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The use of thermography is not new to sport, but more teams and clinics are adopting the technology because of our recent advancements in improving outcomes. Historically, thermography was seen as a promising technique and not a best practice. I have used thermography for years and understand its limitations, but also its potential. Injury reduction and athletic performance improvements in sport are sometimes seen as mirages, but when combined with clinical evaluation, thermography is practical and effective.

ThermoHuman, the company that I am a founder of, is the leader in sports thermography. We have serviced teams and federations for years, and now have clients in the MLB, NBA, and MLS, and individual athletes in the NFL and NHL. The goal of our company, and this article, is to show why thermography is effective, and explain the opportunity to coaches and medical professionals.

What Is Sports Thermography?

Thermography has many names outside of sport, such as infrared thermography and thermal imaging. Professionals have likely seen thermography used in surveillance or other fields like emergency response. Those in sports performance have used thermography to conduct research and help with monitoring athletes though thermal imaging. Sports thermography is an indirect measurement; meaning the camera detects radiation emitted by a body or structure. Human beings are warm-blooded animals, so they are easily monitored with thermogenic images or videos. A recording with thermography is called a thermogram.

We believe that thermograms, combined with clinical evaluation, can help reduce injuries. Share on X

Sports have used thermography to monitor change with athletes, ranging from exercise responses to injury prevention methods. ThermoHuman believes that, combined with clinical evaluation, thermograms can be used to help reduce injuries before they become problematic. Thermography is not able to predict with certainty that an injury is going to occur, but it can be used in conjunction with other approaches to improve the outcomes of a monitoring program.

Video 1. (In Spanish) Thermography uses infrared cameras to collect athlete data, and then analyzes the information with customized software. Based on the changes in temperature, and on the interpretation, teams can measure patterns of change and make more confident decisions. For non-Spanish speakers, watch the system in action as the information shared on the video is explained in this article.

The human body is a very intricate collection of networks and systems that emit heat, and those temperature changes and fluctuations are clues to possible physiological changes. The radiation of heat can be interpreted with the training to hint at possible issues with function and health status, specifically chronic injury or possible injury risk. A change in skin temperature could just be a normal variance of the human body, or if the pattern matches clinical findings, a possible injury. Most of the research with thermography in sports attempted to connect core temperature with skin temperature and athlete work rates, but over the last few years thermography has seen an increase in medical uses.

What Does ThermoHuman Do?

ThermoHuman is both a software and an education company, not a camera manufacturer. We do use FLIR technology for our customers, but we are interested in figuring out how to interpret the data better and what to do with the data post analysis. Our software is about quantitative change, not interpreting information like sonography or magnetic resonance imaging.

Technically speaking, thickness and sizing information can be found with those technologies, but those imaging techniques are usually preferred to help diagnose an injury using qualitative approaches. ThermoHuman assists professionals by automating the process as much as possible, and educates practitioners on capturing technique along with proper analysis.

ThermoHuman is a tool for clinicians or very educated support staff, not interns or coaches without education. A thermogram from a camera with our software asks better questions—it doesn’t give comprehensive answers. A thermogram is a representation and summary of heat radiating from an athlete’s body; it’s not a solution that can alert of an injury or weakness directly. Acute pathologies, chronic injuries, and pain perception require clinical evaluation by medical staff, but athlete injuries that are not symptomatic or showing up in functional evaluations are worth exploring with ThermoHuman software and education.

How ThermoHuman Can Help Sports Professionals

ThermoHuman has four effective ways to support player health and performance, and we have seen great success with monitoring and medical divisions of teams. Thermography in sport is still evolving, but it is strongly suited to help the fast-paced environment of world-class sports. Medical staff are mainly concerned with reducing injuries, but when injuries do occur, they want the rehabilitation process to be more effective so re-injury or cascading injury doesn’t strike later.

Thermography is strongly suited to help the fast-paced environment of world-class sports. Share on X

Initial assessments are the first step faced by all teams and clinicians. Screening, specifically orthopedic assessment, is useful for documentation but is not always effective for identifying injuries or specific injury risks. Baseline information using ThermoHuman is important for vascular responses, creating an important profile that every professional should have. Vascular defects are complicated matters and should be added to the discussion of player health and wellness.

The second area that ThermoHuman excels in is injury management. If an injury does occur, monitoring the advancements in rehabilitation requires a way to track change without even more overloading of the injury site. We do appreciate that muscle performance with strength testing has value in sport clinics, but in combination with thermography the information is even more insightful, such as return from ACL surgery. Tracking a complex injury with an athlete making millions of euros is a very stressful process that requires as much additional information as possible.

Load assimilation is an exciting metric that ThermoHuman specializes in. Player workload is usually very arbitrary, meaning the measurements are not specific to areas of the body. Using the software to add anatomical landmarks enables coaches and medical staff to observe the time course of heavy training and competition during the season. When areas appear to be overloaded, very clear adjustments to sport training or resistance training become easy with our reporting. In combination with GPS tracking and load calculations, we believe that ThermoHuman adds more possibilities to keep athletes training without resorting to resting unnecessarily.

Injury prevention is the final area in which we are seeing growth and success. ThermoHuman is an additional layer that can increase the success rate of injury prevention if used consistently. Asymmetry is a very contextual measure with thermography, since an imbalance requires more than just a comparison between limbs or sides. Having injury history, training information, and other data can explain if an asymmetry is acceptable or if a true concern requires a physiotherapist’s attention. Athletes are able to compensate and manage asymmetries, but over time fatigue and heavy loads result in compromised states that leave an athlete prone to muscle tears or joint injuries.

These four approaches to athlete performance and health improve every year. ThermoHuman is a new company and we are rapidly updating the software as the hardware improves. New research and new methods of athlete support will also shape our software and education, so expect us to continue to refine our technology. 

ThermoHuman’s Advantages and Limitations

Sports thermography has a lot of advantages and, of course, limitations. Starting with the drawbacks, you must have training in order to collect the data, and even more training to properly use the information once you collect it from the cameras. The software helps improve the process for organizing the thermographic readings with reporting, but it requires medical expertise to know what to look for. Right now, we only recommend the product’s use in sports medicine and the applied sciences. High-performance coaches should be aware of our system, but the responsibilities of using it will likely be in the hands of the medical division of a team or university.

Its speed in collecting data makes thermography very useful and powerful in sport. Share on X

The speed of data collection is why thermography is so useful and powerful in sport. Within seconds, an image is captured and digitally saved for further analysis. An entire body can be measured in a few minutes and analyzed just as quickly. In addition to the speed of data capture and analysis, the use of sports thermography has further benefits to the user:

• The process is completely non-invasive and painless.
• Thermography is passive—the athlete requires no active effort to collect data.
• Information can be merged with other data streams for cross-validation.
• Data is longitudinal, so trends and patterns can be extracted from the recordings.

Of course, these customer demands are just the tip of the iceberg, but to me they are the foundational directions that lead to the right answers. Like all data and clinical evaluations, cross-referencing other data is suggested to get to the bottom of the problems faced by professionals.

There are limitations with thermography, as it’s not only an indirect measure of body heat, but many of the possible interpretations are indirect as well. Thus, without careful analysis, the use of thermography is extremely limited. If they don’t have the training and clinical skills, practitioners can’t use sports thermography alone.

Other limitations are also environmental, meaning a protocol must adhere to the requirements of proper data collection. Each athlete must remain still and follow instructions or possible artifacts and interference could occur from outside variables. Cameras are more sensitive than a decade ago, but with technical advancements, the process does increase the demand on compliance with end users. Overall, the challenges of thermography should not be an issue for those who adopt the technology, but it’s only fair to warn you that while the benefits are convenience and speed, the method also comes with responsibilities.

Scientific Evidence for Thermography in Sport

A thorough look at the research on thermography does show problems with the interpretation of skin temperature when used as a summary of an athlete’s health status. I want to embrace those limitations again here, with explanations for why the research is sometimes conflicting and difficult to understand. The first step for new users is to understand the science of heat biologically, and then we advance to sports performance and sports medicine.

The first step for new thermography users is to understand the science of heat biologically. Share on X

Biologically radiating heat is a natural process that constantly adjusts for internal physiological factors that occur in everyday life. An athlete drinking a cold beverage will change their core temperature, and this may or may not change skin temperature. An athlete with poor circulation of the legs may feel cold, while an athlete of similar build and ability may be sweating. Thermoregulation and physical responses are all unique and each athlete should be seen as an individual being with patterns that are unique.

The validity and reliability of skin temperature with healthy athletes is a question that usually comes up early in conversation. My colleagues and I researched this question and we agree that sometimes readings are problematic, and that’s why our software was designed to manage those conditions. It’s not perfect, but with the mortality risks premature infants face, hospitals are investigating FLIR thermographic cameras as a trustworthy approach to real-time monitoring.

Post training or competition requires a different approach to interpretation, as workload and the response to the strains of exercise add more analysis to the process. Highly trained and untrained athletes respond differently to exercise, and subjective monitoring seems to have a relationship with thermography data as well. Case studies on soccer athletes were useful in explaining the recovery time from practice loads, and repeated monitoring may be a great solution for those that play sports where tracking running isn’t as effective, such as baseball and cricket.

Structural differences in athletes can change work rates and overload patterns, such as the equinus and non-equinus conditions of the foot. A current study with soccer athletes demonstrated how thermography can be used with groups of players to monitor the stress on the gastrocnemius and Achilles tendon. Foot eversion was researched as well with runners, but the relationships were too weak to use as a monitoring solution.

Monitoring chronic and acute injury with thermography is where education transforms the technology into a practical and effective strategy. Pre-scanning athletes when limitations are known is useful, especially when measurements are combined with structural modalities such as traditional medical imaging. ThermoHuman’s goal is to make sports thermography a part of every athlete’s routine. I realize it’s a very small part of the picture, but it’s a real opportunity for teams to reduce injuries. Proper training, comprehensive monitoring, and highly educated staff help a successful team win games and reduce injuries, and thermography fits into the methodology. Each year, sports thermography evolves and improves so that it’s faster, more accurate, and less expensive.

In addition to the above scientific references, I recommend reading these declarations by my colleagues in sports thermography.

How Teams Use ThermoHuman

Teams are implementing ThermoHuman to manage complex situations and administer athlete monitoring with greater precision and speed. The best way to apply ThermoHuman is to have it compliment what your team does and not force it to take over the monitoring process.

