capacity.” Oxygen Transport to Tissue XXIV: Springer; 2003. p. 497-507.

7. Gaitanos, G.C., Williams, C., Boobis, L.H., and Brooks, S. “Human muscle metabolism during intermittent maximal exercise.” Journal of Applied Physiology. 1993;75(2):712-19.

8. Smith, K.J. and Billaut, F. “Influence of cerebral and muscle oxygenation on repeated-sprint ability.” European Journal of Applied Physiology. 2010;109(5):989-99.

9. Bishop, D., Edge, J., Thomas, C., and Mercier, J. “Effects of high-intensity training on muscle lactate transporters and postexercise recovery of muscle lactate and hydrogen ions in women.” (Author abstract) (Clinical report). The American Journal of Physiology. 2008;295(6):R1991.

10. Laursen, P.B. and Jenkins, D.G. “The scientific basis for high-intensity interval training: optimizing training programmes and maximising performance in highly trained endurance athletes.” Sports Medicine(Auckland, NZ). 2002;32(1):53-73.

11. Pereira, M.I.R., Gomes, P.S.C., and Bhambhani, Y.N. “A brief review of the use of near infrared spectroscopy with particular interest in resistance exercise.” Sports Medicine. 2007;37(7):615.

12. Hoffman, J.R., Im, J., Rundell, K.W., Kang, J., Nioka, S., Speiring, B.A., Kime, R., and Chance, B. “Effect of muscle oxygenation during resistance exercise on anabolic hormone response.” Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise. 2003;35(11):1929-34.

Over the past decade, there has been a growing trend among performance professionals to quantify and define subsections of strength. This practice has often been demonstrated along a strength continuum in the hopes of enhancing the application of resistance training. Differences in language and terminology about how strength is classified often create dogmatic approaches regarding the specific parameters of subsections, subsequently leading us away from application variables. (Pfaff, 2018) This article is an attempt to clarify basic qualities and protocols within each subsection of strength to improve the implementation of training modalities.

Overview of the Strength Continuum

The Strength Continuum in resistance training is a common means of categorizing the core subsections of strength during the concentric phase of a resistance exercise. These core subsections incorporate power, velocity, and force—the qualities that all subsections are based on—and ultimately help us illustrate how adjacent subsections that seem perceptibly similar in nature have independent qualities and are actually quite unique at the extremes. Some popular subsections along the strength continuum that are commonly referenced in available literature are:

• Absolute Strength
• Maximum Strength
• Accelerative Strength
• Strength Speed
• Max Strength
• Basic Power Development
• Speed Strength
• Absolute Speed
• Elastic and Reactive Strength

With so many referenced categories, it becomes vital to have a basic understanding of the characteristics of each subsection and knowledge of the variables associated with them.

Do not confuse the Strength Continuum in resistance training with the Strength-Endurance Continuum in weight training. Share on X

This concept should not be confused with the Strength-Endurance Continuum, which is a weight training concept based on the theory that muscle strength and muscle endurance exist on a continuum with strength represented by the 1RM (the 1-repetition maximum; i.e., the maximum load that can be overcome by a single effort), and muscle endurance represented by the ability to exert a lower force repeatedly over time. (Oxford, n.d.)

For the purpose of this article, I will only reference data that applies to traditional “power lifting” exercises, such as the back squat and bench press. Olympic lifts will be omitted from this discussion because they fall into a group of exercises where the primary purpose is to increase the rate of force development (RFD). (Schexnayder et al, 2014) There are many variables that make the comparison extraneous from both a micro and macro perspective.

Author’s Note: The deceleration phenomenon seen during a concentric contraction of traditional exercises can be attributed in part to the mechanical disadvantages associated with free weights as a form of resistance. Many researchers believe that a movement that allows force and muscle activation to be maintained throughout an entire range of motion can lead to increased athletic performance. Exercises that are performed using pneumatics as resistance have shown, through kinetic and electrographic profiles, to have superior force maintenance and muscle contractions throughout the entire range of motion in comparison to both free weights and ballistic movements. (Frost, 2008) 

Force, Velocity, and Power

A force (strength) is simply stated as something that acts on an object by pushing or pulling it, and is commonly denoted in Newtons (N) and represented on the force axis in kilos or pounds.

Velocity (speed) is quantified as the rate at which an object moves in a direction, and is usually expressed in meters per second (m/s), or inches per second (i/s). The coalescence between force and velocity allows us to determine power.

Power is the product of force and velocity, and is defined as the rate at which work is done or the rate at which energy is transferred from one place to another. Power is calculated as the amount of work (force x distance traveled)/time. Power in most applications is denoted in watts (W).

Force-Velocity Curve

Force and velocity can easily be charted along A.V. Hill’s (1938) force-velocity curve to demonstrate the inverse relationship between force and velocity. The hyperbolic relationship between force and velocity that he described has become the foundation on which subsequent muscle discoveries have been built (Lindstedt, 2016), as shown in Figure 1.

