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In the last minute of Super Bowl XLIX, the Seahawks were down by four and had the ball at the Patriots’ 1-yard line. Seahawks player Ricardo Lockette should have received the ball, but Patriots cornerback Malcolm Butler intercepted the pass from quarterback Russell Wilson, resulting in the Patriots winning the game, 28-24.

Does this make you wonder where an athlete’s catch originates, from the body or the brain? Lockette’s intention may have been there, but not the sharpness needed to physically execute the “challenge” received by the brain.

Is reaction time coachable or trainable? How much an athlete’s efficacy—and the amount they can control—contributes to neuromuscular performance is unknown. Remove processing factors and improving maximizing an athlete’s reaction time may depend on sustaining physiology—using nutrition to enhance neuronal speed.

In this article, I’ll discuss the omega-3 that strengthens the brain and powers the mind, docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), a nutrient that most athletes are deficient in. DHA supplementation is in the best interest of all athletes as an ergogenic aid for the brain and eyes to enhance acute performance. It can also help support long-term health, especially for athletes suffering from the silent concussion epidemic.

Omega-3 Polyunsaturated Fatty Acids

Omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) are essential fatty acids critical for cardiovascular health (and for fighting inflammation) that must be obtained from the diet.

The key omega-3s are:

• Docosahexaenoic Acid (DHA): A long-chain omega-3 critical for the development and function of the brain and eyes throughout life. Every cell in the body contains DHA, and it is the main omega-3 in the eyes (93%) and brain (97%). DHA is most concentrated in brain cell (i.e., neuron) membranes, specifically where signaling occurs at the gap between two neurons (i.e., the synapse), and in the parts of the brain involved in memory and attention.
• Eicosapentaenoic Acid (EPA): A long-chain omega-3 critical for overall health.
• Alpha-Linolenic Acid (ALA): A short-chain omega-3 (found in plant-based sources) that is a building block for DHA and EPA, and an energy source. ALA converts to EPA (8%) and then DHA (0-4%). This conversion is not sufficient for optimal performance or health; and especially not enough to increase DHA in the brain. Therefore, we need to directly increase our DHA intake.

The Basics of DHA

We know that we need an appropriate supply of carbohydrates for energy, but we forget about an adequate supply of DHA for brain function. DHA is a building block for daily cognitive behavior and function.¹ DHA supports brain growth, neurotransmission, and function.

DHA “domains” form in cell membranes, bringing together signaling proteins that help cell signaling efficiency.

A high concentration of DHA in the neuronal membrane improves neuronal processes such as:

• Neuroplasticity: The brain’s ability to create and re-wire connections between neurons (important during learning and after injury).
• Neurogenesis: The growth and development of neurons.
• Neurite Outgrowth: More projections from neurons.
• Synaptogenesis: The formation of new synapses between neurons.
• Membrane Fluidity: Less resistance in the membrane (important for proper functioning).
• Membrane Protein Function: A change in enzyme activities that improves the transmission of visual signals.

These improvements lead to:

• Improved neuron signaling velocity
• Increased neurotransmission²

DHA can also increase blood flow to the brain during thinking because it decreases blood vessel constriction³ and affects gene transcription. Essentially, DHA enhances neurotransmission efficiency.

Addressing Deficient DHA Levels in Athletes

Today’s athletes, even with a solid nutritional foundation, may not perform at their potential because omega-3 intake is a missing link.

Brain plasticity is high during childhood and influenced by many environmental factors (e.g., nutrition). Consequently, DHA deficiency during growth and development causes significant learning and memory setbacks. During early life, omega-3 deficiency, combined with overconsumption of omega-6s (pro-inflammatory PUFAs prevalent in the Western diet), is associated with impaired psychomotor development⁴, attention, cognition⁵, and clarity of vision.^6,7

Omega-3 intake is a concern in pregnant women in the U.S., especially socioeconomically disadvantaged women who are more likely to have deficiencies that hurt their baby’s future health outcomes. Today’s athletes could’ve easily missed the window of opportunity for optimal brain development because of their mother’s lack of omega-3 during pregnancy and/or poor omega-3 intake during childhood.

Currently, no accepted definition exists regarding optimal omega-3 levels. Given that DHA is the primary fatty acid in the central nervous system (CNS), precise DHA levels aren’t easily obtainable. However, surrogate biomarkers can define DHA status. For example, DHA levels in red blood cells (i.e., erythrocyte) correlate with brain, cardiac and other tissue levels.

For cardiovascular health outcomes, an EPA and DHA blood cell level of less than 8% is detrimental for some populations. Yet, research shows athletes have omega-3 profiles less than 8%. One study found that, among athletes from an NCAA Division I school, 15% had an HS-Omega-3 Index below 4% (considered detrimental) and 84.5% had 4-8%. No student was at 8% or above.

DHA deficiency in athletes shows that sports nutrition needs to be about more than calorie intake, says @OnYourMark_NUTR. Share on X

This data is comparable to the omega-3 intake of individuals in the U.S., and further evidence that Americans don’t consume enough omega-3s.

Sports nutrition has a clear problem—we need to do more than just ensure athletes get calories. We’re missing out on fueling for memory, speed, reaction time, vision, and longevity.

The selection of performance supplements skews toward immediate performance because it’s concrete and tangible. Supplementation for the long-term is more abstract. Fortunately, DHA supplementation is in the athlete’s best interest for immediate performance and long-term health.

DHA is a first-string player in the supplement game, especially for deficient (and aging) athletes, because it stimulates brain and eye health at the molecular level.

Stimulating Brain Health

Forgetting people’s names and where you placed your keys is natural and not a major concern. However, decrements in reaction time and the inability to think clearly hurt brain health— and giving athletes the right amount of carbohydrates won’t solve the problem.

DHA is one of the most important pillars to maintain and strengthen our brain health, and it supports functions such as:

• Thinking
• Remembering
• Learning
• Planning
• Concentrating

As we age, it becomes more challenging to maintain a clear, active mind. All stressors endured throughout an athlete’s career (e.g., head trauma, chronic inflammation, poor nutrition) accelerate this challenge.

DHA strengthens the central mission of the brain to:

• React to challenges (ergogenic aid)
• Fight disease (preventative and healing factor)

Fortunately, coaches can quantify the effects of DHA supplementation more directly using reaction time and cognition.

Memory and Reaction Time

Enhancing memory through nutrition is not just for an aging population facing the inevitable cognitive decline. Working memory is critical to make quick and efficient decisions in team-sport situations where there are constraints, such as time pressure and processing many team members and opponents—like Tom Brady searching for an open receiver on a final play.

Time is of the essence in most sports: How quickly an athlete can assess a situation, make a decision, and carry out a behavior.

Reaction time involves perception (detection and comprehension) in the visual field, mental processing of the perception, a decision for the reaction, and time for the physical response. In Formula 1 racing, seconds—or reaction time—can determine the difference between first and second place.

#DHAsupplementation improves athlete performance and long-term health, says @OnYourMark_NUTR. Share on X

Young, healthy adults with a diet low in DHA may improve memory and reaction time simply by increasing their DHA intake.

A study reported that DHA supplementation of 1.16 g/day for six months improved reaction times of episodic (i.e., memory of an event) and working memory in healthy adults between 18 and 45 years old following a diet low in DHA. A series of computerized cognitive tests showed higher accuracy for episodic memory in women. Men showed greater benefit for reaction times (increased by 20%) from working memory, finishing working memory activities 223 milliseconds faster. Practically speaking, the average human reaction time is 250 milliseconds.

DHA supplementation increased erythrocyte DHA levels to 2.6% of total fatty acids. High DHA concentration in parts of the brain involved in memory and attention may have contributed to the reaction time improvement.^8,9 An increase in membrane fluidity (less resistance) and lower pro-inflammatory signaling molecules may have contributed to improved cognition.

Even with athletes that already have fast reaction times, there’s still room for improvement.

A study investigated the effects of 3.5 g/day of DHA in elite female soccer players over four weeks of training on processes involved with perceptual-motor efficiency (i.e., how sensory information is obtained, understood, and reacted to), such as complex reaction time, precision, and efficiency. Complex (or choice) reaction time is when there is more than one stimulus and multiple potential responses (e.g., a point guard determining who to pass the ball to), whereas a simple reaction time is a response to one stimulus (e.g., the reaction to the shotgun start of a sprint).

Using a multiple reaction times test, DHA supplementation led to significant improvements in complex reaction time and complex reaction efficiency (time and accuracy)—resulting in a significant improvement in neuromotor function. Improving complex reaction efficiency powers athletes to react and perform better with the technical and tactile aspects of sport.

Consider the brain science of basketball. There’s tactile skill of hands and fingers in handling, dribbling, passing, and shooting, which combine with physical training and the player’s individual memory and recall of the shot.

Imagine game-winning shots missed by Lebron James. How many times has Lebron said: “That was supposed to go in.”? His psychological efficacy was there, but missed shots could be at the expense of reduced complex reaction efficiency.

Every competition is the athlete’s complex testing environment. Fatigue during a game (when perceptual-motor efficiency typically decreases) likely lowers complex reaction efficiency. Improving perceptual-motor processes can result in lower complex reaction time and higher accuracy.

Head Trauma

The silent concussion (sometimes referred to as mild traumatic brain injury, mTBI, even though they are not the same) epidemic plagues collision sports. During a concussion, the brain hits against the skull. The primary injury is the repetitive exposure to impact forces, and mechanical injury stretches and rotates the brain nerve fibers.

Neurotransmitters are released, but become chaotic, and neurons are halted, leading to them becoming unable to conduct nerve impulses. The neurons are alive, but they can no longer function properly. This affects the things the neurons control (e.g., memory, speech).

Over time, this leads to secondary injury, which is the increase in:

• Oxidative stress (neuroinflammation)
• Neurodegeneration (breakdown of proteins, DNA, and lipids)

This neurodegeneration is associated with long-term cognitive deficits:

• Impaired memory and attention
• Emotional instability
• Changes in executive function (i.e., the ability to get things done)
• Sensorimotor deficits

Neuroprotection for Current Football Players

The high exposure to head trauma in American football calls for an increase in the resilience of a football player’s brain for neuroprotection.

DHA promotes neuroplasticity (i.e., repair, regenerate, and reconnect) and may serve as a nutraceutical that lends neuroprotective abilities.

DHA neuroprotection comes from its effect on axonal injury, which is central to head trauma consequences. The first study to support this investigated DHA supplementation using the Texas Christian University football team, and its effect on the amount of neurofilament-light (NF-L), a biomarker for head trauma found in cerebral spinal fluid, over the course of a season. Players received DHA supplementation (approximately five days per week at 2g, 4g, or 6g per day) or a placebo. Findings following the season included:

• Double NF-L levels in starters compared to non-starters.
• An increase in NF-L levels in players who did not suffer from diagnosable concussions (suggesting sub-concussive hits are a major factor).
• NF-L levels increased an average of 36% in players taking DHA compared to an average increase of 120% in those taking a placebo.

DHA is not just for recovery from acute head trauma, but also for the potential avoidance or delay of the progressive cumulative effects of brain injuries. Chronic neuroinflammation can continue for months to years following moderate and severe traumatic brain injury (TBI).^10,11,12,13 Each time a player has head trauma, they’re predisposed to a greater inflammatory reaction with the next trauma.

For the aging athlete, TBI is a major cause of disability (e.g., progressive neurological dysfunction).

Neuroprotective Medication for Retired Football Players

Many retired football players experience unhealthy brain aging. Chronic inflammation and neurodegeneration may be the etiology of neurodegenerative disease. DHA may serve as post-injury neuroprotective medication, especially since former players are at an increased risk for neurodegenerative disease, such as Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) and the less common, chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). A study found neurodegenerative mortality in 3,439 retired NFL players was three times higher than in the general U.S. population and four times higher for Alzheimer’s.

#DHAsupplementation has promise in the fight against former football players’ increased AD risks, says @OnYourMark_NUTR. Share on X

AD is neurodegenerative dementia with early impairment of memory and progressive loss of other cognitive functions. Just one TBI may contribute to an AD-like neuropathology. The axonal injury that comes from TBI leads to a buildup of plaques called amyloid-beta—a major characteristic of AD.

DHA is suggested as a preventative nutritional strategy in the prevention and treatment of AD. Given the links between AD and TBI, DHA supplementation has promise for fighting back against a former football player’s greatly increased risk for AD.

Neurotrophins

Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) is a neurotrophin (protein) critical for synaptic plasticity because it helps communication between neurons, neuron excitement, and the maintenance of learning, thinking, and memory.^14,15 Essentially, BDNF is the quarterback for maintaining the molecular foundation of cognitive function.

Oxidative stress from head trauma lowers BDNF. This hurts synaptic plasticity because oxidative damage changes cell membrane fluidity, breaks down the membrane, and results in poor neurotransmitter signaling. The faulty neurotransmitter signaling is part of the pathophysiology of mood disorders (e.g., depression) and potential suicidal behavior.

DHA normalizes BDNF levels, which serves as a healing effect following brain injury.^16,17

Note that BDNF manifests in the part of the brain (hippocampus) heavily associated with processing cognitive function.¹⁸ Improving cognitive function in response to trauma requires delaying the deterioration of the hippocampus, which DHA supplementation of 2g per day for one year has shown to help in those with mild cognitive impairment.

Certain blood biomarkers can be monitored to evaluate potential health consequences for athletes experiencing repetitive head trauma. Prolonged exposure to inflammatory markers is potentially harmful as it shifts the role of these molecules from neuroprotection to neuroinflammation.

Tumor necrosis factor- (TNF-) is an early responder to CNS damage. TNF- can be neuroprotective or neurotoxic. It’s a biomarker to monitor even though the time course toward toxicity is unknown. C-reactive protein levels following injury are associated with post-concussive syndrome symptoms. Coated platelet (i.e., proteins with high potential to promote blood clotting) levels can be elevated for up to nine years following mTBI.

Essentially, biomarkers can suggest any ongoing brain (e.g., BDNF) and inflammatory (e.g., TNF-) injury after repetitive, mild head trauma.

Improving Eye Health

Athletes need a sharp eye, as strong vision (typically taken for granted) helps process information coming at them quickly. Seeing better and reacting faster both rely on visual processing speed to the brain.

High concentrations of DHA occur in cell membranes of the retina and it’s critical to regenerating the visual pigment rhodopsin, which converts light into a chemical signal that creates visual images in the brain (i.e., improved transmission of visual signals). For example, reaction time to make a save in hockey relies on the speed of the neural signal and decision process. Aside from a learned reaction, goaltenders can improve their skill in blocking shots by improving neuronal speed in the eyes.

Furthermore, a new study first reported the molecular mechanisms behind DHA and visual function. Lower amounts of DHA in the retina result in abnormal discs in photoreceptor cells so DHA helps maintain photoreceptor cell disc shape.

It’s hard for athletes to maintain retinal function when they compete under challenging light conditions and/or look into the sun. DHA may reduce or fight chronic light exposure and oxidative stress in the eyes.

The difference between a home run and a foul ball may be nutritionally fueled vision, says @OnYourMark_NUTR. Share on X

DHA can also help combat dry eyes. A study found that 175 mg DHA taken daily for three months improved symptoms of dry eyes in healthy people. DHA may stimulate tear production to alleviate dry eyes, which is promising for athletes training in dry, windy conditions. The difference between a home run and a foul ball may be nutritionally fueled vision.

Fuel with DHA

DHA supplementation rewires the athlete so they can react quicker, increases visual processing speed, and serves as a neuroprotective shield for future brain, eye, and cardiovascular health. DHA fuels neurons that lead to functional performance benefits that can’t be achieved simply from physical training and carbohydrate loading. Implementing DHA supplementation is safe, easy, and reliable. It supports the brain and eye architecture needed to react within a short time frame and protects athletes against stress-related brain consequences.

