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Motor Learning and Muscle Physiology Concepts with Bas Van Hooren

Bas Van Hooren is an athlete, applied sport scientist, and strength and conditioning specialist from Gronsveld, The Netherlands. He currently lectures at Fontys University of Applied Sports Sciences. As an athlete, Bas has won multiple medals at the national championships, including a gold medal at the national championship 3000m indoor in 2017.

As an applied sport scientist, Bas has written multiple peer-reviewed scientific publications about a variety of sport science topics, and has a special interest in the transfer effects of training on sports performance and injury prevention. Bas has trained individuals ranging from the elite to recreational levels with a special interest in sports that involve running. He has a bachelor’s degree in applied sport sciences from Fontys University and a master’s in Human Movement Sciences from Maastricht University.

Freelap USA: What is your take on the role of variability in training?

Bas Van Hooren: Variability in training is important for several reasons. First, we obviously need to use some variability to avoid monotonous loading of the same tissues, which may lead to injuries when repeated over a longer time period. Further, according to the law of diminishing returns, the effectiveness of training will decrease when we repeat the same stimulus multiple times because our body will adapt and therefore be better prepared for this stimulus. For example, when we introduce a new exercise such as a power clean into our training program, we will initially progress quite fast, but progress will slow down over time. Therefore, we need to apply progressive overload by increasing the load or number of reps and sets, or we can use variations of an exercise.

Variability may also be useful from a motor learning perspective. The traditional idea in motor learning is that there is one ideal movement pattern that is similar for everyone. This ideal pattern must therefore be practiced over and over again to optimally learn this pattern. However, several studies have found that recreational and even elite athletes use slightly varying movement patterns, showing that one ideal movement pattern that is similar for everyone likely does not exist. Other studies have shown that a movement pattern is not even similar within the same individual across different days, during a single day, or even during a training session.

Since each individual is slightly different and because the same individual changes slightly over time (for example, due to fatigue, maturation, or aging), these different movement patterns likely reflect an attempt to perform a stable and efficient movement within the constantly changing body (and changing environment, when applicable). Variability in movement is therefore a must rather than an optional requirement.

Variability in movement is therefore a must rather than an optional requirement, says @BasVanHooren. Share on X

Introducing extra variability in training may assist the body in finding the movement pattern that best matches the individual. Numerous studies have indeed shown that more variability can lead to better learning of motor skills than repeating the same skill over and over. This variability approach to motor learning is known as differential learning. It should be noted, however, that there is an optimum amount of variability. Introducing even more variability and variations beyond this point will not improve performance and may actually negatively impact performance by inducing extra fatigue.

Freelap USA: How should we look at the role of the biarticular muscles and muscular timing in the scope of coordination training?

Bas Van Hooren: Biarticular muscles have an important role in transferring energy during high-intensity movements such as running, jumping, and throwing. For example, in vertical jumping, the biarticular gastrocnemius muscles will transfer energy from knee extension into plantar flexion of the ankle joint. This will, however, only happen when they remain near isometrical and therefore essentially act as a rope at the right time during the movement.

Computer modelling studies have shown that even minor errors during the time when muscles are activated and deactivated can cause major deteriorations in performance because the energy transfer is suboptimal. For example, a decrease of 10 centimeters has been observed with vertical jumping! In humans, this error is smaller (~2 cm) than in computer models, but it can still make the difference between winning or not winning a medal or potentially getting an injury or not getting an injury, especially for elite athletes.

Performance may drop when a muscle’s strength improves without improving intermuscular coordination, says @BasVanHooren. Share on X

Training for intermuscular coordination (training how muscles optimally cooperate with one another) is therefore important to maximize performance, especially after a period of rehabilitation during which some muscles or muscle groups may have been trained in isolation. Indeed, both computer modelling studies and experimental studies in humans have shown that performance may actually decrease when the strength of a muscle (group) is improved without improving the intermuscular coordination. Therefore, in addition to muscle strengthening, optimizing intermuscular coordination is also important.

Freelap USA: With coordination training, how much of training (outside of actual sport practice) should be in a mode where we challenge coordination, versus overloading an athlete via intensity (such as common barbell overload means)? Are there situations where one mode or the other may be preferred?

Bas Van Hooren: Unfortunately, it is impossible to say that, for example, 60% of training should be focused on training intermuscular coordination and 40% on improving intramuscular coordination and other structural adaptations, and thereby muscular strength. The first reason is that it is difficult to classify training as coordination-only or overload-only.

For example, when we perform a heavy back squat, we might improve muscular strength via structural adaptations such as a larger muscle cross-sectional area, a stiffer tendon, and higher motor unit recruitment. However, we might also improve the intermuscular coordination between muscles such as the gluteus maximus, rectus femoris, and gastrocnemius if we perform the concentric phase as fast as possible.

Similarly, when we perform a high-intensity sprint, we need a very precise timing of the gluteus maximus, rectus femoris, and gastrocnemius activity during the push-off and therefore, this likely trains intermuscular coordination. However, we likely also improve muscular strength by inducing structural adaptations and intramuscular coordination such as a higher firing frequency.

So, it is difficult to classify training as either coordination or strength training because almost all training will target both adaptations, at least to some degree. Nevertheless, most people will agree that some exercises are probably more suited to train intermuscular coordination and some exercises more suited to train muscular strength.

It’s hard to classify training as coordination- or overload-only or recommend how much of each mode, says @BasVanHooren. Share on X

However, even when we try to classify exercises as predominantly coordination or muscular strength training, it is difficult to recommend how much of each mode should be performed because the distribution of these training modes likely differs between sports and between individual athletes. For example, in some sports intermuscular coordination may be of less relevance because the sport is being performed under less time pressure (e.g., powerlifting), while in other sports intermuscular coordination may become very important (e.g., maximum velocity sprinting).

Additionally, athletes who have performed a large amount of isolated strength training, for example in pre-season or rehabilitation, may benefit from more coordination-focused training to transfer these strength gains into performance gains. Some (periodization) studies reported that there was some time needed before strength gains in the weight room transferred into improvements in sports performance. The improvements in performance might have been made sooner if more coordination training was incorporated.

On the other hand, individuals who have been performing mostly coordination-focused training without much quantitative overload (e.g., distance runners that have performed mostly distance running, some high-intensity running, and specific running exercises like A-skips) may benefit from doing some more training that improves their muscular strength.

Freelap USA: How important is the consideration of muscle fascicle length in training and what are some ways coaches can approach this in terms of training implications?

Bas Van Hooren: Fascicle lengths have been related to injuries and performance. For example, individuals with shorter hamstring fascicles and lower strength have been found to be at a higher risk of hamstring injuries. Other studies have found faster sprinters in running and swimming to have (slightly) longer muscle fascicles, which suggests that the higher shortening speed of longer fascicles may be beneficial for faster force production. Both these findings suggest that longer fascicles may be beneficial in some situations.

There are conflicting findings about the effects of training on fascicle length. For example, although eccentric muscle actions are most likely to induce increases in fascicle length, fascicle length has also been found to increase following concentric and isometric training. Therefore, fascicle length changes may not only be a consequence of the muscle contraction mode, but also of other factors such as the length and velocity at which the muscle is trained, with longer lengths and higher velocities potentially leading to longer fascicles.

Coaches could therefore attempt to increase hamstrings’ fascicle lengths by using eccentric exercises such as the Nordic hamstring curl and calf muscle fascicle length by using an eccentric-only calf raise. However, the potential disadvantages of such exercises in terms of muscle soreness and lack of intermuscular coordination training should also be considered.

Freelap USA: How does the stiffness or compliance of human tendons impact speed and power? How do various training modalities impact this stiffness, particularly resistance training?

Bas Van Hooren: When a relaxed muscle contracts, it does not immediately result in movement of the joints, and thus body movement, because slack first has to be taken out of the muscle and the tendon has to be stiffened. These processes are comparable to pulling a car with an elastic rope.

First, slack needs to be taken out of the rope. When the slack is taken out, the rope will be further stretched until the force required to stretch the rope is higher than the force needed to move the car. Only at this point will the car start to move. The elastic cable can also recoil, hereby further pulling the car forward.

Something similar happens when the muscle contracts from a relaxed position. First, slack needs to be taken out, the tendon will be stretched until the force required to stretch the tendon is higher than the force needed to move the joint. Only at this point will the joint start moving. The tendon can also recoil, which can result in further joint movement. The whole process of taking out slack and tendon compliance can take up to 100 milliseconds from a relaxed position. Since the time available to produce force is limited in many sport situations, these processes can therefore limit performance.

Large amounts of #plyometric training may cause an imbalance in muscle strength and tendon stiffness, says @BasVanHooren. Share on X

A large body of research has investigated the effects of training on tendon stiffness. A meta-analysis by Bohm and colleagues (2015) showed that only heavy loads (>70% 1RM) are effective at improving tendon stiffness, while lighter loads (<70% 1RM) are generally ineffective. These findings confirmed previous research that showed tendon tissue to be most responsive to high loads applied for a relatively longer duration of about three seconds, rather than very short loading durations as in plyometric training.

However, other studies have also shown improvements in tendon stiffness with plyometric training, but these adaptations may simply take longer to manifest. Therefore, there can potentially be an imbalance in muscle strength and tendon stiffness due to large amounts of plyometric training, which may lead to tendinopathy injuries.

Research

Bohm S., Mersmann F. & Arampatzis A. “Human tendon adaptation in response to mechanical loading: A systematic review and meta-analysis of exercise intervention studies on healthy adults.” Sports Medicine – Open. 2015; 1(1): 7.

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How to Build Strength and Power for Endurance Athletes

ALTIS| ByJason Hettler

The role of the weight room in training endurance-based athletes is often relegated to high-volume, low-intensity parameters. The purpose of this article is to highlight additional benefits such as increasing robustness, improving movement quality, and minimizing energetic cost.

Training 101

Before getting into the direct benefits, it is important to take things back a step. Many of the sport coaches that visit ALTIS discuss the difficulties they have in determining where to begin with their strength and power programming. In addition to the more commonly discussed avenues of conducting a needs analysis and developing a periodized annual plan, it is beneficial to look at the role of the weight room through the lens of fatigue management.

It is beneficial to look at the role of the weight room through the lens of fatigue management, says @jhettler24. Share on X

This leads us into the sequence of stimulate, adapt, stabilize, and actualize. Factoring in the role that each of these phases will have at any given stage in an athlete’s development can help bring clarity to the process.

For instance, both developing athletes and athletes who are brand-new to strength and power training (and the accompanying requisite movements) will need to navigate this entire sequence to ensure they have the ability to actualize the movements necessary to progress their training safely and efficiently. Conversely, athletes with a greater training age may cycle through periods where the priority falls on either stimulation and adaptation, or stabilization and actualization, or the entire sequence, depending on ability and time of year.

With fatigue management being a key tenet when introducing strength and power training to endurance athletes, it is wise to initially put the focus on the first half of this sequence. Ensuring the athlete group experiences zero negative transfer to their sport performance is paramount to getting athlete buy-in. Therefore, the greater understanding we have of all that falls into the category of a stimulus—and the unique ways our body adapts to said stimulus—the better we can control fatigue and the athlete’s subsequent mindset toward this type of training.

Stimuli can be categorized as either acute or chronic, with the former being short-lived and positive in nature and the latter being long-lasting with negative consequences. This is not to be confused with training loads specifically—rather, here we mean the stimuli we experience from a global perspective.

The key is to remember that the body’s response to various stressors is non-specific—meaning the body is not able to differentiate between the loads placed on it. Stressors come from many different areas, including physical exertion, financial troubles, caloric restriction, social issues, and many, many more. Understanding that each of these avenues needs to be accounted for is key.

Regarding adaptation, as humans we have a finite capacity and the rate at which we adapt can be classified as either optimal or maximal. An optimal rate of adaptation occurs when stress levels are tolerable and it allows for a physical and mental reserve while facilitating performance. A maximal rate of adaptation is not sustainable and occurs when we are stressed to the limit. Spending too much time operating at a maximal rate of adaptation is not sustainable and leads to decreased performance. Therefore, identifying where an athlete fits along this continuum at any given point in time is critical to understanding fatigue and its impact on performance.

Theories have been developed in an attempt to describe the body’s reaction to stress and stimulation. Most famously, the General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS) was developed in the 1930s by Hungarian endocrinologist Hans Selye. The three phases of alarm, resistance, and exhaustion do a great job of highlighting what happens when an acute stressor (green area) crosses the threshold into a chronic stressor (red area). One of the issues with GAS is that it does not account for varying magnitudes of any given stimulus—an important piece to the puzzle.

Selye GAS — Image 1. Hans Selye’s General Adaption Sydrome (GAS). The three phrases of alarm, resistance, and exhaustion do a great job of highlighting what happens when an acute stressor (green area) cross the threshold into a chronic stressor (red area). However, GAS doesn’t account for varying magnitudes of any stimulus.

Hormesis comes from the field of toxicology and the concept proposes that low doses stimulate and large doses inhibit. If we consider agents such as anti-venom, radiation, calories, or exercise, we can begin to see the role dosage plays—as mentioned, these agents are beneficial in low doses and harmful in large doses.

Hormesis Graph — Image 2. Hormesis comes from the field of toxicology and the concept proposes that low doses stimulate and large doses inhibit. If we consider agents such as calories or exercise, we begin to see the role dosage plays, as these agents can be beneficial in low doses and harmful in large doses.

The human body is remarkable and we still have much to learn about its capabilities, but these theories can help us begin to think critically about how we can better manage fatigue.

Weight Room 101

I am hopeful that if you are reading this article, you have some idea about the many benefits strength training can provide. I will focus on benefits that may speak a bit more clearly to endurance athletes. These include, but are not limited to:

Improved movement quality across various paces
Increased ability to reach, kick, etc. while minimizing energetic cost
Reduced risk of injury and increased robustness

By increasing various strength and power abilities in the weight room, we will begin to see these positive adaptations. With these benefits in mind as an outcome to strive for, we can look at the process through the following categories to target:

Force production
Force transmission
Force absorption
Structural integrity/tolerance

Additionally, at ALTIS we categorize our training parameters using a zonal nomenclature (Figure 3) adapted from the work of Vladimir Zatsiorsky. This helps to define clear objectives for the athlete population and allows them to experience more autonomy within their training.

Zonal System — Figure 3. ALTIS Zonal Categorization adapted from V. Zatsiorsky. This helps to define clear objectives for the athlete population and allows them to experience more autonomy within their training.

Force production refers to the ability to concentrically contract, or shorten, a muscle. The loading parameters within a force production emphasis can follow either of two routes.

The duration of force production can be increased via an increase in physiological cross-sectional area. The potential issue here is that this will usually occur alongside an increase in body mass, which is often contraindicated for endurance athletes. With this, great care must be taken when prescribing loads aimed at increasing the duration of force production.

Take great care when prescribing loads aimed at increasing the duration of force production, says @jhettler24. Share on X

The other route is through increasing motor unit recruitment and, subsequently, maximal strength abilities. This route is closely related to Zone 3, or maximum effort loading parameters (low reps, high rest) utilizing compound movements such as squats, deadlifts, and presses.

Force transmission refers to the ability to efficiently transmit forces between your body and either the ground or an implement. Total-body, coordinative movements are commonly programmed to target the transmission of force. Parameters in the weight room will typically follow Zone 1, or dynamic effort categorization.