If we chart the power output at each resistance over a force-velocity curve, we are able to derive our parabolic power curve. The apex of the curve will indicate the resistance at which maximum power (Max Power), is achieved. Max Power is theoretically used to delineate the relative emphasis of force versus velocity at any point on the force spectrum.

Any resistance greater than Max Power will have a strength bias and any resistance less than Max Power will have a velocity bias. Share on X

Any resistance greater than Max Power will have a strength bias and any resistance less than Max Power will have a velocity bias—i.e., two resistances on opposite sides of Max Power on the power curve can have the same power output, but the resistance to the right of Max Power will have a greater force bias. The prevalent resistance that has been published for Max Power is ≈60% of a 1RM for both free weight squat and bench-pressing movements. See Figure 2.

Author’s Note: One important variable to keep in mind when referencing published subsection velocities is that the velocities articulated only cover the velocity spectrum in regard to free weights. Recent investigations have confirmed that velocity is substantially greater at each resistance when using pneumatic resistance versus free weights. However, the order of subsections along the intensity spectrum does not change. (Frost, 2008)

Delineating Critical Subsections

The subsections in this article are given as a general reference to understand the importance of the relationships between power, velocity, and force. Many authors and researchers have published data using both velocity-based training (VBT), and percent of 1RM to distinguish these zones. Regardless of the method used to define zones, the central takeaway for application purposes is that strength and speed are not exclusive across the force-velocity curve. In its most simplistic view, the ends of the force-velocity curve represent absolute strength and absolute speed respectively, and the middle of the power curve expresses the highest power values.

Regardless of the method used to define zones, the central takeaway for application purposes is that strength and speed are not exclusive across the force-velocity curve. Share on X

The qualities listed below give a general interpretation based on the literature available. The protocols that I offer are adopted and based on USTFCCCA strength protocols and 25 years of pragmatic experience working with elite athletes. Velocity is inversely proportional to resistance. Nonetheless, each concentric repetition across the strength continuum must be attempted as fast and as explosive as possible.

Absolute Strength[Force Development](Maximal Strength, Accelerative Strength*)

This zone has schemes that are performed where the protocol (load) requires maximum muscular contraction to execute a repetition at or near a 1-rep maximum regardless of the rate of production (velocity). This zone covers a 20% area on the force axis with up to five reps. Nevertheless, Absolute Strength has been shown to be maximized at loads ≥ 90% of a 1RM performing 1-2 reps. The 80-90% zone should be used to prepare a subject for loads ≥ 90%.

Qualities

• Resistance: High to very high
• Velocity: Low to very low
• Power Output: Low to moderate (Power output decreases as intensity moves towards 100% due to a decrease in velocity.)

Protocols

• Reps: 1-5
• Sets: 4-8
• Total Reps: 15-30 per region
• Number of Exercises: 1-2
• Intensity: 80-100%
• Recovery: Complete

Max Power[Power Development](Basic Power Development)

This zone has a scheme that is performed where the protocol (load) displays the greatest amount of power as expressed in watts. This zone is executed at ≈60% of 1RM or at the Keiser Optimal Power Resistance up to six reps.

Qualities

• Resistance: Moderate
• Velocity: Moderate
• Power Output: Very high

Protocols

• Reps: 2-6
• Sets: 4-8
• Total Reps: 16-40 per region
• Number of Exercises: 1-2
• Intensity:≈60%
• Recovery: Complete

Strength – Speed [Power Development/Strength Bias] (Basic Power Development)

This zone has schemes that are performed where the protocol (load) requires near maximum to moderate muscular contractions to execute a repetition with a secondary emphasis on the rate of production (velocity). This zone occurs within the summit of the power curve with a prime emphasis on strength. This zone covers a 20% area on the force axis with up to five reps, yet maximum power production will be maximized at ≈60-70% or Max Power plus 10%. If you are measuring power output on each rep, you should terminate the set if Peak Power drops by more than 10%.

Qualities

• Resistance: Moderate to high
• Velocity: Moderate
• Power Output: High to moderate (Power output decreases as you move away from Max Power.)

Protocols

• Reps: 2-5 (Terminate set if Peak Power drops by more than 10% on multiple reps.)
• Sets: 4-9
• Total Reps: 18-36
• Number of Exercises: One with variations allowed in regard to range of motion
• Intensity: 60-80% or Peak Power plus 20%
• Recovery: Complete

Speed – Strength [Power Development/Speed Bias] (Basic Power Development)

This zone has schemes that are performed where rate of production (velocity) takes precedence over force, making (load) secondary in nature. This zone occurs within the summit of the power curve with a prime emphasis on speed. This zone covers a 20% area on the force axis with up to six reps, yet maximum power production will be maximized at ≈50-60% of a 1RM or Max Power minus 10%. If you are measuring power output on each rep, you should terminate the set if Peak Power drops by more than 5-10%.