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. Schmitt JAJ, Benton D, & Kallus KW. General methodological considerations for the assessment of nutritional influences on human cognitive functions. Eur J Nutr. 2005; 44:459-64.
2. Cunnane SC, Plourde M, Pifferi F, Begin M, Feart C, & Barberger-Gateau P. Fish, docosahexaenoic acid and Alzheimer’s disease. Prog Lipid Res. 2009; 48:239-256.
3. Jackson PA, Reay JL, Scholey AB, & Kennedy DO. DHA-rich oil modulates the cerebral haemodynamic response to cognitive tasks in healthy young adults: a near IR spectroscopy pilot study. Br J Nutr. 2012; 107:1093-1098.
4. Burgess JR, Stevens L, Zhang W, & Peck L. Long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids in children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. Am J Clin Nutr. 2000; 71:327S-330S.
5. Helland IB, Smith, L, Saarem K, Saugstad OD, & Drevon CA. Maternal supplementation with very-long-chain n-3 fatty acids during pregnancy and lactation augments children’s IQ at 4 years of age. Pediatr. 2003; 111:e39-e44.
6. Innis SM & Friesen RW. Essential n-3 fatty acids in pregnant women and early visual acuity maturation in term infants. Am J Clin Nutr. 2008; 87:548-557.
7. Sangiovanni JP, Parra-Cabrera S, Colditz GA, Berkey CS, & Dwyer JT. Meta-analysis of dietary essential fatty acids and long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids as they relate to visual resolution acuity in health preterm infants. Pediatr. 2000; 105:1292-1298.
8. Chung WL, Chen JJ, & Su HM. Fish oil supplementation of control and (n23) fatty acid-deficient male rats enhances reference and working memory performance and increases brain regional docosahexaenoic acid levels. J Nutr. 2008; 138:1165-71.
9. Gamoh S, Hashimoto M, Sugioka K, Hossain MS, Hata N, Misawa Y, & Masumura S. Chronic administration of docosahexaenoic acid improves reference memory-related learning ability in young rats. Neuroscience. 1999; 93:237-241.
10. Gentleman SM, Leclercq PD, Moyes L, Graham DI, Smith C, & Griffin WS, et al. Long-term intracerebral inflammatory response after traumatic brain injury. Forensic Sci Int. 2004; 146(2-3):97-104.
11. Johnson VE, Stewart JE, Begbie FD, Trojanowski JQ, Smith DH, & Stewart W. Inflammation and white matter degeneration persist for years after a single traumatic brain injury. Brain. 2013; 136(Pt 1): 28-42.
12. Smith C, Gentleman SM, Leclercq PD, Murray LS, Griffin WS, & Graham DI, et al. The neuroinflammatory response in humans after traumatic brain injury. Neuropathol Appl Neurobiol. 2013; 39(6): 654-666.
13. Ramlackhansingh AF, Brooks DJ, Greenwood RJ, Bose SK, Turkheimer FE, Kinnunen KM, et al. Inflammation after trauma: microglial activation and traumatic brain injury. Ann Neurol. 201; 70(3):374-383.
14. Zuccato C & Cattaneo E. Brain-derived neurotrophic factor in neurodegenerative diseases. Nat Rev Neurol. 2009; 5:311-322.
15. Egan MF, Kojima M, Callicott JH, Goldberg TE, Kolachana BS, Bertolino A, Zaitsev E, Gold B, Goldman D, Dean M, Lu B, & Weinberger DR. The BDNF val66met polymorphism affects activity-dependent secretion of BDNF and human memory and hippocampal function. Cell. 2003; 112:257-269.
16. Wu A, Ying Z, & Gomez-Pinilla F. Omega-3 fatty acids supplementation restores mechanisms that maintain brain homeostasis in traumatic brain injury. J Neurotrauma. 2007; 24:1587-1595.
17. Wu A, Ying Z, & Gomez-Pinilla F. Docosahexaenoic acid dietary supplementation enhances the effects of exercise on synaptic plasticity and cognition. Neuroscience. 2008; 155:751-759.
18. Kelly A, Laroche S, & Davis S. Activation of mitogen-activated protein kinase/extracellular signal-regulated kinase in hippocampal circuitry is required for consolidation and reconsolidation of recognition memory. J Neurosci. 2003; 23:5354-5360.

Neither your innate level of talent as a professional, nor the nature of your intentions, matter as they pertain to accomplishing what you want out of your career.

It’s true. This may seem like something we would tell our athletes before an early morning training session—not to destroy their confidence of course, but rather to teach the harsh reality that things don’t fall into our laps just because we want them to.

Look at the opening statement again. At face value, it certainly would check all the boxes as it pertains to things that an athlete would need to hear before a strenuous workout or important game. It reminds them that even if they are gifted, they are vulnerable to errors if they don’t stay focused on the goal, and that simply trying or wanting to do the right thing isn’t enough for the manifestation of “that thing.”

Yet, this isn’t a message meant for athletes; it’s meant for us. At times, we coaches are masters of meta representation—seeing the world how we think it is instead of how it really is. When it comes to facing reality, we are great at telling our athletes how to do it, yet shirk the notion that there are ways we can continually grow as well (and I don’t mean “grow” by speed-reading another book or fitting in another training session).

Solving problems and gaining knowledge require more than scanning with your eyes, nodding your head, and even taking notes. More training or more reading doesn’t tend to be a problem for us, at least in the grand scheme of things. Improving in the sense to which I am referring lies in broadening the influence we can have on the field in general, and even across other domains. I’m talking about improving not only the impact of what we do, but also what is known as the “option value” of what we do.

Both are key as they pertain to maximizing the quality of our craftsmanship as strength coaches, as well as improving our career sustainability. These are two things that this article, as well as a larger project that I will work on over the next 6-18 months, are dedicated to.

But first, let’s define “option value.” For the most part, it is what it sounds like, and represented by the notion that it is always worth having the option to do something (anything), even if you never actually do it. This is because it increases the range of possibilities, some of which may be better than your current alternatives. You could also think of option value as the old investment strategy known as diversification.

You should NOT think of it is as opportunism. An opportunist is typically characterized as someone who will jump at nearly ANY opportunity and is incessantly seduced by the “grass is greener” phenomena. Diversification, on the other hand, allows for longer term investments to play out over time, thus giving you the possibility of either steadier gains over the long haul or, at the very least, a more robust buffer against potentially large losses if things go south. And in our field, they tend to go south rather quickly once the scoreboard is not in our team’s favor and the finger-pointing begins.

In my last article, “Cannibalizing Our Own: How Fear, Ego, and Insecurity Are Eroding Opportunities for Strength and Conditioning Coaches,” I discussed the rampant contagion that infects our way of thinking and competing (often showcased by pervasive undercutting of one another), and how this pathology often centers around fear, ego, and pride. These things certainly limit our option value to a degree, but there are also other man-made viruses to consider.

In many instances, it is not just our lack of understanding of how scaling something of value is not synonymous with “selling out” or our widespread practice of holding everything we do too tightly to the chest as if someone is going to steal our “prized invention,” but also that we generally don’t have many career options that allow us to diversify our broader impact while simultaneously honing our craft. It is not uncommon to hear of coaches who work for organizations, teams, or companies that do not allow them to speak, consult, and sometimes even interact online with others in the field.

I’ve been a part of a couple of situations like this myself, and while I couldn’t have cared less at first, eventually it became maddening. This was mainly because I began meeting and becoming friends with more and more colleagues outside of my walls of direct employment. They shared similar interests or unique ideas and wanted to collaborate on a level that would potentially benefit more people in the field or lead to original or more applied research and practice. But time and time again, I found myself having to tell them “no” for various reasons beyond my control.

These limitations often led to a form of resentment, as I was happy to even volunteer some of the little spare time I had in order to contribute to the surrounding field more. However, I didn’t want to risk reprimands on behalf of my previous employer(s), who I was, and still am, grateful to for the various other opportunities they provided that helped me develop as a coach.

There are many of you who know what this feels like. Some of you are under even more restrictions.

So those affected watch, and friction builds as the coaches they believe themselves to be in competition with on some level seem to get included in more projects or more events, or accrue unique opportunities. Sometimes, they combat their frustration by denying that they wanted to be a part of any of these extracurricular initiatives in the first place, and/or condemning anyone who does not appear to be working 24/7. They spew anger, they break into factions, and the cycle begins again.

That is, until one person, or a group of people, decides to stop the wheel from turning, or create an alternative that shapes a new path by reminding people of the original mission of the collective and how it can evolve just as any other field does over the course of time. It is then and only then, that previous friction transforms into traction and a movement begins that allows practitioners in that field to explore a new route.

The Cold, Hard Facts

Coaches want a change. Some may not openly admit it, some may reserve their admission for when they’re behind closed doors, and some may fight it before they finally submit or join. But over the past 5-10 years, the chatter has increased. And while the tone is not always deafeningly audible, when the words are right and the mission is clear, a whisper can be louder than a roar.

This is elucidated not only by the numerous conversations you can easily overhear or observe while at clinics and conferences, and on message boards and the like, but also through the reception of direct responses themselves. Recently, I collaborated with a third-party research firm I am also working with for a future project. We sent a survey to fellow strength and conditioning coaches to learn more about their pain points, fears, annoyances, daily schedule, professional aspirations, and the like. More than 1,500 responded in a little over 48 hours.

Fifteen hundred! That’s more than two times the estimated number of workers who initially helped build the Brooklyn Bridge during the late 1800s.

All answers were 100% anonymous and none of the questions (aside from asking their gender) forced a choice, as we wanted to give coaches free reign to share their thoughts and experiences.

These were just some of the common themes:

• Not wanting to find themselves or their families “stuck” in a cycle of low-paying jobs with little to no job security or no opportunity for advancement.
• Gender inequality as it pertains to opportunities for female strength coaches.
• Not having the opportunity to have their work recognized. Not for pride purposes, but rather because they value and respect the craft and simply want to connect with others who are like-minded.
• Coaches in various team settings (collegiate and professional), feeling as if they aren’t allowed to make the difference that they could be making.
• Coaches in the private sector tired of not being respected or seen as “true strength coaches” despite working with diverse groups of athletes year-round.
• Fear among coaches in general that they will have to choose another vocation in order to provide for their families.
• Fear of being viewed as a “sell-out” or fired if they do get more involved or become more visible within the industry.

Most of these may not surprise you. Few, if any, are “new” issues. What is surprising is how many coaches want to be more involved and learn more from an entrepreneurial standpoint as well, since many of them feel as if it may be the only way they can afford to stay in the profession unless they land a job with a significantly higher salary or more relative freedom.

This wasn’t always the case, as I remember being a lowly grad assistant and watching mobs of self-proclaimed S&C “purists” attack or try to discredit anyone who put a product out. I remember it because I felt the same way. It was the prominent theme in parts of the collegiate setting exposed to me to at the time, and numerous other coaches with experience in that realm have written about it as well.

At that point in my career, I didn’t care about anything other than writing workouts, reading training-related research, and coaching my groups. I didn’t have many other interests outside of S&C and rightfully so, since I was still getting started in my career and needed to put in the time and due diligence. I also didn’t have a family to support, or the perspective that I gained later in my career after working with military, amputees, youth, high school, and pro athletes who moved/trained in the weight rooms as if they had never received instruction.

In other words, my problems at that point in my life were relatively “local” in scope, and it seemed like I couldn’t go down the rabbit hole enough in the vacuum in which I operated, studying complex training theory and research that was sometimes so narrow in scope that the number of variables controlled for made it nearly impossible for a true coach to actually apply much or any of it. Regardless, I wanted to be one of the best, so I stayed in the saddle and eschewed any notion that I someday would “put myself out there” or promote anything in any way, shape, or form.

Leading effectively at the highest level eventually requires some semblance of ability to scale, @Coach_BrettB. Share on X

The thought of creating or promoting something left a saccharin taste in my mouth, as I thought doing the “right thing” in our field essentially meant ceasing to exist in any public forum or form and just doing the work. This is noble in some respects, as none of us get into this field to be “rock stars,” but we do get into it to help others. Leading effectively at the highest level eventually requires some semblance of the ability to scale.

Despite what I thought about being more vocal or visible during the first half of my career, when I only had to support myself, several circumstances occurred later, after I got married. The ever-growing financial responsibilities tied to adulthood taught me that I needed to start thinking about my future and career in more ways than just working to increase my athletes’ deadlift maxes. It became clear that in order to both support my family and the field I love, I would eventually have to up the ante and grow in some ways that would either make me personally uncomfortable, or leave me and my wife incapable of financially supporting the family and personal/professional life we both wanted to have.

So, I jumped. I took risk after risk and, in some ways, even took a few on the chin. But the new skills and perspective that I built during that time allowed me to parry, block, and counter a few blows that could have served as career haymakers had I not been resourceful. During my time as a competitive amateur, one of the best boxing coaches I ever worked with drilled it into my head early and often that a great defense will always open up versatile offensive strategies. “Just keep your hands up, lead with the jab and your head on a swivel, and you’ll be on your way,” he said. I still take that to heart in everything I do to this day.

But what exactly does a good offensive and defensive strategy look like as it pertains to those out there who perhaps feel the same way that I did early on in my career (and sometimes still do to this day), along with the 1,500+ responders to the survey who may be hesitant about lacing up the gloves and entering the arena?

Where and how do they start, considering they know the minute they open their mouths, give a presentation, or write an article, the floodgates are now forever open to a deluge of criticism? This is a topic I discussed with someone who was perhaps one of my toughest critics when I began sharing a bit more a few years back. Many of you know him very well: Carl Valle.

At a recent conference, Carl, Keenan Robinson—who is an excellent coach in his own right—and I discussed how vexing it can be to live in a time where people within our field clamor for others to share openly. Yet, if you do, they chastise you as “self-promoting,” and if you don’t then you are “hiding.” This dichotomy itself portends the need for change in this sphere since the field is made better by those who participate in raw sharing. Raw sharing is a vehicle necessary to chauffeur the act of mentoring, which is another utility becoming scarce in the post-scarcity world we now live in.

In order to create more opportunities, we need more coaches who are not scared to branch out and break the mold. I’ve attended conferences outside of the scope of strength and conditioning for professional development and have seen brain surgeons presenting and engaging audiences indirectly related to the understanding and enhancement of their craft, so I think we can all take some time away from our programming templates and agility drill databases to share a few thoughts that others may benefit from as well.

To create more opportunities, we need coaches who aren’t scared to branch out and break the mold, says @Coach_BrettB. Share on X

Briding vs. Bonding

One thing we know for sure regarding human behavior is that within most networks of any kind, there is a tendency for “cliques” to form (common bonds or personal ties). When these networks or cliques stay too close to the loop they are immediately involved in, contribute to, or otherwise perpetuate, they create information redundancy. This is what you see play out nearly every day in the news and within social media.

For example, strength coaches often share training-related articles on the same stuff over and over (some share without even actually reading them), only because someone else did it or because they liked the headline or undertone. Sure, some of them do this because it is something they are passionate about, but many do it out of politeness or affiliation since articles now come out so fast that even the most voracious of readers would have to be the consummate recluse to have any chance at keeping up with everything out there—yet alone fully absorb the content within.

Thus, we create this subconscious and relentless message to others that, regardless of the article, if 10-20 people retweet it then they MUST READ THIS to stay in the loop. But sometimes, a loop is a bad thing to stay in. Sometimes, it’s better to find a gap.

Fortunately, it only takes a few people to share something with a slightly different narrative or to identify a gap—even if they are also in the same network or clique—in order to turn bonding ties (typically defined by redundancy) into bridging ties (typically defined by utility and/or efficiency.) This verbiage, inspired by the work of author Joshua Cooper Ramo, leads to the creation of “small world networks,” which tend to work together in a much more efficient manner than a widespread network. A simpler way to think of this is as a form of adaptive decentralized command.

General Stanley McChrystal, and numerous others within the business and military realm, have documented the advantages to operating within a decentralized command. These include the ability to adapt, scale, communicate, and make decisions even when operating in an environment that is always changing—much as it is in the world of coaching. It is all just a matter of keeping the defined objective top of mind, identifying the possible roads on the map you can take to arrive at the desired destination, and finding the most appropriate and effective narrative you can use to shape the path for others so they, too, can learn on the fly and be set up for success.

Diving In: Ways to Expand and Develop

Many of the industry pain-point have persisted for so long partly due to the fact that we haven’t come together to create a roadmap for responsible scaling, or even discussed a framework as to how we can rid the strength and conditioning industry of this incessant and highly popularized “grinding” mentality. By taking a more conscious approach to our career, we can alchemize previous roadblocks and missed opportunities and transform them into more holistic ways that serve to advance both our levels of diverse exposure and experience. The suggestions below aren’t the universal linchpins that will solve industry problems in totality, but absorbing their core message and adapting them into your daily practice serves as a strong starting point to illuminating a future path.

Create a Diverse Network

If the only people you spend time around are those within your specific domain then you dramatically increase the magnitude of your bias. We have coaches who claim to know the thoughts and beliefs of others who they have spent little to no time around just because they have read a few of their 140-character tweets. Yet shortly afterward, they’ve shared a post of their own discussing the danger of only reading the abstract or “results” section of a full journal article someone posted on speed development. Oh, the irony.

Leave the snap judgments to our amygdala and posterior cingulate cortex. In the meantime, get to know coaches outside of your network who work in the team, private, or tactical sectors. Spend a day or two (maybe even a week) in their environment and seek to understand instead of always seeking to compare. This also applies to reaching out to those in completely different vocations.

Doctors, dentists, entrepreneurs, and yes, EVEN lawyers may have something to teach you that can help you become more proficient as a coach. That whole “blank slate” mentality that we promulgate as it pertains to learning more about training does wondrous things when we also apply it to learning more about people.

Put Skin in the Game

Putting skin in the game allows us to harden our abilities to adapt and grow, both personally and professionally. Adapting is not the same as “selling out.” Repeat that to yourself in a chant-like mantra while squatting if need be. This pertains to your willingness to speak at conferences or workshops, share programming examples, write a book, seek out a mentor in an unrelated field, and even become more of an entrepreneur. “Selling out” is what happens when you compromise your values due to ego and greed, not because someone decides to get involved, create an opportunity, or share something they are passionate about in a widespread manner.

Repeat this to yourself: Adapting is not the same as ‘selling out,’ says @Coach_BrettB. Share on X

We live in an absolutely unparalleled era, where we see former military leaders such as Jocko Willink serving as consultants to Fortune 500 businesses, former football coaches going on to have rewarding careers in commentating and real estate, and music pioneers such as Dr. Dre having a hand in creating Beats headphones and Apple Music. Yet, despite these examples of people who are true to their craft and accomplished bona fide professionals branching out, it is considered “odd” if a strength and conditioning coach investigates anything aside from “sets and reps” or wants to create a platform where others can do the same.

Coaches who are new to the field ABSOLUTELY must hone their craft, and start with a clear understanding and sound application of the fundamental principles involved with strength and conditioning. But at some point in their career, somebody must encourage them to seek inspiration from outside of their specific domain if they hope to indelibly improve the conditions within it. We should not send the message to fellow coaches that it is acceptable for CEOs, military leaders, sport coaches, musicians, and many others to go on and expand their skillset, while we remain stagnant. We have tremendous value to share, and a platform to help more people and improve our field. In short, be wary of taking advice from anyone who tells you the path to mastery is through fixation as opposed to fluidity.

