Shailah Thornton arrived at Chapin High School as an 18.58 100-meter hurdler—she left Chapin with the second fastest time in school history (14.06) and a bronze medal at the UIL 5A State Meet (14.57). Shailah’s work ethic, focus, and determination were the top factors in her posting such dramatic improvements over the course of two years. They were further evidenced in her breaking her personal best during the indoor 60-meter hurdles (9.09) in her first year at the United States Military Academy Preparatory School (West Point).

Over the course of three articles, I’ll discuss Shailah’s practice plans, including drills, skill work, specific hurdle rhythm development, and other factors that led to her improvement. I should also note that many of our hurdlers at Chapin have improved using the same type of skill work and three basic hurdle drills. While the development and skill levels of hurdlers have improved at different rates, the focus of the training program has remained similar throughout. Finally, I’ll address the difference between coaching athletic freaks like Shailah and beginning hurdlers, and how we approach coaching different hurdlers of varying abilities, height, experience, and other factors.

This first article will address instilling speed for the 100/110 meter hurdles and why speed plays such a significant role in the sprint hurdles. As always, there are an infinite number of ways to coach any one event in track and field, but we choose to place a high priority on speed development for the 100/110 hurdles because, despite the barriers, it remains a speed event.

Early in the season, we test an athlete’s fly 10 or fly 30 time to measure absolute speed. Shailah ran a 3.67 timed with Freelap, which demonstrated that she was capable of running a high 12 or low 13 in the 100-meter race. This allowed us to understand that, while she didn’t have speed that would allow her to medal at the Texas state meet, she definitely had the natural speed to be able to three-step between each hurdle. Because of her power, Shailah was also a great accelerator; and because of her athleticism, she developed great hurdle rhythm and coordination.

Last year, I coached a hurdler with a fly 30 time of 3.63, which is faster than Shai, but the hurdler was only able to three-step through eight hurdles because she was only 5-feet tall, and ultimately ran a PR of 15.58. I also coached another hurdler last year who, despite having a slower fly 30 (3.85), ended up with a PR time of 15.35 because she is 5’6” and was able to three-step the entire race.

Speed in the 100/110 Hurdles

Because distance is predetermined in the 100/110 hurdles—including the distance to the first hurdle, distance between each hurdle, and distance to the finish line after clearing the last hurdle—working speed for hurdlers requires a very specific pattern. The first specific hurdle speed drill we try to develop is acceleration to the opening hurdle. Before we even begin to approach the hurdle, we spend a lot of time (twice a week during the general prep phase) working on pure acceleration without a hurdle. As I mentioned in “How to Create a Base of Power and Speed,” we practice acceleration in many forms, but accelerating to the first hurdle is a very specific skill that needs to be practiced early and often throughout the year.

Accelerating to the 1st hurdle is a very specific skill that needs to be practiced early and often, says @mario_gomez81. Share on X

About accelerating to the first hurdle, Boo Schexnayder says: “The hurdle race begins with driving strides. These driving strides are strong steps with less than maximal frequency, and should give the athlete the same sensation one gets when sprinting uphill.” When trying to determine the best accelerating pattern for any hurdler, we spend a lot of time observing proper acceleration mechanics and looking for the most effective setup for the remainder of the race.

The variation of driving/pushing strides is dependent upon the athlete. Shailah pushed out hard for four strides before feeling tall and attacking the hurdle. The 5-foot hurdler pushed for five or even six strides because of her height. There are several tables that show how far each stride should be with proper mechanics, but ultimately the goal is to arrive at step 8, the cut step, between 1.9 and 2.1 meters before the first hurdle with proper acceleration mechanics.

Regarding height difference, Coach Ron Grigg, (Director of Cross Country/Track and Field at Jacksonville University) said, “[The] simple answer is that the shorter the hurdler, the farther away they need to take off in order to raise their center of mass in the correct flight parabola. Conversely, they will land closer to the hurdle they just cleared. It isn’t a significant amount, but there is a difference.”

Video 1. Zoee Huerta eight step acceleration to first hurdle in 2.65. Posted PR 15.58 as senior after a season best of 16.00 as a junior.

Video 2. Shavontee Harris eight step accel to first hurdle in 2.81. Posted PR 15.35 as a junior after posting a season best of 16.74.

For example, Shailah would consistently take off right on the 2-meter mark, while many of the other short hurdlers work on taking off father away. One interesting note to share here is that all of the shorter female hurdlers I have coached tend to overstride by casting their foot and essentially braking all the way to the first. They overstride because they do not think they will arrive close enough to the first hurdle. The overstriding often happens in the later steps to the first hurdle (step 5/6/7), which in turn decreases the velocity of the hurdler.

Wicket Spacing for Hurdlers

Because spacing between each hurdle is predetermined (8.5 meters for females and 9.14 for males) and three-stepping needs to be a learned pattern, we set up wickets with equal spacing when working with hurdlers. For example, the ideal stride length between barriers should be around 1.83 meters (approximately 6 feet) for female hurdlers and 1.94 meters (6’4”/6’5”) for males. Based on height, landing, and technical execution, the stride patterns will obviously differ.

Video 3. Zoee Huerta working on turnover using wickets set at average stride length for hurdler at six feet after acceleration.

Getting athletes to three-step properly and maintain speed is extremely crucial in the #hurdles, says @mario_gomez81. Share on X

However, getting athletes to three-step properly and maintain speed is extremely crucial in the hurdles. Therefore, when working wickets with hurdlers, we often set the wickets progressively up to 6 feet for females and maintain that distance and do the same for males up to 6’4” or so. We treat this as a part-whole-part progression, so that athletes can understand the frequency and speed between hurdles. This establishes the stride pattern needed to three-step between each hurdle. Obviously, the height difference between a hurdle and wicket is significant, but the main purpose for the drill is for the athlete to feel the stride pattern.

In the upcoming articles, I will explain the other three drills our hurdlers use, and why we rarely, if ever, use one-half hurdle drills.

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, the first three 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?

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.

What Effect Does the Gut Microbiome Have on Athletic Performance?

The human microbiome—the collection of bacteria across our bodies, but primarily centered within the digestive tract—has been the subject of increased interest over recent years. The gut microbiome has a number of roles to play in the maintenance of optimal health, including the production of nutrients such as vitamin K₂, the neutralization and breakdown of pathogens and carcinogens, and the regulation of the immune system. Even more recently, research has shown that the gut microbiome can influence the levels of brain neurotransmitters such as dopamine, via the gut-brain axis, as well as the control of inflammation and oxidative stress during endurance exercise.

Because our gut microbiome clearly has a host of important roles, both in terms of general health and exercise performance, and is highly modifiable by diet, interest has grown in trying to harness this knowledge as a means to enhance performance. At present, we know that an increased amount of diversity within the gut microbiome is positive; obese people tend to have reduced bacterial diversity compared to lean subjects (and, in mice at least, transplanting the microbiome of a lean individual to an obese one can drive weight loss). Elite athletes also have an increased gut microbial diversity relative to non-athletic subjects (the main drivers of this being an increased amount of exercise, as well as an increased amount of protein intake).

And that, in essence, is where we are now: We know that we want diversity, and we know that consumption of a varied diet and exercise promote that diversity. If we were to test the microbiome of athletes, we likely would struggle to give more in-depth and personalized advice than that, at present. This is why we need additional research in this area; it would be worthwhile to be able to understand how we can utilize the information from a microbiome test to identify key areas for change. This, in turn, should drive performance enhancements.

These changes could be driven through the targeted use of particular bacterial strains through the consumption of probiotics, the recommendation of specific dietary changes, and even—potentially—the modification of training. We already have promising evidence that probiotic use can support immunity within athletes undergoing heavy training, and so further insights in this area should prove worthwhile.

Right now, we’re at the starting line of being able to utilize #gutmicrobiome info within sport, says @craig100m. Share on X

To that end, the main questions I feel need answering within the sporting sphere in regard to the human gut microbiome are:

1. Can we utilize gut microbiome testing to provide specific interventions aimed at improving performance?
2. Do changes in gut microbiome act as markers of overtraining or excessive training load?
3. How does microbiome diversity change across the course of both the training and competitive periods, and can we use this information to target key changes within the microbiome?

As such, I feel that, right now, we’re very much at the starting line of being able to utilize gut microbiome information within sport. We require further developments to drive the field forward and enhance our understanding—which, in turn, will hopefully lead to performance enhancements.

Why Does This Matter?

The human gut microbiome has interested scientists and the general public for a number of years. We know that an increased diversity is important, and we know the basic building blocks of what drives this diversity, but outside of that we struggle to make specific recommendations. By increasing our knowledge in this area, we may be able to use the regular screening of the gut microbiome in athletes to develop personalized recommendations for nutrition and training practices, and use it to serve as a marker of training load.

Can We Develop Real-Time Markers of Exercise Adaptation?

When we set training programs for athletes, we hope to improve their sporting performance, in part by improving their physiological abilities. Therefore, coaches have to set training that provides sufficient stimulus for adaptation to the given exercises to take place, and select exercises that drive the correct adaptations. A second important issue is that of recovery: Coaches must program training so that the sessions promote fatigue, but not too much fatigue that the athlete under-performs at the next training session or competition, or becomes injured. As such, there is a fine balancing act between sufficient workload to drive adaptations and not too much so the athlete becomes overly fatigued and/or injured. This is, of course, difficult.

The development of effective training programs has an additional challenge: It is often hard to determine which adaptations have taken place until weeks or months later. This is due, in part, to the improvements derived from training programs occurring in tiny increments on a session-by-session basis. As a result, coaches and support staff often have to rely on trial and error, selecting sessions and exercises that they think may drive the relevant adaptations and hoping for the best.

However, given that we now know there can be considerable individual variation in response to a training stimulus—both between athletes (i.e., what works for athlete A may not work for athlete B), and in the same athlete across time (i.e., what works for athlete C in year 1 may not work for athlete C in year 2)—selecting these exercises can be difficult. A potential solution may be the development of real-time markers of exercise adaptation; basically, can we develop a test or tests that tell us how well the athlete is adapting to the training stimulus, and indeed whether the specific required adaptations are occurring, in (or close to) real time.

The development of real-time markers of exercise adaptation would lead to more effective training, says @craig100m. Share on X

There are a couple of leading candidates in this area. One is cell-free DNA, which refers to circulating fragments of DNA found within the blood. At rest, small amounts of cfDNA can be found in our blood, but following both acute and chronic physiological stress, the concentration of cfDNA increases rapidly. As exercise represents a source of physiological stress, increases in cfDNA occur following both prolonged endurance exercise and resistance training sessions, as well as following a 12-week training block. Perhaps even more importantly—from a biomarker perspective—cfDNA changes appear proportional to both exercise intensity and duration, and are transient, often returning to baseline with 24 hours, even after highly exhaustive exercise.

In addition, cfDNA may also be a potential marker of fatigue; in a 12-week resistance training program, increases in cfDNA correlated with increases in mean training load within each three-week sub-block, with the highest concentrations associated with a decrease in physical performance. Furthermore, some research has demonstrated that the correlations between cfDNA and rating of perceived exertion (RPE, a subjective—but reliable—marker of training load) are stronger than those for lactate and RPE. It also showed that increases in cfDNA concentrations are greater than any other biomarker, potentially suggesting enhanced sensitivity compared to more traditional biomarkers.

In Part 3 of this series, I’ll discuss the prediction of training response; looking at how miRNAs may play a role, with specific miRNAs associated with an increased chance of being a responder to a certain type of training. miRNAs may also act as a useful biomarker of exercise response. For example, a number of studies have demonstrated that specific miRNA concentrations change in response to a single aerobic training session, as well as a longer-term aerobic training program.

Similar to cfDNA, miRNA concentrations appear sensitive to training intensity and duration. Potentially even more important, miRNA concentrations can plateau if there is insufficient training progression, demonstrating miRNA’s potential as a method to monitor training. Finally, the extent of miRNA changes following aerobic training are proportional to the training load, with specific miRNAs associated with post-exercise inflammation—information that may potentially guide recovery techniques.

Alongside miRNA and cfDNA, which appear to offer promise as markers of how well the athlete is adapting to and tolerating a training load, there is the potential that we can measure specific adaptations. There are a number of ways that this may be possible, including measuring the proteins produced by specific genes (proteomics), along with measuring specific epigenetic changes at particular points within a gene. As an example, the body is able to add a type of tag to certain points within DNA, which make that specific region of DNA harder to read. These tags are methyl (-CH₃) chemical groups; hence, this process is termed “methylation.” DNA methylation can potentially be passed from generation to generation, although the majority of methylation markers are transient, and can be added and removed (termed “de-methylation”) according to different stimuli.

One potent stimulus of DNA methylation and de-methylation is exercise. For example, sedentary individuals are far more likely to have methylation markers on a gene called PPARGC1A, which is involved in the promotion of mitochondrial biogenesis—an important aspect of improvements in aerobic fitness. If these sedentary subjects start to exercise more frequently, however, this methyl group gets removed, allowing the subsequent exercise adaptations to occur. This raises the potential for monitoring of specific DNA methylation patterns, which may be indicative of the types of adaptation that are occurring, so that training can be adjusted to target the specific adaptations that are required.

A limitation, at present, is that these tests are likely to be highly invasive. Epigenetic changes, such as methylation, histone modifications, and miRNA concentrations, tend to be tissue-specific. As such, if you want to understand what is occurring in the muscles of your athletes, then you need a muscle tissue sample. You get this through a muscle biopsy—a somewhat invasive procedure that has the potential to cause damage, making its adoption by elite athletes unlikely. Furthermore, cfDNA testing appears to require the collection of blood almost immediately following exercise, which again has practical issues. Ideally, we will be able to develop saliva collection techniques for cfDNA, miRNA, and similar; at present, there are some methylation markers that can be collected via saliva.

Ideally, we will be able to develop saliva collection techniques for cfDNA, miRNA, and similar, says @craig100m. Share on X

Of course, the danger with such an approach is that coaches become over-reliant on the data, seeking to derive specific, very narrow adaptations, such as increases in mitochondrial biogenesis or type-II muscle fiber hypertrophy. While it is tempting to go hunting for these adaptations, training as a whole is often more than the sum of its parts. So, while a different exercise may not drive the specific adaptation required to the same extent, it may enhance competition performance to a greater extent. As such, if these real-time markers of exercise adaptation are developed, then coaches and support staff will need to take a holistic, pragmatic approach to such information, using it to guide their decisions, but not making it the sole basis of what they do.

Why Does This Matter? 

The purpose of training is to enhance performance, and so coaches have to develop training plans that they believe will do so. This can be difficult—if the training load is too high or too low, optimal adaptation will not occur, and injury or fatigue is more likely. As such, if we can develop sensitive, real-time markers that allow us to better understand the impact of specific sessions and training programs on an athlete, then we can make small adjustments to training sessions on the fly, hopefully improving performance to a greater extent.

Can We Use Genetic Testing to Predict Talent?

Let me ask you a question: If, on the day you were born, you moved to Jamaica to live with Usain Bolt, eating the same foods as him, living the same lifestyle, and doing the same training, do you think you would break the 100m World Record? Most people would answer no (I’m always surprised by the people that answer yes), which illustrates something that we all understand: Elite athletes are intrinsically different than “normal” people.

Research tends to back this up, too: A study from 2007 reported that the heritability estimate for being an elite athlete is around 66%, which we can roughly interpret to say that the difference between Usain Bolt (the elite athlete) and your dad (probably not an elite athlete) is approximately two-thirds due to inherited factors, and these factors are primarily (but not exclusively) genetic. More recently, researchers found that your chances of winning an Olympic medal are higher if you have a family member who has already done so.

Interest in this area has led to the identification of a number of genetic variants that appear more common in elite athletes. An example of one of these is ACTN3, with research showing that variation at a particular point in this gene is more common in elite sprinters than non-elite sprinters. This genetic variant in ACTN3 appears to modify muscle fiber type, with the “sprint” version of this gene associated with an increased proportion of type-II fibers, something that is obviously advantageous to elite sprinters. These findings have been well replicated, and ACTN3 may even have an influence on training adaptations, post-exercise recovery, and injury risk, as I explored in a paper back in 2017. There are other genes that have been shown to impact the attainment of elite athlete status, such as ACE and PPARGC1A, but of them all, ACTN3 appears to lead the way.

