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

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

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

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

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

Video 3. Here is another great athletic dunk.

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

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

Specific Power Variability

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

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

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

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

Applying Variability

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

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

Complex Training

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Video 4. Long jump technique.

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

The Role of Fatigue in Variability

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Same but Different

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This type of story epitomizes Same but Different.

Here are a few practical examples for jumpers.

Video 5. Stefan Holm and 6 Degrees of Jumping

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

Video 6. Stephan Holm Hurdles Training.

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

Video 7. Low-Rim Dunking.

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

Induced Randomness (Chaos)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For High Jump:

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

Video 8. Stephan Holm’s High Jump.

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

For Triple Jump and General Posterior Chain Power:

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

Video 9. Joel Smith Variable Bounding

Final Summary and Training Suggestions

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sunday should be complete rest.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here is what the week will look like:

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

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

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

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

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

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

What Is ‘Health’?

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

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

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

Physical Health: Short-Term and Long-Term

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Considering Mental Health

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

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

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

Perceptions of Social Health

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

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

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

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

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

’Normal’ Doesn’t Apply to Elite Athletes

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

The gut microbiome.

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

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

Why Athletes Need Gut Microbiota

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

Gut microbiota’s roles and functions include:

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

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

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

In this article, I’ll discuss:

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

Gut Microbiota: A Biotic Shield Against Stressors

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

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

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

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

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

 

The Silent Exercise-Induced Injury That Weakens Immunity

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

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

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

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

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

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

Blood redistribution can cause:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Illness Surveillance in Elite Sport Informs Immunonutrition

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Think of it this way:

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

 

Gut Microbiota: A New Player in Brain Health

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

Brain-Gut Axis

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

Gut microbiota gain access to the brain through different pathways:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sleep and Fatigue

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

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

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

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

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

Psychology

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

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

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

Neurogenesis

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Enhance Your Wattage by Training the Gut

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

References

1. Cronin O, O’Sullivan O, Barton W, Cotter PD, Molloy MG, Shanahan F. Gut microbiota: implications for sports and exercise medicine. British Journal of Sports Medicine. 2017; 51(9): 700-701.
2. Mach N, Fuster-Botella D. Endurance exercise and gut microbiota: A review. Journal of Sport and Health Science. 2016.
3. Galley JD, Bailey MT. Impact of stressor exposure on the interplay between commensal microbiota and host inflammation. Gut Microbes. 2014; 5(3): 390-396.
4. Nakade Y, Tsuchida D, Fukuda H, Iwa M, Pappas TN, Takahashi T. Restraint stress delays solid gastric emptying via a central CRF and peripheral sympathetic neuron in rats. American Journal of Physiology: Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology. 2005; 288: R427-32.
5. Wang SX, Wu WC. Effects of psychological stress on small intestinal motility and bacteria and mucosa in mice. World Journal of Gastroenterology. 2005; 11(13): 2016-21.
6. Nieuwenhuijs VB, Verheem A, van Duijvenbode-Beumer H, Visser MR, Verhoef J, Gooszen HG, Akkermans LM. The role of interdigestive small bowel motility in the regulation of gut microflora, bacterial overgrowth, and bacterial translocation in rats. Annals of Surgery. 1998; 228(2): 188-93.
7. March DS, Marchbank T, Playford RJ, Jones AW, Thatcher R, Davison G. Intestinal fatty acid-binding protein and gut permeability responses to exercise. European Journal of Applied Physiology. 2017; 117(5): 931-941.
8. van Wijck K, Lenaerts K, Grootjans J, et al. Physiology and pathophysiology of splanchnic hypoperfusion and intestinal injury during exercise: Strategies for evaluation and prevention. American Journal of Physiology: Gastrointestinal and Liver Physiology. 2012; 303(2): G155–G168.
9. Drew MK, Finch C. The Relationship Between Training Load and Injury, Illness and Soreness: A Systematic and Literature Review. Sports Medicine. 2016; 46(6): 861-883.
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11. Schwellnus MP, Derman WE, Jordaan E, Webb, S. Elite athletes travelling to international destinations >5 time zone differences from their home country have a 2–3-fold increased risk of illness. British Journal of Sports Medicine. 2012; 46(11): 816-821.
12. Gleeson M, Williams C. Intense exercise training and immune function. Nestle Nutrition Institute Workshop Series. 2013; 76: 39-50.
13. Mann JB, Bryant KR, Johnstone B, Ivey PA, Sayers SP. Effect of Physical and Academic Stress on Illness and Injury in Division 1 College Football Players. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. 2016; 30(1): 20-25.
14. Gleeson M, Williams C. Intense exercise training and immune function. Nestle Nutrition Institute Workshop Series. 2013; 76: 39-50.
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17. Cryan JF, Dinan TG. Mind-altering microorganisms: the impact of the gut microbiota on brain and behaviour. Nature Reviews Neuroscience. 2012; 13(10): 701-712.
18. Dinan TG, Cryan JF. The Microbiome-Gut-Brain Axis in Health and Disease. Gastroenterology Clinics of North America. 2017; 46(1): 77-89.
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In 2011, junior Brandon Moss won the Texas 4A Region 1 track meet and set the Chapin High School triple jump record with a massive leap of 48′-2″. The victory earned him a ticket to Austin for the 4A state championship meet two weeks later. The 2nd and 3rd place medalists also qualified.

The results were much different at State. The two athletes Brandon had outperformed at regionals placed ahead of him. Brandon walked away with a 4th place finish (47′-1.75″), while John Warren of Killeen jumped 48′-4″ to earn silver and Shakiel Randolph of Waco Midway bounded his way to bronze (48′-1″).

I remember agonizing over the results. On each of his six attempts, Brandon was as much as 18 inches behind the board even though he had practiced running through the board numerous times during the weeks leading up to State. I was dumbfounded and couldn’t find the words to console Brandon. It might have been nerves, the stage, or overconfidence. We vowed to fix the problem and return to State his senior year and medal.

Stance Setup

Too often I see high school athletes trying to emulate elite jumpers. Some walk or skip into their approach. Others place their feet parallel to each other and simulate a “waterfall” start. Still others put on a theatric performance filled with entertaining hand movements, confusing foot placements, and clapping. Unfortunately, all these methods lead to an inconsistent drive phase that decreases the likelihood of a consistent approach.

All our jumpers begin with their power leg/foot forward, so they have an even number of steps. It is easy for them to remember, and it makes our life as coaches that much simpler. We typically have several athletes jumping simultaneously at meets. If you ask each one, “What leg do you jump off of?” as I have observed many coaches do, it will drive you crazy by season’s end.

Video 1. Crouch start analysis for the horizontal jumps.

In the crouch start, the athlete places his back foot 8-12 inches behind his power leg for a balanced and consistent base. He leans over from his waist, placing his chest near his power leg thigh. We cue the athlete to “bring chest to thigh and nose to knee.” The power-leg knee is over the front toe, resulting in the shins being inclined and the hips higher than the head. The hips should be placed above (vertically) the space created by the two feet. The majority of weight is on the front foot, although some weight should remain on the back foot as well. The front toe should remain on the ground, and the back heel is off the ground. Finally, the arms are in alternated positions with the one opposite the front leg forward.

Video 2. Roll-over start analysis for the horizontal jumps.

In the rollover start, the athlete’s feet remain in the same positions as the crouch start, but the upper body is tilted back. In this position, the front toe is off the ground and pointing up (dorsiflexed), with the back heel on the ground. The arms are alternated, with the one opposite the front foot raised high overhead. The athlete initiates the rollover by bending at the waist and creating a position similar to the crouch start. However, it is extremely important to note that the athlete should bend at the waist FIRST as he brings his chest to the thigh before the front toe touches the track or the back heel leaves the ground. If the athlete moves his knee over his front toe and back heel off the ground before bending at the waist, he most likely will stumble from the start.

The Drive Phase

The first four to six steps of the approach determine either success or inconsistency at the board. The majority of high school jumpers lack consistency at the board primarily because of an unpredictable drive phase. I constantly hear coaches telling their jumpers to move two feet back or two feet forward without first having checked out the accuracy of the athlete’s first four to six steps. Those athletes will move forward and hit the same mark as before, or even worse, be over the board by an entire stride.

Check the drive phase first. I’ve attended several conferences where college coaches have suggested establishing a checkmark for jumpers. This definitely works for full-time jumpers or if you work exclusively with a few athletes, but the majority of high school athletes also run individual sprints and relays. I work with many jumpers at the same time, so trying to establish a check mark for each of them seems tiresome and unreliable.

However, if an athlete is having difficulty getting on the board at a meet, the first issue I address is the drive phase. I immediately check the athlete’s 4th or 6th overall step and make sure it is consistent. If the drive phase is consistent, the reason he is not hitting the board occurs later. But the majority of the time this check will remedy the situation.

And why wait until the meet? I might have a jumper who has just completed a 4×100 race and must report back to the pit within 10 minutes. He is tired and might also be competing in another field event. I believe in check marks and in fact, they have helped several of my jumpers. But they will only confuse the majority of high school athletes. Use them as needed.

