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Female athletes are notoriously susceptible to more exercise-induced health consequences than their male counterparts, simply due to their genetic anatomy and physiology. The three most common and worrisome disorders are iron-deficiency anemia, amenorrhea, and stress fractures. Females need to take extra precautions when undergoing a heavy training load to avoid these potentially debilitating disorders.

Iron Deficiency

Anemia is caused by an insufficient number of healthy red blood cells in circulation and is frequently associated with iron deficiency.¹ Anemia may result from blood loss from the gastrointestinal and urinary tract after intense exercise caused by transient ischemia from excessive vasoconstriction of splanchnic (GI) and renal vessels during exercise.²

The maximum amount of oxygen carried by the blood is determined by the amount of hemoglobin, an oxygen-carrying protein, in the blood. Because iron is an essential component of hemoglobin, an iron deficiency places a greater demand on the cardiovascular system due to the athlete’s reduced oxygen-carrying capacity.

Athletes have a higher risk for iron deficiency than the general population, and female endurance athletes are in the greatest danger.³ Common symptoms include:¹

• Fatigue
• Irritability
• Moodiness
• Headaches
• Impaired concentration, potentially worsening to lightheadedness upon standing
• Pica (non-food cravings, such as ice)
• Brittle nails
• Sore tongue
• Shortness of breath

Iron supplementation with ferrous sulfate is highly recommended for female endurance athletes. Correcting the deficiency can lead to enhanced performance and health status.

Amenorrhea

Amenorrhea is a disorder of absent menstruation characterized by at least three consecutive missed cycles.⁴ High-risk lifestyle factors include low body weight (>10% under normal), excessive exercise, and stress.⁴

Amenorrhea occurs more frequently in female athletes than women in general because strenuous activity causes metabolic alterations in the endocrine system, leading to severe hormonal disturbances.⁵ Exercise-induced amenorrhea results from decreased follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) and luteinizing hormone (LH); a lack of these two hormones disrupts the hypothalamic center in the brain, responsible for hormone signaling. This decreases estrogen levels.⁵

Estrogen is a key player in developing and maintaining the body’s immune system, so depleting this hormone leads to increased susceptibility to infections, including upper respiratory tract infections.⁵ If no intervention occurs, a predisposition to infertility and progression to refractory amenorrhea (second-grade) with decreased bone density (osteopenia) will likely follow.⁵

Stress Fractures

A stress fracture occurs when the body is unable to absorb the shock of impact on some surfaces, typically due to overuse and fatiguing muscles. Both iron-deficiency anemia and amenorrhea are linked to secondary decreased bone mineral density and stress fractures when female athletes ignore early signals and symptoms.²

Iron-deficiency anemia and amenorrhea are linked to stress fractures in female athletes. Share on X

Interleukin-6 (IL-6) is an inflammatory mediator in the body that responds to intensive exercise stress.² When IL-6 upregulates, it induces osteoclast activity—the breakdown of bone minerals with the intent to rebuild. However, IL-6 also activates hepcidin, a small molecule that promotes iron deficiency.²

Iron-deficient bone cannot rebuild itself properly, leaving the athlete in a state of weakened bone mineral density and vulnerable to stress fractures if they don’t overcome the deficiency. Animal studies have shown that iron deficiency impairs the bone resorption (rebuilding) process⁶; the root of the issue may be nothing more than an insufficiently iron-supplemented diet.²

Other studies have found a correlation between menstrual irregularities and the incidence of stress fractures in female athletes.² A large majority of stress fractures occur in the lower leg and take a minimum of six to eight weeks to heal, creating a major setback in a competitive athlete’s training regimen, regardless of the sport.

Training Considerations for Female Athletes

Training volume and intensity may need to be modified to give the athlete’s body a chance to recuperate and strengthen itself naturally. These two exercise variables create significant stress on the various systems of the body, temporarily depressing its natural function to focus attention on the health and hormonal stressors. Coaches and parents alike should be aware of the symptoms common to these three health issues in particular for both the well-being and athletic longevity of all female competitors.

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. Brittenham, Gary M, “Disorders of Iron Homeostasis: Iron Deficiency and Overload,” in Hematology: Basic Principles and Practice, 6th edition, edited by Ronald Hoffman et al. (Philadelphia, Pa: Elsevier Saunders; 2012), Chapter 34.
2. Yanovich, R, Merkel, D, Israeli, E, Evans, RK, Erlich, T, and Moran, DS, “Anemia, Iron Deficiency, and Stress Fractures in Female Combatants During 16 Months,” Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 25(12) (2011): 3412-3421.
3. Hinrichs, T, Franke, J, Voss, S, Bloch, W, Schänzer, W, and Platen, P, “Total Hemoglobin Mass, Iron Status, and Endurance Capacity in Elite Field Hockey Players,” Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 24(3) (2010): 629-638.
4. Shimizu, K, Suzuki, N, Nakamura, M, Aizawa, K, Imai, T, Suzuki, S, Eda, N, Hanaoka, Y, Nakao, K, Suzuki, N, Mesaki, N, Kono, I, and Akama, T, “Mucosal Immune Function Comparison Between Amenorrheic and Eumenorrheic Distance Runners,” Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 26(5) (2012): 1402–1406.
5. DeCherney AH, et al. Current Diagnosis & Treatment: Obstetrics & Gynecology, 11th ed., (New York: McGraw-Hill Education/Medical, 2013).
6. Katsumata, S, Katsumata-Tsuboi, R, Uehara, M, and Suzuki, K, “Severe Iron Deficiency Decreases Both Bone Formation and Bone Resorption in Rats,” Journal of Nutrition, 139(2) (2009): 238–243.

In the modern era of athletics, numbers are everything. We track performance with advanced statistics and complex formulas because we’re looking for anything that will give us the extra edge on the competition—and rightfully so! Don’t get left behind in the Dark Ages: Stop testing your athletes like it’s 1999.

Testing athletes one at a time and then pausing every five seconds to write something down in your notebook is not the best way to do it anymore. This is time-consuming, tedious, and, ultimately, boring. Not to mention that it takes hours, if not days, to transfer that data to digital spreadsheets. And what happens if your notes get wet or you can’t read what another coach wrote, or worse, you lose them? All your time and effort goes down the drain and you’ve got to do it all over again. It’s time to step into the modern era of athletic testing.

Testing and Tracking Leads to Improvement

Before we get ahead of ourselves, though, we should discuss the importance of testing in the first place. Testing the athletic ability of your players lets you and everyone else know exactly how each player stacks up. Wondering whether or not a player truly has the speed to play a certain position? You can test measurables that have a direct correlation to play on the field, court, track, and ice.

You can’t afford not to test and track your athletes if you want to be competitive. Share on X

To take it one step further, it has been proven time and time again that anything measured will improve. When you know what number you have to beat, it becomes infinitely easier to hone your skills and reach that goal. Better numbers result in better overall performance. Simply put, you can’t afford not to test and track your athletes if you want to be competitive.

Enter DrillStack: simple and easy athletic testing anytime, anywhere. The Drillstack app requires no Wi-Fi connection or data service to function, which means you can test your athletes anywhere you please. Whether you’re out on the practice field, in the weight room, or in the fieldhouse, you’re good to go. No more papers flying around in the wind or losing your pen, because Drillstack is completely digital. Just show up with the device. When you’re all done, you can share and view the results from any device. Drillstack is here to revolutionize off-season testing and take your team to the next level.

Test Anytime, Anywhere

With Drillstack, you don’t need to carry around cumbersome equipment and gear. The device has a built-in stopwatch, as well as a vertical jump calculator, so you don’t have to do the math yourself anymore. Simply capture the reach and the touch and Drillstack does the rest. Test and rank combines type events, weight room lifts, track events, baseball/softball drills, strongman competitions, or any type of event with measurable data. The convenience and customization of Drillstack is unbeatable by itself, let alone all the other benefits it provides.

Intense, Positive Competition

After you record all of the results, they’ll post to your Rankboard. This may not sound like much on the surface, but believe me, the Rankboard will be one of the key factors in your team’s improvement. Athletes are natural competitors, constantly trying to top one another. That means when they see the board, their first instinct will be to work a little harder to grab that top spot.

Every athlete will know where they stand and what they have to do to be the best on the team. They’ll put up bigger weights and clock better times, which will translate to improved play on the field. Ever heard anyone complain that their team is too fast, powerful, or athletic? I didn’t think so.

Always Improving

The best part about Drillstack? We’re always improving. That’s the beauty of a digital device: you can always update it. Laser timing is coming soon, and that will only enhance the accuracy of timed events like the 40-yard dash (or any distance, for that matter) and shuttle runs, and we’re not stopping there. We’ll be using the latest technology to continuously push the limits and take athletic testing to new heights.

The Off-Season Advantage

Ultimately, Drillstack gives you the off-season advantage. In-season is all about playing games and doing what you can with what you have, but the off-season is where you get better. It’s when you get bigger and stronger, quicker and faster, and it’s where you set yourself apart from everyone else.

Drillstack will have your team working out in the off-season like never before. In turn, your athletes will be better prepared for the season than ever. Contact us today to learn more and get a free demo!

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

 

Positive responses from my previous articles on SimpliFaster have reinforced the importance of sharing information, nurturing the future generation of coaches, and fostering certain attitudes and behaviors within the coaching community.

In particular, my article about the challenges facing young coaches trying to gain a foot on the bottom rungs of this career ladder generated responses from young and enthusiastic coaches. They contacted me to develop their network, experience new environments, and enhance their learning and future opportunities. I’ve also had a few interesting interactions with the larger coaching community.

Recently, I read a piece by a coach named Tom Green looking to make his way in the world of strength and conditioning in the UK. In his article, Coach Green laments the state of the industry in the UK where a professional sports team in England was offering only 40-pence more than minimum wage to assume the role of their academy’s lead Strength Coach. The sports team in question demanded an awful lot. The coach would have invested a wealth of time and money to have earned a degree and gained significant experience to take a position earning essentially minimum wage. Are the entry requirements and demands of the job worth little more than that of unskilled menial labor?

 

This leads to my purpose for this article. Paying it forward.

I recently read Brett Bartholomew’s excellent book, Conscious Coaching: The Art and Science of Building Buy-In. Brett highlights that everyone benefits from the knowledge, generosity, and opportunities provided to us by experienced and selfless coaches who came before us.

And we have an obligation to demonstrate the same generosity and provide the same opportunities whenever we can. We should lend the same helping hand when the chance presents itself. Networking and mentoring are essential conduits to developing the coaching community. If older coaches don’t share what they know, their knowledge dies with them, and the new generation of coaches will make the same mistakes.

“Smart people learn from their mistakes, wise people learn from the mistakes of others.”

Unfortunately I’ve witnessed programs where individuals want to hide everything they’re doing. They have a misguided notion that they own coaching and athletic development secrets that no one else has stumbled upon and keep these secrets to themselves. I’ve even witnessed programs where members of the support staff aren’t trusted to have access to the full training plan; they’re essentially throwing darts in the dark when it comes to adding their input.

“I don’t know if there is another place in the world that prides itself on helping and sharing, as federations or universities usually hoard information. For us to share allows us to grow. It is a very unique brand of education.”—John Godina, ALTIS CEO/Founder

For those who don’t know, ALTIS runs regular coaching and performance therapy programs throughout the year, and their staff is incredibly open in sharing what they do. This environment is so refreshing and stands in stark contrast to other situations I’ve seen.

“…its purpose is based in a noble pursuit of trying to help people.”—John Godina, ALTIS CEO/Founder

A young, less experienced coach, though, may be in danger of becoming a leech. Of taking from mentors and not giving back. Not fertilizing the relationship. Once again, as Brett points out in his book, we need to find ways to give back.

It may be difficult if you’re the junior in the relationship, but there can be creative ways to do this. Brett illustrated examples of coaches who wrote personalized letters to their mentors and found other ways to contribute. Even if these efforts appear less significant than what you gain from the relationship, they will be appreciated.

A less experienced coach is in danger of taking from mentors and not giving back. Share on X

I’ve experienced such situations myself. I’ve spoken to some incredibly talented and experienced coaches when I had questions about my practices or my career. One of these coaches was recently looking for information for a colleague who was considering a position in Asia. I was able to speak to some of my contacts and provide a little information to the mentor coach. It was a very small thing, but it was nice to be able to give back for a change.

As Brett mentioned, many coaches influence and, to some degree, mentor the younger generation perhaps without realizing it. Brett’s coaching journey began without any direct mentors. I can empathize with this story. Depending on logistics and your environment, you may not rub shoulders with many experienced and charitable coaches. Thankfully in this age of the internet and social media, we can expose ourselves to the thoughts, philosophies, and techniques of many leading experts. Many experienced and successful coaches are influencing a large number of developing coaches and aren’t even aware of it.

Mentoring, providing a positive influence, and sharing ideas and information are worthwhile interactions within the coaching universe. I can cite moments in my career where I’ve been influenced from afar. I wouldn’t be writing articles now were it not for the challenge laid down by Craig Pickering in his piece encouraging coaches to write.

 

Vern Gambetta and Jas Randhawa, ALTIS Sports Medicine Lead, both have extolled the benefits of reading, writing, communicating, and learning through mentorship. When such experienced coaches and practitioners promote the necessity of reading, writing, and sharing with your network—well you can’t get stronger recommendations.

“The two years I spent with my mentor were priceless, without
that experience I may still be a high school coach.”—Dan Pfaff

“If you’re a young coach, find a good mentor and jump in on their network of influence.”—Stuart McMillan

I’m familiar with Brett’s early career regarding the lack of formal mentors. Whether it was ineffective networking on my part, my geographic and logistical challenges, or just bad luck, my early career missed some of these experiences. I am more fortunate now. Through networking and traversing different countries and continents, I’ve expanded my network of coaches.

While working at the Hong Kong Sports Institute, I’ve been lucky to develop a relationship with the head athletics coach, Anthony Giorgi, who also has a background in strength and conditioning. When I seek answers about coaching and my career, he’s been kind enough to provide wisdom and answers.

Although we can be influenced by coaches from afar, we cannot forego the personal touch. For example, I’ve certainly been guilty (and still am at times) of engaging in the knowledge arms race: reading more and more books and articles in the hopes of short-cutting the path to the top.