So, if we know that genetics play a role in the development of elite athlete status, and we know some of the genes that cause this, can we use genetic testing to predict those individuals who will go on to become elite athletes? At present, no—and there are a number of reasons for this.

The first is that the effect of any individual gene is likely quite low. For example, ACTN3, the gene which likely has one of the largest impacts on elite performance, explains roughly 3% of the variance between individuals. This is not an insignificant amount, but it’s also not huge. Secondly, while individuals with a certain version of ACTN3 are more likely to be elite speed-power athletes, roughly 80% of the population of the world have this same genetic variant. As a result, the vast majority of people on this planet with the “sprint” version of this gene are not elite athletes. Furthermore, research has shown that even if you don’t have the “sprint” version of this gene, you can still be a successful athlete (in addition to this study, I know of two Olympic sprinters—one of whom is an Olympic medalist—who do not have the sprint version of this gene).

We don’t know enough about which genes impact the attainment of elite athlete status, says @craig100m. Share on X

This means that we cannot use a single gene to identify future elite athletes, because no single gene exists with the required predictive ability. Instead, a better approach may be to combine a number of genes into an algorithm. There’s a problem here too—we actually don’t know all that many genes that influence the attainment of elite performance. This is a problem common in medical research, whereby researchers know that genetics explains much of the variance between individuals that get a disease and those that don’t due to the heritability estimates gained from previous research. However, at present they have been unable to identify those specific genetic variants; this is termed the “missing heritability problem.”

A great example is that of height: research suggests that genetic variation explains around 80% of the variation in height between individuals. However, while scientists have discovered around 1,185 genetic variants associated with height, these variants “only” explain around 25% of the difference between individuals. This means that the remaining 55% of variance explained by genetics remains uncovered. We see this with elite athlete status: At present, around 155 genetic markers have been identified to contribute to the attainment of elite athlete status. This likely does not explain enough of the variance between athletes to be used in any predictive capacity. (At the time of writing, I have a paper under review testing this in a small sample of elite athletes.)

Right now, then, the main issue is that we don’t know enough about which genes impact the attainment of elite athlete status. In order to improve the predictive ability of genetic tests for talent, we need to discover a lot more. The problem here is that the discovery of new genetic traits associated with elite athlete status is difficult; because the effect size of any single variant is likely to be very small, researchers require very large sample sizes, well in excess of 1,000 subjects.

Now, there aren’t many elite athletes around, so recruiting 1,000 to a study can be very difficult. This issue is hindering research at present. Nevertheless, if additional genes are discovered, my personal belief is that we will (eventually) be able to develop a threshold score for an algorithm that contains all the required genetic variants: a score above this, and the athlete is more likely to become an elite athlete; a score below, and they are less likely.

However, it still will be the case that some, and perhaps most, individuals with a score above this threshold will not become elite athletes, while some of those with scores below this threshold may. As a result, genetic testing for talent identification will likely never be completely predictive, but it may provide more information on which decisions can be based. It may also be used to guide training prescription in the future, as I wrote in a 2017 paper.

Even if we could develop a genetic test for talent, it’s not clear whether we should use it, says @craig100m. Share on X

A secondary issue around this is whether it is ethical to utilize a genetic test for talent, should one ever be developed. A number of prominent researchers in the field have expressed doubts as to whether such an approach is ethically justified, and there are certainly a lot of unanswered questions regarding the use of such tests. Here are a few:

• Can a club compel players to undergo a genetic test?
• What happens if an individual is found to possess a genetic variant associated with disease?
• Would such information be used to further discriminate against the player?

As such, even if we could develop a genetic test for talent, it’s not clear if we should even use it.

Why Does This Matter?

Because identifying the next Cristiano Ronaldo or Usain Bolt at a young age can be hugely profitable for sports clubs, there is an interest in methods that might be utilized to support such an approach. The use of genetic testing to identify future elite athletes is a scenario envisioned by many, and the technology is now available for such a test to take place. However, at present, such a test would not be accurate, and, furthermore, it’s hard to envision how it ever would be.

Additionally, such tests have serious ethical questions surrounding their use, and these would need to be rectified before the tests can even be considered for utilization. However, there is some evidence that genetic information could be used to inform training program design, supplement use, and dietary advice, as well as for managing injury risk. As such, this is an area to potentially keep an eye on in the future, to see how it develops.

Do Sports Supplements Have an Additive Effect, or Is There a Ceiling?

These days, we have a pretty good idea of which supplements have the potential to exert a performance-enhancing effect, or at least don’t negatively affect performance when the dosing is correct. For example, as I’ve explored previously, we can be pretty sure that caffeine is performance-enhancing for most people, most of the time. We can also add to that list common ergogenic aids such as sodium bicarbonate, beetroot juice, beta-alanine, and a handful of others.

Of course, when these ergogenic aids are researched, they are commonly studied in isolation: Give a group of subjects some caffeine tablets to see if their performance improves, and if it does, you can easily isolate what drove that performance enhancement. However, athletes rarely take a performance-enhancing supplement in isolation.

For example, many utilize caffeine-containing energy drinks for their pre-training and competition caffeine kick, and these drinks often come with sugar and taurine, two substances that also have ergogenic effects. Interestingly, a recent meta-analysis on the effects of energy drinks on sporting performance concluded that, as the taurine dose of these drinks increased, so too did the ergogenic effects, while this wasn’t the case for the caffeine dose. Additionally, an endurance athlete might consume both beetroot juice and caffeine separately, but close together in terms of timing, during their pre-race preparation. What we need to better understand—and precious few studies actually examine—is the effect of these ergogenic aids when combined.

We need to better understand the effect of ergogenic aids when they’re combined, says @craig100m. Share on X

When two supplements have a similar mechanism, there is the possibility that taking them together could exert no additional effects. For example, beta-alanine and sodium bicarbonate are both cellular buffers; does taking the maximum ergogenic dose of one mean that any additional intake of the second supplement provides no further effects? Or, because the mechanisms are similar but not the same (e.g., beta alanine is an intracellular buffer, while sodium bicarbonate is an extracellular buffer), does taking both together provide an additional benefit? Could ergogenic aids cancel each other, for example?

Similarly, is there a performance ceiling associated with ergogenic aids? If, for example, the most an athlete can improve with nutritional interventions is 3%, and a single ergogenic aid increases performance by 3%, then do additional ergogenic aids, even those working through separate mechanisms, provide no additional benefits? I’ve seen this covered briefly in a number of papers, including this editorial from Shona Halson and David Martin, but the most comprehensive review I’ve come across on the subject was authored by Louise Burke and published in the journal Sports Medicinein 2017.

In her paper, Burke reported on some of the more common supplement co-ingestion strategies, of which the most commonly studied was that of sodium bicarbonate and beta-alanine. The results showed a wide spread of findings: Some studies reported combined benefits, others no effects, and others negative interactions. In part, this is due to both a low number of studies and a low number of subjects in each study—demonstrating why further research in this sphere would be useful.

The short answer to this question, then, is that we don’t know. And yet, it is clearly important to enhance our understanding in this area, because athletes regularly co-ingest ergogenic aids as a means to enhance performance. We can, and must, better understand these potential interactions in order to drive athletic performance forward.

Why Does This Matter?

While we understand that ergogenic aids—when taken in isolation—enhance performance, athletes very rarely consume these ergogenic aids on their own. Instead, they more commonly consume them in combination with other performance-enhancing nutrients. However, the effect of this co-ingestion of ergogenic aids is poorly understood: The potential is that taking two or more such aids together may further enhance performance through additive mechanisms; have no additional benefit; or lead them to compete with one another, reducing the performance enhancement. This area has been very poorly studied, demonstrating a need for further exploration in the future, and for research to accurately mirror how ergogenic aids are used by athletes in real life.

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

What is a strength and conditioning pragmatist? By definition, pragmatism is an approach that evaluates theories or beliefs in terms of the success of their practical application. Ideally, every strength and conditioning coach is a pragmatist at heart. Pragmatism is often seen as crude, as it’s minimally abstract. I’m of the opinion, however, that pragmatists often use abstraction to get things to work—it’s the key precept in their approach.

Due to a culture shift, performance “thinkers” often are ossified in their processes via ideologically driven and often dogmatic thinking. The to and fro of ideas can cause a great deal of polarization, personal attacks, sniggering, and taking of sides—it’s a problem that’s present in much discourse covering a range of topics, not just performance coaching and strength and conditioning.

Pragmatic coaches still coach and still get the outcomes they desire. This process incorporates applying objective information, subjective personal experience, and that all too nebulous term “culture.” The aim of the pragmatist lies in outcomes: Does what I implemented work satisfactorily? We can find the meaning of a proposition in the practical consequences of implementing it, and unpractical or unworkable ideas are to be rejected.

Quick Take on Pragmatic Coaches

• A pragmatic coach is a doer, and doers have scars.
• Pragmatic coaches value practice over theory—they value means to produce ends.
• They understand optionality and second-order effects.
• The risk of iatrogenic (harmful) consequences informs their approach.
• They prize precise speech, as good communication is about buy-in, not showing off.
• They are ultimately responsible for managing risk when employing ideas that academics and intellectuals have put forward.

Greeks vs Romans

To borrow an analogy from Nassim Taleb, who often relates lessons from classical antiquity: the Greeks put theory above practice while the Romans put practice above theory (as exemplified by Cato the Elder suggesting that introspective Greek thinkers be expelled from Rome).

In this respect, we must not become enamored by our own ideas, lest they are never actually employed, put into practice, and lastly, challenged. The Romans are considered the ultimate pragmatists in the western tradition; their implementation of what worked arguably built the greatest empire in human history. The Romans understood second-order effects and optionality—the value of additional optional investment opportunities available only after making an initial investment.

Squats

An example is understanding that the time initially invested in building a double bodyweight back squat for most athletes will allow for even greater investment in nuance and particulars further down the line. Despite all the arguments we can make against this investment—including its lack of sports specificity, soreness, and transfer—people still invest in squatting because they understand that its second-order systemic effects benefit athletes over time.

Consider this statement: Squatting may improve systemic strength, which for some may transfer to a potential for a specific application (optionality) of force production through many multivariate physiological effects including all its substrate, mechanistic factors, neurological, and psychological factors (second-order effects). If this seems nebulous, it is. It can keep some people second-guessing while others just get on with it. Pure academics struggle with shades of grey, as the variables of real-world practice don’t appeal to our innate need for categorization and absolutes.

The ability to navigate the nebulous with nuance comes with coaching maturity—and divides people who actually work in the industry from those who just talk about it on Twitter or in academic papers. To quote Brett Bartholomew: “Coaches are holistic problem solvers above all else. The role requires an understanding of social skills, dilemmas, power struggles, and people every bit as much as it does periodization and program design.”

Data and Monitoring

For instance, as highlighted in the Gabbett editorial for British Journal of Sports Medicine, the world of data and monitoring is where sports scientists’ solutions could potentially make performance coaching more difficult, especially when coaches have a preference based on gut feelings—a coach without monitoring systems may be considered a pariah of sorts. To quote Gabbett, “With such a range of monitoring tools available and no agreement on the most appropriate athlete monitoring ‘system,’ it is difficult for practitioners to evaluate the available evidence and develop a process to effectively monitor athletes.”

So what does the coach do to find a suitable monitoring system? Lack of agreement infers that the Greeks in this situation have no clear answer for the Romans. The answer lies somewhere in effectively disseminating existing information, examining the population, monitoring opportunities, resources, and appropriateness. An invasive system makes sense in an elite setting, more so if athletes are residential, but would be inappropriate in a small private setting without readily available resources and time.

Another example comes from my experience working in motorsport—specifically, superbike. There is almost no existing literature on superbike riders, aside from a few instances of injury prevalence and some small-scale research showing “moderate to high physiological strain during practice.” A fact I could have ascertained in simple conversation with the athlete. We know more about the effect of road cyclists following camera motorbikes than we do motorbike riders themselves.

In this situation, we need to look at evidence from the nearest adjacent disciplines: four-wheeled motorsports and non-motorized bike based sports. For instance, we know that weight loss and high-thermic stress due to flame retardant gear is prevalent in all motorsports. But, again, this doesn’t provide enough insight.

I’ve written before about having to base my approach on my personal perception in some of the notes originally included in “Adventures in Physical Preparation for Superbike Riding”:

Often training more like elite endurance athletes. Approach is typified by lack of qualitative strength work, or sporadic inconsistent strength training and usage of “strength circuits” as a sort of catch-all. The culture does seem to be moving towards more qualitative approach however which is great. Wrestling the bike against centrifugal and centripetal force for 30-40 mins requires…wait for it, strength.  Being strong helps with movement efficiency, which in turn reduces both systemic and local fatigue. Stronger riders combined with a good work capacity base will be less tired riders.

So by observing current practice among the athlete population and comparing this to established strength and conditioning theory, we can start building a best practice pragmatic approach.

What Is Real Matters More Than Feel

We all have implicit biases when it comes to how we work. This is natural, and in many cases, an important orienting reflex in any active workplace inundated with a never-ending flow of new and novel information. Guiding principles without the necessary analysis of our thoughts can become ideas we’re shackled to. The colloquialism, “feels over reals,” is the preference for one’s feelings or beliefs over the reality that they contradict.

This speaks to the pragmatic approach that accepting what gets results is more important than emotive ideological possession. It manifests in sport or strength and conditioning coaches alike, who cling doggedly to out-dated or inappropriate precepts, models, or exercises despite constraints making them hard or impossible to implement. In a relativistic world, athletes and coaches believe that what worked for them will work for others—such a structure provides security but excludes openness to change and nuance.

The Golf Swing

Conceptually, I’ve learned “feel vs. real” from golf coaches, philosophers, and essayists alike. I’m often told the greatest illusion or dissonance in golf is found between what you feel and what is real. The practice swings look great (simulation), but the actual swing (reality) doesn’t manifest the desired outcome (shanking the ball rather than driving it down the fairway, for instance). This phenomena occurs a lot in strength sport and strength coaching practice: a movement otherwise feels good for the lift, but it may be mechanically poor, leading to a reduction in the amount of force produced.

Olympic Lifting and Powerlifting

Olympic lifting and powerlifting often embrace the idea of being comfortable with the uncomfortable. At times athletes will complain about good positioning—feeling uncompromising and uncomfortable. The outcome of this good positioning, however, is hopefully what the coach desires.

One pragmatic solution in both instances is brought sharply into focus when we film athlete movement and compare and contrast these clips to the athlete’s performance and models of proper performance by elites in the discipline. The aim here is not mimicry but mindfulness on the athlete’s part to be more aware of technical requirements.

The aim is not mimicry but #mindfulness on the athlete's part to be aware of technical requirements, says @WSWayland. Share on X

This demonstrates how simulated feedback from movement does not lead to the desired result. Or in a strength and conditioning context, the means don’t match the desired ends. In other words, doing what feels good and right over what does good, which brings us to our next subject.

Iatrogenics and Strength and Conditioning

The ugly side of strength and conditioning is summed up by the medical definition of iatrogenic: “Due to the activity of a physician or therapy. For example, an iatrogenic illness is an illness that is caused by a medication or physician.” Iatrogenics within the performance context can be the pursuit of strength, speed, flexibility, etc. to the detriment of overall athletic performance. It’s where being ideologically possessed or inflexible due to emotive, dogmatic, or sophomoric reasons can reap real negative consequences.

Early in my career, I attempted to implement a traditional linear block-type periodization with MMA athletes, working through the typical sequencing of a hypertrophy, strength, power, and speed type. I found this approach was iatrogenic, actually harming athlete performance, pretty much taking three steps forward and two steps back from the standpoint of quality accumulation. From a quality perspective, much of what we’d worked on had eroded by the time of competition.

The model works over long timespans, but for athletes who often only have 8-12 weeks (or less) to prepare, it’s sub-optimal. This experience motivated me to apply the compressed model I outlined in “Applying the Compressed Triphasic Model with MMA Fighters.” The compressed model also encourages the use of supramaximal methods which, under typical circumstances, would be derided for being too tough, too soreness-inducing, and too impactful on technical practice. My experience in its implementation runs counter to this, however.