Take the Unpopular Route

Although I write articles like this, and wrote a book at the age of 31, it may not seem to some that I have enough life experience to talk about “taking risks.” That’s OK. I’ve grown to accept the fact that even if I share rather intimate details about my background, my early hospitalization, my upbringing, and the fact that I have lived in eight states and moved nearly 15 times, some people will always only see my age and care little about the true definition of “life experience.”

Regardless, there have been more than a few times in my life thus far when I’ve made professional choices that I never thought I would, and went out on a limb not knowing how things would turn out. One involved the first opportunity that I ever had to join the NFL as a strength and conditioning coach. I had just accepted a new job, put my house up for sale, and given my word to a new employer when I had an official offer extended to me to join “The League.” This was something I had wanted for a long time, but now, due to extraneous factors and me having already given my word to someone, I had to turn the opportunity down. At the time, I would have much rather taken that job, but I felt doing so would have degraded my character and the values on which I was raised.

Few decisions in my professional career trumped this (so far) in terms of difficulty and personal conflict. Especially because, once others heard about it, coaches I didn’t even know called to tell me that I was “selfish” for turning down a role most would kill for. They couldn’t have cared less about my reason for doing so.

Another time I made an “unpopular” choice was related to me being an early adopter of social media. I referenced this briefly in the intro to this article. When I was a both a volunteer S&C coach at the University of Nebraska and a graduate assistant strength coach at Southern Illinois, we had it drilled into us that being involved with social media or any other commercial venture was the first step towards venturing into “guru” territory. This seemed to be the pervasive belief in the team setting both at the collegiate and professional level. And I can understand why for multiple reasons.

First, at the time a lot of the information shared was garbage. Many of the social media vehicles were still in their infancy and few people understood the concept of these types of networks and how to maximize their potential. I had little interest in them. As I mentioned at the beginning of this article, at that time in my career all I wanted to do was coach, read, and train.

Second, from a social media standpoint, the prevailing thought was that if you were posting then you certainly were NOT coaching and NOBODY wanted to give anyone the idea or impression that they were not on the floor 16+ hours a day, “grinding.” But then, a funny thing happened. Universities started needing the help of S&C departments for recruiting and branding purposes, private sector facilities needed to show that they weren’t as secretive as some made them out to be, and of course some wackadoo personal trainer types wanted to make a name for themselves by selling snake oil. (There is always one bad apple spoiling it for the bunch, isn’t there?)

But now, look at where we sit. These kinds of networks and the sharing that happens within them are not completely without their warts, but researchers can share information faster and farther than ever, coaches can connect across the globe to learn from one another, and articles sharing practical examples of various training and coaching strategies can be added to the reading lists of young professionals. This is also true for those who have slowly begun to participate in podcasts, webinars, roundtables, and the like.

I was once told that it doesn’t take an intelligent man to discover the faults in the world around him, and I firmly believe that to be true. Social media can be an absolute bane and I find myself wanting to do less and less of it, but then I remind myself of the reason I moved to the “dark side” in the first place—to share tips and thoughts that I wish someone would have shared with me. I never had a true mentor, and it took one of my NFL athletes to slap me upside the head one day and say, “I hear you teaching your interns all of the time. Why not share this stuff on social media and help more people?” I had no good, non-meathead/tough-guy response, so I signed up for a Twitter account.

So, while I may not yet have a fully gray beard or understand the meaning of life, I do know that the surefire way to be and stay average is to do the same things as most people do, while concomitantly worrying about what everyone thinks about you.

Build a Voice, Not a Brand

None of us needs to have all the answers in order to share something of value. Tell it like it is and call it as you see it. If people agree, they’ll support and interact—if not, they won’t. Don’t force it.

I never started sharing because I wanted my name to be out there. I started sharing because I never had a direct mentor and one of my athletes challenged me to share the information that I wish someone would have told me when I was starting out and trying to navigate the coaching landscape.

Call it as you see it. If people agree, they'll support you—if not, they won't. Don’t force it, says @Coach_BrettB. Share on X

My early voice was 75% passion and 25% direction. It evolved as my career and my level of understanding of what seemed to be missing in our field evolved. I used to speak on topics solely related to programming, strength/power, and agility, as I had the most interest in those topics. However, as I started to recognize more gaps and hear countless voices talking about the same thing, I began to identify other avenues where I could perhaps provide more value.

There is a double-edged sword in doing this, as you risk people pigeonholing you as the “(fill in the blank) guy/girl.” I say let them. Musicians and actors deal with the same thing. Stay in the game long enough to spread helpful messaging and eventually people forget about that “one album” and instead learn to appreciate you for your entire catalog.

Study Other Professions

The answer to solving a problem rarely lies in looking at it from a more magnified perspective. Sometimes it takes removing yourself from a thought, studying something else, and allowing an “incubation period” to take place, before re-examining the issue with a renewed and more enlightened perspective.

I’m going to make a bold claim here, as I believe the answers we seek within coaching science and strength and conditioning will not ONLY be found by studying these things directly, but by applying the principles and lessons from other domains and adapting them for our own environments.

Put down the leadership books and training manuals for a bit and read something else—anything else—from the autobiography of a chef to a dissection of the Battle at Waterloo. Your problems are not unique and have likely been solved countless times over by multiple people in other fields. Seek out their stories and solutions.

Don’t Devalue Your Work, Your Family, or the Craft

I will keep this one short and sweet. Understand that nobody and no company will ever fully pay you what you are worth. Doing so doesn’t benefit their bottom line. They will also never take you seriously if you don’t first take yourself seriously.

If you worked your butt off to pay for an education; did your due diligence with research, internships, and entry-level positions; and deliver quality coaching, programming, and logistical management, then you should NEVER feel bad about turning down a role or opportunity that downplays or disrespects your abilities or what you can bring to the table. I realize this is maddening to hear, as the anxiety eats at us, knowing that we may be in trouble if we turn down a job and that what I mentioned may be easy to say but not do. I understand.

As I write this, I am self-employed for the first time in my life, and I’m not a “trust fund baby” by any stretch of the imagination. I have a family that loves me, but there is no massive safety net to catch me, as everyone has their own problems to deal with. I coach my butt off, I speak, and I do some consulting. My wife and I hope to have kids soon. This was a mutual decision and numerous job opportunities have come and gone, but none felt like the right fit for us and our long-term goals. So, we took a gamble and moved across the country, deciding to bet on ourselves.

Most people in our field make decisions based on their fears instead of their values, says @Coach_BrettB. Share on X

The cynic will read this and perhaps subvocalize terms such as “prima donna,” but if so they are not reading between the lines. There is a tremendous quote from Roy Disney that states: “When your values are clear to you, making decisions becomes easier.” I assert that most people in our field (and life in general) make career decisions based on their fears instead of their values. This isn’t always the case, but when times get tough and the pressure is high, it rings true more often than not.

Don’t be scared to bet on yourself, and don’t jump at just any opportunity. If you are good at what you do, treat others with respect, and put yourself out there, another offer will come along. It may take some time and a few detours, but both are OK and will likely help you grow even more. It’s worth remembering that, although it is true within the purview of mathematics that the quickest route between two points may be a straight line, that same principle rarely rings true as it pertains to real life or your career path.

Do Things You Hate

I know that this runs counterintuitive to the claim that we should only do what we love to do, but if we did that, where would the growth come from? The discomfort quotient? How would we learn to endure during the times we must stretch ourselves to see an unpleasant task through to its completion? “Only do what you love to do” is great advice for a dreamer, but not a doer.

For example, I absolutely hate writing. Truly. Yes, I wrote a book (and actually wrote it—there was no ghostwriter), but I’d be lying if I told you I enjoyed the process. It was frustrating to no end and everything that Steven Pressfield alludes to in his book, The War of Art, when he mentions the process of overcoming “the resistance.” My disdain for writing is also the reason you can search and search, yet find very little written by me (aside from my research on attentional focus, agility, and motor learning while pursuing my master’s degree).

I’m a coach first, not a writer. I’m also an inherently kinetic and somewhat hyperactive individual who tends to communicate better orally or when I am face to face with someone. When my brother and I were young, our parents went to great lengths to instill in us the value of thoughtful and purposeful communication. Since then, I have always found it easier to avoid misunderstandings, provide context for certain opinions, and just interact with others more thoughtfully and seamlessly when actually speaking to them.

I do not enjoy writing, but I understand the value it provides in sharing helpful ideas in a more widespread manner. So, I am working on it and agreed to do more of it for at least the next year as an experiment and personal test.

Doing things that you do not like doing can sometimes be the best thing for you personally and professionally. It’s a matter of sacrificing pleasure for purpose, and it helps you better understand and appreciate a process that you otherwise would be unfamiliar with and perhaps may even be tremendously skilled at.

Don’t Be a ____!

I’m always equal parts amazed and disappointed when a coach or former intern who started down a humble and honest path lands a job with a major school or professional sports team, lives the life for a bit, and slowly evolves into someone filled with pride and pomposity after confusing the accomplishments of their athletes or organization as their own. The world of S&C is a small one, and Vern Gambetta was right when he once said that these coaches often forget they will see the same people on their way back down that they saw during their climb up.

If you are fortunate enough to attain one of these roles, just remember that regardless of what you consider your “status” to be, few people, if any, will be willing to roll out the red carpet for you if you stomped all over it with muddy boots the last time around. To last in this field, you continually need the help and support of those around you. Be grateful for it, pay it forward, and remember that value is based on what you contribute to the field as opposed to what you take from it.

To last in this field, you will continually need the help and support of those around you, says @Coach_BrettB. Share on X

You can use your imagination to fill in the blank left on the subtitle above, but you shouldn’t need one to remember where you came from and those who helped you along the way.

Know When to Walk Away

In their 2013 book, Fear Your Strengths, authors Robert Kaiser and Robert Kaplan say that in their collective 50 years of business consulting and executive leadership, they’ve seen nearly every virtue taken too far. “We’ve seen confidence to the point of hubris and humility to the point of diminishing oneself. We’ve seen vision drift into aimless dreaming and focus narrow down to tunnel vision. Show us a strength, and we’ll show you an example where its overuse has compromised performance and probably even derailed a career.”

In short, it doesn’t take much for a virtue to become a vice. As coaches, we pride ourselves on being virtuous in all things and holding true to our word. This is smart and honorable, until it isn’t. Always give your best, regardless of the situation you find yourself in, but don’t be blind to what is going on around you. Infections often spread before we feel the symptoms associated with the illness. There are times when it is smart to fight for what you believe in, and there are times when you need to realize that cutting ties and moving on is in your best interest, as well as the interests of your athletes and the people around you.

Cross the Line

This “Maginot Line”-like divide between coaches in the team and private sectors is not only becoming more and more ridiculous, but also detrimental. Some of the rumors surrounding both are true, while others are fabricated, embellished, or even illusory. Every coach has their own opinions based upon their own experiences and preferences. Both settings have their relative advantages, but more coaches should stop worrying about what is “better” and worry more about being in one or the other for the right reasons.

Coaches in the team setting have enough issues to deal with, and don’t need a gaggle of coaches trying to jump ship just so they can brag about championships or who they coach, or being seen on the sidelines during primetime TV. And coaches at respectable private sector facilities don’t need any more pretenders trying to infect their space with gimmicks, gadgets, and training that makes everyone in the space look like hustlers by default. Both the team setting and private sectors are hard work and both have their mix of great coaches and goons. It is more important to realize that athletes need both, and will continue to train in both for a variety of reasons.

Additionally, with the way CBAs and off-seasons are structured across various professional sports, coaches in both settings benefit from increased levels of communication and collaboration when they have the best interest of the athlete at heart. Even though I am currently in the private sector, I am fortunate to have experienced the team side as well. I had the support of some forward-thinking and pragmatic coaches and therapists within that setting who not only welcomed collaboration, but fostered it, and were kind enough to refer some of their athletes to me.

This relationship was built on trust, not hype videos. They know my interest is not in upselling and witnessed firsthand my adherence to a “fundamentals not fluff” type of mentality. I’m not special in this regard. Many other private sector coaches believe in this as well, yet often get typecast as “gurus” or “trainers” in large part because of the way popular media or Instagram mavens portray the training process.

Let’s not forget that within both settings there are coaches who have experience on both sides, and chose one or the other for a variety of reasons, including family, necessity, geography, and opportunity. So how do you know when you’ve made the wrong choice? It’s when you decided upon one or the other, not because of any points mentioned in the previous sentence, but rather because of vanity.

Embrace a Little Career Chaos

The war you prepare for is rarely the war you get. This was a main theme echoed by a friend of mine who fought in the war in Afghanistan, deploying six times in a span of less than five years for various missions. It was more than 115 degrees Fahrenheit in Phoenix, and we were hiking because, well, he was visiting and he wanted to go for a hike. I don’t make it a point to argue with people who carry numerous guns on them at all times, and I never forgot that phrase as it has rung true countless times for me since.

Thinking back far enough, it also rang true when I was in the hospital as a teenager, when I moved across the country to pursue my first unpaid coaching internship, after I wrote my first program for three teams I was in charge of and had to lead them through it, when I sat down to try and write the first page of my book, and also when I married my wife.

In short, some of the most rewarding times of my personal and professional lives came during times of absolute chaos. And believe me, the examples listed above are just the ones that wouldn’t require additional context or a non-disclosure agreement of some sort!

Embracing chaos helps you push past the limits of your current level of behavioral conditioning, says @Coach_BrettB. Share on X

Jokes aside, these moments illustrate the point that if you dive in and diversify, chaos becomes a bridge, not a tomb. To build it and cross it requires us to continually adapt to the landscape. That’s the definition of sustainability: to uphold, defend, and maintain a certain level. Embracing chaos helps you to push past the limits of your current level of conditioning (as it pertains to behavior).

Adapt to chaos by following these five piece of advice:

1. Defy all categories and labels.
2. Constantly reinvent yourself.
3. Subvert your (non-beneficial) patterns.
4. Create a sense of destiny for your mission as a professional.
5. Don’t be afraid to bet on yourself.

The Road Ahead: See Things as They Are

Day by day, the landscape of our field continues to evolve. And while even those in the most protected or coveted of positions may enjoy abundance and asylum, both are temporary in a world where there are far more coaches than there are great job opportunities, or there is loyalty among our employers.

Over the years, many of you witnessed countless role changes. Even in circumstances where we considered someone as nearly “bulletproof,” we saw previously respected strength coach struggle to find new footing.

Keep in mind that our greatest threat as coaches is not getting burnt out. Instead, it’s that our minds may become stagnant because of the Pavlovian responses we’ve developed to the promise that if we just “stick it out” long enough we will be OK. In this case, our will is not enough—we will also require wit.

As a profession, we all need to learn to become every bit as proactive about the management of our careers and our futures as we are with the management of our athletes’ training programs and their outcomes. The conversations that begin because of articles like this or my previous one are a start, but it will take far more of us providing suggestions and solutions to effectively bridge the gap and spark the necessary action to wake up those who can have the greatest impact.

Respecting the craft is not just a matter of adhering to best practices, but also a matter of ensuring the career we chose and the field we love lasts and evolves in a way that is better for future coaches than it was for us. This will only come from action, as anyone can talk a good game and stir up the peanut gallery. It takes a willingness to step into unfamiliar and sometimes unpopular territory for us to shape a path to sustainability.

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

Upon reading a recent SimpliFaster article about the hand supported split squat and its cousin, the hand supported rear foot elevated (HSRFE) split squat, I was excited that others were finding outcomes similar to mine. I’ve recently added the HSRFE as a staple for my collegiate ice hockey team.

I’ve used the Rear Foot Elevated (RFE) split squat as our primary lower body push exercise for about a decade because I see tremendous benefit to unilateral strength development. Along with a few colleagues, I’ve probably been more aggressive than most when programming absolute loads with this movement–it’s our chief maximal strength tool for the lower body.

Evolving Past Dumbbells for Single Leg Training

Until the past year, we almost exclusively used a combination of dumbbells and weight vests to acquire load in the RFE. We did this as a safety measure; early in my career, I had a near catastrophic incident with an athlete under my direction who was performing the lift in the classic barbell back squat position. I vowed never to use a barbell with this lift again.

The nature of the lift when performed with a traditional barbell puts the load very far away from the center of mass. This means that any slight lateral deviation of the bar becomes almost impossible to correct, and a complete loss of balance may ensue. It’s particularly dangerous with high loads, especially if the loss of balance loss occurs toward the side of the lead leg. Even if the athlete can get their back leg quickly onto the ground, momentum takes them in the other direction. It’s a recipe for disaster.

At the time of the near catastrophe, we were able to continue progressing load with other tools in a much safer manner. Heavy dumbbells allowed us to adequately load the exercise while keeping the weight much closer to the body. They also provided an easy “out” if the athlete lost balance by simply dumping the dumbbells.

Fast-forward eight to nine years. Logistical concerns, not the athletes’ physical abilities, were constraining progress in the lift. Performing the exercise with 300+lbs was now somewhat routine with our higher training age hockey players. It had become unwieldy, however, to combine enough vests with heavy dumbbells. Grip strength also started to become an issue.

The undertaking of putting on five 20lbs vests, or one of our big 80lbs monsters, along with picking up and positioning 135lbs dumbbells became so cumbersome that it took away from the effectiveness of the lift and the flow of the training session. Naysayers focused on these limitations, along with stability demands, to minimize the RFE’s effectiveness.

Cue the Safety Squat Bar

Admittedly, and somewhat embarrassingly, I’d never used a safety squat bar (SSB). As luck would have it, our Olympic Sports facility had recently purchased a few, specifically for our baseball players. I began to play around with the SSB, experimenting on myself. (I also played around with the Pit Shark and an RFE set up–that was interesting!)