A medical device is a tool for practitioners, so the process should only expand with the addition of thermal imaging and not really change much. The right way of using ThermoHuman is to integrate it proactively and commit to the system you find is manageable in the long run. A few teams utilize ThermoHuman to handle very complex injuries, such as athletes who have gone through multiple surgeries, but it’s also powerful for large teams that are young and are relatively healthy. Success with ThermoHuman relies on being organized and having a plan.

Sports thermography is most powerful when it’s used continuously. Share on X

The clinical process of integrating sports thermography benefits teams, as it ensures the performance of a best practice with conventional care, and adds in a second round of athlete examination. An initial assessment is useful, as explained earlier, but sports thermography is most powerful when it’s used continuously. Due to the fact it is visual, it may seem to be in the same category as medical imaging, but that is not the case.

Thermography is, again, quantification of physiological responses, and it’s up to the practitioners to determine if false negatives and false positives are due to confounding variables or the limitations of emitted radiation. A thermogram captured over time reveals how injuries and possible pathologies are trending; it doesn’t diagnose the injury or directly predict risk without interpretation and other information.

Sport science is using sports thermography to manage workload responses with more resolution for athletes. We support the concept that player tracking and other technologies are excellent for monitoring load. In addition to the collection of data, statistical evaluation of the workload is also proven to be effective in managing risk. Our issue with those methods is that they are very general and non-specific, making them limited in practice.

For example, a body may fatigue in a pattern that can tell us how a program can be altered so an athlete can practice without increasing risk. Another point is that some athletes who are not load-tolerant are usually held back by an injury or past surgery that’s slow to heal. Therefore, summary models of workload are not useful for veteran athletes, or those who are fit overall but managing a small painful condition.

A few users are privately experimenting with ThermoHuman to assist in recovery approaches. While we educate our users, a strength of ThermoHuman is that we also learn from our users, especially those who are successful and finding original ways to use our service. The collective intelligence enables us to expand our reach and refine the process each year.

How to Work with ThermoHuman

We at ThermoHuman welcome questions and discussion about thermography in sport. We also realize that ThermoHuman is not a great fit for everyone, but do believe that every team can benefit from the power and convenience of thermographic imaging on a routine basis. ThermoHuman won’t do the work for you, but it will streamline and improve the process so that precious time and energy can go toward better support of athletes.

My hope is that the biological sciences help improve the capability of thermography in sport. Share on X

For years, we have seen successful outcomes by working with teams that are proactive and patient with our technology. If you are interested in demonstrations, I recommend watching the videos of our system in practice to understand how convenient our solution is. If you are skeptical about the effectiveness, I welcome you to look at the best available science to become familiar with the potential and limitations of thermography. My hope is that the biological sciences help improve the capability of thermography in sport, and ThermoHuman will be ready for those advancements.

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

Regardless of where you are in your career, the interview process is extremely important. While a lot of colleges offer a career center or similar services to help you organize your resume, there is no blueprint for how to interview for a college strength and conditioning position. In this article, I list ten ways to navigate the interview process professionally and provide examples from my experiences with phone and in-person interviews that will you help you stand out from the pack.

Know What Position You Applied For & Who You Are Talking To

I completely understand and respect that young coaches are applying for 10, 20, or even 30 jobs at a time when trying to land an opportunity. That, however, is not an excuse to avoid doing your homework when you land a phone interview. Without fail, two of the interview questions will be: What do you know about this school, and why are you interested in coming here? I’m always impressed with someone who digs into our athletics mission and vision or did some research on the teams and their success, and I’m equally unimpressed when I get a generic or lazy response.

Here are some recent examples that I’ve heard during phone interviews: “To be completely honest with you, coach, I don’t even know where the school is. Where is it again?” “I have applied to so many jobs, it’s hard for me to keep track.” These can disqualify you immediately. You do not need to recite word for word the department philosophy and the head strength coach’s bio, but try to educate yourself on the school if you want to give yourself a chance.

Research the sport programs' current records, the school location, and conference they compete in, says @GreeneStrength. Share on X

Tip: Research things like the current records of the sport programs, the school location, and the conference they compete in. Also do a Google search to see if the school has received any national attention. It will take you no more than 10-20 minutes and will give you the information necessary to ask the right questions and come off prepared for the interview.

Answer the Phone When Your Time is Scheduled

Answering the phone is the easiest part of the interview, yet some still struggle to do this. I’ve had one candidate ignore the call, then text and say, “can we talk in 20 minutes?” I had another forget the time zone difference when I specified it in the email. Again, this can be an immediate disqualification. If you can’t stick to the time and be punctual for a phone meeting, how can I trust you to do so in the weight room? Keep in mind, coaches may be interviewing 10-20 candidates so it’s easy to eliminate a person if they can’t keep to their time.

Tip: Treat the phone interview as if you were doing an in-person interview. Throw on a suit and take the phone call in a quiet place where you can concentrate. Leave notes out and have a pen and pad ready so you can write down important information. Most importantly, be ready 15 minutes before the interview starts, turn your phone on, and be prepared for the phone call.

Avoid Swearing

It is always a turn off to me when a candidate starts to swear, whether in-person or on the phone. In an interview, you need to act like a professional. If you swear in one of our first conversations, I’ll believe you might do the same in front of a coach or administrator.

Tip: Treat an interview the same way you would if you were meeting your girlfriend’s or boyfriend’s parents for the first time. Even if you felt comfortable in the first 10-15 minutes, you probably wouldn’t start dropping F-bombs at the dinner table. Be sharp.

Have Questions Ready

Having questions ready shows that you did your homework and are interested in learning more about the school, program, and philosophy. Although some of your questions might get answered during the flow of the discussion,spend the time and ask well-thought-out questions that separate you from other candidates.

Questions about the school, program, and philosophy will separate you from other candidates, says @GreeneStrength. Share on X

Tip: Ask questions that show you did your homework. For example, if you see in the bio that the coach running the interview started as a GA and worked their way up to the head position at the same school, ask what their journey was like and how the program has grown during that time. Questions like this will set you apart.

Have a Strategy for When to Ask About Pay

If the first question you ask during a phone or in-person interview is “how much does the position pay?” you run the risk of rubbing the hiring committee the wrong way. This occurs in other professions as well, and it sends the wrong message. If it is a phone interview or in the early stages, your focus should be on learning more about the university and the athletic department; the payment details will come later if you’re fortunate enough to move forward in the process.

Tip: Generally, compensation does not come up during the interview process until you receive an offer. Be patient and research comparable positions and the cost of living in the area so you can professionally and confidently negotiate the salary when you receive an offer.

Dress the Part; When in Doubt, Overdress

Everyone talks about making a great first impression. The first opportunity you’ll have to do so is when you walk into the room for your interview. Whether you’re applying for an internship, GA position, assistant, or director role, dress as if you’re attempting to land your dream job.

Dress well and bring along workout clothes in case you're asked to demonstrate exercises, says @GreeneStrength. Share on X

Tip: Bring a pair of sneakers, shorts, and a t-shirt in a bag. On some interviews, the committee may ask you to demonstrate exercises or invite you to join the staff for a workout, which is a fantastic way to get to know the staff. On one interview I was asked to lead a group on the fly from start to finish, so be prepared for anything.

Do Not Lie on Your Resume

Everyone makes themselves sound a little better on their resumes—I get that. Outright lying, however, will expose you and eliminate you not only from the job you’re applying for, but also for future positions with anyone in that particular coach’s network.

I had a GA candidate list a school as their current job on their resume and went into specific detail on the phone about their experience there, even going so far as to tell me a specific story to make a point about a question I had asked. Little did this candidate know that I had a contact at the school in question, and I immediately picked up the phone to follow up for more information. Come to find out, this candidate had never stepped foot on the campus and was scheduled to start employment there a few weeks later.

I had another candidate take it upon themselves to change their title on their resume. They listed they were the assistant director of strength and conditioning when they were a graduate assistant per their supervisor. Assume the place you are applying is going to call everyone you’ve ever worked for or with during your career—because they will!

Tip: Plain and simple—be honest. Coaches who are hiring across the country are looking for intangibles: hardworking, motivated, and hungry individuals who are passionate and care about the athletes they work with and the job that they do. A slight title adjustment to spice up your internship experience isn’t going to land you the job, but it can prevent you from getting it if the coach does their homework.

Focus your attention on making a huge impact wherever you are, and the staff you work with will go above and beyond to help you. If I have an intern or GA that does a great job for us, I will do everything in my power to help them land their next opportunity. A strong recommendation from your boss or sport coaches is 100 times more valuable than words on a piece of paper.

Come Prepared for Your On-Campus Interview

Find the facility. The opportunity to land an on-campus interview is special. Hundreds and hundreds of resumes are read, and 20-30 phone calls are made before an on-campus interview takes place. Whether you get the job or not, you have a tremendous opportunity to leave a lasting impression. The first step toward making a great first impression is finding the facility!

You’ll likely receive directions to the location—however, most weight rooms on campus don’t come with an address you can throw into the GPS. The last thing you want to do is call the hiring manager while you circle campus trying to find the building. Drive to campus the day before if possible and take your time navigating around so you can find the correct building and avoid any chaos the morning of your visit.

Give a Good Handshake. Another important factor when trying to make a good first impression is how you shake hands. Do not give the “wet noodle” handshake and stare at the floor. Make eye contact and give a firm handshake.

Address the Committee Appropriately. Remembering names is also important during the interview process. Before the interview, look at the agenda for the day and put a face to the names of the people you will meet by reviewing the staff directory on the school’s website. Sometimes you’ll be introduced to someone quickly in the morning before a more formal sit-down with that same person in the afternoon. Keep in mind, this is an interview. If you’re dealing with coaches, always refer to them as “Coach____” and call administrators “Mr._____” or “Ms.____.” Unless someone insists you call them by their first name, stick to these guidelines.

Tailor to the School. Tailor your programs to the school and its sports. I find many people do a nice job of preparing packets or booklets for committee members on the hiring process, and it helps separate you from those who do not. However, take the time to add in the school’s current logos and colors.

When we host candidates for on-campus interviews, I’ll ask them to provide sample programs, and many bring copies of their current school’s programs without adjusting for our school. Additionally, write your sample programs with the sports you might be working with or the coaches that might be on the committee in mind.