The truth is we can’t escape the need to spend time developing experience. Anthony pointed out that I’m at the stage in my career where I should focus on applying what I know. This does not deride the need to read and write more, we’ve already established that these are vital to a coach’s continual growth. If the coaches I’ve mentioned can still learn and grow, you can bet that you and I still can.

At a certain stage, you have to be ruthlessly selective when it comes to deciding what you read and focus on what you’re applying and the outcomes of what you deliver. The search for knowledge is endless. There are always more books and articles to read.

 

I recently completed ASCA accreditation. My next step is to apply to join their pro scheme. Mentoring is a major aspect of this. Coaches can only move up levels within the structure by mentoring junior coaches. To my knowledge, no other body puts such a premium on mentoring to ensure the industry’s growth. This really sets the ASCA apart.

After reading my article about starting a coaching career, coaches trying to broaden their experiences and knowledge asked to visit the Hong Kong Sports Institute. I also had former athletes contact me who wanted to develop a career in strength and conditioning and sports science, and I’ve done my best to facilitate these requests through intern opportunities.

Sharing, networking, and mentoring are vital to developing a coaching community. Share on X

Communication, sharing, networking and mentoring are vital components of growing and developing the coaching community and the world of athletic performance. I’m pleased my writing led to interactions that positively affected some young or potential coaches. While these exchanges may not constitute formal mentoring, I hope to meet the challenge laid down in Conscious Coaching and contribute to the growth and development of up and coming coaches.

While writing this article, I was influenced by Stuart McMillan’s twitter feed on the concept of “working out loud.”

 

Stuart’s post encapsulated all the points I’m attempting to make in this article in a much more eloquent and concise manner. Mentoring and networking, when done well, are noble and worthy causes. Share ideas, encourage feedback, promote your work for the betterment of the community (and not merely to blow your own trumpet).

Stuart, John Stepper, and many others realize that to continue the growth and development of our field, we need to make our work observable, share ideas and knowledge, and promote good practices.

Whether you are a successful coach and major influencer like Dan Pfaff, Stuart McMillan, Vern Gambetta, and Brett Bartholomew, or you’re taking your first baby steps in coaching, you can become an important contributor to the community. And although many fields recognize the importance of mentoring, there is precious little information on what constitutes effective mentoring.

There are also many who deride those who are “too prominent” and “too vocal” on social media. Yet it’s through these mediums that I discovered this excellent piece on effective mentoring. Although it’s written from the perspective of what good mentors should do, it also provides insights into how to be a good mentee.

Why did I write this article? To highlight the importance of mentoring, networking, communication, and sharing information. To stimulate and empower more coaches and practitioners to get involved in the wider coaching community. To not be cowed by the dissenters. To provide opportunities and learning experiences to others. To help junior coaches and those across all levels of experience and expertise to understand that they have an important role to play if they are willing, diligent, and effective participants.

We all have something to offer no matter how small it may seem. In your early career, just be aware that you may need to be a little creative when giving back.

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

 

What Is Direction Bias?

“Direction bias” is a term derived by Craig Phillips, who developed the treatment method of “Clinical Pilates” more than 25 years ago, when he created the Dance Medicine Australia (DMA) method of Clinical Pilates courses in Australia. Since that time, over 10,000 physiotherapists have taken the courses worldwide. These courses expand on Joseph Pilates’ original Pilates method by emphasizing the prescription of a specific exercise to match an individual’s direction bias (DB).

Direction bias stems from “direction preference,” which is a validated assessment tool¹ used by McKenzie-trained clinicians. With it, a subject’s symptoms and/or mobility improve with repeated movement in one direction and worsen with movement in the opposite direction. By using direction preference to guide exercise prescription in patients with chronic lower back pain, outcomes improved by up to 780%.²

The assessment of DB occurs through observation of a subject’s movement quality in a three-part battery of standardized dynamic stability tests following the same repeated direction-specific exercises. According to research, the tests are highly reliable,³ allowing for the assessment of DB in the asymptomatic individual, and opening up its use in the athletic population.

For more information on the technique of direction bias assessment, I recommend the article by Tulloch and Phillips,⁴ as well as these DMA Clinical Pilates courses.

The Use of Clinical Pilates in the Athletic Population

Pilates, while normally synonymous with rehabilitation, has been utilized in the field of high performance for over a decade, but to date there is only anecdotal evidence supporting its performance benefits. Similarly, although programs at English and Australian institutes of sport have used Clinical Pilates (CP) extensively, there are no long-term quantitative studies published on its benefits.

In an unpublished 2014 study,⁵ I found that in an untrained population, both traditional Pilates and CP improved repeated vertical hopping performance on the participant’s non-dominant side after six weeks. However, among trained athletes, it was only Clinical Pilates that yielded a significant benefit. Furthermore, Turner demonstrated a 6% improvement in rowers’ ergometer power results following the addition of Clinical Pilates intervention to their training.⁶

Acutely, Tulloch and Phillips showed a “within-session” 14% vertical hopping difference between prescribing “matched” and “un-matched” CP exercises to the participant’s DB in an untrained population.⁴

So why the resistance to using Pilates as part of strength programming at the elite level?

Conversations with numerous national level coaches across a wide variety of sports point to the low-load, controlled focus of Pilates as a poor match for the strength and power demands of many elite sports. I recall one such strength coach at a NRL Rugby League team saying to me, “If you put a reformer in this gym, I’ll throw it through the window followed by you.”

Furthermore, the focus of controlled movement and breathing in Pilates is often not synonymous with the intensity of effort associated with many athletes’ and coaches’ perceptions of training requirements at the elite level.

However, Figure 1 demonstrates that injury rates are increasing…

We need to focus on more than just strength training for injury prevention (Dan Pfaff)

The traditional belief that you can bulletproof an athlete through resistance training alone is being refuted. Local joint and tissue training strategies are not enough. Coaching methods now view training at the central nervous system level (CNS) as necessary to engage sensorimotor control through neuromodulation and sensory stimulation.

Introducing Direction Bias Gym Programming

DB gym programming prescribes the appropriate exercise to the athlete according to how they respond to repeated movement either towards or against their individual DB, using heavy resistance exercise.

Athletic training is the study of stimulus and outcome, where CNS regulates the outcome. While there are examples of the over-riding effect of descending cortical input on movement patterns, the CNS will primarily try to keep the host free from harm, particularly when loading.

One of my favorite quotes is: “The body is only as strong as it feels safe,” by Perry Nickelston. If the CNS determines that there is a potential threat to itself, it will restrict and/or alter movement patterns.

Inappropriate exercise selection has shown that regardless of the conscious cueing and training involved, some movement patterns will either not improve or will deteriorate, particularly under load. Conversely, with minimal coaching, the correct exercise selection can repeatedly demonstrate improved movement patterns that immediately carry over to other functional tests. The answer to this phenomenon lies in the hypothesized mechanism for the DB effect.

Hypothesis for Direction Bias Effect: Central Pattern Generators

Central pattern generators (CPGs) are networks of nerve cells that produce rhythmic, specific movements without conscious effort. Each joint, bilaterally, may have its own CPG that it communicates with via intermediate neural circuits.⁷

Theoretically, the CPG consists of two sections, the rhythm generator (RG) network and the pattern formation (PF) network, before providing excitation of multiple synergistic motor neuron pools responsible for different phases of movement. Each of these levels is subject to afferent feedback that can alter the level of motor neuron activation, timing of the phase transitions, and/or frequency of the impulse.

By this means, there is a hypothesis that pathology may disrupt the signal intensity at the RG level and/or the pattern of firing of either the extensor or flexor group at the PF level. This results in reduced quality of movement by diminished motor neuron firing, and therefore altered motor patterns.⁷

Potentially, DB exercise acts to negate the modulating effect of the pathology through its preferential stimulus to either the inhibited flexor or extensor pattern, providing positive afferent stimuli to restore the original CPG. Furthermore, spinal position can facilitate and inhibit CPGs,8 suggesting that exercises moving into extension will preferentially excite the extensor pattern at CPG level. Clinically, this is supported by the immediate effect of DB exercise intervention seen on brainstem-injured patients, where extension exercises tend to improve patients with acute brain injury, overriding the frequently observed flexor spasticity pattern.

For more information, I invite the reader to read the excellent article by Rybak.⁷

So how do we know which exercise has which Direction Bias?

The direction bias of an exercise can be theoretically categorized as:

1. The position maintained by the lumbar spine at the “sticking point.”
2. The predominant movement at the lumbo-pelvic-hip complex.
3. Counter torque required against COG.

However, due to the complex multi-segment movement of many resistance exercises, classification is far from simple. A research study proposed for 2018 will compare the acute effects on dynamic stability and athletic performance of four common heavy resistance exercises: the dead lift, back squat, front squat, and recline leg press.

So far, case series data has been collected across seven athletes. The objective measure was the flight time/contact time ratio for the athlete over five repeated vertical hops when told to jump as high as they could with minimal contact time on the ground.

The results for Athletes A-G are not significant for acute change on repeated vertical hopping performance before post-hoc analysis. However, prior to the four resistance exercises, each of the athletes was tested for their DB and the results are as follows:

This demonstrated the acute performance improvement seen with a “matched” versus “unmatched” Clinical Pilates exercise on vertical hopping performance, consistent with the results of Tulloch.4

Therefore, when results are analyzed, the resistance exercises classify as follows:

• Extension – Dead Lift and Back Squat
• Flexion – Front/Goblet Squat and Recline Leg Press

Below is the redrawn graph showing the results for each athlete’s performance respective to whether the resistance exercise was “matched” (MR) or “unmatched” (UMR) according to their direction bias and the bias ascribed above.

This preliminary case series supports the hypothesis that resistance gym exercises with a DB can behave in a similar way to low-load Clinical Pilates exercises.

One of the athletes in this analysis did not respond in a predictive manner like the others. Follow-up testing revealed that this athlete had a “lateral bias,” meaning he did not respond to flexion or extension movement like the other athletes, but responded better to a lateral movement. As the gym exercises chosen were bilateral frontal plane in nature, there was minimal response to the stimulus of the “lateral” athlete. This needs to be a consideration in DB exercise prescription and it warrants further study.

The Potential Benefits of a DB Gym Program

Obviously, there are many more exercises than these four that make up a program, and many more will require further classification to become a useful tool for both clinical and performance parameter decision-making in the gym. However, using the three questions outlined earlier on how to theoretically classify the DB of an exercise, we can provide an “educated guess” on the classification of certain exercises.

I presented a pilot study at the 2015 SMA National Conference, considering the effects of an eight-week DB strength program.⁹

The study consisted of 43 athletes allocated to either a DB group (n=25) or a “mixed” (non-DB) group (n=18). DB group athletes received a program that consisted of bias exercises “matched” to their individually assessed DB (e.g., athletes assessed as having a flexion DB participated in the Flexion Bias program). Of the 25 athletes, there were eight with flexion bias and 17 with extension. Mixed Bias program athletes participated in a mixture of both DB programs, which acted as a control for this study.

Sixteen exercises were theoretically classified as either Flexion or Extension as follows:

Athletes performed a total of 20 sessions of this program over eight weeks, with testing at four and eight weeks. The following results outline the percentage change from baseline after eight weeks of intervention.

In summary, the DB group responded better across all measures compared to the control standard intervention. In particular, repeated vertical hopping and agility testing between groups saw statistically significant effects.

Though not significant, 20m sprint times reported similar results to Brown et al.,¹⁰ following unilateral direction-specific (posterior chain) focused exercise protocol where there was no control group.

Post-Hoc Analysis of the DB Group

Practitioners familiar with DB are aware of the higher concentration of flexion-biased athletes at the elite level compared to the sedentary population, as well as the difficulty in prescribing loaded exercise to a subgroup that traditionally resists compression/extension. Unfortunately, due to the paucity of research in DB, this is not well-known across the worldwide high-performance population.

However, these athletes are commonly the ones that display many of the following characteristics:

1. Excellent flexibility/mobility
2. Soreness with repeated gym sessions, often requiring significantly longer breaks between sessions than their compatriots
3. Extreme levels of “natural” ability
4. Frequent injuries

I am sure many of you reading this are thinking, “Yep, I know athletes like that.” These are typically “flexion-biased athletes,” and I think traditional compressive resistance exercises are prone to endanger this group.

Post-hoc analysis of the above study revealed the following startling chart.

In this chart, the green line represents the Flexion group of the DB group, the blue line the extension DB group, the beige line the Flexion Control group, and the purple line is the Extension control group for the repeated six vertical hop tests.

The summary of this data is highly suggestive that traditional programming does not account for DB (control group) for vertical hop performance. It can be shown to be detrimental for flexion-biased athletes, and is equivocal for extension. However, with implementation of the DB program, extension-biased athletes improve significantly and flexion athletes improve off the scale!

This sub-group of athletes will be the subject of further research due to their natural performance attributes—and, hence, value to the team—as well as their history of predisposition to injury. It’s certainly something worth investigating for your athletes.

Does This Mean We Only Focus on the Flexion-Biased Athletes?

There are certainly a sub-group of athletes that respond better to DB exercises than others. I often refer to these as the “Responders.” These are the ones that demonstrate a large performance improvement after a matched exercise but, conversely, a large degradation in performance with an unmatched DB exercise. As a result, care needs to be taken with their programming. As outlined above, flexion athletes often fall into this category, as do the acutely injured.

Those that respond least tend to be more robust and can tolerate exercises across both flexion and extension movement planes—we refer to these as the “Robust.” These athletes will still have a DB of some degree that is potentially worth considering at least for heavy loads, new techniques, or the novice lifter. Raysmith and Drew found that if an athlete can complete more than 80% of planned training sessions, there is a 700% increased likelihood of them reaching their performance goals.¹¹ Therefore, performance improvements may be associated with DB gym programming because of the potential to protect the athlete by restricting possibly injurious exercises.

As with everything, there is a spectrum at play here, and the point at which the coaching team decides that an athlete’s classification should be a “Robust” versus a “Responder” is an area that requires more research. The net worth of a “Robust” athlete on the far end of that spectrum, undertaking a DB program compared to a compound multi-plane movement focus, is likely low. Suffice to say that this emerging area of performance training will highlight the need for communication between performance staff and physiotherapists trained in DB assessment.