Force absorption is historically the least talked about of the three mentioned force abilities. It refers to the eccentric contraction, or lengthening of a muscle. Considering the amount of ground contacts experienced by runners and the subsequent forces they must absorb with each of these contacts, the relationship should be clear. This is where we can target the previously mentioned benefit of minimizing energetic cost.

Again, two routes can be taken to target force absorption abilities. The first involves increases in specific strength abilities through improved intermuscular coordination. Parameters here often include heavy loads through eccentrically emphasized, long-duration movements. This is a typical starting point when targeting absorption abilities and will, at times, see athletes reach supramaximal loads.

As with most things in life, a point of diminishing returns will be reached at some point. At that time, if not sooner, consider the inclusion of more dynamic effort force absorption loading parameters. This can be accomplished by switching from heavy, slow movements to lighter, faster movements. Improvements in intramuscular coordination are now the mechanism behind adaptation; one that will likely be more specific to the sporting task.

Structural integrity refers to the capacity of the muscles and skeleton to operate in balance for effective force transfer and movement efficiency. Structural tolerance refers to the capacity of tendons, ligaments, and joints to withstand a progressive increase in load while resisting fatigue and injury.

Moderate intensities and controlled tempos are typical of loading parameters here. Endurance runners may benefit from movements in this category targeting trunk stability and posterior chain resiliency.

Additional Means

Many endurance running groups express difficulty in accessing weight rooms at opportune times. When facilities or equipment are limited, creativity is a must. Medicine ball and bodyweight circuits are common and can be manipulated to target the previously mentioned objectives.

For example, the Rudiment Jump Series from coach Dan Pfaff provides a great introduction to force absorption and can be viewed in the following video.

Video 1.Rudiment Jump Series from Dan Pfaff of Altis.

In closing, by respecting the sequence of stimulate, adapt, stabilize, and actualize and its role in fatigue management, you can effectively and efficiently target the necessary objectives within the weight room. Through this process, endurance athletes will experience improved movement quality, while minimizing energetic cost and increasing robustness.

Reference

Jordan, Matt (2017). “Module 9: Strength Development Fundamentals.” The ALTIS Foundation Course.

Bring Speed into the Weight Room with the HiTrainer

Blog| ByEric Joly

“Speed kills” is a cliché that is no less true for being over-repeated and under-trained. The fact is, time, equipment, and staffing constrain coaches to quantify progress and athletic development in pounds and highlight lifts. From an athletic development angle, it isn’t a lack of strength that keeps holding an athlete back on the field, but their ability to deploy power effectively and at speed.

“Within your sport, no matter which sport and with very few exceptions, you must agree that the speed of motion of competition actions are a significant determinate regarding the competition outcome… In either case, the velocity of sport motion is central to competition preparation, yet the principles of increasing the velocity of sport motions are not central to coaching education. Training for speed must be conceptualized as part of practice for sport” –James Smith

Speed work is often difficult to individualize in a team setting. It requires large dedicated spaces and important investments in staff and equipment. Combine those constraints with unrealistic expectations from the head coach about conditioning volume and frequency, and the result is that speed work often gets left by the wayside.

Why Train on a HiTrainer

The HiTrainer was initially developed as a tool to help football players, and power sport athletes in general, withstand the intense and concentrated bursts of energy required to be successful. It can be used to develop repeat sprint ability (RSA), increase athlete resiliency, and manage programs and athletic development. The athlete is placed in a lean in this non-motorized trainer, simulating the late drive phase, and their chest rests on two pads with force sensors. This forward lean reduces joint impact, promotes increased ground force production (propulsion), and recruits the posterior chain in a safe sprint position that protects hamstrings during maximal effort.

Maximum effort sprints and interval training are integral advantages to training on a HiTrainer, says @hitrainer_pro. Share on X

Repeat sprint ability describes the ability of an athlete to recover and maintain maximal effort during subsequent sprints or plays, and has obvious implications with team sports. Workouts to improve top field speed throughout the length of a game should include maximum effort, interval sessions, continuous volume, and neuromuscular sessions. The ability of an athlete to maintain their speed throughout competition affects injury rates, decision-making, and ultimately performance. Much like the goal of S&C training in season is to manage or eliminate athletic attrition, RSA is about managing that decline in a much shorter time frame. Maximum effort sprints and interval training are integral advantages to training on a HiTrainer.

Video 1: Quantifying strength and speed with HiTrainer Director of Performance, Eric Joly.

Great athletes and teams are often durable ones. Whether due to focusing on one sport too early, over-competing/under-recovering, or a simple muscular imbalance, athletes are at even greater risk of injury than ever before. Injuries affect athletic development and seasons, and increasing athlete resiliency throughout the season means longer playoff runs and more success. The proper incorporation of acceleration-based protocols into your training programs will better prepare your athlete for competition year after year and reduce soft tissue injuries in the posterior chain.

A great illustration of this is how sprinting on a HiTrainer mitigates the potential for hamstring injuries by strengthening them through use while limiting the lengthening and eccentric loading of the upright sprinting position. Derek Hansen makes a great case for incorporating acceleration protocols for prehab/rehab and performance in general. In addition, athletic trainers can make use of the HiTrainer’s force sensors to capture left and right leg forces and diagnose potential imbalances or rehabilitate existing injuries with data.

The #HiTrainer helps coaches quickly evaluate groups of athletes for conditioning, power, and speed, says @hitrainer_pro. Share on X

Developing athletic or individual programs is an involved and difficult process, and that is often before we include speed. Having a tool like the HiTrainer enables coaches to evaluate large groups of athletes quickly for conditioning, power, and speed. These variables can be used to customize goals and chart progress, and as a baseline to monitor athletes in season.

If something isn’t measured, it is difficult—if not impossible—to manage, and a system that is repeatable and easy to use, and provides actionable data, is extremely valuable to any coach. You can prove that your athlete is better conditioned and faster while adjusting their training according to how they are feeling, as well as what they are producing. I wrote about balancing tactical training and time in the gym with the help of data and baselines in season in “Fatigue Profiling with Athletes During the Competitive Season.”

Non-Motorized Treadmills

One of the questions we frequently answer at HiTrainer is what the difference is between a curve treadmill and a HiTrainer. Coaches who ask this question usually want to make a purchase to complement what their facility already offers. Both machines are non-motorized and benefit from engaging more muscle groups than the typical treadmill, and given their newness and popularity, such questions are to be expected.

While I am sure there will be more in-depth explorations of what curve treadmills are appropriate for, our experience has shown them to be very effective for endurance training and tempo runs. Their belts carry a good deal of momentum, however, and this limits their practicality/safety for interval training while reducing their value for acceleration training. For power sports like football, where explosiveness, change of direction, and the ability to be in the right place down after down matter, gradually building up speed or floating around the field aimlessly is not the right training approach.

HiTrainer Action — Image 1: Coaches can utilize a HiTrainer to free up surface or turf space for high value coaching while incorporating sprints, resistance training, and conditioning work into one. Users are not limited to a certain distance before having to swing the unit or themselves around, but can continue on indefinitely.

What Can It Do?

A treadmill is just a treadmill until it isn’t. Coaches can utilize a HiTrainer to free up turf space for high value coaching while incorporating sprints, resistance training, and conditioning work into one. Having a strip of turf in a gym is a recipe for collision with other athletes either sprinting or doing sled work and there is never enough room. With a HiTrainer for acceleration and maximum effort work, coaches can utilize their turf space for agility, mobility, and sport-specific work.

Sled work has become a popular proxy for horizontal force production and athletes do seem to enjoy it. However, this means removing coordinated arm movement and it can mean poor posture. It also encourages athletes to overload sleds while increasing their ground contact times. Taken together, these factors can make an athlete tired, but not faster—a better alternative outside of a HiTrainer would be to get athletes to hill sprint.

A HiTrainer can be loaded with up to 300lbs of resistance, and athletes maintain an erect upright posture and arm swing. In addition, they are not limited to a certain distance before having to swing the unit or themselves around, but can continue on indefinitely. Speed work in the weight room has, until non-motorized treadmills, been extremely limited and treated as a separate area to work on outside or at another location. Experts increasingly point to low-volume, high-intensity work or micro-dosing to build speed. Hunter Charneski’s article on in-season football training talks about exposing football players to maximum velocity runs in-season to build speed and reduce injury.

Having the ability to incorporate maximum effort runs in the weight room quickly opens up a full range of training options to coaches without program interruption. Incorporating sprint interval training with active recovery is not just about building top speed or ground force production, but preparing athletes for their chosen sport. We see positive VO2max adaptations and submaximal endurance increases by training maximum effort, which is the reason we recommend sprint training for both power sports and endurance sports.

HiTrainer Run — Image 2: The most exciting aspect of the HiTrainer that is otherwise difficult to measure efficiently is time to peak power, also known as explosiveness. Being able to measure how long it takes, in seconds, is the first step to making progress.

The Machine and Data

The HiTrainer ATP+ is 100% made in North America, built from large pieces of solid steel, and has been tested by NFL linemen and NBA players. It is appropriate for athletes 8 years old and up, and settings go from 4’8’’ to 6’10’’. An athlete rests against chest pads that house force sensors, which capture important data on power. With no motor, the ATP+ only requires a household plug to power the tablet that contains the present options for walking, sprinting, and interval training, and also collects the data. Peak speed and time to peak speed represent maximum velocity and acceleration capabilities of an athlete in the drive phase. Power is presented in watts, and is a function of belt speed and weight into the pads.

HiTrainer’s most exciting aspect may be its ability to measure time to peak power, or #explosiveness, says @hitrainer_pro. Share on X

The most exciting aspect of the HiTrainer that is otherwise difficult to measure efficiently is time to peak power, also known as explosiveness. Powerful athletes are always explosive and everyone from Olympic lifters to top sprinters chase this quality. Being able to measure how long it takes, in seconds, is the first step to making progress.

Although it had previously been mentioned as a tool for all athletic trainers, left and right leg forces are something that every coach will immediately see the value with. Whether you believe in activating muscles or not, seeing a problem clearly reflected in the data is the first step to correcting a movement pattern, strengthening a weaker muscle, and restoring an athlete to balance. This will improve performance and reduce injury risk by helping an athlete remain as symmetrical as possible.

Developing Responsiveness and Explosiveness

HiTrainer was developed to condition athletes to the rigors of competitive action while making them more responsive and explosive. Athletes love to sprint, and are underserved when programs focus mainly on vertical force production. Acceleration should be an integral part of the development process, and training the right energy pathway, removing time/space limitations, and developing quick athlete turnaround is what the HiTrainer is for. Incorporating this high-performance tool into a strength and conditioning program will bring speed into the weight room and faster athletes to the field.

Using Pre-Season Testing to Support Decisions That Matter

Blog| ByCarmen Pata

If you’re like me, August is the most exciting month of the entire year. Football, soccer, volleyball, and cross country athletes are returning to campus for the pre-season camp. There’s always the mix of freshmen who are overwhelmed and walking around wide-eyed. The seniors, grizzled with their years of experience, are anxiously waiting to begin the countdown of their precious few remaining competitions. As all of these athletes come back to campus with their range of goals and hopes and dreams, their sport and strength coaches immediately have to wrestle with a tough question.

Should You Test Athletes at the Start of Pre-Season?

Believe it or not, this is a much bigger question than you might think. I’ve wrestled with both of sides of the argument and found the heart of the matter lies in a discussion about injuries. Those who oppose testing at the start of pre-season don’t want to see anyone injured in non-sport related activities. It’s a difficult opinion to argue against because I completely agree with it. After all, no one wants to see people get hurt, and it’s especially heart-wrenching to see someone go down before they even get to the first practice.

On the other hand, some coaches believe that if an athlete is going to get hurt in testing, that means they would get hurt within the first few practices anyway. I’m lucky because the head coaches I usually work with fall into the latter mindset, so they want to do some pre-season testing. With that said, let me ask you the big picture question: What’s the point of testing your athletes in the first place? Really, what information are you looking for after putting athletes through your testing battery?

In a previous post, I talked about the best conditioning test I know. With any performance test, there’s a lot of very helpful information to unpack once the athlete completes the test, so let’s move past the testing protocol and dissect what I do with the information.

When we get down to the nuts and bolts of performance testing, we’re conducting a mini experiment with our athletes. Think about it for a second. Both research subjects and our athletes complete a baseline test to see where they are with their skills. Then we expose them to a stimulus—be it a lifting program, supplement or placebo, sprint or agility program, or anything else. At the end of a set time period, the subjects and athletes come back and complete the same tests so we can compare their pre- and post-test results. We do all this work to answer the age-old question coaches and researchers wrestle with: Will doing this make any difference?

Know Your Own Athletes

There’s almost a century of research that gives us a solid foundation for the scientific principle and a baseline for determining appropriate training methods. While I’m certain that the General Adaptation Syndrome from Dr. Hans Selye or the Fitness-Fatigue Model credited to Dr. Mel Siff will fit almost every situation, there’s one glaring omission concerning all training programs—they were not designed using your athletes. It might be trite, but there are so many differences between what I’m able to do with my group of athletes and what another coach can do with their athletes. Is it a fair comparison to look at the results I get and automatically assume another coach will get the same?

There is a lot from the late Charlie Francis’s programs that I like and use, but there’s always an asterisk when looking at his athletes’ results. Many of his former athletes tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs, and we can all agree that these drugs help training a lot. So should I blindly follow the high-low training idea that Charlie Francis publicized? Of course not. He worked with the top sprinters in the world. I do not. Some of his athletes took drugs, none of mine (I hope) do. Surveying his work is a good start, but it can’t end there.

I look at the results from what my groups have done historically, compare those results to changes I’ve made with their programs, and then follow the advice of Bruce Lee: “Absorb what is useful, reject what is useless.” After doing this style of test-analyze-compare for years, I’m very confident that when someone goes through one of our 6- to 8-week long off-season training programs, I can predict their expected outcomes.

	Squat Improvement	Bench Improvement	Vertical Jump Improvement	Acceleration Improvement	Change of Direction Improvement
Freshmen (APRE Style)	6%-9%	6%-9%	3%-5%	3%-5%	3%-5%
Sophomore (High-Low Style)	7%-11%	6%-8%	4%-6%	3%-5%	3%-5%
Junior (TriPhasic Style)	3%-4%	2%-4%	5%-7%	5%-6%	4%-6%
Senior (TriPhasic & Velocity Based Training)	4%-7%	3%-5%	6%-8%	5%-7%	4%-6%

All of this information helps when having an honest conversation with everyone involved in your program. Having records of your past results is the only way to see if you’re helping athletes get better or if you need to try something different. This type of review is very helpful for all of us in the strength and conditioning profession who want to confirm that our mesocycles are working and that we’re getting an appropriate transfer of training.

But what about those people who don’t have our background and education, like sport coaches? Do they care about the incremental changes their athletes are getting, or do they care about how these changes impact the way their athletes can play the game? With team sports, isn’t this the real question we should be trying to answer?

From the Spreadsheet to the Playing Field

Don’t get me wrong, I have a track and field background and have competed in powerlifting, strongman, and weightlifting competitions, but these are different than team sports. With team sports, many factors that can’t be quantified come together to determine a winner. We’ve all seen it before; being the strongest, fastest, or most conditioned team does not necessarily mean you will win. You have a better chance, true, but it doesn’t mean the victory is in the bag. So you might be asking yourself, “Then what can I do to help out sport coaches?” I’m glad you asked.

