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The era of sports science in the world of competitive team sports is just getting started, but the movement’s technological underpinnings are beginning to settle. Motion sensors and computer vision track athletes movement patterns and force production. New platforms for chemical sensors tell more and more about athletes’ physiological makeup. And the simple, everpresent questionnaires, anthropometric measures, weigh-ins and heart rate calculations have proven value. All of that data gets funneled into computer interfaces, and sports management moves irreversibly towards evidence- and analytics-based decision-making.

Teams will prioritize some data and ignore others. They will emphasize some results and downplay others. And they will be ready, or not, for the next-generation of sports science tech to come on-line. Those choices, for better or worse, are becoming a sports organization’s recipe for athlete performance, the secret sauce of their team’s won-lost record.

One core piece of emerging sports science technology is Athlete Management System (AMS) software (like CoachMePlus). Think of it as a scaffold for teams to build their sports science programs and their secret sauce. The increasing adoption of these software platforms speaks to the value they have for teams, but heads up, these are new products in a relatively new market.

The newness of AMS’ products has implications for customers, namely:

• These products will change, evolve and improve.
• A community of technically-minded AMS users will emerge, connect, and in time, grow to define itself.
• AMS’ technical advances will lead to users’ (and teams’) innovations in workflow, analysis, and tactics as the product developers and the community make progress toward interface and usability standards.

Culture and community are forms of collaboration. (So are sales, software development, and transition defense.) Successful collaboration defines teams’ success. And collaboration will be critical to shape how teams take to an athlete management system and make it into something valuable, now and in the future.

Understanding the Athlete Management System

It’s best to know how to walk before you learn how to run. Progressions are essential for athletes’ development. And no surprise, there’s a progression for moving through the learning curve of sports science collaboration and AMS adoption.

Team sports at every level benefit from measuring athletes’ performance systematically. The decision to begin measuring starts an organization down the path of applied sports science. More sports science decisions follow, and a big one is whether to purchase and use an athlete management system or to stick with a custom solution, often assembled from Excel spreadsheets or custom databases. Either way, AMS or no AMS, the data collected and the interfaces for the athlete data are going to be as much a part of the makeup of that team as any staff member, any trainer, any player, any coach.

The athlete performance data and interfaces are an opportunity for competitive advantage; together they are the secret sauce teams use to assess talent, develop players and, ultimately, win games. The measurement technologies, in practice and from vendors, are often new and, in some cases, still emerging — biomarkers, sleep, FMS, player tracking, force plates, RPE, questionnaires, Catapult, and Omegawave.

AMS software, like CoachMePlus, is, by necessity, opinionated software. It’s software with a vision and an approach for how best to get work done. CoachMePlus’ vision and approach come from the best practices of applied sports science. (Also, the opinionated-ness is not a lack of flexibility or control for users; users have both. Lots of both in fact.)

If you use Microsoft Excel or something else custom (and less opinionated) to manage athlete performance, you are in complete control of the data, it’s input, output, and management. You are the developer and the user, and out of necessity, you make lots of data management and presentation decisions. Excel is not opinionated software, and it creates more work.

Most times the decisions that get built into the user interface involve steering a user through the tasks that software has been built to help with. “Software requirements” are what software developers call these task definitions that, once built, are important elements of the software’s services. Tasks that are not defined well enough to be included in requirements documentation will not get designed into the user interface, and determining requirements is the crucial early step for building useful digital tools and services.

Having an already-built, commercial AMS helps a team to avoid starting its applied sports science program with a completely blank slate. Fill in the forms and click buttons on whatever starter template to get to a useful place with the technology. But work remains to go from starting out with the basics to making an AMS into something that reflects a team’s approach to sports science.

There can be significant advantages to going without an AMS though. The legwork in using Excel, or even paper, to manage athletes health and performance creates a useful, hands-on, personal relationship with athletes’ data. Manually entering data can be an effective, practical way to see athletes’ patterns. It is also time-consuming, sometimes to the point of being impractical for taking lots of measurements and for managing larger numbers of athletes.

