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I thought I knew all of the butt exercises. I bought the books and tried the exercises. But, what I found interesting is that sometimes athletes wouldn’t feel it in the butt. I couldn’t figure that out for the life of me. It is a butt exercise, but they don’t feel it in the right place. In my quest for this Holy Grail in training for speed, I started to learn about compensation patterns or the body using alternative muscles because the one that is supposed to do the work is not. So, if the glute does not extend the hip when it is supposed to, the hamstring or the spinal erectors will do its job. Why does this happen? It could be lots of reasons, ranging from stress, injury, inflammation, lack of opposing muscle inhibiting the drive of the opposite muscle or even lack of neural drive. In reality, no one knows.

But being the questing knight that I am, I needed to learn all I could. Dan Fichter and I were on a similar path. We both realized that this scenario existed but needed to learn how to fix it. Dan found a Cape Town, South African “Physio” who seemed to have a solution to our problem. Dan decided to fly out London, England to see what Douglas Heel had to say about our situation. I get a phone call from Dan from London. He is blown away by Douglas’ presentation. Through some negotiations, we convince Douglas to come to Chicago to present on his work. On a warm June day in Prairie Medical offices, Douglas rocked our world. What Douglas says takes the glute question back a couple of steps. He is concerned with hip flexion. He wants to know what muscle causes hip flexion. It can be the psoas, quad, calf or opposite arm. Hence, he shows us a chain of compensation patterns. Ideally, the psoas is the hip flexor if it doesn’t do its job, the quad or calf or opposite arm will do the job. And, if the psoas is not doing its job, reciprocally, the glute usually won’t be doing its job in hip extension. Again, it could be a variety of muscles to extend the hip as well—hamstrings, calves, quads, erectors or arms. What Douglas shows is how to disrupt the current recruitment and reset it to the proper recruitment pattern.

What we learned was how to determine what was an athlete’s main driver. And what was interesting was that when someone had a compensation pattern in their movement you could see it. So an athlete who was an arm driver would have an over-exaggeration in their arm swing, in their sprint or their timing. They would be off in their vertical jump where the arms were moving before their legs, therefore losing power and height on their jump. So, when a coach is telling their athlete to lift their knees higher, it may be impossible. The psoas is responsible for bringing the knee above a right angle between torso and thigh, and their psoas may not be the main mover. If a quad is the main mover, the quad can only get the knee so high because the psoas is not there to finish the movement. If an athlete is an arm driver, the knee can only go so high because the arms are synchronized. The arm can only go so high before the other arm is going to come through (this is why I am not a big fan of bounding, the timing is very different from sprinting). From the extension viewpoint, an arched back at toe-off is an athlete who is extending through spinal erectors.

When we learned to break up the pattern, we had athletes who felt completely different when they got up to move around. The immediate impact was on flexibility. Some people improved by as much as 30 percent in their hamstring range of motion. The reason being for this is when the brain senses that the body is in line, and the proper muscles are doing their respective job, it will let the other muscles go. If the glute is doing its job as a hip extender, the hamstring can relax and will lengthen. It reminds me of a coach who saw other teams being very flexible and tried to make flexibility a priority on his team and spent a fair amount of time stretching daily. His athletes’ bodies may not have been recruiting their muscles optimally, and they were tightening neurologically. The extra stretching may have been causing more damage than helping.

When the athlete tries out the new recruitment pattern, they feel light and springy. It is always fun to watch older ex-athletes go out and run and feel like they are young again. It is even better when competing athletes go and run or jump. A completely different athlete emerges. Timing patterns are back to normal, and they feel fast. And in most cases they are. We have set up timers and had athletes run a few flies. Douglas activated them, and they ran PR’s. We even tried it at an Indoor conference meet and the runner ran one of the fastest 800m runs in the state. A PR by 3 seconds. When they jump, they feel like they are flying. In some cases, we have measured a 2 inch increase in their vertical, on a pad. Why does this work? It works because the brain recognizes the correct pattern and will give power to the proper muscles. Don’t agree with that statement? Drop a weight on your toe and see how much power your brain will give your leg of the smashed toe. Think it is carnival tricks. Most people think that until they feel the difference after they go through an “activation”. Some people will discount it but have never experienced it.

How does this carry over to best glute exercises? To get the most out of your biggest muscle, it needs to be firing on all cylinders. And this is the “trick” to get it to go. When your brain learns that it can use all of the muscle, it will. This brings me to my first two exercises. Both of these go along with the activation stuff. The first movement is what we call a butt bungee. There is an actual butt bungee for sale on Douglas’ site. I usually have some, but they seem to grow legs when we take them to track meets. So, we take a big jump stretch rubber band and anchor it to something, like a pole and put the band around your waist. This is the important part; when you walk away from the pole and the slack tightens, you should feel your glutes tighten slightly. If you feel it in a different muscle, quads, etc., slightly move the band to a position where you feel the butt tighten. The glutes are now the driver. With feet square, reach your butt back as far as you can. You can bend knees slightly, but don’t squat. From the side, you should look like you are in a piked position. From here, drive your hips forward. You have now completed a hip thrust. The glutes should have been the main driver. This is mostly what it does. Complete about 10 of them and step out of the band. The athlete should feel like he is walking effortlessly. The glutes are now the driver. For naysayers, we have tried to have people complete the exercise when their glutes are deactivated and have found they don’t have the same feeling when they walk out of the band and their body moves differently as well. The exercise is for feel not how much you can do. We will get to power later. This is just the beginning of this glute thrust. We mix in breathing, voice and vision to see how to get the most out of the thrust. We got Stanford Women’s basketball guard Toni Kokenis to learn to use her voice with her glutes, and it changed her game. She held the streak for free throw percentage in NCAA most of the season a couple of years ago.

Single Leg Stand

We also do a single leg stand. With the butt bungee on the waist, the athlete will stand on one leg and hold their knee above parallel and hold it for 10-15 seconds. Now we are working the glute of the leg on the ground, which is when you really need it and the psoas of the opposite leg. We are teaching them to work together. An advanced exercise is to do this on the exxentrix kbox. We use the smallest plate possible and work the swing leg thigh from parallel and up- pure psoas. The funny thing is that everyone complains about the burn in the glute of the leg on the ground. (I think this is one of the missing links in training sprinters, the timing of the exercises). There is some cool stuff about the psoas and sprinting. A TV show in Japan did a program comparing Asafa Powell and their national champ to see the difference between the two. Japanese sprinter was much stronger in his traditional lifts. They did a cross-sectional MRI to see muscle differences. The Japanese sprinter had bigger muscles except for the psoas. Powell’s was twice the size. Maybe that is why fast athletes look like they have tennis balls for abs. It is not the size of the rectus but the size of the psoas pushing out the rectus. By the way, Douglas will be in Chicago Feb 7-8 for a Level 1 seminar and a Level 2 the following weekend. To read about the experience, read Tony Holler’s article “You Only Know What You Know”.

You can contact me for info, [email protected].

Bungee Exercises

So, that is my basis for my glute development. From there, we go on to other exercises. We start with a bungee on all exercises until they can feel the glute kick, and we wean them off the bungee. I do usually start with the Bret Contreras hip extension. I think that is a great exercise for general development. But, I have not seen a correlation between sprinting and strength in that exercise for faster runners. I have seen a correlation for athletes who are not fast and are weak in the exercise. Their improvement in sprinting coincides with strengthening in the exercise, to a certain point. I try to get people to 500lbs on my contraption. It is not a pure bar push like Bret does. Mine is a home-made machine/rig using straps from Iron mind. I connect the strap between two bars on my Hammer-strength machine and wedge their body under the strap and Glute Bridge up. His books are worth buying. (I know I keep recommending them. I have no stake in the purchase of them. I emailed him once, and that is the extent of my connection.)

The one from his book that there is a connection between fast sprinters and strength in the movement is a 45-degree hyperextension. The trick to teaching the movement is to think that it is a hip thrust and push your hips into the pad to extend the torso. If you feel back, you have extended too far. My best cue is to think of moving your belly button off the pad, so the extension comes from a much lower point. This is the same for the regular parallel position which I also like. We have variations on this as well, straight legs, bent legs, single leg, toes out and toes in for some adductor Magnus. Once you get it, start adding weight. Frans Bosch thought that a powerful athlete should be able to do 2 ½ times his body weight with a single leg. All of my 10.5-10.8 guys could do a ton of weight on these exercises.

Single Leg Squat

Another staple is the single leg squat. If you read my article, My Love Affair with the Single Leg Squat, you understand why it is in this list. Again, depth isn’t the issue; it is about where you feel it the most in the glute. I have found that the cue of someone pulling the shin forward and hips back tends to get the most out of the glute. I like to hang the weight rather than hold on, so we don’t teach the body to drive from hands but through the glute. We do isometrics, iso and explode, fast, heavy and concentrically from the floor. For block work, sink into a squat and then tilt the torso forward for some extreme stuff. Of course, the kbox is incredible when it comes to a single leg split squat.

Step Up

I am also a step up fan. But I like the version from the Scandinavian sprint coach which I saw floating around. It is a mix of a hip thrust and step up. I have a Jumper Plus from www.docssports.net. I have added height to the back end. I have a box under the harness. We push butt back and jack-knife into the step up. We do it with bands, weight and into jumps.

Kickbacks

Kickbacks are also a staple. I got this idea from the U of I coach’s poster that I mentioned in my previous article. He did it on an old Universal machine with the athlete’s shoulder against the dip bar. I use my Shuttle MVP. Kneel down on the sled and kick into the pad. The athlete will launch their body forward, and when they land again, they kick again. Want a great butt workout that will help your sprint, this is it. You can weight this down big time on the Shuttle MVP as well. Talk about developing vertical forces when sprinting. That is the answer. Want to work on ground reaction force and time; here it is in a completely controlled environment. For different force, we will also do this standing up and shoulder harnesses on with the hammer strength deadlift machine with light and heavy weight. Now, the athlete can add bringing the knee through and get up on their toe. And of course, my favorite, the kbox. As a side note, I do measure all of our lifts with my micromuscle lab. I have found, when you measure it, they go harder. Unfortunately, my encoder broke last week, and Ergotest has not responded to my emails for help. I am hoping Carl Valle can help me find a new machine.

Living in Chicago, we have to make the most of our time running outside. Some years, there are not many good days to perform great sprint workouts, which in my opinion, is why Southern/Texas schools have faster times. They get many more good training days. It may be May, but May can sometimes be 40 degrees with winter coats or 30 mile an hour winds that swirl. There is a reason they call it the Windy City and no to the people in New York; we don’t need to hold hands to cross the street (someone asked me that once). Even now, as I am typing in November, it is snowing and will be 14 degrees tonight. We need to make the most out of our indoor time. Instead of weighing your body down with huge weights and feeling beat up for the next three days, try these exercises and feel great, like you can fly.

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Coaches always talk about setting goals, but usually put the onus on the athletes instead of themselves. Coaches have just as much room for improvement as their athletes, and should set goals appropriately. I am currently in my 26th season of coaching, and 14th at Lake Forest High School in Illinois. One of the greatest lessons I have learned in those 26 seasons is to always be setting goals as a coach and reevaluating how to best serve my athletes.

Here are 18 resolutions for high school track & field coaches to get 2018 started on the right foot. If you have any suggestions for resolutions I left out, please write them in the comments. I love learning from other coaches.

1. Be Married to the Vision, Not the Plan

The only constant in track & field is change. I laugh when coaches or parents ask me what a “typical” day in our program looks like. There are so many variables in place, especially early in the season, that there almost is no such thing as a “typical” day. Before spring break, some days we practice at 3:30 p.m. and some days we practice at 5:30 p.m. It depends on what sort of practice space we get.

The only constant in track & field is change. Share on X

Some days all we have is the wrestling room. Some days we get one-third of the linoleum-floored fieldhouse, some days two-thirds, and on some wonderful days we get the whole fieldhouse to ourselves. Some days we get no space at all. We are not allowed to run in the hallways. The pool is always taken up by the water polo teams. The weight room is generally cluttered until 5:00 p.m. We have to share all our practice space with the girls team. I have two part-time assistant coaches on staff who can only come a few days a week, so we have to adjust practice plans based on their availability. The point is that there are many variables that dictate how our practice is run before we even account for the weather.

We write out a progression of what we want to do each year. For example, we need to do certain plyometrics before others, need to do two-point starts before getting into blocks, need to work certain drills to introduce certain skills, etc. But imagine if we were married to the plan instead of the vision. A coach who is married to the plan probably sends his athletes out on a windy 30° day to do a split-400 workout instead of either adapting the workout or holding it off for a better day. Being married to the vision means you know where you want to be, but are flexible with the plan. Many roads lead to Rome.

2. Keep a Cache of Resources

One of the best new trends I started for our program last year was creating a Google Doc with what I consider to be essential sprint training articles. I try to add an article a month to this list, and encourage my coaching colleagues to help me find other articles to add. If you know of a great training article that is not on my doc, please add it!