Further Research

The long-term goal of the coaching team, in addition to performance enhancement, is injury prevention. It is well-recognized that the team that keeps its best players on the field for longer has the greatest success.¹² DB programming has the potential to identify and turn a “Responder” into a “Robust” through exercises prescribed to facilitate the CNS’s control. As the athlete progresses, measuring their tolerance to loading into their “opposite” DB (through un-matched exercises) compared to their matched exercise response will generate a picture as to their current training state. There is a planned 12-month follow-up study of injury incidence for the athletes in the pilot study.

Summary

DB programming is the evolution of the validated concept of Direction Preference, which has demonstrated that repeated movement in an individual’s preferred movement pattern yields improved function. Preliminary studies show that certain heavy resistance exercises, when matched to the individual, can lead to an acute performance effect, and when not matched, a degradation.

By incorporating these “matched” exercises into a specific program for the athlete, there were significant improvements over traditional “mixed” programming in single leg power and agility testing. Further analysis demonstrated that certain subgroups may be more susceptible to DB than others, highlighting the need for their early identification by performance staff, as acute exercise selection may lead to potential performance gains, as well as improvement through reduced risk of injury.

DB programming has great potential in the field of high performance sport, but more research is necessary for its validation and widespread use.

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. Edmond et al. (2014).
2. Long et al. (2008).
3. Yu et al. (2015).
4. Tulloch, Phillips et al. (2012).
5. Leslie (2014) Unpublished – Presented at the Australian DMA Clinical Pilates Summit, September 2014.
6. Turner (2014) Unpublished – Presented at the Australian DMA Clinical Pilates Summit, September 2014.
7. Rybak (2006).
8. Calancie B, Needham-Shropshire B, Jacobs P, Willer K, Zych G, Green BA (1994). Involuntary stepping after chronic spinal cord injury. Evidence for a central rhythm generator for locomotion in man. Brain 117(Pt 5):1143–1159.
9. Leslie (2015).
10. Brown et al. (2017).
11. Raysmith and Drew (2016).
12. Drew, Raysmith, and Charlton (2016).

 

Dr. Fergus Connolly is probably the only person in the world who has worked at the highest levels of Premier League soccer; international rugby; the NBA, NFL, and NCAA (currently Performance Director for Michigan Football); and elite military units. Fergus is also the author of a unique book, Game Changer, which will be out in August.

I had the opportunity to ask Fergus some questions about coaching and sports science. I think you will be interested in his responses.

John T. Weatherly: Recent attention has focused on problems in the sports performance arena while ignoring what is good. What do you feel are strengths of the field?

Dr. Fergus Connolly: Great question. Everyone in this business has to admit we are fortunate to do this for a living. We are in a position to impact young people in a positive way every minute that we work.

Sure, there are downsides and negatives. We have keyboard warriors and fake coaches tweeting random noise for the sake of it, and commercial media promoting “fake sports science” articles, yet there is greater information availability than in the pre-internet age. For example, I smile when I hear the term “fake news” because this industry has been confronting “fake sports science” for almost a decade and social media has simply accelerated its availability. For the next young generation of coaches coming through, it is more difficult to differentiate the real experts from the ones who have no expertise. The plus side is infinitely greater than the downside. If you do your job right, you get to work—like I have—at the cutting edge of human performance and understanding.

John T. Weatherly: Your experiences range from working at the highest levels of international rugby and Premier League soccer, and with elite military groups, to the NFL and your current role as Performance Director with Michigan Football. Do you feel there are a few key concepts that are applicable across sports and different cultures?

Dr. Fergus Connolly: There is no question. The key principles are universal. This is actually the basis of Game Changer. All field sports have the same basic aims—score and defend through teamwork. The athlete is the same person and the team is the same tribal concept. There are principles to be learned across all sports. Many people get caught up in the specific technique for a sport or position, but it’s the principle that is universal and transferable.

The different cultures in each sport do affect the implementation and the skill of the coach, but not the principles. For example, there are generally two ways to address a problem through capability or capacity, through quality or quantity. In some teams and sports, there is a tendency to try and solve every problem through capacity, quantity, and volume—not with shrewd, lean quality. This is the reason these teams never win in the long run—it is often a cultural issue.

John T. Weatherly: Data collection and analysis has increased dramatically. How do coaches and organizations stay on top of this without being overwhelmed?

Dr. Fergus Connolly: Well, let us take a step back first. Far too many teams collect data for the sake of it, but with no real plan. They actually create noise, or what is referred to as “global” or “external” noise, and miss any signal. Do not confuse data with knowledge. Collecting data is easy; gaining knowledge from data is more difficult. There are teams that falsely assume information is power. It is not. Knowledge is power. Data is, well … just data.

Don’t confuse data with knowledge. Collecting data is easy; gaining knowledge from it is harder. Share on X

Some people will suggest there is no problem with collecting as much data as possible, but this is a fool’s errand. Collecting as much data as possible does three very dangerous things for any organization. First, it wastes resources, money, expertise, and time. Second, it serves to create noise and only muddies the water. And third, and most critically and gravely, it gives teams and coaches the illusion of having knowledge. This illusion is devastating, because when the illusion becomes apparent, it is too late and coaches see suddenly that it was just a myth.

A far more efficient approach is to collect information with a specific problem in mind. Sure, you could try to collect all the information you could and look for things, but in elite performance groups such as sport or security, we don’t have that luxury. You need to be strategic in your use of data so that you can solve real problems that manifest themselves on game day. Time moves too fast and games come at you too quickly to just wade through endless spreadsheets and charts hoping to find a differentiator.

John T. Weatherly: Time—whether it is a high school coach, the NCAA with a weekly limit on hours for sports, or the collective bargaining agreement (CBA) in the NFL—is an issue common to all coaches. There is only so much time for practice, conditioning, recovery, and so on. Do you have any ideas on how to manage the use of time?

Dr. Fergus Connolly: The answer is “Legislation with Education.” In the NFL, the elephant in the CBA room is the absence of guaranteed contracts, unlike the NBA or MLB. This complicates it for football. If you simply legislate to tackle issues around overtraining or excessive hours, you do not get compliance, you get enforcement. It will work in the short term, but it is not a true solution. If you educate but do not legislate and do not enforce it, you will always get cheating by those who are unethical. So, you need both simultaneously to have willful engagement in the process and protection of it.

The ultimate aim of training is to do as much as necessary, not as much as possible. You want to achieve the practice objectives as efficiently as possible so that the learning experiences are rich and deliver high-quality outcomes that help the team continually improve their performance in every game.

John T. Weatherly: I have heard you speak of a “Michigan Man” named Tom Brady. While he can certainly throw the ball, you have pointed out his greatest strengths may be psychological and tactical instead of physical. In basketball, I remember Larry Bird seeming to be one of those guys who appeared to be at the right place at the right time. Yet, if you compared Bird’s vertical jump or sprint speed to other NBA players, he would probably have been toward the bottom.

Brady and Bird are two of the greatest of all time in their sports. Can you expand on this concept of how these great athletes may not be above average on physical measures, but still are the best or among the best at their sports or positions?

Dr. Fergus Connolly: Tom is the prototypical Michigan Man. His talk with the guys last year as an honorary captain underlined that. It is never about you as an individual, but the team first, second, and third. You prepare harder than anyone else and never give in, because of the legacy and duty you have to the jersey you have on loan from the Michigan Men who have gone before you.

Yes, and what many have forgotten was that when a shy awkward kid from Indiana met with the Celtics for the first time, he had injured a finger on his shooting hand and had to shoot left-handed! So imagine the scene of a small-town kid with a very challenging upbringing who was not very fast, did not jump much, and was using his weak hand to shoot. The Celtics still took him and he became what we now remember as the legend Larry Bird.

But let us not fall into the trap of suggesting Bird and Brady are not “athletic.” What we are saying is that they, in relation to the most elite athletes in the world, achieve their legendary status through means other than being physically dominant. But they both had healthy off-court or -field lifestyles and worked very hard. They compensated for any limitations with exceptional technical, tactical, and psychological qualities. Also, they never allowed the level of their perceived “weakness” to fall below what I refer to as a “functional minimum.” This means the minimum level they need to perform other qualities.

The most highly skilled humans have the ability to solve problems through the concurrent application and integration of skill sets. This is what Tom Brady does and Larry Bird did. They combine psychological, physical, tactical, and technical abilities holistically at a higher frequency than others. This is what many coaches fail to recognize when they apply a reductionist approach to problem-solving; one that assumes most problems are either due to physical shortcomings or because a player is not mentally tough. This perpetuates a piecemeal view and a perspective of players that is outdated and inaccurate.

John T. Weatherly: Recent studies have indicated many college athletes are not getting enough sleep and are even deficient in vitamin D. Yet university athletic departments invest big money in GPS, HRV, ice chambers, and so on. What are your views on this?

Dr. Fergus Connolly: Go one step further, John. How many teams have GPS systems but poor basic food refueling? In some teams, it is laughable but not surprising.

This is one of the reasons I love working with Jim Harbaugh. He is incredibly pragmatic. If we do something, we are doing it because it is going to help the guys, and help us win, not for magazine inches. Believe it or not, this game is not complex, despite some people trying to make it such. Keep the focus on the main building blocks and perfect them. Do not get distracted by the technology trends and gimmicks, but know which tool to use to solve certain issues. Keep the main thing the main thing and get the big rocks in place first before you start arranging the pebbles.

You have teams who won one or two games last year and they are talking about how they use cryotherapy, heart rate variability, velocity-based gadgets, or virtual reality. I hate to break it to you, but none of those is the reason they lost 14 games! It is the theory of constraints—identify and fix the real limiting factors. In many cases, GPS has become the Bosu ball of the team sports world.

John T. Weatherly: There is not much research on the physical conditioning of athletes, and most of what is done seems to be with tiny Olympic sports in closed environments like weightlifting. The big three American sports of football, basketball, and baseball are almost ignored. I have heard you say periodization does not exist anymore. Could you expand on this, especially for team sports?

Dr. Fergus Connolly: Well, in the U.S., a large influence on training has been Olympic sports. While some of this has been excellent, there are many distinct differences between individual and team disciplines. The concept of periodization in team sports is archaic.

The concept of long-term or annual periodized plans is foolish when you think of all the moving parts and interconnected elements in team sport. People like Raymond Verheijen have been saying this for a long time. Every week you have a different opponent and you have to perform every weekend. Planning with a weekly morphocyclical programming approach is a much smarter method because it reflects the tactical and technical adaptations that must be prepared for. We really need to stop using the word “periodization” in team sports, because what we really do is plan and program. Long-term goals and immediate to short-term programming.

But, as I outline in Game Changer—and I cannot stress this enough—preparing teams to win games is not a physical challenge, it is a holistic performance challenge. Some people have jumped on tactical periodization as the ideal approach. They have read a few articles and completely misinterpreted this as a physical application, or physical training approach. You must train the team sport athlete to execute skills in a complete holistic manner, combining tactical, technical, and psychological qualities, not physical alone. If games were won on physical qualities alone, you would have never heard of Larry or Tom.

In defense of U.S. sports though, I do think it is difficult to do true academic research in the professional arenas, and similarly with student-athletes. I should also point out, coming from Europe and having been educated on good authority, I know to question many of the details in the published Eastern research. Some authors more than others. Nonetheless, the principles are worth being aware of.

Much of the way traditional Olympic periodization is implemented has no relevance to current team sport; particularly the schedules they face. In team sport, you have the combination of tactical and physical abilities, which can only be trained effectively in a gradual integrated manner, not separately. Also, team sport athletes are not working in a four-year cycle in which they only have to peak once for the Olympic trials and again at the Games. Instead, they have to go out and perform week after week and there is no true off-season.

John T. Weatherly: Two mentors of mine are Dr. Mike Stone and Vern Gambetta. I think a lot of both, but they have some different ideas. Dr. Stone and colleagues published a paper “Servant or Service,” which basically points out how poorly educated many sports coaches are. Yet, the sports coaches often control strength and conditioning coaches or sports scientists working with athletes. On the other hand, Vern has pointed out the need for training all-around coaches (he does not like the strength coach title) and has stated it is the sports coach who has his or her butt on the line for wins and losses, not a strength and conditioning coach or sports scientist. Do you have an opinion on who should control what is done or emphasized most?

Dr. Fergus Connolly: First of all, we are all coaches. Our responsibilities may lie within certain areas of the backroom, but we are primarily coaches trying to help a team win. So, when we talk about preparing the team to win, I look at backroom teams in terms of responsibilities, not roles. Many teams do the opposite of this and employ a person for every single possible role, rather than trying to keep the backroom and staff as lean, efficient, and cross-trained as possible. Having worked in a team context at the highest levels of pro and college sports for the past 15 years, I have experienced how the best teams operate.

The first and key focus must be communication, and the larger the backroom the more difficult and unclear this is. This affects everything from schemes to training. In my opinion, the formal education of sports coaches has no reflection on their ability, qualification, or potential to train a team successfully. This is a misguided belief that everything of value can be taught. Well, if that is the case—where is the course on love? Some of the best coaches I have been around have an exceptional level of interpersonal, emotional ability that I have not seen anywhere else, despite no formal qualification.

A sports coach’s formal education has no reflection on their ability to train a team successfully. Share on X

Equally, some of the most qualified, educated, and book-smart professors (and coaches) in sport that I have met over the years have great knowledge, but no personality. They have such bad interpersonal skills that they could not teach a single thing. I have met many who would struggle to help a squirrel find nuts.

I think everyone realizes the term “strength and conditioning coach” is long outdated. But, simply changing a title will not fix the problem. The only way it will change is by focusing on clear definition and delineation of the responsibilities, and this is where benchmarking the responsibilities is critical. It is the paradox: “If you cannot define it, how can you measure it?” In other words, clearly outline what your S&C coach is supposed to be responsible for and hold him or her accountable for that—stop being limited by convention.

John T. Weatherly: Do you have any ideas on how a strength and conditioning coach should be evaluated? Mark Watts has pointed out there is no objective criteria to measure job performance.