How to Build a Player Comparison Tool

When it comes time to have hard conversations about keeping or cutting players from a team roster, I’m usually invited to attend the meetings. For years, I made the mistake of using too many terms that only strength coaches understand or charts that were too difficult to understand quickly. Well, that changed. Below is an example of one athletes’ profile and is typical of what I present to the coaches now.

Pre-Season Testing — Figure 1. Excel chart with scores relative to position group across a range of testing metrics.

Thanks to the magic of Excel, I have a graph for each player that compares their performance to the average for their position group, which gets created by clicking the up or down arrows. I know there’s a lot of information here to unpack, so let’s take a closer look. Starting from left to right, the athletic qualities and associated measurement methods are:

explosiveness (vertical jump)
change of direction (5-10-5 pro agility)
acceleration (10-yard sprint)
top speed (10- to 20-yard split)
stamina (220 fatigue resistance)
power (power clean pull using GymAware)
strength (back squat 1-rep max)
body weight (a calibrated scale)
body fat (three-site skinfold pinch)

Using some really basic statistical breakdowns, I made this chart which compares our current players to the historical average in their position group. Without going in depth with the equations, here is the basic idea.

Find the average for your category. It’s the sum of the results divided by the number of attempts.

Calculate the standard deviation. Excel is very helpful with this since you have to square and take the square root of each attempt subtracted from the average. You should do it longhand once or twice to get to know the equation, but when you’re doing this for more than four data sets, use Excel.

Now that you have your standard deviation and your average, you can define a range of scores that you would expect 68.2% of people to be within. The low number of the range is your “0” or worst score possible. The high number of the range is your “100” or best score possible.

Take your 100 score and subtract from it your zero score. This shows the range of acceptable scores for that test.

The next part is the one tricky point in the whole process. You have to subtract the athlete’s score from the 0 score, then divide it by the range. Finally multiply it by 100. Hang in there, I’ll show you an example in a second.

Now you have a number that is relative to their performance. Keep in mind that it is not the actual score but how it relates to their If they score a 50 in any category, that’s average, a 100 is very good, and a 0 is not.

Here is the actual data set from this player’s position group.

Table 2. Example data set of a player’s scores relative to their position group.
Explosiveness (from a vertical jump test)	Average Score	Standard Deviation	0 Score (you don’t want these players)	100 Score (you want these players)	Range
	31.4	10.6	20.8	42.0	21.2

This player ranked 58 in their explosive quality. The equation is (33-31.4)/21.2 then multiply it by 100. This gives you 57.86 which becomes a score of 58 when rounded.

Let me be upfront, there’s a lot to do to set this up, and with Excel you can get a headache in a hurry chasing after an equation. Is it worth the time and energy? It is for me. In a brief instant, everyone can see how players’ skills rate. This player is pretty average for their position except in their stamina, and they’re slightly above average with their strength and body weight. In fact, they scored off the chart on their stamina. Now, I purposely cap the chart at 100 and zero even though I might have players score outside these boundaries, and that’s OK. Since this a comparison of how my current athletes compare to the historical average, I’m fine with having outliers.

In the example, the player has a ridiculously high score in stamina (137), but the chart is capped at 100. What’s important is that the player can do repeated bouts of high effort work and not fatigue as fast as some others in their group. With this in mind, if this athlete were to change positions or even play a different sport, their score would change to reflect the “average” for the new team and position group. Remember, we’re making a relative comparison of athletes in the same position group, not comparing them to a national average.

How to Use the Player Comparison Tool

Now that you’ve built this tool, how can you use it? As I mentioned, I am invited to the coaches meetings to talk about their prospects. By using this player profile, everyone can easily see if this person is athletic enough to keep up with the rest of the team. If I were at a school that offered athletic scholarships, I would push the head coaches to use this information for scholarship offers.

Think of it this way: If two recruits can play the game about equally, who will you offer a scholarship to? Tough one. What if we had their player profiles and one athlete didn’t score above a 50 in any category, and the other didn’t score worse than a 60. Would that information be helpful? It sure would.

The player profile tool helps everyone see if an athlete can keep up with the rest of the team, says @CarmenPata. Share on X

If you’ve been keeping records on athletes for a while, you know who the all-stars or stand out players were. In that case, why don’t you use their information to build your data sets? This way, you’re comparing people to the best athletes you’ve worked with instead of the average from the best and weakest athletes you’ve worked with. Would this give you a better idea of what type of athletes are on a team? Now that I say this, I might want to make this change myself.

If you have sport coaches who are open to having open and honest conversations, this information becomes important in another way. It can help plan game strategy. Knowing each player’s weaknesses and strengths gives some insight on how to best use them to maximize their potential. For example, let’s say you have a star basketball player whose acceleration and change of direction ability rank very high, but their stamina and top speed ability scores are low. I would recommend to the coach that they have subs go in for this athlete often and suggest they change the team’s tempo on offense or defense.

The athlete profile tool helps plan game strategy and assess program quality, says @CarmenPata. Share on X

Looking through these charts is also one of the ways I do in-house quality control of our programs. You saw the expected improvement ranges when players go through a 6-8 week off-season phase; looking at these graphs over time is a fast way to check if you’re helping your athletes improve.

It’s likely we’ve all worked with athletes who don’t improve at the expected rate, and all too often we blame the athletes. As coaches, we ask them if they’re recovering, eating right, or staying up too late. Or we blame their outside activities. Don’t get me wrong, there is a lot of truth in these questions, but it might not be completely on the athlete.

All athletes have different training ages, backgrounds, and abilities. Our freshmen workouts are three lifting days a week. What would you expect to see if an athlete comes in with a training background of four or five days a week? I would guess that their volume-load in a three-day program is actually their retaining or detraining load. This means they will either plateau or get worse. It’s not always, or completely, the athlete’s fault.

The Truth Is Out There

The real beauty of testing and building this tool is discovering the truth. The truth about your program. The truth about the players. The truth about realistic expectations. If you’re already testing your athletes regularly, you have this information and may need to spend some time upfront to format all of it. If you don’t test your athletes, this article has given you some points to think about. Either way, reach out when you need help. The truth is out there.

Buyer’s Guide to Body Oxygenation Measurement Systems for Sports

Buyer's Guide / ByChristopher Glaeser

Recently, thanks to the micronization of research-grade devices, there’s been an increase in the use of muscle oxygenation in sports monitoring. Over the last few years, consumer products have entered the market, promising performance enhancement by using the data in training and recovery. A few systems have been validated to be useful in sports performance, making a guide on muscle oxygenation necessary for sport scientists, coaches, and medical professionals.

Included in this guide are expectations of the information, scientific validity, key features, and details of the hardware and software. As the wearable market continues to evolve and technology grows more refined, we expect that more sensors and better calculations will make muscle oxygenation even more popular. Down the road, the information from the sensors is likely to be a standard part of monitoring and testing athletes, and education on best practices is necessary.

What Is Near-Infrared Spectrometry?

Near-infrared spectrometry (NIRS) is a method of biological measurement that is non-invasive and engineered for real-time monitoring of basic physiological changes. NIRS uses light to penetrate the skin and sometimes into the muscle belly to detect rates of activity, specifically the hemoglobin and myoglobin in the vascular area. The typical locations for testing are the finger, temple of the head, and muscle belly of propulsive muscle groups. One sensor can measure general physiological health, while multiple sensors are needed for local muscle oxygenation. Single sensors have been used for estimating lactate responses in training, but they are not direct measures of lactate and require correction formulas to be in parallel with conventional blood readings.

NIRS can detect, with a high degree of accuracy, changes in a few physiological systems in the body. Share on X

NIRS can detect, with a high degree of accuracy, changes with a few physiological systems in the body, especially oxygen transfer under the skin. The use of NIRS ranges from low-level medical monitoring to sophisticated modeling of bioenergetics, all having unique validity and specific devices that can measure change in a human body. NIRS is not a new method of measurement, as it’s decades old and extremely useful for a wide range of needs.

The popularity of NIRS began in the 1980s and its use became typical years later in the medical, agricultural, and industrial fields. NIRS gained momentum in the performance world in the early 2000s. Today, nearly 20 years later, wearable and portable options are standard in the consumer space, and there are indications that NIRS has arrived in elite and recreational sport.

Different wavelengths of light have specific value in the medical industry, and for the use of sports monitoring today, most of the wavelengths are in the higher ranges. Similar technologies that are available and should not be confused with NIRS include photoplethysmography (PPG), laser Doppler flowmetry (LDF), and pulse oximetry (PO). These measures do use non-invasive technology similar to NIRS, but are separate biological measures.

Local oxygenation of a muscle is easier to interpret, but still requires a lot of understanding of core physiology. Body temperature, motion artifacts, and simple anatomical understanding all play a role in interpreting the data collected from NIRS devices. Additional physiological systems are often combined when monitoring athletes, such as heart rate monitors, gas exchange devices, and even electrocardiograms.

How Are Muscle Oxygenation and Other Measurements Calculated?

Muscle oxygenation is calculated by an algorithm, thus making an indirect measurement. Most non-invasive measures are estimations, and any NIRS product must be validated against gold standards and compared to systems that have been validated to see if the data is close or interchangeable. It’s possible to have a system that is not as accurate as a research-grade system but still very reliable, making it useful to detect change, but the absolute numbers are not indicative of what is truly happening in the body. Since the calculations of algorithms with NIRS devices are static and don’t factor in sweat rates and other environmental factors, including motion artifacts, careful interpretation is needed to conjecture on what is happening internally within the muscle group tested. More sensors are usually added to compare with other muscle groups for additional perspective, including non-working muscles for contrast analysis.

Measurement begins with light-emitting diodes (LED) firing and projecting waves through the skin and fat and into the muscle. The lights are painless, are not surgical lasers or similar, and are, in fact, completely safe. The sensors inside the NIRS system pick up the scattered light reflected within the biological tissue, and estimate what is happening based on the status of oxygenated and deoxygenated cells in the bloodstream. This process, while simple, requires a lot of research and experimentation to properly analyze a very complex physiological response in exercise so that the calculations are valid, accurate, and precise enough for sport use.

What Is a NIRS System Useful for in Sport?

Near-infrared spectrometry is valuable because it’s continuous, specific, and non-invasive. Muscle monitoring is the most common use, but functional locations (head) are growing and practitioners use fNIRS (functional NIRS) to designate the specifics of the head location over local areas of the body. NIRS is useful for monitoring the change in oxygenation of muscles, therefore it can serve as an excellent proxy to the lactate response and even estimate the contribution from mitochondrial adaptations.

Based on the research, each measurement of the body is unique and ranges from very accurate and reliable to more limited. Nearly all of the benefits to athletes are with conditioning, but some strength training monitoring is possible with NIRS systems. The market caters mainly to endurance training, but speed and power sports, specifically hockey, are adopting the technology as well.

Total body lactate readings are not interchangeable with NIRS measurements for the most part, mainly because the sensors look at the specific muscle, and the specific muscle group may not represent an entire body. General relationships of training and local muscle oxygenation do have merit when coaches want to see higher rates of work, as a few calculations do provide adequate representations of the lactate response, but the values are not absolute and are more working standards for internal tracking. Multiple sensors and correction formulas are necessary to help model lactate responses. If absolute measurements are necessary, conventional lactate testing should be considered.

If absolute measurements are necessary, conventional lactate testing should be considered. Share on X

Attempts to evaluate enzymatic changes and mitochondrial adaptations are still in their infancy, but as the science and technology evolves, so does the validity and accuracy of those measures. Mitochondrial changes can’t be specified but inferred at this moment in time, and local adaptations of muscle groups, specifically large superficial ones, are inferred as well. Generally, the rise and fall of muscle oxygenation (SmO2) locally to the tissue monitored is the primary pursuit of NIRS in sport. Observation of those values, with context in training, enables practitioners to know exactly how the body is responding to both training and rehabilitation.

Brain function is an extremely complex interaction of a highly evolved organ and the cooperating nervous system. Some research on fNIRS demonstrates enough value that monitoring frontal activity with sensors is warranted. Both performance sport science and the supportive nutritional space uses non-invasive real-time monitoring to explore the relationship between nutritional protocols and sports performance outside of general testing. As the field evolves, the connection between decision-making and other cognitive abilities and simpler measures of performance is expected to grow, and fNIRS is one of those technologies that will improve the outcomes of both the researcher and practitioner.

Who Should Use a NIRS Monitor?

Those involved with sports performance, sports medicine, and even sports nutrition are users of NIRS in both practice and research. NIRS can, with the right interpretation, represent important change within the body. The data collected from NIRS technology is very actionable, as testing or monitoring is very effective in improving the precision of the training, down to the cellular level. Based on the power of NIRS monitoring, those who need better outcomes in training should use the technology to evaluate the treatment and training methods used.

Sports medicine professionals monitor local changes to injured areas with an array of technologies and clinical approaches. While electromyography is common, the muscle activity readings are often not enough to make decisions and adjustments. Muscle injuries are often monitored by perceptual pain and soreness feedback, and symptom tracking causes possible physiological problems that objective functional measures do not. Supporting athletes with novel approaches to tracking injuries is useful and very practical.

Those needing better training results should use NIRS to assess their treatment & training methods. Share on X

Long-term adaptations to the muscle and acute improvements for deconditioning are difficult to monitor without invasive testing. In addition to the need to have conscious benefits of NIRS testing, the ability to see how rate limiting factors trend is also important, since many of the cardiopulmonary tests may not be explanatory to the athlete’s adaptive response. When athletes improve in conditioning, many of the adaptations can’t be explained by histological and morphological changes to the heart and lungs.

Nutrition science uses both the functional and local forms of NIRS to evaluate research investigations and applied approaches to sport. Sports nutrition is rapidly evolving now, as the counseling model is now transforming to more applied coaching methodologies. The evaluation of dietary and supplement interaction with training is growing, and it’s expected that NIRS will be one of those tools for sports nutritionists.

Strength coaches may wish to use NIRS technology for speed and power training, as rest intervals are often based on estimated time periods rather than true physiological changes. Training with speed and power requires both the knowledge of output changes and the underlying reasons for those changes. Using NIRS with conventional monitoring systems is empowering for coaches who need the explanatory information for why some athletes may not respond to programs and why some athletes do make improvements with similar training protocols.

Muscle Oxygenation Hardware and Software

Most sensors in sports need to be very small in order to be wearable or ecologically valid. Sensors with enclosures that are awkward or too large will change the validity of the reading, because athletes will alter their movements to accommodate the system. Sleeves, socks, bodysuits, and other garments are necessary to block light from the sensor area, otherwise the data will be corrupted. In addition to the light sensors, it is common that the product includes telemetry options such as Bluetooth, ANT+, or local Wi-Fi ability. Battery and wired power options are common now, and most research-grade products tend to use laboratory designs that are not portable or useful for field testing.

Exporting data into comma separated values (.csv) is nearly standard with most of the systems, but the new wave of consumer products will likely have fewer export options as the app software is geared to the direct-to-athlete service. Third-party software and integration is very common, whether added value systems or athlete management systems that are powerful enough to display testing and/or training data. Research-grade products mainly export into .csv or provide their own file format to allow backing up of native data.

TrainingPeaks, Stages, Today’s Plan, and SportTracks all work with the Moxy Monitor for data integration. Several added value software programs such as GoldenCheetah, PerfPRO, PeriPedal, and SelfLoops are popular with cyclists and triathletes. Most of the third-party added value systems are designed to work with Moxy, but a few are in the works to be universal as the market evolves.