Lo and behold, the SSB worked pretty well with my RFE training. Balance, however, was still a concern. The center of mass was certainly more favorable with this bar, but the load was still higher up and further away from the body than our normal set up with dumbbells which made stabilization a major limiting factor to the lift.

Switching to the Hands Supported RFE

That’s when I started to use the hands supported variation, otherwise known as the Hatfield Squat. Again, another revelation–balance and stability concerns were now almost non-existent. Loads that were previously outside the realm of possibility for myself were becoming easily achievable. I started to wonder where this could progress from an absolute strength perspective.

Of course, as I discussed my thoughts with friends and colleagues, questions began to arise about the efficacy of performing the lift in this manner:

• “What about the stability demand of the RFE? Isn’t that part of the point?”
• “Are the spinal loads we wanted to get away from now back in question?”
• “Are these loads exasperating hip and groin stress potentially implicated in sports hernia problems prevalent in the ice hockey population?”

All good questions. And more will certainly come, but my current thinking is as follows:

• We are not using this lift to challenge stability. It’s our maximal strength tool. We challenge stability elsewhere so minimizing the stability demand is not a problem in this scenario.
• While it’s always dangerous to assume relevance to a study of N=1, my personal experience was very eye-opening. I have a history of low back and hip problems. While performing this lift, however, I had a complete lack of back pain and hip dysfunction after very aggressively, and very consistently, loading beyond any relative or absolute measure of intensity at which I’d previously trained. Also, by the end of the summer’s “experiment,” we did not have a single issue or problem reported by any of our 29 players–even those with previous incidents of back pain. I believe these results are due in large part to the posture one assumes using the SSB. We maintain a fairly narrow stance, with a vertical back femur in the bottom position, so that the knee, hip, and shoulder are all aligned. The stance allows the force of the bar to be almost entirely compressive with very little, if any, shear force at the lumbar spine.
• Regarding spinal loading and potential injury or dysfunction, we reached the same conclusion about the added anterior hip and adductor stress; this has not been a concern or complaint from our players whatsoever, so long as we maintain a proper setup. I also think that using the hands as points of balance helps create trunk stability, which leads to proper and appropriate hip mobility. It becomes easier to get into a “ribs down” position, and the lats can engage to facilitate a cylindrical stability effect on the spine. All this combines to create a very stable position for the prime movers to optimally create force without limiting performance and without injury creating energy leaks.

Players reached at least double bodyweight for a true 1RM with SSB and HSRFE split squats, says @DMcConnell29. Share on X

Since we’ve included the SSB and the HSRFE into our training program, we’ve seen some astonishing results. All of our veteran players reached at least double bodyweight for a true 1RM. I pulled the plug on testing for our two players with the highest load at 515lbs. We have a team record number of players over a 30” counter movement jump. Although there are many elements in our program that contribute to explosiveness and power output, our maximal strength development is most likely a major contributing factor.

Video 1. This video shows the typical mechanics of a rear foot elevated split squat while holding the rack for safety purposes. Heavy loads are possible with hand support, thus increasing force production.

In addition to the counter movement jump, we also improved our RSI (Reactive Strength Index) scores and non-counter movement scores. We look at these three tests to develop a jump profile, which helps us bucket players into slightly different categories and progressions within our plyometric program. Certainly improvements in all these areas are multifactorial, but I can’t say that changes this widespread across the board have been typical in the past.

Maximal Strength Gains with HSRFE

We’ve seen the biggest improvement in maximal strength numbers from our HSRFE training (RFE data shows as load relative to body weight, i.e., a 400lbs 1RM at 200lbs body weight would show a 2.0 in the following chart).

I’m not typically a big number chaser in the weight room. I believe wholeheartedly that my primary role is to train our athletes to remain as healthy as possible. That’s not to say that strength isn’t important; just that strength is the means to reducing potential injuries, not an end unto itself.

From a performance standpoint, I want to see our various vertical jump metrics improve. Again, strength numbers by themselves without a steady progression in jump performance are not my priority. If we have low “man games lost” statistics and high vertical jump numbers, the loads on the bar in our Hockey Performance Center don’t matter much to me. That said, if we can safely increase lower body strength, we know this will have a positive impact on injury potential and rate of force development. In that sense, the HSRFE has been a huge improvement for us.

Video 2. The safety squat bar creates comfort and mechanical efficiency with the split squat when the rear foot is elevated. Multiple athletes have broken 500 pounds using full-range split squats, and their other measures have improved with those changes.

Off-Season Power Training

We take a modified Triphasic approach to training in the off-season, using two lower body training days out of a five-day schedule (four training sessions and a regen day). This summer, we chose RFE’s for both our Tempo day and our Max Effort day.

The following are the Day 1 and Day 2 templates over the course of five phases of off-season training. Athletes performed P1 on campus at the end of the last academic year. They performed P2 and P3 mostly at home where they may or may not have had access to SSBs. The final two phases were performed back on campus during our team off-season training period. Loads are the percentage of the previous 1RM, last assessed in the middle of this past year’s in-season.

To describe the rationale for this portion of our program, you can see we essentially ran through two blocks of ECC/ISO/CON work on Day 1. The initial block was performed at lower overall loads since we were coming off a long in-season period. We designated the start of the off-season as a reconditioning phase. One of the points we emphasized during this time was anatomical adaptation.

During the last portion of this block, in Phase 3, we descended loading and increased velocity. We did this partly to transfer to a higher rate of force development (RFD) and also to deload tissue to some degree as we prepped for the second half of summer when we focused on true maximal strength.

On Day 2, we followed a pretty basic high to low volume approach, finishing with some self-testing in Phase 3 before the athletes came back to campus. We wanted to develop strength at higher volumes, make hypertrophic improvements, and allow some flexibility for the athletes to self-adjust while on their own.

During the second half of the summer (P4, P5), the athletes were on campus. Day 1 again followed a basic Triphasic approach, maintaining volumes and intensities, while varying the contraction types (ECC/ISO/CON). This progressed through the pre-season period with the peaking phases of the Triphasic methodology, decreasing loads, increasing velocity, and realizing improvements in power output. Meanwhile, during Day 2, we aggressively loaded the RFE movement in a true accelerative strength phase, culminating in a legit 1RM.

During Phase 5, what you see on the Day 1, Week 2 schedule highlighted in yellow is a post-test of average velocity at 80%, or 1RM. We performed the pre-test on the first day of Phase 4 (not shown) and were simply looking to see if the speed at the same load would improve over six weeks. It did.

Smart and Aggressive Loading: the Perfect Combination

The addition and implementation of the SSB into our unilaterally focused lower body strength work has been hugely successful. The HSRFE split squat has become a staple for us. It’s exceeded all expectations and all preconceived notions of what was possible with this lift from a loading standpoint. Much more important are the performance improvements that came with the ability to load so aggressively with zero negative consequences from an injury perspective.

Before this off-season, I considered double body weight for one rep as very strong and perhaps the upper limit for realistic maximal strength development in the RFE. It appears, however, that the 400lbs threshold is akin to the 4-minute mile of Roger Bannister fame–impossible until it wasn’t, and somewhat routinely achieved at this point.

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

The barbell hip thrust has been a hot topic of conversation lately in the physical preparation world. Some barbell hip thrust enthusiasts are now conceding that they drew premature conclusions about the exercise’s efficacy from incomplete data, particularly data pertaining to the relationship between hip thrusting and acceleration ability. We should commend these people for their intellectual honesty.

Newer studies suggest that the hip thrust may indeed have no effect on acceleration, and this finding is being cited as validation for the scientific process. Science, in other words, is a self-correcting process worthy of our trust. I agree, but with a very important caveat: Perhaps it isn’t science that is self-correcting, but the ability of human beings to solve problems.

The Interpretation of Science in Sports Training

Science does not exist independently of people and their ability to make reasonable inferences. This distinction is significant because the scientific method is contingent upon our ability to generate meaningful questions and to determine the generalizability of information obtained from a highly constrained set of circumstances.

Barbell hip thrusts were never good or bad. The scientific method works very well for answering certain questions, but does not resolve complex problems without human interpretation and tinkering outside the laboratory. Having the luxury of inquiring about the utility of the barbell hip thrust in a controlled setting is a testament to our ability to solve much more pressing issues like food procurement, protecting ourselves from the elements, remaining safe from predators, and cooperating politically and economically. Though these matters require continued refinement, our individual and collective ability to adapt to the environment is astonishing.

The question of when to justify a general strength exercise w/empirical data is a fascinating one, says @greenfeetPT. Share on X

Those who engage in barbell hip thrust discussions often conclude that more controlled trials are necessary to clarify the utility of the exercise. However, I don’t think more “science” will help illuminate the discussion, because general strength exercises with little transfer to something like sprinting may not warrant their own studies. The question of when to justify a general strength exercise with empirical data is a fascinating one. Provided an exercise like the barbell hip thrust is safe, we need to appreciate that there is no “answer” here because too many variables influence an outcome measure like sprinting ability.

Key Questions to Ask When Evaluating the Barbell Hip Thrust

The barbell hip thrust is a microcosm for any exercise performance, and rehabilitation professionals overly scrutinize in the absence of broader context. We’ll be having a similar conversation about another exercise in the very near future. Hopefully, the following questions help provide a platform for further discussion about the degree to which general strength exercises contribute to complex performance outcomes:

1. Have actual running and programming considerations more specific to sprinting been sufficiently resolved, such that the influence of a barbell exercise on this variable is really pertinent?
2. In studies that showed the barbell hip thrust to be effective, how was the novelty of the exercise accounted for? Most athletes are exposed to squat variations; not as many to barbell hip thrusts. Novel stimuli are more likely to elicit an adaptive response.
3. Why barbell hip thrusts versus squats? What did squats do to become a barometer for sprint performance in the first place?
4. In a well-controlled study, the experimental group and the control group should be identical except for the variable in question. In the context of this discussion, we assume that the training program both groups follow is otherwise sound but for the barbell hip thrust, whose effectiveness is not yet determined.

   We also assume that this program is appropriate for all test subjects and that these subjects must stick to the script to remain eligible for the study. How often do actual coaches adhere to a scripted program without any modifications over the course of weeks or months? Standardization preserves the integrity of the study at the expense of how most sprint coaching actually occurs.

5. Why is more EMG activity in a particular muscle a desirable outcome? EMG is easy to measure but its emphasis in physical therapy and performance circles warrants serious appraisal. EMG studies promote a continually growing “All-Star” team of muscles. How many more muscles or exercises are worthy of their own article? EMG activity, while easy to quantify, isn’t necessarily more telling than a coach’s eye for position.
6. All other things being equal, incorporating any barbell exercise into a sprinting program should only lower the reading on the stopwatch in untrained athletes, low-level sprinters, or highly adaptable athletes, perhaps adaptable to the point of fragility. No single intervention should substantially modify the behavior of a robust system.

This is not to say that a barbell hip thrust might not affect sprint performance for better or worse in conjunction with other modifications (where multiple variables interact to produce measurable change), just that more controlled barbell hip thrust trials are unlikely to considerably alter sprint preparation.

Deciding What to Prescribe in Your Training

In full disclosure, I do not prescribe barbell hip thrusts in my own practice. I might utilize an unloaded bridge variation to groove a hip extension pattern, but I haven’t found a compelling reason to place 300+ pounds on that real estate, even with an AirEx pad. Even athletes who don’t test particularly “strong” in other general strength exercises seem to be able to utilize a lot of weight in a hip thrust.

I’ve seen high school athletes who struggle to perform decent push-ups and pull-ups move 315 pounds in a barbell hip thrust for reps. I don’t think we should pursue loading for its own sake. Nevertheless, there are coaches I regard as mentors who liberally incorporate barbell hip thrusts into their programs. Their rationale for choosing a hip thrust is likely guided by the same principles that influence my own programming, not that I am by any means the judge of what constitutes good training.

Ultimately, I just don’t think the question of whether to use a leg press, power clean, squat, or barbell hip thrust to improve sprint performance in team sport athletes is a fundamentally important one. These exercises aren’t competing with one another. In practice, it probably doesn’t matter. What matters more is how we justify our systems and our processes—why we tinker the way that we do.

The way we justify our systems & our processes matters more than determining what exercise to use, says @greenfeetPT. Share on X

I’m comfortable admitting that the things I do may not affect the competitive outcome very much, but that I still contribute to an athlete’s success or failure in some way that I’ll never be able to measure. Front office personnel and technical coaches demand that sports scientists and medical providers quantify their worth to the organization, yet the former groups should—if they’re intellectually honest—have an equally difficult time determining the degree to which they influence outcomes.

Parting Thoughts on Exercise Selection and Training Process

There’s more to it than wins and losses, so ultimately, we all defer to what we regard as our informed opinion. Sports science, though a worthy pursuit, is nothing more than informed opinion based partially on objective data. This uncertainty, however, makes the performance coaching process more enjoyable.

Sports science is nothing more than informed opinion based partially on objective data, says @greenfeetPT. Share on X

Coaching can be systematic without being scripted. The performance team is just a single component of a multi-disciplinary process. Formally studying general exercises in isolation is probably not what’s going to elevate the standard of care in the profession. So, the verdict on the barbell hip thrust is…keep tinkering with it—or don’t.

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

“Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” This is a favorite quote of mine that reminds me of many instances in collegiate strength and conditioning, including the transition to a new position.

Picture this: An opportunity comes your way and you are excited about the possibility of climbing the career ladder. You double-check your resume and cover letter, reach out to your references, and prepare for the interview by thinking of any questions they may ask you. You make it through the phone and on-campus interviews, and they offer you the position. It is a Tuesday and your new employer asks you to move by Sunday, just a short four days away, with your official start date on the following Wednesday. Are you prepared to change your life dramatically in just four days? Or do you hope you will be lucky and it will work itself out?

Over the past four years, I have climbed the strength and conditioning ladder from intern to graduate assistant to part-time assistant to full-time assistant. I have lived in five different cities and I have worked for six collegiate strength and conditioning programs. To others outside of strength and conditioning, I am a “ramblin’ man”—constantly on the move wherever life may take me.

This is the reality of a young strength and conditioning coach in the profession and I would not change my career path for anything. The experiences have allowed me to become the person and coach that I am today.

I wrote this article to share some lessons that I have learned when transitioning to new positions, to help other young coaches when it is time for them to make a transition.

Proper Preparation Prevents Poor Performance

“Proper preparation prevents poor performance” is an old saying that I learned as a freshman in high school and I have revisited quite frequently as a strength coach, especially during my transitional times.

This article would not be realistic if I did not mention some of the mistakes I have made, and one of them involved housing. For one of my positions, my employer promised me free housing. On the day that I arrived, they informed me that they’d overbooked the rooms. I had a trunk full of stuff, in a city where I knew no one, and no Plan B.

Luckily, this experience taught me not to allow someone else to handle my housing and to always have everything in writing. Now, I begin to look at housing options before the position is even offered, as a best-case scenario. This allows me to at least have an idea of how quickly I can move into my own space and how to prepare financially. Use your resources and check whether you have any friends that live near your new location. Word of mouth has been instrumental in allowing me to secure desirable housing options.

When I accepted my last position, and they asked me to move within four days, I had already reached out to friends, spoken to apartment managers, and contacted listings on Craigslist—all of which allowed me to have a place lined up. This means I had a more stress-free transition and hit the ground running on the first day of work, since my most basic need was covered.

Think ahead about the way you will approach your first day on the job, including a program plan, says @RyanNosak. Share on X

Regarding the position itself, start thinking about how you will approach your first day on the job. What teams will you be working with? If your new employer asks you to provide a program on the first day, what is your plan? These are ideas churning constantly in my head so I already have an idea if the head coach asks me what I want to do. Also, what are the backgrounds and philosophies of the head coach, assistant coaches, and support staff? This will require time and research on your end, but knowing this will ensure that you are much more prepared during the initial interactions with each of these individuals and can only help in creating a relationship.

Put the Athletes First

As difficult as it is for you to make a transition, it is usually equally as difficult on the athletes. Most athletes are routine-based individuals and, given the revolving nature of the profession, they may have just begun to feel comfortable with their old strength and conditioning coach. The best advice I can give here is to try to get to know your athletes and show them that you care.

One of my current teams traditionally does not see much time in the weight room during the season. I came onboard three weeks before their season began and I asked myself, “How can I develop these relationships without seeing the athletes?” I make an effort to warm up the team before their practices, which gives them the chance to get to know me and see me on a daily basis. When I am around the athletes, I strike up conversations to get to know them better. Some of these conversations are as simple as asking where the athlete is from or what the athlete is studying in school.

Our cross-country group recently had its first lift in the weight room and I began the session by going around the group and having each athlete state where they are from and tell one thing that they like to do outside of running. This is very simple, but now I have one or two things that I can talk about with each athlete and continue to build a relationship.

I also attend the athletes’ games, which shows them that I not only care about their performance in the weight room, but I care about where their performance matters the most. Recently, after one of our first soccer games, the athletes asked to see me, which showed me that I had already begun to make an impact. This is one of the best feelings a strength coach can have.

Reach Out to Previous Coaches

Another thing that has worked out well is reaching out to coaches who have been in the position before me. My first official day at Charlotte was also the first day of fall classes. Taking over a basketball team with only five weeks of an off-season before the season begins can be a daunting task. I reached out to the strength coach before me, Skyler Farley, and asked him about previous programs, what he thought worked and did not work, and the overall culture of the team.

Reach out to the coach(es) previously in your position so you’re better prepared on Day 1, says @RyanNosak. Share on X

Asking questions such as, “Do the athletes have experience with the Olympic lifts?” and “Are they used to performing barbell movements?” can be very helpful when programming for a team for the first time. This made the transition much easier because I had an idea of the typical training day for the team. I could provide the athletes with a similar training program, which both the athletes and the coaches enjoyed, while adding some flair of my own.