An AMS might be necessary, but it’s important to understand what it means to surrender some degree of control to an opinionated technology. It’s also important to understand what you as a software customer can do to influence, evolve and improve opinionated technology.

A team can guarantee that its data systems evolve according to its needs by developing its own systems, but the team that goes with a commercial AMS needs to remain aware of how changes in data can lead to workflow changes that might call for changes in the user interface. The task definitions that are scoped out as requirements can be inaccurate, imprecise or fail to keep up with users’ needs. It helps to remember that sports science is a young discipline, and the technologies are new.

The inability to make sense of the data takes time away from coaching, training and otherwise helping athletes. The situation is a user interface failure. Like so many efforts that do not succeed it is also a learning opportunity, a chance to examine what’s happened, apply the lessons and make progress.

Software tends to work better when the task and the analysis are well-defined. Technology gets better as developers, designers, and engineers improve their understanding of how it should be used. Requirements that start off murky eventually become clear.

“Design Patterns” are what often maps the requirements for a user task to its implementation in a software interface. Design patterns also provide a helpful way to understand how good software takes advantage of modular components that work together. One design pattern is a reusable solution to a specific problem, like the easy solution to gathering health data by assigning clickable zones to a simple representation of the body. Good software is built component by component, where each component does its job, much like what coaches ask for from players. Design patterns provide a common language and helpful shortcut to bridge what users need from software to the code that helps do those tasks.

More than with any other task, an AMS shines when asked to provide an overview, helping busy users see the big picture on a dashboard: that athletes are thriving, who might be injured, what practice patterns seem to get the desired results.

Stephen Few, a noted information design consultant, has articulated what makes for good dashboard design, “Visual monitoring involves a series of sequential steps that the dashboard should be designed to support.”

• The user should begin by getting an overview of what’s going on and quickly identifying what needs attention.
• Next, the user should look more closely at each of those areas that need attention to be able to understand them well enough to determine if something should be done about them.
• Lastly, if additional details are needed to complete the user’s understanding before deciding how to respond, the dashboard should serve as a seamless launch pad to that information.

It’s here, at the dashboard, that the AMS and the team using it have to be in sync. Software for athlete performance is going to incorporate a wide range of data inputs: weight, body composition, hydration, questionnaires, velocity-based training, sleep, nutrition, blood markers, fitness tests, movement screens, heart rate, heart rate variability, athlete tracking, readiness monitoring, load, video analysis and game analytics. The dashboard needs to reflect the priorities of the team, or it isn’t putting users’ attention where it should go.

Applied sports science depends on an effective athlete management system that has to do two very different things at the same time. It has to value the simple presentation of good dashboard design. And it has to capture the complexity of all the different facets of athlete performance. The tension to maintain simplicity while also adding new complex features is another fundamental consideration of user-center design.

The tension between design simplicity and feature complexity is likely always to be an issue for athlete management systems. New sensors and data sources continue to be invented. Teams are adding sports science personnel who bring a range of backgrounds and place new demands on the software. If you agree that AMS is opinionated software, you will want to pay attention to how an AMS is set to evolve on these fronts in the future.

In addition to the tension between simplicity and new features, supporting collaboration among users is another design dimension that will shape the future of the AMS. Collaboration plays a role in turning information into actionable insights that will improve athletes and teams, and in using the evidence at hand for organization decision-making about players.

Authorities on effective collaboration point to the “shared artifact” as the thing that everyone has in common and which provides a single frame of reference for the group discussion. An AMS can be the shared artifact for all of the different stakeholders in a sports organization that helps them work together.

This is the AMS progression for doing sports science:

• Start by simply entering data.
• Do basic analysis.
• Develop a unified dashboard.
• Incorporate a wider range of sports science data inputs.
• Increase the complexity of the data interface.
• Ultimately make the AMS a tool for collaboration.
• A progression, yes. An easy progression, no.

Advocacy, Customers and the Future of Athlete Management Systems

The goal for CoachMePlus (and our product development roadmap) has us getting more flexible and more collaborative as the product evolves. Inside our organization we are building out the APIs, data modeling tools and dashboard functionality for our internal product teams, These are the technical tools that will improve our internal collaboration, setting us up to work better with our customers and partners.