The Current Near-Infrared Spectrometry Products in Sport

Muscle oxygenation measurement is a major role of NIRS, but other systems exist that use near infrared spectrometry to calculate physiological changes in athletes. A few of the sensors are ways to replicate lactate curves while others look at brain performance, thus making the market wide and innovative for companies to provide solutions to mounting conditioning and physiological challenges. Here are seven products that are available now (Autumn, 2018) and are either designed for sport or can be used by those involved in sport.

Humon

Humon is a Boston-based company with a commercial system that is similar to BSX, as it focuses on the lactate modeling of the body and is designed to fit the general recreational athlete. Humon Hex is new to the market and promoted to the mainstream consumer. In addition to the single location sensor, the product offers an app on both the iOS and Android platforms to connect to the sensor via Bluetooth, and has a web application for more advanced analysis post use. Humon markets a virtual coach for their platform, a claim that suggests their artificial intelligence provides enough insight that changes in training recommendations are possible from their analytics. The system is water-resistant, offers a wireless charger, and can be purchased online.

Moxy Monitor

Moxy Monitor is one of the top-selling solutions in endurance and team sport domestically and its international reach is growing as well. In the summer of 2018, Moxy improved both the hardware and firmware for more convenient measurement, and expanded their educational services with another user conference. Much of Moxy Monitor’s traction is in the endurance sport market, but a growing interest from speed and power sports is projected to be significant, thanks to their hardware improvements. Moxy Monitor can be purchased online directly, or through resellers at local facilities and e-commerce stores.

PortaMon

The PortaMon is a leading system on the market, and has been evaluated multiple times as both reliable and useful for coaches demanding performance in sport. As its name suggests, the system is portable and extremely versatile, allowing coaches to use it in multiple assessments. The PortaMon product is sold by Artinis, a Dutch company that provides an fNIRS system as well. In fact, Artinis has multiple NIRS systems for all types of scientific needs, including sports performance and research. The company sells their products through distributors, and specializes in other medical devices outside the NIRS market.

NIRSport Mobile

NIRx provides the NIRSport solution for researchers needing mobile tracking beyond just the brain. The German company also provides solutions for monitoring eye function. The NIRx line of systems is not just for sport, as the company is interested in supporting an array of other areas such as neurofeedback, as well as child and infant monitoring and research. NIRx does have distributors and offices outside of Berlin and, according to their website, their software solutions are constantly being refined and updated.

MetaOX

This research product is mentioned as an example of a cerebral oxygen monitoring solution that is commonly used for investigations outside of sport. The system is not a medical device and is not appropriate for coaches or even sport scientists in applied settings. MetaOX is sold through ISS, the company that provides a major line of research-grade products outside of NIRS. Including the cerebral products, medical lines that support infant care and medical grade monitoring are also available. The company has not entered the sport monitoring space with a wearable, and is unlikely to provide anything in the near future outside of what they provide to kinesiology and sports medicine applications with altitude and hyperbaric areas.

NIRSOptix

This company is another Massachusetts-based provider of NIRS, and they specialize in brain mapping and not sports monitoring for conditioning. Their system is for clinical and research needs only, and their other products help with breast imaging, cognitive development, and other research. The strength of their innovation is perhaps the brain mapping software, as they do provide a real-time concentration solution. TechEn, the parent company that manufactures and develops the NIRSOptix, has prestigious partnerships with the Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital.

NIMO

A small but visible company, Nirox provides a miniature NIRS device that is sport ready. The Italian company also provides consulting services along with their research and wellness product line. Based on hardware specifications, the equipment is wireless for the NIMO wellness product and the tabletop version is appropriate for research as it’s not very mobile. Most of the company’s products are industrial and medical sensors outside of sport, and the traction with teams and facilities is virtually non-existent.

Other systems are likely to follow these leaders with similar features, pricing, educational resources, and access to experts in the field. It’s wise to look into the company’s history and goals before making a purchase, as new startups and brands have come and gone, like all sports technology. BSX Insight closed its doors recently, and companies that depend heavily on fitness enthusiasts will likely be more volatile in sales and revenue.

Additional Recommendations on Body Oxygenation Systems

The current options in sports performance and sports medicine are already available now. Before implementing monitoring of muscle oxygenation, or any variable for that matter, you need education on the subject matter and training on how to use the system of choice. In addition to education, it’s also important to know the limitations of the technology used and when other methods are appropriate for monitoring. Down the road, the science of muscle oxygenation and similar physiological monitoring will be more accessible for coaches to apply, as we expect even more commercial opportunities to come to market.

How Should We Approach Habitual Caffeine Use by Athletes?

Blog| ByCraig Pickering

Caffeine is one of the most widely used—and abused—performance-enhancing drugs in the world. It enhances performance across a number of exercise types, including aerobic endurance, muscular endurance, repeated sprints, and maximum strength. Athletes know this, of course, which is why as many as 90% of them consume caffeine before or during competition, according to the research.

While researchers have examined how a pre-training or competition dose of caffeine directly impacts sporting performance, we need a wider conversation as to how caffeine fits into an athlete’s lifestyle and how this may impact athletic performance at the time when the athlete most needs a performance boost—in competition.

Regular Joe

Using caffeine as a performance enhancer isn’t only limited to those involved in sport. About 80% of the world’s population consumes some form of caffeine on a daily basis. In the UK, the average daily caffeine intake for adults is about 130 mg, which equals 2.5 espressos or 1.5 cans of Red Bull. Often, non-athletic adults consume caffeine for its positive effects on mental alertness and concentration, especially when sleep deprived. Caffeine also offers health benefits, primarily when consumed as coffee, with research suggesting it lowers overall mortality risk.

Traditionally, caffeine has been studied in two separate spheres: how it impacts athletic performance and how it impacts humans in their normal life. However—and this may surprise you—athletes are also normal people, and alongside consuming caffeine before a competition, they also tend to use caffeine in ways that mirror the general population.

Recent research has begun to explore this behavior, demonstrating how caffeine’s pain-reducing effects can help offset soreness associated with heavy training or reducing fatigue associated with travel or early morning training. Similarly, just like regular people, athletes consume caffeine by drinking coffee and tea socially.

Caffeine and High Performance

Our recent paper in Sports Medicine looked at how an athlete’s regular intake of caffeine, for sport and in general life, might impact their performance. We wanted to understand how athletes might become habituated to regular caffeine intake. We know that long-term exposure to some drugs requires more of that drug to exert the same effect. Caffeine is likely no different.

There are, however, surprisingly few studies exploring habituation and its effect on subsequent performance. The first study by Dodd and colleagues found no differences regarding time to exhaustion between habitual caffeine users and non-users. The researchers recruited non-habitual (average daily intake of 25 mg) and habitual (average intake >300 mg per day) caffeine users and had them undertake two incremental cycle tests with a pre-test caffeine dose of either 3 mg/kg or 5 mg/kg.

The opposite results were reported by Bell and McLellan, who found that habitual users (>300 mg/d) exhibited a smaller ergogenic effect from caffeine following a pre-cycle time to exhaustion dose of 5 mg/kg than did non-habitual users. These results were mirrored by a more recent, tightly controlled study by Beaumont and colleagues. In this study, participants took 3 mg/kg or a placebo every day for 28 days and then 3 mg/kg of caffeine before a performance test. The researchers found a smaller performance benefit compared to placebo in the caffeine supplemented group.

Finally, in a wonderfully provocatively titled study, “Dispelling the Myth that Habitual Caffeine Consumption Influences Performance Response to Acute Caffeine Supplementation,” Goncalves and colleagues reported no difference in performance enhancement following 6 mg/kg of caffeine in low, moderate, and high habitual caffeine users who ingested an average of 58 mg/d, 143 mg/d, and 351 mg/d, respectively.

Determining Caffeine Dosage

This leaves us in a delicate situation. Half of the studies suggest that habitual caffeine intake negatively affects caffeine’s subsequent performance benefits while the other half suggest no such thing. Which are we to believe?

In our recent paper, we proposed a theory that there has to be a substantial difference between the habitual and pre-competition caffeine doses for the negative effects of caffeine habituation not to occur. In the studies that supported a negative impact from caffeine habituation, there often was minimal difference between the habitual and pre-exercise caffeine doses. For example, in Beaumont’s study, both the habitual caffeine dose and pre-competition dose were 3 mg/kg.

Conversely, in the trials suggesting no negative effect from habituation, the pre-competition caffeine dose was much higher. In the Goncalves study, for example, the pre-trial caffeine dose was 6 mg/kg while the habitual dose in the high group was 350 mg/d (equivalent to about 4 mg/kg). This suggests that athletes can regularly consume caffeine, as long as the habitual dose is much less than their pre-competition dose.

That’s all well and good except that this prompts an obvious second question: How much caffeine should an athlete consume pre-competition? Very broadly, there is no right answer. Historically, the general recommendation is 3-9 mg/kg, with no additional benefits occurring above this amount.

Recent research, however, has suggested that doses lower than 3 mg/kg can also be ergogenic. I authored another paper that critically examined whether these guidelines applied to all athletes and found that they did not. As an example, variation in a gene called CYP1A2 may alter the optimal dose of caffeine. Recently, a group of researchers from Canada found that those with the CC version of the gene saw reduced sports performance with a 3 mg/kg caffeine dose while those with the AA version saw improved performance. These individuals may benefit from lower doses of caffeine or a longer period of time between ingestion and performance.

It’s very difficult to give a one-size fits all solution to the question of the optimal caffeine dose for an athlete pre-competition. I suggest that most people should experiment with consuming about 3 mg/kg 60 minutes before performance and then experiment with altering the dose and timing until the athlete arrives at an optimal strategy. For prolonged events, such as endurance running or team sports, there is a case for consuming caffeine later in the event, often with a lower dose.

An 80kg athlete could have three cups of coffee a day in addition to their pre-competition dose, says @craig100m. Share on X

Once we set the pre-competition caffeine dose, we can calculate the habitual dose—I recommend 50-75% of the pre-competition dose. If an athlete were to consume 3 mg/kg pre-competition, they could habitually consume 1.5-2 mg/kg on a daily basis. For an 80 kg person, this equals 120-160 mg of caffeine, which is roughly three cups of coffee or two small cans of energy drinks. This way, the athlete gets all the benefits of caffeine pre-competition as well as the benefits of regular use within training and can even consume caffeine socially.

Estimating caffeine intake is notoriously difficult, with many studies demonstrating a large range in caffeine concentrations between different drinks and brands; a coffee from Starbucks will have a different caffeine content as one from Pret. There also is a large range in caffeine concentration within the same caffeine source at different times; coffee from Starbucks will have different amounts of caffeine on different days.

Planned Caffeine Withdrawal

Another strategy often discussed is pre-competition caffeine withdrawal. Here, the athlete stops consuming caffeine for a period of time, often 7-28 days, before a competition to “re-sensitize” themselves to caffeine’s positive effects and gain a larger performance benefit. This strategy is also surprisingly poorly explored. A study examining the impact of a 4-day caffeine withdrawal found no effect on the performance benefits from a subsequent caffeine dose. It’s unclear whether a longer withdrawal period would have had a positive effect.

It’s also worth keeping in mind that caffeine withdrawal can be extremely unpleasant and can cause headaches, muscle pain, and sleep disturbances. While these side effects don’t last long, an athlete would not want to experience them before a competition. Given the lack of benefits from a pre-competition caffeine withdrawal period, along with the potential for negative side effects, I don’t recommend a withdrawal period.

Final Thoughts

So where does this leave us? There’s no reason why athletes cannot consume caffeine on a regular basis like normal humans in sporting and social contexts. Indeed, given caffeine’s positive effects on training performance, athletes should consume caffeine around training sessions. I suggest limiting their habitual caffeine dose to 50-75% of their regular pre-competition caffeine dose to limit any potential habituation effects.

Because there are apparently no positive effects from short-term caffeine withdrawal before a competition, I don’t recommend it. Finally, athletes should experiment with different caffeine doses and timing to better determine their optimal protocol, keeping in mind that the general advice may not be suitable for their own unique contexts.

Power Lift Roundtable: Game-Day Lifting for Baseball Players

Uncategorized| ByBob Alejo

Game-day lifting had enough buzz around it that I felt it necessary to write an article on the topic. Knowing what I know, my thoughts couldn’t be punctuated unless I could get some science behind it… or, at least, scientists. And there aren’t many better than Andy Fry, PhD, and David Szymanski, PhD. These two have been around and performed a ton of research on the effects of resistance training, and are able to confidently comment on this topic.

In terms of game-day lifting, we primarily look at the issue in the context of a pre-game lift at some point prior to competition, but our inquiry does not exclude post-game training. It’s certainly something to consider, and I’m sure all of us also know that it could backfire if done incorrectly. Undoubtedly, the group and level of chronological training age must be considered, the same as when we program regular training. With the increase in practice sessions, factoring in the toll on the body from games and then adding one more training session, the results could be disastrous with younger, less-resilient athletes.

And what would be the key markers to look for that would inform the coach that too much has been done? Or that perhaps just the right programming is in place? Or the unlikely, but possible, chance that there isn’t enough being done to elicit a response? I truly feel it’s not as easy as just seeing if lifting fits into the schedule.

These two members of Power Lift’s Sport Science Educational Board will shed some light on the issue and their thoughts could influence your decision on programming exercise the day of a competition.

Q: Where can you see game-day lifting as a benefit to high school athletes? College athletes? Professional athletes?

A.C Fry: When you consider that a high school baseball season can be two to three months in duration, a college season three or more months long, and a professional season three to seven months long, the competition season lasts a long time… too long to ignore strength training during this time. An athlete runs the risk of losing strength, power, and/or muscle mass over that period. Since it has been shown that strength and size can be beneficial to several important aspects of baseball performance, it becomes critical that the athlete at least maintains strength, power, and size during the season. So, the question is, how does a coach incorporate in-season training for the sport of baseball?

Additionally, you must consider the competition schedule. For example, high school teams may compete one to three days each week, with some games being double headers. Youth club teams often do not play during the week, but may play many games over a two- to three-day weekend tournament. Colleges often play three to five days per week, and summer collegiate teams typically play five to six days per week. At the professional level, there are few days across the entire season where a game is not played.

If a coach tries to schedule weight room training on non-game days, it is easier to do at the high school or youth club levels, but becomes increasingly difficult (or impossible) at higher levels of competition. Therefore, to maintain strength, power, and size across a competition season, weight training sessions must sometimes (or often) occur on game days.

Lifting must sometimes occur on game days to retain athlete strength, power & size across a season. Share on X

Performing resistance training during the in-season is important to maintain strength and power for anaerobic, power athletes. As someone who has trained baseball players for more than 25 years, it has been a goal of mine to learn as much as I can about every aspect of training, coaching, and motivating players. I have tried to accomplish this by conducting research, reading research and coaching articles, using practical experiences, and learning from others in the field.

David Szymanski: From a personal perspective, I have rarely needed to train baseball players on a game day because, in my career, I have trained high school and college athletes that did not play games every day during the in-season, and game-day training was not necessary because lifting occurred on non-game days. However, the only high school or college players that I would have lift on game days would be non-starting position players or red-shirts who are on a scheduled, periodized program that I did not want them to miss because it could interrupt their training schedule.

On the other hand, I have friends that are strength and conditioning coaches in professional baseball and it is necessary to train on game days because there are 162 games played in 185 days. The benefit of training professional baseball players on game days is to maintain strength and power as much as possible, because the professional baseball player’s schedule is physically and mentally demanding, and a player could easily become weaker and deconditioned if they did not train over the lengthy season. Some professional baseball players train on game days in the mornings before games or after games before they leave the stadium.