Qualities

• Resistance: Low to moderate
• Velocity: Moderate to high
• Power Output: Moderate to high (Power output decreases as you move away from Max Power.)

Protocols

• Reps: 3-6 (Terminate set if Peak Power drops by more than 10% on multiple reps.)
• Sets: 4-9
• Total Reps: 27-45 per region
• Number of Exercises: One with variations allowed in regard to range of motion
• Intensity: 40-60% or Peak Power minus 20%
• Recovery: Complete 

Absolute Speed – [Speed] (Reactive and Elastic Strength)

This zone has schemes that are performed where the rate of production (velocity) is the single most important variable. These schemes are designed to exploit a high degree of elastic and reactive qualities. Exercises within this zone often need to be adapted into ballistic movements when using free weights to achieve the desired effects—i.e., barbell back squats to jump squats.

This zone occurs well outside the summit of the Peak Power curve with a prime emphasis on velocity. However, you should implement this zone with care, especially when training the lower limbs, because of the spinal loading and impact required during ballistic movements. This zone is typically reserved for older athletes who have a higher training age and a solid foundation of Absolute Strength, basic power, and general strength development. (Schexnayder et al, 2014)

Qualities

• Resistance: Very low to low
• Velocity: Very high to high
• Power Output: Low to moderate (Power output decreases as you move away from Peak Power.)

Protocols

• Reps: (5-12)
• Sets: (3-8)
• Total Reps: 40-84
• Number of Exercises: 2-3
• Intensity: 20-40%
• Recovery: Enough to ensure quality of work

The Why (and How)

As a performance professional, your first question should be “why?” when creating and implementing training schemes. Why will implementing training schemes for Absolute Strength, Strength Speed, Speed Strength, and Speed help improve athletic performance? There is a large body of literature that shows that resistance training can increase strength, power, and speed, which are the skills commonly needed in many sports. (McGuigan et al, 2012) The missing element in that statement is the extent to which sports performance is actually improved when we get stronger, more powerful, and faster in the weight room. Does the weight room transfer to the field of play?

Resistance training allows us to display strength, power, and speed during an exercise that may or may not translate into improved athletic performance. The ability to evaluate an athlete’s strengths and weaknesses in relation to the key performance indicators (KPI) of their specific sport will help a performance specialist create and implement effective training protocols. Training plans must not only be specific to the individual; they must be explicit to the task or tasks being performed on the field of play.

Practitioners must always ask one simple question: How will this protocol improve performance on the field of play? Share on X

Understanding the qualities and protocols along the strength continuum arms the performance coach with the tools needed to incorporate training modalities specific to an individual trying to complete a specific task. Two athletes quite frequently need different stimuli to accomplish the same task. Practitioners must always ask one simple question: How will this protocol improve performance on the field of play?

Author’s Note: It cannot be overstated that the extent to which improvements can affect human performance is dependent on many variables, including (but not limited to) the individual’s specific physical qualities, the physical skills required for explicit activities, mental competency, environmental conditions, sport competency, and exercise selection. Effective implementation of resistance training through an integrated periodized training plan that has measures to control intensity, volume, and density will also play a key role in determining the overall effect in a resistance program.

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

Bondarchuk, AP. (2014) Olympian Manual for Strength and Size. USA: Ultimate Athlete Concepts, Michigan.

Cormie, P. et al. (2007) “Optimal Loading for Maximal Power Output during Lower-Body Resistance Exercises.”Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise. 39(2):340-349.

Frost, D.M., Cronin, J.B., and Newton, R.U. (2008). “A comparison of the kinematics, kinetics and muscle activity between pneumatic and free weight resistance.” European Journal of Applied Physiology. 104;937-956.

Lindstedt, S. (2016). “Skeletal muscle tissue in movement and health: Positives and negatives.” Journal of Experimental Biology. 219(2):183-188. 10.1242/jeb.124297.

Mann, B. (2016) Developing Explosive Athletes: Use of Velocity Based Training in Training Athletes. USA: Ultimate Athlete Concepts, Michigan.

McGuigan, M.R., Wright, G.A., and Fleck, S.J. (2012). “Strength Training for Athletes: Does It Really Help Sports Performance?” International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance. 7, 2-5.

Pfaff, Dan. (2018) Personal communication.

Schexnayder, B. et al. (2014)USTFCCCA Strength and Conditioning Certification Manual, USTFCCCA Track and Field Academy, New Orleans.

Schnolinsky, G. (2006) Track and Field: The East German Textbook of Athletics. Sport Book Publisher, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Stone, D.A., Cronin, J.B., and Newton, R.U. (2008). “A comparison of the kinematics, kinetics and muscle activity between pneumatic and free weight resistance.” European Journal of Applied Physiology. 104:937-956. doi 10.1007/s00421-008-0821-8

Strength-Endurance Continuum [Def.1] (n.d.). InThe Oxford Dictionary of Sports Science & Medicine Online, Retrieved September 11, 2018.