The “anti-iatrogenic” ideal has an underlying influence in performance culture. The coach who takes things at face value probably perceives that their approach produces their intended results while they see their competition’s approach as iatrogenic. We see this a lot in social media commentary, especially with shared videos and statements that have little to no contextual information.

The “anti-iatrogenic” ideal has an underlying influence in sport performance culture, says @WSWayland. Share on X

For example, Dan Pfaff has stated previously that “movement expression trumps rate of force development. I’ve coached three guys to sub-10-second 100’s who have never lifted weights.” While this seems to contradict my earlier statement about squatting, this is where pragmatism in approach shines—Dan clearly understands when to apply (or in this case not to apply) the appropriate means to achieve desired outcomes. Remember, you can make all the cases for weight training you want (emotive, feel), but three of his athletes still run sub-10’s (real). No one called out Dan’s well-known performance approach for being potentially iatrogenic.

Also, consider the recent example of Chelsea’s football club manager, Maurizio Sarri, and the statement about his athletes “not lifting weights.” It caused spectacular online blowback from strength and conditioning coaches; the assumption was that Sarri was an absolutist who was just a sports coach with no understanding of the iatrogenic effect of his statement, which then led to absolutist responses.

The response should have been “it depends on what you mean by lifting weights,” followed by “it depends on what you mean by not lifting weights,” followed by asking the Chelsea FC performance staff their interpretation of this diktat. Yes it’s nebulous, yes it’s multiple shades of grey, but what we lack from the initial statement is any real nuance. Whether or not Sarri’s approach is iatrogenic or false attribution via subtraction will be seen. At the time of writing, Chelsea remains unbeaten. Absolutists will await their answer.

These overlapping grey areas mean we are seeking sweet spots for progression and attempt, to the best of our knowledge, to keep athletes improving, optimizing, and being robust enough to handle their sports. Sometimes, what you do won’t look like what others expect of you—this is also the nature of being truly pragmatic.

Strength and conditioning coaches, however, make mistakes—and I’m sure early in their careers commit interventions that in fact may hamper performance. Most of the best coaches I’ve met are highly neurotic, self-critical, and thankfully self-correcting. Coaches that fall on the inexperienced-yet-confident end of the Dunning Kruger curve are the ones who will commit such mistakes. And if they repeat them often, they’re clearly consumed by hubris and not working in the private sector.

It’s the role of more senior coaches and mentors to make sure these lessons occur with minimal impact on the coach’s careers but have maximal impact on their development. If you’ve never made such errors, I commend you and wish you well on your unbroken win streak. The rest of us will purposefully agonize to the end of our careers.

 

Constraints and Adaptability

This seems self-explanatory: we all have constraints and we all have to adapt to the athlete, the available resources, and our surroundings. The vast majority of coaches do not get blank cheques or unlimited power within their programs. Consider, however, that many often seek to get the world to move around them rather than learn to take the stoic precept of changing that which can be changed and discarding the immovable. This extends to ideas and presuppositions.

One example is Olympic lifting within a constraint-limited context. For instance, touring golfers who have a risk for wrist issues and use hotel gyms. These gyms have a bevy of issues such as low ceilings, no chalk, bent bars, no bars, no bumpers, and no coach’s eye. Which means I can put all the cleans and snatches into a program I like, but my athletes need to implement derivatives with a can-do attitude when confronted with only a dumbbell rack rather than spin on their heels and hit the hotel bar instead.

When we do have the resources at hand, pragmatic solutions arrive like the European Tour Performance Institute’s truck, which overcomes this issue by offering a performance center on wheels and travels 30,000 km a year.

It’s also a problem with coaches who either compete in or build a culture around a specific strength sport. If expectations aren’t met, an outside effort to protect a universal generalization will be made (see the Sarri debacle)—known as the no true Scotsman fallacy. Consider the statement: If you don’t power lift or Olympic lift or at least have a program containing these, are you really a strength coach?

The hand-supported split squat, for instance, meets the need for intensity in a movement that exists outside of competitive lifting. Split squats have never been contested, so I don’t understand why a hand-supported variant could be considered cheating, something about which I’ve received numerous DMs. Until someone starts a hand-supported split squat competition, I suggest we often need to go outside the ground that strength sports have trodden for so long. Sometimes what you do won’t look like what others expect of you. The hand-supported split squat is merely an adaptation that meets a need.

The real application here is not just being adaptable but also teaching adaptability to athletes and colleagues. Personal adaptability loses its worth if you’ve done nothing but foster co-dependency in athletes.

 

Culture, Communication, and Precise Speech

Coaching is a function of communication; without communication, the coach cannot do their job. Pragmatists need to speak in a fashion that makes their teaching easily understood, interpreted, and disseminated. Gone are the days when coaches were isolated to their specific practice and culture where they only needed to be understood by their most proximal group athletes. Now, sports coaches, administrators, parents, Twitter followers, and athletes all expect coherent communication—the age of social media and increasing transparency from all invested parties is upon us.

Social media has globalized performance training, and we are steadily navigating the cultural waters that come when mixing voices that come from a range of backgrounds. The predominant one is the strength and conditioning Anglosphere where Americans, Brits, Aussies, Canadians, and Kiwi’s make natural friends via a shared language, which is both terrific and terrifying. While academia functions in English, there is much good out there from coaches who don’t have the same reach as the Anglosphere.

For instance, practitioners need to put greater thought into their lexicon, especially when we have scientific language plundered from neurophysiology and even quantum physics. I’ve come across coaches who often use idiosyncratic wordplay or obfuscation when naming things to otherwise disguise simplistic concepts or exercises in nebulous language. I always ask myself “if I can’t understand it, how can their athletes?” Am I speaking merely to make myself seem smarter to my peers to bolster social standing?

Clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson articulates this well:

“Listen to yourself talk, as if a stranger was talking. Try not to identify too much with what you are saying. Then, observe. See if what you are saying makes you feel stronger physically or weaker. If it makes you feel weaker, stop saying it. Try to reformulate your speech until you can feel the ground under your feet solidifying. Then practice only saying things that make you strong. Stop trying to use your speech to get what you want. Instead, try to articulate what you believe to be true as carefully as possible. Then, accept the outcome.”

As a coach who has always suffered a sense of impostor syndrome due to my introspective nature, I’ve worked hard to say what I mean and mean what I say.

Communication has become more important as I work more with athletes who are non-native speakers. Strength and conditioning uses a language that I sometimes grasp, so how can I communicate this to someone who only speaks on a conversational level?

In a world of DMs and cross-cultural communication, I’ve had to explain my own slang. Share on X

Language and culture are inherently linked, and I’ve said in the past (jokingly) “British coaches need more chest-beating pragmatism and Americans more sports science-based neurotic introspection.” Jokes aside, there is much we can learn from each other culturally. Americans deal in the language of hyperbole, the British in understatement—this can be a minefield in cross-cultural communications. In a world of DMs and easy accessibility, I’ve been guilty of having to explain my own slang. Be casual carefully!

The US enviably does strength and conditioning on a scope that is impressive, with high school strength and conditioning facilities that are often better than many UK elite training centers. Does this assure good outcomes? Not necessarily, but it certainly makes for a fertile training environment. It’s something I’ve spoken about with colleagues from across the Anglosphere as we collectively work to share ideas.

Romans Need Greeks, Greeks Need Romans

Out of all the possible Greek philosophical schools the Roman pragmatists could have chosen, Stoicism seemed to fit the bill. Romans could have embraced Epicureanism (seek modest pleasures to attain a state of tranquillity) or maybe Cynicism (rejecting all conventional desires for wealth, power, sex, and fame). Neither are particularly appropriate options for running an empire but are options nonetheless.

The point here is practitioners need open-minded intellectuals to put forth propositions, which can then be disseminated and acted upon. Without these types of thinkers, we end up with a utilitarian dulling of possibilities. On the same hand, while we need to test ideas, there is a risk in vapid philosophizing—academic, online, and efamous “experts” transfer the risk of their ideas because they are often not accountable for the practices implemented from the flawed theories they teach.

Practitioners take the calculated risk with implementation, hopefully with careful dissemination of the ideas they are acting upon. Some people manage to operate in both realms, obviously, with the means to assess, propose, implement, and reassess.

It’s difficult, however, for the overburdened strength coach to do. Working with multiple teams in a limited space provides an overwhelming challenge to implement a myoelectric potentiated oscillatory Bolivian cluster restriction training method fresh from the newly minted pdf that a “Twitter famous coach” just released, and not discount all the training aids that come along with it.

The Death and Rebirth of Strength and Conditioning

Strength and conditioning is a fantastic industry at the moment, with the situation shifting as the discipline tries to find the mixture of hard and soft skills that will allow future generations of coaches to do better. Some are quick to declare strength and conditioning dead, that its application is overstated, and the fundamental precepts of strength are DOA. Given statements like Dan’s, this pleases absolutists who seemingly loathe the industry and the notion of conventional strength training.

#Pragmatists are running programs, weight rooms, and gyms all across the world despite contrarians, says @WSWayland. Share on X

Contrarians exist in all industries, and being reflexively contrary on social media seems to be a fashionable choice for some. The thing is, despite these practitioners, the pragmatists are still running programs, weight rooms, and gyms all across the world and won’t stop because a controversy broke out on social media. I make an effort to read the works of strength curmudgeons who live and die by barbell training as much as I read the work of weights-free avant-garde thinkers.

The answer, as always, lies in mediation among many approaches that are appropriate for the group or individual in front of the coach. I’ll quote Stuart Mc Millian, who paraphrased Nassim Taleb, “we often over-estimate our ability to influence the process and determine the outcome—when all we can do is try to influence the distribution of possibilities.”

Again, this returns us to my earlier point about options: invest so that we can build possibility and opportunity. What you can invest in varies and can be discussed ad nausea. To quote another philosopher and Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius “stop arguing what it means to be a good man and just be one.” Swap man for coach, and you can see what I’m driving at here.

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

References

Taleb, Nassim Nicholas (2018) Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life. Penguin Books.

Peterson, Jordan B. (2018) 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos. Penguin Books.

Brearly, M. et al. (2014) “Responses of elite road motorcyclists to racing in tropical conditions: a case study.”International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance.

Wayland, W. (2016) “Adventures in Physical Application in Physical Preparation for Superbike Riding.”

 

By Craig Pickering

Sports science often gets bad press, and I’m not entirely sure why. Recently, Wayne Goldsmith published an article titled “Sports Science: You’ve Still Got it Wrong,” in which he detailed 10 points where he felt sports science was failing. While there were many problems with the article—including the fact that he appeared to be conflating people who do sports science (i.e., sports scientists) with the discipline of sports science—it’s always important to try and take criticisms of your field seriously, especially when they come from the people you want to help: athletes and coaches.

Sports science research can do better in some areas to help athletes & coaches improve performance, says @craig100m. Share on X

Though there were some good rebuttals of the original article, including this from Queensland University of Technology senior lecturer Vince Kelly, the article got me thinking about areas in which sports science research could do better in order to assist athletes and coaches in their quest to enhance performance. In this three-part series, I explore 10 different research questions for which I feel sports science could make a big difference by attempting to answer—and in many cases, is close to doing so. Obviously, I have my own biases, and some of these questions are for 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.

Is a Low-Carb, High-Fat Diet Effective for Athletes?

Though it is often easy to forget, athletes are normal people too, which means that the internet—especially social media—is a major source of information for them. Athletes are always looking for ways to gain an edge over their competitors, and they tend to focus on nutrition because this is often something directly under their control (as opposed to coach-directed training). Plus, they consume food multiple times per day (as opposed to training, which often happens just once or twice per day). Consequently, research demonstrates that athletes are increasingly susceptible to diet fads, something that I can attest to on a personal level, having followed various different diets—including paleo and keto—during my athletic career.

Athletes looking for an edge tend to focus on #nutrition because it’s something they can control, says @craig100m. Share on X

Recently, we’ve seen a rise in “biohacking,” in which both the ketogenic diet and fasting are very popular. Furthermore, many of these biohackers, such as Tim Ferriss and Ben Greenfield, have maneuvered into the athletic performance realm, making athletes even more likely to discover their work. Additionally, Tim Noakes, an acclaimed sports scientist responsible for a number of important breakthroughs within the field, has also fully endorsed a ketogenic-esque diet. Ketogenic diets typically require individuals to consume less than 20 grams of carbohydrates per day, which is the equivalent of around 30g of oatmeal. A slightly more relaxed version of the ketogenic diet, which is the type more commonly promoted, is the Low Carb, High Fat (LCHF) diet, which tends to be a bit less strict on the upper thresholds of carbohydrate intake, but still requires significant carbohydrate restriction.

A Bit of Theory

During prolonged, lower-intensity exercise (around about 65% or less of VO2max), the body can utilize fat as its main source of energy. This is a good thing, because even a very lean individual has extensive fat stores on their body; more than enough to see them through a marathon or ultra-endurance event. If you consume an LCHF diet, then your body becomes more efficient at utilizing fats at these lower intensities, and potentially even a bit more at higher intensities. This means that (in theory) you could:

1. Exercise for longer; and
2. Do so without having to consume additional energy (i.e., eat or drink) during a competition, which could reduce feelings of gut discomfort.

What we need to remember, however, is that most sporting events don’t give gold medals to the athlete that can exercise for the longest, but to the one that covers a given distance in the shortest amount of time. As such, even elite endurance athletes are required to reach high levels of exercise intensity in their events if they want to win, such as the final sprint seen in most endurance races.

So, in theory, there are certain situations where an LCHF diet may be advantageous. But how does this hold up in practice? Some studies do show an advantage to LCHF diets in a number of populations. Last year, researchers demonstrated that an LCHF diet (and in this case, a ketogenic diet) did not significantly harm performance in a 100km cycle time trial, and improved the participant’s peak power output in the sprint. This study was widely shared as proof of the effectiveness of LCHF/ketogenic diets, but, alas, the analysis was somewhat misleading, as I pointed out in a letter to the editor of the publishing journal. Essentially, the performance benefits were due to decreases in body fat. In a test where performance output is divided by weight, this obviously skews the results—especially for elite athletes, who often don’t have much body fat left to lose.

Other studies have reported a negative effect of an LCHF diet on anaerobic exercise performance (which is to be expected, given the primary energy system utilized); a decrease in training capacity in endurance training (but a decrease in body fat); and poorer strength training adaptations (but reduced body fat). One of the popular criticisms of these studies is that individuals must become adapted to LCHF diets (which is true) before they can realize the benefits, although the exact duration of such an adaptation phase is unclear, with no definitive answer given by LCHF proponents. This leads to my favorite joke of 2017: How long does it take to become fat-adapted? At least one week longer than the time period in the most recent study disproving LCHF for athletes. It must take a long time to become fat-adapted, given that this athlete followed an LCHF diet for 32 weeks, culminating in his worst performances ever.

Analyzing the Research

So far, the majority of research in this area has taken place with non-elite athletes, with the majority of performance improvements, if any, coming from reductions in body fat. Elite athletes are a different kettle of fish, however, and often have little excess body fat to lose. A series of studies from researchers at the Australian Institute of Sport on elite race walkers—exactly the type of athletes you’d expect to get a benefit from LCHF, given the (relatively) low intensity of their event—illustrated this nicely. The LCHF diet led to no improvements in a 10km time trial performance following a three-week training block, while those athletes consuming either a high carbohydrate or periodized carbohydrate diet did see improvements.

As such, for now, it appears that an LCHF diet has little to offer the majority of elite athletes, but may be useful for recreational athletes—particularly if they have higher levels of body fat. There is the potential that some periods of LCHF eating around training sessions, in the form of carbohydrate periodization, may enhance some specific training adaptations, although whether these adaptations manifest as performance improvements is unclear.

For now, #LCHF diets have little to offer most elite athletes, but may help recreational athletes, says @craig100m. Share on X

The best approach for elite athletes may, therefore, be a mixed approach—as suggested in the most sensible paper I’ve seen on the subject. One area where a low carbohydrate diet may potentially be useful is in managing weight (and by this, I mean losing weight fairly quickly) in weight class sports, such as Olympic weightlifting and various combat sports. While we don’t yet have a definitive answer as to the impact of an LCHF diet on elite athlete performance, we are, in my opinion, getting close. However, further research in this area is required to answer the following:

1. 1. After sufficient adaptation to low carbohydrate feeding, are there any performance advantages to elite endurance athletes following an LCHF diet? At present, the fairly limited research suggests no, but the main argument is that this is due to insufficient adaptations.