For example, if the soccer coach, softball coach, and hockey coach are all on the committee, it would be wise to provide a sample program for each. Something simple like a 4-week off-season plan for soccer, a 4-week in-season plan for softball, and a 4-week speed program for hockey will cover your bases and allow the coaches to see that you can adjust your program based on the demands of the sport and account for different times of the year.

Follow-Ups

Follow-ups go hand-in-hand with first impressions, but they deserve their own section. I have not met another coach or administrator who does not value a follow-up note or an email. Whether it’s a phone call or in-person interview, take a few minutes to follow up with the people you met or spoke with.

I have not met a coach or administrator who does not value a follow-up note or email, says @GreeneStrength. Share on X

I also find the timing is important. It’s best to follow-up the night of the interview or the following day, as you don’t want to wait too long. I also recommend sending a thank you note in the mail to the person running the search and possibly their supervisor in addition to the email (i.e., the head strength coach and the athletic director). It could take a few business days, and a lot of schools have an old-school mail room so it may be even longer. Therefore, the email is critical to send ASAP. Another thing to keep in mind is to personalize each email. Below is an example:

Dear Mr. G,

I want to thank you for taking the time out of your day to meet with me and talk to me about the position at _____ University. It was great to meet you and hear your perspective after 17 years at ________ University. I really enjoyed learning about your mission to transform the life of each student-athlete and your plans to build a brand new indoor facility. It would be an honor to join your team, and I appreciate you considering me for this position. I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Sincerely,

___________

It’s concise and highlights 1-2 things that you spoke about in the interview. Keep in mind many of these people share office space and will talk about the follow-up note you sent to them. If it is a “copy and paste” message sent to each person, it will carry less weight.

You Are Always On an Interview

Whenever I go to a conference or clinic, I make it a point to talk to as many young coaches as possible. When I meet someone who impresses me, I make a note, and when I have a position open or someone in my network does, I may contact them. At the same time, I make a note of those who I feel would not be good candidates for future positions.

Two of the questions I usually ask young coaches at conferences is: Where are you currently and what are some things that you and the staff are doing? It’s disappointing how many young coaches will start talking poorly about their current employer without blinking an eye.

Here are two recent responses:

• “We do a lot of old-school training, but that is because my boss is a dinosaur. I am hoping he retires or leaves.”
• “We do my boss’s program because he is a micromanager. I don’t get to write things the way I want so I am on the hunt for another job. Do you know of anything open?”

These responses came within ten minutes of meeting me and with disregard for the fact that I could have known their supervisor. Loyalty is very important in this business, and every head coach wants to hire loyal staff members.

Loyalty is very important, and every head coach wants to hire loyal staff members, says @GreeneStrength. Share on X

It is the exact reason young coaches get so upset when they apply for 100 jobs and don’t receive a single response. Wrong or right, your two years of experience, ten certifications, and a master’s degree are thrown out the window if the other candidate comes from a trusted colleague or happens to be former athlete or intern.

One day you'll get your shot, you'll have your staff, and you'll want that staff to have your back, says @GreeneStrength. Share on X

The term loyalty is thrown around a lot, but many do not understand how important it is. Keep in mind: one day you will get your shot, one day you will have your staff, and one day you will want that staff to have your back.

Regardless of where you are as an assistant or GA, chances are good you will have things you will want to do differently than your boss does and that’s okay. Make notes of the good things your current supervisor does while also making notes on the things you would do differently. During your work as a GA or assistant start to develop a manual that you would use to manage your department if you were to get the opportunity to be a director.

Starting this process early will build your confidence and prepare you for the future without dwelling on the things you don’t like about your current job. Preparing for what you shouldn’t do is equally as important as preparing for what you should do.

Recap

I listed these examples to share some of the things to avoid during the interview process. The strength and conditioning field is more competitive than ever, with more and more professionals competing for the same jobs around the country. We have all heard the phrase “control what you can control” and that could not be truer for the interview process. If it comes down to you and one other person, don’t let the lack of attention to detail be the reason you don’t land your next job. Final review:

• Know what you are applying for and who you are talking to
• Answer the phone when your time is scheduled
• Avoid swearing and be professional
• Have well-thought-out questions prepared
• Have a strategy for when to ask about pay
• Dress the part
• Do not lie!
• Come prepared for your on-campus interview
• Follow-up
• Loyalty is very important—you are always on an interview

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

At SimpliFaster, our gaze is forward. Training. Technology. Speed. Every day we ask: What are the best ways to go from where you are to where you want to be? As 2018 winds to a close, however, we thought we’d indulge in a rare backward glance to survey the year that was. Even then, in order to know where you’re going, you have to know where you’ve been, so this review will also double as a preview of what to expect from us in 2019.

Every day we ask, ‘What are the best ways to go from where you are to where you want to be?’ Share on X

Whether looking back or looking forward, SimpliFaster offers an accessible platform supporting coaches, athletes, and high-performance professionals along the micro and macro paths of athletic achievement, ranging from “one day better” and autoregulation to Olympic cycles and long-term athletic development. That open platform continues to grow through the ongoing evolution of our blog, the expansion of our online resources, the increasing line of performance equipment available in our web shop, and the broadening scope of our sponsorships and partnerships with leaders in the field.

Where do we go next? Here’s where we’ve been the past 12 months.

SimpliFaster Blog

Chris Korfist kicked off 2018 at SimpliFaster with the phrase “I thought I knew all of the butt exercises” in his post “Top 5 Glute Exercises for Sprinters.” There it is—whether you’re training a slate of elite sprinters or a crew of new clients harboring January 1st resolutions, whatever you thought you knew, there’s always more. Or, at least what you thought you knew can be re-examined, with enough of a different twist to make what was old into something new again. Over the course of the next 12 months, 261 original posts followed, presenting a range of authors, training methods, and performance technologies that would be impossible to do justice to in the space of a few short paragraphs.

When aspiring authors reach out to us and ask what we are looking for on the blog, we tend to respond simply: “Value.” Solutions have enduring value. Here’s a problem, here’s how I tried to solve it, here are the outcomes I observed as a result. Whether the challenge at hand involves general training for sport, properly using high-performance technologies, or specifically developing faster and more explosive athletes, since the answer to most questions in sport is “it depends,” from those simple foundations (problem-solution-outcome), the possibilities are limitless.

When aspiring authors ask what we look for on the SimpliFaster blog, we respond simply: ‘Value.’ Share on X

Through the course of 2018—and anticipating 2019, in turn—that enduring value often came via our regular contributors covering their unique areas of expertise. During the year, we featured Carl Valle’s prolific examinations of industry trends, techniques, and topics (“10 Sport Scientists Strength Coaches Need to Know”); William Wayland’s from-the-trenches programming advice (“7 Upper Back Pulling Exercises for Athletes”); Shane Davenport’s creative methods for integrating new equipment and technology in training (“The Top Accommodating Resistance Methods for Strength Coaches”); and Craig Pickering’s deep dives into cutting-edge sports science and research (“Creatine: Not Just for Muscle”).

Call those the “Big Rocks,” if you will—from those jumping-off points, the SimpliFaster blog in 2018 was further propelled by a diverse mix of returning authors and engaging new voices. We championed thought-provoking posts from continuing favorites such as Cameron Josse, Hunter Charneski, and Ken Jakalski; we also introduced proficient authors making their SimpliFaster debuts, including Jeremy Frisch, Nanci Guest, Carmen Pata, and Cody Roberts. Meanwhile, in our Freelap Friday Five series, we offered weekly interviews with top practitioners sharing their own words on the topics that inspire their passion each day, featuring notable conversations with JB Morin, Ken Clark, Michelle Boland, and dozens more.

In addition to coaching philosophies, exercise selection, and best practices, SimpliFaster is dedicated to the tools and technologies that support these methods on the track, in the gym, on the court, or in the lab. These tools may come with a technical manual, but for those still evaluatingwhether to buy or needing suggestions on how to make the best use of the tools they have, SimpliFaster continues to provide “from the horse’s mouth” articles on how to apply top products available on the market. Among the equipment-based posts on the blog in 2018, we featured Fredrik Correa on flywheel training with the kBox, Sean Smith on neck training with Iron Neck, and Eric Joly on developing speed on the HiTrainer.

Something we missed in 2018? Something to add in 2019? Feel free to send your firsthand insights on training, technology, sports, and speed to [email protected]. We consider new submissions year-round and our editorial team of Rachel L. MacAulay, Jeanie Simoncic, Joel Smith, and Nathan Huffstutter will work to bring your words to life.

SimpliFaster Resources

Back to that concept of value. All the coaching experience and insight in the world is useless without athletes to coach. You don’t need us to tell you that it can be a volatile industry, and in 2018 we added our Job Board to the SimpliFaster platform. It’s an easy-to-navigate, reverse-chronological listing with over 3,000 open positions for sport coaches, PE teachers, sports scientists, strength and conditioning coaches, and interns. Positions in track and field, soccer, volleyball, swimming, tennis, football, basketball, baseball, lacrosse— you name it, across the United States there is a demand for coaching talent.

For both job seekers and job posters, the job board is free to register for and use, with positions sub-categorized by sport and an additional section to post resumes. Visit the job board and see what’s out there.

Beyond the hiring front, in 2018 SimpliFaster also expanded our clinic calendar, featuring a monthly view of USATF educational offerings, TSAC courses, NSCA conferences, CSCS exams, and much more. Have a look to see what’s on the horizon and stay on top of the opportunities available in 2019.

SimpliFaster Store

In 2018, SimpliFaster added more and more products to the line of high-performance technology and equipment available in our online shop. The intent is, once again, value: Products we believe are the “gold standard” in their space, available to coaches, athletes, and performance professionals in a single location, with the customer support and follow-through that are the hallmarks of SimpliFaster.

The SimpliFaster store features high-performance products that are the gold standard in their space. Share on X

In addition to touchstone products like the Freelap timing system, GymAware’s velocity-based training, and Exxentric’s kBox and kPulley, the SimpliFaster store features the ability to browse and buy from 1080 Motion, Assess2Perform, Hawkin Dynamics, HiTrainer, MuscleLab, Swift Performance, PNOE, and more.