Dr. Fergus Connolly: Like all measures in chaos and life, you don’t measure simply and purely by objective metrics, but you should combine quantitative and qualitative measures. I discuss this, too, in Game Changer, because it is the same approach you should use when assessing a player’s value to a team, not their “price.”

You always start with the team and evaluate the team first, and then assess the individual’s responsibilities and influence on the group with respect to its collective aims and goals. Remember, some teams value strength and conditioning more or less than others, depending on how they decide to try and win games and how physically or technically dominant their style of play is. So, the value of the role to each team differs.

But, the key point here is team objectives first, group objectives second, and then the individual—but with respect to the team’s collective goals.

John T. Weatherly: With all the certificates and credentials out there, you do not have any specific to sports performance. Yet, you have worked at the highest levels in major sports on different continents. Do you have any advice on a career path for people wanting to work in the sports performance area?

Dr. Fergus Connolly: I get asked this question quite a lot. I have always had a natural ability for understanding human performance. I see things differently. Some people have a gift for music, drama, whatever. Mine is understanding human performance. I have been fortunate not to have been trained in a standard formulaic manner to think like everyone else, too. As a result, seeing problems differently leads to more creative and inspirational solutions. I am actually in the middle of putting a course together for professionals in this industry, and the first two modules I outlined were sociology and critical thinking, because they are the two basic areas I see as absent in modern coaching.

First, every problem you face is based in the human environment. So, the better your understanding is of the human, the better the chance the solution has to succeed, regardless of how good it actually is. Secondly, if you cannot think critically, how can you improve? People throw the word “Kaizen” around, and speak of constant improvement, but without the ability to analyze, how can you improve a player—not to mention self-analyze and self-improve? Then, you have the mass of information that is being sold to you on a daily basis. If you cannot think critically, you will continually to fall for snake oil. How often do you see strength coaches go all in for gimmicks without critically analyzing the application and implementation?

The best examples of this are GPS, Nordbord, cryotherapy, and velocity-based training (VBT). GPS is a tool, but in most sports it only measures a fraction of the activity, so is it actually adding any value? Is it just interesting, useful, or useless? The Nordbord is a great exercise for knee flexion and isometric loading, but what is the true benefit? Is there any, other than being good at the Nordbord or changing a strength curve?

Does a team who trains and plays in states where there is snow six months of the year need cryotherapy or get any benefit from it? Seriously? Or, is it just adding non-specific stressors for the sake of it? Why not just walk outside in the cold for 60 seconds for a similar effect? The principles used in VBT are very effective, but is it really a “system?” Is it any more relevant than load-based training (LBT) or density-based training (DBT)? These are just a few examples of where critical thinking has been absent, and why in this era of “fake news” it is essential for this professional more than most.

John T. Weatherly: Is there a definition for what a sports scientist is? Everybody from university professors who do exercise or supplement studies on the general population (do not work with athletes at their own universities) to people collecting and analyzing data, seems to like the title of sports scientist. The words “sports science” are popular yet cloudy.

Dr. Fergus Connolly: I do not think there is. But, then again, as you pointed out earlier with strength coaches, titles are questionable, at best. At the risk of boring the reader, far too many people focus on specific roles and not on the total required responsibilities for the team and assigning responsibilities to people that way.

Where you see it often is in the role of “rehab coordinator.” This role basically has evolved because neither the strength coach nor the athletic trainer was knowledgeable, interested enough, or practiced enough to rehab athletes—when the reality is that this should be a joint responsibility. But for some teams, it is easier to create a role than to upskill people. Now we have another salary, another person to communicate with and manage, and we have made things more unnecessarily complex … all because we did not want to share tasks or equip people with interdisciplinary, transferable skills. Remember, when it comes to staffing and backrooms, “small is big.”

When it comes to sports scientists, the role evolved because no one in the backroom had the skill sets or time to learn how to operate GPS and these other technologies that have become so prevalent, or wanted to. The pitfall, though, is when you have inexperienced people who now start to offer opinions on data without any real context.

In the future, you will see the best teams having no strength coaches or athletic trainers, but rather a single “performance staff” of smaller elite experts, who each have specific responsibilities along a continuum. Everyone does some of everything, but naturally some have more expertise.

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

 

 

First, thanks to Coach Roger White for his enlightening article on 4 X 100 relay exchange. His analysis and perspective have inspired me to share a few insights, as well as a few overarching philosophies that—going back over forty years—pretty much led me to the same conclusions he has reached.

Applying Three Overarching Philosophies in Coaching the 4 X 100

Just a few meets back I had the opportunity to talk to a sprinter I coached at another school 31 years ago. While he was watching his son competing in the sprint events, he commented on how disappointed he was with the way his son’s team was approaching exchanges in the 4 X 100. He alluded to a math calculation I used that resulted in a no verbal command/ hand back at a specific point in the zone method of exchange that was effective in helping his teams earn state medals.

At that point, I called over my current relay guys and asked him to share with them what he just mentioned, because the method of take-off-mark determination we were using was essentially the same one I applied ever three decades ago.

This was the same formula Coach White discussed in his recent article.

I very much liked Roger’s reference to Tom Ecker’s classic work, Basic Track and Field Biomechanics. My introduction to Ecker’s approach to relay racing came from an earlier publication of his, Track and Field Technique Through Dynamics published by TafNews Press in 1976. That book brought to my attention Ecker’s original premise—that “placement of runners and baton passing skill can have a profound effect (for better or worse) on the total time for any sprint relay.”

 

What Ecker was suggesting made sense to me. The baton needs to travel as fast as possible at the time of the exchange, and that the exchange should be made deep in the zone at a point closer to what the outgoing runner’s top speed will be. How to determine that was the problem Ecker was able to solve.

In both editions, he offers that, “by using a simple formula, the coach can determine the exact go-mark distance for any two relay runners with very little time and effort.” In the fourth and earlier editions of Biomechanics, he simply changes the numbers in his formula from yards and feet to meters.

Like Coach White, I came across the table version of Ecker’s formula in Gerhardt Schmolinsky’s Track and Field: Text Book for Coaches and Sports Teachers published in 1978. The chart presented in the book is described as an “aid to assessing with a fair degree of accuracy the spot for placing the starting marks after clocking the time of the runner with the baton on the last 25 meters and of the receiving runner on the first 26 meters.”

Both works were as helpful to me as they were to Coach White, and it feels good to know that my epiphany moments about relay exchange were similar to those of a great coach like Roger. My only modest contribution is in presenting my three overarching philosophies for this event.

Just as no two relay exchange zones are exactly the same in terms of running distance with and without the baton and gravitational forces relative to curves, no two runners are exactly the same in terms of acceleration ability, speed regression over longer distances, coordination, and reactivity. Ecker’s Biomechanics provides the following pieces of advice. “A poor starter should not run the leadoff leg. Poor curve runners should not run the first or third legs. Poor baton “givers” should not run the first, second, or third legs. Poor baton “receivers” should not run the second, third, or anchor leg.

He acknowledges that these points are obvious, and I think this is where a coach’s personal overarching philosophy on the 4 x 100 relay comes into play. For example, I understand that most of the excellent research on this relay will point to the importance of the fastest athlete running first because he runs farther with the baton than the anchor runner, but the reason we are using the formula in the first place is to maximize the outgoing runner’s speed so that the baton is not slowing down in the zone. Therefore, the amount of running the sprinter does to build up speed before getting the baton is important.

I always consider the difference in each of the four zones, as well as the nuances in ability of the four fastest sprinters I believe should be in this event. My shortest sprinter with a low center of mass and good acceleration I like to run first. My fastest sprinters, because of the amount of running they are doing both with and before getting the baton I like to put in either leg two or three. The fastest of those two I will put in the third leg, generally because I believe he is the most prepared to deal with negotiating the curve. As Jesse Tukuafu noted his research on curve running, “In order to be continuously changing direction around the curve, a runner must generate centripetal forces with the ground. This requires athletes to put some of their efforts into generating ground reaction forces that accelerate them towards the axis of rotation of the curve. As the medio-lateral (ML) ground reaction forces increase to generate centripetal forces, the vertical forces are decreased which results in a loss of running speed.” My fastest sprinter is most likely the one whose speed through the curve decreases the least. He is a sprinter who probably runs many 200’s and 400’s, and is the most experienced at making adjustments to run the curve effectively.

To understand the zone, the athlete must live and work in the zone. Simulation training (relay baton practice) that does not account for the true context of high-speed exchanges in each of the three zones does not prepare athletes for live race conditions.

This is where the original notion of a chart or projection table was a major step forward in helping coaches gets a better handle on how to coach their 4 x 100 teams. Its benefit is that, provided the input data is good, there is a logical starting point that does not require multiple practices.

And Ecker points out the problem with conventional type relay practices. “The typical short run –up practices coaches employ results in the incoming runner accelerating rather than decelerating as is the case over the actual distance of each leg in the relay.” I like to gather data by having each sprinter run the actual distance needed to be negotiated in his leg to get a more accurate assessment of his slow down over those final 25 meters. This means the testing is conducted through the actual zone on the track.

One of the surprising insights in Ecker’s Biomechanics is his focus on accuracy. “When using these formulas,” he says, “be aware that errors in timing will produce errors in distances. Therefore, it is essential that the timing be as accurate as possible.” Years back I would station an athlete at the fly-off mark and catch the drop of his hand to get a 25-meter incoming time. Now I use Freelap.

Declines in force application during repeated practice trials make the value or such rehearsals questionable. This is the one key insight I picked up from Biomechanics.
“The commonly used trial and error method can take hours of practice time and often produces go-marks that are not accurate. Because of fatigue on the part of the relay team members, the go-mark distances that seem correct at the end of one trial-and-error session often turn out to be all wrong at the next session.” That has always been my observation and another of the benefits of trusting a method that may only need tweaking after races themselves.

But there is another rendition of the sprint table that coaches might wish to consider. Randy Huntington sent a detailed Excel chart to Christopher, who then forwarded it to me. I asked Randy if it was OK to present this in a follow-up to Roger’s article, and he graciously gave me permission to discuss the spreadsheet.

I will briefly digress to present my relationship with Randy, and my appreciation for what he has done throughout his career for those of us involved in the sport of track and field. Randy has always been patient, generous, and supportive in dealing with coaching colleagues and as well as athletes, and that at times can be difficult, especially when differing approaches become contentious. Several years ago while I was debating Dr. Mike Yessis on the significance of the pawback technique for high speed sprinting, I sent Randy images run through SiliconCoach of more advanced high school athletes who, though trained by their coaches to execute an effective pawback, revealed no such pawing action in the speed trials I conducted.

 

Randy’s response was that the pawback was not in evidence because the sprinters were spending too much time in backside mechanics. I should have accepted that as a credible answer, but at the time I was hesitant because in my own mind I could not understand how Weyand’s analysis from JAP2000—that swing time in all sprinters at their respective top speed was essentially the same—could jive with Ralph Mann’s position, going back to the early eighties, on the significance of frontside mechanics. How could swing times be the same if it appeared as if a significant part of that swing was being eliminated?

When Drs. Weyand and Mann did clinic sessions together and agreed with each other’s research, I was compelled to think a little deeper, and realized that, rather than something being “cut out” of the swing, the entire swing was just shifted forward, thereby allowing a more productive thigh angle on the frontside (70 degrees in the elites tested).

Now that Dr. Ken Clark’s groundbreaking springs study, conducted with Dr. Weyand at the SMU locomotion lab, has revealed that elite sprinters have a surprisingly fast rising edge to their force curve, and are applying greater forces in the first half of contact, the mechanics of exactly how they accomplish this are becoming clearer. They are applying a powerful leg drive with a stiff contact on landing.

The training implications of these findings point to minimizing backside swing, a maximizing of frontside knee lift, a forceful down and back ground attack, and a shin vertical/stiff contact on the ball of the foot. And the coaching cues to achieve this kind of landing, things like Frans Bosch’s “whip from the hip” and some of Dr. Clark’s cues such as “hammer the nail and “spin the globe” do indeed seem somewhat like what the original notion of a pawback was intended to achieve.

So Randy, if you’re reading this, thanks for your patience in allowing me the time to better wrap my head around a mechanic that may still be semantically problematic—the pawback—but conceptually similar to what current research is suggesting, and what you pointed out years ago.

And now back to Randy’s approach to the 4 x 100

The table that appears is apparently based on a concept Fred Wilt, the famous “FBI distance guy,” developed many years ago. Like all Excel spreadsheets, this one has probably gone through several versions, but the math is still accurate. For example, on the table that appears in the GDR textbook, if an incoming runner’s last 25 meters is 2.8 seconds, and the outgoing runner’s first 26 meters is 4.1, the take-off mark for the outgoing sprinter is at 11.6 meters on the GDR chart and 11.61 on Randy’s spreadsheet. Assuming both are projecting a free distance of 1 meter in the baton exchange, coaches should have no concerns using Randy’s work.

What I like that he’s done is to add things in a simple way that gives coaches some flexibility. For example, assuming that coaches may want to run a full relay simulation in practice, he accounts for the fact that marks will be different in trials than they would be in an actual competition due to a runner’s aggressiveness. As a result, he presents both practice mark projections as well as what coaches can anticipate as take-off marks for an actual race.

I will close with one final overarching philosophy on the 4 X 100 relay. I refer to this event as Full Tilt Boogie—acting in an extremely focused manner in the pursuit of a goal and putting forth a superlative level of endeavor that is inherently exciting. If a formula gives my sprinters the confidence to run with abandon, trusting that the incoming runner will deliver the baton to them late in the zone when their arm comes back, it is well worth using. High risk is not an issue for me.

I like what Coach Vince Anderson once said about coaching concerns over possible failures in the 4 X 1: “Can someone explain what, exactly, is a safe pass?”