In my most recent transition to DePaul University, I had a previous relationship with the strength coach before me, Nic Higgins. Nic had great relationships with both his coaches and athletes here at DePaul and asking him his thoughts also better prepared me to deal with the sport coaches. The staff before me had spent the year collecting monitoring data via session RPE, questionnaires, and force plates; all of which are new to me this year.

If I had not contacted Nic regarding resources and suggestions for what worked, I feel that I would be doing my athletes a disservice by not continuing projects meant to benefit the student athlete. It is also important to note that you are not trying to copy or steal what the previous strength coach did; rather, you are reaching out to learn about the history of a program. Most strength and conditioning coaches are willing to share information about previous programs because they want to see their athletes in good hands after they transition to a different position.

Communicate

In the same way that athletes develop a routine, most sport coaches also adjust to the way that the previous strength coach trained the athletes. As soon as you start the new position, ask to schedule a meeting with the sport coach. Before you come in with a list of 20 things that you would like to see happen and an annual plan for the entire year, ask the sport coach their thoughts on training. This includes questions such as: “What are some aspects that you liked or disliked in the past?” and “How may I help make your job easier?”

Showing the sport coach that you want them involved in the training process typically allows for more trust later. Communicate your goals and expectations for the team and your plan for achieving those goals. It may help to send a weekly report to your sport coaches outlining the events of the training day. Think of this as a debrief of each training day and a great way to communicate the progress of the athletes to the sport coaches. During the season, there is often limited time and you may not see the sport coach daily. At least the sport coach can count on receiving that weekly report from you if you are not able to have face-to-face communication.

Enjoy the Journey

While this article focuses on preparing for the job itself, I include this reminder to enjoy the journey thanks to some of the lessons that I have learned. It is extremely easy to let the job consume you and never experience the amazing city that you live in. The only regrets that I have are wishing I did more in some of the places that I lived and spent more time with the people that mattered the most to me.

You are only young on this journey once and those life experiences will be something you will carry with you forever. Get the barbell out of your hand and take a boat ride through your new city, or catch up with an old friend over pizza. You will be glad you did and they will become your fondest memories when it is time to make another transition.

“I think the real thrill comes from the preparation to get where you’re in that area where you have the opportunity to outscore the opponent. But getting there…it’s like Cervantes said, ‘The journey is better than the end.’”-John Wooden

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

 

This is the challenge I face with football players during the fall: competing adaptations between the sport and maintenance of lean muscle tissue, the management of stress accumulation throughout the practice week, and ensuring a player is primed for optimal performance on Friday and Saturday nights. Such tests bring out the best in us as coaches.

I have made more mistakes than anyone in the industry. From prescribing a carbon copy of Westside Barbell’s methods to my athletes to making sure I knew a kid’s 1RM before his name. Fortunately I maximize each mistake so I don’t make it a second time, and this enables me to learn faster than the competition. Many sport coaches, however, are making a mistake that is neither maximized nor eliminated: the corrosive in-season training of American football players and teams.

As soon as training camp begins, focus on preparation for football always seems to get lost in the shuffle. There are typically two schools of thought when it comes to in-season workout routines:

1. Make no changes to training.
2. Training will cease to exist.

These are classic examples of over and under reactions, and they will not serve your player(s) or team well. As is the case with almost anything in physical preparation, the answer “depends,” as Bill Hartman is notorious for saying.

Having worked in the private sector and in a team setting as a consultant, I’ve seen both sides of the coin. Each category presents its own advantages and disadvantages, processes and systems, programs and templates. Luckily for us coaches, neither scenario requires a master on all things regarding physical preparation. All that is required is competence or “cooks, not chefs,” as my mentor Andy McCloy would say.

Private Sector Challenges With Football Training Design

If you’ve spent any significant amount of time in the private sector, you understand that strength and conditioning at the high school level is simply not where it needs to be. Mix that with athletes entering the competitive season, and you have a recipe for disaster. Now, before I’m crucified, some coaches are doing tremendous work: John Garrish, Gary Schofield, and Fred Eaves, to name a few.

The typical measures for high school strength and conditioning coaches are situations that are ideal and situations that are not ideal.

Video 1. Lateral lunges may not sell training programs to young athletes, but if a coach sticks to their principles and teaches what the client needs, the business will come. In the private sector it can be tempting to promote flash, but focus on the basics before advanced techniques.

Ideal Situations

Simply put, ideal situations occur when coaches work toward competence. These coaches possess a sound base of training knowledge paired with experience, and they are willing to work with you as long as you are willing to be “the supplement” and not “the show.” Transitions for these athletes from practice and weights to our facility are nearly seamless. In these situations, developing sound relationships with the strength coach is essential for athlete success. We know exactly what they’re doing at school from a programming standpoint, and this shapes our template and exercise selection.

Most of the time at school, due to time restrictions and “bang for your buck,” this is the common program we see athletes performing before they come to us:

1. Deadlift, Clean Variation 3-5×5
2. Back Squat 3-5×5
3. Bench Press 3-5×5

Now, I did not say these strength coaches are masters or chefs, but the program above is light years ahead of some of the other acts of terrorism we encounter. To supplement this program, we emphasize the dynamic effort method and move into R5 (more on the R7 protocol later). My feelings on this subject could be an article itself.

When moving submaximal weights with maximal velocity, we prescribe three-week waves with weights ranging from 30-40% 1RM. A typical three-week wave would look very similar to this:

• Week 1: 10×2-3 at 30% (explosive)
• Week 2: 8×2-3 at 35% (speed-strength)
• Week 3: 6×2-3 at 40% (strength-speed)

We attribute our success with the dynamic effort method in-season to three factors:

1. Velocity recovers everything.
2. Rate of force development or power increases.
3. With their circa-max effort reps at school taking anywhere between 4-6 seconds to complete, the dynamic effort sets (2-3 reps) take nearly the same time to complete. These methods complement each other nicely in that regard–the players blast through sticking points at school and get more powerful at our facility. Everyone wins.

Moving into the accessory work is just that–accessories. We do not major in the minors. However, this segment is still important as it provides movement, variability, and capacity. As Mike Robertson would say, “Accessory lifts are our insurance policy!” Speaking of my friend Mike, we prescribe his accessory template exactly, and you should too.

1. Accessory Superset 1
   • Single Leg, Split Stance 2-3 sets
   • Direct Hamstring 2-3 sets
2. Accessory Superset 2
   • Thorax Motion 1-2 sets
   • Upper Body Press 1-2 sets
   • Core 1-2 sets

Aside from the dynamic effort method, accessory work is a lost art in high school strength and conditioning. This is where we truly feel we make a difference in not only an athlete’s success but also in their resilience.

Accessory work is a lost art in high school S&C. It impacts an athlete’s success and #resilience, says @huntercharneski. Share on X

Accessory lifts provide variability to a population that is notoriously rigid. When football players are exposed to “the big three” on a regular basis, their rigidity levels spike, which substantially increases prime mover output but at the cost of lessening degrees of freedom. Luckily, supplementing their school program with accessory work increases their degrees of freedom which in turn increases stabilizer output. Win/win.

Here is our in-season R7 template for ideal situations:

• R1: Release–three areas
• R2: Reset–Supple Leopard mobility, breathing, FMS corrections
• R3: RAMP–wall drills, arm mechanics, posture, and position
• R4: Reactive–acceleration, COD, max velocity, chaotic agility
• R5: Resistance
• R6: Reminder–cyclical movements
• R7: Recovery–supine diaphragmatic breathing

Non-Ideal Situations

Non-ideal training situations are those where training has come to a screeching halt or has seen no decrease in volume or intensity at the onset of camp. Simply put, these athletes are in survival mode. For better or for worse, at our facility we’ve chosen to adhere to the least common denominator given the circumstances by prescribing aerobic circuits comprised mainly of concentric movements (upper and lower body sled drags, medicine ball throws). To show a template for this situation would be unrealistic, as the needs of these kids become so individualized that the entire session is purely autoregulation from start to finish.

 

These poor kids are living “in the middle” by coaches adhering to the more work, less time philosophy. In non-ideal situations, often it’s not exposure to high intensity that hinders the athlete but repeated efforts in a submaximal, lactic environment with inadequate rest periods. This alone is how we justify our modified sessions for these players, as the aerobic environment will increase capillary density like tributaries forming off a river.

Smaller capillaries forming off major blood vessels will slow blood flow. And, if we’re able to do that, blood will stay in contact with the tissue longer. This heightens waste product removal and nutrient transfer. More importantly, as this workout generates heat, there will be a decrease in the electrical impedance which will increase motor unit activation. Over time, all these motor units will develop characteristics of white fiber (fast and explosive). The accompanying sleds and throws will introduce a brief high-intensity component, but any soreness will be peripheral rather than central since these are concentric movements.

Other pain points that we encounter in the private sector include:

• Negative alterations in movement technique because weights (at school) are too heavy.
• Enhanced levels of fatigue because of the immense stress placed on the muscles.
• Insufficient learning of technique because coaches emphasize the weight put on the athlete’s back, chest, or floor.
• Little-to-no physical and technical preparation for performing the movements.

In my opinion, a laser focus on skill execution will alleviate all four of these points. In other words, the weights prescribed to the athlete and the strength they gain should be directed toward improving the skill or sporting activity, not pure strength alone, regardless of skill execution or sport improvement. Simple concept, yes?

Unfortunately, common sense is not so common these days. When coaches prescribe heavy weights, it’s nearly impossible for athletes to focus on proper execution of the lifts. The athlete’s attention shifts to simply overcoming the weight which can lead to bad habits which can lead to injury. If coaches understood this, many athletes would be healthier and achieve higher levels of success.

The Team Environment

My experience in team settings has always been as a consultant. That in itself can be considered a pain point, as only so much of your message and suggestions are taken and then applied (any of my friends in the industry who consult can surely attest to this). Why? Coaches and players are worried about three things:

1. The game
2. The product they put on the field
3. Wins

I’ve always found this extremely interesting since a college football player’s time spent in the competitive environment (the game) is only 8-10% throughout the year. They spend 23% of their time in mandatory days off and 67% in physical preparation. These figures beautifully illustrate “process over product.” Perhaps we should develop tunnel vision in the process, so the product will then take care of itself.

The first conversation I have with coaches is about the structure of practice. American football, from a bioenergetics standpoint, is an alactic-aerobic sport. Yet practice plans rarely meet the demands of the appropriate energy system. The “more work, less time” philosophy rears its ugly head once again, as 24-30 plays run in two five-minute periods and place the athletes smack dab in “the middle,” or lactic, environment.

When athletes train in a lactic environment, they move too slowly to develop speed, says @huntercharneski. Share on X

Derek Hansen has said that players will spend less than 3% of the contest in the lactic zone. I’ve said it before and I will say it again, when we expose our athletes to a lactic environment, they are moving too slowly to develop speed, and they are moving too fast to develop work capacity. It’s truly a waste of valuable practice time. Of course, the sport coach is attracted to this zone. Why? As Derek Hansen has said, it comes down to two points:

1. Coaches believe it’s high-intensity work.
2. It provides an immediate, tangible effect.

I’ve implemented a system with coaches where we walk thru a majority of plays on the script to aid in learning and keep players out of the middle. Walking thru plays also serves the team well on a neurological level. When the body is learning a new motor skill, (or in this case, the game plan from week-to-week) the initial result is typically crude and atrocious. So why have them perform these new tasks at full-speed? To change a motor behavior, we have to get the brain’s attention; to get the brain’s attention, we have to slow things down.

During these initial stages of learning early in the week, the brain tells the players what to do by sending signals through the nerves down to the muscles that are involved in executing the skill. Repetition after repetition, along with coaching cues, notifies the brain of the execution. Through both visual (film) and auditory evaluation and correction, the brain once again sends signals to the players’ muscles for execution. The execution then improves.

Video 2. Breathing drills are sometimes difficult for athletes and must be coached and programmed just as well as any other exercise. Football players are very good at repeated explosiveness, but activities that relax the body are just as vital for performance.

This feedback mechanism continues until a more or less permanent feedback loop is formed. As the week progresses, I suggest you sprinkle in more full-speed reps. This aids the process of skill correction and acquisition on every repetition. Then through film study and practice, the skill improves over the course of the week until it becomes more automatic.

This is where the magic happens. As the end of the practice week approaches and the skills acquired become more automatic without brain involvement, the feedback loop moves to the spinal column. This loop now circles from the muscles to the spinal column, back to the muscles. Since the brain is no longer involved, the skills and game plan are nearly automatic. When the signal is received, the muscle memory kicks in, and the loop occurs without hesitation. Throughout the week, players have canceled the noise and enhanced the signal a la Derek Hansen.

Low-Volume, High-Intensity Training

Unfortunately teams across the nation are detraining throughout the year because they don’t provide enough high-intensity work. I know I must sound like a hypocrite, as I just explained how low-intensity practices can benefit performance. But how I could I ignore sprinting since I have such an affinity for it? How do we incorporate high-intensity work in a practice setting without taxing the players and inhibiting optimal performance on Saturday? We microdose absolute speed.

Microdose Absolute Speed

Derek Hansen has told me on more than one occasion, “You only need three good runs.” With that, I’ve simply suggested to the coaches that they microdose three good runs over the course of the practice week. For those unaware, most college football practice weeks consist of full practices on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday and a walk-thru on Friday. Again, it’s not a difficult or complex concept to implement. We advised coaches to have the players give one max-velocity sprint of no more than 30 yards during each of the full practices. Three good runs.
Microdosing absolute speed throughout the week is of the utmost importance for not only maintaining and experiencing a positive adaptation of speed capabilities but it also prevents injury. Whether an offensive lineman has to reach top speed on a screen play or a cornerback intercepts a pass and proceeds to “house it,” having exposure to max velocity will ensure their health.

If players are not exposed to max velocity, their neural recruitment patterns will be impaired, says @huntercharneski. Share on X

If players are not exposed to max velocity, their neural recruitment patterns will be impaired as their central nervous system does not know how to handle absolute speed. Do you believe the ungodly number of hamstring injuries reported this early into training camp are a coincidence? I rest my case.

 

The Speed Reserve

The maintenance of speed capabilities also contains a conditioning effect–the speed reserve. Derek Hansen’s explanation is as profound as it is simple, “The higher your maximum speed capabilities, the greater ability to run sub-maximally at higher velocities for longer durations.” With a typical football game, a player will only reach speeds above 91% a mere one percent of the time. Yes, 99% of a football game is played at submaximal speed. Speed increases endurance, but endurance does not increase speed.

Weight Room Adjustments for In-Season Training

As we shift gears to the weight room, we focus on high force, high velocity. As you’re reading this, it would not surprise me if you have a blank stare on your face. You’re trying to reconcile how an athlete can produce a high force at high velocity. As much as I would love to alleviate your concerns on this matter, it’s beyond the scope of this article. For more information, read High Force x High Velocity = Optimal Power on my blog.

Buddy Morris told me that having players overcome weights between 55-80% of their 1RM is the perfect complement to the sport; they are indeed displaying high force production at high velocities, and I believe Buddy.

• R1: Release–three areas
• R2: Reset–Supple Leopard mobility, breathing, FMS corrections
• R3: Resistance
• R4: Reminder–cyclical movements
• R5: Recovery–supine diaphragmatic breathing

 

Due to heavy practice, meeting, and school schedules, college players’ stress buckets are near full. We’ve found it prudent to utilize only five R’s twice per week to gain the intended effect without overreaching a la Bruce Lee.

There is no need to rush strength, especially in-season, says @huntercharneski. Share on X

I have encountered situations in which coaches, and my younger self in previous years, placed a premium on maximal strength during the season. In these instances, I’ve suggested the coaches only train their athletes above 85% once per month, as the training residual for maximal strength is 30±5 days. There is no need to rush strength, especially in-season. Keep in mind, the quicker you gain strength, the quicker you lose it. The slower you gain strength, the longer you will keep it.

Video 3. Medicine ball throws are not just ways to kill time, they are effective ways to teach coordination and power simultaneously. Adding medicine ball throws in-season will not create fatigue that hampers game performance.

Neurological Reset

Lastly, I want to touch on the concept of neurological reset in the team setting. The day before a game, we’ve implemented three medicine ball throw variations (high force, high velocity) to potentiate, or excite, the players’ central nervous system:

3-point medicine ball throws

• 1 set, 4 reps
• Mimics beginning movement from a static start

Between-the-legs scoop tosses

• 1 set, 3 reps
• Mimics acceleration

Backwards/Overhead Tosses

• 1 set, 2 reps
• Mimics top speed

These throws and their variations are found in James Smith’s Applied Sprint Training. More and more research has shown that the excitement of the central nervous system can last for several hours. I believe that throws are the method to use as they are extremely brief, almost 100% concentric, and produce the intended effect.

Conclusions

In-season does not mean out of training. It’s still an important aspect of player development, performance, and success. In the private sector, it’s about finding a common happy medium between two radical ends of the spectrum. In the team setting at the college level, in-season is the realization that the process truly does outweigh the product.

Regardless of the market, situation, or level of competition, I believe the modern approach instituted by many coaches comes down to one word: fear. Fear is synonymous with ignorance, and it can motivate, or it can paralyze. Coaches are afraid to say “I don’t know,” but they’re not afraid to be rather cavalier with their players, which leads to mistakes–big ones.

Search for information outlets, seek those who are doing it correctly, crawl out of your lactic threshold, and maximize mistakes by learning from them.

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

 

“Competition is for losers.”