A.C Fry: So how is this best done? One consideration is to keep the weight training session away from the actual game. To do this, the lifting must be performed early enough in the day to permit recovery from the training. An alternative is to perform the lifting after the game, which is occasionally done at the professional level, although this may not be possible in most situations. This type of training early in the day may help some athletes deal with pre-game anxiety, as has been observed for other sports¹.

Lifting early enough in the day allows for recovery and may help athletes with pre-game anxiety. Share on X

There is also evidence that immediately following (i.e., 5-15 minutes) a heavy load training session, there are enhanced strength, power, and speed performances. This phenomenon is called post-activation potentiation (PAP), where muscular performance is actually briefly improved². However, I believe it is unlikely that this enhancement in performance would last across an entire day and result in improved game performance.

It should be noted, however, that some individuals feel that the PAP effect is long-lasting and could affect game performances later in the day. Sport scientists have studied how the fatigue of two high power training sessions in a day can alter muscular performances³. In many cases, the fatigue is minimal or non-existent by the second training session, and different individuals respond differently.

For baseball, this suggests that an early weight training session is not necessarily detrimental to game performance. What the exact training session looks like, of course, is critical. It has been shown that speed squat sessions employing 5 x 10 at 30% 1RM or 5 x 5 at 70% 1RM sessions do not produce decreases in squat power or barbell velocity across the five sets.⁴The takeaway here is that effective training sessions do not have to be fatiguing. However, the importance of muscular strength and power in baseball has been well documented,^5,6thus supporting the need for maintaining muscular performance across the entire season.

David Szymanski: To further answer this question, research needs to be reviewed. At this time, there is not much data on game-day training; however, of the few articles that are published, one by Woolstenhulme, et al. indicated that game-day resistance training for female college basketball players was not detrimental to performance as long as the resistance training session was of moderate intensity and occurred six hours before performance testing⁷.

It is important to know that the players in this study lifted weights for five months prior to the study; moreover, the women trained for six weeks during the study and were tested in the last two weeks of the program. Therefore, they were already trained and well-conditioned. The strength training sessions consisted of a full-body workout of seven exercises with three to six sets of 5-12 reps at 60-70% of their 1RM. The variables tested were the vertical jump, anaerobic capacity, and shooting accuracy. The authors suggested that experienced and trained basketball players could resistance-train on the morning of games or important practices without it negatively affecting their performance.

A.C Fry: Here are several important suggestions for incorporating strength training during a baseball season:

Be sure to coordinate weight room activities with on-the-field activities. When the baseball schedule dictates many games in a short time period—double-headers, long road trips, stressful overnight stays, or extra-inning games, for example—the weight room training should be modified.

Remember, too, to take into account the chronic fatigue that develops across a long season. Weight training sessions late in the season can be modified to still allow full recovery late in the season. One strategy sometimes used as post-season play approaches is to eliminate weight room sessions at the very end to permit a type of training taper. Be cautioned, however, that some athletes will resist stopping all training, so simply decreasing weight training volume and intensity may work best in these cases.

Different positions may dictate different strategies. For example, catchers need to be very strong and powerful, but often require recovery phases or games. This must also be realized in the weight room. Pitchers usually compete less often, but need to be fully recovered when their spot in the rotation comes up. However, many players are everyday players, and need to simply maintain near-peak form, and be fit enough to minimize injury risk.

All game-day weight training should include short duration sessions, and should avoid lifting until fully fatigued. The athlete should be able to leave the training hall refreshed and invigorated, rather than feeling beat up and totally spent. Sessions of 20-30 minutes may work fine if well-designed.

Game-day weight training should include large muscle mass, multi-joint exercises. Share on X

Game-day weight training should include large muscle mass, multi-joint exercises. These types of exercises are very time efficient and can easily be performed using high power. Please note that some of your athletes might not be experienced with high power lifts. It is generally recommended to teach and incorporate these lifts during the off-season so that game-day lifting doesn’t need to become an instructional event.

Q: Certainly, implemented incorrectly, game-day lifting could cause a decrease in performance, or worse, increase the risk of injury. What are two things you would be concerned about from a physiological standpoint?

David Szymanski: From a physiological standpoint, I would have two concerns about resistance training prior to playing on game day. One would be acute neuromuscular fatigue, which can be defined as the reduction in the force-producing capacity of the muscle (peripheral fatigue) and a decrease in the neural activity of the muscle (central fatigue). The other concern would be appropriate fuel recovery. If the resistance training session was too intense (> 85% 1RM) and/or had too much volume (sets and reps), athletes could experience acute neuromuscular fatigue, which could negatively affect performance and, potentially, the outcome of the game.

Acute neuromuscular fatigue & suitable fuel recovery are physiological concerns of game-day lifting. Share on X

Additionally, if the resistance training session was performed too close to game time (<6 hrs) without enough recovery time, and appropriate post-training nutrition was not optimal, performance could also be negatively affected. In an article by Beelen, et al., research indicated that optimal nutritional recovery for greater rate of muscle glycogen and protein re-synthesis should include appropriate carbohydrates (0.8-1.5 g/kg/hr) and proteins (0.2-0.5 g/kg/hr) within 30 minutes after training and every two hours for up to six hours post-training⁸. For optimal recovery, a 200lb (90.9kg) player, for example, would need to consume 72-136g carbohydrate (CHO) and 18-45g protein, which is a 3-4:1 ratio of CHO to protein. If this type of fuel recovery was not utilized with appropriate rest, then performance could be negatively affected.

A.C Fry: Some things I would be concerned about are the following:

Forgetting what the athlete is training for. It is too easy to simply prescribe a bodybuilding or competitive lifting program for your baseball player. These types of programs, while perhaps excellent for competitive lifters, do not take into account the needs and demands of a baseball season or the sport itself. Too often, these programs are popular but cut into the recovery of the baseball player, and may not address the immediate needs of the athlete who will be playing later the same day. Related to this is the concern that the athlete is too fatigued when they leave the training hall, and is not able to adequately recover by game time.

Although not necessarily directly related to the physiology of training, the baseball athlete may often have to train while on the road. In these cases, the training facilities may be quite different, or non-existent. When this occurs, the athlete must adapt with alternative training sessions. Numerous activities that may be beneficial can be performed without barbells and dumbbells.

Remember though, just because no weights are available, do not be tempted to perform large numbers of repetitions to try to make up for the lack of load. This strategy can result in excessive, and unfamiliar, levels of fatigue. Instead, moderate volumes of training modalities such as partner lifts, bands, plyometrics, medicine balls, and other related callisthenic activities can suffice in these situations. In general, the athlete and coach sometimes need to be creative.

In summary, do not be afraid of game-day lifting. It can become part of the athlete’s regular routine, and it can help preserve game-specific fitness across a challenging season.

References

Fry, A. C., Stone, M. H., Thrush, J. T. & Fleck, S. J. “Precompetition training sessions enhance competitive performances of high anxiety junior weight-lifters.” Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 1995;9(1):37-42.
Smith, J. C. & Fry, A. C. “Effects of a ten-second maximum voluntary contraction on regulatory myosin light chain phosphorylation and dynamic performance measures.” Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 2007;21(1):73-76.
Chiu, L.Z.F., Fry, A. C., Schilling, B. K., Johnson, E. J. & Weiss, L. W. “Neuromuscular fatigue and potentiation following two successive high intensity resistance exercise.” European Journal of Applied Physiology, 2004;92:385-392.
Kudrna, R. & Fry, A. C. (2009). Average power changes across five sets for three different lifting protocols. Abstract at NSCA Conference, Las Vegas, NV.
Fry, A. C., Honnold, D., Hudy, A., Roberts, C., Gallagher, P., Vardiman, J. P. & Dellasega, C. (2010). Relationships between muscular strength and batting performances in collegiate baseball athletes. Abstract at National Strength and Conditioning Association National Conference, Orlando, FL.
Forsythe, C. M., Fry, A. C., Haggerty, M. C. & Andre, M. J. (2011). Relationship of ground reaction forces and other performance measures with batted-ball velocity in collegiate baseball players. Abstract at National Strength and Conditioning Association National Conference, Las Vegas, NV.

Woolstenhulme, MT, Bailey, BK & Allsen, PE. “Vertical jump, anaerobic power, and shooting accuracy are not altered 6 hours after strength training in collegiate women basketball players.” Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 2004;18(3):422-425.
Beelen, M, Burke, LM, Gibala, MJ & van Loon, LJC. “Nutritional strategies to promote postexercise recovery.” International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism, 2010;20:515-532.

Buyer’s Guide to Metabolic Gas Analysis Systems for Sport

Buyer's Guide / ByChristopher Glaeser

Conditioning is an important part of the sports performance and health of both athletes and the general population. Evaluating the ability to extract oxygen and utilize it during exercise is a measurement that is common and valuable in the applied setting, as well as the research space.

This buyer’s guide covers gas exchange analyzers in the market, including how they work and what the future is leading to. While we make no recommendations, the list of companies mentioned creates an awareness of the products currently available to coaches and sport scientists. There is a growing trend toward portability, and the technology is on the verge of becoming consumer-friendly.

Metabolic testing is more than just oxygen utilization; it’s important for the utilization of macronutrients for fuel as well. Therefore, this guide will also briefly mention systems that are able to determine metabolic rate and substrate extraction.

What Is Metabolic Gas Analysis Testing?

The primary reason to perform gas exchange analysis on an athlete is to get an accurate assessment of their ability to extract oxygen and use it for aerobic performance. In addition to oxygen extraction, systems can also determine how much carbon dioxide is exhaled. How oxygen and carbon dioxide are exchanged in the body potentially determines how an athlete can cope with fatigue, as well as what output they are able to compete with. An assessment of the changes in oxygen extraction and carbon dioxide transport out of the body assumes that arterial levels are parallel with changes in respiratory exchange, and while they are very similar, they are not the same in real time.

Gas exchange analysis gauges an athlete’s ability to extract oxygen and use it for aerobic function. Share on X

The common metrics used by gas analysis systems are:

Maximal oxygen uptake (VO2 Max)
Metabolic equivalents (METS)
Minute ventilation (VE)
Carbon dioxide production (VC02)
Ventilatory equivalents measures (VE/VO2 and VE/VCO2)
Respiratory gas exchange ratio (RER)

Straightforward health and wellness measures that are important but not directly related to performance are metabolic rate and efficiency type metrics. Nutritionists who are progressive and want to actually prescribe nutritional interventions based on metabolic profiles can use advanced systems to address individual measures. Aging populations, recreational athletes, and elite competitors can all benefit from testing at rest conditions. Macronutrient distribution and caloric intake prescription with periodized diets are growing in popularity, but without direct measures, many of the estimations are not accurate.

Most systems that test athletes use a treadmill to estimate aerobic performance, but nearly every analyzer works fine with stationary cycling, rowing, and any cyclical equipment. Each mode of graded exercise has pros and cons, meaning athlete data may not be transferable to the field if the mode of exercise has poor relevance to the sport.

Some advanced systems are suitable for swimming tests, but a flume water treadmill is costly for even high performance centers. Some systems are technically portable and provide a backpack-like solution for activities that are on the grass, but due to their size, still have issues replicating a perfect environment. Newer systems are promising, as they have no hoses or wearable devices, but they have yet to be thoroughly vetted by multiple peer review studies. Today, the typical lab cart and treadmill solution is the most commonly employed testing option for conditioning tests.

Who Should Use Metabolic Gas Analyzers?

Most of the users of metabolic gas analyzers are sport scientists, but coaches and nutritionists are appropriate as well. In hospitals, lab techs commonly run the equipment, with qualified professionals performing the analysis. Any professional who needs to know the metabolic data of an athlete at rest or during exercise can be educated and trained to utilize the technology. Generally, running tests with the equipment is straightforward and easy, with most of the demand on analysis of the data and knowing how to improve the findings.

Ideally, the information gets shared with the athlete, along with an explanation of what it means and a plan to either improve the data or support their score if maximized. While most users seek out maximal performance in endurance, team sport athletes can benefit by including other tests such as electrocardiograms and even lactate testing.

How Metabolic Gas Analyzers Work

Just as important as the technology behind the equipment, practitioners should know how protocols work scientifically. Due to the complex nature and extensive amount of context for best practice, the methodologies of testing, analyzing, and prescribing interventions are all necessary to apply testing data. Gas analyzers estimate the composition of oxygen and carbon dioxide with internal sensors and all have different technologies that make them prone to variances in accuracy and precision.

Nearly every system on the market uses a hose to directly connect the air exchanges from an athlete to the machine, but an ultra-portable option bypasses hoses and reads the gas directly. A face mask covers the mouth and usually has a dual shaped extender, with one valve that flows into the machine for readings. Because air contains moisture, filters exist to ensure the air is dry and clean for the readings, and to prevent health hazards to users later. Most machines need to be maintained and cleaned, but some have internal mechanisms that assist users and reduce maintenance requirements.

Drift, a common problem with sensors, occurs when the measurement quality decays over time. Calibration, whether manual or done internally by the machine, requires the user to literally rest the device so it measures accurately. A system must be carefully maintained to ensure precision, and various sensors are common in the equipment to detect possible interference from ambient air quality and other variables. Generally, it is an enormous challenge to keep a machine accurate over long periods of time, as practitioners need to have data that is comparable year to year. In addition to the reliability of the machine, practitioners care about the interchangeable qualities of the data between other machines and other professionals, so tight protocols are important.

After the sensors internally mix and calculate the composition of the gas, the final step is to display the information. Most of the digital readouts from the machine are not measurements, but general operational messages. Typically, the data is sent from the analyzer to the software on a laptop or tablet, wirelessly or via cable. Software, mainly available in Windows, enables users to generate reports and further analyze the data. Some systems provide a web app for cloud storage and mobile viewing.

Validation and Accuracy of Systems

The process of ensuring that metabolic gas analysis systems are valid, reliable, and precise is very demanding. Validation of gold standard products is also difficult, as even the best research products require repeated external review for comparison purposes. Coaches must understand that most laboratory testing is still an estimate, as graded exercise testing protocols are questioned and conflicting in the scientific literature. Therefore, each system needs to pass through a rigorous review in order to see the strengths and weaknesses of the product.

Ensuring that metabolic gas analysis systems are reliable and precise is a very demanding process. Share on X

Multiple studies will likely give an organization confidence in the product because internal validation approaches are nearly impossible in most team and college environments, as standardized equipment for validation is enormously expensive and typically not available. A sport scientist or experienced professional should be consulted before investing in any system.

The typical approach for vetting a product includes the simulated use of the machine for known gas levels. Concurrent use of multiple gas analyzers has been attempted, but due the location of mouthpieces, it’s very difficult to acquire simultaneous readings from the same athlete for comparison. Conventional evaluations use a known measure of gas composition, and evaluate the intake measurement, as well as what is artificially expired.

Even known gas measures are limited for several reasons, as mouth breathing is sometimes stressful for athletes who are uncomfortable, and masks can cause errors with resting scores. High-intensity exercise requires mouth breathing, so maximal testing is better aligned with laboratory tests. Face masks are still appropriate for submaximal graded testing when users understand the measures are estimates.

Testing in the field is sometimes necessary, as most non-cyclical endurance sports can’t be replicated in the laboratory (thus, the increase in portable systems). In addition to the need for ecologically sound data, the miniaturization of technology and correction algorithms for novel measurements are trending in the market. With the speed of peer review, it’s likely that more than one company will develop a sufficiently accurate product for sport analysis that is extremely small and practical. Products may not be able to detect actual advantages in Olympic sports, since lower-grade systems may not be able to detect a tiny change (smallest worthwhile change) that is actually an advantage.