Already, customers can call with an idea they want to try and our tools enable less than a 24-hour turnaround. Eventually, the APIs, modeling tools, and dashboards should become self-service interfaces for teams to take greater ownership of how they use their data and which will help teams to extract maximum value of athletes’ data.

There are many pathways to realizing potential; it’s true for athletes, and it’s true for technology. Each athlete management system is going to have unique elements for the team operating it. If the team has someone whose job is to administer the AMS, all of the ongoing change in sports science is going to make for challenges.

High up on the list of challenges is the way an AMS administrator has to represent all of the different stakeholders and be an advocate for athletes, coaches, clinicians, trainers and team management as he or she guides the evolution of the AMS and the workflows a team uses with the AMS. The point: It’s not enough to simply passively administer the team AMS, not when these products are set to evolve rapidly, even within the timeframe of a team’s season.

AMS administrators are advocates when it comes to working with CoachMePlus or any of the developers of the technology. Administrators are the voice of their team’s otherwise voiceless stakeholders who benefit from the technology. The better those team-side communication channels are working, the more aware AMS administrators are of their needs when they have their conversations with their technology partners.

Teams that make the most out of sports science will need to make the most of their athlete management system, and that will be difficult for teams that choose to be passive participants in AMS evolution.

Ultimately teams will get the AMS they deserve, based on how much they participate in moving the technology forward. In time, there will be communities of practice for applied sports science technology, but until that day arrives, the quality of the tools depends on the quality of the collaboration on teams, between teams and technology providers, and among everyone who comes together in the nascent community of sports science technology developers.

Participation is not mandatory and karma is not guaranteed. But please share so that you and your peers in the present and the future may benefit.

One of the summer activities I have my cross-country runners do is throw a turbo-jav into a trash can. Since I give prizes for the winning toss, every time I do this my runners always want to take some warm-up tosses prior to competition. But are these warm-up tosses improving either their distance or their precision once competition begins?

A classic study from 1957 provides us with an insight on warming up for an activity similar to my “javelin in a can.” Forty-six male students were given a five-minute warmup and then instructed to throw a softball as far as they could. The participants came back a little more than a week later and, like my javelin toss, they would win prizes (in this case, money) if they could throw the softball farther than they did previously, but this time without benefit of a warmup. So, what happened? None of the participants threw farther than they had before.

Does this 60-year-old study suggest the inherent value of a warmup for any movement activity, or am I simply “lobbing a softball” to those who want to use this as evidence to corroborate why it makes sense to do some kind of warmup activity prior to competition?

What Is the Goal of Warmups?

It is a complicated answer because the concept of “warming up” means different things to different coaches. Is warming up stretching? Is it a combination of stretching with various movements? Is it mental rehearsal? Lighting up the central nervous system?

The concept of ‘warming up’ means different things to different coaches. Share on X

Maybe it is all of these and more. But, if warmups are a smorgasbord of various activities with different purposes, do we need to fulfill all of these purposes in order for the warmup to be truly effective? The current debate on the value of static stretching is just one example of the confusion over which items from the warmup smorgasbord coaches and athletes need to put on their plates. That may depend on what specific physiological effect—as well as psychological effect—of warming up coaches most value, and there are many to choose from.

Is it muscle temperature? This makes sense since a temperature increase allows muscles to contract faster and with more fiber recruitment. For example, nerve impulses in people travel eight times more slowly than they do in frogs, which have much lower body temperatures. We know that a warmer muscle is likely to experience less damage, especially during eccentric contraction. Is it increased blood flow to the heart and muscles by way of movement that needs to be addressed? Might it be muscle plasticity?

Distance coaches will point out that a warmup results in increased oxygen and carbon dioxide exchange, and that a more-efficient oxygen transport means more available ATP. Others will contend that a warmup can reinforce important motor skills. I have always considered the warmup a valuable means to achieving competitive arousal. For example, Frank Shellock pointed out that a warmup leads to psychological increases in focus and attention, and that a warmup decreases the fear of injury.