Athletes need to be patient during the drive phase. “Patience” here means they should feel longer timed pushes into the track, resulting in movement up and forward during the initial part of the approach. We want them to be powerful, rather than quick. Quickness does not equal fast.

Jumpers should work on large ranges of motions with their arms, which will allow their legs to work in sync. If they can produce “big arms,” the opposing thigh will work toward the chest in unison, creating greater force application. This will also appear as if the athlete is coming out of blocks, and the coach should see triple extension. This includes the head being aligned with the body and not tucking the chin. Cue the athlete to “split big,” use “powerful pushes,” and continue to reiterate patience.

The Continuation Phase

The middle part of the approach consists of 4-8 steps, depending on the length of the approach. The early part of this phase continues to have some aspects of the drive/acceleration phase. Look for the head to remain in line with the spine and hips. The head, body, and hips gradually unfold into a tall posture during this phase. Once the jumper is upright, he will continue to run faster and approach max velocity. At this point, the jumper has become a sprinter. Therefore, the coach should encourage effective sprinting mechanics. The feet should land directly below the hips and at contact the shins should be at or near 90 degrees.

Because the jumper is using sprinting mechanics during this phase, max velocity sessions, wickets, and/or full-fledged sprinting drills provide an opportunity to coach athletes to work this aspect of the approach. The main point here is that 90 percent of the success of the jump occurs during the approach. Flight, landing, and air mechanics are predetermined based on the approach and takeoff.

Too many jump coaches, I believe, waste time on gimmicks that place the athlete in a high-risk environment. These gimmicks include placing a hurdle near the jumping board to have the athlete get more height and increase knee drive at the end of the long jump approach. Another is placing barriers at specific distances and having triple jumpers bound over them to increase second-phase distances. I’ve often witnessed both of these at high school practices even though height in the long jump and second-phase distance in the triple jump are a result of other factors, not stand-alone causes. You’re better off having your jumpers work on becoming better sprinters, which in turn makes them faster and leads to more successful jumps.

The Final Four Steps

Long Jump: Mention “penultimate step” to an incoming freshman or fast sprinter who wants to try jumping, and they will give you the same look they give a foreign language instructor teaching verb tenses. We call it “p-step”; the kids like it because it sounds cool.
Before getting to the p-step—the last step before takeoff—it is important for athletes to understand that they must continue to sprint at near full-controlled speed. High school jumpers tend to get to the board and freak out. They either try to get faster or come to a screeching halt, thereby destroying the momentum they’ve built up during the approach. You need to make sure they continue sprinting all the way onto the p-step.

During the p-step, the athlete’s hips lower while still maintaining velocity. The p-step lands slightly ahead of the hips and allows the center of mass (hips/torso/head) to move upward and forward. As the p-step foot nears the surface, it should be dorsiflexed, allowing the heel to lead the foot onto the ground. The actual contact on the track will be flat with the entire p-step foot creating a rocking-chair-like movement onto the toe. This rolling movement allows the hips and center of mass to move upward and forward. The athlete should feel the p-step behind him, allowing the toe to remain on the ground and the heel to be slightly off the ground to create a bridged position. During the transition from the foot striking the ground into the bridged position, the hips move forward, and the shin shifts forward and down toward the track.

Video 3. Penultimate step analysis.

The takeoff leg should also hit the board in a flat manner and slightly ahead of the center of mass. This means the takeoff foot lands in front of the hips, but not excessively. The jumper should allow the hips to go past the takeoff foot as it pushes down and away from the board.

Triple Jump: The final four steps need to be as close as possible to full sprinting mechanics but in a controlled and relaxed manner. The jumper should continue to land with his foot directly under his hips and maintain a tall and straight posture. Much like the anticipation in the long jump, many jumpers slow down near the board. But this destroys posture and mechanics, leading the jumper to reach for the board and foul because of the excessive front-side mechanics.

Only in the last step should the foot strike slightly ahead of the hips. Again, the jump foot should hit the board in a flat manner and then allow the hips to pass through. The jumper should be cued to be patient on the board by “running through the board” and then pushing off. If the athlete is patient, the height of the first phase of the triple jump will be lower. But rushing onto the board and prematurely jumping creates too much height for an effective first phase.

Number of Steps

How many steps should each jumper take for the approach? There are many proposed guidelines, and the differences are significant, but the number generally falls between 12-22 steps for high school athletes. You can either count every stride your jumper takes to arrive at the board or only the jumping leg. For example, a 12-step approach would be the same as a 6-step approach counting only the power leg.

While all coaches base their approach distance on different aspects, you need to consider the jumper’s training age (how long the athlete has been participating in track and field), speed, strength, and other related factors. The lower the speed and strength of an athlete, the fewer the steps. The reason is simple: the sooner the athlete gets to controlled top speed, the sooner deceleration begins. The key is the amount of time an athlete can sustain his top controlled speed approaching the board. It is important to note, however, that although a high school jumper may be faster, stronger, and have a relatively higher training age, he may not necessarily benefit from a longer approach. I’ve never had any jumper go past a 16-step approach.

Measuring Steps

When measuring the total distance and the number of steps for each athlete, have them get their marks on the track rather than the pit. Introducing jumpers to the runway—even veterans—when you first measure distances will lead them to alter their mechanics to hit the board. Have them line up at the starting line or finish line, with either a crouch start or rollover start, and measure the total number of steps and distance from that point.

Be sure to include a “pop up.” If you simply run through with a predetermined amount of steps, the measurement will be inaccurate. A “pop up,” as shown in this video, includes the p-step and takeoff.

Have them do this 4-6 times on the track and place a piece of tape from the takeoff spot each time. Then measure the distance from the most consistent takeoff spot. For example, if the athlete has five takeoffs, and three pieces of tape are within a few inches of each other, measure from that spot all the way back to the starting point. Next, take that measurement and begin from the back of the board (nearest to the sand pit) and measure away from the pit.

When should a coach allow the athletes to take their marks and practice approaches on the runway? When you feel comfortable, they can attack the board without hesitation. We generally have a month before our first meet. In the past, I have allowed jumpers to start practicing approaches within two weeks after measuring their approach distance. But two years ago we didn’t practice any approaches on the runway until we got to the actual meet. That is part of the art of coaching: figuring out what works best for your athletes.

Brandon: The Sequel

In his senior year, Brandon had knee issues, so we had to limit his triple jumping. He still did 47′-10″ and finished 3rd at the regional meet. However, he long jumped 24′-1.5″ at the same meet to earn a gold medal and punch his ticket to State. The jump set both a school record and the city record for a non-wind-aided jump. As coaches, we dream about our athletes executing the perfect jump and Brandon did it.

The weather at State two weeks later was rainy, and the boards were slippery. Yet Brandon trusted himself, his mark, and his entire approach. He leaped 22′-9.25″ to earn gold.

All the principles I’ve outlined in this article are the same ones we practice with our jumpers throughout the season and year by year. But they are only guidelines. I still search daily for anything to give my athletes and me a better understanding of the horizontal jumps.

Just like anything else in track, the horizontal jump approach is a process. Schedule time in your practices to work the approach 2 to 3 times a week. When focusing on acceleration, allow the athletes to work the drive phase from a crouch or rollover start. In max velocity, they can work on transition and final step mechanics on the track. Work the approach on the runway when you feel your jumpers are ready. Stay away from gimmicks and flashy landing and bounding drills. Instead, focus on the fundamentals that will make your jumpers faster, stronger, and more accurate on the board and enjoy the results.

Credits

Special thanks to the following mentors: Boo Schexnayder, Schexnayder Athletic Consulting and contributor to Completetrackandfield. Reuben Jones, Associate Head Coach/Sprints, Jumps and Hurdles at Columbia University and contributor to Completetrackandfield. Latif Thomas, Owner of Completetrackandfield. Ron Grigg, Director of Cross Country/Track and Field at Jacksonville University. Nick Newman, Director of Scholastic Training at Athletic Lab and contributor to Elitetrack. Travis Geopfert, Field Events and Multi-Event Athlete Coach at the University of Arkansas and contributor to Digitaltrackandfield. Jake Jacoby, Former Jumps Coach at the University of Louisville. Calvin Robinson, Assistant Coach at Texas Tech.

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

Plyometrics are only truly useful if there is a specific intent behind them. They aren’t a magic pill. They must provide an overload in at least one of the following areas to provide a real athletic benefit:

• Muscle recruitment
• Speed of recruitment
• Muscle coordination
• Ground reaction force

Doing plyometrics for the sake of their fancy name or promised benefits won’t lead you down the path to athletic excellence.

There is an inherent joy in leaving the pull of the earth’s gravity. In reading through Joe Navarro’s The Power of Body Language, it became clear to me that acting against gravity is a bodily sign of pure joy. What is in the mind is in the body. Jumping is a universal sign of happiness and excitement.

Jump training has been a huge part of my life, and they joy of getting just a little farther off the ground than the last week, month, or year has been a driver in my search for training methods and philosophies surrounding this human movement.