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. Clark, K. P., and P. G. Weyand. “Are Running Speeds Maximized with Simple-spring Stance Mechanics?” Journal of Applied Physiology 117.6 (2014): 604-15. Print.
2. Clark, K. P., and P. G. Weyand. “Are Running Speeds Maximized with Simple-spring Stance Mechanics?” Journal of Applied Physiology 117.6 (2014): 604-15. Print.
3. Tukuafu, Jesse Tipasa, “The Effects of Indoor Track Curve Radius on Sprint Speed and Ground Reaction Forces” (2010). All Theses and Dissertations. Paper 2348.
4. Weyand, P., Sternlight, D., Bellizzi, M. and S. Wright. “Faster top running speeds are achieved with greater ground forces not more rapid leg movements.” Journal of Applied Physiology, 89: 1991-2000, (2000).Print.

Have you checked your form lately? Do you know the proper stride mechanics that will make you the most efficient runner possible?

Running economy is the energy utilized under a submaximal velocity, usually measured by the consumption of oxygen, per kilometer run, per kilogram body weight. The greater the running economy, the more efficient the runner and the better the performance. Numerous factors, both genetic and adaptive, can affect an athlete’s efficiency, with the focus here being the individual’s biomechanics.

Let’s take a look at what goes into efficient form and break down each phase into its biomechanical constituents. I will address the common errors that occur in each phase to give the reader an idea of what to look for in an athlete’s form. After reading, you should have a better understanding of what it takes to improve running economy to minimize energy expenditure over long distances.

Goal: Minimize Energy Expenditure to Reach Maximize Efficiency

We can break stride mechanics down into the following foci in endurance running: foot placement, toe-off, thrust, rotation, and torsion. Visualize constant low-speed running as a cyclic wheel motion, rolling and circular without any jerky or shock-generating movements. The mechanics for high-speed running and endurance running are nearly equal; however, the two differ in the displacement of energy. Both should emphasize reactivity and avoiding wasteful rotation.

Bosch and Klomp (2005) wrote that limiting the degree of movement of the entire pendular action decreases the amount of energy needed to oscillate the legs; athletes achieve this by keeping the support phase short (when one foot is in contact with the ground), and by pushing off “reactively.”¹ Reactive muscles essentially recycle energy between phases as a function of muscle elasticity, and ultimately save the athlete energy costs over the long haul.

Long ground-contact results in a greater energy expenditure and less recycling. Rotation, especially when dealing with the shoulders, trunk, and pelvis, requires the body to use unnecessary energy to both produce the rotation and subsequently compensate for its inefficiency.¹ I will examine both errors in greater detail here.

The most efficient runners exemplify a footstrike in which the foot lands directly under the hip at the moment when the entire weight of the body comes to rest on the support leg. Backward flexion of the hip is key in bringing that foot around as quickly as possible, and virtually eliminates heel-striking as a result. Without much backward flexion of the hip, the foot will land in front of the body’s center of gravity with the heel striking first, far in front of the hip, causing a deceleration effect.¹ This braking effect is metabolically expensive and wasteful.

The general posture of the trunk should be more or less upright to avoid overworking or underworking the hamstrings and the displacement of stored energy.¹ The carrying angle of the arms is typically quite small and high to avoid fatiguing the muscles around the shoulder girdle.¹ The motion of the arms is not linear or rigid as in sprinting, but more fluid along the front of the body, naturally flowing with the torsion of the trunk and pelvis along the longitudinal axis.¹

Don’t confuse torsion of the trunk with rotation. In rotation, the shoulder compensates for hip rotation by moving in the opposite direction, backwards as the same leg pushes off.¹ Torsion, the correct motion, has the shoulder pushing forward on the same side that the leg toes-off¹; the shoulders seemingly “open up” to the driving knee, perfectly balancing the torsion, and effectively cancelling out the rotation of the shoulders and pelvis.

Vertical motion is yet another energy leech, so keep it to a minimum. Share on X

At the moment of toe-off in the support leg, the knee angle should be significantly less than 180 degrees; this ensures that the drive or thrust angles backwards with the heel flip and the workload directs onto the hamstrings.¹ The hamstrings are the key players driving the stride: The stronger the pull of the hamstrings, the less vertical displacement of the runner, and thus the greater the focus on horizontal propulsion.

Vertical motion is yet another energy leech, so keep it to a minimum. Less economical runners exhibit greater vertical impulses.² A certain degree is necessary to give the hamstrings enough room to work through full oscillation; strengthening the small gluteal and dorsal muscles of the lower back can achieve this.¹ If these muscles are weak, then the rectus femoris (central quadriceps muscle) needs to drive the vertical push-off, making for a costly compensation.¹

Sitting the hips low is a common adaptation of distance runners, simply because the rhythm of movement is slower than fast-paced running. This is OK as long as inertia doesn’t enter between the energy storing and unloading phases, since any loss in tension of the lower limb muscles and tendons will result in an enormous loss in energy.³ Runners with low power and reactivity or faulty coordination usually have this sloppy, loose technique.

Resistance training and explosive plyometrics are two proven strategies for improving lower-body stiffness to enhance running performance.³ Another point worth mentioning is that lack of tension around the ankle, lethargic dorsiflexion, causes ground-contact time to increase, expending stored energy from the Achilles and surrounding tendons.¹ In contrast, too much plantar flexion of the ankle does not allow the muscles to tighten sufficiently enough for a reactive ground contact. The ankle should be stiff and only slightly dorsiflexed at ground contact.

Biomechanics of the Gait Cycle

The propulsive phase is where force is applied to the ground through the lower limbs in order to obtain forward horizontal displacement.² Any deviation in weight or force distribution can be detrimental to the athlete’s running economy, since this sub-phase of ground contact is the most metabolically demanding of the entire gait cycle.² The error most commonly seen here is the athlete who only runs with his or her legs, lacking tension in the abdominal and gluteal muscles, and not allowing the trunk to participate in propulsion. The act of propulsion, or thrust, should be carried out earlier in the support phase rather than later, to avoid long-axis rotation of the trunk.¹

Note common errors during the floating phase, when both feet are off the ground. A lack of sufficient knee drive results in lax plantar flexion of the ankle in the trail leg. This is apparent in an athlete whose trailing knee lags behind the stance leg at the point of maximum ground contact. The swing leg’s knee should be already quite forward at this point in the stride.¹

A 2014 study by Santos-Concejero and colleagues investigated stride angle as a predictor of running economy. Stride angle is the tangent between the athlete’s vertical and horizontal displacements after toe-off to touchdown. Too great of an angle indicates vertical waste, and too low of an angle hinders stride length, which is possibly the most influential factor in running economy.² Stride angle serves as a marker for the runner’s ability to maximize swing time and effectively transfer energy during quick ground contact2, making it a solid assessment point for any coach.

Keeping these points in mind regarding each phase of gait analysis, coaches and athletes alike can gain better insight as to where form is responsible for losing precious metabolic energy. Stride mechanics are the most direct player in running economy and efficiency, but luckily also the most trainable. In practice, it is wise to focus on no more than one correction to technique at a time, giving enough time for neuromuscular adaptation to occur and become subconsciously integrated into the athlete’s natural stride mechanics.

This adaptation occurs relatively quickly, as a function of age, with young children and adolescents being extremely neuro-adaptive. Once a completely efficient stride is in place and mechanically second nature, the improvements in performance will soon follow. This is because the efficient stride reduces the entire metabolic demand on form to a bare minimum and shifts the focus to cardio-circulatory economy, rather than biomechanical.

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. Bosch, F. & Klomp, R. (2005). Running: Biomechanics and exercise physiology applied in practice. Maarssen, Netherlands: Elsevier. Chapter 3.4: 181-88. Print.
2. Santos-Concejero, J., Tam, N., Granados, C., Irazusta, J., Bidaurrazaga-Letona, I., Zavala-Lili, J., & Gil, S. M. (2014). Stride angle as a novel indicator of running economy in well-trained runners. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 28(7): 1889-95.
3. Barnes, K. R., McGuigan, M. R., & Kilding, A. E. (2014). Lower-body determinants of running economy in male and female distance runners. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 28(5): 1289-95.

 

When Donald Thomas waltzed off a basketball court in 2006 into his first track meet, with only one high jump practice under his belt, he shocked the nation by high jumping 2.22m (7’3”) wearing Nike Shox basketball shoes. The highest jumpers in the world come from basketball and volleyball courts, but most coaches don’t consider the scientific and motor learning reasons behind this phenomenon.

Video 1. Donald Thomas clears 2.22m in Nike Shox after one high jump practice.

I love anecdotes from the world of slam-dunk specialists largely because many coaches who are well versed in structured regiments and periodization schemes would laugh at the “training” in this hoops subculture. And yet social media is becoming more and more buzzed with gravity defying exploits of street dunkers. Many of these athletes haven’t touched a weight, heard a single cue from an experienced coach, or read a word about how to plan training.

How do these athletes manage such ridiculous jumps? Here are some hints. First, they are highly motivated and have a passion for jumping. Distinguished USSR high jump coach Victor Lonsky described this as “an itch in the soles of the feet.” Second, when they jump, they don’t just dunk on a 10-foot rim the exact same way each time. They twist, they spin, they might do cartwheels and back handsprings, and they have a lot of fun. All of these jumps yield different plant rhythms and sequences as well as outcome goals. Here are two of my favorite videos highlighting these ideas.

Video 2. Justin Darlington doesn’t lift weights or have a “training program,” but he can do this.

Video 3. Here is another great athletic dunk.

To help vertical jump athletes reach their highest potential, a variety of specific strength, power, and coordinative training is essential to maximize performance gains. There is an important aspect of motor learning that has a massive impact on the way we understand programming and athletic adaptation to training as we know it.

This aspect encompasses the subtle, and not so subtle, variations of key athletic movements, in this case jumping, that allow athletes to respond better to training over a period of time and acquire a higher performance level. With this in mind, we’ll jump into the idea I call specific power variability.

Specific Power Variability

Doing the exact same jump over and over, without adequate variation, is the “silencer” of vertical gains. This concept isn’t only true in athletic performance but also life in general. Nature itself is a balance between order and chaos. Without some level of chaos, or randomness, life ceases to exist.

I recently read Frans Bosch’s latest book on strength training and coordination, Strength Training and Coordination: An Integrative Approach. Bosch states that movement must have degrees of freedom to promote learning and progression. In other words, there must be some level of chaos, or room for the CNS to self-organize movement, to reach a goal. When exercises offer no degrees of freedom (such as a heavy barbell lunge), the athlete’s CNS is in a “straightjacket,” and no motor learning is possible.

John Keily describes training a skill as a trek through a densely undergrown path. The more you train the skill, the more you narrow the path, making it harder to keep walking along it. The more variable you train that skill, the wider you keep the path. The wider the path, the more easily you can move through it, but if it becomes too narrow, continued progress is difficult. Hence, a certain level of variability is vital to continue to make training progress and stay injury free.

As coaches, we are guides to the athletes’ subconscious systems. The athletes cannot consciously control how their brains shuffle through the adaptive systems of training nor can coaches control the exact way in which their nervous systems process stimuli and the exact mechanical manifestations from that process. The best we can do is to put an athlete in an environment that helps to promote the way we want them to adapt.

Applying Variability

In this article, I talk about four types of variability coaches can use to guide a jump athlete’s speed, power, and technical ability down the correct path. These are listed in order of their use, from beginner through advanced athletes. The beginning of the list is more useful for beginners while the end has more application for advanced trainees. This isn’t to say that beginners can’t benefit from #4 or advanced athletes can’t improve with #1 or #2; these are general guidelines. Four ways to induce specific power variability into jump training are:

1. Complex training
2. Fatigue induced learning
3. Same but Different
4. Induced randomness/chaos

Complex Training

Vertical jump training can become more robust through variability with both a mixed attempt format and the compounded effect exercises have on each other in a complex format.

Complex training is largely applicable to the widest spectrum of athletes in respect to potentiation. Dr. Bondarchuk has said, “In the future, in the track and field speed-strength events, we will see the complex method of constructing separate training sessions.” I was fortunate to hear Dr. B talk about complex methods in the weight room for advanced athletes at the 2014 Central Virginia Sports Performance Seminar, and potentiation exercises were a big part of his lecture. From a purely motor learning perspective, complex training is most applicable to beginners, but potentiation is useful for all levels.

Unfortunately, most coaches think of complex training only in terms of potentiation and, although this is an important aspect of stringing together a series of jumping, lifting, and throwing exercises, it is critical to also look at a series of exercises as a motor learning tool. Performing an exercise directly before another influences the mechanics of the second exercise in either a coordinative or fatiguing manner. For now, I’ll talk about the coordination aspects and cover fatigue in the next section.

Looking at the coordination effects of complex training, strength coach legend Dan John has some wonderful, insightful training methods using a kettlebell in the throwing ring. He uses various kettlebell drills, such as swings, goblet squats, single arm presses, and snatches, to settle his body into the rhythm he is trying to accomplish technically in the throws. He calls this “reflexive training”; using an exercise to “trick” an athlete into acquiring the desired body position while sparing willpower.

By alternating kettlebell work and throwing, Dan creates a powerful motor stimulus that teaches technique without spending an athlete’s mental forebrain energy on each throw, enhancing the workout and retention of technique. Complex training teaches motor patterns more effectively than simply potentiating prime movers haphazardly.

To this end, we must look at every movement complex from not only a potentiation standpoint but also a coordinative one. Better than simply aiming for gross potentiation, such as performing a heavy back squat followed by a vertical jump, it is much more useful to build complexes where specific skills are targeted, potentiated, and repeated. On simple terms, we can utilize movements like basic barbell lifts, medicine ball throws, and depth jumps to provide a coordinative transfer to subsequent jump attempts. French Contrast is one of the best ways to do this. A French Contrast circuit utilizes two strength exercises and two speed exercises in alternating circuit fashion.

A good coach can steer the nature of the French Contrast towards the specific technical output desired. The French Contrast’s total effect is not just potentiation but also a heavy coordination boost. In the video below, specific skills from a two-foot vertical jump are trained in a French Contrast format. Regarding what the coaching world has found to improve an athlete’s coordination and power in vertical jumping, the French Contrast offers one of the best training layouts.

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A post shared by Joel Smith (@justflysports)

Complex training concepts are important for motor learning in track and field jumpers. Alternating a drill such as the box takeoff below with actual long jump takeoffs is a useful method to “trick” an athlete into the proper takeoff rhythm, similar to Dan John’s kettlebell work for the throws. Once the rhythm is established, it becomes ingrained in the nervous system for future efforts.