Going to coaching clinics is a great way to build your resources. In the past few years, I have attended four Track-Football Consortiums, the USATF Level 2 Clinic, the ITCCCA Clinic, the WISTCA Clinic, the Bureau Valley Track & Field Clinic, and the Glazier Track & Field Clinic. Keep all the notes you get from these clinics, get the email addresses of the speakers you liked, network with other coaches, and do as much as you can to learn from other coaches.

Twitter is great at keeping you up to date with the latest research and articles. My favorite follows are @SimpliFaster, @pntrack, @JustFlySports, @GiffUsStrength, @trainwithPUSH, @DerekMHansen, @BBAPerformance, @SandCResearch, @KenClarkSpeed, @HFJumps, and @TrckFootball. If you know of other great resources, please let me know!

3. Have a Mentor, and Pay It Forward

In his autobiography, Knight: My Story, Bob Knight tells a great story about former Cal basketball coach, Pete Newell. Knight played for some amazing Ohio State teams from 1959-62, with teammates like John Havlicek, Jerry Lucas, and Larry Siegfried. Ohio State’s coach, Fred Taylor, was very impressed with the defense displayed by Cal in their run to the 1959 NCAA Championship. In the summer of 1959, Taylor spent a week with Newell at the Concordia Clinic in Moorhead, MN, learning their defensive properties. Taylor then sent his assistant, Jack Graf, to California over the holiday break to ask Newell more questions.

As fate would have it, Cal and Ohio State played for the 1960 NCAA title. Ohio State won, thanks largely in part to the knowledge Taylor and his assistant gained in the time spent with Newell. Knight writes in his book, “I remember thinking that one reason this was happening for us was that the coach of the other team shared what he knew with our coach… He shared his knowledge and it came back to cost him in the most important game of the season, the national championship… What he represented to me in this case was the responsibility a teacher has to share with others whatever he has come up with that he found to be of some benefit.”¹

If you know something valuable, share it. Do not keep knowledge to yourself. Share on X

Speak at clinics if you have something valuable to share. Do not keep any knowledge to yourself. One of the reasons track & field is such a great sport is because nobody actively roots against each other. Track coaches do not lie awake at night trying to figure out how to slow the other team down. They lie awake trying to figure out how to speed their own team up. We want our athletes to be faster than the other team’s athletes, of course, but a rising tide lifts all boats.

If I have a question, there are a bunch of fellow coaches I can ask for input. One is Tony Holler, whose program I discovered in 2015 and adopted in 2016. Another is my college coach, Chip Schneider, who led my alma mater UW-Eau Claire to the NCAA Division III Indoor Track & Field Championship titles in 2015 and 2016. Barely a week goes by that I do not discuss track with Brad Fortney, a former athlete of mine who is now the head girls track & field coach at Kenosha Bradford High School in Wisconsin. No doubt, we are all better because of our collaboration.

 

4. Try a New Program

Changing philosophies or implementing a new program can seem like a big leap. Coaches will use the old “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” logic to justify keeping the same program they have run since 1994. The worst reason to do something is because that is the way you have always done it. Obviously, there should be some stability in your program, but many coaches are afraid to change anything at all.

In 2016, I switched philosophies completely from a volume-based approach to a speed-based approach. The results were amazing, and I am upset I did not make the switch earlier. Nearly a year of research led me to believe the switch was appropriate for my program. This is also the reason that Resolutions No. 2 and 3 in this article are important. You need resources and mentors to help you with the training, whether new or old.

5. Keep Records

Every team keeps school records. I envy the programs that also have accurate top ten lists or even top 25 lists for all the events in their school history. But outside of competition, we should still be keeping records.

The Freelap timing system we purchased in 2016 helped our record-keeping processes tremendously. If we timed something at practice, we catalogued it and shared it online in a Google Doc. Time those 10 meter flys, 40 yard dashes, split 400 workouts, mile repeats, etc. Rank and publish them. Make lifting sheets for athletes to chart their progress in the weight room. Last year we bought two Beast velocity trackers to get more feedback in the weight room.

Charting practice plans, progressions, and adjustments should be a priority as well. When you have data, you can track what worked well and what did not. If your athletes consistently peak early, go back to your records and figure out why. Data keeps the guesswork out of coaching.

 

6. Promote Your Team

You know how you can instantly become a better coach? Get better athletes. All of you have at least a few athletes walking your halls who would be tremendous at track & field, but instead go home at 3:00 p.m. every day in the spring. Some have never even considered our sport.

Talk to your current athletes and see if they know of any athletic kids who might want to join. Go to the football, basketball, soccer, and volleyball games, where sprinting and jumping talents are easy to see. Track & field is a wonderful sport where natural talent is all around us. Not every sport has this luxury. I have also coached swimming the past five years, and we have never had somebody just decide to try swimming as a sophomore in high school and end up qualifying for the state meet. But in those same five years, we have had 11 athletes just decide to join the track & field team sophomore or later and qualify for State. Three of those athletes qualified for State in their first year in the sport!

At Lake Forest, my track team competes with baseball, lacrosse, volleyball, tennis, water polo, and dozens of club sports for spring athletes. Yet we still get 120 kids out for the boys track & field team at a school of about 1,650. Where other sports are losing athletes every year, we are gaining them. The class of 2016 had seven athletes out as freshmen and 42 out as seniors. That’s a growth of 600%. Eight of those 42 athletes qualified for the IHSA State Track & Field Championships during their high school careers, but only one of those eight ran track as a freshman!

There are many ways to promote your program throughout the school and get more athletes. Share on X

How do we get athletes out? By promoting, recruiting, and attracting. Anybody who has seen my Twitter feed knows one of my hobbies is making posters that show the importance of track & field, especially in relation to football. As soon as the students at Lake Forest get back from winter break, they will see dozens of posters highlighting our program. Image 1 in this article shows a great poster made by Dustin Hausherr of Downers Grove South. He learned how to make those posters in just a few days.

Another way to recruit athletes is to let them know individually that you are interested in having them on your team. A personal message to a kid is powerful. I do not “poach” athletes from other teams, but I do send an email to all the fall athletes who do not sign up for a spring sport. Promote your program and ask those talented kids to come out for track. It’s always a “no” if you don’t ask.

7. Listen to Your Athletes

“My way or the highway” programs are generally unsuccessful in high school track & field. As coaches, we need to take advice from our athletes. Coach Norman Dale of Hoosiers famously said, “My practices aren’t designed for your enjoyment.” Well, not everything we do in practice should be fun, but I live by the notion that it is entirely possible to have a program that is functional and fun.

Your seniors and leaders can cue you into the pulse of the team. Maybe the team needs a break, or they really loved the last workout, or they feel one drill helped more than another. You will never know unless you ask them. Obviously, you should not bend your will completely to the wishes of the team, but do not view your program as a dictatorship. Instead, view it as a collaborative effort. John Wooden once said, “It is amazing how much can be accomplished if no one cares who gets the credit.”

The next several resolutions will relate to listening to your athletes.

8. Update Your Schedule

Perhaps the most important task of updating your schedule is to ditch the bad meets. If the meet is poorly run or the facilities are terrible, get rid of the meet and look for something else. Why would you keep going back to a meet nobody likes? Tradition? Chances are there are plenty of better meets in your area that would love to have your team.

Developing a philosophy for your meet schedule is important as well. Some coaches look for the hardest schedule possible. Others want an easier schedule to help their athletes succeed. Some coaches value facilities over competition, especially indoors. Other coaches focus on the format of the meet.

I make no secret of the fact that I love relay meets. In the past few years, we have gone to the Mustang Relays, Bulldog Relays, Wildcat Relays, Cougar Relays, Spartan Relays, Prospect Relays, and Madison West Relays. Outdoors, every year we go to four or five dual meets (required by our conference), the Lake County Championships, North Suburban Conference Championships, and Sectional Championships, all which have the same traditional meet format. We also host an invitational with the standard events. So, for our other invitationals, I like to change up the format.

In 2016, we started going to the Cougar Relays at Vernon Hills, and it quickly became everybody’s favorite meet. Instead of a 4x800m relay or 3200m run, they have a distance medley relay (1200-400-800-1600), and instead of a 200m dash, they have a sprint medley relay (200-200-400-800). They allow you to run a JV team in each relay, and they score those relays as varsity events. Athletes are not allowed to run JV in one relay and varsity in another. That adds a bit of strategy, which makes coming up with a lineup more fun (believe it or not, I love making lineups). Add in the fact that it is a coed meet—a rarity in Illinois—and you can see why most of my athletes look forward to it.

Destination meets are another great idea for a day trip or even an overnight trip. This is a great idea especially during the indoor season or early outdoor season. Most areas have a limited number of quality indoor tracks, so a long trip to a great facility makes a lot of sense. Here in the Midwest, traveling south for warmer climates in early April could mean running in 60° weather instead of 40° weather.² If you have a great relay team, consider making a big trip to the Penn Relays. I highly doubt any of your athletes will forget the experience.

 

9. Get Cool Apparel

I find this to be so important that I wrote a whole article about it. Bottom line: look good, feel good, play good.³ But beyond all that, apparel can help market your team. Every high school team should have an apparel page at the beginning of the season for the athletes to order team gear. You can even tie it into a fundraiser, which leads me to the next resolution.

10. Fundraise, Fundraise, Fundraise

Track & field is one of the most expensive high school sports. Even if you are fortunate enough to have your athletic department cover the cost of the facilities, hurdles, high jump pads, pole vault pads, starting blocks, transportation, and the other necessities, you still need plenty of other items to run a successful program. We spend our fundraising money on essentials like uniforms, tape measures, batons, shots and discs, and “luxury” items like mini-hurdles, mini-bands, sleds, tents, Freelap timing systems, velocity trackers, rollout runways, food for the athletes at long meets, and a dozen other things.

There are plenty of ways to fundraise. Car washes, golf outings, spaghetti dinners, runathons, potlucks, auctions, raffles, donations, or just straight-up salesmanship. If your inbox is anything like mine, you get offers for fundraising ideas on at least a weekly basis. Many businesses are more than willing to host a fundraising night for your team. Chipotle, Panera, Applebees, and dozens of other companies, as well as local businesses, are very happy to partner with you to achieve your fundraising goals. Those fundraising nights are great because they double as a team activity and do not require any startup cost from your program.

Ask other teams in your school and your area what they do for fundraisers. Odds are you will find out about great fundraising opportunities you had never even considered before.

11. Schedule Alternate Activities

What stands out about your program? What do you do that is unique or memorable? Hopefully there’s something, otherwise you’re going to have a problem retaining athletes and getting new athletes out. If every day is a boring repeat of the day before, what do your athletes look forward to?

In my life, I have coached cross country, swimming, and track & field, and in my 26 seasons I have seen dodgeball tournaments, T-shirt relays, team bike rides, pool aerobics, flexing contests, scavenger hunts, watermelon seed spitting contests, sibling relays, trivia contests, Slip ’N Slide relays, team pentathlons, dancing contests, movie days, skits, rap battles, banana relays, etc. All during regular practice time.

We play basketball the Friday before spring break every year at Lake Forest. I reserve the game gym and everything. Barely anybody is there because they are all on vacation. One program I coached for had the varsity cross country athletes run the Homecoming football back from the opposing team’s school on game day. They timed it out to jog the ball into the pep rally on Friday afternoon. I have always had an idea to finish a cross country meet in a football stadium on Friday night during the varsity football warm-ups. Try telling me your athletes wouldn’t love that!

12. Bring Alternates to State

The first State Championship I attended was the 1996 Wisconsin State Track & Field Championships in La Crosse, WI. I always had the desire to be a great athlete (my ability would take a few years to catch up with that desire), but tasting that State Championship as a spectator left no doubt what my goal was for the rest of my high school career: I wanted to compete at State. I never missed attending another State Championship again in my three sports, going to three more as a spectator and one as an alternate before finally qualifying for two as a competitor.

Bring as many alternates to State Championships as your budget and athletic department will allow. Share on X

There is an aura about every State Championship site; something that athletes needs to see and experience. When you do have athletes qualify for State, bring as many alternates as your budget and athletic department will allow. The seniors will see it as a reward for their services, and the underclassmen will see it as a goal for the future. I cannot emphasize this enough. Never have I had an underclassman travel to State as an alternate who was not motivated to get back there the next year. In Illinois, the alternates can even participate in the Friday night open track meet, one of my favorite meets of the year.

The open meet at State is AWESOME. pic.twitter.com/DbKhueUVsr

— LFHS Track & Field (@LFHStrack) May 27, 2017

Video 1: Friday night’s open track meet between days of the IHSA State Championships is basically one big celebration of our sport. There are sprint events, distance events, and even a steeplechase.

13. Understand the Value of 1%

Some coaches have a thick packet of rules they expect their athletes to follow. Other than general rules about showing up on time, respecting the equipment, etc., my team basically has two main rules:

1. When the coach talks, you listen.
2. No matter what the intensity is at, quality is always 100%.

For every drill, every skill, every repeat, and every step we take, the quality is at 100%. Even if our intensity is at 70%. Imagine if you did everything at 99% quality. That still sounds pretty good, right? Well, what if we lose 1% on our times at the end of the year?