Important Options and Features to Consider

Most available products have single purpose values, meaning they only have the ability to report oxygen transport data to users. Nearly every product on the market favors a typical laptop or desktop computer, as the software is usually a native program for Windows environments. In addition to the program, each system has a main hardware device that analyzes the gas exchange during exercise, and systems tend to have specialized hoses and face masks to collect data from athletes. Currently, multiple companies provide an app for ease of use, but the systems are new and the robustness of the data is still unknown.

Servicing systems requires more than just cleaning, as each cart must be calibrated repeatedly for possible issues with either drift or data impairments from room air quality. Some systems can provide very extensive reports, while others only deliver plain readouts of the measurements over time. Additional features like spirometry and other functions are sometimes available with higher end products. Finally, all of the electrical components are international with the bigger brands, supporting the specifics of each country’s laws and codes.

Many resellers and partner distributors provide computer and cart hardware for support purposes. The reason third-party hardware is sold in a bundled fashion is that it is often difficult to troubleshoot clients without remote management and standardized setups. Training is usually done on-site with higher end products, but some companies provide online education and product information. There is an ecosystem of continuing education and added value services that are popular within the industry, including conferences and trade shows.

Example Products in the Metabolic Testing Market

Clinical, research, and private training facilities commonly use the systems on the list below. Most of the systems sell at a price point that is affordable for sports teams and small universities. The list is not a recommendation of products to invest in, as the decision on what to buy is dependent on a combination of factors such as validation and service. Nearly every system listed below has external validation research available, meaning the product was evaluated with a scientific investigation that was peer reviewed or performed by a researcher.

Most metabolic gas analysis systems are affordable for sports teams and small universities. Share on X

COSMED: This Italian company is one of the most prestigious and pioneering companies in metabolic testing. Over the years, they have pushed technology to new heights and they provide additional solutions outside the gas analyzer market. An innovator in both aquatic and portable testing solutions, COSMED also has hospital equipment for basic metabolic assessment, including lactate testing.

In sports science, the company is popular because of their products’ features, their quality service, and the support they provide internationally, with offices in the U.S. and other locations. COSMED is known in research for providing great data when conventional lab testing isn’t possible, and their systems are often employed for activities that are not endurance sport. COSMED is a leader in portable solutions, but several companies are trying to disrupt them with even more portability.

Parvo Medics: As a market leader, a wealth of high performance and elite organizations use Parvo’s system for comprehensive testing. Many practitioners consider the TrueOne 2400 a gold standard, and nutritionists, sport scientists, and hospitals commonly use it. Parvo specializes in metabolic testing and their service is known as one of their strong points. One drawback is that, due to its power and precision, the cost of their system runs higher than typical mid-range products, but that is to be expected with top-of-the-line analyzers. Parvo Medics has a full software program that is robust and constantly maintained and updated.

AEI Technologies:AEI Technologies is recognized for its high-precision metabolic carts, especially in delivering reliable VO2 Max measurements critical for sports science and performance training. With over 40 years of experience, AEI’s flagship products, like the MOXUS, are trusted by elite training centers, research institutions, and medical clinics. Known for their unmatched accuracy, AEI’s systems use gold-standard gas analyzers, including the S-3A/I Oxygen and CD-3A CO2 analyzers, providing data essential for endurance optimization and respiratory efficiency.

VO2 Master: The VO2 Master is new to the industry, and while there is some evidence of validation with an independent review, there haven’t been multiple peer reviews to ensure that this ultra-portable option is research-grade. The product’s design is exciting, as it pushes the envelope for both mobility and cost, and if it can effectively measure oxygen utilization with quality data, it could disrupt the market. The product is completely wireless and uses no laptop, and the Bluetooth communication is primed for smart devices. The company is based in Canada and has an online shop for e-commerce sales.

KORR: KORR’s CardioCoach VO2 and entry-level systems are popular due to their user-friendly designs and simplicity. Based in Salt Lake City, KORR manufactures a small set of metabolic testing systems for coaches and professionals needing essential information. KORR also provides metabolic testing for wellness clinics and other industries outside of performance, and has a reputation for supporting boutique facilities and colleges. The company does assist hospitals with a metabolic testing device, but the system is intended more for obesity treatment than high performance or similar, although the validation demonstrates adequate precision for estimating aerobic capacity.

VacuMed: After 50 years in business, this California company offers the most extensive product line in the market. They even provide systems that help validate equipment, and offer various resources like books and manuals. VacuMed’s annual catalog showcases body composition solutions as well as ergometers. VacuMed offers typical machines for simple treadmill testing, as well as the treadmills for bundled sales. Finally, the company launched a mobile system as well, entering the emerging competitive space of portable testing solutions.

CORTEX Medical: A German powerhouse in metabolic testing, CORTEX Medical provides both hospital and sports performance solutions, including a novel solution for swimming. One of the strengths of CORTEX is their international partnership and distribution options, and there have been multiple investigations into their products’ validity and data quality. Some companies that partner with CORTEX resell their systems with their treadmills. In addition to their performance line, they offer hospital and wellness solutions that help practitioners with their clients. MetaSoft Studio is their enterprise software, and it’s available for purchase on their website as a license.

PNOÊ: PNOÊ is brand-new to the market, and the system is relatively unknown and still in early adoption mode. The company was founded to disrupt the VO2max market, with a focus on bridging the professional and consumer spaces. The PNOÊ system is wireless and completely portable. So far, there is no available validation study on the product on their public website, but we expect that efforts to demonstrate accuracy, precision, and reliability will be available soon. Like typical start-ups, PNOÊ has an impressive scientific advisory board, but has yet to show traction in the market.

The future of the metabolic testing system market is portable and wireless. Share on X

The future of the metabolic testing system market is portable and wireless, since most cart-based systems cannot be used in actual practice environments that simulate game conditions. Currently, some of the products are mobile, but they are far from perfect. Still, the use of a conventional cart option is repeatable, and those performing experiments on gross variables can benefit from the current technology.

Closing Thoughts on Metabolic Testing Systems

Not all sports require testing of an athlete’s aerobic system or even anaerobic system, but testing may be helpful to see how the athlete can improve performance. While VO2 max testing is questionable in some sports, even endurance sports, the information provided is objective and useful for determining how an athlete adapts to training.

Investing in equipment requires not only an understanding of the hardware and software, but also the ability to interpret the data and make actionable decisions for the preparation of athletes. We encourage all professionals to get up-to-date on their understanding of exercise physiology, especially in aerobic training and performance. Metabolic testing is scientifically valid, relevant to sports performance, and practical now because of system design changes over the years. Even non-researchers can use laboratory-grade technology, and benefits to recreational athletes—as well as their elite counterparts—are possible when there is accurate interpretation

Training Talk: Conversations with a Dozen Master Coaches Book Review

Blog, Book Reviews| ByChris Gallagher

“Coaching is a question of absorbing other people’s training and adding some of your own experience.”

In summing up his introduction for Training Talk, Martin Bingisser offered this insightful commentary on the coaching development process, and it perfectly encapsulates the overall theme and value of the book. Digesting the contributions of 12 master coaches and integrating their philosophies and experience into your own practice is the ultimate message and lesson of Training Talk. The underlying theme and message threaded throughout the entire book is being willing, able, and smart enough to learn from others: other coaches, other sports, or even artistic expressions of physical mastery such as ballet.

Training Talk could represent the invitation list if a sports coach decided to play the ultimate dinner party fantasy game. Imagine if you could invite 12 master coaches over and quiz them on their training philosophies and ideas. Bingisser makes excellent use of the enviable coaching network he has developed over the years of running his HMMR Media website to produce a resource that is stuffed full of coaching insight from master coaches across a variety of disciplines.

Imagine inviting 12 master coaches over and quizzing them on their training philosophies and ideas. Share on X

Given Bingisser’s background and HMMR Media’s emphasis on track and field, it’s not surprising that Part I of the book centers around the insights from seven expert coaches in this area: Vern Gambetta; Harry Marra (Ashton Eaton’s coach); Dan Pfaff; Gary Winckler; Pat Connolly; hammer throwing coaching legend and Martin’s former coach, Anatoliy Bondarchuk; and Derek Evely.

Training Talk TOC — Image 1. A sneak peek at the contents of “Training Talk” reveals the wide variety and many years of coaching expertise Bingisser has drawn together.

The second half of Training Talk is devoted to physical preparation experts with a broad range of experience in field sports, predominantly across various codes of football and rugby, comprising interviews with Dave Tenney, Tom Myslinksi, Frans Bosch, John Pryor, and John Kiely.

Bingisser provides an introduction to each master coach, culminating in a synopsis of the key takeaway points from each of the interviews in the informative “Lessons to Learn” sections—a very valuable addition to such resources. Each interview has central themes and particular areas of expertise, and the reader will likely find certain contributors resonate more with them and their current situation. Given the breadth, depth, and variety of coaching experiences from the dozen experts, there are numerous, wide-ranging lessons to take away from the book.

Training Wisdom from 12 Master Coaches

The author challenges the reader not to get fixated just on the similarities among the different practitioners, but instead to also look at the differences between these coaches. The 200 pages of Training Talk are full of coaching know-how, and I’d like to provide you with a sneak peek of what some of the coaches bring to bear:

In Harry Marra’s interview, he divulges the type of coaching wisdom that can only be learned from extensive time in the trenches. It’s the kind of information you don’t get in a textbook, course, or seminar. These items typically fall under the umbrella of the art of coaching. For example, Marra outlined how he and Eaton broke down the entire decathlon into just a handful of words. Ultimately, Marra explains why the cues must come from the athlete.

Dave Tenney is now High Performance Director for the Orlando Magic NBA team, but built his reputation in North American soccer with the Seattle Sounders FC. Tenney brings a unique perspective on preparation and performance for team sport athletes, discussing topics such as sports specificity and technology. Nuggets of wisdom emanating from his section include:

“Training for team sports is about finding compromise.”

“You don’t just train the thing you want to do, you have to work the extremes.”

Training Talk also introduced me to Tom Myslinski, the head strength and conditioning coach at the Jacksonville Jaguars. As a British-born coach, I didn’t grow up on America football, so my sporting knowledge is more geared towards football (soccer), rugby, and the major team sports that most of the rest of the world play. Like many of you reading this, I was familiar with Pfaff, Gambetta, and most of the other 12 master coaches featured in the book, but Myslinski was a new name to me and his chapter was of particular interest.

The author challenges the reader to also look at the differences between these successful coaches. Share on X

As with each of the other interviews, Myslinski’s segment is bursting with coaching insights. Myslinksi’s approach and philosophy may almost seem counterintuitive at points—to the strength coach fixated upon the barbell, back squats, and max strength—but the detail makes perfect sense if you avoid getting caught up in the headlines, such as the implementation of “submaximal loading.”

Myslinski provides a great analogy for the role of the modern strength coach, which may more accurately define the role of the high performance coordinator. He talks of the need to be both below deck—down on the floor working with the athletes—and simultaneously above deck, steering the ship and looking for icebergs. The analogy neatly encapsulates the challenges faced by the modern strength coach.

“Periodisation theory is ‘eminence-based’ rather than evidence-based.”

– John Kiely

John Kiely is a prominent critic of the “science of periodisation” and a major focus of his interview centers on avoiding the planning trap, recognizing our own fallibility when it comes to predictions, and not being married to a flawed and questionable periodization strategy. For any of you who aren’t familiar with Kiely’s publications, this is a must-read

Bingisser Excerpt — Image 2. Bingisser highlights an example of the contrasting similarities and differences among the master coaches in Training Talk.

“All the coaches have a different approach, but they are confronting similar issues and their search for better feedback optimizes the process. In a world where nothing is clear, it is key to learn as much as possible from your immediate surroundings.” Author Martin Bingisser explains that many roads lead to Rome, with different coaches finding alternate solutions to similar problems, but context, awareness, and problem-solving are essential skills.

Summing Up

Bingisser exploits his wealth of coaching connections to pull together a diverse, yet complementary, mix of coaching experiences and knowledge in a high-quality, powerful resource. Despite the varied knowledge and career histories of these successful coaches, Bingisser manages to weave together the text in a manner that delivers an absorbing and insightful narrative that progresses in a logical manner.

Obviously, with many of these master coaches influencing Bingisser’s coaching journey, there is a danger of groupthink, as well as confirmation and authority biases. While each of the master coaches chosen boasts an impressive résumé, Bingisser cautions the reader to be aware of their innate biases. Training Talk rightly challenges you to ask questions of what you read, challenge your established beliefs, and adopt a critical mind-set.

Training Talk boasts vast amounts of first-class coaching insight in an easy-to-digest package. Share on X

As a collection of high-quality interviews with leading practitioners, providing insight from their years of coaching elite athletes, Training Talk packs a lot of punch for its size. Many of the coaching- or training-related resources I have recently read and reviewed have required the investment of a considerable amount of time. Training Talk boasts vast amounts of first-class coaching insight in an easily digestible package that I highly recommend.

Competing to Coaching: 4 Common Coaching Mistakes by Former Athletes

Blog| ByBryan Mack

The greatest part about coaching the sport you used to play is getting to help others experience the same feeling of accomplishment and camaraderie that you experienced, but on a larger scale. It’s extremely rewarding to be a part of that process. However, just because you’re a former athlete, that doesn’t mean you have all the answers—it’s still a long road full of mistakes.

We all start our coaching careers from different angles, and the entry point from which we start plays a role in the way those mistakes present themselves. Former athletes have an insight into the players’ experiences that may initially create rapport, but that background also comes with a unique set of challenges that we must overcome to efficiently transition from athlete to successful coach.

Below are four common mistakes young coaches make as they transition from competing to coaching. I have made all of these mistakes myself, and am in a constant battle to prevent myself from continuing to repeat them. Being self-aware of your shortcomings is the first step to correcting them, and ultimately becoming a better coach.

Copy-and-Pasting Your Program

“It’s what I did, and I got better.”

Probably the most common mistake athletes make as we transition to a coaching role is repeating what we did as an athlete in the hopes of passing that same success along to our athletes. Although done with the best intentions, your training was designed for athletes at your specific level, with your resources, on your schedule, and a methodology that was influenced by your coach’s philosophy, mentors, personality, work ethic, and biases, to name just a few factors. All of those variables will always be present in your decisions as a coach, but they do not manifest the same way for you as they did for your coach.

A mistake athletes make as we transition to a coaching role is repeating what we did as an athlete, says @TJMack53. Share on X

The ranking of KPIs (key performance indicators) such as acceleration, top speed, speed endurance, and work capacity—and the time spent at each—will differ greatly for athletes of different levels and genders, such as a male collegiate short sprinter and a female high school short sprinter. For a high school female, a bigger emphasis on speed endurance and work capacity is necessary due to lower training age, the need to achieve top speed earlier in the race, and less distance being covered while at that speed—meaning a larger percent of her race will be deceleration. The male collegiate sprinter, on the other hand, may get 70 meters into the 100m dash before deceleration occurs. Consequently, the density of speed endurance can be slightly deemphasized for the male.

The reverse can also be true. How efficiently are you spending your time training a male collegiate sprinter for the 100m dash doing intensive tempo intervals 3x a week, when the training adaptation from that stimulus constitutes 30% of your race? Copy-and-pasting will yield underperformance.