Video 4. Long jump technique.

In my time working with swim athletes, I’ve learned that swim coaches use lots of variation through fins, paddles, socks, chutes, and simply heavy kick cues, to create the motor change they want to accomplish in the water. These movements are often complexed to create a better technical response. Track coaches can often get away with leaving technique alone in simple blocked training patterns because running is more instinctive, and thus less trainable, than swimming, but they can certainly learn from the motor learning ideals of aquatics and create faster sprinters and higher jumpers in the process.

The Role of Fatigue in Variability

In Strength Training and Coordination, Bosch mentions that fatigue can play an important role when building better motor patterns in sport. As speed and power coaches, we often look at anything fatigue-inducing with disdain, saying “look how technique fell off.” Bosch teaches us that fatigue causes the body to formulate a new recruitment pattern to deal with the building level of muscle fatigue. Clearly, this is only beneficial to a point. Fatigue is useful only as long as technique remains somewhat close to optimal.

When muscle fatigue rises, the body relies more on elastic elements to continue designated movement patterns. An example would be performing a set of squats and then immediately performing a round of eight consecutive hurdle hops. The muscle fatigue (contractile elements) from the squats force the body to formulate a greater contribution of elastic elements in the hurdle hops, which magnifies the purpose of the hurdle hops.

Some time ago, my college jumps coach was in contact with a Russian jumps coach, Egor. My coach received all sorts of interesting information which he shared and implemented with me. I hung on to every word and found the training advice more than helpful. As a coach, I used his advice on distance flops and scissors over a low bar with great success.

In my later coaching years, I contacted Egor and learned an interesting practice where you place the high jump bar to 6’-6’4” and jump it 50 times with a full approach, jogging back to the start mark after each landing.

This sounds crazy, but this type of practice is more common than you may think and, as we have just seen, has a plausible motor learning rationale. The two-minute drill, used by triple jumpers such as Christian Taylor, involves the following sequence: perform a triple jump from a short approach, about five strides; jog back to the starting mark, and repeat. Perform this for two minutes, trying to maintain technique under fatigue.

We tend to get stuck thinking that only maximal efforts count toward building competition technique, but a small percentage of training effort can be used to use fatigue when building a better motor program in the jump. Fatiguing efforts in jumping offer a unique motor stimulus that improves the interaction of muscle and tendon in conjunction with maintaining an athlete’s optimal jump technique.

Again, this tactic is only effective within reason. I don’t believe in regularly allowing athletes to sprint or jump with poor technique. Fatigue training generally bodes well as a finisher of typical workloads that are done with relatively good momentary technical accuracy.

When applying French Contrast work, we can assume that the relatively short rest breaks between exercises in French Contrast yield small fatigue elements that may force the body to increase elastic contribution in the workout’s speed-strength elements.

Same but Different

I first learned of the Same but Different idea while reading the book, Easy Strength by Dan John and Pavel Tsatsouline. Suddenly many ideas in the world of training made sense.

In Supertraining, Siff and Verkhoshansky state, “The competitive action executed with maximal physical exertion represents the most specific of all the special training means.” Athletes have only a certain amount of stored energy when it comes to maximal efforts in their primary directive. This idea represents much of what is utilized in the “Westside” powerlifting program, where the competitive lifts are sparsely addressed in their intense and competitive state, and large amounts of lift variations performed with high intent are prescribed during the rest of the training week.

The essence of Same but Different retains specificity under new biomechanical, environmental, and psychological constraints. The psychological constraints may be the most underrated and often are not considered when creating training variation. Basic examples from the weightlifting world are alternating a sixteen-week powerlifting program with three or four weeks of bodybuilding training or going from a competition low-bar squat to a few weeks of high rep high bar Olympic squats. A swimmer might take two or three weeks after the end of the season to play water polo, and so on.

Within the scope of jumping, complicated and environmentally different versions of movement offer a gold mine of options for helping the nervous system to form a better training pattern over time. Continually training the same exact skill and motor enneagram doesn’t give an athlete’s nervous system room to create improvement and leads to burnout. Training a skill properly requires a very high volume of specific training, but with an activity as physiologically demanding as jumping, it is very important that much of this specific training be performed under subtly different biomechanical and emotional constraints.

In Easy Strength, Tsatsouline shares a Vladimir Issurin (Block Periodization) anecdote about a coach who decided to get rid of all general exercises and make the preparation of his athletes exclusively sport specific. Many months later, none of the athletes had set a PR and many had regressed in performance. So much for the sport-specific approach to training that is so overbearing in our private sector sport-performance culture.

In the high jump world, high school basketball players make up a huge portion of the talent pool. There are loads of high school stories regarding jumpers coming straight off the basketball court clearing personal best heights and then floundering to sub-par jumping as they move away from basketball and start an extensive amount of specific high jump training and heavy weightlifting. In these scenarios, the specific high jump training is too monochromatic, and the heavy weightlifting is poorly designed, and the two combine to “straightjacket” the nervous system. The result: lousy jumps that the coach blames on the athlete’s lack of focus.

Back in my NCAA DIII coaching days, I saw college basketball players waltz off the basketball court in late February and win NCAA indoor national track meets in the high jump, who then stagnated in the outdoor campaign once they began to train specifically. Wouldn’t the specific high jump training in the outdoor campaign help their high jump technique and precision jumping ability? Not as much as we might think.

Athletes in weaker physical states will benefit from training that resembles a higher order of chaos to broaden the path of their nervous systems. Sometimes the best thing you can tell a jumper who is weary from the wear and tear of depth jumps, bounds, sprints, throws, and hops, is to simply go play soccer or ultimate Frisbee for a few days to help widen their path. Just hope they don’t twist an ankle.

In 2000, Matt Hemingway, who had walked away from high jumping two years earlier, found redemption through slam dunking during pickup games at work. His dunking exploits fueled his return to high jump, and his 2000 result of 2.38 was a PR and the highest jump Americans had seen in some time.

This type of story epitomizes Same but Different.

Here are a few practical examples for jumpers.

Video 5. Stefan Holm and 6 Degrees of Jumping

I love, and regularly make use of, these jump variations with my youth high jumpers. Even with collegiate and elite level athletes, practicing more than one style can yield solid benefits. I think it’s accurate to say that this type of work helped Holm with his career.

Video 6. Stephan Holm Hurdles Training.

Holm hurdles are another great way to train jumping under different environmental constraints while building takeoff rhythm. For complicated jumping patterns, I enjoy using hurdles. They force a higher rate of power development in a shorter time frame and provide agility that helps athletes to continually develop well-rounded athletic performance.

Video 7. Low-Rim Dunking.

This is an example of jumping with a dunker who is pretty famous now. Did you see his dunk in jeans at halftime of the NBA All-Star game? Many internet sensation slam-dunkers do a good amount of work on lower rims and many will tell you that it builds their jumping height. In reality, low-rim dunks likely offer a mental break from typical 10-foot rims and allows more focus on some of the fluctuators in common jump movements. This gives the CNS continual puzzles to solve and keeps the width of the path at an appropriate level.

Induced Randomness (Chaos)

An athlete must train specifically to improve vertical jumps, but that specificity can become more effective with an element of induced randomness. Induced randomness is a sound method of adding variability into a more specific skill path and works by making a movement subtly different while maintaining most other competitive constraints. In other words, you give an athlete a small error in the movement to provide the nervous system a chance to correct it. It has been postulated that motor learning is actually more about fixing errors than perfecting technique.

As far as track and field go, one way to implement induced randomness is to have athletes pulled in an overspeed setting and, while in route, attempt to stride on a few small pieces of track laid out on their course. I learned of this idea from Chris Korfist, who is doing some great things with the 1080 sprint trainer.

Other coaches have their athletes sprint onto irregularly spaced chalk or tape marks during their sprints. This plays with the rhythm of the movement and creates an error to be organized by the nervous system. Athletes must solve, on the fly, movement puzzles which optimize their technique on the fastest and most specific level.

Induced randomness training, however, isn’t completely new. Twenty years ago, Polish jumps coach Tadeusz Starzynski sent jump athletes on 200m repeats over uneven terrain as a means of general preparation. Distance coaches in the past have had athletes run on different terrains such as rocky trails and sand dunes. This also falls under the realm of Same but Different. Some forward-thinking coaches have intuitively understood these concepts for some time, but the methods are now coming full circle with more purpose, intent, and intensity.

There is a famous study of long jumpers conducted by Rewzon which appeared in Science of Sports Training by Thomas Kurz. In this study, long jumpers performed one of two training programs.

• Program One was simply to practice long jumping and “jump as far as you can each jump” in every training attempt.
• Program Two was “jump a different distance with each jump, and be accurate with the landing.”

The Program Two athletes, who jumped different distances, were able to best their max-only counterparts when it came time to jump all-out for distance at the end of the training study. These jumpers, who fed their nervous system more randomness, created a more robust overall system for the one important big jump attempt. Giving the CNS more possibilities of movement allows the creation of a better program compared to providing only one possibility.

Looking back at the example of high-level slam-dunk athletes, the induced randomness of dunk training is perfect for vertical jump athletes who already have high skill levels. At the higher performance levels, athletes are stable in the fundamental points (attractors) of their jump technique, and rightly so. At this point, complex training for skill acquisition is less important than fine-tuning existing qualities. The same principles will ring true for high-level sprinters and jumpers. They will benefit more from solving a motor puzzle via induced randomness within their event type than performing a series of fundamentally different jumps or sprints to improve technique.

Below are some examples of using induced randomness/chaos with jumpers.

For High Jump:

I enjoy the Swedish technique for training jumpers, and Stefan Holm’s various training schemes are no exception. I particularly like his high jump run-up drills, as they include elements of fatigue, rhythm, and randomness, but are all high velocity and specific enough to apply to all levels of jumpers. In this video, Holm does a run-up with a random single leg bound leading into the penultimate series.

Video 8. Stephan Holm’s High Jump.

Holm also performs a version of this drill with a long series of single leg bounds leading into his penultimate takeoff series. The long series drives an even greater rhythm and fatigue element which leads to a strong, unique motor learning effect in the takeoff.

For Triple Jump and General Posterior Chain Power:

Variable bounding is a simple and extremely effective way to induce subtle randomness into an explosive sequence. This type of bounding, where cones are set at intervals up to 20% difference on each stride, also causes a more “reflexive” feeling from the athlete in many cases.

Video 9. Joel Smith Variable Bounding

Final Summary and Training Suggestions

To help coaches and jumpers build a more effective total program, I’ve included a master list of ways to apply the four forms of variability. Remember, these methods should not compromise the entire program, but should comprise enough of a portion to ensure that the motor pattern of and athlete is continually fresh and improving. For some athletes, this might mean 10-20% of the program is based on some form of variability. For other athletes, at least 50% of the program might revolve around a chaotic and complex system. Different athletes have different needs for training variation.

• A variety of high jump takeoffs, not just the flop style (straddle, scissors, western roll, head on hurdling, various clearances off of two feet)
• A variety of long jump takeoffs over hurdles or barriers or with various small box constraints around the penultimate steps
• Hurdling movements and jumps
• Bounding combinations
• Variable bounding
• Parcour style jumps, that can be performed safely, or safe recreations of parcour style jumps
• Run, or at least practice, the hurdle events
• Slam dunks as well as creative low-rim slam dunks
• Play basketball or volleyball, at least as a shakeout or cooldown
• Complex lifting and jumping exercises
• French Contrast training
• Complexing bounding with jumping
• Complexing depth jumping with specific jumping

Variability can also be used in a practical, rotating manner on the workout-to-workout level. I make use of this format in my book, Vertical Ignition, which has yielded some great vertical gains, particularly in track and field athletes.

When it comes to vertical jumping, particularly skilled versions such as running jumps in track and field, training variation and coordination is a critical aspect of improvement. Funneling all training into rigid buckets can have drawbacks. Sprinting, jumping, and all movements in between, can and do work synergistically to create a stronger jumping technique.

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

 

It puzzles me that we spend so much time in the off-season training for qualities that we feel will make our athletes more successful on the field, but once the season hits, it all kind of goes to hell in a handbasket. In fact, I see some coaches who use the weight room as a babysitter for their athletes. They have an hour to kill for practice to be the “appropriate” amount of time, so they send their athletes into the weight room, where they do their “Friday Night” workouts, pumping up their arms and doing some benchwork because they like to. For the most part, it looks like a late afternoon at Lifetime Fitness: a lot of people standing around, talking, posing, and finding a way to do as little as possible.

I want to strip back the in-season routine and see if we can’t find a better solution. This way, we can have continual progress toward the goal of developing better athletes without losing any time. There can be continual improvement if we look at the big picture. This can be really beneficial for younger athletes who need more development, as well as two-sport athletes who want to change from one sport to the other without missing a step. I will look at the situation from a football/track standpoint. The ideal goal is to use in-season football to help track athletes, and use in-season track to help football. Even though I am a track coach, I must admit that track coaches need to give in a little to “Friday Night Lights.”

We need to look at Friday night games from an exercise perspective. Share on X

We need to look at Friday night games from an exercise perspective. I would say that it is certainly a maximum effort exercise that taxes the body to the limit in almost all areas. In playing the game, there are 40-50 reps on acceleration work, with agility added into the mix. There is also unstable upper body work, which includes isometric work in locking out, concentric work in blocking, and eccentric work in falling. Overall, it is a whole-body workout that takes the athlete to their physical limit. How can we get our athletes to recover and get better at the same time? And what can we do during in-season football training to help develop the track athlete without hindering the athlete from being their best on Friday night?

The Week After: A Training Schedule Leading Up to Friday Night

On the day after the game, long-duration isometrics (30 seconds) can be beneficial. First, isometric strength is a foundation for all reflexive movements. Isometric strength can certainly help any kind of explosive movement, including sprinting and jumping, and isometric strength does not create a lot of muscle soreness once the athlete is used to the load. It also creates a lot of blood flow when the hold is for a longer time, like 30 seconds, which will greatly aid in recovery and move toxins that build up from the recovery process while sleeping after the game. (Have you ever seen a cooldown after a football game? Even better, have you ever seen what a high school football player eats after a game?)