Yes, you read that right. I wish that I could take credit for that line, but the truth is it belongs to Paypal co-founder, serial entrepreneur, philanthropist, and billionaire, Peter Thiel.

Funny how the vast majority of these billionaires seem to think, isn’t it? If you truly research the most of their beginnings, you will find that, while they all certainly learned how to “play the game” within their own domain, few did so at the expense of lambasting, bad-mouthing, or attempting to discredit their so-called competitors.

Despite what seems to be the trend in our profession, world-class thinkers and business strategists understand that, over the long-term, focusing on tearing others down at any expense is parasitic, not productive. They find ways to expand the market and the value they bring, not shrink it. Sure, profits may be made in the short term by “stealing business” or establishing so-called “superiority,” but in the world of business, profits do not always equate to long-term value.

Successful people find ways to expand their market and the value they bring to it; not shrink it, says @Coach_BrettB. Share on X

My father, who has been a stockbroker/financial advisor by trade for more than 40 years, taught me this when I was a kid. I’d be sitting in the kitchen, trying to inhale my breakfast before school, while the ticker on CNBC scrolled across the bottom of the screen, inducing a “Matrix”-like altered state. The acronyms and numbers representing the company names and their current values on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) meant nothing to me at the time. However, for my dad, it read like a picture book that told a vibrant story of how businesses in highly competitive sectors were performing day to day and minute by minute.

He’d explain that many of the businesses that had not just survived but also thrived over the last 50-100 years, did so not by being highly competitive, but rather by learning from other companies and adapting to changing markets. The ones that are able to essentially monopolize a market do so by adding value through helping to solve a unique problem or need.

We in the realm of human performance could take a lesson from this. For a profession obsessed with adaptation, we do a poor job of adapting to the world around us and the way it tends to communicate, expand, and operate. Sure, in some ways we have advanced leaps and bounds in regards to our knowledge about training, recovery, and nutrition. But when it comes to professionalism, pragmatism, and just plain business sense, we are still in the Stone Age.

Money Talks, but Perhaps Too Much

The content of this article may not resonate with everybody, and that’s fine. These kinds of non-training-related reads don’t always widen the eyes of the practitioner who is hungry for a “new” interpretation of an old method that promises to provide THE answer for all in-season training woes. However, anyone who has been in this field for 10 or more years is not being entirely truthful if they deny the fact that nobody badmouths one another within their own industry quite like we do within strength and conditioning. Furthermore, it’s starting to hurt us more and more, due to the oversaturation of coaches compared to the number and quality of jobs available.

This also isn’t something that only affects new or young coaches, as we have well-tenured pioneers being replaced in their positions because an organization or athletic department decides to trim the ledger and find new blood who will take the job for significantly lower pay.

That’s a polarizing term in our field: “pay.” The minute it is brought up, someone itching to jump on their dagger clamors to shout, “we don’t get into this field for the money!” They’re right. But there’s also nothing wrong with being conscious of a resource that helps us provide for our families. We aren’t talking about sport coaching salaries here. Nor are we the type to throw money around like the Floyd Mayweathers of the world.

Even if we did have a vastly different pay scale than we currently do, our collective blue-collar demeanor and leadership-based value set paints a hilarious comparison with most other professions, to the point where our version of “spending frivolously” often equates to doing things like paying the rent, buying a used vehicle, keeping the air conditioning at anything below 82 degrees Fahrenheit (~28 degrees Celsius), and perhaps being able to pay for insurance for our family (if in the private sector or some team/university scenarios) or a modest vacation one to two times per year, if our schedule or level of anxiety allows for it.

For a profession obsessed with #adaptation, we do a poor job of adapting to the world around us, says @Coach_BrettB. Share on X

But this isn’t an article about money. This is an article about scalable sustainability in our profession, and the reformed mindset and attitude it will take to get there so that the number of coaches who are burnt out, bitter, territorial, insecure, or deviously opportunistic does not continue to become legion.

Practice Collaboration, Not Competition

Despite the amount of leadership books we read and conferences we attend, our lack of imagination and creative problem-solving continues to keep us in cement boots, drowning in the depths of despair. Meanwhile, those in other industries who have learned how to systematically “play nice” float steadily towards the beaches of continued personal and/or professional progress.

Don’t think it’s that bad? Take a moment to truly observe and reflect upon the behavior and messaging so often projected within various social media channels, research journals, message boards, and even at conferences that are supposed to focus on professional development. If the lenses on your glasses aren’t foggy, it shouldn’t be hard to see that there seem to be more Attila the Huns running around within our field than Aristotles: Those who would rather claim everything as “theirs and theirs alone,” as opposed to openly promoting more forward thought, or putting true skin in the game by testing their theories and sharing their work in order to push the boundaries of possibility further.

Avarice is not the means to achieving the apotheosis of your own legacy, or your own career for that matter. That takes collaboration in the form of adaptive learning, yet another thing that those guys in the fancy suits working at large “commercialized” corporations that we often make fun of tend to do better than us. We may have the “cool” jobs, the ones that place us on the sidelines of major sporting events, allow us to work with world-class performers of all kinds, and keep us out of cubicles and countless death-by-PowerPoint boardroom meetings, yet despite this, and our obsession with continual self-improvement, we still cannot seem to get out of our own way and make the leap into a 21st-century mindset defined by adaptability, decentralized command, and the ability to create meaningful networks that help others achieve more significant work in less time.

This is the reason those in the corporate world seem to move from cubicle to corner office faster than half of us even get through our second unpaid internship. Sure, you could argue that the business world is better scaled for upward mobility and that job placement opportunities are more plentiful than they are within strength and conditioning, but I dare you to say that to the face of the struggling University of Michigan business school grad who thought that their shiny new MBA from a heralded Big 10 institution would surely land them something a bit more stable than a lead barista job at the Starbucks on South State Street.

Professional struggles are relative, regardless of the chosen vocation. So it’s best for us to bite our tongues before stepping up to the counter and making claims that certain folks have it easier. If they do, it’s because they’ve done their homework, observed, and adapted.

The root of the problem comes in part from the indelible role that conflict often plays within human nature. We are social creatures that choose when to compete or collaborate for scarce resources based on our perceptions, biases, drives, and long-term goals. It’s also somewhat expected, due to our industry being as young as it is.

In regard to the timeline of established and organized vocations, those solely focused upon the promotion of physical culture and ethical enhancement of physiology through training have barely been around the block, whereas fields such as those that focus on carpentry, law, medicine, and some form of politics have established residence much longer within our economic landscape. Famed astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, who has made it a habit of eloquently describing the relative insignificance of the timeline of human existence within what he calls the “cosmic calendar,” would likely relate the collective existence of our profession to far less than a speck of stardust within a vast multiverse.

Stated more simply, those in our field are still trying to find their way, and many think that the only way they can prove their value or be taken seriously is by coaching at the professional level of sport or at a major Division 1 university. Young coaches who can’t find paying opportunities in the team setting will turn down job opportunities at private sector facilities because they have been told by more senior coaches (and sometimes in a threatening manner) that if they take these jobs, they will never be able to “get back in” on the team side. What a message! Whatever happened to the biggest concern being whether someone is simply good at what they do and has built valuable and diverse experience?

The message to new coaches should be—Diversify your skillset: coach anywhere and anyone you can, says @Coach_BrettB. Share on X

Telling someone that they face an uphill battle in accomplishing their ultimate goal by gaining experience in a role that challenges them technically and relationally, and having to coach four to eight groups a day across the spectrums of youth, high-school, professional, collegiate, and even military athletes, is like telling a musician that he may not know how to play his guitar in front of a crowd at Wembley Arena if he has only played at venues in Nashville. Sure, the stage is bigger and the acoustics are a bit different, but most legendary coaches will tell you that the playing of the instrument is the same. In other words, “coaching is coaching.”

Instead, the message should be to diversify your skillset, and coach ANYWHERE and ANYONE you can. For the long-term health of our field, this “segregation of sectors” makes about as much sense as any other type of divisive and antiquated belief system played out on a more global or political stage.

How Our Employers Use Our Faults Against Us

Competition may be for “losers” over the long run (when it is entirely ego-based), but just like conflict, competition is natural and can make us better if we aim our sights correctly. In my opinion, it is less a universal issue with competition as a whole since possessing a mindset geared towards relentless improvement guides us towards enhancing our ability to help others. Where it becomes problematic—and this is the core theme of the article—is the way we in strength and conditioning or any of the related fields, tend to go about competing with one another (in-fighting, conspiring, undercutting, etc.).

Not only do these behaviors fail to demonstrate the true value that we as a profession provide to those we serve and those who hire us, but also to the field as a whole, given the fact that even the most modestly observant outsiders who spend time around us in social situations would be hard-pressed to not think there is something odd about a group of coaches who perceive themselves to be leaders, yet can’t seem to play nicely together in the sandbox. We tend to be an insecure lot, and while you would rightfully argue that every profession has its issues, I would add that this isn’t a matter of comparing ourselves, once again, to one another or anyone else; it is a matter of owning up to our faults, buttoning up our behavior, and wising up in regard to our long-term professional strategy if we truly hope to maximize the options available to all of us now and in the future.

This is illustrated by how we say we are the “behind the scenes” type, but then our actions show that we love the thrill of a good crisis and the sound of our own name, especially if our name is associated with world-class athletes, fancy branded clothing, a winning organization, or an illustrious sports team. We want to prove ourselves, and some may say we have even become desperate to do so.

Our employers have been taking note, and through our behavior we have shown them both what we value and what we don’t, as well as the tremendous lengths we are willing to go in the name of affiliation or perceived authority. Why should they pay us more or provide us with longer contract options if they know that there is always another coach following the wake of the boat while another chums the water with ego as their bait?

I’ve been told twice in my career that if I didn’t like what was offered, they could and would find someone else to do it cheaper. And, while I appreciate the realities of economics, dictatorial responses like that leave me wondering whether some of our employers are looking for the “right fit” or the one that meets their budget requirements. Not only have we as coaches shown that we will willingly help our employers undercut any and all competition for a job opening, but we have done so in a manner not based on a desire to learn, improve, or lead, as we often say it is. Rather, it is because of the notoriety we get and so often crave from alignment with that team or institution.

And once we get that job, we are willing to do whatever it takes to keep it, even if that means not pushing the limits, not speaking up against toxic cultures, and not truly seeking ways to add long-term value for those who work with us. As it pertains to self-defense strategies, it has been whispered in our ear that it is better to “play it safe” when under the lights and not risk threatening anyone, than it is to push the envelope. I understand that to be a great leader, you need to first learn how to follow—and that is timeless and potent advice, especially in the world of coaching.

All of us can recount stories where we have done what we had to do to survive or make sure that our boss didn’t think we were trying to hijack their authority. However, there is a difference between following and being blind, just as there is a difference between speaking up because you actually have something to say and speaking up just because you want to “be heard.”

Speak up because you have something to say and not just because you want to ‘be heard,’ says @Coach_BrettB. Share on X

Those who think and behave in any of the self-preserving Machiavellian manners mentioned above risk mistakenly thinking that doing so protects the opportunity they have in-hand, when the reality is that it erodes the opportunities to come not only for them personally, but for other coaches as well. Our employers often do just fine as it pertains to resources and wit, and don’t require our help in procuring a metaphorical playbook that shows them how much we will go to war with one another or our own ethics and/or morals just so we can displace our families yet again for slightly more than a lateral move.

But we have established this trend, and that is why it is not uncommon to hear of a coach taking a job that offers minimal-to-average pay with almost no vacation time, basic health insurance, or even a continuing education budget, simply because they catch a whiff of an opening after a predecessor with a big name has been removed or taken another job. (This, of course, does not apply to young coaches fresh out of internships or volunteer roles, as you have to get in wherever you can and shouldn’t be picky or entitled.) Our anxiety paints this picture as our only chance to move up and get the respect we deserve; hence the speed-dial-induced rashes on the fingertips of coaches trying to find their “immediate in” the moment they smell blood in the water and get wind of a possible position change within a team or organization.

For us, the name of the game has often become, “anything in the name of survival,” especially if it is someone we don’t like or believe should have been in that job in the first place. Research shows that humans find immense pleasure in seeing those we envy, or perceive to be competition, fall from grace—no matter what form that failure may take.

Even ‘Outsiders’ Notice Our Behavior

To be fair, this applies to leaders within the realm of business, too. They are just a bit more skillful with their application, as they have had much longer to practice and refine the politics associated with their craft. Their true talent lies in the way they wield the knife that they use to carve up the competition. They know just how to draw enough blood to manage perception, but not fatally harm. This allows for possible future collaboration, as they know they may need the man/woman next to them for a future mutual venture.

We don’t do this. We have coaches that have been in the game for 25 years or more, more focused on keeping “secrets” than on mentoring, and those who have mastered the former AOL chat room art of sub-tweeting another coach simply because they didn’t like what they said or how they said it. At some point, someone has to call this kind of behavior what it is: child’s play. As coaches, we are often tasked with helping shape the work ethic, character, and decision-making processes of our athletes just as much as we are tasked with helping shape and tune their bodies for optimal performance.

Are we truly living up to what it means to be a coach when we can tell other people how they should behave without looking at ourselves in the mirror? What good has all of this back-office chatter done to us at this point? Instead of a field that truly “bridges the gap,” we’ve splintered into factions due to the bridges we’ve burned, and cost others and ourselves jobs and more diverse opportunities in the process.

I’ll never forget a particular moment when I was attending an event hosted by the UFC in Las Vegas. This wasn’t a fight, it was an educational summit. The event was put on in large part to help educate both rookie and veteran fighters on their need to be smarter with their money, their training practices, and the management of their own independent “brand” or image now that they had made it into the UFC. I was working for another company at the time and we were in attendance to serve as ambassadors, or consultants if you will, from a human performance standpoint. It was our goal to work alongside the UFC to spread a message to current fighters about the practice of proactive sustainability, or smarter training, so that they could enjoy a longer and more productive career.

A co-worker and I were at a welcome dinner for the event when a high-ranking UFC executive came to say hello and chat for a bit. The usual chitchat ensued, followed closely by a comment that I would never forget.

“You know, you have a very interesting profession,” the executive stated.

“How do you mean?” I asked.

He then went on to say that he had been in business a very long time and had seen it all, but he had yet to see a profession where people badmouthed one another quite as badly and openly as those within the field of human performance.

I nodded in both agreement and embarrassment, rendered momentarily speechless. (Those of you who know me realize the irony there.) My co-worker didn’t know what to say either. We chatted a bit more, shook hands, and parted ways.

My momentary oral paralysis wasn’t a byproduct of him bestowing some esoteric knowledge upon me that I hadn’t already realized myself some time ago—his words weren’t the missing link to creating cold fusion. Rather, it was the frustration I felt that our industry had done such a great job of building personal protective barriers and throwing tantrums about “who is right” that an international pioneer in sport and business noticed our behavior. It is not uncommon for passion to turn into pestilence when left unchecked.

Sometimes it takes outside opinions to wake us up. Consider this: If HE saw us this way, and he had just begun paying closer attention to the industry within the past few years, how do our more traditional employers such as team and private sector facilities who often have a say in our career path or destiny see us? With the recent hardened stance that the NCAA is now taking on strength and conditioning coaches, after numerous high-profile incidents, we don’t have to imagine too hard.

I Learned My Own Lessons the Hard Way

Yes, strength coaches are often taken for granted, and they are certainly taken advantage of far more than any other entity within human performance. (Relax, physical therapists and athletic trainers—your plight is recognized as well.) But we do it to ourselves. We brag about being “first in and last out” and insinuate that the only way to be considered a “true coach” is to run groups non-stop, spend every waking moment creating new templates, and prove to an invisible audience that nobody is more dedicated than we are.

Some of these aspects are certainly true early on in your career, as you have to put your time in to understand the craft, but after a point you have to ask yourself whether the things you are doing really are for the benefit of those you serve or are instead just serving your ego and filling a bigger void. There are easier ways to earn the respect of your athletes than by shunning your family, neglecting your own health, and trying to fit a faux military stereotype. I know, because I was traveling down that path early on in my career as well.

Ask yourself, ‘Am I doing this for the benefit of those I serve, or to feed my own ego?’ Share on X

When I first started coaching, I refused to leave an internship despite the fact that my brother was stabbed and in the hospital with a near-fatal wound, because I feared I would lose the momentum I had gained with the company and they would replace me if I left. Later in my career, I coached for more than six weeks after experiencing a full-blown herniation and protrusion of a disk that left me unable to walk normally or feel anything in my left leg. I also nearly blew it in my first year of marriage after accepting a new role at a facility that had zero infrastructure and largely relied on me to get back on track. I rarely asked for help in these situations because, in our field, perception is reality and there is always someone willing to take your place and do it for less money.

This isn’t me complaining; this is me sharing. I love our field—it helped save my life—and I knew the sacrifices required when I signed up and moved for the first of my two unpaid internships. We have all made sacrifices and will continue to do so. But what we should not tolerate are the external issues that occur due to the agendas of a hard-headed and egotistical few with a fixed mindset on what it means to be a coach.

Coaching is a small, tightly knit community, and each of our decisions affects those around us whether we intend them to or not. This pertains to the jobs you choose to take, the way in which you represent yourself both in and out of the workplace, how you treat others in the field, and the messages you send consciously or subconsciously to employers, young coaches, and our governing bodies. Strength and conditioning coaches are capable of far more than “counting reps,” and we should display the comportment of the multidisciplinary-based professionals we claim to be and the value we bring to the table of any organization.