We see examples of unique kinds of arousal techniques used in various sports. Football players will tap helmets together and punch down on shoulder pads, and boxers will glove their faces before the opening bell. Long jumper Mike Powell often slapped his face before taking off down the runway, and many sprinters still jump up and down a few times before backing into their blocks.

Others see the value of the warmup as a form of visualization—what Mel Siff used to describe as “imagineering.” You see this with wrestlers who jog around the mat as they mentally rehearse shooting for a takedown. Some athletes perform specific kinds of rehearsals right before a trial. Dwight Stones, for example, bobbed his head as he visualized his approach steps in the high jump. And there is some performance justification for suggesting that these activities are more than just ritual. Charles Duhigg described how, every night, Michael Phelps would play a mental recording of himself setting world records. Maxwell Maltz introduced this concept back in the early ’60s, and referred to it as “psycho-cybernetics,” the process of enhancing self-image through visualization and mental rehearsal.

Many elite coaches might also choose specific activities in a warmup because they intend to use them to spot any imbalances. In this case, the warmup might be considered a kind of movement screening. This makes sense, since most coaches and trainers say that the key goal of the warmup is to ward against potential injury, while at the same time getting athletes ready to compete.

But some warmup activities make more sense than others. I know cross-country and track coaches who have their runners jog a couple of laps or even a mile, then have them plop down on the turf or track to do 20 minutes of old-school static stretches, with each of those stretches held to a 10-count by the group leader. They then have those runners get back up and run another lap or two because they don’t quite trust that they are ready to race, or because they want to re-elevate things like core muscle temperature and blood pressure, both of which dropped back down during the static stretching. Some say they do this because they want their runners to “re-break a sweat.” Is the value of this approach more about its team bonding and ritual aspect?

I have always liked what Loren Seagrave and Kevin O’Donnell referred to as the “big warmup,” and many coaches include those activities in their pre-competition protocol. I like incorporating various kinds of skipping, hopping, or galloping done forward, backward, and laterally, and it’s extensive enough be its own workout. These kinds of activities seem to accomplish many different things, including elevating the temperature and blood pressure, and challenging runners neurologically. Additionally, since the group must duplicate the speed and amplitude of the group leader’s movements, athletes need to concentrate and stay focused. The activities I select are what I call “gravity constant,” emphasizing such things as timing, core stiffness, coordination, and reactivity.

Video 1: I like incorporating various kinds of skipping, hopping, or galloping done in all directions—forward, backward, and laterally—into warmups, and it’s extensive enough to be its own workout. Here, an athlete engages in complex rope skipping in all directions.

Video 2: In group warmups, the groups must duplicate the speed and amplitude of the group leader’s movements, forcing each athlete to concentrate and stay focused. I select what I call “gravity constant” activities, which emphasize such things as timing, core stiffness, coordination, and reactivity.

The Inclusion of Self-Massage Activities

In recent years, the warmup has involved activities for removing tissue micro-trauma from previous training sessions. Trainers often describe small “hot spots” or knots in muscles as trigger points. They no longer try to remove these knots by way of conventional stretching, believing that if these trigger points are indeed like knots, pulling on the ends of the knot via conventional stretching only further tightens them—kind of like the old Chinese finger trap.

So, a form of self-massage has evolved. Again, at first this seems like nothing new, since the massage stick—which I used to describe as a rolling pin with bicycle handles on the ends—goes back more than 30 years.

Perhaps that stick, refined over the years by way of soft rubber knobs and waffles replacing the original hard plastic rings, will be viewed in a whole new way, thanks to Ben Affleck’s self-massage technique in the film, “The Accountant.”

The theory is that rolling applies pressure to tissue sore spots in the muscle, thereby breaking up scar tissue and adhesions, and thus releasing the trigger points. In this regard, the stick has now evolved to tubes—the original being just sections of PVC soil pipe—but now these tubes consist of various configurations of denser foam. These new massage tubes are now very popular.