For this article (series), I am whittling much of those ideas down into three primary forms of effective plyometric exercise to help usher one’s jumping ability to its fullest potential. We’ll start with the usual method informed coaches and athletes turn to for building vertical jump ability (if they are physically ready for it), shock plyometrics, and then get into two less considered, yet vital, training ideals for building more vertical and reactive power, variable and “pliosoidal” jump training, and also that of contrast/cluster work.

Jumping is a universal sign of happiness and excitement. Share on X

I wrote his article with the track and field coach and athlete in mind, but the following workouts can apply to any athlete interested in jumping higher and becoming more explosive. These methods are also covered and arranged in detail in my latest book Vertical Ignition.

High Powered Shock Plyometrics

If you want to jump high, then you need to train the jump pathway at a more intense level than you ever have before.

The number one priority of jump training is for the athlete to learn to produce more force in less time, and put that force in the right place. Nothing is better suited to this task than a proper selection of intense sprints and plyometric exercises. Since sprinting is another topic, we’ll just stick to plyometrics for the sake of this article.

Before plyometrics were given their “American” name, they had a far more fearsome and intimidating label: “shock training”. I doubt the term “plyometric” was being thrown around shortly after the Soviets tricked the Americans by telling them that an 8-9 foot box was the optimal height in which to drop from in the depth jump exercise.

Shock training was (and still is) a series of landing and jumping exercises based on the depth jump. Jumping itself is a volatile, violent event, where an athlete must handle multiple times their bodyweight in an instant. Jumping, like sprinting is a hindbrain activity, where reflex action is key.

Plyometrics designed to overload the jumping process should, therefore, yield even greater forces, or rates of loading than jumping, and do so in a precision manner that allows force to be properly channeled for the ultimate leap. As far as improving vertical jump is concerned, plyometrics that teach athletes to utilize maximal forces in the vertical and horizontal vectors reflexively are paramount.

Granted, not everyone can just set out and start banging out depth jumps from a 48” box, or performing a standing triple jump from a 24” elevated start position. Shock plyometrics are best used once an athlete has reached physical maturity, has good training experience, and more importantly, good proficiency, in lower level plyometric takeoffs and landings. As I see it, there are two basic types of shock plyometrics that can be used in the training of track and field jumpers, and other aspiring vertical jump athletes:

• Depth jumping and related activities
• Triple jump family bounding

Depth Jump Family

When it comes to jumping higher, coaches and athletes should have a close relationship with the depth jump. 2.40m high jumper Rudolf Povarnitsyn did.

Regarding the basic depth jump, the exercise is easily modulated towards the ability level of the athlete. An 18” depth jump is as different from a 48” depth jump as a 135lb squat is from a 405lb squat, and you don’t hear many in-the-trenches strength coaches going around telling half of their athletes to avoid barbell squatting.

The use of low boxes in depth jumping is one of the best ways to teach younger athletes, who are ready to train more seriously (late middle school, early high school), landing mechanics in a “single response” format. On the level of higher boxes, depth jumps are directly scalable to the landing and reactive ability of the athlete as they progress through their athletic career.

Learning to perform a depth jump in a single response format is the base work for many other plyometric exercises. As legendary strength coaches, such as Dan John, have said: learn the proper position first, then do it in volume, and finally, start increasing the load. Low intensity, repetitive plyometrics are a useful tool for younger and less experienced athletes, but if the first rep isn’t correct, the middle and last ones generally won’t be either. Starting with the single response is the ground work for success of multiple repetitions.

Depth Jump Family: Single Leg Versions

An advanced version of the depth jump that is particularly useful for all athletes, and not just the track and field variety, is the single leg depth jump. Interestingly enough, the single leg depth jump has much more in common with the two leg jump than it does a single leg takeoff. Why? Contact time.

Single leg depth jumps tend to yield a relatively long contact time compared to its two leg counterparts (although this time can be lowered considerably when rebounding over a hurdle). Since this is the case, the single leg depth jump is more closely related to the “explode” quality of a vertical jump than the driving, “reactive” quality of single leg leaping. Think of it as a GPP exercise for single leg jumps, and an SPP exercise for double leg jumping.

Again, with this in mind, I’ll almost always use a hurdle, or a series of hurdles if I am implementing this type of work. Otherwise, the ground contacts can be a little too long to be usable. Below is a sample of a single leg depth jump over an (importantly) collapsible hurdle. For even better results, perform this exercise in a series over lower hurdles where posture can be easily maintained, and contact time kept in check.

Depth Jump Family: Hurdle Hops

Where depth jumps are of a more powerful, single dose, nature, hurdle hops are a rhythmic, vibration like counterpart. In the landmark book “Running”, by Frans Bosch and Ronald Klomp, sprinting is noted to be a cyclic activity, with each stride closely linked to the last via reflex action. It is for this reason that high and long jumpers will often increase the cadence of their last few strides leading into takeoff because a faster frequency will allow a faster reflex of the takeoff mechanism itself (from the inverse-extension reflex). Each step on the approach is related to the step before it, and therefore, the plant step is related to the penultimate, and each step prior. Nobody jumps too high or far off one leg with long, loping strides all the way until the plant. Good jumpers will instinctively escalate the cadence of their pre-takeoff strides to yield a better reflex connection into the takeoff step. In this manner, each hurdle hop is related to the one before it.

Although hurdle hops are a bilateral activity, they are still cyclic in nature and based on reflexive mechanisms that bind each jump together. Because of this nature, along with the fact that the presence of a hurdle leads to quicker contact times, the hurdle hop is an invaluable counterpart to the depth jump in the world of shock plyometrics.

Also, because hurdle hops are an easier exercise to perform in a higher number of repetitions, they are an excellent tool for solidifying, and building on the mechanics learned through single response depth jumps. These can be done off one, or two legs, and I strongly recommend collapsible hurdles in either scenario! Hurdle hops can be spaced according to the goal of the day, or simply for variety’s sake. Farther apart hurdles will yield shorter touchdown times, and a premium on maintaining momentum. Closer hurdles will have a more powerful effect on the knee extensors muscles.

One of my personal favorite developmental plyometrics for the high jump event specifically is the double hurdle + big hurdle jump. In this exercise, two hurdles set the cyclic rhythm of the jump, and the last jump is over a max height hurdle. It’s a nice exercise for mimicking the quicker steps that tend to precede the powerful takeoff stride, along with a nice induction of variety into the training montage. You can see this exercise below in one of my “classic” (extremely poor quality and editing) YouTube videos.

Triple Jump Family

The next style of shock plyometrics goes into the “triple jump family”. Where depth jumps and hurdle hops develop the ability of an athlete to store and release energy in the vertical plane, bounding variations overload the sweep-like planting mechanism in the horizontal plane. There are plenty of ways to perform bounding for the sake of a better vertical jump, not to mention improved acceleration and sprint abilities. Here are a few bullet points on my thoughts regarding the art of bounding for improved jump power.

• A combination of bounding styles is best. Even if athletes aren’t triple jumpers, they will still benefit greatly from learning single leg, and left-left, right-right styles of bounding, as these work different portions of the stumble and inverse-extension reflexes seen in sprint gait.
• The single leg, and left-left, right-right style bound in particular trains an athlete to reduce excessive backside mechanics in the sprint gait cycle, the nature of the bound forcing a quicker transition back into a forward rotation of the swing thigh after the foot leaves the ground in push-off.
• Bounding should be addressed from both the shorter, multi-jump arena (such as standing triple jump), as well as the longer bounding means (various combinations over a distance of 20-40m). Short bounds develop power, and longer bounds build elasticity and jump reflex action, as well as some general jump capacity. The means of bounding that has the highest transfer to almost all track jumping events (as referenced in “Transfer of Training”) is a 10-fold bound from a standing start, which is a bit in the middle of short and long bounding sequences.
• Perform bounds from both a standing start, as well as a run-in. Record best distances for both styles.
• Don’t be afraid to end a shorter bounding session with a single “endurance” set, of 40-60+ meters. This works similarly to the way that a single high-rep drop set works in a strength training session. It is also useful practice for heavier jumpers with more muscle mass, as “endurance” work can assist in the rapid relaxation qualities of their muscle fibers.

The categories of bounding that I’ll generally use are that of:

• Short multi-jumps (3-5 jumps from a standing or running start).
• Longer bounds of 20-40m, which are nearly always done in the form of a “complex” where different types of bounds are performed in a circuit.

For multi-jumps, there is usually only one type of jump trained each day, and it is measured and recorded. A different approach is taken during the longer bounds. Since when doing a series of bounding of a moderate distance, muscle coordination is a premium adaptation, rather than raw power and recruitment, it also makes sense to include a variety of types of efforts. On training days where you are following up some specific jump efforts with plyometrics, I prefer the majority chunk of those auxiliary plyometrics to be more of the muscle-coordination variety, rather than all single effort bursts.

Bottom line, use short multi-jumps as a source of long-term measured improvement and use longer bounds in variety to build elasticity, muscle coordination, and some specific jump capacity.

Putting it all together

I often use a shock plyometric workout as a stand alone, or in partial volume to finish off an event specific practice on a high CNS training day. This type of workout is one that requires the athlete to be fairly fresh coming in, either off a day of rest, or a potentiation based day of resistance training and coordination based elastic work.