Going forward, our ability to help our profession evolve to provide scalable value to not only the athletes we serve, but the organizations we are a part of, will not come from competition, but from collaboration. Many in the Special Forces community echo this sentiment, including my good friend Colonel Robert Bollinger, a veteran with more than 24 years of service. Regarding the carnivorous nature of the human performance field, he once said:

“Comparisons should be avoided in the world of human performance due to the complexity of the environment. Everyone is dealing with different athletes, with different backgrounds and different constraints. Fighting about who is the best or who is right in these types of environments is like asking whether SEALS, Delta, or Rangers are superior. We may poke fun at one another because we are brothers, but at the end of the day WE ARE ALL Special Forces.”

It is a great point. Each branch operates somewhat differently within their domain, but all act in pursuit of a common purpose. They know that only through the collaboration of multiple branches will their primary objectives be achievable. Us? Give us 10 more years and we may have finally moved on from talking about which form of squatting is the most efficacious (as if we have not yet learned and accepted that there is no one right answer for everyone.)

Managing Our Future Begins with Managing Ourselves

In my closing thoughts, I’d like to try and assuage some common anxieties shared by many coaches by stating a few points that are certainly not novel, but are worth remembering. This is especially for those times where it becomes tempting to lash out or behave in a manner that you would never tolerate from your children or the athletes you guide daily.

The points below are especially critical to remember during times of personal duress, financial hardship, and even a lack of clarity as to the next steps for you and your career. Why during these times? Because they are usually when emotions run highest and, as we all can attest when pushed far enough, emotions left unchecked will trump logic every time.

Remember:

• There are more than enough athletes for all of us all to train.
• If you are good at what you do, there will always be another job opportunity.
• There is more than just one type of career path to take in this field, and some people will navigate these paths a bit more quickly than others. Don’t resent them; learn from them.
• Nobody has “the answer.”
• It’s not about you and your momentary feelings; it’s about furthering the field.
• The louder the chest-thumping, the bigger the ego.
• Employers are rarely ever going to pay you what you are truly worth. Hence the axiom, “you don’t get what you deserve in life, you get what you negotiate.”
• All of us are going to meet coaches throughout our career who are a bit sharper than we are in some areas. Remember that it goes the other way as well.
• Affiliations, shiny brands, and championship-caliber teams are not what define great coaches—the way they behave and the difference they make as a whole does.

The points above may seem trite, but they are true. They are also not going to be easy to swallow because of our sometimes trigger-happy emotional personas. Given the context of our jobs, we are often much better at assessing and screening others than ourselves. Yet, sometimes, improvement starts with a reminder of the basics so we don’t shoot ourselves in the foot, personally and professionally.

Without question, we are all part of a profession that ranks as one of the most unique and rewarding of any trade. However, we can do better, and this starts with becoming aware of our faults, and owning up to them.

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

Optimal sport performance is the successful expression of ability, which consists of physical and psychological capacities. Each of these factors can be teachable (such as tactics), trainable (such as physiology), or uncontrolled (such as genetics). We all know that, to become successful, an athlete requires many ingredients (including luck), but there isn’t always a consensus as to what those characteristics are. Even if we have two athletes with an identical characteristic, such as the same training program, one may become a World Champion, while the other may fade into obscurity.

The ability to correctly identify talent at a young age is an attractive proposition, as it allows for the correct funneling of resources towards those athletes most likely to benefit, which in a sports performance world represents the biggest chance for a worthwhile return on investment. Similarly, the concept of talent identification allows for the “weeding out” of athletes who are unlikely to be successful, so that money, time, and resources are not wasted on them. In this article, I’ll discuss whether we can test for talent, and what lessons we can take from the research that has attempted to answer this question.

What Is Talent?

Talent is “a special ability that allows someone to reach excellence in some activity in a given domain.” Within the constraints of sport, a talented athlete is one with the ability to become elite, where the definition of elite depends on many factors. For a PE teacher at school, elite likely refers to being successful at a local level. At an athletics club, elite perhaps refers to success at a national level. And for a small group of athletes, elite means competing at the World Championships or Olympic Games.

Because the definition of elite can change from situation to situation, so too does the level of “special ability” required—It takes a different amount of talent to be successful at the Olympics than it does to be successful at a local athletics competition. In this article, I’ll typically be referring to elite athletes as those with the ability to compete at international championships.

It has been proposed that talent has five properties:

1. It is genetically based in origin, and so is at least partially innate.
2. There will be early indications of its effect, but these will improve with training.
3. Early indication of talent allows for a prediction of who will excel.
4. Only a small number of people have talent.
5. Talents are relatively domain-specific—i.e., someone isn’t globally talented.

The Factors That Impact Talent

The importance of talent within the pursuit of excellence has been the subject of several popular science books. Some authors believe that talent is irrelevant, or at least overrated, and that undertaking purposeful training for an arbitrary amount of time (say, 10,000 hours) can lead to elite status in whatever domain you wish. Let’s call this the “Bounce” rule, after Matthew Syed’s book on this subject, Bounce: The Myth of Talent and the Power of Practice. (The book has more nuances than this. It’s an oversimplification on my part, and I could have chosen a number of other books that have taken this standpoint).

On the other hand, we have far fewer books that detail the innate aspect of talent; the standout for this is The Sports Gene by David Epstein. There are often debates about which is more important, which we can sum up as “The Sports Gene” vs. “Bounce.” It’s easy to take one side or the other, but as we will see, talent is complex and subject to influences from both spheres.

Age

Many different factors impact sporting talent. Some of these are well outside of the athlete’s control, while the athlete and coach directly influence others. One of these uncontrollable factors is birthdate. This refers to something called the relative age effect (RAE), which underlies the fact that there is an over-representation of individuals born at the start of the academic year within groups of elite athletes. In the UK, this would mean that elite sports people are more likely born in September than in August.

This effect is more prevalent at younger ages, and more so in some sports than others. If we look at athletics, it is perhaps obvious how this can take effect. In the UK, athletics age groups at all levels up to and including under-17 correspond to school years. For example, u-17 athletes for the athletics season in 2017 have birthdates between September 2000 and August 2002. Because each age group spans two years, you get “top-year” u-17s (born September 2000 to August 2001), and “bottom-year” u-17s (born September 2001 to August 2002). For a competition at the end of July, those top year u-17s born in September will be almost 17, while those born in August won’t yet be 16.

Given that maturation plays a big role in athletic achievement in junior athletes, it’s hardly surprising that those who are older than their peers will be successful. The RAE is likely a bigger factor at youth level than at senior level, where the developmental advantages are lost as the younger athletes catch up. What this illustrates, however, is the importance of maturation-matched competitions, to ensure that the older athletes don’t dominate, and that younger athletes don’t drop from the sport due to loss of enjoyment and motivation.

Genetics

Another factor the athlete has no control over is genetics. We know that genes play a role in the development of elite athletes. At the last count, over 155 genes were linked to being an elite athlete. However, what is interesting is that elite athletes appear not to have all of them, even when just looking at an unrealistically low number of them. It’s clear that individual genes tend not to discriminate between elite athletes and non-elites.

For example, one gene that gets a lot of attention is ACTN3, known as the “speed gene.” Almost all Olympic sprinters have at least one R version of this gene, which makes it seem as if having this version is crucial if you want to be a sprinter. However, there are reports of elite power athletes being successful despite not having an R version of this gene. Add to this the fact that over 80% of the world’s population has at least one R version of this gene, and fewer than 0.0001% are elite sprinters, and it’s clear that it has no predictive ability.

There are many inherent intangibles in the journey to elite athlete, and a huge helping of luck. Share on X

I’ve written about this previously, and at the end of 2015 a number of leading researchers in this field published a consensus statement regarding their belief that genetic testing had no predictive ability for talent. However, the future of this field could possibly head in this direction. It’s likely that there are perhaps 1,000 gene variants strongly associated with being an elite athlete. What we might find is that, on average, elite athletes have around 700 of them—but not always the same 700. As such, there becomes a threshold above which your chances of being an elite athlete are higher; still, there will be no guarantees that if you have these 700 variants you will be an elite athlete, and if you don’t have them you could still be elite.

Of potential interest is the ability to screen for genetic variants linked to injury, which could help keep talented youngsters injury-free. In addition, gene variants can increase susceptibility to serious conditions such as repeated concussion, as well as alter the recovery from such trauma. At present, this is an ethical minefield, but over time evidence-based guidelines should be produced. Finally, epigenetic modifications can alter gene expression, and almost certainly play a role in exercise adaptation. The only problem is that they’re currently hard to test for, and it’s not entirely clear how they affect training response.

A very common and low-cost test for talent is anthropometrics. For example, if you know that almost all basketball centers are well over 2 meters in height, you’re unlikely to focus on someone who is much shorter than that. Soccer clubs in the UK often use various anthropometrics in order to predict a child’s adult height—e.g., the Khamis-Roche method— which they sometimes use to discard youth players. For example, if you want a goalkeeper who is over 1.9m in height, and your u-13 keeper is only predicted to be 1.6m, then you might release him.

In open sports such as soccer, this is potentially dangerous: Iker Casillas, the former Spain goalie, is “only” 1.85m in height. Leo Messi, possibly the best footballer ever, is a “short” 1.7m tall. I wonder how many clubs would have released these players due to the shortsightedness of relying heavily on height prediction? So, while anthropometric data might be useful, changes that happen during puberty and through maturation can alter the results. Because these processes happen at different times with different individuals, there is no optimal time to collect data.

Some psychological factors and personality traits also correspond to elite performance. The ability to perform well under pressure is crucial for elite athletes, and so discovering whether an individual has this trait is no doubt useful. However, the ability to perform under pressure is trainable, and so identifying athletes who are naturally able to do this might not be all that useful. Alongside this, how the athlete motivates themselves can also be an important difference between elite and non-elite athletes, so in theory being able to measure and test this may be of use.

Birthplace

Another factor the athlete can’t control when it comes to talent is that of birthplace. Research from the UK suggests that slightly smaller settlements are more advantageous than large cities. Athletes in the World Class Program were twice as likely to have been born in a medium-sized town (50,000–100,000 residents), over 10 times more likely to have attended a primary school, and three times more likely to have attended a secondary school in very small villages (fewer than 2,000 residents). This is perhaps unexpected.

It’s important to note that birthplace is likely a proxy measure for development place; most people grow up in the area they are born in. This may suggest that it’s better to be a big fish in a small pond when it comes to development, although there are many exceptions. Added to this is that smaller towns and villages are perhaps less likely to have the requisite facilities for developing sports people, and we have the potential that this finding is a statistical anomaly.

Indeed, the city I mostly grew up in (but wasn’t born in) has had at least one track and field Olympian for Great Britain at the last five Olympics, including one who won. This city has a population of well over 200,000, and the schools that all of these Olympians went to were either in the city itself, or in surrounding towns with larger populations (in my case, a town with a population of 12,000). In our cases, the birthplace effect didn’t hold true.

Testing Flaws: Specificity and Sensitivity

I’ve introduced a few factors thought to impact the development of talent, and in many cases, used to identify talented individuals for targeted training aimed at developing champions. In all cases, I’ve also shown how the tests themselves, while potentially useful, don’t necessarily predict talent, as there are many cases of a successful athlete not meeting the criteria.

This brings us nicely to the issue of specificity vs. sensitivity. Sensitivity refers to the ability of a test to correctly identify the variable of interest. For talent identification purposes, this would mean that a sensitive test would identify all future elite athletes. Specificity refers to the ability of a test to correctly identify negative findings. In talent ID, a specific test wouldn’t falsely identify someone without elite potential as a future athlete.

There are many cases of a successful athlete not meeting testing criteria. Share on X

And herein lies the problem; none of the tests of talent have the required specificity and sensitivity to allow us to be certain. Every time a test is used, a potential elite athlete won’t make the grade (false negative), and many people who won’t go on to be elite athletes will pass the test (false positive). On a population level, this arguably doesn’t matter. In athletics, you only need one athlete per event to be successful, so if you lose 99 others through incorrect identification perhaps it doesn’t matter. But how do you know that one of those 99 discarded individuals couldn’t have been better than the individual you took forward?

Talent Identification: An Alluring Idea That’s Impossible to Execute

So, what is the answer? First, if you want to test for talent, you probably want to utilize several tests, and view the results as a whole. Some of these tests should be specific to the sport, and perhaps hold more weight than others. I once went to talent testing day for athletics when I was 15, where I was in the lowest 50% in terms of score on just about every test (e.g., standing long jump, vertical jump, flexibility), but the fastest in the sprint tests. It just so happened that three months prior, I had won the national under-15 title in the second fastest time ever for a 14-year-old in the UK, so arguably such a test wasn’t necessary in my case.

However, there are many athletes who develop much later. Great Britain hasn’t had many sub-10-second 100m sprinters, and James Dasaolu and Joel Fearon didn’t break 10.2 until they were 22 and 25 respectively; relying solely on junior performance in these cases would have been misleading. If you do test for talent, repeat the tests at different time periods to correct for differences in maturation and development.

Instead, perhaps we can use the information gleaned from tests to nurture natural talent. If an athlete is born later in the age group, allow them to compete in developmentally matched competitions. This doesn’t happen so much in athletics, but is big in the UK for soccer, where athletes are bio-banded in order to compete against similarly developed peers. The same is true for genetics; while there is so much more to learn, early research suggests that we might be able to tailor training programs to a person’s DNA, although genetic testing under-18s is an ethically grey area.

Genetic variation means some people need less practice to reach the elite level than others, and some lack the genetic ability to ever be elite, regardless of the amount of training they do.

There are many other aspects that seem related to the development of talent in athletes. This includes taking part in a wide range of sports and late specialization, thought to develop essential movement skills and robustness. Deliberate practice is another one; while the evidence is now clear that deliberate practice training time doesn’t really differentiate between elite and non-elite athletes in terms of predicting success, it is still true that to be elite, you must do the right training. The modern twist on this is that genetic variation means some people need less practice to reach the elite level than others, and some lack the genetic ability to ever be elite, regardless of the amount of training they do. It is also important not to neglect the psychological development of athletes, and you should take care to ensure they develop the mental traits associated with elite performance.

Summing up, while the idea of talent identification is an alluring one, there are many practical stumbling blocks to its execution. Alongside this, the use of a variety of tests traditionally thought of as a talent screen may be better utilized to personalize training and individualize the development process for athletes in their journey from promising youngster to elite athlete. Inherent within this journey are a number of intangibles—factors that increase the chance of being an elite athlete, but either aren’t known or can’t be measured—along with a huge helping of luck. The worst thing a coach could do is incorrectly discard an athlete because they score poorly on a single test of “talent.”

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

Unilateral lower limb exercises are currently a staple of just about every strength and conditioning program in some form or another. I have found, however, that bilateral hand-supported movements allow athletes to express intent and force development not attainable with heavy standard unilateral work. And this leads to enhanced adaptations and ultimately maximized performance. In this article, I explain why I’m a fan of the hand-supported split squat (HSSS) and will share how to coach and program this exercise correctly.

The Limitations of the Rear Foot Elevated Split Squat

The rear foot elevated split squat (RFESS), or Bulgarian split squat, is often prescribed to improve lower limb strength. Looking at the RFESS, any coach or athlete who has tried to load it significantly becomes immediately aware of its shortcomings. When the RFESS gets near loads similar to those we find in front or back squats, it’s an ordeal just to find a position.

It’s also difficult to stay stable in the position due to a mixture of instability from axial loading, a narrow support base, dumbbell movement, or even the athlete’s choice of footwear that day. Not to mention heart stopping moments when athletes readjust their rear foot position.

I’ve seen some coaches attempt to remedy these weaknesses by performing trap bar variants off the floor in a split or rear foot elevated position. This also can be problematic as lumbar overextension, grip strength, and unwieldiness become issues at high loads. Athlete safety is paramount as is their confidence under load. A moment of doubt can ruin a set as an athlete struggles to retain stability. Coaches still find they get more from bilateral work from the perspective of loading, safety, and intensity.

Fans of unilateral lower limb movements cite stability training as a reason for implementation. I find, however, most athletes learn to stabilize against light load pretty quickly. Stability is fine if the aim of training is to enhance that quality. We are strength and conditioning coaches, however, not stability and conditioning coaches.

To quote Carl Valle:

“Asymmetrical forces recruit areas that help stabilize the joints instead of helping create propulsive forces. Increasing the stability of joints is a great thing, but if the joint needs to have propulsive forces at specific time frames, stability is not what is needed. Stability is reducing unwanted motion, not providing the motion the athlete needs.”

Single leg exercises often suffer as a result of the sheer energetic cost of getting set and staying stable. The emphasis often moves away from quality movement to a gassy lactic grind. So we wind up stuck in an intensity vs. stability trap. We need to intensify movement to yield improvement yet are limited by the ability to stabilize movement under intensive loads. So we move back to the bilateral safety blanket we know and love.

Unilateral lower body work does present an opportunity to train a gross movement quality that applies well to sports with gross physical qualities. These limitations on loading exercises mean we aren’t extracting the potential of any movement. Put simply, the RFESS just can’t be loaded heavily enough to get the most out of unilateral potential.

I’ve had athletes who can perform split squats and RFESS with loads comparable to their front squat, but even they understand the rigorous stabilization effort steals from the movement’s intent and intensity. The question becomes: How we can load unilateral work to allow for greater loading, safety, and intensity? The well of unilateral work is potentially very deep, and we aren’t going far enough.

How Fred Hatfield and Cal Dietz Fathered the Hand-Supported Split Squat

The HSSS is a remedy to a number of the issues addressed above. Its origin, however, is from hand-supported squatting. The hand-supported safety bar squat from which it’s derived is not a new movement by any means. Fred Hatfield originally popularised it, and the eponymous Hatfield squat has appeared in a few circles, including body building. Hatfield justified the use of the movement in his classic article “I May Not Know Diddley…But I know Squat”:

“This problem is solved by use of the hands in the safety squat bar. When the ‘sticking point’ is reached, the hands can be used to help you through it. This unique feature allows you to work with heavier weights in the ranges of movement where you are strongest and gives you help when you are weakest. You are exerting closer to your maximum effort through the entire range of motion.”