Sponsorships and Partnerships

Bringing the year full circle, not only did Chris Korfist write our first post of 2018, but the year was also bookended in part by our sponsorship of the Track Football Consortium’s clinic in Tampa, FL, in mid-December. Leading up to the pre-holiday conference, we featured new posts from event founders Chris Korfist (“Microdosing off the Track and the Tools to Make It Work”) and Tony Holler (“Why Coaches Recruit Speed (But Still Neglect It)”), and helped promote TFC events featuring speakers such as Ken Clark, Ron Grigg, Dan Fichter, and Al Leslie.

In 2018, SimpliFaster also continued our enthusiastic sponsorship of the Just Fly Performance Podcast. Joel Smith’s weekly interview series continues to be one of the most valuable online resources available, providing consistent insight into best practices in training from innovative coaches and professionals in a range of sports. Rather than asking boilerplate questions, Joel directs conversations toward those unique areas where each guest is currently pushing the envelope, providing consistent value to his audience in conversations with the likes of Henk Kraaijenhof, John Kiely, Rob Assise, and Cal Dietz.

Joel Smith’s Just Fly Performance Podcast is one of the most valuable online resources available. Share on X

In this past month, we were also pleased to be a sponsor of the online World Speed Summit, hosted by Tyrone Edge and including sessions on speed training with USC Track & Field Head Coach Caryl Smith Gilbert, ALTIS Sprints and Hurdles Coach Chidi Enyia, and previous SimpliFaster contributors including Derek Hansen and Tony Holler.

In addition to championing those providing educational resources in the field and on the web, SimpliFaster further bolstered our output in 2018 via partnerships with ALTIS and Power Lift, who each began to fill out their own pages on the SimpliFaster blog. Over the previous 52 weeks, ALTIS delivered tips on warm-ups and preparation from Chris Miller, the building blocks for a performance culture from Jason Hettler, and a master class in applying the ALTIS “Kinogram” method from Stuart McMillan and Dan Pfaff.

Meanwhile, under the Power Lift banner, in 2018 our friend and frequent contributor Bob Alejo posted articles on grip strength and game-day lifting. He also served as “master of ceremonies” for roundtable discussions covering topics ranging from power development to supplementation strategies, coordinating conversations with members of the Power Lift Educational Board (including Mike Young, Bryan Mann, and Doug Kalman).

Onward. Forward.

Just as Chris Korfist provided an appropriate kickoff to 2018, Jamie Smith of The U of Strength offered a fitting summation in answering the fifth and final question of our last Freelap Friday Five of the calendar year. (Smith was so comprehensive in his approach to tackling each question that we split the interview into two parts.)

“I look at resistance training and all of the varying weight room movements as tools that play a part in developing a robust and resilient athlete. When coaching an expansive range of different sports and skill levels, it’s essential to have an extensive toolbox.” 

Thank you for being with us on the journey through 2018. We look forward to doing our part in expanding everyone’s toolboxes as we move into the New Year.

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

The commercialization of sport has led to an increased emphasis on getting an edge over the opponent in any (mostly legal) way possible. Historically, this was achieved through improved training techniques aimed at enhancing physical performance or reducing injury rates. Over the last few years, however, there has been a focus on how the backroom staff collects and utilizes data. This has naturally fed into an increased emphasis on how data is used to make decisions, and more and more sport scientists are tending to “borrow” from other disciplines, such as computer science and statistics, to help them make better use of this data.

As a result, we’ve seen a rise of the data scientist—or at least sports scientists that are comfortable in using data—within sport, with some prominent examples being Mladen Jovanovic, whose website I fully recommend, and Sam Robertson, a researcher from Victoria University who is embedded within the Western Bulldogs AFL team as Head of Research and Innovation. Additionally, a number of leading sports organizations, such as the New South Wales Institute of Sport and UK Sport, have recently advertised for data science positions.

People involved in sport should have some idea of what data scientists add to athlete preparation, says @craig100m. Share on X

Consequently, it is probably a good idea for people involved in sport to at least have some idea of what these roles add to the athlete preparation sphere. In this article, I aim to explore machine learning and its close cousin, data mining, in order to shed some light on what information we can expect to gain from these practices that are emerging in sport.

What Is Machine Learning?

First, some definitions. Machine learning refers to the process by which a computer system utilizes data to train itself to make better decisions. So, if we input a set of data—such as that from a GPS system—along with injury data across a season, the software will try to create a model that allows it to predict which players got injured. We can then feed in additional information, such as the next season’s injury data, and the computer will again try to predict injuries—but this time, it will also look for corrections in the calculations it makes in order to enhance its predictions. What calculations were unnecessary, for example, or which data point was given too much weight previously? We can then add more data, such as player wellness scores, ratings of perceived exertion, etc., and the program will continue to make these calculations, refining its output.

The goal of #machinelearning in sport is to be able to predict what will happen in the future, says @craig100m. Share on X

The aim of this is to be able to predict what will happen in the future: for example, which player from your youth team will become a world-class player? Which type of training is best for a given athlete? How likely is a given person to become injured, and how does this change with exposure to specific types of competition or training?

As such, the quality of the prediction is associated with the quality of data that is put into the machine. Garbage data in will lead to garbage data out. This is where the data mining aspect comes in: Data mining is the extraction of patterns (and therefore knowledge), from large amounts of data. It essentially represents the first aspect of efficient machine learning—which parts of data matter, and which can be discarded?

One of the advantages of the machine learning process within sport is that it allows us to better understand non-linear systems. Biological processes tend not to operate in a linear manner: This is important, because if we can only analyze using linear analysis—such as the “r” in standard correlation calculations—this can hamper our understanding of these processes. As a simple example, let’s take the recent work of Tim Gabbett and his development of the Acute:Chronic workload ratio. Based on the findings of a number of papers, we now understand that both too much and too little training are risk factors for injury.

Applying the #machinelearning process in sport allows us to better understand non-linear systems, says @craig100m. Share on X

If we plot this on a graph, with training load on the x-axis and injury risk on the y-axis, it would not be a linear relationship, but rather a curvilinear relationship in the shape of a U. As such, standard statistical methods for understanding this relationship (i.e., a non-linear relationship) are insufficient, and we need to start to build slightly more complex models. Adding more and more data types—such as wellness, age, previous injury history, sleep duration, and other aspects associated with an increased injury risk—increases the complexity of the modeling required.

Predictive Modeling

Another important aspect to consider is the difference between explaining what has happened and predicting what will happen in future. Explaining why an athlete has previously been injured allows us to identify some potential risk factors for this. Age, for example, has been found to be a risk factor for hamstring injury. As a result, we can state that age is associated with hamstring injury in athletes. But can we then use this information to predict future injury? To do this, we need what is termed a “holdout set,” meaning a set of data that has not been used in the previous statistical model to test the predictive power of that model in the future (the data used to create that model is termed the “training” set).

Obviously, in sport, it is far more important to predict what will happen in the future than explain what has happened in the past. A good example of this is a recent paper from the journal Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise. Here, researchers collected data from a group of professional soccer players over the course of five seasons. They collected hamstring injury prevalence and severity, “exposure” time (such as time spent training and playing), anthropometric data, and information on a number of different genes. They then plugged this data into a statistical model, finding that the following were significantly associated with hamstring injury during that five-season period:

• Seven genetic variants
• Previous hamstring injury
• Age (with players over 24 more likely to become injured)

Furthermore, if the researchers selected two players at random, the probability that the player with the higher injury risk (as determined by the model) would be more likely to suffer an injury was around 75%…which is pretty solid. This represents the training data stage.

The next step was to use this model, and its related inputs, to “predict” future injury using holdout data. In this case, the researchers used data from the following season, in which 67 players suffered 31 hamstring injuries. Here, if the researchers selected two players at random, the probability that the player with the higher injury risk (as determined by the model) would be more likely to gain an injury was around 50%, which is essentially the same as flipping a coin—i.e., chance. So, while this model was useful in explaining previous hamstring injury, it did not predict future injury rates well at all.

The strength of any predictive model is enhanced by its total number of data inputs, says @craig100m. Share on X

The reasons for this lack of predictive ability are likely varied. The first is that the strength of any predictive model is enhanced by its total number of data inputs. A model trained on 1,000 players will typically outperform a model trained on 100 players. This is obviously problematic in professional sport, because the average first-team size in most sports varies from 20-50 players, and most teams do not want to share their data.

In individual sports governed by a central federation, it might be easier to overcome the problem of sample size—although, by definition, the prevalence of elite athletes is always going to be very low. Furthermore, sporting injuries are notoriously multifactorial, as demonstrated in a seminal paper by Roald Bahr and Tron Krosshaug. As a result, any statistical model aimed at predicting injury risk would need to have a great number of data inputs that cover the various individual risk factors, while the model used to predict hamstring injury in the paper under discussion only used a limited number.

As a result, it’s clear that, for complex outcomes such as injury risk—which is highly multifactorial in nature—we need a large number and range of data inputs. However, for more “simple” outcomes (and by “simple” I mean affected by a small number of variables), less complex models may hold promise. An example of this is muscle fiber type, which is largely influenced by genetic factors.

Understanding an individual’s genotype may be useful when it comes to selecting various training modalities and variables; but, at present, there is a limited number of available options by which we can achieve this. We could take a muscle biopsy, which is highly invasive and somewhat damaging to the muscle, or we could use some sort of test, such as a vertical jump, to predict muscle fiber type. A recent paper explored the effectiveness of a model utilizing seven different genetic variants to predict muscle fiber type, finding that it was pretty accurate. As a result, for more simple outcomes, such as muscle fiber type, a less complex model can be useful, while complex outcomes often require a complex model. 

From Data to Decision-Making

A further example of how we might be able to utilize machine learning as a way to support better decision-making was reported in a conference paper from late 2017. Here, researchers from Belgium utilized a machine learning tool to optimize training load based on the prediction of session rating of perceived exertion (sRPE). They collected data from 61 training sessions of elite Belgian soccer teams, where the players wore data collection sensors, allowing the researchers to gain insight into metrics such as speed, distance covered, and heart rate.

Additionally, after each training session, the players reported their sRPE for that session. Further inputs, such as environmental temperature, humidity, age, baseline fitness, muscle fiber type, and others were all added to the model. In total, the model performed well, providing coaches with the ability to predict sRPE before the session occurred, which has some obvious benefits: Individual training session load and intensity can be modified prior to the session occurring based on real-time data to ensure that the required outcomes are met.