The technique used with these foam tubes has a technical name—SMR or Self-Myofascial Release. These rolling techniques increase both flexibility and range of motion through “autogenic inhibition.” And what does that mean? The tension the roller puts on the muscle causes the brain to relax that muscle to prevent it from tearing.

Trainers and therapists often progress to using tennis balls or lacrosse balls to target deeper trigger points, especially those in the back. There is no end to the therapist’s creativity here. Some tape these balls together to form what they call “massage peanuts.”

It Comes Down to a Matter of Taste

So, not only is the warmup a smorgasbord of choices, it also appears that even choices we make continue to undergo changes. I very much agree with Rett Larson, project manager for EXOS- China, who said that the “concept of the warmup needs to shift from simply focusing on the muscles of the body to embracing the multi-factorial nature of pre-training or competition preparation.”

The takeaway from all of this is that many techniques can activate muscles before training. Whatever coaches choose to implement in their warmup, what they are actually accomplishing may be the kind of neurological arousal that they believe best prepares their athletes for the demands of the sport or event they are competing in.

Coaches choose warmups they like through experience, but not everyone has the same experience. Share on X

Like a smorgasbord, we can sample a variety of warmup routines, but whatever we choose to maintain is really the result of an “acquired taste” for what we think works best. These are activities we come to like through experience, but keep in mind that they reflect an appreciation that others might not share if they have not had similar experiences with the athletes they train.

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

Duhigg, Charles. The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do and How to Change. London: Random House, 2013. Print.

Joyce, David, and Daniel Lewindon. High-performance Training for Sports. Leeds: Human Kinetics, 2014. Print

Maltz, Maxwell. Psycho-cybernetics. New York: TarcherPerigee, an Imprint of Penguin, 2016. Print

Rochelle, R., E. Michael, and V. Skubic. 1957. “Effect of warm-up on softball throw for distance.” Research Quarterly, 28: 357363. 2.

Shellock, F.G. (1986) “Research Applications: Physiological, psychological, and injury prevention aspects of warm-up.” National Strength & Conditioning Association Journal: Vol. 8, No. 5, pp. 24-27.

 

My introduction to Dr. Peter Weyand came late last century on a snowy day at Benedictine University in Lisle, Illinois. Respected Illinois high school coach Ken Jakalski led a seminar featuring Weyand and his new research on sprinting speeds.

At the time, Kevin O’Donnell and Loren Seagraves were the rage with their Speed Dynamics VHS tapes. Every coach had their own copy. They could recite all of the drills from “A” skips to whatever the last alphabet letter they used. You weren’t a good sprint coach unless you had all of your athletes lined up doing the drills in unison.

I can still hear the sound of a good practice because everyone’s feet were hitting in unison. And in the back of all the coaches’ minds was the stride rate vs. stride length controversy. This was such a powerful, overriding factor that we even had sticks set out to work length or shorten the distance-to-do rate. And on acceleration days, we threw out the slats with rope to measure the lengths of acceleration. Those were the days.

Jakalski’s entertaining introduction reminded us of our journey with speed development, touching on such cool toys as the Kolka Thigh Trainer, Russian parachutes, and other well-marketed devices that caught the attention of desperate sprint coaches who had a spare Benjamin or two in their budgets. He ended with the statement that Dr. Weyand was going to change all of that. And he did.

Dr. Weyand is not a sprint coach. At that time, he was a Harvard University researcher, working at a nearby one-time Nike anti-aircraft missile control center. He had a force plate and high-speed cameras that recorded animals and people running. If my memory serves, he started working for the US Army to look into calorie expenditure and running. From there, he looked into birds running, like ostriches. That led him to limb repositioning.

In his paper “Faster top running speeds are achieved with greater ground forces not more rapid leg movements” (Journal of Applied Physiology, 89: 1991-2000, 2000), he determined that repositioning of legs was just about the same in everything he tested. (Everything except the common house cat. He had every kind of animal and human run on the plate but couldn’t get a cat to do it). He even inherited a lion that had started living at the facility.