Most of my articles are a bit short on things like exact exercises, sets and reps, but in this one, I’ll give you a snapshot of some sample training constructs. The following are linear versions of my favorite combinations of high-powered shock training:

Vertical Vector Power Emphasis

1. Double leg depth jump to a target (3-5 sets x 2-5 reps)
2. Single leg depth jumps over a hurdle (2-5 sets x 2-4 reps)
3. Hurdle Hops (2-3 sets x 4-8 reps)
4. Bounding Combinations (100-250m)
5. Shot Throws (5-20 reps)

In this workout, the quality and breadth of the depth jumping will determine how many repetitions of the lower level, coordination based plyometrics are performed, such as the hurdle hops, and bounding combinations. The shot throws have more of an explosive, high-velocity reset nature to them, but their reps are also variable.

To steer this type of workout towards a raw force nature, the double and single leg depth jumps can be performed in a “drop-off” format, where the exercise is stopped as soon as an athletes maximal rebound jump starts to go down.

Vertical Vector Power-Speed Emphasis

1. Double leg drop jump over hurdle, or to another box (3-5 sets x 4-8 reps)
2. Double leg depth jump over a hurdle (3-5 sets x 3-6 reps)
3. Hurdle hops with generous spacing (2-4 sets x 3-6 reps)
4. Bounding combinations (200-400m)
5. Shot throws (5-20 reps)

Horizontal Vector Emphasis

1. Multi-jumps from a run-in, e.g. 5 bounds from a 5 stride run-in (x 4-8 reps)
2. Hurdle hops with generous spacing, 5-7’ apart (3-4 x 4-6 reps)
3. Depth Jumps, shorter box, shorter rest (3-6 sets x 4-8 reps)
4. Shot Throws (5-20 reps)

Combined Emphasis Sample I

1. Double Leg Depth Jump over 2 hurdles (4-10 sets x 1 reps)
2. Standing Triple Jump (x3-5)
3. Hurdle Hops (2-3 sets x 4-8 reps)
4. Bounding Combinations (100-300m)
5. Shot Throws (5-20 reps)

Conclusion

The depth jump and triple jump exercises, and their various offspring allow for a myriad of high-powered possibilities in the world of athletic development. Each exercise on its own is never the magic 8-ball of results, but putting powerful exercises together into complexes begins to sow the seeds of one’s highest level of athletic jump performance.

The next “workout” in this series will be that of plyometric (and human) variability. Stay tuned.

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

The recent trend in coaching is sport-specific training and early specialization. Neither of these complies with the “learning to learn” theory; in fact, they lie at the opposite ends of the spectrum. Athletes should be encouraged to acquire general adaptations to all types of fitness endeavors to become well-rounded, versatile, and trainable in other activities.

Arguably, a college football player will have a much better athletic background and skill set if he plays high school basketball and competes in track and field during the offseason.

Sport-specific learning can be broken down into the fundamental movement levels of coordination, flexibility, speed, strength, and endurance. Training all of these throughout a periodization cycle grants the most access to learning specific skills down the road and results in quicker adaptation.

Learning to Learn

Researchers have proposed the theory of learning to learn to explain how the transfer of skills can apply to related motor skills as well as unrelated ones, independent of prior experience.¹ Essentially, not all motor skills need to be taught or trained in a specific fashion to achieve proficiency. A general adaptation to coordination can occur with an athlete who has never trained an exact motion.

For example, an experienced snowboarder can often cross over to skiing easily. The basic maneuvers on the snow are very different due to the body’s position on skis rather than a board, but the underlying principles of cutting, braking, and balance are transferrable.

Possibly people modulate limb stiffness to accommodate new changes in their environment and their specific task at hand. This allows room for error, which provides constructive feedback on how to learn and adapt for following trials.¹

Neurologically, these learning functions are attributed to the brain’s anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). The ACC shows the greatest neural activity in the early stages of learning where corrections and adjustments are made rather quickly. And it serves this role regardless of the task presented.¹ Sensorimotor adaptations occur under a general umbrella of learning that can then be used to generate specific, well-adapted skills.

Transfer of Learning: Acquiring New Motor Skills

Transfer of learning occurs when prior motor skill acquisition impacts later motor learning, either positively or negatively.² With a positive transfer, previous learning experiences make it easy to learn a new skill or perform within a new context. We believe transfer may occur because a motor pathway was already established for a similar skill or performance framework.

For example, the overhand throw of a baseball positively transfers to the overhand throw of a football.² Although the throws are not identical, the motor firing sequence is similar. Learning one after the other is beneficial due to positive transfer.

There are two theories explaining why positive transfer occurs. One is the identical elements theory—the degree to which the two tasks are similar determines the efficacy of transfer.² These elements can be abstract, such as an athlete’s mental state, or grounded, such as the specific characteristics of a skill movement pattern. The second theory is transfer-appropriate processing, which refers to the similarity of cognitive processing between two tasks.

Positive transfer can also apply to training adaptations in endurance athletes, which lines up with the identical elements theory. Physical training enhances the performance capacity of untrained muscles in a generalized manner.³

We can see this transfer in endurance athletes who primarily train the legs and experience an increased endurance capacity in their upper body.³

Endurance athletes who primarily train the legs experience increased endurance in upper body. Share on X

Strength training can have a direct transfer of learning effect on endurance capacity as well. Issurin (2013)³ discussed how the outcomes of strength training have a positive growth effect on slow-twitch muscle fibers and an increase in the oxidative energy in local muscle mitochondria.

Similarly, strength training increases the tendon stiffness and elastic properties of the muscles involved in both activities. We can see this in increased storage capacity and function during the eccentric contractions of running mechanics. Overall, this improves an endurance athlete’s work economy.³

Strength training also enhances peripheral blood circulation for better perfusion of oxygen during local muscle contraction.³ By increasing the absolute strength of muscles, an endurance athlete can increase their muscle efficiency; this allows them to operate under low levels of blood circulation common to intense exercise.

The anabolic effect of strength training combined with the catabolic effect of endurance training, though, can sometimes lead to a negative transfer of learning. Hormonal responses to training are directly in tune with the intensity, duration, and type of exercise performed.³ The correct prescription ratio of strength-endurance is key to maximizing the positive effect of hormones in training.

Clearly the activities encompassing strength and endurance training are substantially different in technique and movement patterns. However, there is a direct, positive link between the learned adaptations of one having a positive influence on the other. Although the two activities are very dissimilar, the identical elements theory does apply in a physiologic context.

Transfer-appropriate processing may have a role in the cognitive effects of strength training on endurance performance, especially if we consider hormonal influences.

Bilateral Training Transfer From One Limb to Another

Bilateral transfer of learning refers to the learning of a particular task with one limb with a cross-transfer to the opposite limb.² The theory states that learning a skill initially with one hand or foot will facilitate learning the same skill easily with the opposite hand or foot.

Bilateral transfer can be explained cognitively by the identical elements theory, which establishes that the basic motor principles of a movement are learned the first time around, regardless of the limb.² Thus the “how-to” component is already present for future learning.

Similarly, the motor control explanation for bilateral transfer is based on the development of a generalized motor pattern during the early stages of learning. Although this is not associated with a particular limb, it can later be recalled in either limb.²

Does the principle of bilateral transfer apply to all motor skills? Researchers found that bilateral transfer is valid for the timing of movements but not force application.⁴

Bilateral transfer occurs for the timing of movements but not force application. Share on X

During an experiment of bilateral transfer of learning from dominant to non-dominant hands, the researchers used surface electromyography (sEMG) to monitor the fine motor capacity of the first dorsal interosseous. The improvement in relative reaction timing between the two limbs was strikingly similar—56% in the trained limb and 58% in the untrained limb.

The force control training did not transfer to the opposite limb, however, even when substantial learning occurred in the trained limb. This may be attributed to the degree, or threshold, of force required to recruit the opposite hemispheric motor cortex brain.⁴

Without sufficient stimulation, especially with fine motor movements, learning may not be induced. Timing, however, is more reflexive in nature and requires less cortical involvement within the brain.

We can use a healthy limb as a platform for learning in a weak or injured limb. Share on X

In practical terms, bilateral transfer is important in the field of rehabilitation medicine. Physical therapists and trainers can use the healthy limb as a platform for learning in a weakened or injured limb.

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. Seidler, Rachael D., “Neural Correlates of Motor Learning, Transfer of Learning, and Learning to Learn,” Exercise Sport Sciences Reviews, 38(1) (2010): 3-9.
2. Magill, Richard, and David Anderson, Motor Learning and Control: Concepts and Applications (10th ed.) (New York: McGraw-Hill Education, 2014).
3. Issurin, V.B., “Training Transfer: Scientific background and insights for practical application,” Sports Medicine, 43(8) (2017): 675-694.
4. Yao, W. X., A. Cordova, Y. Huang, Y. Wang, and X. Lu, “Bilateral Transfer for Learning to Control Timing but Not for Learning to Control Fine Force,” Perceptual & Motor Skills, 118(2) (2014): 400-410.