Last year in Illinois, the AAA State Championships qualifying times in the 4x100m Relay and 4x200m Relay were 42.66 and 1:29.30, respectively. My teams ran 42.65 and 1:29.17 at Sectionals to barely make it. What if we had done everything at 99% quality all year? That 1% might not seem like a big difference, but if my relay teams had run 1% slower, they would have clocked 43.08 and 1:30.06, and watched State from home.

A 1% improvement in any aspect of training might not make a 1% difference in time, but those little differences add up. Understanding the value of 1% means finishing through the line on every repeat, focusing on every handoff or run-through, lacing your spikes up tightly even for practice, getting to bed earlier at night, choosing Raisin Bran instead of Fruit Loops for breakfast, and 100 other things the athletes have control over every day. Coaches must set these expectations!

14. Understand Minimum Effective Dose

You may think this resolution clashes with my previous resolution about understanding the value of 1%. However, when talking about minimum effective dose, I mean volume, not quality. If you can get the same physiological response from six reps as you can from eight, why would you do eight? Professional sprint coach Håkan Andersson suggests, “Train as much as necessary, but not as much as possible.”⁴ I love that quote. It is better to be 10% undertrained than 1% overtrained.

Joel Smith, whose website Just Fly Sports should be required viewing for coaches of all anaerobic sports, writes about understanding the minimum effective dose of lifting as one of the seven essential paradigm shifts in his coaching life. If you leave a few reps in the tank, you will not struggle with poor form and are ready to come back for more the next day. He writes that grinding teaches athletes to implode, rather than explode.⁵ Far too many coaches believe nothing is accomplished until everyone is exhausted. Those coaches are usually great at getting athletes exhausted, and not as great at getting them faster. For those coaches, I recommend they read Resolution No. 4 and try a new program.

Understanding minimum effective dose is especially important for sprinters and jumpers. Distance runners have to go to the well every once in a while. They are told to “get comfortable being uncomfortable,” which is great advice for aerobic events. You do not need to cajole most state-quality distance runners to work hard, though. Part of their talent is their capacity and love for hard work. Pulling the reins on these thoroughbreds can be just as effective as bringing out the whip. How many of you coaches out there know a distance stud who just has to hammer, even on a recovery run?

For those distance runners who think a constant grind is the only path to success, I recommend they read up on Hicham El Guerrouj. The greatest miler in history tripped with a lap to go in the 1996 Olympic 1500m final, then suffered a shocking loss after being outkicked as the heavy favorite in the 2000 Olympic 1500m final. He admitted to overtraining coming into the 2000 Olympics, running 10,000 meters’ worth of repeats when in years past he had only run 8,000 meters. Instead of making him stronger, the cumulative result of the extra meters was that it made him tired.⁶ He learned his lesson, scaled back his training, and won both the 1500m and 5000m finals at the 2004 Olympics. Sometimes, less is more, even for distance runners.

15. Do a Quote of the Day

You have probably noticed several quotes already in this article. We end every team meeting with a motivational quote. This can take 10 seconds or 10 minutes. Sometimes the quote is relevant to the day’s workout; sometimes it is just a general quote. We do quotes from athletes (Muhammad Ali, Michael Jordan, Carl Lewis, etc.), coaches (John Wooden, Vince Lombardi, Dean Smith, etc.), and non-sports figures (Martin Luther King Jr., Zig Ziglar, Mister Rogers, etc.). Last year we even brought in our wrestling coach, Matt “Sunshine” Fiordirosa, to give a speech on toughness. Sunshine was 14-1 in his professional MMA career, so he had everybody’s attention.

About five years ago, I happened to do two Larry Bird quotes in the same week. The joke then became that every quote was from Larry Bird, so I play it up. Now when I do a Larry Bird quote, I wear my Larry Bird jersey under a zip-off hoodie and reveal the jersey right before I do the quote. Athletes remember that stuff a lot more than they remember what their splits were on a 6 x 200m workout.

16. Connect the Program

How many of your throwers are friends with your distance runners? How many of your seniors can name the best freshmen on the team? How many of your sprinters can tell you the best mile time on the team? Track & field is a wonderfully inclusive sport, accepting athletes of all talents and abilities, but event groups can become like cliques.

Find ways for the groups to intermingle. Some programs I know adopt the “Big-Little” strategy of college Greek life where every upperclassman is assigned an underclassman to mentor. The “big” and the “little” are both responsible for knowing each other’s events, personal bests, goals, etc. Other programs I know have a captain for each event group, and that captain must report on a different event group’s accomplishments at a team meeting.

Don’t let track & field event groups become like cliques—find ways for the groups to intermingle. Share on X

Coaches need to get involved as well. Though I am primarily a sprint and hurdle coach, I do a lot of research on all the other events as well. In case we have a prolonged period of time without a certain assistant coach, I need to feel comfortable helping out that event group. Occasionally, we will have “stations” at practice where each event coach will have around 10-20 minutes to coach a group of athletes. This gives the athletes some exposure to all the coaches on staff, and gives the coaches a chance to check out all the athletes in the program to see if some have slipped through the cracks a bit in certain event areas.

17. Invite Alumni Back to Practice

Virtually every successful program I know has a great alumnus following. Bringing the alumni back to practice connects the present with the past. This strengthens the sense of team and makes the current athletes realize they compete for more than just themselves.

I love reconnecting with alumni. Austin McIlvaine, who still holds our school record in the 4x100m Relay from 2014, sent me a video on Snapchat last year when he was back in Lake Forest for summer break. The Snapchat included the text “GLORY DAYS.” What was in the video? Was it his medals? A workout sheet listing the old season plan?

Nope.

The video was of him stepping out his mark for a 4x100m relay exchange. That was a memory from high school track he cherished. Athletes might not remember the workouts they ran, all the medals they won, or even what their personal records were. But there will be memories they cherish created by moments in your program. Sharing those moments is a great way to connect the past to the present, and maybe help your current athletes realize all the little aspects of the sport they will miss when it is over.

 

18. Have Fun

Coaching is fun. Track & field is fun. Never forget that.

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

 

References

1. Knight, B & Hammel, B. (2002). Knight: My Story. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press.
2. Why Do Birds Fly South?
3. Look Good, Feel Good, Play Good
4. Andersson, H. World Speed Summit IV: The Pete Karlsson Sprint Study.
5. 7 Essential Paradigm Shifts In My Coaching Life
6. Olympic Games 2004

Strength and conditioning is unique in many ways. The most important aspect of working with an athlete is teaching proper habits to set them up for success as the player and the person they are destined to become. This is a reality in all team settings–where we must learn to crawl before we walk.

Likewise, as we learn to manage individuals in a large group setting, we must fully grasp the dynamics of individual mindsets while merging beliefs, needs, and desires into the desired outcomes for our organization. A great coach and a great program will focus on more than developing just the athlete. A book by Jeff Duke, 3D Coaching, focuses on these three dimensions: strategies of the game, coaching the mind, and transforming the heart.

At the collegiate level, we typically have two hours a day with each athlete. Our goal is to educate them with necessary life tools and decision-making skills that will serve as a guide when they are outside the realm of their coaches’ watchful eyes, hoping we have prepared them for the infamous twenty-two hours the coaches are not present.

A good coach and strength program will not accept the blatant absence or skipped reps by individual kids, and every rep is coached up. A great coach and strength program run a well-oiled machine that is athlete-driven with a focus on large-scale details but where the minute details are always under the microscope.

The Culture of the Team or Organization

Do you ever wonder why Disney, Southwest Airlines, McDonald’s, and other major corporations experience unwavering amounts of success? It’s because they produce the same product at any given time or any location in the world with the same established daily expectations of its employees. The monikers “Mickey Mouse,” “Free Carry On,” and “Big Mac” are the same everywhere you go.

This is a cornerstone of solid culture. This is how we want our program to operate–meaning that when our athletes are not in our presence, their actions are the same as when they are in our presence (positive role models).

Below are four key elements of the necessary standards all strength coaches need to impart to their athletes.

1. Do the athletes care about the details? Some examples include arriving early, following all coaching cues, and taking the coaching seriously.
2. Do the athletes perform, or at least attempt, each exercise with the correct technique taught to them?
3. Do the athletes improve upon each aspect that is intended by the coaching staff? Examples are their mental and emotional state of mind and approaches to personal development (mental, physical, spiritual, athletics, academics, etc.).
4. Do the athletes learn life lessons that will prepare them for the other twenty-two hours in their day?

Culture is predicated on these variables, and we should emphasize them any time of the year in any location. Different sports might need different attributes and exercises to train. Culture is not determined by your philosophy but rather by an outsiders’ point of view.

Attention to Details

Outlining clear and concise definitions of on time and late, start behind the line and not on the line, and finish are the first steps in creating a culture. Emphasis on details signifies importance. Everything else tends to fall into place with clarity in the program.

Discipline sets the tone for our culture. Share on X

We start our program as soon as the clock hits the designated time. We start with a breakdown team clap which contributes to team building and, more importantly, signifies a definitive start to that session. Athletes know to move to their designated areas, focus up, and get ready to go. To start behind the designated line and finish through the designated line. We do not tolerate tardy or absent. We’ve established a consistent punishment that we’ve cleared with administration and coaching staffs and explained to the athletes before all sessions. This sets the tone for the culture.

Strategies

1. Put a big clock in a prominent area for everyone to see.
• This creates a set time for everyone to follow.
• If you don’t have a clock, use a countdown off your watch.
2. Establish a designated area to start.
• Warm-up lines: 5 lines of 6
• Cones/lines: Feet behind cone/line
3. The example that I use is also life-altering: Get-ups–perform with a 45lb bumper/plate for males and a 35lb bumper/plate for females. The athlete must hold the weight with both hands. The athlete lies down on the ground fully extended without letting the weight or hands touch the ground and then stands back up without letting weight or hands touch the ground.
• Every minute late equals 5 get-ups
• Missed session equals 300 get-ups

Take detailed attendance. Each day, record the time your athletes come in. This is critical because your athletes will always challenge you to show when they were there. An example is an athlete who makes the bad decision to skip class to make a lift they were supposed to perform at 6 am. For most athletes, the idea of sleeping in late and skipping class to make up a workout is very appealing. It helps to know what time they’re supposed to be in class so if they decide to skip, you can easily say “No, you’re supposed to be in class. We will make it up tomorrow with your punishment.”

Life happens and accommodating your athletes will improve their buy-in. When an athlete communicates with us that a conflict arises, we need to give them the benefit of the doubt. I always relate this to real-world scenarios. If you show up late or miss work and don’t communicate to your supervisor, you will most likely get fired.

It also shows maturity and respect when they communicate beforehand and ask for another opportunity to work out. Although it can be draining to create other workout times, it’s our job to be available. No one is going to thank us for coming in on a Saturday morning or staying an extra hour after working a 12-hour day, but it’s always worth it. These are the times when I’ve made the greatest connection to an athlete and have learned the most about them as an individual.

When an athlete does not communicate ahead of time about missing or being late, that is inexcusable. Like most young people, however, they will push the limit of acceptable behavior. If individuals in leadership roles do not take action, these athletes will abuse the system, and that will spread like wildfire. Documentation (C.Y.A.) is a must when providing proof (attendance) to resolve any issues at hand.

A Real Commitment to Technique

Technique is one of my main philosophical coaching points along with safety and relationships. Technique has many intricacies in terms of how each exercise is performed, but it has its foundational principles in the execution of each exercise. With that said, there are always concrete benchmarks during each movement that create validity or standards within coaching, ensuring that our athletes perform each movement safely and correctly.

Technique is the same when implementing life principles with our athletes. “Built for Life” is the philosophy of Coach Petersen, Washington Huskies Head Football Coach. Coach Petersen implements life lessons into each team meeting to build a foundation for success that is not just football related but aims to develop the overall individual. Life lessons can, and should be, imparted using the task of the day for the other 22 hours; our goal is to shape and develop our athletes with solid foundational principles to aid in their decision-making process for real-world situations

Implement lessons for success not only in sport but also life situations–the other 22 hours. Share on X

The first step is to establish a set list of acceptable cues for each exercise and their progressions and regressions. This creates a clear picture for your coaches to follow in terms of cueing. I have learned from great coaches in the field of strength and conditioning to be overprepared. “Preparing to fail, is failing to prepare.”–John Wooden.

Go one step further and create a hierarchy of the progressions and regressions. This mostly ties into safety, which is the most important variable to consider when attempting to correct, followed by performance.

The best coaches I’ve worked with can precisely pinpoint the lifting form for each athlete. They also can relate the task of the day to real-world situations. We might not always get the cue or message across to everyone. Our goal as a coach or teacher is to reach one of them.

Strategies

1. Keep a notepad in your pocket to write down cues; evaluate those cues’ effectiveness
2. Analyze and evaluate video content of each athlete working out
3. Implement a Built for Life protocol

Strategy: A Key Ingredient to Success

As a coach of details, I’ve implemented a concise list of policies that are important for establishing a successful culture and will transfer to real-world importance. Shoes should always be tied. Safety gives tied shoes a greater importance on my list of policies. Also look professional.