 

1. 1. After sufficient adaptation to low carbohydrate feeding, are there any performance advantages to elite speed-power athletes following an LCHF diet? Given the energy system requirements of these sports, I would suggest that the answer is almost certainly no, outside of reductions in body fat.

 

1. 1. What is the impact of ketone ester (a supplement that can rapidly mimic the effects of a ketogenic diet) when ingested by elite athletes?

 

1. What is the impact of LCHF diets on training adaptations in elite athletes? At present, the research suggests that some periods of low carbohydrate intake may enhance training adaptations in endurance athletes (although, at present, this is largely theoretical), while other research suggests a prolonged LCHF diet during heavy training may negatively affect immunity, which could be problematic.

Why Does This Matter?

Athletes are always looking for an edge, and they often focus on the trends seen on social media and promoted by biohackers. At present, the use of LCHF appears to be potentially harmful to elite athlete performance, and so by increasing the body of evidence in this area, we will get a better idea of whether an LCHF plan is ever appropriate for elite athletes. We will also see how factors such as athlete event and training status alter the use of LCHF, along with whether and how to utilize periodized nutrition approaches to performance that involve short- and long-term LCHF use.

Is Caffeine Really Ergogenic for Everyone?

Caffeine is one of the most well-established, well-replicated performance-enhancing substances in sport—and the best news of all is that it’s completely legal. Athletes are fully aware of this, which is why roughly 75% utilize caffeine either immediately before or during competition. However, while, on average, caffeine demonstrates performance-enhancing effects across a variety of exercise types, when studies report individual subject data, we tend to see variation in how much performance benefit an individual gets from caffeine.

A famous example of this comes from a study published by Jenkins and colleagues. Here, the researchers gave subjects three different caffeine doses (1, 2, and 3 mg/kg), along with a placebo, and got them to undertake a 15-minute maximum cycle time trial. On average, although there was no performance enhancement from 1 mg/kg of caffeine for the majority of subjects, four of the 13 did show a performance improvement at that dose. Comparatively, while there was, on average, a performance-enhancing effect from 3 mg/kg of caffeine, two subjects performed worse with that caffeine dose than with no caffeine at all, and seven experienced less of a performance benefit than at lower doses of caffeine.

Based on this, and other studies reporting variation in caffeine’s ergogenic effects, it appears that caffeine can have a different effect on different people. This was the subject of a paper I wrote last year, exploring inter-individual variation in caffeine response. One of the factors that may affect how much caffeine enhances performance is an individual’s genotype.

An individual’s genotype is one factor that may affect how much #caffeine enhances their performance, says @craig100m. Share on X

A gene called CYP1A2 determines how quickly you metabolize caffeine; as a result, people are termed “fast” (AA genotype) or “slow” (AC/CC genotype) metabolizers of caffeine. A study from 2012 explored the impact of this gene on the ergogenic effects of caffeine. In this study, the authors got subjects to undertake a 40km cycle time trial under two conditions: with 6 mg/kg of caffeine, or placebo. They found that caffeine had a greater performance-enhancing effect in AA genotypes—improving performance by almost 5%–than C allele carriers, whose performance increased by around 2%.

Since that initial study, there were a handful of others, mainly reporting no effect of that gene. However, these studies tended to be underpowered, which may have made them unable to detect the small changes we would expect this gene to have. Then, earlier this year, a research group from Canada published a large-scale study on 101 athletes, exploring the impact of CYP1A2 on the effects of caffeine in a 10km cycle time trial. This is important because it:

1. Had a sufficiently large sample size to detect the potentially small effects of the gene.
2. Had a decent amount of CC genotypes.

On this second point, most previous studies have combined AC and CC genotypes into the “slow” metabolizers group, in part because the CC genotype is quite rare, occurring in only around 10% of people. With smaller studies, this means that there are often only one or two CC genotypes; this study had eight. The authors utilized two caffeine doses—2 and 4 mg/kg—along with a placebo. The results from the study as a whole were that 4 mg/kg, but not 2 mg/kg, of caffeine improved time trial performance compared to placebo.

What the authors then did was stratify for genotype, with some interesting findings. For AA genotypes (fast metabolizers), both caffeine doses enhanced performance compared to placebo. For AC genotypes, neither caffeine dose improved performance compared to placebo; caffeine appeared to be neutral for these individuals. For CC genotypes, 2 mg/kg of caffeine did not enhance performance compared to placebo, while 4 mg/kg made their performance much worse compared to placebo. These findings, therefore, suggest that for around 10% of the population, higher doses of caffeine (in this case, 4 mg/kg) can be harmful to performance, while for around 40% of the population (the expected frequency of AC genotypes), caffeine potentially has no beneficial effect when compared to placebo.

Since this study, a second paper from an Iranian researcher was published. In this study, the author explored the influence of CYP1A2 and caffeine on resistance training, specifically muscular endurance. The main finding of this study was that 6 mg/kg improved muscular endurance only in AA, and not in AC/CC genotypes (they were grouped together due to a lack of CC genotypes).

These results caused some significant cognitive dissonance for me. I used caffeine a lot during my career, and yet I possess the AC genotype for CYP1A2. Was I just wasting my time? Reflecting on this, I started to question the applicability of both the previous caffeine studies discussed above. What the first researchers found is that 4 mg/kg harmed performance in CC genotypes when consumed ~60 minutes pre-exercise—but what if they consumed either a different dose of caffeine, or the same dose but much earlier prior to exercise?

Time—and new research—will tell whether everyone can get the performance benefits of #caffeine, says @craig100m. Share on X

This potentially makes sense: One of the proposed mechanisms for why slow metabolizers see a reduction in performance is that the downstream metabolites of caffeine are also performance-enhancing; slow metabolizers, therefore, perhaps need longer periods of time to metabolize caffeine to these by-products, and therefore harness their performance-enhancing effects. In a letter to the editor, I proposed this theory, and I know of at least one research group that is seeking to test my hypothesis. Time will tell whether everyone can get the performance benefits of caffeine, or whether, as the current results suggest, for some people, consuming caffeine prior to exercise may well harm performance.

Why Does This Matter?

A very high percentage of athletes consume caffeine, both pre-training and pre-competition. Based on the results of recent research, up to 50% of these athletes may not be getting a performance benefit from caffeine, or worse, may be harming their performance by consuming caffeine. Given that caffeine is a widely utilized, well-established ergogenic aid, uncovering the impact of CYP1A2, along with other genes, on the performance benefits of caffeine has the potential to massively affect performance.

Are Isometric Loading Exercises as Effective as Eccentric Loading Exercises for Hamstring Injury Prevention?

Hamstring strain injuries are very common in sport at all levels. During my career, I suffered serious, season-defining hamstring injuries across four separate years. One of them prematurely curtailed my 2010 competitive season, and another left me facing an uphill, but ultimately successful, battle to qualify for the Beijing Olympics. Research shows that hamstring injuries are common in pretty much every sport that requires high-speed running. During the 2016-2017 Premier League soccer season, for example, 27% of all injuries affected the hamstring muscle group; separate research has shown that hamstring injuries represent the most common form of non-contact injuries in athletics, rugby union, cricket, basketball, Australian Rules football, and American football.

#Hamstring injuries lead to significant costs, as well as an increased future risk of other injuries, says @craig100m. Share on X

Clearly, hamstring injuries are common, but they also exert significant costs. At the elite sport level, even if a player is unavailable to compete, the team often still has to pay him. In individual sports, such as athletics, if you can’t race due to injury, you don’t get paid. But the financial implications are not the only costs of a hamstring injury; previous injury appears to increase the risk of both a future hamstring injury and injuries of other kinds, as well as reducing future physical performance.

As such, over the last 20 years or so, there has been an increased interest in understanding the causes of hamstring injuries. Over the last five years or so, there has been a war declared on hamstring injuries, with numerous research groups exploring different exercise modalities as a means to reduce the risk of such an injury, leading us to have a pretty good understanding of what is going on. When we injure a hamstring muscle during high-speed running, it most commonly occurs during the late swing phase, where our hamstrings act to reduce the forward movement of the lower leg, in preparation for it to be moved forcefully towards ground contact. In general, this process is thought (more on this in a minute) to require an eccentric contraction of the hamstring, where the muscle lengthens under load.

Eccentric contractions are uniquely damaging, as they occur under high loads, forces, and speeds, which can often lead to damage at the z-discs, the areas that delineate each individual portion of a muscle fiber. Indeed, lower levels of eccentric strength have been shown to increase the risk of hamstring injury, and increasing the eccentric strength capabilities of the hamstring reduces the risk of future injury. Additionally, one of the adaptations commonly seen following a period of eccentric loading is an increase in muscle fascicle length, with shorter muscle fascicles a second risk factor for hamstring injury. As such, we can be pretty sure—and indeed, almost certain—that eccentric loading exercises are a useful method to reduce the risk of hamstring injury, which has led to the popularization of exercises such as the Nordic Hamstring and Yo-Yo Hamstring exercises, both of which have demonstrated effectiveness at reducing the rate of hamstring injuries.

We can be pretty sure that #eccentric loading exercises are useful to reduce hamstring injury risk, says @craig100m. Share on X

However, eccentric loading exercises, including Nordics and Yo-Yos, are often associated with increased muscle soreness, which can reduce their uptake. Indeed, even though we know eccentric loading exercises are effective, compliance to them is often poor, which means that they don’t reduce hamstring injuries as much as we might hope.

Over the last couple of years, some research groups have become more interested in the use of isometric loading exercises as a means to reduce hamstring injuries. This school of thought is primarily driven by two researchers from the Netherlands, Frans Bosch and Bas Van Hooren. They suggest that, in actual fact, the hamstring muscle acts isometrically, not eccentrically, during the late swing phase of sprint running. It is very hard to either prove or disprove this theory in humans, because no one has yet been able to develop a method of observing the muscles inside the leg (most likely via ultrasound) during high-speed running.

As a result, most of the evidence underpinning Bosch and Van Hooren’s hypothesis is based on animal studies and predictive modeling—which doesn’t necessarily mean they’re wrong, but it is something to be aware of. Based on their belief that the hamstring muscle acts isometrically, and not eccentrically, during the swing phase of sprint running, Bosch and Van Hooren logically believe that isometric, and not eccentric, loading exercises are likely to be more effective at reducing the risk of hamstring injury. Examples of these types of exercises include the single-leg Roman chair exercise, which has some early evidence demonstrating its effectiveness.

An additional potential advantage of isometrics over eccentrics is that isometric exercises promote much less muscle damage and soreness. Given that one of the main reasons eccentric hamstring exercises are poorly adhered to within sport—and therefore don’t reduce injury prevalence—is due to the high levels of soreness experienced, this makes isometric hamstring exercises a viable alternative.

So far, the evidence underpinning isometric hamstring exercises is limited, especially compared to the high-level evidence, including randomized controlled trials and meta-analyses, supporting the use of eccentric exercises. As such, from a strictly evidence-based perspective, we should be programming eccentric hamstring exercises as a method to reduce hamstring injury rates. However, from a pragmatic standpoint—and remembering that much of real-life coaching and sports science support has to be pragmatic—we have to consider whether isometrics would hold more real-world effectiveness if their uptake and adherence rates were greater, and whether the exercises themselves are effective.

As such, we need studies exploring the use of isometrics, both as a “predictor” of hamstring injury (i.e., is lower isometric hamstring strength associated with an increased risk of hamstring injury, and is this association stronger than with eccentric hamstring strength?), and as a means to reduce hamstring injury prevalence. Additionally—and this will be a major challenge—we need to attempt to better understand whether the hamstring muscle operates isometrically, as Bosch and Van Hooren claim, or eccentrically during the late swing phase of high-speed running.

Finally, if isometric exercises are effective at reducing hamstring strain injuries, we need to view their adherence rates within the real world: Do teams utilizing isometric exercises have greater adherence and, as a result, fewer hamstring injuries than those utilizing eccentric exercises? Getting closer to the answer could have a large impact on the reduction of hamstring injuries, but, in the meantime, it’s probably best to program both into your injury prevention work.

Why Does This Matter?

Because hamstring injuries are so prevalent within sport, researchers have long attempted to understand how to reduce their occurrence. A great body of research suggests that eccentric hamstring exercises reduce the risk of hamstring injuries by increasing eccentric muscle strength and muscle fascicle length. However, recently some researchers have suggested that the hamstrings primarily act isometrically during the late swing phase of running, and as a result, we should be utilizing isometrically focused strength exercises to mitigate the risk of hamstring injury.

#Isometric hamstring exercises tend to cause less soreness, which should increase athlete adherence, says @craig100m. Share on X

This is an attractive option, because isometric hamstring exercises tend to cause less soreness, which will likely increase their adherence. As a result, a better understanding of the real-world effectiveness of isometrics versus eccentrics could have important implications on the risk of hamstring injury.

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

If you work in the sports industry, chances are you started with a passion for training, either on your own or through your background as an athlete. Whatever the case, turning a passion into a business requires different knowledge and a solid plan of action. Whether you’re a strength coach, a personal trainer, or a gym owner, if you’re in the training business, it’s because you have more than just the passion for it. And it is possible for you to make a living—a profitable living.

I spent my early years as a strength coach trying to define myself and to get any client I could to make a few bucks. It was a rough time, and building a clientele was a difficult process. Opening a gym was always in my mind, and I had a clear image of what my facility would look like. Unfortunately, the financial means to get there always seemed impossible to achieve.

I’ve now been in the business for over 20 years. I went from a personal trainer to strength coach to owner of a high-performance training center. As the last 20 years certainly defined who I am today, it surely also defined how I think about making my training business a profitable one. While I spent my early years dreaming about a gigantic premium facility built a certain way, I quickly realized that optimizing square footage had to be my number one priority.

Since operating costs set the foundation for profits, an entrepreneur must clearly define which type of clientele their business will serve, how to serve them, how many you can serve, and most importantly, how to retain them.

How to Evaluate Equipment Before Deciding to Buy

If I had to start all over, I would certainly do things differently. But since I’m now a business owner looking for profit, I must do things differently. Instead of dreaming of a bigger facility, I’m looking for ways to make more out of my actual square footage without compromising efficiency and quality. In other words, I want to add more equipment and services without compromising what works well already.

As a sports performance facility owner, here are the ten qualities I look for in a piece of equipment before I make a purchase.

1. Who will it serve, and what does it do?
2. Do the end results transfer to client goals?
3. Can it serve multiple types of clientele?
4. Does the equipment do what it claims?
5. How much space does it require?
6. Is it versatile?
7. Will clients benefit from it over a long period of time?
8. Is it durable?
9. Does it require maintenance?
10. How much does it cost?

You may be surprised to see cost listed at the end. The reason is simple. If I give positive answers to all the other questions on the list, the equipment has the potential to generate recurring revenue. Whether we can afford it or not is another question, but knowing a tool can generate recurring revenues also means we can build a business model around it. When you multiply your money-generating tools and optimize them according to how many clients can use them, you will start generating good profits from the tools.

Knowing a tool can generate recurring revenues means we can build a business model around it, says @hitrainer_pro. Share on X

Keep in mind that the business model of a sports performance facility is very different than a personal training studio or a large surface gym. Nonetheless, optimizing square footage must remain a priority.

In an athletic training-type facility, there are tools essential for making a profit. I mentioned earlier that if I had to do it all over, I would start with a different approach. Here’s what I would do first: based on the ten qualities listed above, I would only pick five tools to start my facility and build from there.

Below are my top five pieces of equipment that are essential to start a facility and generate results for my clients. And yes, profits come from our ability to provide results with the tools we use.

Squat Rack

First on my list is a squat rack. The “cage” is a strength tool that’s evolved extensively over the years. Since working the large muscle groups remains the most efficient way to improve performance and burn calories, it’s a must-have.

Although originally squat racks served a single purpose (developing lower body strength), the newer designs have responded to market demands by becoming much more versatile. Because they now have the capacity to develop both upper body and functional strength and offer multiple models of grip attachments, the cage allows us to target and assess some very specific areas of development. With both athletes and general population clientele, especially beginners, simple gains in strength can produce great results.