To really get blood flowing, pick a lighter weight, hold it for 30 seconds, do three reps and repeat. Try to go for two minutes of ISO holds in a mid-point position. The exercises I like are the split squat, jack-knife split squat, glute ham plank, bench, and row. Do the longer duration work with the upper body, and with the lower body, keep it to two sets of 30 with 45 seconds of rest.

More growth hormone is released with the shorter rest period. The 45-second rest gives partners time to change over as well. And with controlled workouts, you can keep the time in the weight room to a minimum. Also have athletes keep track of their weight. You want a gradual increase every week. If an athlete is struggling, it will excuse him or her from the rest of the workouts for the week.

Sunday should be complete rest.

Most coaches use Monday as a walk-through. We also use it as a day of rest and recovery. Dan Fichter calls it tactical training. Build your workouts around what is going on in the field. It only taxes the body more, or creates less recovery time, if you have a walk- through day on the field and a taxing day in the weight room.

This leads us to Tuesday, which is a hard day in most football practices. Packages and plays have been taught and now it is time to see how they work. You want to take advantage of this day and make it a hard day in the weight room. Tuesdays will be your concentric day, where you work the force-velocity curve on major movements. However, before you get into the weight room, it would be smart to create a power baseline with a vertical jump. Have an athlete complete three separate jumps. If their best is more than 10% below the previous week, they are not ready to work out.

Once in the weight room, you can get some force work to help into the track season for starts. (I know this is a crazy idea, actually doing track stuff during football season—borderline blasphemy!) For the sprinters/skill players, I like the two-step sled push. After two to three weeks of pushing the sled, attach the athlete to a rubber band from their start and pull them out of their stance, almost like an overspeed start. This will deal with the velocity aspect of the force-velocity curve.

If the head coach questions it, any concentric movement off a pin would be great. A quarter squat off a pin would be great. A deadlift off a pin. Bench off a pin. These would all be for singles with no eccentric portion to the lift. Push it up and put it on the rack. Spotters can put it back down. Save the eccentric work for the field and Friday Night Lights. And, as with the shove, attach bands from above and do some French contrast jumps with the bands. It will be a great change-up for the body.

Wednesday is usually another hard day, so you can use that to your advantage and get one more workout in that could help. Skip upper on this day and rest up for Friday. But touch into the neural world of top-end speed. Research on NFL teams using the latest technology shows that most players never go more than 80% of their speed. So, they don’t train there. But if most of what they do is acceleration and they stop before the point of max velocity, it doesn’t mean that they are not neurally getting to max speed.

After watching a lot of football on many different levels, especially high school, I think this is the reason many teams slow down by the second half of the season. They have gassered away all of their explosion and top end speed. They become really good at 40-yard repeats in an exhausted mode, which is slow. To solve this problem, bring out the lasers for some fly 10s to start practice. In fact, warm up with some deep fade routes and time the player’s fly 10 during the route before he catches the ball. I think two to three would be sufficient. You just want to remind the brain that the gear is still there. Again, if they are coming out slow, it might be a good idea to hold that player back in practice to get them ready for Friday night.

The cat is probably out of the bag at this point: I am using in-season football training to get ready for track season. But, I think it is only fair that a good number of athletes use track to “get ready” for football. From a track coach’s perspective, it can be useful to develop some work in the “pre-season,” so you can spend more time running during the season.

Here is what the week will look like:

Friday: Game
Saturday: Isometric work
Sunday: Rest
Monday: Light practice
Tuesday: Force/concentric work
Wednesday: Fly 10s
Thursday: Light practice

For teams that play through the summer, like we do in Illinois, apply the same principles. Almost every day is a max day, so adjust the workouts accordingly. I see too many people go too hard in the weight room in the summer and it results in athletes on crutches or braces for the first game.

We need to account for the two-sport athlete, the working athlete, and the partying athlete in the summer months. Some can’t and others won’t make the sacrifice to give up the good times of summer. We need to meet them halfway.

Remember, the goal of the summer is to go to camp with your whole team intact. The goal of camp is to field your best 22 on opening night. It is a war of attrition.

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

A few weeks ago, Stuart McMillan, the sprint coach from Altis, put up a very thought-provoking social media post. Stu made the point that elite performance was not healthy, and it stimulated a great discussion, with many good points made by a variety of contributors. The idea of whether elite sport is healthy or not is something that I’ve been thinking about for a long time, and so, prompted by Stu’s thoughts, I’ve finally gotten around to collate mine.

What Is ‘Health’?

To determine whether athletes are healthy, we first need to define health. The most commonly cited definition comes from the World Health Organization, which says that health is “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” This indicates that we can’t just focus on the physical aspect of health, but must also include the psychological and social aspects—both of which I will consider in this article.

Another key point to consider is how we define elite athletes. This is important when it comes to interpreting the research for several reasons. First, there are precious few elite athletes in the world, so true elites don’t tend be found in great numbers in research. This is problematic, because to discover population-wide trends in health, we need large numbers of people.

A second issue is that there isn’t really a consensus as to what an elite athlete is. In athletics, we might consider an Olympian elite, or perhaps someone who has competed at the World Championships. But what about non-Olympic sports, such as American football? How do we define an elite athlete within that realm? The most common workaround is that elite athletes are those that compete internationally, although some sports (NFL, AFL) don’t really have true international competitions, so it’s not a catchall.

Physical Health: Short-Term and Long-Term

Let’s begin with physical health. Overall, former elite athletes are likely to live five to six years longer than non-athletes, and are less likely to develop cardiovascular disease and suffer from strokes (although this is true only for endurance and team-sport athletes). “Power” athletes, especially boxers, are more likely to die from dementia than non-athletes. Other studies have similar findings, although they do illustrate that statistical anomalies occur when you analyze large amounts of data. For instance, baseball players whose name began with the letter D had shorter life spans than those whose name began with the letters E through Z.

One of the protective causes is that athletes are much less likely to smoke, indicating that a potential reason athletes are healthier is that taking part in elite sport promotes behaviors commonly thought of as healthful. An obvious protective cause is that of exercise; athletes are more likely to exercise more than non-athletes. Indeed, many athletes train for at least 20 hours per week, far in excess of the typical recommendations on physical activity. In turn, this can protect them from a number of metabolic diseases, such as type 2 diabetes, with rates lower in athletes than non-athletes, even after retirement.

This is less clear-cut in power-based sports such as sprinting, with at least one study suggesting that obesity rates could be higher within this population. However, it is apparent that, overall, athletes are typically at lower risk of developing the majority of activity-preventable and diet-related diseases and, as such, tend to live longer. In terms of long-term physical health, athletes are indeed “healthy.”

But what about in the short term? It seems logical that taking part in sports increases the risk of musculoskeletal injuries—nobody pulls a hamstring sitting on the sofa. What isn’t clear is how this differs between elite athletes and non-elite athletes.

On the one hand, elite athletes spend greater amounts of time participating in their sport, increasing their injury risk. However, on the other hand, they are likely better conditioned, which may protect them from injury. Again, this probably differs from sport to sport, so we would expect injury rates in contact sports such as rugby to be higher than in track and field. Similarly, we might expect hamstring injury rates to be greater in sprinters than in distance runners, who might have a greater prevalence of stress fractures.

I’m not aware of any studies examining long-term health in athletes forced to retire due to injury. However, as I am such an athlete, I can offer an anecdotal standpoint. I retired because of a back injury that doesn’t give me many problems at all day to day—and certainly fewer issues than many non-athletes I know. In addition to this, I know of many people who were not elite athletes but suffered long-term damage from sports-related accidents. It appears that sport/exercise itself contains an inherent injury risk, which is not necessarily increased in elite athletes compared to the general population.

While exercise is certainly healthy, it is entirely possible that elite performers will take it too far, developing symptoms of overtraining and/or unexplained underperformance. This occurs in roughly 10-20% of athletes over the course of their careers, and is more common in endurance athletes than speed-power athletes. However, this overtraining is fairly rare, and the best coaches will guard against it.

While exercise is certainly healthy, it is entirely possible elite performers will take it too far. Share on X

There isn’t really a comparable syndrome in non-athletes, although it’s worth pointing out that work-related stress and burnout are high in the general public, especially in stressful jobs such as a doctor or pilot. The good news is that, in most cases, the symptoms of overtraining appear to resolve within six to 12 weeks after diagnosis. Long-term, excessive strenuous exercise appears to be associated with ill health, but again, sensible athletes and coaches will avoid this.

On the physical side then, it is difficult to conclude that elite performance is unhealthy. Overall, it likely promotes healthful behaviors, such as getting sufficient sleep, consuming a nutritious diet, and getting plenty of exercise. Rates of diseases, especially metabolic diseases, appear much less often in elite athletes than other populations. In the short term, athletes may be unhealthy occasionally due to exercise-induced injuries, and in some sports —particularly contact sports—these may continue throughout their lifespan (although the same is true for non-elite athletes competing in these sports).

Considering Mental Health

The other side of the health paradigm may be where athletes might be considered “unhealthy.” Let’s first look at the mental side of health. Mental health was a dirty prospect in elite sport for a long time, especially among males. However, more attention has recently focused on this area, and so professional sports people can hopefully get the support they require. Mental health issues are not uncommon in elite athletes, but it’s not clear whether they are more common than in the general population (elite athletes may be less likely to report symptoms of depression or anxiety, for instance). Eating disorders are potentially more common in athletes than non-athletes; in females, this can lead to the female athlete triad, which can seriously impact long-term health and well-being.

Elite athletes are especially susceptible to mental health issues when they have to retire, either voluntarily or involuntarily (i.e., through injury). This represents a difficult transition for these athletes to make, and can create a lot of stress as the athlete moves from an income-producing, familiar position into a sea of unknown.

Overall, it doesn’t appear that athletes are at an increased risk of psychological ill-health, aside from eating disorders. Athletes will no doubt have periods of increased stress, such as around major competitions or retirement, but these stressors are also present in the general population in the form of job interviews, family illness, redundancy, etc. Athletes may also be better at tolerating stress through learned behaviors attained over the course of their career. This is especially true if they have worked closely with a sports psychologist, which is something that may improve their health throughout their life.

Perceptions of Social Health

Finally, we have the social aspect of health. The typical perception of an athlete is someone who never has a night out, is extremely strict with their diet, and overall has no social life. This isn’t the case. Athletes tend to train in groups, and they tend to spend a lot of time with their training partners. This gives them a social group aligned with their goals, which can be very useful.

When I was at university, I lived with three other athletes, and was in a training group of 10 people. We had lunch together every day, and would often have social events together. We even—gasp! —had nights out, although only occasionally, and never before training. Overall, I’m not convinced that athletes are socially unhealthy; they have the opportunity to spend plenty of time in social situations with teammates.

However, athletes are certainly not normal, and I think this is where a lot of the confusion comes from. Overall, athletes are healthy—or, at least, they’re certainly not unhealthy. But they aren’t normal, which may be the reason they sometimes get tagged as unhealthy.

Athletes become obsessed with performance. I could probably tell you what more than 50 different supplements do; I’ve tried a number of different diets, training regimens, and sports science practices; I’ve worked with a sports psychologist; I have a good working knowledge of biomechanics; and through experience, I even understand some sports medicine. So, I’m not normal. But I can’t see this as unhealthy, especially when it promotes healthful behaviors.

Athletes may also be seen as unbalanced; again, this is true—and is an extension of the “not normal” perception. But is it unhealthy? If I don’t want to go to a night club and drink alcohol, and follow it up with a greasy kebab and two hours of fitful sleep because I’d rather get nine hours of sleep and then wake up and do some exercise, is that an unhealthy choice? I don’t think so, but it’s certainly not normal, at least in the sphere of university students. We equate balance, or normality, with health, whereas many of the normal, balanced behaviors are not associated with optimal health.

’Normal’ Doesn’t Apply to Elite Athletes

Overall, I can’t conclude that elite performance is inherently unhealthy. This is not to say that there shouldn’t be a focus on athlete health, because there absolutely should be. Elite athletes likely do develop some unhealthy behaviors over time, as do many non-athletes.

While athletes may be healthier than “normal,” it doesn’t mean they are necessarily healthy. Share on X

Some unhealthy behaviors may be more prevalent in athletes, especially acutely—playing with an injury, for example—and care should be taken by athletes and support staff to guard against these behaviors where possible. Normal rules do not apply to non-normal people, so we can’t judge athletes by normal standards—but overall, their behaviors don’t appear to be particularly unhealthy.

The one final confounder is that, overall, populations tend to be somewhat unhealthy: The number of obese and overweight people is higher than ever, as are disease rates such as type 1 diabetes. It’s possible that just because athletes are healthier than “normal” doesn’t mean they are necessarily healthy. This is a good reminder to everyone involved in sport to prioritize athlete health as much as possible.

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

 

An athlete’s power traditionally develops from physical training. Power output is critical for success in sport, but power becomes more selective at the highest level, depending on an athlete’s ability and training. If all things are equal physically, what is the key ingredient that will separate athletes at the top of elite sport?

The gut microbiome.

The gut is another route to increase horsepower. Optimizing gut microbiota means increasing the quality and diversity of the microbiota, which can increase the power of overall health. This power output propels an athlete to the top of the game via stronger immunity, lower inflammation, enhanced nutrient metabolism, and resilient brain function and behavior.

While beetroot juice may make the difference between gold and silver, the gut microbiome can determine whether an athlete makes it to the starting line. In this article, I’ll explain how the gut is an athlete’s control center for optimizing their power potential and why this offers the best chance of athletic success.

Why Athletes Need Gut Microbiota

Trillions of microorganisms in the gut powerfully influence our health. They influence nutrient metabolism, immunity, gut development, inflammation, metabolic disease, neurodevelopment, and behavior.¹

Gut microbiota’s roles and functions include:

• Enhance digestion and food absorption
• Regulate and strengthen immunity
• Protect from pathogens
• Ferment certain carbohydrates into small chain fatty acids (SCFAs), the energy sources for the liver and muscle cells. They also maintain glycemia during endurance performance, regulate neutrophil function and migration, reduce gut permeability, restrict inflammatory cytokines, and regulate the redox environment.²
• Communicate with the brain.