The first two blogs in this series focused on establishing data reliability (Data in Sports Performance: Why Your Measurements Matter) and a foundation for practical data analysis in sports science (Foundations of Applied Sports Science: A Starting Point in Sports Performance). In this third installment, I highlight applications of these methods as they were integrated into the offseason programs for a group of NFL draft hopefuls and NFL veterans.

I had the distinct pleasure of working with an old colleague of mine, Erik Jernstrom, who is now the Director of Sports Performance and Fitness with EForce Sports. In addition to Erik directing strength-and-conditioning efforts, we also worked directly with a staff of physical therapists and nutritionists, headed up by Ryan Baugus, DPT. I assisted as a strength coach, and I also managed the sports science and performance analysis for our group. Our staff was tasked with preparing a group of NFL hopefuls for their upcoming combine and pro days, and serving a small group of NFL veterans in their offseason.

We took great effort to design an onboarding and assessment process that best served the needs of each athlete. These are high-level, accomplished football players entering critical junctions in their career: the NFL draft, free agency, or the final year of a contract. Erik, Ryan, and all the staff members were diligent in designing the screening and assessment process, making sure the chosen interventions were justified and would yield results in a timely manner.

As the sports scientist of the group, I knew how important it would be to assess the readiness of each athlete’s recovery as it related to our training goals. This is where the appropriate use of technology would help our group facilitate the process.

Technology and the Offseason

The creation of an interdisciplinary staff in athletics gave me a perfect opportunity to implement my athlete management system, Voyager. Our staff had spent considerable time designing and scheduling our process within our unique high performance team: Ryan has developed a customized screening process as a physical therapist, Erik has multiple assessments and performance tests he implements as a performance coach, and I had elected to use a simplified approach to assessing readiness and recovery. Voyager would allow us to connect each department within our staff into a single hub for our athletes.

Whether by phone, tablet, or computer, each staff member had ready access to key performance indicators daily, and these were simultaneously stored in a database. Perhaps the best part about our athlete management process with Voyager is that it is customized to fit our needs; only the information we wanted to collect was included, and we could create new metrics, forms, and surveys quickly and easily.

Voyager

 

In our system, each athlete filled out a quick recovery questionnaire each morning via their phone. I elected to use a popular five-question/five-point scale used often in the literature1. Athletes received instructions on using Voyager on their phone and also on answering the questionnaire, and learned the importance of the information.

Athletes must understand how a process benefits them if we expect them to adhere to our methods. Share on X

Athlete education is a critical element in sports science: Athletes must understand how the process benefits them if we expect them to adhere to our methods. Erik and I have a history working with most of the athletes in these groups, and the relationships we enjoy are based on trust. This element takes great time and effort to develop, and is central to the effectiveness of not only a sports science process, but to any performance-staff-related endeavor. Data and technology have great importance, but they cannot replace human interactions and relationships.

 

 

In addition to recovery data, we collected data on key performance indicators within strength and conditioning, as outlined by Erik. We were careful to collect data relevant to the goals of each athlete: Clearly, the goals of a quarterback entering the NFL combine are not identical to the goals of a three-year NFL veteran receiver entering the final year of his contract. The athletes do not train in the exact same way, they are not assessed in the exact same manner, and each received individualized considerations in their training and recovery process.

After extensive conversations with the athletes, their agents, and skill coaches, and using scouting feedback, our staff outlined a plan for each athlete. After we outlined the plan and proposed a program, I created metrics in Voyager so that our staff could enter the information during or after training. Instead of keeping track of endless information for each athlete, we focused on relevant performance metrics when building our database.

In addition to training, the use of Voyager showed perhaps the greatest benefits in the recovery process, as the data we collected on recovery helped drive athlete education on individualized recovery interventions. We were able to define sleep behavior patterns and show each athlete their effect on readiness and performance. It’s not as simple as telling an athlete to get eight hours of sleep; the underlying concepts surrounding their sleep behavior ultimately affects the quality of their sleep.

This element took center stage when one of our NFL combine hopefuls exhibited sleep-quality disturbance during a period of travel for meetings and post-season All-Star Bowl games. He exhibited the utmost professionalism by devoting himself to his craft and manipulating his environment to maximize his sleep. During this period, we demonstrated to him the importance of sleep quality by highlighting the way he felt it affected his physical performance. He displayed tremendous self-discipline in his response to the situation, utilizing methods to manage his stress response, relax his mind and body, and ultimately return to a high quality of sleep.

 

On his experiences during the offseason and combine preparation, Erik said:

“Using Voyager as our athlete management system has allowed our entire staff at EForce to more effectively manage and monitor both subjective and objective KPIs for athletes we’re working with that are relevant to their sport. Not only has Voyager helped us drastically decrease our paper trail, but it has also allowed us to more clearly communicate to athletes the interplay and effect of different variables on overall performance. All this has enabled our athletes to train more consistently and free our staff to spend less time working through Excel worksheets.

Voyager allowed us to streamline our own process, and it became a powerful tool for us to drive athlete education. This was a trial run during an intensive period for our staff, but the ease of use and customizability of Voyager gave us all new insights on how to connect to our athletes and clients. It didn’t take us long to start visualizing how Voyager would allow us to provide them with additional services that would help yield real results in performance.”

 

Omegawave

While Voyager allowed our staff to assess recovery data and document progress on key performance indicators, we also used the Omegawave. I have direct experience with the system as both an athlete and a coach, and the privilege of having trained and worked under Mark McLaughlin. There are few people in the world who have trained as many athletes over the past 20 years while using the Omegawave as Mark.

Because I have trained with and learned from Mark since the beginning of my career some 13 years ago, I have an exceptional understanding of not only the utilization of the Omegawave, but also the use of this unique lens when training athletes. The system allows you to understand the potential “cost of doing business” when training your athletes. While we, as strength coaches, are obsessed with programming and performance outcomes, it is critical to understand how our training program affects the athlete, based on their readiness and preparedness. It is mandatory to understand how the functional state of the athlete affects their ability to train specific systems or traits.

Think of the central nervous, cardiovascular, and metabolic exchange systems, or traits like power, strength, endurance, coordination, agility, and functional movement. While many strength coaches become fixated solely on getting athletes bigger and stronger, or spending most of their programming focused on improving movement efficiency, it is critical to understand that these important traits have governing factors.

 

For those not familiar with the current interface of the Omegawave, the home screen gives a summary of the functional state of the CNS, cardiac, and metabolic exchange systems, as well as the Windows of Trainability^™ of the athlete. There has been misunderstanding of this system in the past, as some practitioners decided that the Omegawave is simply a “red light, green light” system. This implies that, based on the quality of your screening results, you are either allowed to train hard or not at all. This is not the case, however, as the specific information each athlete receives in their reading offers critical information on their readiness to best accommodate the timing, type, and amount of training to produce a desired response.

For example, just because the Window of Trainability^™ for strength is not within the highest stratified level (“green,” as of the current version), it does not mean the athlete cannot perform any strength training, nor does it mean that the athlete cannot or should not perform the prescribed strength training workout. Additionally, it does not guarantee that the athlete is not capable of executing a prescribed strength training session to a high level. The screening is communicating the fact that, based on the readiness level of the athlete, performing a strength training session will most likely yield a limited training effect, or could potentially result in a detrimental training effect due to increasing recovery time (think of issues like increased muscle soreness, greater depletion of local metabolic substrates, etc.).

Our staff aimed to have the athletes test on the Omegawave as often as possible, but with realistic expectations. We had space in our facility dedicated to performing the screenings, and based on best-practice methodology developed in the field surrounding heart rate variability measurement reliability, we performed our process in the morning. Though not ideal, we did the screenings at our facility 15 to 30 minutes after the athletes arrived. The issues are obvious when thinking about increased stress due to traffic, morning meal timing, and other problems athletes face when not operating in the vacuum of a research lab environment.

Our staff was very selective about communicating the results of the readings; I believe there is a definite art to this process. A useful tip I can offer is to establish with the athletes early on that this screening process is a “snapshot” rather than a “pass or fail” examination. From my own experience as an athlete, the test itself can create stress, so be mindful that athletes should be allowed to be inquisitive about their results without feeling resigned to a dim fate based on a sub-optimal reading. (Just as Mark McLaughlin joked about me breaking his Omegawave because I tested so poorly early on in our time together.)

Establish with athletes early on that the screening process is a snapshot, not a pass/fail exam. Share on X

Because of our relatively short time frame, our staff focused on only a few metrics from the Omegawave during this first offseason. Functional state of the main systems received attention during each screen, as was the Windows of Trainability^™. The idea of “keeping plan B as close to plan A as possible,” proposed by many coaches in the field, was in full effect during this period. The programming covered many things, and one of the foundational principles was separate sessions devoted to the development of specific systems.

For example, the Monday session for some of our athletes was an anaerobic development day where strength and structural hypertrophy were the main emphasis. Power and speed elements were also trained, but programming was implemented through both the lens of physiological/morphological development and neuromechanical elements (i.e., determining if they are performing fast enough to develop the desired trait). There are many great resources on the SimpliFaster blog regarding velocity considerations for speed and power.