The use of data mining and #machinelearning in sport holds promise, and has wide implications, says @craig100m. Share on X

Similar results have also been recently reported when attempting to predict the risk of injury in a group of soccer players. Here, the authors utilized a variety of inputs based around individual player anthropology (e.g., height, weight, age), sporting factors (e.g., position), GPS metrics, and various other workload-related aspects, such as previous training load. Their model could detect around 80% of injuries, which is better than currently available estimation techniques.

Additionally, the model had very few false positives; this means that few players who were flagged as being high injury risk went on to not get injured. This is important, because incorrectly suggesting a player is at an increased risk of injury can lead to needlessly missed training sessions, and possibly even missed competitions. A machine learning approach utilizing artificial neural networks has also been shown to correctly predict around 70% of a player’s competitive level (i.e., Premier League vs. Championship) when data such as passing accuracy and shots were utilized. Early research has also been undertaken to explore the use of machine learning in the development of optimal training programs.

Clearly, the use of data mining and machine learning in sport holds promise. If we can predict what will happen in a given circumstance, then we can make interventions to guide us to the desired outcome. This is obviously going to be of great use when it comes to training program design and load management, hopefully improving athlete performance and reducing injury risk. The concept also has wider implications.

For example, these techniques could be utilized when developing tactical frameworks—within a team, which moves and passing networks lead to the greatest success? Data mining can also be used with competition data to better understand the underlying aspects that are most associated with success. For example, if teams that win perform a certain skill better than others, it allows for the use of targeted technical training to ensure that players can effectively execute those crucial skills.

It’s important that coaches and data science specialists speak each other’s languages, says @craig100m. Share on X

This is undoubtedly an area that will grow in the future, as evidenced by the increasing number of data science roles in sport. As always, because sporting success often relies on an effective supporting team, the ability of each support team member to speak each member’s “language” is important. As such, it is potentially important for coaches to at least have a bit of working knowledge around data science, especially at the highest level. However, just as importantly, the data science specialists will have to speak the coach’s language. Given the promise this area holds, I look forward to watching it develop.

Further Reading

Practical prelude to machine learning by Kyle Peterson

Predictive modeling of football injuries by Stylianos Kampakis (PhD Thesis)

Machine and deep learning for sport-specific movement recognition: a systematic review of model development and performance by Emily Cust, et al.

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

Coaches of distance runners should be asking an overarching question, one that is often not mentioned because it seems way too obvious: How does an athlete get better at running? Most leading researchers, physiologists, and coaches will point out various things that coaches need to convey to their runners. But I like to narrow it down to basic, easily remembered concepts that can be expanded on in an equally simple manner:

1. How to use oxygen more efficiently
2. How to improve lactate threshold
3. How to enhance running economy

A bigger and stronger heart that pumps more blood to the muscles makes sense. So does having strong respiratory muscles that can move great amounts of air in and out of the lungs more efficiently. To emphasize this point, early in my coaching career, I had a wrestler who was running cross country to “get in shape.” After admiring a competitor who appeared to glide through three miles to win a big race, the wrestler observed “that kid has balloons for lungs.” Another essential component is the ability to efficiently extract oxygen from the blood by way of muscle cells. Knowing this, coaches can select at least one of these qualities to target in training.

In all of this, there is one component—by way of Owen Anderson’s most recent book, Running Form: How to Run Faster and Prevent Injury—that appears to address what I consider the “elephant in the room” that most coaches probably are aware of but are not sure how to deal with: running economy.

Running Economy

Running economy is the amount of oxygen we use at a given running speed. We can easily make the case that an efficient runner will probably use less oxygen. The reality is that genetics likely has something to do with this, but the amount of oxygen a runner can use effectively without any waste can be influenced by what I refer to as a few key economy indicators.

First, we need to consider what Dr. Jordan Metzl highlights as key economy indicators:

1. The way in which a runner pushes off the ground (vertical oscillation)
2. Arm swing
3. Stride length
4. Ground contact time
5. Stability
6. Number of mitochondria in the muscle cells
7. Strength and efficiency of the cardiovascular and respiratory systems
8. Efficiency of metabolism
9. Neuromuscular coordination

Some of these points fall under what most coaches would call biomechanics. And these same coaches would agree that good running form is economical with no wasted motion. Okay, that sounds great, but what can we do about it? How many coaches are struck when noting that some runners look inefficient but run very fast?

When this happens, we start to consider (probably with good reason) that the way a particular runner looks might be due simply to the way they need to translate the skills of running based on their structural asymmetries and abnormalities that we don’t even know exist. It’s a fair point for coaches to keep in mind: style may indeed be the way runners translate the skill of the sport.

Kaleidoscopic Coaching

At my clinic sessions, I now talk about our need to engage in “kaleidoscopic coaching” for those of us working with distance runners. Meaning, we all know that inside our personal kaleidoscope there are all kinds of shapes and patterns that we call coaching strategies, workout concepts, and enhancement drills.

Rather than fixating on maintaining and considering only one specific pattern, sometimes we need to “turn the tube” so the same pieces emerge in different ways. We might not choose to change what we do, and that’s fine. But at least we can come to accept that other patterns do exist, and sometimes looking closely at the new arrangements can enhance the way we coach our athletes.

I contend that sometimes we need to entertain the possibility that the elephant in the room for distance runners may not really be an elephant but a completely different animal that we don’t fully see because we haven’t “turned the tube” on our kaleidoscope. How a runner looks while running is often due to the traditional way we view mechanics, and that’s precisely why “turning the tube” is so important—we see all the same parts in a somewhat different way.

What Are Good Mechanics?

The classic example of one-way vision is how coaches have long approached the apparent mechanical flaws of Emil Zatopek, the great “Czech Locomotive.” But was Zatopek a mechanically-flawed runner who simply learned how to translate the skill of running despite the shortcomings in his form? Zatopek’s incredible success in distance running should lead us to consider that mechanics is not simply style of form and that perhaps we’re overlooking the idea that the mechanics we consider essential are not even the right ones—and in fact may be an entirely different animal.

As Owen Anderson suggests, “shouldn’t a definition of proper form go beyond smooth activity and control of the torso? Should it also include precise mention of how the feet, ankles, and legs are functioning with actual scientific numbers placed on joint and leg angles, limb positions and movements, and foot angles at initial contact with the ground?”

If forward propulsion comes from what the legs are doing, shouldn’t we focus on lower limb actions? asks @Zoom1Ken Share on X

Most coaches will say it’s difficult to do such a complicated analysis outside a locomotion lab, but perhaps we’re missing the whole point. If forward propulsion really results from what the legs are doing and not what the upper movements appear to reveal, shouldn’t we focus on the lower limb actions?

And this is what I believe Owen Anderson attempts to explain in his book.

Midfoot Landing

So what are the characteristics of the mechanics animal we need to identify? Here is what more and more researchers and biomechanists appear to agree on: a midfoot landing underneath the runner.

What do we need to identify? The midfoot landing underneath the runner, says @Zoom1Ken. Share on X

Why? First, this landing will reduce stress, and mechanical stress can lead to injury. Second, a midfoot strike makes for a shorter ground contact time. When a runner’s heel strikes, their foot hits the ground in front of their center of mass. We observe that the leg is straighter, and this straight leg results in a braking action. The foot landing so far forward from the runner forces them to pull their body forward instead of pushing off the ground.

The bottom line: Zatopek, most known for winning gold medals in the 5K, 10K, and Marathon in the 1952 Olympics, won because, as Anderson points out, “his legs and feet interacted with the ground in very positive ways, but this has never been mentioned in the examination of his form.”

To deal with this elephant in the room, we should first verify that it is indeed an elephant before we consider correcting its trunk position.

References

Anderson, Owen. Running Form: How to Run Faster and Prevent Injury. Human Kinetics, 2018.

Metzl, Jordan D., and Claire Kowalchik. Running Strong: The Sports Doctor’s Complete Guide to Staying Healthy and Injury-Free for Life. Rodale, 2015.

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 this three-part series, I explore 10 different research questions that I feel sports science could make a big difference by attempting to answer—and in many cases, is close to doing so. In Part 1 and Part 2, the questions I explored were:

1. Is a low-carb, high-fat diet effective for athletes?
2. Is caffeine really ergogenic for everyone?
3. Are isometric loading exercises as effective as eccentric loading exercises for hamstring injury prevention?
4. What effect does the gut microbiome have on athletic performance?
5. Can we develop real-time markers of exercise adaptation?
6. Can we use genetic testing to predict talent?
7. Do sports supplements have an additive effect, or is there a ceiling?

Obviously, I have my own biases, and some of these areas are from the fields in which I hold a strong interest, but I have tried to cast the net as wide as possible. For each question, I’ve provided:

• A brief review of what we know so far.
• Why it’s important to know more.

My expectation is that, over the next 10 years, we will get closer to more concrete answers in many of these.

Are the ‘Proven’ Effects of Ergogenic Aids and Training Interventions the Same for All Populations?

How science works is that you recruit a group of people—commonly termed “the sample population”—and then conduct your research intervention on them. Because researchers often require subjects who are somewhat similar in order to minimize sources of variation within the results, this often leads to certain groups of people being underrepresented within sports science research. As an example, men and women mightmetabolize caffeine differently, and females potentially metabolize caffeine differently at different stages of their menstrual cycles. As a result, most researchers tend not to recruit females into research exploring the use of caffeine, because they can’t easily figure out at which stage of the menstrual cycle their subjects may be at, or whether their use of oral contraceptives is affecting the results.

Is this a problem? Simply put, yes. Approximately half of the population of the world is female, and, accordingly, roughly half of all elite athletes are female. Yet, in many cases, we don’t fully understand how various interventions affect this sizeable population because they are so underrepresented within sports science research. Indeed, a recent study reported that less than 40% of subjects within sports science research were female.

Similarly, elite athletes are, by definition, quite rare. Very few individuals have the ability and luck to be able to perform at the highest level, and when they do, they’re unlikely to want to take part in research studies that may harm their performance. As a result, researchers find it very hard to conduct research, especially intervention studies, on elite athletes; consequently, elite athletes are comparatively underrepresented within sports science research.