What I like the most about these strength gains are the corresponding increases in speed we see with young athletes. If your market is like mine, young athletes will be a major component of your business, and often their parents hesitate when it comes to strength training. With that in mind, I really enjoy flipping the conversation to explain their child will become faster with muscle development. With sports performance, to move quickly you need to be able to produce ground force—and that requires power.

When you’re starting out, the truth is that any rack will do as long as it’s solid. I’ve used different brands, and all get the basic job done. Having been fortunate to play around on different units, however, I can say that my favorite is the rack manufactured by Pendulum Strength. The quick release features and great handles help make for smoother sessions and results.

Dumbbells with Rack

I don’t think the dumbbell needs much of a sales pitch. As old as the cast iron, the bell remains to this day one of the most versatile tools for strength, function, and power. Selectorized (adjustable) ones are good for small facilities. If you refer back to my criteria list, dumbbells make sense in every way and are a must for a new facility. Only your imagination limits their use. Dumbbells are valuable when introducing young athletes to proper squatting form via the goblet squat while allowing experienced athletes to train their smaller stabilizing muscles doing auxiliary lifts.

Although it’s difficult to go wrong when it comes to this tool, remember that upgrades like rubber coating and solid pieces will save you trouble down the line. If you have a choice, avoid dumbbells with rubber grips as they tendto show wear and tear faster than any other component. Iron Grip offers a great product and is widely available.

Speed Development with a Motor-Less Treadmill

As speed is a main focus in a performance facility, we must ask ourselves how we’ll develop this quality and how we’ll measure it. We all know that top speed is very different than acceleration and that capacity to process information can greatly affect speed and power output. As coaches, we must ask ourselves not only how we’ll improve the different aspects of speed, but also how we’re going to measure it.

Ground work is always necessary, but for increased development and quantification, I turn to the motor-less treadmill. I avoid motorized treadmills because I don’t want my athletes only to develop their ability to pick up their legs quickly. Curve treadmills are great when I want my long distance athletes to do tempo, recovery, and endurance runs.

For athletes to make a difference on the field or court, however, I look for explosiveness and acceleration. I chose the HiTrainer because it’s non-motorized and puts the athlete in the drive phase, engaging the core, strengthening the posterior chain, and developing speed. It’s on my priority list because it’s an intelligent, self-propelled treadmill that only requires the space of a regular tread.

The HiTrainer’s measuring capabilities are unmatched in the market, and the versatility allows users to measure a 100m-sprint or push a sled for as long as they can stand it—all in the space of a closet. HiTrainer caters both to the most advanced athlete as well as the young beginner. Knowing you can keep an athlete progressing for years to come based on reliable data also means you can keep the client for the long run.

Our mission is to develop better athletes, and the HiTrainer is a great coaching aid in teaching how to accelerate on the field and how to improve that acceleration. If strength is the foundation of sports performance, speed will take an athlete to the next level. High-level competition is defined by tenths of a second, so we must be able to measure the different components of speed accurately. Top speed, acceleration, speed to deploy peak power, and cognitive speed are all very different, and we must be able to assess them in real time and during a max effort.

I also use the HiTrainer for rehab and return to play protocols. Its force sensors measure a lower limb’s left-right balance in real time as an athlete runs. This one function allows me to cater to a clientele with entirely different needs and can highlight whether an athlete has recovered from an injury.

Athlete Wearable

Increasingly, in sports performance and team facilities and unquestionably on social media, we see coaches invest in wearable measurement tools with varying price points and utility. Wearables are big and on trend as people are looking for ever finer edges over their competition. At a certain point, however, the information available becomes too much and doesn’t help with my decision-making as a coach. Especially in the context of the often lean start-up business, I’ve had to make decisions about whether a tool brought value to the athletes and me. If we don’t measure it, we can’t manage it, but too much data tends to lose meaning.

With that in mind, my athletes all train with Push. I work mostly with power sport athletes who play hockey and football, and a velocity-based approach ensures that we’re getting done what we need to accomplish in the weight room. Anyone can exhaust an athlete—making them better is another matter. Just like I don’t waste time conditioning an athlete for sport-specific demands by working with a HiTrainer, we don’t waste reps.

With power sport athletes, velocity-based measurements ensure we're accomplishing what we need to, says @hitrainer_pro. Share on X

When our goal is power and we factor in velocity, we can stay away from pure strength development, and I don’t have to watch every rep or guestimate speed. This is important for many reasons, including the demands of the sport my athletes are preparing for. At a certain point, an athlete will be strong enough, but an athlete will never manage to be too powerful.

Foam Plyo Boxes

We mainly use plyo boxes for jumping to develop power and because my athletes enjoy them and find them motivating. Although I do incorporate other uses, my athletes certainly love to jump. Before we get into the specifics, first a note on the boxes themselves—invest in the best ones and you’ll only cry once. While the stackable pyramid boxes save space and are certainly durable, they will be the reason your athletes sign up to be skin donors, as will wooden boxes. Fatigue, inattention, and accidents will inevitably lead your athletes to rip open their shins, and possibly worse.

Purchasing foam boxes eliminates a very real worry for your athletes and allows them to push harder and farther than they otherwise would. The flip side is that some foam boxes can deteriorate quickly and may not stand up to wear like a wooden box or metal pyramid, so make sure you get quality. While I certainly have a few brands I don’t recommend, I will say that I’m currently using PowerSystems Plyo Boxes and that, with two years of heavy use, they still look and perform exactly as they should.

So what do I use boxes for? They’re good for working power and body coordination. And depth jumping and jumping for height are some of my most programmed options. It’s also important to make sure athletes are fresh and don’t tax their CNS heavily before their jumps.

Apart from that, I use the boxes to do single leg squats instead of the usual pistol squats on the ground. These are excellent exercises for strengthening the knee joints, and the ability to execute them consecutively and with proper form reduces the risk of ligament injuries. This is especially important when I’m working with my female soccer players, who have a greater risk of ACL tears. For the same reason, I also focus on proper shock absorption and change of direction exercises.

Building Blocks

Looking at these five tools, I hope you see that the common thread is my original decision criteria. Most of the tools are also focused on the ability to create a solid baseline for our athletes, which leads to a foundation for development. Measure, measure, and measure. Strength is quantifiable, and so is speed in all its different aspects. To retain a client, we must provide them a roadmap with well-established stepping stones. The combination of these five tools allows for that.

Of course there are other great tools out there. But whether you’re a trainer, coach, or facility owner and just getting started, I encourage you to consider these five tools. They can bootstrap a simple facility that produces great athlete results while optimizing space and profit.

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

I have the opportunity to work with a number of female athletes at the NCAA Division I level, specifically young women competing in softball, track & field, and rowing. Through this experience, I’ve gained a certain perspective regarding various groups of young women who are incredibly devoted to their sports—in some cases, they are competing at the collegiate level as the culmination of 10-15 years of commitment and dedication to their given event. With regard to rowing, they are often beginning a new athletic endeavor altogether!

All too frequently with these female college athletes, their sport-specific skills are highly developed, but take the glove out of their hand or the spikes off their feet, and the weaknesses in their athletic foundations are quickly exposed. (Many coaches will recognize that these observations are not unique to female competitors, either.)

Can You Learn to Train, Compete, and Win All at Once?

Young women’s athletic careers are often too quickly shunted into being competitive, with little time dedicated to developing fundamental movement skills, foundational strength training, or any sort of structured athletic development outside of sport-specific practice or competition. It’s as if they must constantly prove themselves, and are being tested to see what they can do and how they compare with one another. This leads to games, then tournaments, traveling across the state and across the country, and club season in the summer and fall, with their respective high school season in the winter and spring.

We need to give young female athletes the chance to maximize potential that we do for male athletes, says @Cody__Roberts. Share on X

From my perspective further down the line, it seems incredibly overwhelming and backwards. From a pre-teen age, we ask these young ladies to compete against one another with a high standard placed on winning, without ever engaging or prioritizing the ancillary pieces to performance enhancement and injury prevention through proper training, development, and education.

Don’t get me wrong—I understand that a sense of team camaraderie and competitiveness can be an important ingredient in this process. But then here on campus arrive 18-year-old young women who have little to no experience with strength training, or with having properly prepared their bodies and minds for the demands of practice, holistic training, and competition.

It may be a chicken-and-egg discussion, but I make this challenge to all parents:

• Are you making the time for your daughter to learn how to train?
• Is she playing other sports or doing other activities besides her primary sport?
• Is she allowed a true off-season?
• Does she have a true “off” day during the week?

As a strength and conditioning coach, I’m obviously partial to the mental fortitude that comes alongside the physical development from learning to squat, deadlift, lunge, press, and pull, with or under a load.

This is not to say that underdeveloped and overspecialized athletes are always the case: School districts often employ certified strength coaches (or contract out to private professionals), while CrossFit, social media, and more have all greatly increased the popularity of strength training and the use of the barbell. This can make a collegiate strength and conditioning coach’s job somewhat easier, smoothing the acclimation process of teaching an athlete how to lift properly and use free weights. (Properly can have different meanings to different people…but that is not the road I want to go down with this article.)

Overall, each individual teenage athlete will fall somewhere across a wide spectrum of experience that must be appreciated when they step on campus. Within the same group of freshmen student-athletes:

• Some may have been involved in structured strength and plyometric training since adolescence with a quality and experience professional;
• Some may have had a physical education class in high school and a football coach that let everyone do the program their football players were doing;
• Some may have been constantly playing their sport(s), traveling to tournaments, and participating in showcases, with a nonstop practice schedule and no commitment to proper or adequate strength training.

Let us focus our attention on that last end of the spectrum, with the athlete that has little to no experience in the weight room. They are possibly a victim of the youth and club sport system that puts a high priority on traveling to compete in tournaments every weekend, limiting the opportunity to dedicate time to enhancing performance potential and mitigating the risk of injury through basic strength training. Or maybe they simply never had the opportunity or encouragement necessary to step into a weight room with proper guidance? In the end, it is definitely not the student-athlete’s fault, as they are at the mercy of their environment and the system. I would encourage youth athletes to enjoy what they do and do a variety of activities (sports, exercises, games, etc.).

Too often there is this standard on competing, winning, and individual accolades. But this process can be very detrimental, because the athlete never puts in the necessary time for training and doesn’t learn to appreciate the work and commitment needed outside of game day. It is the work in the weight room, on the track, and outside the lines of the playing field that provides a foundation of both mental and physical development for a young athlete.

Things are shifting and evolving, but I hope we, as coaches, and especially at the youth level, provide an opportunity for young women to maximize their potential and development much as we do with male athletes playing football, basketball, wrestling, or baseball. A weight room can be a male-dominated environment and can be terrifying and intimidating for a young adolescent, and girls cannot be treated as boys that don’t lift as heavy. Fundamentals may be the same in the movements, but the approach needs to be adapted to the individual and personality.

It is our responsibility to bring guidance, welcoming women into the weight room at an earlier age, says @Cody__Roberts. Share on X

Science and research have shown that per unit of muscle, potential for strength is equal across genders (women can potentially make greater improvements in strength in the short term) and women can build muscle at similar rates to men¹. We may know this, but young athletes are not reading this research and it is our responsibility to curb these doubts or fallacies and bring guidance, welcoming women into the weight room at an earlier age. Further, the research and encouragement around youth strength training and the benefits, especially for a post pubescent female, are astounding when it comes to performance enhancement and injury prevention³.

Control the Controllable

Regardless of the youth system, as strength and conditioning coaches—especially at the collegiate level—we are left to assess, adapt, and adjust our training philosophy to quickly onboard and maximize the time and efforts of the student-athletes who are our responsibility. An effective coach is one that can rapidly acclimate an inexperienced athlete to the weight room. As Carl Valle wrote in a recent barbell squatting article: “We shouldn’t overcoach, but the blend of teaching and challenging an athlete with tasks is an art worth exploring.” Helping the athletes understand proper technique and educating them on how strength training can impact their ability, durability, work ethic, and commitment—this is the psycho-physical side to training. The physical actions and techniques are important, but more important is the psychological approach to the general process and each training session (and, when it comes down to it, each set and repetition).

Over time, the technical cues, progressions, and programming may become more simplified and more easily understood in the eyes of the strength coach. However, what never gets easier are the personalities and the people, as each individual presents new and unique trials and tribulations. Herein lies the art and science of being a strength coach, where it is challenging, but at the same time incredibly rewarding, to see the growth and maturation of any young student-athlete, male or female.

S&C coaches are responsible for molding not only an athlete’s body, but more importantly their mind, says @Cody__Roberts. Share on X

There is no recipe for success, and it takes time and effort to slow-cook an athlete to buy into training and simultaneously compete at the NCAA level. When all is said and done, strength and conditioning coaches are responsible for molding not only the body, but more importantly, the mind of the student-athletes they work with. There should be pride taken in how an athlete conducts themselves in the weight room, and the strength coach is the driver of that bus.

Teacher & Coach

Back to our freshman female athlete with zero “weight room” experience. The first responsibility is to meet her at her level with regard to exercise prescription and ability. The proper exercise progressions and regressions that help set her up for success will be a vital piece to building trust and confidence between coach and athlete. She may be intimidated by the barbell, the plates, the larger set of dumbbells—and even though her legs may be strong, her grip is not equivalent yet, so starting small and simple is important.

But even with the simplest exercise, there are still at least a handful of technical cues that need to be understood and appreciated. This is where the coach becomes a teacher, aiding and guiding the focus to keys like posture, foot pressure, and intent on each repetition. In a large team setting, a coach only has one pair of eyes and one voice and cannot actively coach every individual through each repetition. But what a coach can do is simplify the technical cues and set the athlete up for success, teaching her what to remind herself or her teammates to do while performing every exercise.

A coach should identify three standard cues with each exercise:

1. Stance/Setup
2. Grip/Bar Position
3. Bar/Body Action

For example, for a Goblet Squat:

1. Stance: Shoulder width
2. Grip: DB/KB at sternum, with forearms actively squeezing the weight
3. Body Action: Sitting hips between the feet, maintaining an upright posture and full foot pressure

Even simpler than a Goblet Squat, a Counterbalance Squat or Lateral Squat, where the arms extend out from the body and allow the hips to counter backward, keeping the arms parallel to the ground and the torso upright. This exercise is a great way to autocorrect position and action, allowing the coach to assess abilities and limitations with regard to movement quality. The simplest of activities in the weight room can help acclimate athletes and reduce the intimidation factor associated with the space.

Simple activities in the weight room can help acclimate athletes and reduce the intimidation factor, says @Cody__Roberts. Share on X

’Starting Strength’

The exercise end goals I reference in this article all center around the barbell—in my mind the primary static strength exercises. Multi-joint in nature, they are the “best bang for your buck,” allowing the athlete to handle the heaviest loads and having the tried-and-true greatest return on investment. These are the squats, deadlifts, and presses with a barbell. These lifts do not always start with a barbell (as is the case with squatting), but the barbell is the goal.

This is another nugget I appreciated from Carl’s barbell squatting article—“Heavy training is the ultimate teacher”—and in the progression of athletic development, there will come a time that it becomes a necessary piece. But with heavy barbells comes great responsibility, and what makes these exercises so potent is that if an athlete wants to truly embrace their greatness and reap their benefits, a solid mental and physical approach is necessary. These exercises create the strength and skill needed for an athlete to operate at higher levels with Olympic lifts (cleans, snatches, and jerks), and, ultimately, the ability to create force in other skills and sports.

Crawl, Walk, Run (Progression)

A coach can improve their ability to effectively coach and impact a group by controlling the tempo of each rep. Starting slow can be effective, and this accentuated eccentric focus has training benefits as well, especially for a beginner. This approach improves the neuromuscular connection and provides the mechanical tension necessary to create the desired adaptation and motor learning.

Controlling the eccentric phase of each rep allows the athlete to better feel the positions and actions she is going through: Connecting coaching cues with mindfulness and focus; learning to create tension and stiffness throughout the torso, upper body, and lower body; creating this concentration and appreciation for technique; and focusing not so much on counting repetitions, but on making each rep count. This is the first step toward developing maturity in training, instilling diligence and treating each multi-joint exercise as a skill—not to mention it also helps prevent putting too much load on the bar too soon.