The Omegawave’s Windows of Trainability^™ allowed our staff to understand the individual athlete’s capability for maximizing the training goals of each session. If an Omegawave reading indicated a suboptimal window for the development of speed and power on a Monday session, Erik would use this as a flag when timing sprints, measuring jumps, or observing technique during high-velocity lifting. As a former national junior-level Olympic weightlifter, Erik knows upholding a high quality of work when developing these traits is mandatory.

During instances where readiness was not optimal in the previously mentioned traits, there were often slight reductions in volume, intensity, or both. It did not mean the athletes weren’t going to train hard, but it did mean that we, as coaches, could not be oblivious to the risk of diminished returns on performance from the session. As previously addressed, a suboptimal Omegawave reading does not mean an athlete is not physically capable of achieving a high level of performance. It does, however, indicate that the “cost of doing business” will likely be higher than normal.

Imagine trying to perform the infamous Smolov squat program during the phases where intensity is high and frequent. Sure, you could gut out 5×5 at 90% of a 1RM, but think of feeling strong and powerful during each set and walking out of the gym versus feeling like you need spotters to finish each set and likely crawling out of the gym afterward. In both cases, you complete the 5×5 at 90%, but in the latter instance it takes a much heavier toll. You would probably have more lingering muscle soreness, more acute fatigue, and an overall diminished feeling of perceived recovery in the next days. This is an explicit example of utilizing the Windows of Trainability^™ to guide your training, and it’s also a great tease for investigating programming and recovery methods to maximize optimal readiness.

An additional Omegawave metric our staff focused on was DC potential, or “Direct Potential” of the brain. After long consultations with, and continuing education from, Mark McLaughlin and the Omegawave staff, and the works of Dr. John Sullivan (@BrainAlwaysWins) and others, as well as my own investigations and athletic career, it became explicitly clear that brain function needed to be accounted for in training.

Think of the massive stress that NFL hopefuls are under—moving to a new city to train, keeping a new schedule focused solely on what amounts to intense manual labor, separation from family and friends, learning new skills, mastering and refining old techniques, spending every hour of their day in the spotlight, and being pressured to meet performance standards—while the national sports media scene observes their every move. Their brain health will dictate their ability to manage and cope with these stressors, and a tool like the Omegawave gives a quick snapshot of this system.

A suboptimal Omegawave reading does not mean an athlete is not physically capable of achieving a high level of performance. It does, however, indicate that the ‘cost of doing business’ will likely be higher than normal.

Because our athletes were also doing sport-specific skill work as part of their training program, we elected to utilize the DC potential reading from Omegawave as a lens to prescribe the volume and intensity of this work. One of our NFL veterans had a personal skill coach during this period, and our staff communicated to the athlete and the coach the ideal session duration, rest periods, drill progressions, perceived effort levels, introduction of new drills, reactivity, complexity, and other factors potentially affecting his nervous system.

If he displayed suboptimal DC potential, he was encouraged to focus on his “everyday drills,” allow for more recovery time during repetitions and between drills, do technique reinforcement at variable (read: slower) speeds, and limit the introduction of more complex tasks. When our staff saw optimal DC potential before certain sessions, we would encourage the athlete and the skill coach to explore reactivity to colors, sounds, and numbers; introduce complexity in environmental processing, such as reacting to a defender; and compete in one-on-one situation-specific drills against a defender, if possible.

Within our system, using the Omegawave along with Voyager allowed us to paint a picture of performance to drive athlete education. The relationships our staff developed with each athlete inspired the trust of the athletes. This paid dividends, as they were open and brutally honest with us in recovery questionnaires, feedback, and personal conversations. Being able to show an athlete something like how their continual poor sleep quality was coinciding with poor trends in readiness and stagnation in performance was like pulling open the bedroom shades in the morning. Our staff educated the athletes on the process they were immersed in by visualizing their progress, with its peaks and troughs and plateaus.

Omegawave with Voyager helped us to paint a picture of performance to drive athlete education. Share on X

Enabling the athletes to see these elements firsthand in relatable terms was likely the critical factor enabling the high buy-in we had. The data and technology was a secondary factor to the human element we created: coaches as active listeners who show interest and devotion to improving the athlete, care about their well-being outside of the weight room, and sensitivity to the experiences each athlete brings to the team. There are many strength coaches and allied health professionals who are elite at developing the ecosystem of a program, and they don’t mince words when it comes to establishing a fair and firm approach to leadership in an offseason program. The “ecosystem,” as strength and conditioning coach and sports science coordinator of Navy football, Bryan Miller, has outlined, is often the glue that holds the ship together.

Our offseason program presented a unique challenge where long-term data collection and analysis was not possible. This placed a critical emphasis on the employment of training, therapy, recovery, data, technology, and analysis applications that worked in a short time frame. This highlights a critical, and somewhat controversial, element, particularly in sports science. While data analysis gets much of the attention, it has become explicitly apparent to me and a growing number of coaches in the field that American sports scientists must be able to prove their worth in the short term.

This means that the sports scientist must have a deep knowledge of the sport, training, recovery, and rehabilitation when administering their process. Technical skills in database creation and management, analytics, and visualization are great tools, but anybody can develop these skills with continued education (like watching the right YouTube videos). Having credibility with each member of an allied health and performance team, as well as with sport coaches and athletes, takes a unique blend of specialized experience that cannot be learned online or in a textbook.

Many American sport coaches, particularly American football coaches of all levels, want to see results here and now. An associate of mine at a major school in the Power-5 Conference put it brilliantly when he remarked that, “the first thing that I am asked by coaches is if this technology or method will help us win games, or not.” Sports scientists must also do their part in this scenario by understanding not only the technical and tactical elements of their sport, but also the culture and “ecosystem.” During this current offseason project, if I lacked understanding of Ryan’s goals as a PT, Erik’s goals in strength and conditioning, or the athlete’s goals as a draft prospect or free agent, the wheels would have fallen off the wagon early.

 

Moving forward, our staff wants to outline the parameters of success in the offseason by producing player profiles. Within the Voyager system, creating metrics and assigning them to athletes is a quick and easy process. The idea behind athlete profiling is to highlight the trends of their key performance indicators. Once your staff have identified the KPIs specific to your program, modeling training and recovery interventions to meet these standards should be the goal.

Another feature within the Voyager system is the ability to create a training report for each athlete that targets these KPIs. By setting appropriate data targets for each metric, our staff can see a performance trajectory in real time. This allows us to make corrections in training or recovery before issues present themselves. Are these predictive analytics in action? I would say “no,” mainly because this is simply a coach or allied health practitioner taking action when presented with information that, based on their knowledge and experience, raises a flag. The difference is that, with an athlete management system like Voyager, you have a database your staff can easily access and refer to when making a decision.

About his experience with forming a high-performance team and using technology to supplement his method, Ryan Baugus said: “Finding technology that fits into the principle-based framework of our system is the next frontier; it’s the same game but with tools like Omegawave, FreeLap, and Voyager we have the cheat codes. Any time we can look under the hood from an objective standpoint is very helpful as a clinician. If all of our staff has a convenient and user-friendly way to access and utilize data, the metrics can guide the programming and training. Inter-provider communication and dialogue is paramount in the utilization of an interdisciplinary system. If we are looking at the same performance metrics we can divide the subcomponents into our specific scopes and break down performance improvement into manageable pieces.”

 

So, after a busy offseason in a high-pressure environment, was adding foundational sports science even worth it? I would argue it was, as each of our draft hopefuls landed on teams across the NFL and CFL, and our group of NFL veterans are enjoying new or extended contracts with their teams. Our group of athletes achieved all-time personal bests in physical tests at combines and pro days. Additionally, and perhaps more impressively, some of our athletes regained speed, strength, power, and mechanics that previous team physicians and coaches had doubted would ever be possible. When an NFL hopeful is urged to consider medical retirement due to pain and dysfunction, and then receives training and treatment through a new lens based in objective assessment, it should not be considered a miracle when most of his ailments disappear.

One of our NFL veterans was part of a highly publicized contract negotiation and subsequent trade. I won’t pretend that our sports science process or offseason program was the only reason for his success, as he is easily the most competitive, driven, and dedicated, as well as hardest-working, athlete I have ever been around. I am sure there are times he wanted to take the Omegawave belt and sensor and drive over them in his car! But to his credit, and to the credit of our staff, he took each challenge head-on with the highest level of professionalism. As he continues to use the tools and concepts we have installed, and as he enters this next chapter of his career, I am beyond excited to see what lies ahead.

I think the take-home message of our sports science foundation is simple: you must have your procedures mastered and grounded in a firm understanding of human performance and physiology first. Additionally, you must possess relationship-building and leadership skills to foster a healthy ecosystem within your team environment. This takes time, self-assessment, humility, and a healthy sense of curiosity.