Even variables like weather and location affected what your coach gave you as an athlete. Whether you realize it or not, your program’s training methodology was influenced by the weather and what you were able to do at any given time of the year. A change in location could completely derail your previous training if your program called for Block 60s in January, but the Northeast’s weather will prevent you from even glancing at the track until April, let alone spiking up.

The varying personality types from coach to coach may alter the success of certain methodologies, says @TJMack53. Share on X

Another example occurs in personality differences that influence coaching styles. The varying personality types from coach to coach may alter the effectiveness of certain methodologies: A very level, mellow demeanor may be contraindicating to administering a Tony Holler-esque “Feed the Cats” program, where creating an extremely high level of athlete arousal is needed to make that low volume dosage effective. It’s not impossible, by any means, but when you take a coach’s personality into consideration, you may realize that their way of leading and communicating with their athletes was an extension of their personality and not a chosen method.

The inability to step outside of your success and biases to seek new information can box you in. Like all things, there is a spectrum—once headed too far in the other direction, a different problem arises.

The Walking Textbook

This problem stems from the opposite playing experience of that mentioned above. When a former athlete feels they did not have a positive competing experience and could have achieved more if given the opportunity to train at a higher quality, we run into this archetype. The “walking textbook” effect comes into play when we place a higher emphasis on science than on people. Every coaching decision we make is determined by the latest research. We forget that we coach the people in front of us and not the parameters of the most recent studies; we think finding the perfect workout is more important than the athlete’s intent, so we spend more time writing and tweaking the program than on building an environment where the training is done with purpose.

After my first year of coaching the sprints, one example always stuck out to me. Pretty much every resource for information I used at the time (books, manuals, interviews, podcasts, etc.) said to do acceleration or absolute speed work on Monday. So, I did. Every single week. While I thought I was executing the perfect program, I missed the obvious reality right in front me: Some of my athletes weren’t ready to train the Monday after a meet. Had I been less attached to the prescription, I would have swapped Monday and Tuesday, done a general day on Monday, and then assessed whether athletes were ready to hit it on Tuesday.

When we are too reliant on research, we can miss opportunities to build trust with our athletes, says @TJMack53. Share on X

Now, there are worse problems than being too reliant on the research, but where this mistake is really going to affect your program is the working relationship between you and your athletes. You’ll miss the opportunity to build the type of trust that comes from involving them in the training process and valuing their input. I won’t ever say that you can’t be effective being the textbook, but you’ll miss some crucial coaching moments.

Lack of Long-Term Vision

This mistake is extremely common in former athletes who start coaching without strong mentorship. Thinking back to our mindset as a young athlete, we all remember the feeling of needing to PR every meet despite our coach’s reassurance that the process would take care of itself over time. As we got older and we experienced bad practices, bad meets, and even bad seasons that turned out fine in the long run, we started to learn that performance can have up waves and down waves, all while ultimately trending upwards until the most important meets of the year. Essentially, when we’re young, we can’t see past the next meet. Over time, we learn to see the big picture.

When an athlete transitions into coaching, sometimes we must relearn that process from the coaching perspective. Where does an athlete need to be in November in order to lead to success in May or June? What does a 24.00 200m in May look like in the first few indoor competitions? A young coach’s gut feeling is a fear of failure, because their instinct isn’t based on any experience in long-term success.

We often panic after a bad performance the same way we used to as a young athlete—our gut instinct is to do more work, or even alter the program as a knee-jerk reaction to make KPI No. 1 the skill or quality our athlete just underperformed in this week. The long-term vision solution is to stay the course. Stay healthy, continue training your KPIs, and you’ll be right where you need to be four months from now, when it matters.

Trust in your program and look long-term, says @TJMack53. Share on X

During my apprenticeship program at ALTIS, I remember Dan Pfaff commenting on young coaches and this remark of his will always stick with me: “Experienced coaches’ worst fear is doing too much, young coaches’ worst fear is not doing enough.” Resist the urge to panic, resist the urge to do those “where are they at” workouts in season, resist the knee-jerk reaction to a poor performance. Trust in your program and look long-term.

Cookbook Coaching: What, How, Why?

Everyone starts their coaching career enamored by the “what.” “What’s the best workout for a 200 runner who decelerates the last 50?” “What’s the ideal workout for a triple jumper with that horrible second step phase?” “What drill can help you get a faster start?” It’s why you can go to any coaching clinic or seminar, and most of the people just want to be given a workout.

When we athletes transition to coaches, we’ve known the “what” for the past 4-10 years but have very little experience understanding physiology, physics, and kinesiology to know why our coach gave us what they did. But we are still highly competitive after the transition, so to find success right away, we latch onto the “what” for quick results and disregard seeking the “why.”

Often, this problem is a continuation of the first mentioned problem above if not solved. Don’t get me wrong—there is value in trying to get experience using someone’s program and seeking success early—but if you don’t seek to understand the how and why behind the what, the odds are very unlikely that you will have a high success rate in any training group, and even fewer odds that the ones who do find success are performing at their potential. You may have the super stars at the top, but then there are 25% who have a moderate career and 25% who don’t get past their high school (thinking collegiately) PRs, while the other 25% is a mix between the athletes who lose their love for the sport and those who are out for the season.

Imagine printing off a Gordon Ramsay recipe and preparing that recipe 30 times in 30 different kitchens, all with slightly different variables. Some have convection ovens, some have standard ovens, some have burners that burn hotter than others, some have restaurant-grade frying pans and pots, some have just a microwave, etc. What are the odds that meal comes out Gordon Ramsay quality all 30 times just because you used a Gordon Ramsay’s recipe? Some may be restaurant quality, some may be passable, some may taste great but look awful, some may look great but taste awful, some may be completely inedible, and one time the kitchen may burn down before you even finish. Why? Because you didn’t understand the ingredients used in the recipe. You applied the exact same recipe to every situation without knowing how or what ingredients to manipulate in response to the slight variations to end up with the same quality meal.

If you can’t apply ‘what, how, why’ to your training menu, you don’t understand the ingredients, says @TJMack53. Share on X

The same goes for applying the “What, How, Why” to the training items on your menu. You can’t make changes to your program to account for the variability in people to yield the same results because you don’t understand what you’ve prescribed. How can you effectively train the 100m dash if you don’t truly know the KPIs of the event, let alone whether the workouts you’ve chosen efficiently change those KPIs? If you’re doing a workout and your “why” is to get strong or build a base, ask yourself how exactly do you define strength? Building a base in what? If you can’t answer these questions, you don’t understand the ingredients.

As we go through an athlete’s career, we WILL guess wrong and there will most likely be injuries that pop up here and there. When we guess wrong, our job is to problem-solve and find the ingredients responsible. And when an athlete gets injured, we must work with our physio staff to construct a Plan B that keeps in all the necessary ingredients to minimize the training gap while on the mend.

Good luck with either of those if you only know the “what.” We can’t reverse-engineer what we never engineered in the first place. Cookbook coaching may yield some superstars, but will ultimately fail in maximizing the potential of a roster.

Cookbook coaching may yield some superstars, but ultimately fail in maximizing a roster’s potential, says @TJMack53. Share on X

The most important thing is to accept that failure is inevitable. Like Pfaff says: “The school of hard knocks is the best teacher!” The best we can do is put ourselves in a position to make the most educated guesses possible through education, experience, mentorship, and self-evaluation. The latter will always be the most difficult, as self-evaluation requires us to acknowledge our mistakes. But every mistake, including the four mentioned, presents an opportunity to grow and become a better coach.

Horizontal Jumps: The Technical Model

ALTIS| ByBoo Schexnayder

The following is an excerpt from “Coaching the Horizontal Jumps,” an online educational program dedicated to the long and triple jumps, representing the third course in the ALTIS Track & Field Education Series.This digital course features 12 modules written by esteemed coach and educator Irving “Boo” Schexnayder, and is packed with coaching insights, tips, tools, and progressions crafted to build topic-specific understanding, develop targeted coaching skill sets, and accelerate athlete development.

A seldom voiced but critical question to ask before teaching skills is, “What makes ‘good’ techniques ‘good’?” Obviously, good techniques foster good performances, but it’s complicated. We see athletes succeeding while doing radically different techniques, and the fact that these athletes might vary in their talent levels further confuses the issue. Is the athlete succeeding because of good technique, or in spite of it? We also make the mistake of thinking that elite performers have perfect technique; this often isn’t the case, either.

Below, we explore some principles that should guide every coach’s thought processes before determining exactly which technique or style you want to teach your long and triple jumpers.

1. Commonality-Based Teaching

We can define a commonality in two ways:

A commonality is a technical feature we see in multiple events.
A commonality can be a technical feature we see in a single event, executed by many different, successful performers.

In this case, we are more concerned with the second definition. No two performers in an event share identical technical models.

However, when we examine the horizontal jumps (or any event, for that matter), we can find technical features that all successful jumpers share. We should build our technical models around these commonalities, rather than around differences. For example, we saw features like dorsiflexion of the ankle, heel lead, and flat, rolling contacts numerous times in our technical exploration.

2. Technique and Style

If we study the top performers in any event, we see many things they do the same, and we base our technical teaching on these commonalities. But what about the things they do differently? When we see top athletes doing things differently and still performing at high levels, it becomes obvious that these differences must not matter much. We classify these as differences in styles.

Good coaches teach technique and allow style to evolve, says @BooSchex. Share on X

For example, any jump competition shows jumpers using single and double arm styles. If they are all highly successful, it’s fair to ask if the arm style matters that much. Good coaches teach technique and allow style to evolve. This simplifies the teaching of technique tremendously for the coach and athlete. More importantly, the efficiency of the teaching process improves dramatically because of the elimination of unnecessary teaching.

3. Sports Science Contributions to the Technical Model

When building a technical model for an event, we draw upon various fields of sports science for reason, insight, and supporting evidence. These fields of sports science may agree in supporting a particular technique; however, they may also conflict.

For example, we have documents showing that takeoff angles in the horizontal jumps are wildly different than the ideal angles suggested by projectile physics. Here, the sciences of physics and human anatomy conflict. In these types of cases, it is important to identify the conflict and weigh the positives and negatives. You should evaluate techniques in terms of physics, physiology, and anatomy.

At times, even psychological reasons might come into play. Technical styles that are more physically demanding and challenging can sap emotional energy levels and extinguish the passion and love for an event.

4. Evaluation of Technical Model Changes

Why would a coach choose to change an athlete’s technique? There are three potential answers to this valid question:

Performance Level: Improvements in performance level may result.
Consistency: Improvements in consistency and frequency of good performances may result. Maybe the athlete might not hit a huge personal best, but the average performance grows closer to that PR level.
Injury Prevention: Decreased levels of risk associated with the technique may allow for injury-free performances. For example, a triple jumper who reaches on each phase and relies on big swinging movements in compensation can be effective, but this is a risky technique. Switching to a technique based more on speed maintenance would drop this risk quite a bit.

5. Cost/Benefit Analysis

When deciding that a change in technique is needed, the coach should apply a cost/benefit analysis before undertaking the change. These are key questions to consider in that analysis.

Benefit: What will be the type and amount of potential benefit?

Difficulty: How difficult will this change be, and will I have enough time and resources to accomplish it? For example, changing an arm style or switching jumping legs takes quite a bit of time. If you are in a situation with a very short preseason or limited training opportunities, such a change might not be wise.

Further Issues: Is the change likely to result in other problems? For example, an increase in the number of steps used in the approach might increase velocity and potential jump distance. But, if small technical problems at takeoff explode into huge ones as a result of this added speed, things might very well get worse.

Scientific Rationale: Do sports science and commonality study support such a change?

6. Biomechanical Efficiency

It’s good practice to evaluate techniques in terms of biomechanical efficiency. Being biomechanically efficient will always result in good performances and minimal injury risk. We are fortunate that the techniques that produce good, consistent performances are the same ones that minimize injury.

Being biomechanically efficient will always result in good performances and minimal injury risk, says @BooSchex. Share on X

7. Radical Techniques

We will always see certain jumpers who show radical aspects of technique. However, the techniques that permit good performances more frequently and minimize injuries will always be conservative, existing in the middle of the technical continuum.

8. Periodization of Technical Training Phases

It’s important to organize technical training with the same degree of detail we use in assembling other aspects of the training program. A good starting place is the identification of the phases of technical training. You can divide technical training into four phases. These phases are described and arranged chronologically in the training program as follows:

A Phase of Radical Changes

The first teaching priority should be a phase concentrating on radical technical changes, if any need to be made. Necessary, radical technical changes require time, so they should be the first priority on the training calendar. For example, a jumper who might change the jumping foot, or change from a single to double arm technique, will require significant time to assimilate the new movement patterns, so those changes should be made early. Ideally, this phase should be done prior to the formal start of the training year, possibly during the time of transition from one season to the next.

A Phase of Technical Exercises and Partial Movements

Next should come a phase of technical exercises. In this phase, drills and technical exercises may be used, and the event might be broken into parts to facilitate learning. This phase should begin immediately upon the formal start of the training year, but should not extend beyond the midpoint of the general preparation period. This phase might not be necessary for jumpers with high levels of experience and who are reasonably, technically sound.

A Phase of Whole Movements and Synthesis

Our next phase should feature technical rehearsal and a progression of intensities to prepare the jumper for meet intensities. This technical rehearsal might not look exactly like the competition at all times, and speeds and intensities are often less than those in competition. Regardless, the coach should strive to focus on whole, complete movements and avoid “breaking the event down.” As this phase progresses, practices resemble competition more and more, as whole movements are emphasized and intensities increase. This phase should begin no later than the midpoint of the general preparation period, and in most cases, end at the start of the competitive season.

A Phase of Problem-Solving

The final phase should be a phase of problem-solving, allowing time to correct any problems that may arise during synthesis. Athletes will show small errors even after the soundest technical teaching, so some opportunity to correct errors prior to critical competitions is needed. This phase generally begins at the start of the competitive season and consists of the early-season preparatory competitions.

9. Technical Training Volumes and Density

Density of practice refers to how frequently a skill is practiced. This depends upon many variables, including training age, experience, proficiency, and number of events the athlete trains for. Young athletes should have a higher density of technical sessions in their training.

It’s often a good idea for young athletes to practice their events almost daily, driving interest as well as learning. Older, more experienced athletes may devote only one or two days a week to technical rehearsal. One session per week of approach development/rehearsal and one to two days per week of technical rehearsal (per event) are common with established athletes, but exceptions exist.

10. Session Volumes

Technical training volumes must be sufficient to allow for opportunities to learn and rehearse skills, yet not so excessive that injury risk increases or training is negatively affected. The chart below provides some rough guidelines for jump volumes in training sessions of varying intensities.

Jump Volume Guidelines — Figure 1. Some rough guidelines for jump volumes in training sessions of varying intensities. Use sufficient volume to provide opportunities to learn and practice skills, but not so much that injury risk increases.

Note that while there might be occasional exceptions, we do not advocate the use of full approach jumps in practice, particularly with higher-level jumpers. It is very difficult to create the arousal needed for effective full approach jumping in the training environment. For this reason, we typically plan so that the first few meets of the year serve as our full approach jumping practices. The presence of emotion and arousal in the meets helps greatly in making these first annual attempts at full approach jumping successful.

We plan so that the first few meets of the year serve as our full approach jumping practices, says @BooSchex. Share on X

11. In-Season Planning

In-season, we usually continue runway practice as usual, but we return to shorter approaches in our short run jumping sessions. We do this for several reasons.

Minimize Injury Risk: The slower speeds produced with shorter approach runs greatly diminish intensity, and thus injury risk.