Elite athletes are unlikely to participate in research studies that may harm their performance, says @craig100m. Share on X

Is this problematic? Well, we don’t really know as it hasn’t been extensively studied, but there is at least some research that suggests elite, well-trained athletes gain more of a benefit from caffeine, and less of a benefit from other ergogenic aids such as beetroot juice. This means that, if you’re working with an elite athlete, in many cases the research on which you’re basing your decisions is perhaps not valid in the athletes you coach.

This in and of itself isn’t necessarily a major problem; sports science doesn’t exist just to enhance athletic performance, but can also be a method to improve the health of a wide range of individuals by guiding training program design and nutritional interventions. But here, again, we can run into problems; because most researchers are based at a university, there is a tendency to recruit university students to exercise intervention studies—and these subjects don’t necessarily accurately reflect the wider population.

All told, we clearly need more research in underrepresented subjects within sports science. This is especially true for female subjects, notwithstanding the issues researchers face in controlling for the menstrual cycle, and elite athletes, again keeping in mind that the recruitment of such athletes can be difficult. By being able to understand these, and other, populations, we will be better able to make evidence-led recommendations, and support practitioners who work closely with these people, enabling them to (hopefully) make better decisions.

Why Does This Matter?

Many different populations of people, especially females and elite athletes, are underrepresented within sports science research. Crucially, some evidence indicates that both groups respond differently to certain interventions, suggesting a need for more targeted research on these populations in order to better extrapolate the data from current studies and enhance their performance and health.

Can We Predict Exercise Response?

When coaches give a training program to their athletes, they are essentially making a prediction, stating that “I believe this is the best training program for you at this time.” If the training program leads to improvement in the athlete, then the coach is seen to be successful—even though we don’t know if the athlete could have gained greater improvements from a separate training program. Conversely, if the athlete doesn’t improve, then the coach can alter the training stimulus for a second training block, with the updated prediction that “I now believe that this training program is the best for you at this time.” As a result, happening upon the optimal training program for a given athlete is often a process of trial and error, with many things tested, and the ones that are perceived to work sticking, along with a large helping of luck.

One of my interests is in trying to understand whether we can predict this exercise response; that is, can we determine how much someone will improve with an exercise training program before they undertake that training program? If we can gain the ability to do this, then we can remove the trial and error process, and match athletes to the training most suited to them.

If only it were that easy.

First, a little bit of background. Since the mid-1980s, it has been demonstrated through research that not everyone gets the same improvements from exercise. Most famously, this was shown in the HERITAGE Family Study, where researchers recruited 720 subjects to a 20-week aerobic training program, putting them through a wide variety of pre- and post-training tests. Here, the results showed that, while on average, VO2 max (a measure of aerobic fitness) improved by around 380 mL O2, some subjects improved by over 1000 mL O2, while others showed no improvement (and, in actual fact, appeared to get less fit due to training—which makes no sense and is most likely measurement error).

This was also true for various health markers tested for, such as fasting insulin; most people improved, but some more than others, while others got worse. Similar results have been shown following resistance training: after a 12-week training block in one study, the mean improvement in 1RM was 54%, but varied from 0% to 250%.

The cause of the variation between individuals in response to a training program is as yet unknown, says @craig100m. Share on X

It’s clear, therefore, that there is the potential for considerable variation between individuals in response to a training program. As a result, a big question that needs answering here is “What are the causes of this variation?” We can essentially boil these causes down to two factors: “true” and “false.” “False” factors refer to things such as measurement error and random biological variation, which make it look like there is variation, when actually there isn’t (if you’re interested, this is probably the best paper on the subject).

How much of the variation in response to a stimulus is “false” is open to debate. Nevertheless, we also know that there are a number of aspects that lead to “true” (i.e., real) inter-individual variation between subjects in response to a training stimulus. In a 2017 paper, I categorized these as genetic, environmental (i.e., non-genetic), and epigenetic, and I wrote about these for SimpliFaster here. Genetics play an important role in how much an individual responds to exercise, with studies tending to find that around 50% of the variation between individuals in exercise-related traits is due to heritable factors. The other roughly 50% is therefore down to aspects such as nutrition (getting enough energy, protein, and micronutrients), sleep, and psycho-emotional factors, such as the stress levels of an individual.

In theory, if we can ensure that everyone achieves the optimal environmental factors, such as getting enough sleep and adequate nutrition, then that should help to maximize adaptation to a given training program. This leaves us with genetic factors, which, explaining around 50% of the variance in response to exercise, are clearly important; if we could understand which genetic factors explain the variation in response, and we know the genetic makeup of a given athlete, could we use this information to predict the training response?

There isn’t a great deal of research in this field, which is why I’ve identified it as a potentially important route for future research. Some studies have looked at individual genes, such as ACTN3, the famous “speed gene.” Here, it appears that individuals with a certain type of this gene respond better to high-load resistance training (i.e., lifting heavy weights), and it may also play a role in post-exercise recovery and risk of injury. A few other studies have looked at the impact of other individual genes, but the relative effect size of any individual gene on training adaptation is likely to be small. Instead, we need to identify an increased number of genes, and combine them into a single score

This is what a study in which I was an author did; here, we used the results of 15 different genes to determine whether people would respond better to high- or moderate-intensity resistance training. We then gave around half the subjects the “correct” training, and half the “incorrect” training, for an eight-week period. After the training period was completed, those who had undertaken the “correct” training, as determined by their genetics, demonstrated around three times the improvement in a countermovement jump test than those who had undertaken the “incorrect” training.

These results were both praised and criticized in equal measure, and it’s important to keep in mind that they require replication. However, they do suggest there is promise to such an approach, especially when we consider that other researchers have shown the use of similar methods to predict the response to aerobic training. Like using genetic testing to predict talent (explored in Part 2 of this series), there are ethical concerns regarding the use of genetic tests for training prescription.

It’s not just genetics that holds promise in this area. A second potentially promising biomarker is that of microRNA (miRNA). In order to adapt to exercise, our body has to produce new proteins. These proteins can themselves drive adaptation, or form part of a new structure; for example, in skeletal muscle hypertrophy, the body produces proteins that form part of the muscle, allowing it to grow.

At the cellular level, these proteins are produced from DNA. Our body “reads” this DNA, creating messenger RNA (mRNA), which travels to the ribosome, which “reads” the mRNA and creates the new protein. miRNA appears to affect this process by breaking down or destabilizing the mRNA before it can be read (among other processes), altering the expression of a given protein from a given gene. miRNAs appear to impact the adaptation to training.

As an example, researchers from a 2011 study recruited 56 men to a 12-week resistance training program, comprised of five resistance training sessions per week. They then identified the top and bottom 20% of responders in terms of increases in muscle mass, and compared differences in miRNA signature between the two. They found that three miRNAs were downregulated in low responders, and one miRNA was downregulated in the responders.

The ability to predict the response to exercise is an area requiring further research, says @craig100m. Share on X

If we can better understand whether baseline (i.e., pre-training) levels of miRNA affect the response to a training stimulus, then miRNA profiling might be useful, although at present it requires either a blood test or muscle biopsy, which may not be palatable to all. Nevertheless, the ability to predict the response to exercise is an area requiring further research, as doing so should enhance the training process quite substantially. A further understanding of the contributors to variation in training response is required here, as is the development and validation of predictive panels utilizing this information.

Why Does This Matter?

Designing training programs is essentially a matter of prediction: Coaches match athletes to the training techniques they believe will yield the greatest improvements, and then refine via trial and error. If we can predict the response to a certain type of training before that training occurs, then we may be able to more readily match athletes with the training type that will promote the greatest adaptations, and hence improve performance to a far greater extent.

Are Low Doses of Caffeine Optimally Ergogenic?

I’ve already discussed in this series how caffeine is the most established, and most used, performance-enhancing drug in sport. And, best of all, it’s legal. However, even with all the research conducted on caffeine, and even with the wide use of this ergogenic aid, there are still a number of unanswered questions regarding the practical side of its use by athletes.

One of these is the impact of individual variation on caffeine, which I covered in Part 1 of this series, as well as in this paper. A second one is whether habitual caffeine intake reduces the subsequent performance-enhancing effects of caffeine (which I discussed in this paper); the surprising thing is, we don’t really know. Finally, we don’t necessarily know which dose of caffeine is optimum for performance—and we likely never will know, given how much variation there will be between individuals as to what an optimum caffeine dose is.

Nevertheless, most caffeine guidelines suggest that the optimum caffeine dose is roughly 3-6 mg/kg of body weight, with no additional benefit of doses greater than 9 mg/kg of body weight. In 2014, Lawrence Spriet published a hugely influential review paper on the impact of lower doses of caffeine—typically 3 mg/kg or less—on performance. The main finding was that these low doses of caffeine, while not as extensively studied as higher doses, likely did exert ergogenic effects, most notably in aerobic endurance events.

What I’m interested in understanding is whether these low doses of caffeine offer similar performance-enhancing effects as more typical higher doses of caffeine. This is a potentially important question; high doses of caffeine can exert a number of side effects that may negatively impact sports performance, such as increased anxiety, gastrointestinal discomfort, and poor quality sleep following training or competition, which may negatively affect recovery. If these lower caffeine doses are as ergogenic as higher doses, then athletes susceptible to these negative side effects can just take less caffeine for the same performance improvement.

Conversely, if any athlete is using caffeine to enhance their performance, then they want the caffeine to increase performance as much as possible. For example, a runner before a competition could choose between 2 mg/kg and 5 mg/kg for their caffeine dose. If both lower and higher doses are optimally ergogenic, then they can pick the dose based on preference. However, if 2 mg/kg, while ergogenic, is not as performance-enhancing as 5 mg/kg, and they can tolerate this higher dose, then they should choose that higher dose.

The optimal dose of #caffeine will likely vary from athlete to athlete and between events and sports, says @craig100m. Share on X

So, are there any differences between lower and higher doses of caffeine, in terms of their performance-enhancing effects? It’s hard to draw really firm conclusions from the research. If we return to Spriet’s seminal paper on the topic, I count 14 studies that used a low caffeine dose and utilized a performance test (as a brief aside, I always prefer it when caffeine studies explore the impact of caffeine on some aspect of performance, such as time to cover a distance, time to exhaustion, or similar, as opposed to measuring fat oxidation rates or ratings of perceived exertion). Of these 14, only four directly compared a low caffeine dose with a higher caffeine dose, and of these four, we get contrasting results—two find that increasing the caffeine dose enhanced performance to a greater extent, while two found that both the lower and higher caffeine doses enhanced performance to the same extent.