The next policy has stirred up some controversy with various teams. I’ve heard every excuse in the book on this one. Everyone on the team should wear team-issued clothes for the team they represent to signify a team concept at all times. I have a strong case for attire worn in the weight room. Watch any strength and conditioning video and observe the gear. If the team is allowed to wear what they want, it looks no different than a 24-hour fitness center with the benches occupied.

The last policy may seem trivial but has a lot of value when implemented correctly. Yawning. If an athlete is caught yawning in the weight room, they have to complete ten push-ups. It’s one of my most despised policies starting out. But eventually, it becomes the most revered policy, as athletes catch themselves in the classroom, car, and at home on the couch not wanting to yawn.

I don’t want a group of lackadaisical zombies in the weight room wiping sleep out of their eyes. The weight room is a work environment with high energy as athletes throw weight around working to get better. I want athletes to take this mentality into the real world. Individuals who rise before their alarm sounds will have a focus and a purpose to attack the day, and everything they do will lead to success.

Outside of wins and losses and reduced injuries, there must be something quantifiable upon which you strive to improve. In a team setting, I prefer to use 4-week training blocks. Periodization and class schedules aside, these allow for progressions to occur. And progression provides a life lesson about goals–attainable and realistic goals are implemented first before progressing to large-scale goals.

Documentation helps with accountability in the weight room and everyday life. Share on X

We must document as we progress in sets/reps and load. Likewise, we must document our life goals as we progress in our 1-year, 5-year, and 10-year plans. This helps with accountability in the weight room and everyday life as our athletes develop into young men and women.

Strategies

1. Progression
• Start easy and progress to more difficult exercises
• Attainable and realistic goals progress toward large-scale goals
• Don’t load too early, and focus on basics
2. Documentation
• Have athletes record all sets and reps
• Document goals and place in plain sight
3. Accountability

This model works for several reasons. It ties into what we’re asking of our athletes: building a culture of consistency, attention to detail, and perfect technique relative to what they’ve been taught. It allows athletes to increase their performance in a multitude of areas in academics, in athletics, and in life. The importance of exposing our athletes to new stimuli and allowing them to struggle is part of developing a winning culture along with preparing them for the real world.

Take the First Step to Winning

The constant mentorship that comes with 3D coaching will overprepare each athlete for the 22 hours spent outside of athletic facilities and academic buildings. The obvious goal is to win a championship, but the ultimate reward is when an athlete returns to campus with a happy family and a successful personal life. They let us know we are one of the main reasons they are successful in their endeavors today.

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

 

There is an elephant in the room, and some football evangelists are willing to back right up to it as long as they don’t have to acknowledge it. There are even staunch defenders of the game who want to ride that elephant all the way over the cliff.

Before anyone decides this article is yet another panicked and cherry-picking attack on football, you should know that simply isn’t the case. I played football from junior high into college, have coached at the high school level, and supported a staff for a Division I Power-5 football team. For the past 13 years, I have worked for athletes and teams of this sport as my central focus and chief passion. While I have participated in other sports—outdoor soccer, indoor soccer, basketball, hockey, and track and field—football is by far my favorite and has made the greatest impact on my life. It’s a terrific team sport that is in a dire position.

Football is dying, and there are proud football evangelists tightening the noose on their own sport.

While high school sports participation is now at an all-time high and showing continued, steady growth, football participation is shrinking. Football still led the pack of all high school sports in the 2016-2017 school year, but has lost some 25,503 participants since 2015-2016. The numbers show that schools are not dropping football programs; students are simply electing to participate in other sports. For schools that offer 11-man football, this decrease means that about two kids per school are electing not to come back out for football. These aren’t drastic decreases, but with the current issues surrounding the sport, it begs the question: What is driving students away from the game, and what can we do to stop it?

The Elephant in the Room…

Player safety in football has been a hot topic for the past several years. All levels of football have implemented rule changes to try to make the game safer. Thanks to the high-profile nature of the NFL, these changes have been publicized and widely debated. Since 2011, the NFL has instituted 22 rule changes aimed specifically at enhancing player safety. Also during that period, the NFL announced a donation of $30 million to the National Institute of Health (NIH) to research “serious medical conditions prominent in athletes.” The press release from the NIH in September 2012 listed the first medical condition they would investigate: chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).

CTE is a degenerative brain disease found in patients with a history of repetitive brain trauma. While military veterans have it, it is prominent in those who compete or have competed in athletics as well, and football appears at the top of this list. Thanks to the 2015 film, “Concussion,” starring Will Smith, the connection between football, concussions, and CTE has become a hot topic of discussion. This article will not focus on the controversy surrounding suppression of facts, money influencing research, or other back-door dealings and mischief. There is a central issue to discuss: Concussions in American football are indeed a problem and we, as members of the football and sport community, must do a better job representing our game and field.

CTE Findings: Facts, Fiction, and Fallout

There have been recent research findings showing a high prevalence of CTE among former football players of all levels. The survey findings, published in 2017, showed that 177 of 202 former players who had recently passed away and donated their brains for research had a CTE diagnosis. Of this sample, 111 players competed in the NFL, and 110 of them had received a CTE diagnosis. Those who played past the high school level were also diagnosed at a higher prevalence: college (48 of 53 had CTE), semi-professional (9 of 14 had CTE), and Canadian Football League (7 of 8 had CTE). The summary of findings was that CTE may correlate to prior participation in football.

Is it nail-in-the-coffin evidence? Not exactly. Objectively speaking, this study used a convenience sample. This means that researchers only examined the brains of men of an older age who agreed to participate in this study upon their death. Additionally, these older men may have had more confounding factors contributing to their CTE diagnosis, such as military service and other head injuries not related to football. While this study isn’t permanent proof, it certainly isn’t flattering for football. It also highlights the importance of understanding how the media presents research findings.

 

In an article appearing on FootballScoop, a popular site for football coaches to get insight on coaching changes and all-around football talk, content manager Doug Samuels proclaimed that a recent study proved that “playing HS football is just as safe as band, glee club, or choir.” In fact, this was the headline he chose when describing the findings of a study assessing the risk of developing neurodegeneration from playing high school football. Pro-football evangelists shared the headline and subsequent article from Mr. Samuels on Twitter and social media hundreds of times. But what did the study actually find?

The study examined medical records from a group of men from one town, in one county, in one state, who played high school football between 1946 and 1956. See where there might already be some issues in making an inference from football in small town America at the dawn of the Cold War to football played around the country in 2017? This comparison is like making a statement that driving in the front seat of a 1956 Chevy on a back-country gravel road without a seatbelt is no different than racing down the freeway during rush hour in a 2017 Camaro without a seatbelt while on your cell phone. It seriously lacks validity to make any inference from this study and apply it to football in 2017 and beyond. In fact, the very authors of the study urge caution in making any inference from this study in the complete study’s conclusion:

“These data should be interpreted in light of the many differences between today’s high school football players and those of the distant past. Although today’s players have better equipment, trainers and physicians who are more knowledgeable about concussions, and rules against spearing, they also tend to be larger and quicker than athletes in the prior era, increasing the force of impact. Moreover, although dramatically different from the marginally protective headgear of this earlier era, current helmets certainly do not eliminate concussions and may provide players with a false sense of protection. Although these results should be somewhat reassuring to high school players from 50 years ago, they should give no reassurance to today’s players.”

Pro-football evangelists who want to refute any science suggesting that the current way athletes play football may be dangerous conveniently ignore this section of the study, as well as the concept that football may be unnecessarily unsafe at times. Yet, at the same time, there are those from this same population willing to cherry-pick arguments despite the prevalence of evidence.

When we cherry-pick arguments, it confuses athletes and their perception of safety in the game, says @MdHCSCS. Share on X

Whether the research findings are more favorable to one side of the argument or another, there is an unknown fallout from cherry-picking arguments and click-baiting headlines. This discussion both directly and indirectly influences athletes and their perception of safety within the game. Within the last five years, I’ve witnessed firsthand the interaction of high school, collegiate, and professional football players and talk surrounding player safety, concussions, and CTE. There are high school students who legitimately believe that any head-to-head contact, at any speed or force, will result in a concussion. Teenagers are self-diagnosing themselves with concussions, and are genuinely afraid of returning to play following their self-assessment.

I’ve also witnessed players at the college level take pride in the deliberate destruction of their helmet in practice. Imagine a helmet that has incurred so many head-to-head collisions on its crown that it cracks within an eight-month span covering spring football, fall camp, and the first several weeks of the season. These players were of a high caliber at their position, and were adamant that concussions were only for the weak and timid.

Failure on the Front Line?

There is good news for the sport, as governing agencies within youth and high school football have adopted modernized techniques for blocking and tackling. USA Football’s campaign for Heads Up Football prioritizes a new approach to positioning the athlete to execute contact in the game or practice while almost completely removing the head from the trajectory of contact. Traditional cues for tackling specifically use the head, helmet, and face mask as a reference when blocking and tackling.

The old mindset was that the player needed to secure the tackle first and foremost, and protecting the neck was a secondary benefit from this technique. The modernized Heads Up protocol, as used by the NFL’s Seattle Seahawks, emphasizes local positioning, leverage, and body contact similar to techniques used in rugby and Australian Rules Football. The theory behind the methodology is that taking the head out of the play will lead to reduced exposure to head impacts and thus, fewer concussions.

Many state high school organizations now mandate that football coaches must be Heads Up certified in order to coach. This process must occur in the weeks leading up to the pre-season camp period, and done in partnership with the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS). The NFHS also offers continuing education and certification on athlete safety, health, coaching, and administration.

Has the Heads Up program been effective in reducing injuries and concussion? Preliminary findings showed that the program was making great strides forward, but a more in-depth review showed that the overall rate of concussions in youth and high school football has not significantly changed. Does this mean football is doomed, regardless of the techniques? The issue at hand here more likely has to do with the fact that certification in Heads Up techniques does not necessarily result in strict enforcement of these traits.

 

As football coaches, we are responsible for the health and safety of our athletes, regardless of our own preconceived beliefs or opinions. In the past several years, I have witnessed firsthand tackling drills from peewee leagues up through the college level around the country. Not all coaches with certification requirements are universally accepting or enforcing the progressive techniques of Heads Up football. Instead, they continue to utilize more traditional tackling and blocking techniques that explicitly involve the helmet and face mask as a landmark reference. Coaches still heavily use cues like “get your eyes to the football” or “put your helmet in his chest,” even at the youngest levels of the game.

As football coaches, we are responsible for our athletes’ safety, regardless of our own opinions, says @MdHCSCS. Share on X

The issue here is clear: There are some football coaches failing their players and the sport as a whole, with their deliberate rejection of player safety and insistence that safety equates to weakness. This is the same type of coach who once believed that taking water breaks during practice made you weak, or that face masks, gloves, and forearm pads meant you were a lesser player who lacked toughness. These coaches are not in the majority, but enough of them exist and employ their beliefs to make them a threat to the longevity of football.

How Technology Transforms Player Safety

Along with improvements to the techniques of blocking and tackling, there are also advancements to the equipment that players use. Many helmet manufacturers have changed their designs in the past decade to produce lighter helmets that improve safety. One helmet company, VICIS of Seattle, Washington, has taken the traditional physics of football helmet design and turned it upside down, almost literally. VICIS reports that their ZERO1’s RFLX^TM layer is a “sophisticated construction of columns that bend and flex in response to linear and rotational impacts.”

They designed the ZERO1 ARCH^TM shell of the helmet to spread out forces from contact to the head over a broad area to help reduce the risk of injury to the head. This is similar in concept to the old junior-high science experiment of dropping an egg from a rooftop in a cushioned box: The central idea here is to distribute impact forces and absorb them more optimally. The traditional hard-shell design of helmets can act in the opposite way, localizing forces to the area of contact.

 

While VICIS offers a new generation of helmets, there are also independent studies on individual helmet model safety levels available for reference when buying helmets. Additionally, the NFL-backed Play Smart Play Safe initiative offers further resources for parents, athletes, and coaches on the safety rating of helmets available for purchase.

A helmet must fit properly as more movement of the helmet leads to a greater risk of #concussion, says @MdHCSCS. Share on X

Improvements in helmet technology go hand in hand with progress being made on the front lines of football: properly fitting equipment. The most advanced helmet technology’s limiting factor is undoubtedly how coaches, athletes, and parents ensure the proper fitting assignment of each helmet. While USA Football offers a guideline on how the helmet should fit, there is still a great margin for error due to the simple fact that not all heads have the exact same proportions. What is the danger of a helmet not fitting properly? It is simple: More movement of the helmet leads to a greater risk of concussion.

Existing fitting procedures involve taking one manual measurement of the circumference of the head just above the eyebrow and adjusting the padding and chinstrap accordingly to meet subjective fit and feel markers. This procedure is quick and manageable, and a realistic task for almost every coach to accommodate. The problem is that it neglects the fact that human skulls are three-dimensional entities where specific length, width, and height measurements can vary just enough to make a significant difference in fit and feel. Beyond fit and feel, there are safety implications, as recent research highlighted an increased risk of concussion severity due to poorly fitting helmets. As it turns out, fitting helmets should focus more on the shape of the head rather than simply fitting within an acceptable range of the one circumference measurement taken.