Facilitate Communication: In most cases, the skill has been adequately taught by this point, and practice sessions center around error correction and the communication and cueing processes between the coach and athlete in competition. Neither of these purposes requires high intensities.

Set Up the Following Year: These lower-intensity practices can serve as a very effective technical training base for the following year. This becomes particularly important when training time early in the training calendar is severely limited.

Eliminate Motor Interference: Once in-season, the jumper must be allowed to become comfortable at meet speeds and discover effective runway rhythms. Practice runs that are close to, but not exactly, the same length as the competition length approach show very subtle rhythmic differences and might interfere with the athlete becoming comfortable at meet speeds. Choosing slower runs enables the athlete to interpret practice and meet speeds as two separate rhythms, and the gap between them eliminates this interference.

The Paradox of a Hammer—Cracking Motor Pathways to Hard & Soft Skills

Blog| ByJeff Moyer

A picture can speak a thousand words—and many of us are familiar with the picture of a blacksmith swinging his hammer. The paradox of the picture is that we focus on the variations of paths the hammer takes, but I haven’t heard anyone talk about the blacksmith’s wrist, elbow, or shoulder.

Anyone familiar with the picture of should know that it comes from the “OG” of studying movement, Russian neurophysiologist Nikolai Bernstein. Bernstein was concerned with the number of muscles and joints that need to coordinate when we move (striking, throwing, running, and jumping). How many limbs, muscles, and joints are involved? How are they involved, and where are they involved?

There many ways in which humans can move to achieve a goal: this is known as the Degrees of Freedom Problem. However, from the start to the end of a movement, humans need to control and organize the body in one or more planes of motion, (i.e., solve the Degrees of Freedom Problem/motor abundance). When accomplished, we call this coordination.

The blacksmith picture and Bernstein’s work regarding the Degrees of Freedom Problem led to the understanding that there is movement variability in the normal variations that occur in motor performance across multiple repetitions of a task. If a person tries to repeat the same movement twice, the two actions will never be identical because each repetition involves a unique motor pattern. Bernstein termed this “repetition without repetition.”

Cyclogram Gastev — Image 1. When a person tries to repeat a movement, such as hammering, their actions will never be identical because each repetition involves a unique motor pattern.

Movement sciences and coaches studying movement are doing a great job trying to understand how various constraints (environment, task, and individual) help to form movement on the field and court. And that movement isn’t always as clean and straightforward as we would like, as the picture of the blacksmith depicts. In the context of athletics, this has led coaches to believe that there is no such thing as a perfect technique, and we should not worry about working on technique. Instead, we should spend time on physical outputs and teaching movement variations.

But from one sports movement to the next, there is always variability in speed, fatigue, opponents, task, etc. A world-renowned Olympic sprints coach once told me that “In chess, you don’t need the biomechanical part.”

My return argument is: there are mechanical rules by which chess pieces must move. The Bishop moves in a straight line diagonally on the board. It can move as many squares as wanted until it meets the end of the board or another piece. The Rook moves in a straight line horizontally or vertically through any number of unoccupied squares until it reaches the end of the board or another piece blocks the Rook—you get where I’m going with this.

The velocities and ROM differ with each swing, but the joint actions appear to be the same. Share on X

The path of the shoulder, elbow, and wrist are never fully the same, but that doesn’t mean the blacksmith doesn’t demonstrate shoulder rotation, elbow flexion and extension, and wrist supination. The velocities and ROM all differ with each swing, but the joint actions appear to be the same. My question to practitioners is this: Why are we only concerned with the path of the hammer and the variability it shows, rather than the joint actions and muscles that contribute to the hammer swing? In fact, this is something Bernstein contemplated, according to one of his former protégés.

Bernstein’s Concept of Key-Movements

Bernstein wrote that an improvement in motor skill comes from establishing the pathway for achieving the needed goal (or the motor pattern), which is resistant to possible fluctuations under the influence of environmental conditions. Establishing a motor pattern occurs through the assimilation of the motor task’s essential parameters (motor determinants) with the gradual adaption of its nonessential parameters to the environmental conditions. “The organism tries to realize the essential variables by completely overcoming any difficulties and influences from the environment; as for the parameters of nonessential variables, the organism, on the contrary, is yieldingly adaptable.”

So not only is there variability within the blacksmith’s motor pattern swinging his hammer, but there are also essential parameters which allow him to swing the hammer (perform the motor pattern) consistently well. His hammer’s path may differ from swing to swing, but his arm’s joint actions don’t completely differ.

Relate this to an athlete’s technical preparation: their motor pattern, which must be established to acquire the motor skill, is the correct technique used to execute the competition exercise. The essential parameters of a motor pattern are the most important key-movements of competition exercise, which determine its correct execution as a whole.

A little-known fact in the physical preparation world is that Dr. Vladimir Zatsiorsky and Dr. Yuri Verkhoshansky were protégés of Bernstein. Dr. Verkhoshansky is one of the first coach/scientists to use the idea of finding out and establishing these “essential variables” (key-movements) to develop athletes.

In a conversation I had with his daughter, Dr. Natalia Verkhoshansky, she told me: “I have to say that nobody has used this term key-movements. It was necessary for me to introduce this term because in the articles of Bernstein, there is no definition of this term, also because his articles/books are totally scientific. It’s necessary to deliberate this information…In every kind of exercise there are key-movements…and that these key-movements have two characteristics: 1) they improve the whole complex movement. They are very important in motor learning, so if a person tries to improve the sports technique, it is very important to improve their ability/capacity to execute the key-movements correctly; 2) key-movements are important in increasing the magnitude of force-effort (power) employed while also decreasing the time (speed) that it takes to employ.”

I reached out to one of the world’s experts on Nikolai Bernstein and Motor Control, Professor Mark Latash, to see if he knew of more information on this topic. He told me, “In his book, Dexterity and Its Development, Bernstein did use a term similar to that (Key-movements), although he used it in a very fuzzy way. He was one of those geniuses that had such a deep understanding that he could use a fuzzy word and could still make it sound ok.” Professor Latash was kind enough to put me in contact with Dr. Vladimir Zatsiorsky, who was also a student under Bernstein and was one of the top biomechanists in the former Soviet Union. Dr. Zatsiorsky discussed with me a study he did in 1981, which looked at determining the most vulnerable muscle groups in sprinting (key-movements).

Dr. Zatsiorsky wrote and gave an example of a key-movement in his book, Science and Practice of Sports Training. It was a practical example for coaches on how to strengthen this key-movement, which he called the Principle of Accentuation; it is training strength through the range of the main sport movement, where the demand for high-force production is maximal. “In natural movements, at least on land, muscles are active over a relatively narrow range of motion. Usually maximal muscle activity occurs near the extreme points of angular motion.”

One of the many things that Dr. Verkhoshansky is well known for is his Principle of Dynamic Correspondence. It became one of the first well-known criteria for selecting special strength exercises. Dr. Verkhoshansky proposed applying the Principle of Dynamic Correspondence in training exercises with resistance in the key-movements of competition exercises. According to this principle, these movements must have the same:

muscle groups involved in the exercise
ROM and direction of movement
accentuate the part of the movement amplitude
character of the force-effort applying (the magnitude of force-effort and time of its applying)
regime of muscle contraction

More on the practical application aspect in a bit.

Context and Results Are King

With much discussion among coaches about variability, I find myself coming back to several things: What is good and what is bad variability? How much and how little should we allow? And where are the results?

I get it; it can be hard sometimes to quantify improvements in movement quality. But there should still be some videos of before and after to demonstrate what we see, need to change, address, and improve upon. Biomechanics, motor control, motor learning, are all very difficult subjects of study. But what good is all of the knowledge if we can’t apply it to an athlete and see a result?

One of my biggest issues with any discussion, article, book, or podcast on motor learning and control is that context is often missing in the discussion. Gary Vaynerchuk said, “Content is key, but context is King.” I argue that context and results are king. What good is the information without results to back it up?

Context means who, what, and why as to the type of motor control and learning strategy and what it should be used for. For instance, movement variability is thrown about in many different ways with athletes—athletes running up steps with weights on their backs, athletes tossing water bags around, and athletes performing different types of cutting. What seems to be missing, however, is coaches giving context and reasons for the variability. For example, they are important to the task, caused by fatigue, due to physical limitations, normal noise in the motor action, or improve performance. This is something that should be trained.

A pitcher's key body actions of a weight shift and push off shouldn’t change from pitch to pitch. Share on X

Looking at a track and field sprinter, for example, we know that variability happens based on fatigue or arousal. But the underlying motor pattern should not have so much variability that the arms and legs are swinging every which way. The same is true for a baseball pitcher. There can be some subtle variability between pitch types and pitch locations, with the pitcher making a slight change to their arm slot. However, the key body actions of their weight shift and push off shouldn’t change from pitch to pitch.

Help Make the Understanding of Movement Simple, Not Simpler

When it comes to looking at movement and motor learning, I try to take a more simplistic approach. That’s not to say that understanding movement is an easy task or that I have it all figured out. I believe that simplifying it allows us to understand better which motor learning and control strategies we can best optimize.

Break down complex motor skills into hard and soft skills to identify which motor strategy to use. Share on X

Within the context of sport technique, we can break down complex motor skills into two types of skills that we should consider when trying to help a practitioner identify which motor control and motor learning strategy to use: hard skills and soft skills.

Hard Skills

Hard skills are the optimal mechanics in an ideal situation and the foundation of playing sports. For example, quarterbacks and baseball players have throwing mechanics with no perceptual stress in an ideal situation. Also consider a baseball player’s swing mechanics, a basketball player’s jump shot, a golfer’s swing mechanics, and an athlete’s linear running mechanics.

Hard skills are the general laws of physics and biomechanics as they pertain to the sporting action. These are where the key-movements are mastered within the motor skill. “Neurologists call this the ‘sled on a snowy hill’ phenomenon. The first repetitions are like the first sled tracks on fresh snow: On subsequent tries, your sled will tend to follow those grooves.”¹

Hard skills are the general laws of physics and biomechanics that pertain to a sporting action. Share on X

We should build hard skills in a very precise and measured fashion, perfecting and repeating them before we move onto the next piece. Within the hard skill, two types of movements are important to understand, so a coach knows where to spend their time with the athlete: key-movements and secondary movements. As discussed above, key-movements are the force producing actions in the mechanics (for example, sprinting: paw back, ankle extension, knee drive).

The secondary movements help to transmit and stabilize the motor skill. They don’t contribute to the hard skill’s power production, but they can contribute to power and energy leaks. In sprinting, for example, the role of the shoulders and arms don’t necessarily contribute to the production of power, but if the shoulders aren’t moving in synchronization with the hips and legs and are swinging all over the place, they certainly can leak power.

Developing hard skills is where most of us can have a major effect. Share on X

I pay the most attention to hard skills, particularly with the key-movements, as this is where most of us in this industry can have a major effect. But if an athlete looks like garbage in an ideal situation, then throwing them in a blender (chaotic environment) is only going to make trash soup.

The difficult truth about building the hard skills is that it’s not very fun, as it takes deliberate practice to master them. Errors should not be allowed because hard skills are hard to break. If an error occurs in these hard skills—let’s say heel striking in sprinting—a top-down approach works best to correct the error as the athlete can only change this motor pattern if they are thinking about it. We can try to manipulate the environment or the task all we want, but I guarantee that if an athlete isn’t thinking about correcting the issue, they aren’t going to correct it. The error has to move from unconscious-incompetent to conscious-incompetent and then all the way to unconscious-competent. This is a daunting task, but it can be done.

Understanding the biomechanics and qualitative technique analysis of the hard skills is extremely important when determining where and what joint actions are effective. What are ineffective? Is the error due to poor technical learning? Is the error from poor technical application to a sport situation? Is the error due to physical limitations (strength, speed, mobility, stability, etc.)? Can the joint movement(s) involved in XYZ actions be improved with physical exercises or with technical exercises? Could the athlete’s actions lead to injury (technique plays a very large role in non-contact related injuries)?

Soft Skills

On the other hand, soft skills are how the hard skills are incorporated into a task and environmental situations. Soft skills are where you create a breadth of movement to learn how to adapt to the various changing situations of practice and sport.

“Soft skills are built by playing and exploring inside challenging, ever-changing environments. These are places where you encounter different obstacles and respond to them over and over, building the network of sensitive wiring you need to read, recognize, and react.”¹

A baseball player uses soft skills when batting against live pitching. Share on X

Soft skills are the quarterback’s ability to throw with defenders at their feet, or on the run, with or without a hitch step, over the top of a corner, or through two linebackers. The baseball player bats against live pitching. The basketball player’s ability to shoot coming off of a pick, or with a hand in their face. A golfer swings on a slight hill through the ruff. A running back runs away from defenders.

This is where this movement about movement is focused. Perception and action. Repetition without repetition. How an athlete sprints, jumps, and changes direction will vary each time based on arousal, speed of movement, fatigue, goals, and the task of the situation.

However, this is where variability within a motor skill’s key-movements should not vary much per movement. In a quarterback’s throwing mechanics, the lower-body key-movements are the weight shift with the hip rotation separated from the shoulder rotation. The variability depends on whether they are standing tall in the pocket—as opposed to on the run—or throwing a route to their right (as a right-handed thrower) or to the left. Or if they’re in the shotgun formation and throwing a quick crossing route or rolling out to their left.

Generally, there should always be these key-movements, but the ROM and velocity of their actions will vary. The variability will differ for a baseball pitcher, whose body actions should not change while their arm slot should—elbow and wrist actions are based on the type of pitch and the location they are trying to throw.

Closing Thoughts

In the Central Virginia Sports Performance Manual Vol. 3, I go into details of the three key-movements of sprinting. One of these is knee drive, which may vary for a soccer player based on the speed of motion and the direction of movement. But the mechanical law of the knee drive (creating a short lever) should not vary far regardless of the situation. That leg has to fold up from behind to quickly move to the front of the body.

How to tear an ACL is pretty well documented—have your knee go in and forward and rotate with an extreme amount of force. Change of direction mechanics will vary depending on the task and the perceived situation. However, the key laws of where and how to stop and slow down should not vary.

If you Google change of direction, you will likely see more commonalities than not. The athlete should stop or slow down in the fewest amount of steps as possible. The plant leg (depending on which direction the athlete is coming from and going) should be outside the width of the athlete’s hips on the outside leg with as little or no weight on the inside leg. The variability of change of direction occurs when the athlete reacts to getting to an open space, following an opponent, with a ball, or running away from an opponent.

The paradox of the hammer is that we get caught like a bug staring at the light, watching the variation of the hammer. The Degrees of Freedom Problem has shown that human movement is not clean cut. Variability of movement is essential because we are not robots, and the human body is a complex system with many degrees of freedom, which it must try and coordinate with various constraints to perform motor skills. This is what allows us to adapt our movements; it serves a functional role.

On the other side of the coin, however, there are mechanical laws by which we are allowed to move. These mechanical laws are similar from person to person, although they may not all be identical and can vary in ranges of motion, velocities, effects of physical and mental stress, etc. Certain joint actions and sequences are better suited as power developers and force absorbers, while some are not. There are mechanical laws according to which athletes must move, but then there is bandwidth we can move within. A coach’s intuition for knowing which is which—and how one thing can affect the other—is where our industry is missing pieces to this puzzle.

References

Coyle, D. The Talent Code: Greatness Isn’t Born. It’s Grown. Here’s How. A Bantam Book 2009.

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