I’ve spoken with athletic directors, athletic administrators, and performance staff members at the highest levels of collegiate and professional sports in the United States about sports science. Opinions range from being ready and eager to implement an entire sports science department to serve 750+ student athletes, to being perfectly content with letting thousands of dollars of equipment collect dust in a weight room closet. It is fascinating to me that, although sports science is not yet well-understood by many people I have spoken with in that population, there are two definitive types of responses. The first is that of curiosity and optimism that sports science offers a way to improve the health and performance of athletes by assisting strength and conditioning coaches, all allied health professionals, and sports coaches. The second response is one of fear that sports science will somehow assess the effectiveness, or lack thereof, of offseason programs or medical treatment outcomes.

Ultimately, the best strength coaches and allied health professionals have already been using concepts from sports science to assess performance for decades. The act of using technology or collecting data is not a new concept, it is merely a modern wrapping on an age-old process of assessment. Clearly, sports science has the capability for providing tremendous performance benefits for athletes. It is our job as coaches and professionals to continue the task of applying it meaningfully and appropriately in practice.

Voyager on Twitter: @Voyager_PTS
Erik Jernstrom on Twitter: @EJStrength
Ryan Baugus on Instagram: RyanBaugus

Reference

1. Buchheit M, Racinais S, Bilsborough J, et al. “Monitoring fitness, fatigue and running performance during a pre-season training camp in elite football players”. J Sci Med Sport 2013; 16(6):550-555.

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I am a thief. Everything in my coach’s toolbox is stolen. I scour the Internet for the best coaching articles, troll social media for the best drills, befriend/stalk mentor coaches all over the country, and stock up on coaching videos and programs. I’ve always believed that if I am going to ask student athletes to work hard on the track, I need to do the same off of it.

After the end of last season, I attended two coaching clinics. The first was in Chicago. Coach Tony Holler spoke about timing fly 10s and publishing results. I stole his idea. Now we time our fly 10 times with Freelap and publish the results on social media. Chris Korfist and Dr. Tom Nelson talked about breathing and being activated. I also stole this information. Every athlete in our off-season knows about level 1 activation. We also encourage them to take 20 deep belly breaths when waking up, throughout the day, and before going to bed.

Two weeks later my insane friend and I took a 6-day road trip from El Paso to Boston to attend the Complete Track and Field summer clinic. Coaches from Harvard, Columbia, Brown, UMass, Boston, and Jacksonville University worked with high school athletes on warming up, accelerating, sprinting, jumping, and hurdling. I stole cues, drills, progressions, and ideas. I quickly realized these coaches were not just smart—really smart—but also that they conveyed their information in a simple manner through effective instruction.

Meeting coaches like Holler, Korfist, Nelson, Latif Thomas, Cal Dietz, Rueben Jones, Marc Mangiocotti, Joel Smith, Tony Veney, Dan Fitcher, Kebba Tolbert and so many others makes you quickly realize how little you know. But then you get excited because they are so willing to share their experience and knowledge. Ultimately what matters most to me is transferring what I learn and applying it for the benefit of my athletes and program in a simple and effective way.

I am a thief. Everything in my coach’s toolbox is stolen. Share on X

This aim was especially evident when Ron Grigg, Director of Cross Country/Track and Field at Jacksonville University, presented a fascinating lecture about three simple yet valuable drills: skipping for height, skipping for distance, and hurdle gallops. I left his clinic convinced that these drills could transform our jumping program.

Let me begin with the observation that the majority of jumping practice sessions I have witnessed make my heart ache for the kids. I am stupefied by some of the practice norms many coaches allow their athletes to create. For example, I’ve seen some middle school coaches let 15–20 kids practice multiple full-length approaches with an entire jumping sequence—including landings. High school coaches set up high hurdles within a few feet of the board so long jumpers can “jump” over the hurdles and create more height. They also set up mini-hurdles on the runway so triple jumpers can bound for more distance even though their form becomes completely compromised.

In the past, I’ve been guilty of silly or unnecessary drills. As a younger coach I believed that “more was better.” Simplifying is difficult, but that is Coach Grigg’s point with these three drills. If they are the only ones you do, you will keep it simple for your athletes, and they will still achieve their goals.

“These drills are like the ingredients on a spice rack,” Coach Grigg told me. “You can create something really good if you use the ingredients properly or you can create something rotten if they are not understood or misused. When done correctly the skips can turn into high-level drills, or when done poorly they can look very much like second grade recess time.”

He added, “You have to be able to watch, and know what you are looking to see. Being able to teach the very basics of posture, takeoff foot patterns, swinging segments usage, and displacement depends on observation.”

Video 1. The three key fundamentals include posture, takeoff foot pattern, and swinging segments.

Posture

When doing these drills, athletes should have proper posture. These posture cues also transfer to sprinters. Through the usage of the drills, Coach Grigg is “trying to use as much commonality between sprinting and jumping. The skills they are learning will make them better sprinters and athletes.”

The posture when performing the drills should be:

1. Neutral head — head down during acceleration is WRONG
2. Neutral pelvis — Stomach tight, back flat, hips up, butt tucked, belly button to spine: stable yet mobile
3. Absence of forward or backward lean

Sprint coaches will recognize many of the same cues used during acceleration and max velocity. Chins tucked or heads down forcefully during acceleration compromise foot contact placement (below or behind hips), mechanics, and the angles athletes are trying to achieve during acceleration. The postural cues help guide athletes during these specific low-force application drills, and they can transfer over during higher velocity drills and sprinting.

Takeoff Foot Patterns

The continuous nature of the drills allows athletes to feel the takeoff foot patterns they need to achieve when long jumping and triple jumping. These are the direct concepts Coach Grigg emphasizes:

1. Isometric preparation of ankles (and quadriceps)—dorsiflexed toe or 90-degree angle between the foot and shin. Strong stable ankles (and knees) at ground contact. Allows for bridging position during penultimate step.
2. Located under or slightly in front of COM to conserve horizontal velocity
3. Heel/toe rolling or flat rolling contacts (“Like a rocking chair,” Coach Grigg says)
4. Shin perpendicular at full foot support
5. PUSH on the ground, NOT pull

These explanations regarding takeoff foot patterns apply to the penultimate and jump steps in the long jump and the takeoff step in the triple jump. The biggest takeaway for athletes is being able to continually repeat these drills throughout the season and feel the takeoff foot patterns at low velocities. They learn what their feet should be doing and apply this knowledge when jumping at higher velocities.

Swinging Segments

Swinging segments refer to how athletes use their shoulders, arms, hips, and legs during the drills. The drills are introduced with lower forces and smaller movements to emphasize the feel and movement of the body. A common error is to move body parts and not the body. For example, an athlete may drive the arm without blocking and drive the knee high, yet the body doesn’t displace vertically. Through progressions, the athlete learns to move the body through smaller force applications, smaller ranges of motion, then gradually increase the forces—which will in turn increase the displacement and ranges of motion.

Eventually, skips for height ask athletes to generate as much as height as possible, and skips for distance ask athletes to cover as much distance as possible. However, many aspects needed to create successful horizontal jumps are often wasted motions when athletes participate in the traditional forms of these exercises. Done properly, the swinging segments will create:

1. Large and powerful amplitudes of movement
2. Synchronized movements that help timing and rhythms
3. Blocking—body parts STOP while the body continues to move

As the athlete’s shoulders, arms, hips, and legs generate movement, blocking/stopping them allows the body to continue moving and synchronize the timing of the jumps.

Fundamental Outcome

When done correctly and efficiently, an athlete’s posture, takeoff foot contact pattern, and swinging segments create elastic energy and displacement. Coach Grigg cues athletes to “move your body, not just your body parts,” essentially eliminating wasted motions and to “push, swing, and block” all occurring simultaneously) to help them time and synchronize the drills—and eventually the horizontal jumps.

Skips for Height

When skipping for height the athlete will be cued to do the following:

1. Move body up and forward
2. High hips, low knees
3. Like a soccer header, or a basketball rebound

Video 2. Skips for height.

A notable difference between a power skip for height and this one is that athletes are expected to keep their knees low and hips high. To create this movement, athletes feel the swing in their arms and then block the swinging motion. As the arm opposite the jump leg passes the hip on the downward stroke it will be blocked, but the hips will continue to rise, and the athlete’s body will continue upward and forward. The arm driving forward opposite the swing leg will also be blocked. This causes the swing leg knee and thigh to stop moving up and then work back down into a straightened position, thereby allowing the swing leg foot to work down below the hip. This position resembles sprinting action where the free leg will back down toward the track beneath the hip (center of mass).

Skips for Distance

When skipping for distance the athlete will be cued to do the following:

1. Move body forward and up
2. Feel your takeoff foot behind you
3. Push the thigh forward
4. Block the thigh low

Video 3. Skips for distance.

In this form of skipping for distance, the arms will be blocked in a similar but even lower manner as they are in skips for height. The jump leg, however, serves a different purpose. The coach cues athletes to feel their takeoff foot behind them, allowing the body to move forward and up. The athlete pushes the swing leg hip and thigh forward and then blocks them low. As a result, the free leg works back down into a straightened position, allowing the shin to open up and create an acute—or close to a 90-degree—angle with the swing leg dorsiflexed foot.
The importance of this cue transfers to the first phase of the triple jump. I believe we spend more than enough time cueing the jump leg in the triple jump but often neglect the swing leg. If we cue the athlete to push the swing leg thigh forward then block it low, it works back down as previously stated. Additionally, it sets up an elastic swing during the hop phase.