Three-dimensional modeling is a potential solution to maximizing helmet fit. Imaging procedures, such as the methodology developed by Falcon Pursuit of Portland, Oregon, take only a few seconds and provide a hyper-accurate 3-D map of the athlete’s head with millimeter precision. Finding the exact dimensions of the athlete’s head is critical information for the equipment manager or coach trying to find the best fit for the athlete. This also applies to the equipment manufacturers who want better insight into designing size ranges for various levels and positions of football players. While coaches must continue to work on blocking and tackling technique to help further protect athletes, providing them with better-fitting and more advanced helmet technology is also a step in the right direction.

Beyond helmet technology, there are companies such as Q30 Innovations taking the conversation around concussion prevention by the neck…literally. Their technology, called the Q-Collar, focuses on mildly increasing blood volume in the brains of athletes with an apparatus worn around the back of the neck. Initial research into the effectiveness of this method is promising, as exploratory research shows a potential positive effect of reducing brain slosh from contact sports resulting from the use of this neck-collar technology.

Further analysis also shows the technology potentially reduces white matter diffusion alteration when wearing this type of neck-collar technology during football. While initial research investigation shows potential for helping reduce the risk of brain injury, further research should continue to help the football community understand the size of the potential benefit, as well as identify any potential limitations in the application of the technology. 

Detection as the Best Defense

With concussions still present in the sport, the assessment, diagnosis, and subsequent treatment have all greatly improved in recent years. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, high school athletic programs that have a certified athletic trainer present incur fewer overall injuries. Additionally, these schools tend to be able to diagnose more concussions than schools that lack an athletic trainer. The reasoning centers on the fact that athletic trainers have much more training to detect and diagnose concussions. This highlights a critical element of the issue of concussions in football: the need for objective assessment of the incidence of head trauma by knowledgeable, certified individuals.

Football needs an objective assessment of head trauma incidence by knowledgeable certified trainers, says @MdHCSCS. Share on X

While football coaches are obliged to make a good-faith effort in the detection of concussion-like symptoms in their athletes, they are limited by the scope of their training and assessment, and lack of diagnosis capability. In some instances, football coaches face a real conflict of interest when it comes to concussion-like symptom identification, as any detection of these symptoms would necessitate the athlete’s removal from activities for further assessment. Some coaches see this as holding out their best players merely on the chance they have a concussion.

 

In recognition of the need at the high school level, Providence Sports Medicine, a branch of the regional Providence Health & Services hospital network, is teaming up with high schools across the Northwest. They help place certified athletic trainers at the schools, and the trainers are available for practices and home games, and many away games as well. One of the many services these athletic trainers offer is the ImPACT® concussion management protocol, as part of the Providence Primary Care Concussion Treatment Pathway. This pathway consists of a battery of tests that better assess brain function beyond simple memory and recognition exercises. Balance, memory, eye function, neuromuscular function, musculoskeletal symptoms, and the ImPACT® protocol are all part of their assessment process.

In addition to better detection of concussion-like symptoms, the pathway developed by Providence Sports Medicine helps give athletes access to more complete treatment options depending upon the severity of the injury. Rather than simply improving their ability to detect head trauma, Providence Sports Medicine can offer athletes more specific rehabilitation and treatment options based upon the type of concussion symptoms displayed. Beginning with a physician’s thorough evaluation, these symptom-based treatment recommendations are designed to meet the specific needs of the patient, rather than subject them to a “cookie-cutter” approach to rehab.

As soon as the physician finds the athlete is asymptomatic, the athletic trainer assists them in a modernized approach to return-to-activity protocols. More recent findings, as documented in the Berlin Consensus of 2017, show that there is insufficient evidence to continue complete rest in the days and weeks following a suspected concussion. After an initial rest period in the acute stage of the suspected injury (the first 24-48 hours), the latest evidence suggests that:

“…patients can be encouraged to become gradually and progressively more active while staying below their cognitive and physical symptom-exacerbation thresholds (ie, activity level should not bring on or worsen their symptoms). It is reasonable for athletes to avoid vigorous exertion while they are recovering. The exact amount and duration of rest is not yet well defined in the literature and requires further study.”

What is the aim of the pathway from Providence Sports Medicine? It is to identify more specific treatment pathways that match patient symptoms, identify those at risk who display lingering symptoms, improve the rehabilitation process for patients who become asymptomatic, and maximize the return-to-play process. This coordinated, individualized approach can help athletes who are ready to return to sport do so safely. The role of the ATC working with a well-designed medical team is critical to the success of the program and reduces the liability for the coaching staff.

Saving Football’s Future: Look Within the Sport

Early in this piece, I stated that this article is not an attack on football, but rather a call to action for helping preserve the game. As I mentioned, I played football from junior high through college, and have spent most of my professional career working within the sport. I, too, experienced diagnosed concussions, and like many players I also wonder how many concussions I experienced that went undiagnosed. But, like many things, as time passes we learn more and should focus our efforts on maximizing player safety by any means possible.

The sport itself is a terrific vessel for teaching life lessons, perhaps unlike any other sport. The issues hotly debated by the media have shown an uglier side of the game in the form of the willingly ignorant football evangelists refuting science, facts, and common sense. This is the worst approach imaginable to helping the game of football survive into the 21st century.

We should call out the portion of football coaches and fans who refute the facts and research surrounding head injuries to the point of bullying athletes, fellow coaches, and media outlets.

We need to call out the football coaches and fans who refute the facts surrounding head injuries, says @MdHCSCS. Share on X

These willfully ignorant bullies will destroy the game by disrespecting the very real and rational fears of past, present, and future players, their families, and the fans who express concerns over the status quo of football. Concussions, CTE, and head trauma have nothing to do with lacking “mental toughness,” not being disciplined, or being a “wimp.” As coaches of the game, we must grow a spine and halt these types of behaviors among our fellow coaches, athletes, and fans.

This past fall, I had the privilege of returning to the sidelines of my alma mater to coach defensive backs for Head Coach Aaron Hazel of La Salle Prep. Coach Hazel has seen the game change in his nearly 20 years of playing and coaching, including many positive steps in tackling and blocking techniques. “Since I took over the program four years ago, we’ve completely done away with live tackling at practice. That being said, we work on tackling every day by focusing on technique, angles, and leverage over the old mantra of ‘whatever it takes.’ We have found over this time utilizing the techniques taught through USA Football that our tackling has improved significantly now that our kids have a plan for almost every scenario they will see.”

The issue at hand is not that the tactics of football and the game are dangerous, but rather that different schools don’t uniformly enforce more progressive and safer techniques. In his years of experience with football at the high school and college level across the Pacific Northwest and West Coast, Coach Hazel has seen positive signs from many areas. “Talking with coaches in our region, most programs are implementing these techniques. Some are not going to the non-tackling depths that we are, but everyone I communicate with understands that we owe it to the game to continually adapt.”

The idea of adapting is not lost on football coaches either, but there are some coaches from the “old school” that just want to hold onto the game of football that they know. As Coach Hazel points out, “It is cyclical. Thirty years ago, everyone was running the wing-t, 20 years ago everyone was running the wishbone, 10 years ago everyone was single-back and nobody was running the wing-t. Now the wing-t is growing again; we played three wing-t teams this fall! In the late ‘90s when I played, all the talk was on neck injuries, now the focus is on head injuries. What we have to look forward to is that we made a lot of changes in how the game was taught and what rules needed to be added to reduce the risk of neck injuries. We are now doing the same for head injuries, and it is only going to make our game safer and better.”

La Salle Prep is also one of schools working with an athletic trainer from Providence Sports Medicine. While this service has greatly helped the school, Coach Hazel sees hope for even more progress with player safety, equipment, and the future of football. “Right now, the best equipment is extremely expensive and is not financially feasible for a lot of schools. We are very fortunate to have a handful of kids purchase their own top of the line helmets, reducing our costs, but other places are not as lucky. I would love to see the NFL subsidize the cost of top-end equipment so that youth and high school programs have the ability to put every kid in the best gear.”

A To-Do List for Every Football Program in America

Instead of simply crying wolf, there needs to be action taken to help preserve the game across all levels. These are first steps I believe each football coach and program should seriously consider in the coming offseason:

Implement and Enforce Better Blocking and Tackling Techniques 

The Heads Up football initiative is a terrific first step to help limit unnecessary head contact from blocking and tackling, but certification should become mandatory and oversight on tackling and blocking techniques should come from state high school associations. Additionally, state referee and official associations can offer feedback to high school associations, leagues, and individual teams regarding the quality of their tackling and blocking techniques, and whether they are within the rules. If there are teams incurring more illegal helmet-to-helmet hits or blindside blocks, this system would help hold coaches accountable for implementing safer techniques. Sharing game film of these incidences in widely used video systems such as Hudl will improve transparency in the detection and assessment of poor tackling and blocking techniques.

Invest in and Research Equipment Technology 

There are companies such as Falcon Pursuit, VICIS, and Q30 Innovations willing to produce cutting-edge technology when it comes to equipment and apparel in sport. The NFL, NCAA, and any entity that profits from the sport of football would be wise to invest in companies that can help preserve the longevity of football in an ethical, optimal, and sustainable manner. This has nothing to do with spending money to prevent the publication of research, or paying entities to skew or withhold information. Instead, this has everything to do with pursuing innovation and advancements in equipment and player safety.

The potential is there, as fine-tuning the helmet to best fit the shape of each athlete’s head, improving the materials of the helmet, and utilizing supplemental equipment like the Q-collar all show great promise in reducing the risk of severe head trauma. None of these will happen without continued investment and research in these areas. Implementing gear-exchange programs funded by the NFL and their major sponsors for youth, high school, and under-funded teams will help expand access to better equipment.

Embrace the Medical Community and Work Alongside Them 

This is going to be tough for some coaches to hear, but unless you are a medical doctor or a certified and licensed sports medicine practitioner, you are not qualified to diagnose and treat concussions or other injuries. Having certified athletic trainers present for both practices and competitions will help ensure that knowledgeable and certified individuals deal with any potential injuries—particularly head injuries. Having your starting running back, stud linebacker, or all-conference quarterback take a few minutes to make sure they are not putting themselves, or their teammates, in danger by playing with a head injury is a worthy investment of time. He won’t suffer from missing five minutes of everyday cone drills!

This is an opportunity for the broader football community to preserve our sport for the future, says @MdHCSCS. Share on X

Initiatives such as those from Providence Sports Medicine are growing in popularity, and should be taken up in conjunction with state athletic associations for youth and high school sports. Additionally, state athletic associations must increase educational opportunities for coaches by supplying specific guides for athlete health, wellness, safety, and performance. They can do this online, or in quarterly, regional seminars.

The Time Is Now

While not every team can accomplish all the elements to help improve player safety, the overall football community needs to step up and realize this is our opportunity to preserve our sport for the future. Doing nothing, protecting the status quo of football under the guise of being “tough,” and speaking out against player safety because of your fear of watering down the sport are all irresponsible and cowardly. If we want football to survive, the time to act is now.

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

 

If you’ve ever trained a group of athletes, you’ve probably noticed something peculiar. Even though you give the group the same training program, at the end of the training block, there are vast differences in how much those athletes improve.

Some athletes will respond really well to that specific training, and see huge improvements that carry over to personal bests in the competition period. Some athletes won’t respond well at all, and as a result might underperform in the next competitive season. Most of the athletes will show a fairly average response; they might set a few new personal bests and have a decent season, particularly if they’re young and developing, but it might not be anything special.

Over the course of a several different training periods, these effects can add up. Those who respond really well to training will likely compete at a very high level, while those who respond poorly will likely fall by the wayside.

Athletes Are Unique Humans, Not Averages

Anecdotally, almost every coach will have experienced these effects. When I look back to my days as an athlete, I was often in a training group with 10 or more athletes. Yet, in any given year, perhaps only three or four of us would set personal bests—despite following very similar (and in some cases, identical) training programs. I set my personal bests in 2007, and yet was still a competitive sprinter for four years after that. Why I didn’t I improve with more training?

We all know that there is this variation between individuals when it comes to training adaptations, and so it seems odd that there is blanket advice given when it comes to training. For example, the American College of Sports Medicine recommends that advanced athletes use rep ranges of one to 12 in a periodized fashion, with an eventual emphasis on utilizing heavy loads for one to six repetitions.

There are two things we can observe and ask from this. First, that the range of one to six reps is quite wide—would some people be better off working at close to 1RM, while others work at 6RM? The second is that, given that we know there is variation in how people respond to exercise, do such one-size-fits-all approaches, even those with a broad range, create conditions for effective adaptation to occur for all athletes? Inherent within this advice from the ACSM, and similar bodies, is the notion that exercise adaptation is standardized in response to a stimulus, and that if individuals follow the advice, a fairly standardized training response will occur.