What was cooler than the roaming lion was Weyand’s conclusion that what determines speed is the amount of force an athlete applies to the ground. This not only applies to humans but also to animals as well. The really fast ones—cheetahs, ostriches, greyhounds—hit the ground much harder than sheep, lions, and other slower animals. I have Boerboels. They are very fast for big dogs, just for about 50 yards. When they go by, you can hear the thud of their feet on the ground. When my really fast sprinters go by, it is like a drum. Weyand concluded that the harder you hit the ground, the faster you are. He compared the world’s top sprinters to other runners and found the same thing.

The seminar was a game changer. But, it was only a game changer in theory because no one gave any tips on how to develop the ability to put force to the ground. It was a brand-new game. Is it strength or stiffness that needs the work? Do we do a ton of plyometric work? Do we start lifting large amounts of weight?

Both create problems. Plyometrics are often supported by two legs and lack the challenge to the lateral chain that is so important for a stiff contact. The strength portion is too slow and sometimes not in the proper range of motion. I have seen many athletes who can lift the house but can’t run. Others can’t deadlift much but run like a deer. So where does that leave us?

Before I get to the weight room stuff that I found to be very effective, training the test is very effective. Sprinting itself can have a huge impact on vertical force. Like Tony Holler preaches, electronically timed short sprints are the best way to develop sprint speed. There is no way around it. Start with fly 10s and gradually spread out to 30s by the peak of the season. In The Rise of Superman, Steven Kotler writes about the importance of Flow. Flow is the neurological state necessary for optimal performance. Immediate feedback is one of the keys for Flow.

So at our practices, people scream out numbers so athletes immediately know exactly how they did. That creates a reaction in the brain to do better, or ride the wave and do even better yet. Every night after practice, I post times which show improvement (or lack thereof) from the previous workout. All this creates a positive environment. Most times, our practices become more competitive than our meets. So even if all you have is a short hallway, that’s enough for an effective workout. I have had the luxury of a 200m track for the last 9 years. All we need is a straight and that is enough for most of our workouts.

But, if you are short of space or want to change things up, you can try this workout I created several years ago. It has proven very effective for my athletes.

The first exercise is a psoas and glute exercise. If you read my previous post, “5 Effective Glute Exercises,” you know about the relationship between the glute and psoas. I want to establish this relationship in most of these exercises. I also want to establish the scissoring action of the knees.

In his book Strength Speed: Technology and Training for Sprinter Speed and Long Jump, Swedish coach Jan Melén shows the differences between athletes of varying levels and their knee lift. I think we all agree that faster sprinters get their knees high. Part of that knee height is a reaction to the drive onto the ground.

But there is also an element of psoas activity. If the psoas is not firing, the knee lift will come from the hip flexors in the thigh and will not have the power to lift the leg all of the way to a position with the torso past 90 degrees. This exercise drills the knee lift. The athlete has a strap around the thigh and standing straight brings the knee past parallel.

When I tried it on my kBox, it lit my glutes and psoas. Initially, I used a weight that was too heavy. It went to my quads and was ineffective. I called the guys at Exxentric and asked them to build me a very small plate so my body would not cheat. Two weeks later, I received a package from Sweden with a tiny kBox plate. (Thanks Erik and Andreas! Great customer service! Something lacking from some other companies mentioned in my other posts.) The tiny plate rocked it. My glutes were burning after a set and the psoas was jacking my knee up. When I stepped off the machine, I felt like I could fly. Awesome! I tried it with some rubber bands. Not as good. It doesn’t have the eccentric pull that the kBox has, which seems to really fire the psoas.

What does this have to do with ground force? If the psoas and glute are reciprocal functioning mechanisms, the glute will work better if the psoas is firing. And, since the glute is in its peak contraction at the midstance phase, we are strengthening this pattern where we need to. Timing is half of sprinting. But in the weight room we never work on that. Now we are.

 

 

The second exercise is a reactive single leg squat. We challenged the push of the swing leg knee with our kBox psoas lift. Now we will weigh down the stance leg. I use my Hammer Strength deadlift, but dumbbells work well as do rubber bands—or any combination of the three. The athlete picks up the weight and does reactive quarter squats up to his big toe. To work on timing, the swing leg will come high. And the top of extension, the athlete will rapidly drop back down and repeat.