In short, there is a relative lack of trials comparing low and higher caffeine doses for their respective performance-enhancing effects, and these trials often have conflicting results. By increasing the number of studies exploring this question, we should getter a better idea of which type of caffeine dose is most optimal for athletes, allowing us to better inform their pre-training and pre-competition caffeine strategies.

Why Does This Matter?

Because caffeine is such as well-established and well-replicated (and legal!) performance enhancer, many athletes consume it. However, we’re not quite clear on the optimal dose yet, and, more realistically, it’s likely that the optimal dose will vary from athlete to athlete, and between events and sports. Recent research has shown that lower doses of caffeine—defined as 3 mg/kg or less—can be ergogenic, but it’s not yet fully clear whether such doses are as ergogenic as the more commonly recommended 3-6 mg/kg. Fully understanding this will enable athletes to be better informed as to the optimal caffeine dose for them, enhancing performance.

There’s Still Some Way to Go

While it is tempting to think that we pretty much know all there is to know within sports science, hopefully some of the points I’ve raised in this series demonstrate that we have some way to go before this is true. This is a good thing: The use of sports science has been instrumental in enhancing performance over the last 20 to 30 years, and has even spilled over into improving the health of non-athletes. Given the progress we’ve made so far, further enhancing our knowledge in these areas will allow us to improve health and performance to an even greater extent.

The use of sports science has been instrumental in enhancing performance over the last 20-30 years, says @craig100m. Share on X

Finally, this list isn’t exhaustive, and represents areas in which I have the most interest. I’d love to hear from you as to the questions you’d appreciate gaining some answers for from the field of sports science.

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 elite sports, athletes maintain an incredibly hectic schedule throughout the calendar year. During the season, they spend the bulk of their time on competitive games, practices, and general maintenance, while during the off-season, top performers will spend upwards of 20 hours per week preparing for the physical demands of the upcoming season. For college athletes, you can add time required for academics, “voluntary” workouts, and team functions. It’s pretty easy to see why these high-level athletes are constantly teeter-tottering along the edge of overtraining.

To keep top players healthy and performing throughout the season takes an experienced coach who understands their athletes and knows when to push harder as well as when to pull back on the volume and intensity. With this in mind, here are a few suggestions I’ve seen of how coaches monitor their players to better understand when they should crack the whip to push their players or pull the reins and allow them to rest.

Wearable Technology

One of the most popular ways coaches monitor their athletes is using wearable technology. There are tons of different athletic wearable gadgets on the market today that track various markers of performance and recovery. Some of the most popular options are sleep trackers, GPS/accelerometers, EMG garments, and heart rate monitors.

Sleep Trackers

Assuming they’re feasible for your team, sleep tracking devices can be an important piece to understanding how your athletes approach recovery (or their lack thereof). One of the better products I’ve seen is Whoop, which analyzes recovery, strain, and sleep. If you notice one of your players underperforming on a consistent basis, this tracking device can help you isolate the cause. Generally, an athlete who averages less than 7 hours of sleep over an extended period of time is not going to perform at their best.

GPS Devices

GPS tracking data helps a coaching staff understand different performance metrics (miles run, speed, etc.) during a match or practice and can provide insight into the stress placed on their players since, theoretically, more distance equals more stress. There are several companies in this market, with Catapult Sports being the oldest and most well-known.

One of my criticisms of GPS devices, however, is the implicit assumption that distance equals stress on the athlete, as different body types, genetics, and anthropometrics play a much greater role than a strictly quantitative measure of distance. For example, if a football lineman and a wide receiver each run a mile, the distance is the same, but the stress and fatigue each incurs is incredibly different.

EMG Garments

EMG garments have appeared on the sport technology scene over the last year or so and allow us to directly observe how much stress we’re putting on an athlete’s muscles both in real-time and from practice to practice. The previous scenario of a lineman and a wideout each running a mile shows how EMG is so valuable because it accounts for the differences in body type, genetics, and anthropometrics; it directly measures the stress that an athlete’s muscles undergo. Using GPS, we would not see differences in stress, but with EMG we see much greater stress placed upon the lineman as he fatigues as opposed to the wide receiver.

One of the most accurate and reliable companies I’ve seen and started using with my athletes in this space is Athos, which provides EMG compression apparel that mainly monitors muscular stress and muscular balance—think Under Armour and a medical grade EMG combined. I use it to establish baselines on my athletes from a stress and balance standpoint before monitoring them over time to either progress or regress my programming based on the goals for that individual athlete.

Also, the  real-time biofeedback helps my athletes self-assess whether they’re executing a movement correctly and then self-correct much quicker than external cues alone. Self-assessment and correction like this allow the athlete to build more efficient movement patterns, which in turn, helps them improve performance and reduce their risk of injury.

To get the most out of wearable tech, coaches must be realistic and have a plan. Share on X

Ultimately, wearable technologies are becoming a fixture in elite sport performance, but to get the most out of the technology coaches need to be realistic about what they want to measure and, most importantly, have a plan for how they want to implement the technology with their athletes.

I suggest coaches do some research before purchasing new technology to find the right equipment for their team and organization, as there are many companies out there that tend to overpromise and underdeliver on their marketing claims.

Subjective Questionnaires

Another great way to monitor athlete wellness—and one of the simplest—is a basic questionnaire that takes account of how your athletes feel at a particular moment. An old school method for sure, but it works and helps you get an idea of where your team and each athlete is on a given day.

The form will differ from program to program, but I suggest you have your athletes fill out a series of basic questions before every training session. Questions can include: “How many hours of sleep did you get last night?” “Do you have any areas of your body that are hurting?” and “How do you feel on a scale of 1-10?”

The questions should be specific and easily quantifiable. You don’t want an athlete just to say they’re “feeling okay.” Numbers are valuable and allow you to compare an athlete’s response from day to day. The questions should be the same every single day so you can monitor changes and trends over time to adjust training as needed.

I use questionnaires to decide if I should push an athlete on a given day. Share on X

I especially like to use these questionnaires for deciding if I should push an athlete on a given day. For example, if an athlete indicates they’re at a 9-10 or 10-10, I’ll talk with them to try to gauge the validity of that number before using that session as an opportunity to push their boundaries a little, depending on where we are in the season.

If we’re in an off-season strength and hypertrophy block, I might try to push the athlete by increasing the volume or intensity of the lift, whether by adding sets and reps, pushing a PR in a given lift, or progressing an exercise to challenge the athlete.

If we’re in an in-season maintenance block, I might use it as an opportunity to get some additional maintenance or skill-specific work done while keeping in mind the athlete’s upcoming game and practice schedule. How you push the athlete when they’re feeling good will always, first and foremost, depend on the individual athlete, where they are in their season, and their training priorities.

For tips on building questionnaires for your athletes, check out this article by Iowa assistant strength coach Cody Roberts where he dives into “Dos and Don’ts for Athlete Wellness Questionnaires.”

Performance Measures

Finally, a very common way to gauge how your athletes are feeling on a given day is by using established “baseline” metrics for different performance markers and then monitoring how far each athlete deviates from that baseline before or during a particular training session.

For example, if a football lineman with a 400-pound max bench is struggling with reps of 315 pounds, he’s probably feeling a little worn down—or worse, there may be an underlying injury. Either way, it’s an indication to back off the volume or intensity for the day and investigate further.

It doesn’t really matter what performance measure you use, only that the measure makes sense for your sport. A bench press, for example, probably wouldn’t give great insight to how a baseball player is feeling.

Resting heart rate is an easy performance measure that's useful across different sports. Share on X

A performance measure I like that’s easy to measure and can be useful across different teams regardless of sport is resting heart rate (HR). Once again, establishing a baseline and monitoring deviations is the key to success. After you’ve established a baseline resting HR, if an athlete shows up on a given day with a significant increase, they’re likely not in a good position to be pushed throughout the day’s training regardless of whether that increase is attributed to overtraining, dehydration, or general stress.

Here are some best practices from the Mayo Clinic for measuring and recording restingHR in your athletes.

Wrapping It All Up: Collect as Much Data as Possible

With any monitoring strategy, the goal is to better understand where your players are on any given day. The better you understand your players, the easier it is to gauge objectively how ready they are to train or play.

Ideally, we’d like to have as much data as possible, but more data does not always equal better data, and sometimes a “less is more” approach can be the key difference with the teams and organizations that use these strategies successfully versus the ones that do not. At the end of the day, our goal as strength and conditioning professionals is to find which data allows us to move the needle regarding player performance and availability in our individual sport.

By correctly implementing some of the monitoring strategies above, coaches better understand their players each season and, in turn, know how to more effectively adjust practice and training to win more games.

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 coaches might be aware of isoinertial training (horizontal) from the VersaPulley, which was introduced nearly 20 years ago. I was not aware of its popularity then, as I was training and not yet even considering coaching. More recently, the kBox helped put flywheel training back in the spotlight, and the systems from Sweden and Spain are huge here in the States.

Only use the #kPulley for an exercise after an athlete has mastered the traditional movement, says @ShaneDavs. Share on X

At Exceed Sports Performance, we got our hands on a kPulley in the middle of the 2018 summer off-season, and after a few days it became a part of our training. Since we already had a kBox at our disposal and an idea of what we liked and disliked, we decided to whittle down a list of exercises to the ones that made the most sense and wasn’t just about adding isoinertial training to an exercise better suited for conventional barbells and dumbbells. Creating the list was a hard process, because choosing your favorites and what may be best for others isn’t an easy task. This piece covers my five top exercises, with ways to do them better and how to determine when athletes are ready to perform them.

How I Created the List

I briefly touched upon flywheel exercises in a couple of previous articles, but kept the information pretty basic and straightforward. This piece will outline a few less-obvious choices and some potential options with which we are currently experimenting. We are lucky enough to have some research-grade sports tech at hand and will use it more to determine the efficacy of these movements. For now, the movements have passed the look and feel tests and have taken up a useful spot in our programming. We don’t typically just throw in some flywheel exercises, as that would be fairly lazy in my opinion, but we aim to replace or alter movements because of a specific need, and the kPulley and other flywheel tools create a unique opportunity for us.