This is false.

Instead, there is a wide range in the size of adaptations in response to exercise. This is well-established in the scientific literature in regard to exercise; often resulting in those seeing large improvements being labelled as “high responders” and those seeing smaller improvements as “low responders.”

For example, a paper from 2005 put 585 male and female subjects through a 12-week strength training program. There were huge variations in the adaptations to this training program seen among individuals. For example, muscle size changes ranged from a loss of 0.4cm to an increase of 13.6cm (-2% to +59%). Improvements in the 1RM score varied from no improvement at all (0%) to huge improvements of 250%. Maximum voluntary contraction changes also varied between subjects: Some saw a 32% decrease, while others saw a 149% increase.

This doesn’t just occur following strength training; there have been similar results after aerobic training programs. Perhaps the most famous study to examine this is the HERITAGE (HEalth, RIsk factors, exercise Training And GEnetics) family study. Here, 481 adults were given a 20-week aerobic training program, with their VO_2max tested both before and after the training intervention. The average improvement seen was 384 mL O₂ per minute. However, some subjects saw improvements almost four times this amount, while others showed no improvement. (Some even got worse, although this is more likely due to measurement error or motivational issues than a negative effect of training.)

A large range in variations following training has also been reported regarding fitness improvements after high-intensity interval training, fat loss from exercise, and health-related improvements expected after training—such as an increase in insulin sensitivity, a change in cholesterol levels, and a drop in blood pressure. In fact, this variation is not just seen in response to exercise, but also following the use of a sports supplement such as caffeine.

Inter-Individual Variation in Exercise Adaptation

That there is variation between individuals following training is unquestionable. However, an obvious question remains: What causes this variation? If we could discover and understand the causes of this variation, then we could ensure that athletes undertake training matched to their needs. We could also take steps to change the aspects that lead to sub-optimal improvements following exercise, in order to improve adaptation.

This is the thought process that led me and my doctoral supervisor, John Kiely, to publish our most recent paper, “Understanding Personalized Training Responses: Can Genetic Assessment help?” In it, we aimed to identify the causes of this variation between individuals following exercise (from now on, I’ll refer to this variation as “inter-individual”), focusing on a number of different potential cofounders. The paper itself is available for free, so if it interests you, I encourage you to read it.

As anyone who has ever written a paper for a peer-reviewed journal will know, the process itself is brutal. First of all, you need to fit within a set word limit, which means that many key ideas may have to be left out. Then you hope that your reviewers understand the paper and the point you’re trying to make; if they don’t, then you will have to remove further bits (thanks a lot, reviewer #2). Finally, scientific writing means that you must sometimes use big words and flowery language, which doesn’t always make it accessible to your target audience—in our case, coaches.

Let’s consider this article as a director’s cut version of the paper, where I can explore certain areas in more detail, or provide context that just wasn’t possible within the paper. At all times, you can refer to the paper itself to see how we made the argument in a scientific manner, if you wish. It’s also worth pointing out that we wanted to focus primarily on the biological causes of this variation between individuals. Other researchers have discussed how such inter-individual variation may be partially explained as normal “noise” or error within both a measurement and a population; perhaps the best such paper on this topic is by Atkinson and Batterham. We didn’t cover this in our paper for a variety of reasons, including word limits, but their work is crucial in understanding the statistics behind the individual response to exercise.

The first clue we get as to the biological causes of this inter-individual variation in exercise adaptation is that the individual response to exercise appears to be specific to the type of exercise you undertake. A novel study from 2011 found this to be the case, when 175 males and females were randomized into four different groups for a 12-week training block. One group undertook only strength training, one only endurance, one both strength and endurance, and the other was a control group. As you might now expect, there was a large range in the individual improvements following exercise in all the training groups.

In the endurance group, improvements in aerobic fitness (measured via VO_2peak) ranged from a 10% to 60% improvement. In the strength training group, changes in maximal voluntary contraction varied from a decrease of 15% to an increase of 60%. We might call those that saw a decrease in fitness non-responders, and those that saw improvements of 60% the high responders, with all other subjects spread out in between (although we must keep in mind that some of this is due to daily biological variation and measurement error).

However, it is the combined strength and endurance group that grabs the attention. While some of this group were non-responders in terms of aerobic improvements or strength improvements, subjects did not show a non-response to both. Neither were any subjects in the highest 20% of improvements in terms of aerobic or strength improvements. This means that, while you might not respond well to one type of exercise, you likely will to another. So, there probably aren’t non-responders to general exercise, but non-responders to specific types of exercise.

Why is this a clue? Well, adaptation to exercise occurs through a huge number of different molecular pathways. The signals created by exercise that cause our mitochondrial density to increase as a response to aerobic exercise are not the same as those that cause our muscles to grow after weight training. Instead, variation in these pathways could potentially explain—at least partially—the variation between individuals following training. A number of things can lead to variation within these pathways, but perhaps the most potent of them all occurs within our DNA.

An Essential Primer to Genetics in Sport

Our knowledge of the impact that genetics has on fitness and performance has grown tremendously in recent years. Initially, it used to be thought that perhaps a single gene was responsible for creating elite athletes—known as the “single gene as a magic bullet” philosophy. However, throughout all the research, no single gene has been discovered, with individual genes being responsible for only a tiny amount of the variation between individuals. (The gene with the largest impact that I’ve come across is ACSL1, which explained approximately 6% of the variance in the HERITAGE study, although this has yet to be fully replicated).

Instead, the likelihood is that elite athletes possess a number of favorable versions of genes (called alleles) associated with elite performance. If we hypothetically state that there might be 10,000 different alleles associated with elite performance, we would likely see a threshold, above which being an elite athlete is more likely, although not certain. It is exceptionally unlikely that any person possesses the single optimal genetic profile for elite performance. This was nicely shown in a 2008 paper whereby researchers examined 23 genes where common variation occurs within the population. Even with this examination of an unrealistically low number of genes that might impact performance, the chance of a single person having the “optimum” version of them all was only 0.0005%.

It is very unlikely that anyone possesses the single optimal genetic profile for elite performance, says @craig100m. Share on X

Clearly then, no single gene or even a small number of genes can explain all the differences in variation seen in exercise adaptation. We can therefore state that both exercise adaptation and sports performance are “complex polygenic traits,” comprised of variation in a number of different genes. While it might be easy to write off complex polygenic traits as unexplainable, research has shown that we can start to pin down the genetic variation that contributes to them.

Being an elite athlete is clearly a complex polygenic trait; elite athletes not only have a favorable genetic profile (whatever that might be), but they also often have a good coach, motivation, and nutritional intake. However, a 2007 paper found that being an elite athlete was about 66% “heritable,” which we can take to being down to our genes. Other studies have found that about 50% of variation in VO_2max improvements following exercise is heritable, as is around 45% of muscle fiber type, and 52% of muscle strength scores.

The next step on this journey is to find genes (or more specifically polymorphisms—small changes in the underlying genetic code within a gene that can very slightly change the protein encoded by the gene). A recent review paper reported that there are at least 120 such polymorphisms linked to being an elite athlete, with roughly 10% of these replicated in at least three studies. Research has linked yet more genes, around 250, to playing a role in exercise adaptation.

One of the polymorphisms with the most attention (and, in turn, over-hyped) occurs within ACTN3. This gene creates a protein called alpha-actinin-3, which forms part of muscle fibers. In fact, this protein is exclusively found in fast-twitch muscle fibers, making it somewhat important for speed events. At a certain position in this gene, you can either have a C allele or a T allele. If you inherited one T allele from your mother and one from your father, it is said you have the TT genotype.

If this is the case, you cannot produce alpha-actinin-3. This isn’t uncommon—it occurs in about 18% of individuals—and isn’t associated with any disease. (In fact, some research indicates it might reduce the risk of developing metabolic diseases like Type 2 diabetes.) It does mean that TT genotypes tend to have a lower percentage of fast-twitch muscle fibers than those with at least one C allele. Research also indicates that this can impact the likelihood of being an elite sprinter, with a number of studies illustrating that the TT genotype is uncommon in these athletes. The polymorphism within ACTN3 is just one identified polymorphism that potentially affects athletic performance, with an ever-increasing number of others being identified as research progresses.

The next step is to try to see how these genes influence the individual training response. Sticking with ACTN3, this polymorphism has been shown to impact improvements in peak power and strength following resistance training. The mechanisms by which this occurs are currently unclear, but C allele carriers appear to have greater mTOR activity (the pathway that stimulates muscle hypertrophy) following intense exercise, and also higher testosterone levels—both of which may contribute to the increases in fast-twitch fibers seen. A number of polymorphisms have also been identified that impact injury risk and the inflammatory response to exercise, which may also contribute to the individual variation seen in exercise adaptation.

This isn’t to say that genetic variation is responsible for all the different responses seen in terms of adaptation following exercise; they’re not. A good example of this comes from outside the exercise sphere. We now know that if you give a group of people exactly the same amount of vitamin D, the size of the increase in plasma vitamin D they see varies greatly. Genetic variation in a number of genes helps to explain this, but this variation doesn’t explain all the differences. Instead, we find that baseline levels of plasma vitamin D appear to modify these increases (those with lower initial levels see a greater improvement), as does body mass index. While both additional factors do have a genetic component, they are also subject to non-genetic factors, something which we refer to as “environmental” factors in our paper.

Additional Factors that Connect to Genetics

As a human being, you are unique. Even if you’re an identical twin, the unique situations you are exposed to within your life lead to differences in your “phenotype,” such that you and your twin have subtle differences by which people can tell you apart. The same is true when it comes to examining exercise adaptation.

What we have experienced previously can impact how we adapt and respond to an exercise stimulus, be it acute (e.g., an individual session) or chronic (e.g., a 12-week training program). Our baseline fitness impacts exercise recovery, so that the quicker you can recover from exercise, the greater the likely adaptation you will see relative to someone unable to recover sufficiently between training sessions. Previous training history also plays a role here, with different molecular sequences occurring as a result of exercise in beginners and more advanced athletes. Age also appears to impact how well a person adapts to exercise.

An individual’s nutritional status also impacts exercise adaptation. Different dietary composition of macronutrients can alter the adaptive response, with different molecular signals occurring when an athlete has a high carbohydrate intake compared to a low carbohydrate intake. The same is true for micronutrients. I’ve written extensively for SimpliFaster about vitamin D, and serum vitamin D levels can impact muscle power and force, either in a one-off performance or by modifying the adaptations seen in a longer-term training program. Too high an intake of supplemental antioxidants can reduce the adaptive response to exercise, which I wrote about in “Revisiting the Question: ‘Should Athletes Take Antioxidant Supplements?’” The use of supplements by athletes, such as caffeine or creatine, can alter the tolerable within-session workload, which in turn can lead to differences in adaptation occurring between individuals.

Sports Psychology: Factors That Matter in Training and Performance

Psychological factors can also impact exercise adaptation through several different mechanisms. Exercise is a form of stress, and each person’s response to that stress is highly individualized. Every brain interprets stress differently, with past experiences modifying this response. How our brains interpret a stressor impacts the release of hormones, and these hormones can affect how we adapt to exercise.

A simple example of this is two athletes undertaking a 300-meter time trial in training. Athlete A recently suffered a hamstring injury, and worries about the chance of a re-injury. As such, he is hyper-aware of any symptoms he might feel in that hamstring. The athletes start the time trial, and at 250 meters both are heavily fatigued, with their legs feeling heavy. Athlete A’s brain interprets the feelings of fatigue in the injured hamstring as a re-injury, causing a release of stress hormones, which in turn causes a maladaptive state. Athlete B’s brain, however, interprets the fatigue positively, potentially lowering the stress response and leading to more positive adaptations. My co-author, John Kiely, sums up the impact of stress on performance in this essay, which I strongly recommend you read.

A number of factors can modify this psychological response itself. One of these is sleep, with poor sleep quality or short sleep durations consistently linked to under-performance and under-adaptations in athletes. Lifestyle stress can also impact training adaptations. A study from 2008 found that, following 12 weeks of resistance training, subjects who self-reported higher feelings of stress had smaller improvements in both bench press and back squat compared to those who reported lower amounts of stress.

This individualized stress response can further alter the adaptations seen following a training program by decreasing immunity, increasing injury risk, and blunting exercise-induced performance improvements. In addition to this, within a session the acute psycho-emotional state can impact many things, including within session work rate—which, as is hopefully obvious, can alter the adaptations seen following exercise. All of this indicates that the psychological state of the athlete taking part in the training session and program is an important modifier of the adaptations seen.

An athlete’s view of a supplement’s or training program’s effectiveness can impact their #adaptation, says @craig100m. Share on X

Finally, how the athlete views the effectiveness of a supplement or training program can impact the amount of adaptation seen. This is because previously held beliefs can modify the response a person sees to a stimulus—in this case exercise—through both the placebo effect and expectancy effect. I’ve written about placebo and expectancy effects in exercise before, but in summary, if you believe something will have a positive effect it increases the chances that it will.