His last point, the crucial closer to maximum effort, is what we strive for to derive training effect. Hatfield liked to use the movement to add volume at intensities higher than that attainable with conventional barbell squats. Hatfield also preferred the weight distribution the safety bar offered.

“Conventional squatting places the weight behind you, fully four inches behind your body’s midline. That caused you to lean or bend forward for balance. With the safety squat bar, the weight is distributed directly in line with your body’s midline, and eliminates the need to lean forward.”

In some far flung corners of Instagram, you can find powerlifters and strongmen still using the safety squat bar to overload the squat pattern.

It’s my understanding that it was Cal Dietz who took the Hatfield squat and started applying it to a split squat and has done so for a number of years, particularly with hockey players. Thus the HSSS was born. Cal is well known for his triphasic method which places special emphasis on eccentric and isometric components of movement. The HSSS lends itself well to supramaximal methods that present the greatest opportunity for overload.

The movement is certainly eyebrow raising as it is not conventional in a powerlifting or Olympic lifting sense. But the point here is “stress” not strength.

How to Perform the Hand-Supported Split Squat

The movement requires the use of a safety squat bar, which is a padded bar with handles and camber. If you don’t have one, they’re pretty inexpensive and have several applications other than the HSSS. Popularised by injured powerlifters and football players, this bar is often used by athletes with shoulder injuries. More often than not, however, it gathers dust in the corner of a weight room.

The bar’s shape effectively drapes over the shoulder, leaving the hands free to clasp the handles on the bar. The bar position is stable enough to perform the movement hands-free. By freeing the hands, we can use them for support. Traditionally, Hatfield suggested holding the rack but rapidly moved to handles.

I suggest one of two set-ups. When using a second bar below the safety bar for the athlete to hold onto, it’s important for the athlete to push the bar back into the rack or down into the J-hooks to ensure the bar doesn’t shift. Preferable to this is the use of custom hand holds, or in the case of my set-up, repurposing detachable weight storage pins as handles.

The athlete holds the bar and the handles for the entire execution of the movement. Preferably, the athlete places the foot to achieve a roughly 90-90 position with both knees at the bottom of the movement. The athlete then drives off their lead leg as hard as possible. A stance that is too narrow takes away the base of support. If it’s too wide, often the athlete has excessive lumbar extension.

I suggest using warm-up sets to find the preferable foot placement (“finding your feet”) because doing so under high loads is potentially risky. When using the handles, the athlete wants to focus on staying tall to reduce axial stress. The athlete also wants to avoid touching the floor with the knee because this can deload the movement slightly and then displaces the hip position when attempting to drive back up.

Video 1. This video shows a hand-supported split squat with 180kg while using a safety squat bar and mounted handles.

The athlete uses the arms to assist during the concentric portion of the movement, especially if the intent is to overload the eccentric or isometric components. Increased support and the use of the arms allows for more weight than a barbell split squat would allow, applying more stress to the entire body.

The hands-assisted aspect also better supports, and takes pressure off, the back. The back is usually the weak link in squatting exercises and is one of the main rationales behind using RFESS. How much hand assistance an athlete uses will be determined by the coach and athlete depending on the training goal.

The use of the arms, along with the increased load, stresses the core to an even greater extent than a barbell split squat. This effectively turns the movement into a full body unilateral exercise. After the first workout, I’ve had a few athletes complain of sore lats the next day. However, their main complaint is sore quads and glutes since the heavy unilateral loading induces so much greater stress than conventional unilateral work.

One could also argue that we could elevate the rear leg much like RFESS, but with very heavy loading it becomes important to make sure the back leg does not extend too much. If the leg becomes too extended, the athlete’s hips will begin pulling out of position, causing potential unnecessary stress. Cal suggests that to protect the hips, we should use the split position rather than elevating the rear foot on a bench. I’ve occasionally used RFESS position with lighter loads and high-velocity movements, especially when implementing timed sets or local lactate work.

When loads exceed the athlete’s squat 1RM, I suggest using spotters at the end of the bar. Spotters are a must during supramaximal work to assist the athlete on the way up. Even with spotters, the athlete must focus on pushing as hard as possible on the way up. This set-up also allows athletes to perform tempo based lifting alone rather than depending on a spotter–I suggest this for only those who are competent with the movement.

Practical Application and Programming the Hand-Supported Split Squat

It makes sense that high-stress movements like HSSS take early precedence in any training session. We will often contrast this movement with single leg jumps, plyometrics, and bounds or apply French contrast. I suggest a low-volume high-intensity approach in its application.
My implementation of the movement borrows heavily from Cal’s triphasic method. We follow an eccentric, isometric, and concentric sequence over several blocks. This means using 80%+ or even supramaximal loading. I have, however, made extensive use of the movement with standard concentric sequencing and the addition of accommodating resistance. We apply 80%+ loading to HSSS on the first day then integrate bilateral exercises on alternate days into a weekly training routine.
Programs I’ve used with athletes are listed below.

I avoid programming multiple days in a row with HSSS to due to the movement’s stressful nature. Repeated heavy unilateral days, especially with the greater loading HSSS offers, seems to be very demanding on trunk musculature. To get around this, I integrate a bilateral day using conventional loading between split squat days to help cover the unilateral and bilateral bases. I like to think of HSSS as offering tissue adaptations and bilateral work as covering neurological ones.

HSSS offers tissue adaptations and bilateral work covers neurological adaptations. Share on X

During off-season training, I prefer a 3-day sequence if possible to get most out of the movement. Soreness for the unwary can be profound, so I suggest minimizing applying this type of work with tactical and technical work. This is why I often apply a two-day model to Mixed Martial Arts fighters who have high tactical and technical loads year round but who can still derive benefit from the intensity this training brings. Using supramaximal loading does lead to a compressed training effect, so such blocks are typically short, usually four weeks. Athletes with longer off-season stints can run longer cycles of this movement.

Before You Start Using the Exercise in Training

Like many others, I initially grabbed onto the rationale of unilateral work, particularly the RFESS, which seems very appealing. But I found myself going back to bilateral exercises because unilateral benefits didn’t manifest, primarily due to loading and stability issues.

HSSS allows maximum intent and force due to mitigation of instability. Share on X

I find this movement allows athletes to express intent and force development not attainable with heavy standard unilateral work. Conventional single leg work comes with inhibitory deceleration due to the expectation of potential instability with high loads that could be potentially disastrous. Athletes are smart, and they will develop compensations in movements to mitigate risk. HSSS allows maximum intent due to mitigation of instability.

The strength coach’s main job is to apply stress at the right moments using the right movements. Some movements are derived from happy accidents, agreed contested exercises, necessity, and some come from the process through which we try and solve problems in the gym. HSSS does turn heads due to its unconventional set-up. Some of my athletes jokingly refer to it as “cheat squat”–understandable given the assist from the upper body.

The key point is that the hand-assisted safety bar split squat leads to maximized stress placed on the body during training, which leads to enhanced adaptations, and ultimately maximized performance.

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

 

If you’re in this industry and you haven’t been living under a rock, you’re aware of the emerging popularity of velocity-based training (VBT). Velocity-based training is not new, and some of the best texts I’ve read on the subject are Fundamentals of Special Strength Training by Yuri Verkhoshansky and Training of a Weightlifter by R.A. Roman. Louie Simmons brought the Tendo to America’s attention, and more recently, Dr. Bryan Mann helped to further attention and knowledge on VBT with his excellent work. (There are many other pioneers, including Carmelo Bosco. The point is that VBT is not new).

With the influx of VBT tools and educational material available, many coaches are realizing the many benefits of training in submax special strength zones to increase high velocity strength and further aid athletic development. Gone are the days when absolute strength was the end-all be-all of training in most coach’s minds, which is a good thing.

Universal Principles of Strength Development

Before we start, there are two points I would like to make regarding VBT:

1. Strength is not overrated. I’ve heard a few coaches say that it is, and I don’t like it. I think it’s great that a lot more coaches understand the need for training more specific to the velocities attained in sports, but let’s not get carried away. Strength, or more specifically peak force, is still an extremely valuable quality for many athletes to train. The key is to figure out who needs more force, or who is better off working at higher velocities.However, if we start throwing the baby out with the bathwater, we will do a disservice to our athletes. Younger or weaker athletes still need to improve their force capabilities, while athletes who have strength trained for years might not need to improve their force capabilities and might be better off training at higher velocities. Like all else, we need to consider the context and provide the right stimulus for each individual athlete, which is beyond the scope of this article.
2. Velocity-based training is not a method of improving dynamic strength at higher velocities. Sure, the use of VBT devices correlates with an increase in coaches implementing higher velocity strength work, but not all VBT is high velocity. Instead, velocity-based training is simply an objective method of evaluating intensity of a given movement. That’s all it is.

Velocity-based training is simply an objective method of evaluating intensity of a given movement. Share on X

Due to the linear nature of the force-velocity relationship, we can objectively quantify the intensity of any given exercise using velocity rather than % of 1RM. Just as percentages are a method of quantifying exercise intensity and you can program strength, hypertrophy, and dynamic effort work using percentages, you can do the same with velocity. The belief that VBT is only useful for dynamic effort work shows a misunderstanding of what VBT really is.

I make this point because there are some coaches out there who believe you should only use VBT for higher velocity training. I’ve even surprised some coaches when I used VBT for my athlete’s strength work or for my own higher rep training. VBT is very much an objective method of quantifying intensity, just like percentage- based training, but with the benefits of autoregulation.

There is research by Mladen Jovanovic and Eamon Flannagan that suggests that 1RM strength can vary by 18% in either direction on any given day.¹ This means that the prescribed percentages can be wildly inappropriate in either direction. Let’s say an athlete’s 1RM is 300 lbs. On a great day, it could be as much as 354 lbs. and on a bad day it could be as low as 246 lbs. If the program called for 5 x 5 @ 80%, let’s see how it could fluctuate:

Scenario A (Normal Day, 300 lbs., 1RM)
5 x 5 @ 80%, which is 240 lbs.

This is an ideal scenario. The athlete is prepared to train today, and the prescription is an appropriate challenge.

Scenario B (Excellent Readiness, 354 lbs., 1RM)
5 x 5 @ 240
80% of 354 = 283
240 = 67%

This is not an ideal scenario, but is not the worst scenario either. The 80% is actually more like 67% 1RM for the day. If we stick to the prescribed program, this will be a very easy workout and may not result in the adaptation we want. This is also an example of what can happen if an athlete gets stronger over a longer program and the coach continues to use the original 1RM for percentage-based prescription.

Scenario C (Poor Readiness, 246 lbs.)
5 x 5 @ 240
80% of 240 = 192
240 = 98%

This is probably the worst-case scenario. The prescribed 80% is actually closer to 98%, which will make this workout impossible. If the athlete can somehow complete it, it may result in injury or overtraining.

This is where VBT comes in.

There are numerous options and methods for implementing VBT for strength. I will list a few here, but this barely scratches the surface. These are just some of the options I have used.

Option A: Switch Traditional Percentage to Velocity Equivalent

This option is the most basic method of using VBT for strength prescriptions, so it is where I tell coaches to start when they ask about using VBT for strength work. Instead of prescribing a percentage, prescribe a velocity that corresponds to that percentage. For example, 80% of 1RM will equate to .48 M/S in the bench press, on average. (Individuals will have slightly different corresponding velocities to percentages due to their unique force-velocity characteristics, so you should test and plot individual profiles to ensure accuracy. A little Excel knowledge goes a long way here.)

5 x 5 @ 80% turns into 5 x 5 @ .48 M/S

That’s it for VBT Option A. The only change that you need to make to start implementing VBT for strength work is turning the percentage into a corresponding velocity. This is a great place to start because it will account for the daily fluctuations in 1RM on any given day, while still being really easy to implement. If using the example above, that .48 M/S should automatically equate to 283 on the good day and 196 on the bad day.

Just work up as you normally would until you hit around .48 M/S and start your sets there. The .48 M/S is for the first rep in the set, not the average velocity of the set.

Option B: Implementing Velocity Stops

Now we start to get into it a little bit more. With this option, we start to add a range of velocities that we must stay between. By adding the second number, we now have a cutoff velocity, or a velocity stop. The goal is to stay above this cutoff velocity for the entirety of the set, and cut the set short when we go below it.

For example, it might look like this:

5 x 4 @ .48 M/S-.35 M/S

The second number should correlate to an RPE, or reps in reserve (RIR) number.

Now you might ask how you determine what velocity stops to use or, more specifically, how do you know which numbers correlate to RPE numbers. The easiest way to determine this for an athlete is to have them perform a reps-to-failure protocol in the specific exercise that you plan to program. You can use anything from 60-75% of 1RM. Simply have them perform a set to failure with the given load and monitor velocity for each rep. Figure 1 shows mine from bench:

 

You can see that my MVT was 0.18 M/S. I was alone, so I kept half a rep in the tank without a spotter. I’m usually around .12 for bench, but we’ll go from 0.18 here. Now we can use the corresponding velocities to RPEs for training prescriptions. If we want to have an 8RPE, the velocity stop will be 0.23 M/S, 0.27 M/S for a 7RPE, and so on.

To program this method, I first determine the set and rep scheme I want to perform. Then I determine at what intensity I want the athlete performing the work. Instead of writing an intensity in percentages, I find the corresponding velocity and list the velocity as the first number. Finally, I determine how many reps I would like in the tank and then find the corresponding cutoff velocity according to the chart listed above.

The belief that VBT is only useful for dynamic effort work shows a misunderstanding of what VBT is. Share on X

Note that the number of reps performed and the cutoff velocity will not always match up perfectly based on the readiness for the day. That’s fine. I don’t worry about going slightly under the cutoff velocity as it is a guide, but getting below cutoff velocity can be indicative of very poor readiness for the day. In this case, the coach should make some changes on the fly. If this happens often, consider the next option.

Option C: Undetermined Number of Reps

This option is very similar to Option B. The only difference here is that we don’t list a set number of reps to be performed. Instead, we use the initial velocity and cutoff velocity, and predetermined number of sets.

Example:

5 x ? @ .48 M/S-.35 M/S

The goal is to try to get as many reps in as possible before you hit the cutoff velocity. This can be a great way to control fatigue. There is research that anything above a 30% velocity loss begins to increase ammonia levels and correlated fatigue, so at certain times of the year, (peaking, tapering, in season) it may be wise to use this method with a velocity cutoff correlation of less that 30%.²

I’ll say that I have enjoyed using this method more with accumulation emphasis than in true strength phases. If we attempt to perform more reps in the range and/or progress by lowering the cutoff velocity, we can accumulate greater volumes each week through an accumulation cycle.

Option D: Velocity Stops as a Percentage of Initial Velocity

Everything about this method is the same, except for one factor. We use a set number of sets, an undetermined number of reps, and an initial set velocity, but we will not correlate the cutoff velocity with a RPE. Instead, we can use a percentage as our cutoff velocity. Here is an example of how to program it in a three-week block:

5 x ? @ .48, cutoff at 10% velocity loss
5 x ? @ .48, cutoff at 15% velocity loss
5 x ? at .48, cutoff at 20% velocity loss

We still use a number in M/S as a cutoff velocity number, we just use a percentage of the first rep to get there. I can set the Gymaware for a certain percent drop-off, and it will automatically spit out a number. Coaches can use this when they prefer adjusting by velocity loss, or when they do not have experience with correlating cutoff velocity to RPE. Option D is better when you have an exact RPE in mind, but if coaches want to go off velocity loss, then I would recommend this method.

Option E: Cutoff Velocity Percentage, Undetermined Number of Sets and Reps

Now we really start to use VBT to its fullest extent. All we know going into the session here is the initial velocity and cutoff velocity. Adjust the sets and reps based on performance. You can use RPE or percentage stops here. I will use % for this example.

Say we want to perform strength work in season. We stay below 20% drop-offs in velocity. We hit our initial rep at, let’s say, .5 M/S and then perform as many as possible until we drop below 20% of that, or .4 M/S. When we hit .4 M/S or below, we terminate the set. When the initial rep velocity of any given set falls below .4 M/S, we terminate the workout.

Wrapping Up the VBT Training Options

As mentioned, this is not an exhaustive list of VBT methods for monitoring strength work. These are just some of the methods I have used. It would be outside of the scope of this article to list all of the available methods. Some other options are: using a very low percentage drop for cluster sets, using an undetermined number of sets with various combination of the other factors, etc. As with anything, the possibilities can be endless if we have a grasp on the principles of velocity-based training.

There are pros and cons for each method of prescribing intensity for strength training. The decision of whether a coach uses velocity, intensity, or subjective RPE comes down to preference and logistics. However, VBT can be an excellent method to use when logistics allow for it. In my opinion, you get the auto-regulatory benefits of RPE without the flaws of subjective monitoring, and you get the objective prescription of percentages without feeling bound to what’s on the paper for the day.

As always, a coach should experiment by implementing these methods on themselves before programming for their athletes. Once a coach is familiar with some of these methods, they can be an excellent way of prescribing training load in an objective auto-regulatory fashion.

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References

1. Jovanovic, M., & Flanagan, E. (2014). Researched Applications of Velocity Based Strength Training. Journal of Australian Strength and Conditioning.
2. Sanchez-Medina, L., & González-Badillo, J.J. Velocity loss as an indicator of neuromuscular fatigue during resistance training. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise. 43: 1725–1734. 2011.