Any variation of tempo, such as pausing prior to the concentric action, can be valuable. It continues to challenge the athlete and provide variety, and is all part of the pursuit of mastery in building a wide base of physical and mental understanding for a specific exercise.

I rarely say never, but I never promote an accentuated concentric action, as there are no benefits and it can confuse the athlete as to what the goal is regarding moving the load. There are always exceptions, and there may be a time that the athlete needs to go slower on the way up to build confidence and establish control, but I am not going to be the one to control or limit that. Let the athlete develop a sense of overcoming gravity on their own. When the time is right and in the effort of progression, add velocity-focused training after technical mastery and rudimentary strength is established. This can be very valuable, since it promotes intent, provides immediate feedback, and can be a way to take focus off of load and facilitate competition through moving moderate loads aggressively between teammates. But as I said, when the time is right…

Another way to increase use with a barbell while governing the load is to prescribe some sort of barbell complex (three to five different exercises performed consecutively without putting the barbell down).

Barbell Complex– RDL, Hang Clean High Pull, Hang Clean, Front Squat x2 – five each

This can be used as a warm-up at the beginning of a session or cool-down activity to help establish technique. At the end of the session, things can often be incredibly productive as minds and bodies are their most alert and mobile for this type of work.

Never Sacrifice Technique for the Weight on the Bar

Technique is always the priority, for safety purposes as well as the discipline and accountability piece mentioned earlier. We never want to fool ourselves or the athletes we work with into thinking they are getting stronger by increasing loads at the expense of either shorter ranges of motion, or sloppy technique. This is when we are driven by ego, and chasing numbers rather than focusing on the “Learn to Train” phase of development. Competition can be a great thing, but check your ego at the door and focus on the progress, not the performance under the bar.

Focus on progress, maintain perspective, and above all, stay true to the technique, says @Cody__Roberts. Share on X

For beginners, things will happen and progress quickly, and it is often too easy to bite off more than they can chew. Use your experience, knowledge, and maturity as a coach to help keep the reigns tight on these young and excited minds. Maintain perspective and stay true to the technique. Instilling this patience and appreciation will pay dividends, and most importantly, when the athlete trains away from your supervision they will have their concentration and effort in the right place.

As the basic technical cues are understood and loads begin to increase, there can be layers of technical cues that need to be added. The stance, grip, and body action that got them started will always remain, and you should work to connect consistencies to any and every exercise or sport-specific skill. As the loads begin to challenge posture and the position of the joints and spine, this is where we add in advanced components of bracing and positioning that initially happened on their own, but now need additional cuing and regard. This can be a focus on engaging or using the upper back, head/chin position, in maintaining a neutral neck, or position and focus on knuckles, wrists, and elbows. All are potentially one-inch adjustments that have incredible return on safety and performance in the respective lift.

Further, the use of diaphragmatic breathing and the Valsalva maneuver can also be learned during this time and should flow well, as philosophically the use and cuing of breathing through the diaphragm happens concurrently in warm-up, corrective, or torso exercises as well. This is in effort to avoid the use of a belt and to promote proper bracing. It may be a philosophical opinion, but I am not one to encourage wrapping a belt around an athlete to help them handle a heavier load. In the end, we want to progressively load and this is a technique and means to accomplish that which will have greater transfer to their sport (where they will not be wearing a belt either)—empowering the athlete from within to transfer strength and power from the lower body to and through the torso and upper body/barbell.

I measure my impact on athletes on the way they conduct themselves without my instruction, says @Cody__Roberts. Share on X

Ultimately, each set and every rep is a tuning process, developing physical proficiency as well as mental fortitude. Identify two to three cues that the athlete understands, and implement these as she sets up under or on the bar and attacks the set mentally and physically. This is training: the practice and rehearsal of a task that challenges the individual and helps facilitate change. In order for that change to stick, there has to be mental engagement. This is the “teaching” and “challenging” side to coaching that must be instilled in athletes. I measure my impact on athletes on the way they conduct themselves without my instruction and take great pride in how they operate and conduct themselves in a weight room.

Progress Is a Process

Strength and conditioning coaches have the opportunity to not only improve performance and physical output, but—more important and more impactful—the molding of the athlete’s mindset and approach to training. There is so much to be gained from strength training, and the barbell will never lie. Training, like life, is a place where you cannot cut corners, and the greater the investment, the greater the return. The investment is not measured in how much you do, but rather in the focus you do it with: “train smarter, not harder.”

As an athlete learns to train, it is the responsibility of the coach to encourage patience and a focus on progress over time, taking away the focus on load. Again, dipping to the “art” of coaching versus the science, but building trust with the athlete allows them to gain confidence in their preparation. When an athlete sees steady progress with the barbell, in their body, and on the field, then they will continue to become more mentally engaged in the process.

Progress with a Purpose

Once technique is established and the periodization of training ensues, a layer that helps to promote progress with our athletes is to give them purpose in how to load. I generalize my weeks of training into four categories:

1. Base: This is the introduction of the exercises and a feeling out for what loads can be handled.

• During this session, the athlete focuses on establishing technique as well as challenging reps per set, setting an understanding for the weeks ahead regarding how much she can handle.

2. Volume: This is where we stabilize the weights used in the base week and look to increase the amount of work being done.

• This is another opportunity to potentially add the RPE layer of training.
• Help the athlete understand Rate of Perceived Exertion, as during this week RPEs should be roughly an 8 (2-3 reps left in the tank, nothing to failure).

3. Intensity: This is where the athlete looks to increase the weights used and volume (sets or reps) decreases.

• Coaches need to pay the most attention here, keeping egos at the door and continuing to promote technique as the priority.
• Reinforcing the RPE concept, we can start to explain and understand RPEs of 9-10. 

4. Unload: Intensity is generally maintained during this week, but volumes (usually reps) are very low.

• This serves as a way to stabilize the intensity of the bar and gain confidence operating with the newfound loads and abilities from the previous session.
• As a coach, watch the speed and technique, and reinforce that the RPEs should be in the 6-8 range. Combine telling the athlete with allowing the athlete to feel and tell you how they would rate the sets they perform.

It is such a beautiful process as it unfolds and the athlete (female or not) comes into the room with an established understanding of proper technique, and knows how to appropriately apply that technique and balance the workload as it fits into the holistic picture of their sport, season, and development.

Facilitating Engagement

As much as the focus has been on molding the mind of the individual athlete, much of what we do in sport is team-related and team-focused. To be effective coaches, we must also facilitate the engagement, conversation, and interaction of our student-athletes during a session. What they are doing is difficult, and often not the most enjoyable (early mornings, at the end of a hard practice, etc.). The best way to not simply get through, but to truly get better, is to support one another. Hold each other accountable to the techniques everyone is collectively learning, ask questions, provide feedback, and be encouraging for each rep and set.

There needs to be an understanding that the time is now, and in order to truly benefit from the training, there needs to be an urgency, purpose, and motivation through the process. This does not mean that loud music, yelling, screaming, and slapping each other is the answer. But just as any artist would approach their craft, things need to be methodical. An effective coach helps the athlete and team navigate this system and approach, which can be done in part by leaning on the veterans and upperclassmen of the group to help continue the standard and on-board the freshmen.

The athletes I work with are technicians with the barbell, and I work to help the athletes develop a routine and checklist for how they begin each set and perform each rep. Even in the lighter/warm-up sets, no matter the week or session, there is an “act as if” mentality. So, psychologically, when the athlete begins to handle loads that are 85%+ their 1RM, they already have the mental maturity for how to operate and what to think about, and they are set up for success and progress.

More than telling athletes they should care, create an environment that makes them wantto care, says @Cody__Roberts. Share on X

There is a mental switch that gets flipped as soon as they grip the bar, and a focus that carries over into their sport and life. It is much more than simply telling them they should care, it is creating an environment that makes them want to care. They care because they see the results of others before them, they see their own results, and they have dreams and goals of success. Help them unlock their potential and aid in the maturation process from learning to train to training to win.

Timing Is Everything

The primary piece to be understood is that this is not a recipe where you can simply mix all the ingredients together at once and have everything come out of the oven as you envisioned. We must add each ingredient at the right time and in the right way to get the product and reaction we wish. This is where the art of coaching outweighs the science, and is what truly makes a coach effective in their craft. The best training program is the one that athletes believe in. The psychological feeds the physical—the greater their investment, the greater the return.

The best training program is the one that athletes believe in, says @Cody__Roberts. Share on X

A coach must first know where they are going: meaning, what exercises they ultimately want to get to and what qualities they want to develop. Use the proper exercise regression that allows progression to the barbell exercises you are working towards. Establish technique and continue to add layers of understanding and mastery as the confidence of the female athletes increase, along with the weight on the bar and in their hands. Show them the transfer of training as performance in other areas begins to grow (speed, vertical jump, etc.); develop their trust and buy-in. Make them feel as welcome and important as their male counterparts.

Ultimately, give them purpose and ownership of the process as they fully engage both mentally and physically with their time and efforts. We are not looking to create weightlifters or powerlifters in this process, but we are developing values and skills that they can implement in all areas of their life. Iron sharpening iron, tough and together.

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

References

1. Best Strength Training Articles – Stronger By Science

2. Long-Term Athlete Development Framework, Sport For Life Canada.

3. NSCA Position Paper: The Squat Exercise in Athletic Conditioning: A Position Statement and Review of the Literature National Strength & Conditioning Association Journal – 1991

Aspiring athletes between the ages of 5 and 12 need to be exposed to and perfect a wide variety of movement challenges in order to develop effective coordination and movement skills. Proper coordination and mobility—and the joy in executing these in a free-flowing, creative environment—set the foundation for learning more complex sports skills later on. As author Jozef Drabik puts it: “…without good coordination the full motor potential of a person cannot be realized. Mastery of sports technique is impossible without good movement coordination.”

A common complaint among sport coaches today is that many young athletes lack fundamental coordination and movement skills. These traits were found in abundance years ago, when children were more likely to play outdoors, compete in multiple sports, and have access to physical education class more than once a week. Children today spend most of their school days seated in a classroom, while their free time is also often sedentary as well: Fortnight, anyone?! Even those who do actively participate in sports tend to be heavily involved in playing one sport year-round.

All this #specialized practice in one sport should lead to a generation of superstars, but it hasn’t, says @JeremyFrisch. Share on X

Over the last 20 years, there has been a push in youth sports to spend any and all available practice time on developing specific sport skills at the expense of developing all-around athleticism. You would think that, with all this specialized practice in one sport, we would be seeing a generation of superstars. In fact, it’s just the opposite: Injury and burnout rates are at an all-time high.

Proper general movement training can go a long way toward helping improve overall athleticism. Movement sessions for children should be fun, engaging, challenging, and most importantly, semi-organized. Between school and sports, children spend their entire day in an organized setting being constantly told what to do. A good training program will let young athletes develop their own style of movement to be able to solve movement problems in their own unique way. Children develop this movement sense by practicing, exploring movement, and trying things out.

Back to the Basics: Educational Gymnastics

In my experience, the implementation of basic gymnastic exercises can greatly enhance a developing athlete’s all-around movement skills. As mentioned earlier, the best age to implement these types of exercises is between 5 and 13, with the most sensitive periods from the ages of 6-11. The exercises involved ask the entire body—fingers to toes—to move in a coordinated manner, defy gravity, and, in turn, develop a number of fitness- and skill-related components like flexibility, strength, balance, and coordination. They explore the basic foundational positions of squat, lunge, step, supine, prone reaching, and rotation. With a little creativity, these movements can allow for unique movement challenges in multiple planes, levels, and directions.

Training for a sport doesn’t always have to look like that sport, and kids appreciate fun movements, says @JeremyFrisch #LTAD. Share on X

Training for a sport doesn’t always have to look like that sport. For example, climbing on monkey bars is not only fun for kids, but it develops a tremendous amount of shoulder/arm/grip strength that can carry over into sports that involve throwing, catching, blocking, and tackling. When it comes to training youth athletes, the following are some of my go-to ideas for all-around athletic development.

Basic gymnastic exercises can be broken down into the following subsets:

• Animal Movement
• Rolling and Tumbling
• Jumping and Landing

Bear and Crab Series

1. Bear series
   • Bear one-arm reach
   • Bear opposite arm leg reach
   • Bear rotate

Video 1. Bear series exercises.

2. Crab series
   • Crab one-arm reach
   • Crab cross
   • Crab rotate

Video 2. Crab series exercises.

We often do this series as a challenging warm-up activity. The benefits of the Bear and Crab Series include:

•  Static and dynamic balance
•  Trunk stability
•  Strength development through the hands/arms/shoulders
•  Mobility through the hips and thoracic spine

The sequence follows one-arm, opposite arm and leg, and then a rotational component with each exercise increasing in difficulty. This could benefit almost any developing athlete. When training youth baseball players, for example, this series can improve shoulder function and build strength and rotation through the trunk and core, which aids both throwing and hitting. For youth soccer players, these same qualities mean better coordination of the arms and legs, which translates into better sprinting and cutting efficiency. It takes tremendous effort to balance and maintain position on three and two points of contact. This is the reason the series starts with simple holds in a static position for a short period of time, and then moves on to more dynamic movements.

Rolling/Tumbling Series

3. Rolling/Tumbling series
• Forward shoulder roll
• Back shoulder roll
• Star roll
• Butt roll

Video 3. Rolling/Tumbling series exercises.

Very young children love to do somersaults and other tumbling actions. It’s the perfect opportunity for them to explore their environment and learn how to control their bodies. For some reason, as we get older we stop doing these movements, which is not a great idea. As we grow taller and heavier, our center of gravity and base of support change significantly from early childhood.

During growth spurts, children’s balancing abilities can often be negatively affected for a short period of time. Out of nowhere, kids can suddenly seem clumsy and uncoordinated. An easy ground ball at shortstop one season is suddenly a bit more challenging the next season because the athlete grew two inches over the winter. The athlete has never explored that new range of motion in different movements and scenarios, and will need time to adjust. This is why general movement training is so effective for the developing athlete, because even as the athlete is growing rapidly, they continue to develop their spatial skills at the same time.

Maintaining #tumbling skills can positively affect body awareness and control during growth spurts, says @JeremyFrisch. Share on X

Keeping up with tumbling skills can positively affect body awareness and control through those times. This is very important for young athletes who play sports like football, soccer, hockey, and wrestling. Those sports obviously have moments where the athletes will find themselves moving through the air and falling on the ground in awkward positions. Knowing how to fall, land, and recover is not only important for performance, but also for injury prevention.

Jumping and Landing

In field and court sports, having the ability to start, stop, turn the hips, and change direction is paramount to being successful. It requires a pair of strong legs and mobile hips to be able to get into the right positions to move efficiently. Many young athletes have decent sport-specific skills, but fall behind or get injured because they simply never developed a foundational level of upper and lower body strength, hip range of motion, and trunk stability.

Luckily, it doesn’t take fancy exercises or a million-dollar training facility to remedy this issue. As a young coach, I often found myself training youth sports teams in gymnasiums, outdoor fields, and empty hallways. With minimal equipment, I had to come up with ways to improve strength that produced results. Working on jumping and landing skills is a great way to train the lower body for the demands of sports. It’s cheap, easy to implement, and something many children like to do from a very young age.

Children, by their very nature, love jumping. For most kids, jumping skills develop naturally though a wide range of movement experiences, games, and sports. Children crave challenges and by exploring different jumping activities, children will naturally take chances and have fun in the process. For older athletes, jumping and plyometrics have been a staple in performance enhancement for decades. This is why I find jump training so beneficial—it can be implemented at all levels and ages of sports performance training.

Jumping is broken down into five different categories, although as you will see in the video, a coach is only limited by their creativity and imagination. When you add simple tools like boxes, hurdles, and trampolines, the amount of variation is endless.

The five jumps are:

• Two-foot takeoff, two-foot landing
• Two-foot takeoff, one-foot landing
• One-foot takeoff, two-foot landing
• One-foot takeoff, opposite foot landing (aka leap)
• One-foot takeoff, same foot landing (aka hop)

When it comes to jump training, many coaches follow a series of progressions, with increasing difficulty depending on the exercise. Although that is a perfectly fine method of training, our method of jumping is a bit more experimental. Instead of following a fixed number of reps and sets and training days devoted to one exercise, we constantly change exercises and add different parts to each exercise. For example, instead of just a two-footed vertical jump, we may throw a medicine ball catch in the air, followed by a single-leg landing. For young athletes, the more variation that can be added to each exercise, the bigger the potential to expand their overall movement skill set.