A Better Approach Than Trial and Error

Putting this all together, it’s clear that we have genetic factors that influence exercise adaptation, but also a myriad of complex environmental aspects that influence the adaptive response. However, we can add an extra layer of complexity to this because these environmental aspects are partially influenced by genetic variations themselves. For example, some genotypes are more sensitive to stress or susceptible to the placebo effects.

When it comes to subjective effort, this is also partially genetically determined. Nutritional requirements are, too; as I mentioned earlier, giving people the same amount of vitamin D leads to different plasma increases, partially determined by genetic variation. Inherent within all the environmental aspects, therefore, is the pervading influence of genetic variation. Indeed, we can add a further layer of complexity by adding epigenetic modifications—defined as changes in genetic expression without changes to the underlying DNA structure—into the picture. We detail these extensively in the paper itself, and I have previously written about these here.

All of this means that the athlete you have in front of you is a highly complex organism, comprised of their genetic makeup, their life experiences, and their environment. These factors all combine to determine how an individual responds to exercise and, given how complex this is, it should come as no surprise that there is wide variation in the type and magnitude of adaptation seen following training in a group of individuals. If you coach 10 athletes, then you have to deal with 10 different highly complex systems.

Frustratingly, these systems are not stable over time; they constantly change. A simple example of this is vitamin D levels, which tend to be higher during summer months and lower during winter months. If vitamin D can alter the adaptations seen after strength training, then we might expect greater improvements in strength during the summer months, when vitamin D levels are optimal. Similarly, if an athlete has had a successful training block with a coach previously, their belief and confidence in the coach may be higher, which could further enhance the improvements expected from a subsequent training block.

So where does this leave the coach and the athlete? One thing we try to do in the paper is to take this theoretical basis and make it usable. Being able to compete at the highest level is a function of “talent,” whatever that might be, and optimal training. However, the key point is: How do you know your training and lifestyle are optimal?

The usual way to approach this is via trial and error, whereby we try one thing, see how we respond, and then modify it. However, this can be a lengthily process, as feedback in terms of exercise adaptation is not instant. Having more information on which to base decisions regarding training and lifestyle could therefore be valuable.

At present, we tend to gain this information through a number of “phenotypic” tests, which tell you where you are right now. This might be a VO_2max or 1RM test, or a measure of vitamin D in the blood. This can lead to the use of training methods to improve those physical metrics, or supplements to improve the dietary aspects. The problem with these tests, however, is that they have minimal long-term predictive ability.

If my vitamin D score is currently X, how do I know what I need to do to get it to Y, given that there is so much variation in individual responsiveness to vitamin D supplementation? The same is true for training; while my current bench press 1RM might be 165kg, what type of training do I need to follow in order to get it to 200kg? While we might follow the usual guidelines, I’ve already discussed how the variation that is inherent in each person means that these guidelines probably aren’t optimal for each person.

The Future of Genetics and Genetic Testing

Given that genetic factors are the reason for a large proportion of this variation between athletes, the possibility remains that we could test for these factors in order to provide more information. This is currently an emerging field, but there is some evidence that genetic testing may hold some predictive ability in terms of exercise adaptation, although not all researchers share this belief. What is clear is that we cannot use genetic testing as talent identification (something that I discussed previously).

There are also many ethical hurdles that require negotiation before genetic testing within sports will become mainstream; nevertheless, the promise remains that, as more research is carried out, genetic testing may yield information that we can use alongside, not instead of, more traditional testing procedures such as physiological or blood tests. This is an area I hope to explore further in the future, so watch this space for updates, and, if you’re a coach of athletes interested in taking part in this research, please get in touch.

Thank you for taking the time to read through this article on my first paper as lead author. If you’ve enjoyed it, or at least found it interesting, please check out the full paper itself, along with our other work, as it contains much more information.

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

Intensive squatting provides many benefits for athletes and serves as a foundational movement for athletic performance. Increased cross‐sectional muscle area and changes in neural drive will not come from a diet of goblet squats and Bulgarian split squats. In a previous article, I argued that heavy single-leg work offers tissue adaptations, but there is something about bilateral work that offers greater neurological stimulus. This may be because bilateral velocities overall seem to be faster than unilateral velocities, especially from deep positions with high loads.

The Return of Intensive Squatting

To clarify, we’ll regard the definition of intensive squatting as anything over 90% of an athlete’s 1RM. This can be a contentious issue, and some coaches avoid intensive bilateral loading; heavy bilateral work can be challenging. Much of our approach and orthodoxy is borrowed from lifting sports where the specific expression of strength lives at 90%-100% loading and the athletes involved have anthropometries suited to lifting.

Often, athletes who possess leverage great for sport have poor leverage for lifting. And under high training loads, they exhibit high peripheral and central nervous system fatigue. Both of these will impact heavy squatting. Another oft-repeated concern is lumbar stress which may be a problem if lumbar flexion and/or excessive forward leaning occurs with high loads. However, lifting 90%+ has too many benefits to ignore and should be integrated into physical preparation where applicable.

Video 1. Intensive training at near maximal thresholds creates unique adaptations to the nervous system. The brain is challenged just as much as the muscular system, so proper loading is essential to stimulate growth and recovery.

Heavy squatting has several systemic benefits that are hard to achieve with lighter loads. We see improved recruitment of muscle fibers–in particular, heavy squats recruit and activate the maximum number and the fastest motor units. Improvements in the underlying neurology of strength expression such as rate coding/firing rate or discharge frequency are long-term adaptations caused by heavy strength training.

We also see improved intramuscular coordination and muscle fiber synchronization relating to the pattern by which fibers are recruited. The greater expression of intramuscular coordination improves muscular synergism. Finally, this type of training boosts serum testosterone levels.

Reconciling these benefits with an athlete who may have a busy schedule and high training volumes can be tricky for coaches. We can, however, manipulate things a little to provide intensity, keep volumes appropriate, and make changes to minimize technical aberrations. The key is to apply stress in a fashion that yields benefits and mitigates drawbacks. If this has to bend orthodoxy slightly, then so be it. We can provide this in the form of derivatives, clever rep schemes, and load manipulation.

How to Insert Clusters into Training

Clusters, which seem to fall in and out of popularity, make for a safe and effective way to integrate volumes with high load levels. Tufano et al., 2017 established that a large body of evidence supports using cluster sets to maintain or increase acute power-related variables, such as jump height.

By using clusters, we can sustain higher velocities in our final sets than we can with tradition set and rep schemes. The method simply calls for short inter-rep rest periods between sets. For example, perform one rep at 90% of 1RM, rerack, rest 15 seconds, and perform another single rep.

With cluster sets, we can focus on form while maintaining velocity and power output (Nicholson et al., 2016c; Tufano et al., 2017). This, in turn, allows for a greater volume of work at higher intensities. We can moderate the volume with a velocity-based drop-off between reps to keep quality as high as possible. We use a 5-10% drop-off.

Clusters at 90% of 1RM are best employed as doubles and triples–while remaining cognizant of quality at all times. There are numerous ways to sub-set rest periods for cluster work, including straight reps with a single cluster. For example, perform two conventional reps, rest 15 seconds, and perform a final rep.

Clusters moderate poor final reps due to #fatigue, especially for high-load front squats, says @WSWayland. Share on X

Fatigue causes a lot of poor final reps, and clusters are one way to moderate its effects. From a personal coaching standpoint, clusters are particularly beneficial for front squats at high loads where fatigue can compromise the rack position.

Implementing Death-Ground Squats

Effectively a cluster variant, our death-ground squat parameters are:

• Squat at 90%+ load every minute on the minute (EMOM) until we see a degradation in rep speed and movement quality.
• Across an array of athletes, most can achieve 5-8 reps with 1:00-1:15 rest between reps.

Why perform repeated singles? With high reps and high loads, the neuromuscular system fatigues to the point where a second set will not resemble the first.

Why rest 1:00? It’s enough time for the CP system to recover while keeping the nervous system in an excited state without the energetic cost of multiple reps with only limited rest between clusters. It’s a very time-efficient way to develop skill and capacity. You have about six seconds of quality, very high-intensity work available. Go beyond that, and we start using energy pathways we should avoid and see a speed and nervous system degradation.

Video 2. Low reps are great for athletes, but we must manage them carefully as they are exhausting to the nervous system. Avoiding intensive training will only dig an athlete’s grave later in the year; sufficient maximal strength drives the lower body’s power.

By hitting regular singles much like the cluster sets, we can achieve a higher volume of high-quality work at a high intensity. I find that attempting 90%+ lifts using 3 x 3 leads to an awful looking third set, despite Zatsiorsky suggesting this is the best place to acquire strength in the classic Science and Practice of Strength Training. While this might be fine for Soviet-era weightlifters practically, applying it to sports athletes is a tricky proposition. I’m sure any strength coach would rather have nine high-quality reps than three good ones followed by six ugly ones.

To dictate the amount of volume achieved, we use a timed drop-off, a velocity measurement, or a coach-determined drop in rep speed. There are plenty of inexpensive velocity measurement tools, some of which offer percentage drop-off alarms. We usually look for a 10% drop-off in speed or power.

We often find that the first rep is slow and subsequent sets are faster until, on average, reps 6-8 unless the athlete is having a really bad day and achieves only 3-4 reps. Load and the athlete’s activation/arousal matter.

We can also apply this in an EDT fashion, setting 15-20 minutes aside to perform as many singles within the prescribed time or until a velocity drop-off occurs within the time limit. The athlete’s goal is to increase the total number of reps performed within the time limit.

This works well with high-functioning athletes who can perform 90%+ squats for numerous reps. Most athletes don’t have time to perform at least 20 reps of squats because it would leave little room within their training session for anything else.

Hand-Supported Squats: From Basics to Mastery

Recently I explored heavy Hatfield or hand-supported squatting. I discussed implementing this method in a previous post as a hand-supported split squat. High loads are quite achievable with this method. Adding hand support increases stabilization, allowing an athlete to provide a maximum effort through their legs.

Increased intensity and decreased risk while moving very high loads at high velocities make this appealing, and it can do much for building confidence under big weights. It gets a lot of traction particularly with my tallest and heaviest athletes who seem to get much more out of hand-supported squats than my shorter athletes.

Hand-supported squat increases intensity, decreases risk while moving very high loads at high velocities, says @WSWayland. Share on X

We must not, however, use it as a crutch for squatting. It’s best used with athletes who have well-established competence and strength in the squat pattern. I’ve had to chide assistant coaches at my own facility for being keen to get clients lifting with hand supports before establishing a strong conventional squat.

• Encourage an athlete to stay tall and use the handles for support.
• Staying tall minimizes forward lean and lumber stress, and the safety bar takes out the more problematic elements of heavy axial loads.
• The athlete should push-off only when using eccentrics or isometric methods.

This method is also useful for contact athletes who have elbow, wrist, or shoulder injuries and may struggle with conventional squatting positions.

To program the hand-supported squat, I usually suggest 20-25% more weight than an athlete’s back squat 1RM. I employ two variants depending on whether the athlete needs more knee extension or hip extension:

• Hip dominant hand-supported squat
• Quad dominant hand-supported squat

Integrating Bulgarian-ish Squats

I use an auto-regulatory method for athletes with high training loads, particularly in-season, that I call the Bulgarian-ish method. I apply this only once a week rather than every day as per the original method.

Simply, the athlete works to a maximum single rep for the day. You can use velocity threshold to dictate how heavy the athlete goes, and building an individual velocity profile can be useful. But I find 0.25 m/s average for back squats and 0.3m/s average for front squats works really well. The aim is to work up to a comfortable heavy single.

Adding volume is simply a matter of dropping 10-15% of your daily maximum and doing a few sets of doubles or triples. Any attempt to add more volume will usually end in disaster. I only back off sets on the day I feel capable. Controlling your ego is crucial.

The following example presents a threshold of 0.25m/s.

I find this method highly beneficial from a psychological perspective because it allows athletes to come close to their maximum in a controlled fashion. It re-establishes that they are not stepping backward regarding their strength, offering a boon mentally.

It’s very important to restate that this is not an opportunity to go for a 1RM every time we use this method. I’ve had athletes sheepishly admit that they couldn’t resist the temptation to go for a new one-rep maximum when left to their own devices, usually when a coach wasn’t present. I’ve had athletes hit personal bests in training and established a new 1RM staying out of velocity threshold. It’s great if this happens, but it’s not the goal.

Partial Squats

Pervasive thinking in fitness has damaged the reputation of partial squats. I’ve heard strength coaches, athletes, and personal trainers screech about “ass to grass.” The depth conversation has been done to death, and it’s not what I’m addressing here.

As a culture, some coaches have a hard time with the partial squat as a tool due to the “squat deep” mantra that’s become deeply ingrained. This makes little sense in a world where the trap bar deadlift has been embraced wholly–ostensibly a partial squat but with none of the benefits of a heavy squat–which Carl Valle illustrates in this article. Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. Put the much-maligned partial squat in your toolkit and use it.

The partial squat allows greater force and power outputs. Put it in your toolkit and use it, says @WSWayland. Share on X

From a research standpoint, partial squats have received a reprieve with studies demonstrating its benefits. The usefulness of the partial squat comes from accelerating high loads at high velocities, which allows for greater force and power outputs, according to a Drinkwater et al. study, 2012.