The keys are an ankle bend into a rocker position and a slight hip bend so the glutes and hamstring will need to extend. I usually hook my micro-muscle lab to the bar to monitor force output but it died on me. The Gymaware people don’t respond to emails so I am waiting to hear back from them so I can get back to measuring. I have been measuring this output for years and my fastest runners are the ones who put out the watts. It never fails. I usually vary between 45-135 lbs. After that the power output drops.

 

The third exercise is kickbacks on the Shuttle MVP. Now we are leaving the ground. I adjust the weight to less than body weight for weaker athletes so their contact time is quicker. I weigh down stronger athletes and really force them to hit the plate hard. Some athletes like to be face-down and others on their side. I don’t put them on their back because foot placement is too far in front. No Shuttle? No problem. Hang some rubber bands from the ceiling or the top of a squat rack and do French Contrast jumps, a la Cal Dietz. Again, the body weight can be controlled by the strength of the band.

 

The fourth exercise ties everything together. We call it Boom Booms because I want to hear the foot punch the ground. The second boom comes if we want to do two contacts to the ground. I stole it from Frans Bosch’s Running DVD (I stole a lot from that DVD). Athletes start with a butt bungee around their waist and walk out to tighten the band. This gets more glute function, though I have no proof other than feel. They lift their swing leg and arms to a perfect position. Quickly they step down with the swing leg, scissoring their legs. The swing leg hits the ground and punches back up to the starting position.

In his book, Melén shows the positions of where knees pass each other in a variety of sprinters. The faster the athlete, the further away from the ground the knees pass. From the picture, you can see that there are different surfaces on the floor. I want them always changing the surface. Sometimes I put 5-pound plates under them to make them uneven. There are lots of variations to this exercise that we use but I will cover those on my forthcoming warm-up and lateral chain articles.

 

The last exercise is a fly 10. We do 2-3 to warm up and get a top time and then start to cycle through the exercises. The kBox is great because I can take it out to the track and do kickbacks and single leg squats with it to try to replicate the full indoor workout. The athletes usually feel great when they run and the neural drive for the exercises sometime coaxes some really good times, even after they are fatigued. When their times slow more than 5-6%, I stop them. It is usually 2 cycles.

This is a great workout because it kills two birds with one stone. The athletes get a “weight room” workout and sprint together. I think one of the biggest barriers for high school athletes today is doing too much. Dawn patrol workouts, breakfast club, Animal farm, etc. before school and sprinting after creates a horrible recovery situation. It is just way too much. And it is not just their coaches. It is them too. They will sneak off to Lifetime Fitness to get more in and the body, both neurally and muscularly, never gets a chance to recover. I see it every year. The ones who don’t get better do too much. I see when I muscle test as well. I am sure the Omegawave and Bioforce people are tracking that also. Rest is a workout and drugs are not an option for the people I train.

When I used this workout extensively, my athletes had their best fly 100 times and ran some of the fastest times in Illinois history. Why did I get away from it? I get bored like you do. I constantly look for new stuff when I already have all that I need in front of me.

Here are some ideas I play with. Maybe something to them, I don’t know. The second to last one has John Fox pulling over my 4-way hip machine. That is some power.

 

We all have groups of student/athletes who we hope we can change their lives. Sometimes you have a group that changes a coach’s. This group ran 41.84 and 1:26.06, two of the fastest times in state history. (From left) Tarrance Williams, who graduated from Eastern Illinois. You all recognize him as the Eastbay catalogue model. Jimmy Sullivan threw the javelin for University of Illinois, spent a semester in Patagonia in National Outdoor Leadership School, and then walked across South America. John Fox ran at Illinois, but his career was curtailed with a recurring hamstring injury. He is enrolled in law school. Khara Williams is currently breaking into a career in theater.

 

 

 

This is a 40-inch jump by Khara. Watch the shadow in the background.

 

 

This is another group of athletes. The first one is a long jump state champion and all-state 100m. The second is a girls all-state 400m runner. And last is a good high school sprinter who ran 11.4 FAT.

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

 

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.