For an in-depth explanation of how gut microbiota impact our nutrition, read here.

The key to harnessing an athlete’s power potential is optimizing gut health. This means harboring a diverse community of good gut bugs and maintaining this microbial community. Power drops when gut dysbiosis (i.e., microbial imbalance) occurs, resulting from antibiotic use, dietary changes, and most importantly, stress.

In this article, I’ll discuss:

• Stressors on the athlete that hurt the gut
• How gut microbiota alleviate these stressors by strengthening immunity and preventing illness
• A new area of microbiota research involving brain health

Gut Microbiota: A Biotic Shield Against Stressors

Gut health is the athlete’s control center. The following stressors affect optimal gut health:

• Lifestyle (diet)
• Training and competition (intense, prolonged training; psychological)
• Environment (heat, germs, pollutants)
• Travel (jet lag)
• Poor sleep (quantity and quality)

These unavoidable stress factors impact the stability (composition and function) of gut microbiota³ and, consequentially, gut health. This constant attack on the microbiota leads to microbial dysbiosis. For example, exposure to stress can lower gastric emptying and slow transit time in the small intestine.^4,5 This reduction in gut motility usually results in bacterial overgrowth.⁶

Stressors lead to inflammation in the gut, which changes microbial communities for the worse. This creates a cascade effect, hurting nutrient digestion and absorption, immunity, and brain health.

For a further understanding of inflammation and gut health, read here.

 

The Silent Exercise-Induced Injury That Weakens Immunity

Athletes always end training with an injury. When we think of injuries, we tend to consider the superficial injuries that we see or feel—muscle soreness and bruising, for example.

Deep within the body, however, exercise-induced cellular damage occurs every time an athlete trains or competes hard. Over time, this chronic injury indirectly hurts athletic performance.

Exercise-induced cellular damage is a consequence of different, unavoidable physiological stressors. Examples include:⁷

• Strenuous exercise
• Heat stress
• Redistribution of blood from circulation through the internal organs to skeletal muscle; blood circulation away from the gut hurts the gut lining and causes gut cell injury
• Oxidative stress and mechanical damage

This injury is quite common. For example, one study found that healthy, young adult male cyclists training 4-10 hours per week experienced a redistribution of blood in just one hour of cycling at 70% of maximum workload capacity.

And that impact was at the healthy human level, not the elite level.

Blood redistribution can cause:

• Lower gastrointestinal (GI) blood circulation
• Increased intestinal permeability where the gut barrier starts to widen and substances from the gut can leak into the bloodstream
• Damage to the small intestine

These inevitable stressors initiate at the protective, one-cell thick barrier of the gut. They cause intestinal cell damage by increasing gut permeability, which opens the door wide open for bad bacteria to enter the bloodstream. If this leaky gut exacerbates, then pro-inflammatory bacterial endotoxemia results in much more serious problems due to immunosuppression.

For example, high amounts of endotoxin can disrupt sleep by activating our body’s defense system. This increases pro-inflammatory markers, cortisol, heart rate, and body temperature. We believe this results from endotoxemia, which releases inflammatory markers. A consistently reported effect of endotoxin on sleep is its suppression of REM sleep, which increases wakefulness and amount of time it takes to go to sleep.

Does this mean the sleep practices at the pro level are fruitless? Not necessarily. It’s just a major factor when considering a solution to the bigger picture. And, once again, it’s evidence as to how maintaining the gut helps an athlete’s power potential: lack of sleep hurts cognition and behavior.

Essentially, exercise-induced stress can weaken the GI barrier and allow bad bacteria to enter the bloodstream, which leads to GI consequences, hydration imbalance, poor absorption of nutrients and electrolytes, and thermal damage to the intestine.

Exercise-induced stress can weaken the GI barrier & allow bad bacteria to enter the bloodstream. Share on X

The result is a subsequent drop in athletic performance.⁸
The typical nutrition-centered recovery of glycogen repletion, hydration, and muscle repair is not enough to restore performance levels.

The immunological aspect of sports nutrition is often forgotten. It’s just as important to never start a training session with a weak gut as it is to never start a training session while dehydrated.

Immunonutrition via gut microbiota can alleviate the increase in oxidative stress, intestinal permeability, muscle damage, and inflammatory response by strengthening the intestinal barrier. (I’ll discuss this later.) For a further explanation of how the gut strengthens immunity, read here.

Illness Surveillance in Elite Sport Informs Immunonutrition

A weakened immunity opens a wide window of opportunity for illness and a huge cost to training preparation and performance. Common risk factors for athletes include:

• Training loads^9,10
• Travel¹¹
• Exercise-induced immune suppression¹²
• Psychological stress¹³
• Poor nutrition (energy restriction)¹⁴

Collectively, these are stressors. Typically, the respiratory system is the most affected, which occurs in 41-63% of illnesses.^15,16 Injury management in the NBA is taking off and so is illness surveillance in elite sport.

A study investigated illness risk factors in athletes nine months before the Rio 2016 Olympic Games. The researchers defined illness as “an event which limited training or competition for greater hours in the prior month.” Here are some of the results:

• Females had the greatest association with illness; the risk was worse when combined with low energy availability.
• Low energy availability, depression symptoms, and high perceived stress were significantly associated with illness.
• Communal living had a three-fold increase in illness rate due to exposure to potential contagious substances.

Because Aquatics has the second largest number of participating athletes at the Olympics, another study investigated the prevalence of illnesses four weeks before, and the incidence of illnesses during, the 2015 FINA World Championships. Results included:

• Of 312 illnesses reported, 17% resulted in time loss.
• Most common illnesses involved the respiratory tract (~34%) or the gastrointestinal tract (~24%) and were caused by infection (~45%).
• During the four weeks before the championships, athletes with illnesses suffered symptoms for eleven days, on average; yet, the average for missing training was only two days.
• About 67% of athletes started the championship with symptoms, and over 50% reported that it affected their performance.

It’s critical to note that athletes continued to train and compete while ill. This has many implications, including increasing the severity of the illness and lowering the quality of performance.

This type of surveillance system—reporting the incidence of illness to identify risk factors—is also gaining momentum in professional tennis. And it’s not just Olympic-level athletes who are exposed to these risk factors; it trickles down to collegiate and elite, recreational exercisers.

The goal of identifying risk factors is to modify risks to prevent the consequential time loss due to illness. Immunonutrition comes into play here.

The imbalance between training and recovery could increase the risk for illness. A systematic review found moderate evidence of a link between training load applied to an athlete and the occurrence of illness. The researchers, however, cautioned that a latent period exists between training load and the onset of an illness. For example, when an athlete experiences a rapid increase in training load, health consequences may not result until 3-4 weeks after the loading.

Illness prevention programs—immunonutrition practices in an athlete’s overall nutritional plan—are critical to optimizing the athlete’s ability to train. And this must be a habitual practice.

Nutrition should go beyond fueling the athlete to enhancing their gut health. Share on X

The goal is to alleviate the severity of the exercise-induced immunodepression phase. This is where nutrition goes beyond fueling the athlete toward designing a gut-enhancing diet.

Think of it this way:

• Reduced Power Output
  1. Inability to train at high intensity and prolonged duration (loss of quality training)
  2. Arrival at competition under-prepared (poor health)
• No Power Output
  1. Loss of training time
  2. Absence from the starting line

 

Gut Microbiota: A New Player in Brain Health

Gut microbiota, through crosstalk between the brain and gut microbiome, can influence all parts of physiology, including gut-brain communication, brain function, and behavior.¹⁷ We can view gut microbiota as an endocrine organ that has effects outside the gut. This has critical implications for an athlete’s mental health and longevity.

Brain-Gut Axis

The brain-gut axis is a perfect example of bidirectional signaling between two organs—the autonomic nervous system and enteric nervous system (ENS) in the GI tract.

Gut microbiota gain access to the brain through different pathways:

• Neuronal—both the vagus nerve that connects the brain stem to the digestive tract and the ENS
• Endocrine—gut hormones (cortisol) and gut microbiota molecules (SCFAs, tryptophan)
• Immune Signaling—pro-inflammatory cytokines (interleukin-6 (IL-6))¹⁷

Gut microbiota can produce neurotransmitters found in the brain, such as serotonin, GABA, noradrenaline, and dopamine.

The brain is also dependent on gut microbes for metabolic products that regulate the brain and behavior. SCFAs are the end products when microbiota ferment complex carbohydrates. Also, cytokines produced in the gut can reach the brain. And the gut microbiota can change the concentration of circulating cytokines, which can impact brain function.¹⁸

The hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) is the core regulator for the stress response, which releases stress hormones (norepinephrine, epinephrine) and glucocorticoids (cortisol). Cortisol, the most powerful stress system activator, can not only negatively impact immune cells in the gut by increasing gut permeability and lowering barrier function but also immune cells throughout the body.

Microbiota may control the HPA axis in athletes, and therefore, control hormone release from exercise-induced stress.

This is critical because the HPA axis has a major influence on the brain-gut axis. Psychological or physical stress can dysregulate the HPA axis, which then dysregulates the brain-gut-microbiota axis.

Thus, microbial dysbiosis could have detrimental effects on brain function.

Sleep and Fatigue

The HPA system is critical to balancing the sleep-wake cycle because of its sleep-related hormones.^{19, 20} Poor sleep negatively affects the HPA axis.²¹

This leads to an increase in cortisol and changes in the release of testosterone.

For example, the central fatigue hypothesis states that serotonin release is associated with sleep, drowsiness, and central fatigue.²² Low serotonin in the brain can cause mood disturbances and depression,²³ and the microbiota impact production²⁴ and regulation²⁵ of serotonin. This latest study discusses how gut microbiota influence serotonin.

Sleep deprivation lowers cognitive function, reaction time, execution, and power potential. Share on X

Performance is typically defined as goal-directed behavior requiring mental effort.²¹ Cognitive function powers performance, and reaction time and execution are factors of power. Sleep deprivation that lowers cognitive function lowers reaction time and execution and overall power potential.

Psychology

Fatigue and mood disturbances (a critical performance factor) are common among athletes. These include irritability, anxiety, lack of motivation, poor concentration, and depression. The microbiota work by synthesizing and regulating different neurotransmitters and hormones that influence an athlete’s mood, motivation, and feeling of fatigue.²⁶

Microbial manipulation, therefore, may benefit an athlete’s psychology. A study found that supplementing Lactobacillus helviticus and Bifidobacterium longum reduced psychological distress and lowered cortisol levels in humans. It’s speculated that the mechanism behind this alleviates the effects of pro-inflammatory cytokines and oxidative stress.²⁷

Another study found that a multi-species probiotic treatment significantly lowered negative thoughts linked with sad moods. Even though the research is in its infancy, we’re finding that targeting the gut microbiome with probiotic therapy may alleviate or prevent this disrupted brain circuitry.

Neurogenesis

Nutrition’s impact on brain health is gaining speed, especially the focus on new brain cells (neurogenesis), which are critical to the aging athlete. Specifically, polyphenols in the diet can stimulate neurogenesis and improve memory, learning, and cognition.

The cognitive part of sports nutrition must consider exercise-induced psychological stress and its impact on gut microbiota. Normalizing the gut microbiota may help adult neurogenesis²⁸ which is sensitive to stress. This is important for learning and memory. The link between brain plasticity and the gut microbiome is a new avenue of research.

Sports nutrition must consider exercise’s psychological stress and its impact on gut microbiota. Share on X

For example, the gut microbiome is pivotal for the maturation of microglial cells, which are important in neuronal transmission and plasticity (the optimal wiring of neuronal circuits).²⁹ A negative shift in bacterial composition could hurt gut-brain communication, which may lead to a deterioration in neuronal circuits with behavioral consequences.

Essentially, a healthy gut is critical to maintaining good communication along the brain-gut axis that leads to a healthy status. Stress on the central nervous system can affect gut function and lead to microbial dysbiosis.

The brain isn’t just powered by food. A gut-enhancing diet can be a type of nutritional psychiatry that can prevent the dysregulation affecting the brain.

 

Enhance Your Wattage by Training the Gut

Training the gut is a new sports nutrition paradigm where nutritional strategies, specifically carbohydrates and fluids, are used to induce adaptations in the GI to mitigate GI stress and improve performance. This paradigm shows diet can impact the GI through adaptations.

A nutritional intervention that maintains the gut, however, is another lens to look through when training the gut. This is the power of probiotics, live microorganisms that benefit the host’s health when taken in the correct amount.³⁰

Athletes already have an advantage because those who exercise tend to have a healthier profile of good gut bugs—a diverse microbiota with favorable metabolic and inflammatory profiles.¹ Athletes need to maintain this advantage.

To train the gut for a well-functioning GI system, we need to supply our innate microbiome with symbiotic bacteria to harness our gut’s control center. Probiotics are an ideal therapeutic approach to optimize the gut because they interact directly with microbiota.

Of course, the microbe-human relationship is highly complex. There are no established dietary recommendations for probiotic supplementation for athletes,²⁶ and there are only a small number of studies exploring this topic.³¹ There is modest evidence that probiotics can provide some clinical benefits for athletes.

Probiotics can provide some clinical benefits for athletes. Share on X

Not all probiotics are the same—clear communication is pivotal to differentiate products. Key points to consider are:

• Sourcing of recommended products and formulas
• Dose-response requirements for different probiotic strains
• Storage and transport of supplements
• Supplementation timing during travel³¹

Also, a symbiotic product that combines prebiotics and probiotics is critical because prebiotics feed the probiotics and can enhance the anti-inflammatory benefits.

In my next article, I’ll dive deeper into probiotic supplementation and why we need to move away from the typical “fuel the athlete” mantra that predominantly focuses on macronutrients and calories. The next level of fueling focuses on a gut-enhancing diet. Food impacts our gut microbial composition and function.

Superior gut health is a marginal gain that is pivotal to elite sport. Probiotics are a complementary factor to optimizing the gut microbiome. Harnessing the power of gut health will increase an athlete’s wattage physically and mentally.

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. Cronin O, O’Sullivan O, Barton W, Cotter PD, Molloy MG, Shanahan F. Gut microbiota: implications for sports and exercise medicine. British Journal of Sports Medicine. 2017; 51(9): 700-701.
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