To quote Chris Beardsley discussing a Bazyler et al. study, 2014, “Partial squats may have applications for improving maximum full squat performance, possibly because heavier relative loads can be used for the same number of reps when working at shorter muscle lengths.” Greater intensities for more reps reflects the thinking we apply to clustered squatting.

Another option is the sports back squat, a narrow stance partial squat discussed by Cal Dietz in his book, Triphasic Training. The aim is to take the hamstrings to a parallel position.

The thinking is that “athletes don’t need to keep working on hard, straining, maximal effort lifts in very wide stances. We want explosive, reactive athletes who can generate huge forces quickly in the direction where their sport will likely be played (i.e., narrow stance).” We see the same thinking in the Bazyler study concerning the need for force generation.

Key technique uses the agonist and antagonist muscles most effectively. Athletes pull themselves into position using their antagonist musculature–the hip flexors and the hamstrings–and explode back out again. I usually encourage this technique for all squats my athletes do.

We often see people perform partial squat off pins. While useful for powerlifters, this isn’t the most productive method because it lacks the return of force and the switch from eccentric into rapid concentric action. It’s the same reason I prefer Romanian deadlifts over rack pulls.

Partial squats should be included in programs when athletes have a decent level of strength and have performed full range of motion squats. Provided you choose appropriate ways to implement a partial squat, it provides a powerful stimulus for great levels of power and force production. I find it particularly useful as a heavier in-season option as it offers a lot of stimulus without a lot of tissue perturbation.

Putting It Together

Intensive squatting for non-lifting athletes has many benefits. Understandably, some perceive it as dangerous and fraught with risk. We know, however, that this kind of stress builds robustness and resilience that we can’t find under an upturned kettlebell.

To integrate intensive squatting into a program, I plan a 90%+ squatting option at least once a week during our heaviest lifting cycles. Below are some weekly sample programs showing how to slot 90% squat options into a program.

There’s no reason why we can’t apply some of these 90% options to other movements such as the press or deadlift. These have their own constraints and limitations, however. For instance, 90%+ deadlifting can be extremely taxing neurologically, not benefiting from a stretch reflex, unlike the squat pattern.

Future Considerations and Suggestions

Running off-season programs presents ample opportunities to implement intensive squat work. For advanced athletes, it provides an opportunity to express their highest levels of strength in a manner that yields improvement but errs on the side of caution. Trying to put non-lifting athletes through a conventional intensive squat program is a fast way to burn them out. However, manipulating movement, load, and volume at high intensity will hopefully keep athletes safe and improved.

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In-season training at the collegiate level is a balancing act between player development and team success. On the one hand, you are dealing with 18- to 24-year-old athletes in the prime of their physical development life. The physiological progress that is possible with this specific population is about as good as it gets, on paper at least.

On the other hand, when you work in the collegiate setting, especially when you are on staff with a specific team, the primary goal of everyone associated with the program is to find a way to win games. Player development matters according to the program, dependent on team culture and provisionally on buy-in or emphasis by the head coach/GM/check writer. Regardless of the situation you find yourself in as a performance coach, a balancing act must occur in order to optimize both sides of the coin. If done right in a model that values high performance, you can optimize readiness and sport performance, while still allowing for technical, tactical, psychological, and physical development over the long haul.

Balancing the Goals of Winning Now and Long-Term Development

The key to successfully walking the tightrope between long-term development and short-term success lies, of course, in great communication and collaboration, in an environment devoid of “silos,” where everyone is on the same page. This admittedly “unicornian” example of a perfect scenario probably doesn’t ever completely exist, but in a setting where all parties at least continually strive to reach excellence, high levels of sustained success become the standard, rather than the exception. It is within this model that we, as performance coaches and sport scientists, hope to operate, while managing the bumps, bruises, fatigue, soreness, and monotony.

My current setting is a system that we have grown and developed over time, and it is a mixture of communication, trust, science, art, love, accountability, and a shared desire to continually improve. There is no “one thing” that we do that is the answer to the riddle of managing athletes from a development perspective and, at the same time, ensuring that performance capabilities are high week after week. Instead, we have a holistic model that attempts to encompass multiple factors and eventually allows for more informed decisions by all individuals involved, as to what the appropriate action might be at any given time. This isn’t to say everything is smooth sailing, that wins and player development come easily, or that there aren’t bumps in the road. The reality is that these things get harder and harder to achieve over time, but I can say without a doubt that our expectations are high and our standard is passed down and pushed up year after year.

Creating a Real-World Monitoring System

The process by which we operate has several different components, all equally important to the whole and none more important than the other. What we do from a physiological as well as subjective monitoring perspective allows us to better understand the stress we apply to our athletes, and how they adapt (or don’t). It provides context and color to the ever-looming debate over how much is enough, whether more or less is better, and what the physiological result of our training and competition actually is. It informs, but does not dictate, future action. “Front end monitoring” as we call it, simply provides information.

Athletes don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care, says @DMcConnell29. Share on X

Most importantly, this first layer of data allows for conversation, both with the athletes and within the staff. Nothing creates more buy-in with an athlete then them believing you genuinely care and have their best interests at heart. Difficult conversations that come from a place of mutual understanding and trust can have broad and deep positive implications. They don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.

A standardized, consistently applied, subjective questionnaire is the first line of defense in our front end, allowing us to gain insight before training or practice on a daily basis, as well as identify any red flags that warrant a follow-up with the athlete. This might be the simplest and most important piece of data that we collect, as it gets us real-time data that we use to make acute adjustments.

The next layer in our attempt to quantify stress and the resulting adaptation—and ultimately navigate the inevitable bumps, bruises, and fatigue—is to utilize HRV daily. This allows us to gain a wider view regarding “readiness” by gathering information about the relative state of the autonomic nervous system. We don’t make rash decisions based solely on HRV readings on a day-to-day basis—there is too much noise in the signal with our setup.

While we are consistent and have a standardized protocol, the reality is the data we gather can never be completely clean. This is because it happens in a group setting in our Hockey Performance Center, sometime after the athletes have gotten out of bed and made their way to the arena. That being said, the data remains valuable over the long term from a trend analysis perspective, and adds a layer of feedback on top of our subjective data to evaluate adaptation. Just as importantly, it sparks conversations with the athletes when necessary.

Creating a Routine and Readiness to Train Workflow

The last layer on the front end is simply having the athletes weigh in every morning. This basic, time-tested routine provides a myriad of benefits. First, it allows me as the coach (and the athletes individually, once we’ve educated them) to monitor hydration status simply by referencing the previous day’s weigh-out number. The athlete should return to the same weight as the previous day; if they don’t, they have not taken the necessary steps to rehydrate since the last physical event.

Having athletes weigh in every morning is a time-tested routine with a myriad of benefits, says @DMcConnell29. Share on X

Second, it obviously provides long-term trend data on weight gain or loss, either of which may be positive or negative depending on the athlete and the situation. And third, weighing in daily emphasizes to the athlete the importance of body composition and hydration over a long and grueling season. As Dan John has said, “If it’s important, do it every day.”

The last piece of the front end is to utilize RSI as an autoregulatory tool. This approach is by no means foolproof, but it has proven to be a reliable workaround in our setting to objectively quantify CNS “readiness,” while at the same time appreciating individual differences in workload and overall fatigue. In a nutshell, we use the RSI score from a drop jump prior to lifting sessions to adjust the loading our athletes will perform.

Based on a 30-day rolling average, if an athlete’s current RSI score is more than a .5 standard deviation above their norm, we assume that they are “well recovered” and that their system is in a good place to push development. Those athletes scoring above this threshold will increase the load in their primary exercises for that training session by 10-20 pounds. If they score within their “normal” range (within .5 to -.5SD), they will simply continue to train off their prescribed percent of 1RM. If they are below .5SD, they will cut some volume, as we take that score as an indicator that they are not firing on all cylinders and today might not be the best day to hit the gas pedal.

Psychology trumps physiology every day, says @DMcConnell29. Share on X

The caveat to this is that any athlete who scores in the “Red” must first talk to me before adjusting their loads. If they tell me they feel great and don’t want to cut anything back, I will more than likely honor their desire and allow them to train as normal. Psychology trumps physiology every day. I want to cultivate a culture of effort and accountability, and if an athlete wants to get after it, I will probably celebrate that.

Back-End Analysis for Strength and Conditioning

The flip side of “front end monitoring” is “back end monitoring”: gathering, analyzing, interpreting, and understanding the data we collect from a physical output perspective. This gleans invaluable insight into the response to training and competition. If all stress is stress, it is imperative that we measure what we can to try to better understand the implications, so that we can improve our future application of that stress.

The back end is about finding out what happened. Without this layer, load management would simply be a guessing game. This can come in many forms, both subjective and objective, shorter and longer term. Daily sRPEs alongside internal training load measurements like TRIMP and intensity density provide a window into physiological load, and the athlete’s ability to handle it. These metrics should somewhat mirror each other: hard days should feel hard; easy days should feel easy. Mismatched trends can indicate functional overreaching if necessary and appropriate, or warning signs that the balance between developmental desire and performance necessity may be off. 

Longer-term indicators of global strength and power development, as well as fatigue and readiness balance, are also important. We use various vertical jump metrics on a continuous and rolling basis across the season, not only to provide important data about developmental trends, but also to allow for more nuanced training within the team setting regarding individual make-up and needs. Non-counter movement, counter movement, and drop jump/RSI scores paint a picture of the relative strengths and weaknesses of each athlete. You can build a “jump profile” from this data, which will help to direct training in the appropriate area.

Weekly acceleration-based speed assessments not only microdose all important high-velocity movement—crucial to applying appropriate stress outside of competition to remain capable of handling those loads within competition—but also create and take advantage of the athlete’s competitive drive, fostering a culture of effort, excellence, and grit. Nothing gets a competitive person more excited to give a maximal effort in the dog days of mid-season training than sprinting against the clock, with teammates cheering and chirping, with past and current times posted for all to see.

The Programming of Strength and Conditioning

As we slide down the continuum from monitoring to training (they are really all one piece of the same pie, and so cannot be completely removed from each other), we arrive at loading for development and loading (or unloading) for immediate performance. This is where the meat and potatoes of the balancing act come to the table for the performance coach. Monitoring gives us information, and now we must use that info to make decisions.

Culture must be the first part of this conversation. Nothing even remotely appearing to drive development or reach optimal performance is achievable without a culture cultivated from the top down and reverberated from the bottom back up, that emphasizes, demands, and embraces effort and intelligent training. However, when this is the standard held up within a program or organization, it is up to the performance coach to appropriately guide the athletes towards this goal.

I am a firm believer that strength must underpin and set the foundation for high performance development, as well as athlete robustness, in team sports. Actual weight room loading must progress in intensity and then remain high. Consistency is key: Once the foot is off the gas pedal in-season, it’s nearly impossible to get back up to speed.

Athletes must routinely use loads between 80% and 90% to provide adequate stimulus to the organism and ensure the ability to maintain the expression of this level of force production. That said, I favor a very low volume approach. At no time in the season should there be an overload of volume or a “straining” or “grinding” to the movements of training. That is why consistency is so key. More than a week or two away from heavy loads will result in a marked increase in effort, and a decrease in velocity, of the primary exercises.

There is, of course, a time and a place to taper load and increase velocity, but I find it best to reserve this for a very narrow window at the very tail end of a season. If 85% of a rear foot elevated split squat for two reps is hard or nearly impossible late in the season, then you, as the coach, failed to apply adequate stress long before that.

Fine-Tuning the Weight Room with VBT

One tool that is a “nice to have”—but might just be a “need to have,” if at all possible—is something that allows for velocity-based training. VBT lets us autoregulate loading, but in a much more nuanced way than RSI. This is nothing new, but when it comes to managing stress and fatigue, and bumps and bruises, the ability to prescribe training by speed instead of load, and the subsequent ability to adjust sets based on an athlete’s acute abilities, is hugely beneficial.

The key is getting athletes to respect the numbers, and back off when the data says back off. At first, this is tough, as they won’t feel like they’re getting better. But over time, with enough education and buy-in, they will realize that following their nervous system’s ability, which is really just listening to their body, will result in one step back and three steps forward.

Mastering the Balance and Using Common Sense

At the end of the day, the balancing act between longer-term athlete development and shorter-term team success comes down to managing stress. It’s like Goldilocks: not too much, and not too little. Finding that sweet spot is a combination of art and science. A coach’s intuition, along with candid conversations with the right group of players, is a must, but so is the appropriate use of objective data. “Figures lie, and liar’s figure” might be true, but data can still tell a story.

Balancing long-term athlete development and short-term team success comes down to managing stress, says @DMcConnell29. #LTAD Share on X

There is no one thing, no unicorn answer, to tell you how to navigate a long season and maintain equilibrium between development and readiness. Furthermore, no season is the same. But hopefully, in the quest to achieve this goal, common sense backed up with a little bit of science will be the winning recipe.

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