All of the exercises can be done using traditional cables and elastic bands if needed, but the training effect won’t be the same. Four of the five movements require the athlete to aggressively overload the eccentric portion with an inflated concentric force, while the fifth (shoulder) should be strict during the entire exercise. As always, I would encourage any coach to come up with their own list based on experience, clientele, and specific needs, but we are sure there is value in the movements I list here.

Single Arm Eccentric Cheat Rows

Although it will seem like there are only two lower body exercises on this list (the rest being spine and shoulder training or rehabilitation options), almost all of them incorporate the lower body to create the necessary force to make them worth doing. What really makes the kPulley special is its use in horizontal pulling exercises that triple as oblique and adductor training as well. Although an athlete can do a simple row, and that is likely valuable for some of them, we much prefer the flywheel cheat row.

You can use a #kPulley in horizontal pulling exercises that triple as oblique and adductor training, says @ShaneDavs. Share on X

This exercise is great because it gives purpose to a movement that many athletes are already trying to do. How many times have we seen athletes do dumbbell rows with a little too much weight and somewhat “clean” the weight up? Plenty. Now we have a reason to let them cheat, assuming they know what an honest row should look and feel like. I believe this movement is actually much more of an anti-rotation/rotational core movement than just a simple row, and what makes this exercise special is that gravity isn’t limiting the technique and loading. “Cheating” can be taken to the next level and the forces acting upon the body are atypical of traditional weight training exercises.

Video 1. The amount of cheating can range from small assistance to total body exploitation of momentum creation. Coaches can experiment with how strict the eccentric portion of the lift is.

When an athlete performs the movement, they should use leg drive and a little bit of rotation to create the momentum and accelerate the handle concentrically. Then, they should control eccentrically using the lats, muscle groups surrounding the shoulder, obliques, and everything connected to the floor. Partial squat, half-kneeling, split stance, or any other method of ground contact will work, provided you can use the leg drive effectively. Most of the time, the exercise grooves into a pattern that is both safe and effective as a row and an anti-rotation pattern.

Rotational Chops with Triceps Ropes

The issue with most rotational movements is the lack of eccentric balance. Although the follow-through of rotational throws with medicine balls does have incidental eccentric contractions, the overload isn’t as high as you can create with flywheel training. In order to get a real bang for your buck, you need to cheat with skill and athleticism. Compensation cheating or fatigue-style degradation in technique is bad news, but a coordinated intentional cheat is what we are looking for with rotational chops.

Video 2. The goal with chops is to drive the force from the legs, so the receiving phase of the exercise is more demanding than traditional movements. The trunk is an excellent joint system to transfer force, but think ground up.

Receiving a true eccentric overload means athletes must create concentric momentum with a technique that uses the entire body. With most of the exercises listed, we want athletes to use a different technique to create momentum and a strict technique to receive the eccentric forces. If you’ve done your homework on baseball players or any rotational athlete, you’ll fully understand that forces are created from the bottom up. The ground is important and footing is paramount. If you need to add a wedge or a foot bar to create the force, go for it. The initiation of the exercise does start with a leg drive, but concentrically it finishes with a swing, so the athlete can be immediately ready to receive the forces in the proper body position.

Forces are created from the bottom up: The ground is important and footing is paramount, says @ShaneDavs. Share on X

Ropes are great attachments for rotational work. We use triceps ropes and prefer a single arm attachment using an overhand grip. We instruct the athlete to keep their hands close to them during the concentric phase of the movement and (usually) let the hands drift away during the eccentric portion. Similar to a Pallof press, the exercise has more torque as the hands extend farther away.

Once you gain efficiency in the strict chop, you can add a step or rotation during the concentric phase. You can step forward and to the side with the concentric phase as a conservative progression or alternative. Whether you stick with a strict movement or utilize the step, the chop is a great tool for tackling heavy eccentric force to the obliques and groin.

Eccentric Overload Hamstring Curl

We employ a lot of hamstring equipment at our facility, and most have a specific function and use. The same goes for the kPulley’s involvement in our hamstring work. I need to make the point that one exercise is never a cure-all or silver bullet for hamstrings. If you read the research, hamstring training seemed to be all about EMG years ago; now it’s about lengthening and eccentrically preparing hamstrings for sport. Don’t follow the leader: Diversify your program and train hip extension, knee flexion, and both simultaneously to ensure you cover the bases. As I mentioned before, we use flywheels to improve upon or replace a movement when it creates a better alternative than traditional options.

Video 3. Coaches should start off with the two legs up and two legs down before moving to two legs concentric and one leg eccentric. The rolling devices today are available from a few equipment manufacturers.

A popular technique in flywheel training is the “two-up and one-down” concept that most coaches are familiar with. Before isoinertial training became popular again, veteran coaches used two legs to lift the weight up before lowering the weight down with one leg when performing hamstring curls and RDLs. As with the row and chops listed above, adding technique variation to the concentric portion of the lift to overload the eccentric portion is just as valuable and effective as the two-to-one method, and the kPulley and kBox are perfectly set up for such.

I use #flywheels to improve or replace a movement when it’s a better choice than traditional options, says @ShaneDavs. Share on X

I believe there are five major exercises (and a few variations of each) for the hamstring using the kPulley that are effective, and each has a different setup and function. For this piece, I focus on the supine bridge hamstring curl, as it’s one of the most popular methods for training hip extension (statically) and knee flexion (dynamically) in rehab or training settings. There are much better options for training true hip extension, but the supine bridge hamstring curl plays an important role in our training program and is worth exploring a bit. Supine bridge curls do have eccentric benefits, but lack a true closed chain quality, so we consider them a high-priority assistance exercise rather than a main option for performance.

Whether you use a slideboard (towel, slide disc) or a wheeled implement, there are four ways to train the bridged hamstring curl. No bridge, bridge after concentric, bridge during eccentric and concentric, and two-to-one lowering. As for the topic of eccentric overload, the concentric (no bridge) to eccentric (with bridge) is our method of choice, and if you try it I’m sure you’ll agree.

Shoulder Reconditioning with Eccentric Forces

Narrowing down all the shoulder-specific exercises to just one option or movement isn’t very fair, so it’s easy to get upset that I didn’t pick external rotations or another arm care flavor of the week. The shoulder is an interesting joint in the PT world, and every year sees a change as to the best exercises for preparing the overhead athlete for sport and reducing injuries. By the time this article is posted online, I’m sure the best practice with shoulder rehabilitation and training will have changed again. Yesterday’s rotator cuff exercise will fade into tomorrow’s scapular stability training and then to something else later. Just like the principles of good ACL prevention, good training will help keep the healthy prepared.

Video 4. The external rotation range of motion is based on skill and individual anatomy. Build the range of motion up carefully and gradually over time.

We don’t do much additional training to the shoulder, but we do know that the rotator cuff, even with a well-trained athlete, may not be fully maximized. There are dozens of exercises for the shoulder and arm, but the primary recommendation is that everything is performed strict and you only use the kPulley after an athlete has mastered the traditional movement.

We have a few movements that we tend to gravitate to the kPulley for, but the good old half-kneeling external rotation (ER) can be recognized by many and is still broadly accepted. The key here, as with the other exercises listed, is that you create a little more momentum/concentric force using a variation of the technique and then quickly get into the proper technique to control the eccentric portion. An added bonus of the flywheel ER movement is that the transition from a face pull or row to an ER involves a bit of dynamic stabilization, which most studies have shown to be more important than simply strengthening the cuff.

Prepare a program that utilizes appropriate methods—not just the methods that sell to the masses, says @ShaneDavs. Share on X

Athletes with great corrective exercise routines and poor prime mover strength never succeed in sport. The opposite is often found in the training room or on the surgeon’s table. Be smart and prepare a program that utilizes appropriate methods—not just the methods that sell to the masses. Giving lots of funky exercises is like giving out full candy bars during Halloween—it may make you popular around the block, but it’s not the best practice for your nutrition program. Make sure your shoulder diet follows the same principles as your eating: well-rounded and balanced, with less junk.

My last recommendation with external rotation and scapular retraction exercises is to make sure you work with a very good sports medicine professional who is involved with football, javelin, and other throwing sports, not just baseball. Having a therapist who isn’t afraid to do anything overhead, while having the responsibility for throwing athletes such as quarterbacks and track athletes, has helped us tremendously. Sometimes it’s good to put aside the therapeutic bands and light dumbbells, and load the shoulder group with enough fortitude that it’s actually trained.

Knee Extension

Since I mentioned ACL prevention above, it’s worth noting that we deal with plenty of knee issues and “rehab” at our facility. An absurd number of young athletes start training with general knee pain or are training because of a major knee injury. We know that strength is lacking and that is usually where we start, but general strength is not quite specific enough. We have included a lot more quad strengthening, directly, in our programs and add in sequenced work for using the knee in almost all of our knee pain or injury cases.

We use the #kPulley the most for seated leg extensions and standing terminal knee extensions, says @ShaneDavs. Share on X

The two movements we use the most when it comes to the kPulley are seated leg extensions and standing terminal knee extensions (TKE). Both take some practice and setup manipulation, but the eccentric forces you can create using the pulley are invaluable. Specifically, the TKE movement: An athlete can use a little shift or body “English” to get the wheel spinning and then lock down the movement to control the flexion.

Video 5. Eventually, leg machines will grow in popularity, but for now a box works well. In the future, isometric and eccentric workouts will evolve to handle rehabilitation demands even better.

In almost every single “case” of general knee/patella pain we’ve come across, the affected leg has much less strength and control than the “good leg.” It’s probably a case of “chicken or the egg,” but we know that incorporating knee extension work directly before leg training has made a huge impact on our recovery times and long-term knee health success.

Video 6. It takes a while for coaches and athletes to get the handle of this exercise, but EMG biofeedback may help. Basically, the athlete is doing a reverse leg extension and uses the friction of the ground and momentum to challenge the quads.

Respect Momentum Before You Start

Most of the exercises listed use a little body English to overload the eccentric portion of the lift and, in doing so, require a little more focus and attention. There is an associated risk with any exercise that overloads a joint or body movement. With anything that will yield results, risk must be worth the reward.

Some exercises should be done one on one, while other exercises are fine to do without supervision at all when an athlete is highly trained and experienced. Other exercises are sure to be popular with the kPulley, but for our program, we know this list works well. Try each exercise and judge for yourself, as every facility and team training environment is unique enough to warrant you spending the time and thought to decide what is ideal for your situation.

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