Video 4. Jumping and landing exercises.

Learning to Play

Children learn best when they are allowed to figure things out by themselves. When I was a kid, my friends and I never counted how many times we climbed a tree or raced each other down the street (sets and reps). I simply went outside and played. We raced, chased, wrestled, biked, climbed, and swam ourselves to exhaustion. These play sessions not only made us tired, but developed movement skills that we carried forward with us in sports and life. If sports are a complex problem-solving activity, then early movement experiences are the ABC’s and 123’s needed to solve those problems.

Kids need #play sessions to develop the movement skills they carry forward in sports and life, says @JeremyFrisch. Share on X

Exposure to a wide variety of movement is key for all-around athletic development. Good coordination and movement skills are the basis to developing an athlete’s full potential in any sport. The lack of fundamental movement skills in our current youth has been brought on by the decline of outdoor play and multiple sports play, and diminishing physical education time paired with longer periods of sedentary, seated time. This, in fact, is why I find my passion in training these young athletes. It is my mission to bring back these basic movements that once flooded our courts and fields with superior athleticism.

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

During the academic year at my school, Mondays are the busiest training day of the week. Over the course of the day, 400 student athletes come in for workouts, with the bulk of them arriving during two high-traffic intervals: 6 am to 7:30 am and 2:30 pm to 5:30 pm. These are busy stretches, and with support staff limited to a grad assistant and a few undergrad interns, we have to lay out procedures almost perfectly so they run with precision. Otherwise, there’s too much downtime, and athletes end up cooling off while waiting to get the rack for their next set.

While I’m fortunate that we could have 24 people lifting in racks at the same time with another 24 spotting the lifters (accounting for 48 athletes), we typically have groups of 60-75 lifting at one time. That could be half of our football team or combined groups like the men’s and women’s hockey teams. Although it seems like there should be enough work for everyone to stay focused, having large groups of people lifting and staff members doing too many things at once, sometimes athletes decide to make their rest times longer than they should. What’s an overworked coach to do?

Programming rest activities for the athletes is the best of many things I’ve tried. While active recovery is not a new idea (Dr. Zatsiorsky talks extensively on this), we can look at recovery activities as ways to logistically control the flow of the room and spend enough time doing those extra—but easily skipped—pre-hab exercises.

We now have athletes set up in groups of three to four and, while one performs the main exercise, everyone else has a job to do, and no one should be screwing around and distracting others. Sounds good, right? It is. The hard part comes next. You have to decide which exercises are important to program and how much time the athletes need between sets.

What Makes An Exercise a Good Fit for Rest Intervals?

After a few years of programming rest exercises, I’ve been able to try a high percentage of my ideas. As you would expect, some worked well and others did not. I’m lucky now because my staff size has grown and I have other people who—because of their background or education—see different solutions that I never I could. That’s called diversity, by the way, and has been proven by history to be a good thing as long as you’re open to a range of ideas. The three areas where anyone (from undergrad intern to professional staff) can be creative are:

1. Injury Reduction
2. Grip
3. Vision

Of course, we don’t try every idea that gets pitched in the staff meetings. We have to have a process to vet the ideas before we introduce them to the athletes.

Here are the four questions we ask before we try anything new.

Is this an exercise that athletes can easily do on their own, and is it unique enough to keep their attention?

Once upon a time, I was a staff of one (plus the occasional undergrad intern) coaching groups of up to 50 people. In that large of a setting, it’s really difficult to be effective coaching everyone at once, so I needed a way to keep half of the athletes busy and out of the way so I could spend time coaching more technical exercises. Out of necessity, I had people perform some drills that they could do on their own with minimal or no coaching at all—but it didn’t get off to a good start. I found myself coaching the recovery exercises more than the big compound exercises because people weren’t doing them correctly or not taking them seriously.

Do we have—or can we make—the equipment needed for this exercise?

A couple of my favorite shows growing up were the A-Team and MacGyver. In both of these series, the characters had to think of creative ways to use materials at hand to beat the bad guys and save the day. While we have some very specialized equipment that we use with our athletes, everything that they use for their rest exercises is homemade or found lying around the office.

Is this exercise so simple that you could coach a 5^th grader to do it right?

The athletes take the lead on these recovery exercises. I teach a handful of them first, and their job is to teach the next group. Keeping that in mind, all the exercises have to be simple to set up and to teach. The fact that I’m working with college athletes with big, mature bodies doesn’t always mean they have big, mature brains.

Is this exercise going to allow the athlete to recover from their main exercise?

Since we’re talking about active rest exercise selection, be aware of the paradox of rest and exercise. You can blame my football coaching background for my deeply rooted aversion to people standing around during a workout, and my first few attempts at programming rest exercises were more exercise than rest. Those poor athletes needed a rest period after their rest period. I had to remind myself that tired and fatigued athletes only become more tired and do not improve. It was a blow to my ego when the rest exercises started looking more passive with people standing around, but the quality of their lifts improved, which is the important thing.

For an idea to go from the meeting room to a trial with athletes, we have to answer yes to all four questions. If it doesn’t, we work on it and adjust it until it passes our screening process. Once it does, we plug the new idea into some sample workouts to see how the athletes handle it. Be ready with a backup exercise, just in case. I’ve seen plenty of ideas pass all of the screening questions only to fail spectacularly when introduced in the weight room. It happens. Suck it up, learn from it, and move on. Now, let’s get into the recovery exercises.

Injury Reduction Exercises

There is more downtime in weight rooms than you’d expect. Say, for example, you have power cleans programmed for the athletes to do four sets of triples at 85% of their 1RM. How much rest should the lifter have? If you want them to mostly recover between attempts, 3-4 minutes rest would be about right. If you have lifting groups of three people, realistically each of the recovery exercises should take about 60-75 seconds. That way, you’ll account for 2-2.5 minutes of the lifter’s rest time with some extra time built in for them to get their head right before making an attempt. This should work out just perfectly.

The art, though, comes in deciding what type of focus you want for the recovery exercises. One of the hallmarks of strength and conditioning programs is that stronger athletes tend to get hurt less than weaker athletes.^{1, 2, 3}I spend time addressing the injuries experienced by the athletes I work with. (The injuries rates on the chart below might be different than what the national averages show.) While we all have different names for similar exercises, and by no means is this going to be an exhaustive list, here are some types of exercise we use to address these common injuries.

Addressing any way to fix these common injuries is a good first step to keeping the athletes in the competition arena versus the training room. But for the athletes I work with, improving their performance is not limited to the typical exercises you would expect to see in a weight room.

Grip Exercises

As our athletes will tell you, I’m obsessive about the quality of their grip. It might be a reflection of society and the general avoidance of physical work, or it might be my belief that you’re only as strong as your hands, but many of our athletes come in as freshmen with embarrassingly weak grip strength. The overwhelming majority of team sports, however, require grip strength in some form, be it securing a tackle in football, holding onto a basketball, keeping a finger from jamming, or pulling a heavy deadlift without straps. Consequently, I place a concerted emphasis on grip strength.

You're only as strong as your grip allows you to be, says @CarmenPata. Share on X

The way I describe it, there are three types of grip strength: pinch, crush, and twist. Pinch grip exercises focus on using the thumb and fingertips to secure an object. For crush grip exercises, think of anything that you’re trying to close your whole hand around and, well, crush. Lastly, the twist grip uses your wrist to turn something forward or backward.

At the start of this article, I shared the four must-have qualities for a recovery exercise. Here is how I decide which grip exercises to program as recovery exercises.

Is this an exercise that athletes can easily do on their own, and is it unique enough to keep their attention?

Yes, most people have never seen anything like these exercises before they get into our gym.

Do we have—or can we make—the equipment needed for this exercise? 

Yes, as strong as the athletes are, extra 45s, 25s, and dumbbells are always available.

Is this exercise so simple that you could coach a 5th grader to do it right?

Yes, all you have to say is “Pick it up until it drops. Make sure to have fast feel, though!” 

Is this exercise going to allow the athlete to recover from their main exercise?

Yes, grip work will not fatigue the central nervous system, and no one will need an oxygen tank to help them breathe after a set. The notable exception is not to fatigue the athletes’ hands before deadlifts or any of the Olympic variations.

Since the grip exercises receive a yes on all of the questions in the screening protocol, try adding in one at a time with the people you work with. Try the pinch grip for starters, as a person can do it with a double overhand position. When they need a new challenge, move into the single overhand position.

Pinch Grip

To really work on the pinch grip, start with two sets of plates and put them together front to back. I begin our male athletes with two 45-pound plates and female athletes with two 25s. In our gym, we don’t have metal plates anymore, which is a blessing and a curse for grip work. The bumper-style plates are easier to grip (as the rubber is easier to grab than the smooth metal), but they’re also thicker than standard metal plates, making it more difficult for people with smaller hands.

• Whatever style plates you have, stand them up and then put the plates face to face (so the backs of the plates are facing out).
• Pinch the plates between your thumb and fingers and pick them up. For the first couple of runs, chalk will help with your grip, but as your grip improves, slowly wean yourself off the chalk.
• When you’re ready to step up to a new challenge, try the single overhand version of the plate pinch as shown in the pictures.
• The final and most difficult evolution of the plate pinch is to add movement to this pinch, in the version of a plate.

Video 1. Finishing a pinch grip exercise with a mic drop moment is not needed, but it’s deeply satisfying.

Crush Grip

Since a crush grip simulates closing your hand to make a fist and crushing anything in its way, you can use something as simple as a towel to train for it. Both of the examples below involve the athlete doing some type of pulling exercise. The only direction I give the athletes is to keep their grip on the towel—no wrapping the towel around their hand.

Video 2. Towel pull ups are about as easy as it gets. Simply hang two towels from a pull-up bar and start your reps from there.

Partner towel rows take a little more coordination since you’re pulling against another person and both of you must be in sync. I coach a three-second eccentric tempo with both people holding the towel in the same hand, which gives an angled pull. And as long as they keep their chests squared up, this drill also doubles as an anti-rotation drill for the torso.

Video 3. The partner towel rows provide an angled pull and double as an anti-rotation drill for the torso.

Twist Grip

For targeting the twist grip, the kettlebell bar twist is my go-to exercise. As you can see in the video below, we set a standard Olympic bar at shoulder height and tied a weight to a stretch-band while looping the other end around the bar’s sleeve. What you don’t see is a 45-pound plate on the opposite side counterbalancing the kettlebell hanging from the bar.

When I program this exercise, I explain that each rep will go up with wrist flexion (turning your palm down) and down with a controlled eccentric wrist extension (turning your palm up). For the next rep, just go the other way: extension then flexion.

Video 4. The kettlebell bar twist is my go-to exercise for targeting the twist grip.

These examples of the pinch, crust, and twist grip exercises give you a starting point for getting strong hands. Again, you’re only as strong as your grip allows you to be.

Vision Training Exercises

Finally, the last of my programmed rest exercises work one of the most overlooked aspects insports: visual acuity. Or, as I tell athletes, these drills will help them see better. Using basketball as an example, watch how much the players’ eyes move around looking at the ball, their opponents, their teammates, coaches, officials, or even the people in the stands. Their eyes are in constant motion and quickly change their focus. As strength and conditioning professionals, we do all sorts of work to help improve people’s speed, power, and stamina, so why don’t we spend time helping them track, focus, and identify their targets faster?

Some of our rest exercises work one of the most overlooked aspects in sports: visual acuity, says @CarmenPata. Share on X

Keeping with the basketball example, it doesn’t matter how fast an athlete is if they keep visually losing track of the person they’re guarding—they won’t be on the court playing. If progressive overload is a way to force a super-compensation of muscle, then there should be a way to overload the muscles that control eye movement and focus the pupil. Before we get going too far, let me state the obvious: adding weights to the eyeball is not how you’re going to overload these muscles. What I’m suggesting is that you can fatigue these muscles by forcing them to move fast and adjust their focus quickly.

Like every other muscle group in the body, our eyes have a few main movement patterns which work in opposite relation to each other to stabilize the joint—or in this case, the eye. The main body movements are flexion and extension, internal rotation and external rotation, and protraction and retraction.

The eyes are the same. I’m not comfortable using the correct optometrist terms, so I’ll stick with the common terms of up and down, left and right, all the angles in between these, slight rotation to or away from the nose, convergence (cross-eyed) and divergence (bug-eyed). All of these movements come into play one way or another when the eyes focus on a target.

As your eyeballs move to see the target best, the colored part of the eye relaxes or contracts to change the amount of light that ultimately transmits to the back of the eye to the retina and then your brain “sees” what you’re focusing on. This description is an overly simplistic—yet accurate—portrayal of how our eyes focus, and it does have something in common with every other movement pattern the body produces: muscles make everything happen in sequence.

Since there are muscles involved in producing these movements, you can train the muscles surrounding and inside the eyes to become more efficient and faster in their movements, just like we do to help people run or jump. Here’s how I do it.

Eye Charts

I start with the most basic skill and have the athletes match letters and numbers from two sets of charts. One is smaller (4″x6″) held in their hand while the other is larger (8.5″x11″) and posted about 6-8 feet away from the athlete. Their job is to read their handheld card like a book (left to right and top to bottom) and then find the matching character on the far sheet as fast as they can.

When doing this sort of vision work, the athlete’s goal is to move their eyes as much as possible while specifically focusing on a target. We’ve had people do this while running their feet, doing some jumps, up-downs, or even switching cards during the set.

Another progression is to have them move the card or their body in different positions. To their right or left. Over their head or at their hips. Feel free to change the font size and colors to make it a bigger challenge. You can even do this with one eye closed. Let your imagination be your guide in how you want to challenge the athletes and overload the eye musculature.

Hand-Eye

Once people start getting good with the vision charts, the next step is to help them track an object as it moves in space. This is not something overly complicated. All I’m talking about is playing catch. Well, there is a twist—you need two different colored balls. In the video below, there are red and white lacrosse balls. Tell the athlete which hand is going to catch which colored ball. In the video, the athlete is supposed to catch the white ball in the right hand and the red ball in the left.

Video 5. The hand-eye catch exercise helps athletes track an object as it moves in space.

We start fairly easy, only going one ball at a time. Then, once the athlete has their rhythm, they turn 90 degrees toward me with their left shoulder pointing at me, but they still need to catch the ball with the correct hand. Lastly, the athlete turns 90 degrees the other way, so their right shoulder is pointed at me. This is a relatively easy progression.

Next, I throw both balls at once with high-low, both sides, and even a crossed-arm catching pattern. As with the vision charts, we do this with one eye closed or start with both eyes closed and opening on a “go!” call. These drills are to help the eyes focus on targets, not to help the person’s catching skills. Some people have never practiced catching drills before and will be discouraged quickly if you emphasize the catch. You should coach them up on their ability to see and react to the different balls.

Convergence-Divergence

The last vision skill we teach is done with some high-tech equipment: a six-foot piece of string or rope, five ½ nuts, a one-inch washer, and a dedicated carabiner. To set this up, tie off the washer to one end of the string, loop the nuts through the string (so they don’t slide off) every foot or so, and then tie the other end of the string to the carabiner, which you secure to your rack. When the athlete is ready, they hold the washer on the top of their nose right between their eyes then step back until the string is straight.

Their goal is to either converge or diverge their eyes so they experience a blurry double-vision of the string crossing at the first nut. Once that happens, they relax their eyes to come back to normal and then converge or diverge their eyes at the next nut, working up the string. This is harder than you’d think, and if they’re worried about always looking awkward while doing this drill—well, they’re right about that, but no one is going to notice.

Make a Difference Where and When You Can

The overall idea behind these drills is to fill the athletes’ time with quality work and not just to keep them busy. Pre-hab, grip, and vision work are areas that I’ve been quick to overlook in the past but are vital to an athlete’s overall development. Like you, I’m naturally drawn to watching someone set their new squat max, or shave a tenth of a second off their ten-yard sprint time because it’s fun to watch and is something you can feel proud about being part of. Seeing someone set a new PR on their string target convergence drill is not something I’m going to ever post on social media or brag out to other coaches because it’s not that glamorous.

On the other hand, if you’re like me and believe you’ll get the greatest improvements in performance by attacking people’s deficiencies, then maybe you should celebrate these improvements. Say you already have a basketball player who is strong (a double bodyweight back squat), fast (a 1.6-second ten-yard sprint), and powerful (30-inch vertical jump). What more can you really do with this person that’s going to impact their performance?

If I was working with a person like that, I might simply try to keep them healthy, fast, and strong. But that doesn’t improve their performance on the court. Would helping their eyes move and focus faster on what’s happening on the court change their performance? What about making sure their hands are strong enough to hold onto the ball coming down from a rebound? Save your answers, these are rhetorical questions.

Seeing people improve and stay healthy are always my goals for athletes. Just because the improvements happen in a non-traditional exercise doesn’t change the fact they’re still getting better, and their training is making an impact when they compete.

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

References

1. Zouita, S. et al. “Strength Training Reduces Injury Rate In Elite Young Soccer Players During One Season.” Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 2016; 30(5): 1295-1307.

2. Hewitt, T. E., et al. “The Effect of Neuromuscular Training on the Incidence of Knee Injury in Female Athletes: A Prospective Study.” American Journal of Sports Medicine, 1999; 27(6): 699-706.

3. Alentorn-Geli, E., et al. “Prevention of Non-Contact Anterior Cruciate Ligament Injuries in Soccer Players Part 1: Mechanisms of Injury and Underlying Risk Factors.” Knee Surgery, Sports Traumatology, Arthroscopy, 2009; 17(7): 705-729.

I am excited that neck training is gaining a lot attention because of concussions in sport, but we still have a lot of work to do. This is not an article on how to reduce traumatic brain injuries (TBI) using neck exercises or neck training. That’s too much of a promise that no coach could keep; however, if a stronger neck gives you a better chance, than I am all for it.

This blog piece is about building a complete neck that enhances what the neck is designed to do. The typical article on neck training usually shows progressions of exercises from easy or light strength training to more intensive or difficult training. I will not do that. Instead, this article is about preparing the neck for sports performance, and if that can reduce concussions and help athletes recover from TBI, then I feel I have made a difference. This past summer, the Exceed facility started taking neck training to the next level, and my goal now is to share a few concepts we support.

My Neck Injury Story

Neck strength is not just a catchy, trendy topic for me. It is a tale that hits home personally because it played a huge role in my life and athletic career. During my sophomore year in high school football, I was thrown into the starting role of middle linebacker while weighing a whopping 170 pounds. Despite my lack in size, I had a knack for the ball, and ended up playing a key role and made some noise across the league. About seven games into the season, I experienced what might have been a career-ending injury.

I was on special teams in a game we had already wrapped up when I stepped up to make a block and, the next thing I knew, I was getting up off the ground. Although I felt a little dazed and unsure of what had happened, it wasn’t out of the norm for me to have this “stinger” sensation a couple of times a game. After a few days of this sensation, however, something just didn’t seem right.

At the time, I had been working with a reputable strength coach for a couple years and when I mentioned the feeling to him and the staff, they quickly referred me to “the top guy.” After a negative X-ray, I almost walked out of the hospital with a clean bill of health; however, at the last minute the doctor asked me to simply turn my head. Tingling, numbness, and concern would best describe what I felt.

He referred me to the best neurologist he knew and after countless tests (MRI, CAT scan, bone scan, EEG), the neurologist determined that I had almost completely broken through my C6 vertebra. He estimated that I was one good collision away from some form of paralysis. His recommendation was to quit contact sports and spend a few months in a neck brace.

Direct #necktraining should play a greater role in contact and collision sport training programs, says @SPSmith11. Share on X

I chose a different path. I worked tirelessly with my strength coaches and PTs for months on end until I was fully cleared to return to play. Neck strength and direct neck training were invaluable to my success, and therefore I believe that they should play a greater role in contact or collision sport training programs.

General Training and Neck Development

The same lessons we learn from core training apply to neck training. Technically, where the core ends and begins isn’t clear, so spinal training may be a better description for training the trunk and neck. I want to make sure that anyone reading this understands I do believe in training the neck specifically, but at Exceed, we found that our athletes now test better than we expected because they are well-rounded in their training. Before jumping into any neck training, we recommend looking at the entire training program to see if any of the workouts you do help train the neck indirectly.

Without reviewing what the neck already does from day to day, it’s easy to overdose the area with added exercises. This is not a debate on what the minimum effective dose is compared to the maximum safe dose; it’s knowing what an athlete is already doing. I can say with confidence that our training has a lot of neck training without doing any isolation drills. You should inventory your training and see where you can add areas to challenge athletes above the chest.

The human head weighs about 4.2-5 kilograms, according to online journals, and this fun fact means the neck always has work to do every day. Be aware though, not training the neck directly isn’t enough to have a neck that performs. What I am saying is a healthy neck will come from general training, while a high-performance neck requires extra credit or direct training.

A healthy neck comes from general training while a high-performance neck requires direct training, says @SPSmith11. Share on X

Leg training and neck training should have similar philosophies, but you don’t need a “neck day” to make gains—just include neck training earlier as part of athlete training. Periodically placing the neck work early in training, even if it’s warm-up drills for coordination activities, reminds everyone involved that the neck matters. Depending on the needs of the day, the order of where you place neck training will change. We tend to include it later in the session, but don’t place it at the very end of the workout all the time.

Practice is another source of neck training we need to account for. An athlete playing and practicing their sport will spend a lot of time being active with turning, tilting, and twisting in order to track the action. I will get into neuromuscular control in more detail later, but just going to a game and watching an athlete play can teach you a lot about the job the neck has to do.

The gist of what I am saying is that, like any area of the body, you need to see how much total and specific work an athlete receives each day. If they are wearing a helmet and are tired, listen to them and think about resting or going lighter than planned. Even if they are not doing a lot of neck-specific training and are just tired overall, listening and monitoring their training load is a better road to take.

Neuromuscular Coordination and Vision

Precision motion of the neck is great to ensure an athlete is challenged without just resorting to loading only, and strength without mobility and motor control is incomplete. The neck has many roles, and one of them is the ability to use its mobility to look for danger or to be the danger. During times of chaos, the speed and precision of neck action is essential to vision, especially in sport.

In times of chaos, the speed and precision of neck action is crucial to vision, especially in sport, says @SPSmith11. Share on X

A neck needs to stabilize the head, but that’s not the end game. Necks are “pivotal” to life and do so much in sport beyond just tracking balls and looking for opponents. If you want to prepare the neck properly, think about its three big needs and exploit them with your exercise selection. The videos below show the three needs of neck coordination: fine motor skills, freedom or mobility, and brute force. We don’t use a pen light or laser with the exercises at Exceed, like some coaches are experimenting with, but we think it is more for bored athletes or rehabilitation.

Video 1. Fine Motor: Coordination of the neck isn’t complicated—it’s the ability to do what you want in any way you need it to be. We like doing figure eights with athletes now as it improves how they control and steer their neck.

Video 2. Freedom: Large ranges of motion are great, and that starts with diagonal chops of the neck and plotting every safe degree of motion possible. Neck mobility is not about how much range of motion you have, it’s how much coordinated range you can access.

Video 3. Force: This isometric exercise develops neck strength, improving the accessibility of neck coordination and even endurance of the neck. Getting stronger is not oversimplifying the problem or reductionist—it works.

Improving sports vision or eye performance is popular and the trend comes and goes quickly. Balance or vestibular development is also a trend that still seems to linger from the days of unstable training. Not getting caught up in the hype cycle is important, but we still keep an open mind to the science by asking questions of other coaches. Our philosophy is simple: Train the body and let the skill coaches and games take care of most of the skills.

We are not purists and do step into the development process if a gap exists, but hero coaching needs to stop. Without getting into a rant, we see a lot of coaches who want to be the star of the show, meddling with athletic gifts that are not very trainable and spending way too much time on things that might work instead of focusing on what must work. Strength and conditioning is a limiting title, but doing neither job leaves athletes weak and out of shape. Direct and basic strength training of the neck is enough to make a difference, so if you have time to do more that’s great, but “don’t lose sight” of the priorities.

When you train for performance, it also covers injury #resilience most of the time, says @SPSmith11. Share on X

One point to consider, though, is that the small details of how the head receives a blow make a huge difference as to whether an athlete becomes concussed or not. I am not making an argument for teaching how to receive a blow, but I do think something needs more exploration if a possibility exists. Stepping away from injury, it makes sense to address performance and ensure that a neck is functioning for winning, not just trained in the hope that concussions are reduced. What is great when you train for performance is that most of the time injury resilience is covered.

Testing Standards and Expectations

I don’t blame coaches for not testing the neck directly, as we have just scratched the surface in that regard. Some of the best testing data is the load and exercises you do, but when working with someone unfamiliar, isometric testing is a safer way to go. Without getting into endless details and the science, research supports testing the neck by isometrically challenging flexion and extension with simple equipment in a seated position. We do realize that, for a lot of accuracy and precision, testing the neck should be done with a strap in a chair, but we aim to screen out really poor performers who have likely slipped through the cracks rather than try to get an exact number like those who do performance tests. We want ballpark estimates to ensure we are on the right track, and acceptable standards can be found with studies from rugby.

The rate of force development, RFD for short, is a measurement we know needs more attention and promotion. Working with force plates and being exposed to this measurement with jumping was eye-opening for us. If you read the social media comments, the average coach can rattle off more measurements about jump output then they can on neck performance. Neck training and RFD are in the research, so we took time reading the studies and concluded that RFD was worth measuring. Athletes don’t have the luxury of bracing for impact with long time periods; they need to be just as reactive to their neck impacts as their legs when playing.

Athletes need to be just as reactive to their neck impacts as their legs when playing. Share on X

In the next year, we plan to add better testing, monitoring, and rehabilitation standards with our athletes. Based on some recent conversations with a colleague, we will most likely utilize some more advanced metrics with our neck training, including load cells. We don’t expect everything to change overnight, but we don’t want to drag our feet either.

Currently, we don’t test “strangers” at Exceed, as an unknown athlete maximally doing any strength test is a recipe for disaster. Even isometric testing of the neck is something I am not a fan of, as it’s not the same as the IMTP or vertical jump testing. If an athlete has been training their neck, we are more comfortable submaximal testing based on their training history. If they are new to training and we add any maximal test, it could spell trouble. Thus, we like to ramp up training and testing, and don’t like doing a formal maximal effort test on “Day 1” with athletes. Testing early, however, can provide a quick snapshot or send up a flare on any athletes who need a more medically monitored intervention.

Static and Dynamic Isometric Training

Isometric training works. If an athlete is new to strength training, it’s common to do bodyweight exercises like push-ups, pull-ups, and maybe lunges. The neck is a little different with training, as bodyweight exercises are not easy with the neck without really knowing what you are doing. Wrestlers are known for having great neck strength, and so are football players, but getting a bunch of basketball players to do bridges isn’t realistic. The solution to starting with isometrics is to do solo routines of basic movements, then progress to more demanding exercises.

Video 4. The spin, or 360 exercise, is unique to the Iron Neck device due to the technology. I am sure someone can find a similar exercise, but this option is great for all levels of neck strength.

Isometrics don’t need to be perfectly static and sometimes consist of a combination of contraction types. I demonstrated an eccentric contraction with the kPulley, as the use of elastic resistance with neck training is mainly concentric. Overall, using bungee or elastic bands is versatile, but the average athlete can benefit from simple cable resistance.

The days of head harnesses and using a weight plate are not gone, but they are certainly shrinking. Based on what we do now and in the past, isometric training and simple movements are the needs, and other combination exercises are mainly for advanced athletes. We don’t do neck rehabilitation at our gym, but we like to learn from experts in sports medicine. In general, I’d say about half the training we do is isometric.

Video 5. The KB Hip Halo with static neck is not easy to do and we’re just starting to experiment with it.

Our “Neck Program” includes a handful of exercises and our progressions mainly add load or just coach the exercise right. Sequencing exercises and writing workouts so that each piece perfectly connects to the next is unrealistic, but we get the idea of what is attempted. The KB Hip Halo works mainly on pelvis stability (staying neutral and level) while introducing a force that wants to disrupt that position. The intrinsic muscles of the foot and lower limb are already heavily challenged, but by adding a neck component to the mix, we can challenge the eyes/neck, pelvis, and foot simultaneously.

Video 6. Maintaining a good neck position is always difficult for people when doing push-ups. With good coaching and form, the athlete can kill two birds with one stone.

Since my business partner and I basically do most of the coaching, we just try to keep the challenges slightly linear—meaning we don’t get too fancy or cycle loading to the neck. Incrementally adding resistance or making an exercise slightly harder is the objective. At times, just letting experience take over and selecting exercises that are progressively more demanding works perfectly. By progressing a push-up by adding the Iron Neck, you can reinforce posture while adding a slight variation to a “simple movement.”

Video 7. This exercise challenges the neck in a multi-planar environment. It encourages maintaining a posture through level change as well as a forward and backward step. As with all the exercises displayed, we are not endorsing it or prescribing it—the point of showing it is to make sure coaches know what is possible with just a little creativity.

By combining a simple strength movement with a static or isometric neck position, you can really add some value to the basics. Finishing a day with some coordinated neck work in combination with a squat or lunge can ensure better strength patterns in the future, as well as train the neck for sport.

Yoked – Muscular Development of the Neck

Getting bigger and getting stronger from neck training is easy to see with some athletes, but other sports may not have a culture of wanting to get “yoked.” American football loves thick necks, but not everyone wants to look like a bull, so neck training is tricky. Certain body parts have a greater propensity for size and most often the individual athlete’s genetics will be more to blame for size gains than the reps and sets, but it is always good to ask an athlete what they believe is important when training the neck. If an athlete doesn’t want to get an increase in neck thickness, they won’t put the effort into the training if you don’t explain to them how to avoid the issue. Most will conclude that concussion prevention and injury reduction is important enough to invest some time in.

Educate athletes on #necktraining early so they know its purpose and comply with instructions, says @SPSmith11. Share on X

If you don’t talk to the athlete about neck training early, you may see poor compliance later. You can get stronger without getting bigger, and you can get bigger without much improvements in maximal performance. As a side note, it’s rare to see an athlete with a bullfrog neck who hasn’t spent a lot of time in the weight room. It’s somewhat of a badge of honor.

The research on neck thickness can easily be misinterpreted if you make conclusions based on a simple number. In addition to their body composition, where an athlete adds muscle determines if the gains really provide a benefit. The muscles that provide flexion, rotation, lateral motion, extension, and other motion do not develop the same. A cross-sectional analysis of the area looks like a tree trunk if you look at the anatomy images online.

For our tracking purposes, we believe that the research has merit, but we are cautious about getting excited if an athlete increases their neck thickness. You have to eventually test in order to be sure that the size helps the neck perform. As of today, neck size matters, but we don’t think about what that really means with athletes.

Video 8. Simple neck retraction and protraction motions are part of a neck development plan. A few reps and sets are all that is needed to get progress in neck strength.

Many of our more advanced athletes do Olympic lifts. Many college programs still incorporate them, so we feel that it is our job to at least educate and instruct the athletes to use them as effectively and safely as possible. In some programs, we train them heavily and rely on them for much of our power development in the weight room. Even after years of coaches talking about how jump squats or, ironically enough, the trap bar jump is great for leg power, we keep true to the lifts because they build a lot of muscle in the neck region.

The trapezius muscle is the posterior chain of the neck, and if it’s big and strong, it’s highly likely the neck is prepared. Direct training and general training together make a difference, and we know from both our own eyes and the science, getting stronger in traps with big lifts matters. We are not activating, we are loading.

Creating Your Own Training Plan

I wish I could go into more of the exercises and concepts that we are learning about now. It’s easy to get excited about any new facet of training, but what we learned over the years is to be patient—but proactive. Don’t wait for the field to pass you, but don’t overreact and try to be a leader by taking things too far in neck training. Being adequately prepared means you take the need seriously, not make it so important you add too much strain on the area.

Take the need for neck training seriously, but don’t overreact and add too much strain on the area. Share on X

We expect to fine-tune our neck development program every year, but tweaking what we are doing right is so much better than overhauling like a mad scientist. I personally know the value of neck training, and I hope this article gets you started in making progress in this important area.

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