Hurdle Gallops

When athletes jump over a low barrier or a mini-hurdle/wicket, they are cued to do the following:

1. High hips, low knees
2. Feel the swing
3. Feel the block

Video 4. Hurdle gallops.

Hurdle gallops take the requirements of both skipping exercises and ask the athlete to apply them. As a result, the drill requires its own set of skills. During skips for height, the primary movement of the body is vertical (up) and then out. During skips for distance, the primary movement is horizontal (out) and then up. Hurdle gallops ask the athletes for equal levels of both horizontal and vertical displacements due to the placement and height of the hurdles. Each coach will have to play around with the distances based on their athletes’ skill and mastery. Coach Grigg places 6” banana hurdles about 3 meters apart because of the skill and ability of his Jacksonville female athletes.

Whatever the distance, athletes must generate enough force application to jump over the hurdle, and enough distance to be in position to clear the ones that follow. Too much height and the athlete will not be able to jump over the next hurdle. Conversely, too much distance and the athlete will knock over the hurdles by not generating enough height.

While posture, takeoff foot placement, and swinging segments remain the same in hurdle gallops, a combination of height and distance are required to be successful. You can make this drill more challenging by having athletes gallop over higher hurdles or increasing the distance between the hurdles—or both.

Conclusion

Coach Grigg notes that if you watch an athlete walk, then jog, and finally sprint, you will notice many of the same patterns. Walking and jogging at low speeds transfer to how an athlete warms up, skips, jogs, and ultimately sprints. This is especially evident in competition. Athletes—especially those with a low training age—tend to revert to what is most comfortable or natural. These three drills allow the coach to cue proper posture, proper foot strike, and synchronization of upper body and lower body movements that will transfer to sprinting. Proper takeoff foot patterns, swing and blocking movements, and displacement will transfer to horizontal jumpers.

We coach in an era where complicated, and dazzling drills are easily accessible online and coaches buy into training programs/videos loaded with overly complex, yet compelling and “sexy” drills. As coaches we need to focus on the fundamentals even if it they are not “sexy” because that will ultimately get our athletes the results they strive to achieve. Echoing motivational speaker Jim Rohn, Coach Grigg ended his presentation by saying, “Success is neither magical nor mysterious. Success is the natural consequence of consistently applying basic fundamentals.”

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

 

If you are an avid reader of SimpliFaster, you will notice the frequent reference to electromyography (EMG) studies throughout the blog’s articles. The goal of this review is to inform readers about the science and application of EMG experimentation. Not all readers will have the need to perform EMG readings on themselves or their athletes, but everyone involved with sports in some capacity should be aware of the requirements for measuring muscle activity.

The ability to understand EMG research and apply the science is a valuable benefit when making decisions on exercise selection and other choices in training and rehabilitation. This guide includes instructions on performing your own EMG experiments, as well as determining when you need additional instrumentation or expertise to analyze the collected data.

What Is Electromyography?

Electromyography is a measurement of electrical activity in the muscles during movement. EMG is used in both medical and research settings, and the data collected is valuable to learn what is happening with muscle and motion. Depending on the location of the muscle group, users of EMG will either perform surface data collection or, if deep muscles need to be measured, fine wires are used for intramuscular insertion.

An electromyogram records the signal strength to the muscle or set of muscles. EMG is an indirect measure of muscle force, since it’s only picking up the neurological activity during the movement, and not the direct muscle tension. Most instruments that measure EMG send the signals to a computer or other hardware tool to filter the data, so it can be displayed and analyzed later by a trained professional. A valid interpretation depends upon a strong knowledge of both movement science and muscle physiology, and other simultaneous measurements are taken to cross-validate and ensure confidence in the findings.

The Value of Internal EMG Data for Coaches and Sports Medicine

Performance coaches and sports medicine professionals have relied on research to provide clues and insights into the actions of muscles during sports tasks and exercises, whether for performance or rehabilitation. The arguments against EMG are not because of the science or technology, but the contextual design of the studies—the specific exercises and subject populations. If you have direct access to EMG instrumentation and can test your own athletes, it’s far more useful than depending only on external studies.

The application of EMG is not just for research. EMG is also an important tool for biofeedback during training and rehabilitation. In addition to quantitative feedback for the athlete while performing physical tasks or rudimentary rehab exercises, EMG is a great teaching tool. Clinical settings, as well as group training, rarely use EMG to assist the professionals involved, but new technology is streamlining the process and athletes are more engaged in their data now.

EMG technology has come a long way since the 1950s and 1960s, but it’s still the same tool when you strip away the newer innovations and get right to its core. The major difference is that the transmission of the data from athletes is wireless now, and the data can also synchronize with other sensors and instruments.

Whether you perform your own experiments or only read the experiments done in formal research, being informed on the nuances of data collection and interpretation is vital to understand what the information means. Coaches and sports medicine professionals can be tempted to scan through the materials and methods parts of studies and skip to the conclusions or summary charts, but they then risk missing the true results evident in the paper. Read the full study and even the citations at the end of a research paper. It is important to judge the data and the conclusion of the author(s) separately.

What Information Can EMG Provide to Professionals?

Nearly all of the studies that use EMG tend to be investigations into popular exercises in strength and conditioning or rehabilitation. Many landmark studies on sports tasks are very popular and have a large impact on other studies—an important ranking measurement in research—due to their value in revealing what is happening in athletic motion. Simply stated, training and rehabbing athletes can get a hint from EMG as to what is happening with the muscles involved in sport and what exercises could help prepare them for their particular sport.

EMG is not just about which muscles work the most during exercise; it provides a vast amount of information that can help everyone in sport solve problems better. For example, EMG can help measure the rate of force development (RFD), track coordination changes from beginner to advanced athletes, observe symmetry and asymmetry in gait, and even determine the effects of pain and fatigue on older populations. EMG provides a wealth of information that transcends sports and the field of physical therapy. Electromyography connects to other fields of study as well.

EMG is not just about which muscles work the most during exercise; it provides a vast amount of information that can help everyone in sport solve problems better.

Most of the arguments in support of investments in EMG education and equipment cite the ability to get more information than the naked eye can reveal. Another benefit is that the information is objective, so that everyone can agree on it and decide on an intervention. Dysfunctional muscles are not just a weakness or size issue (cross-sectional)—there’s often a less obvious factor that can’t be left to guesswork. The use of EMG on athletes in team or college environments adds another layer of confidence that what is being done in training and rehab is managed properly.

The Requirements for Collecting EMG Data from Athletes

Collecting EMG readings does require some experience and expertise, but the demand of collecting data isn’t overwhelming. The biggest challenge isn’t the use of the software or other technology; it’s having the athlete follow directions, and also keeping the exercises consistent when performing a group analysis. EMG can be a perfect n=1 experiment, especially with biofeedback during return to play after an injury, but team or sports analysis is extremely difficult to do with complex motions because of styles and body types involved. The variability of EMG data can be misinterpreted as inconsistency or inaccuracy, but the true cause is likely the subjects rather than the measurement integrity.

Defining an event, or when a sporting action starts and stops, is difficult, and is a primary reason why video cameras or other tools synchronize with EMG. A continuous recording is hard to interpret, and a raw signal doesn’t fully explain what is happening in time and space. EMG is especially valuable for a time series or time course of events, rather than just being distilled to peak and average values of gross movements. Activity, the term used in EMG to summarize the nervous system providing a signal, is basically just a rise and fall of microvolts from the muscle. More electrodes placed at key muscles will create a wider, more-detailed picture of what is happening in the task being measured. This will, of course, require more analysis later. The comparison of relationships between limbs or muscle groups is extremely valuable to professionals in performance and therapy, and most of the superficial muscles are propulsive in nature.

Intramuscular EMG is usually performed for deep muscles or small muscles that simply can’t be read by electrodes. While intramuscular, or fine wire, EMG may sound painful, the wire is very thin and thread-like, making it surprisingly comfortable for most subjects being measured. Some athletes need to shave the testing area, such as muscle groups in the legs, and practitioners usually isometrically test the muscle group with a voluntary maximal effort or maximal voluntary isometric contraction (MVIC) to normalize the data.

Subject motivation will make a comparison limited, but there’s an expectation that using a contraction of near maximal effort will gain a perspective of the magnitude of activity. Each athlete will have to perform an isolated muscle contraction isometrically for each muscle recruited, thus making data collection take a little longer, but this is also common with other data sets from other sensors. Electrode placement is important as well, since some areas of the body are especially congested and can cause either crosstalk (false readings from other muscles) or misinterpretation from not knowing what muscle is being analyzed.

Common Errors in the Use of EMG in Research and Clinical Settings

Even researchers can make mistakes with EMG, since the instruments and environment can interfere with the collection of a pure signal. EMG is prone to motion artifacts when movements are fast and violent; thus, high-speed and high-force activities sometimes give false readings. Some resources have compiled a comprehensive list of the causes of errors, but most issues with collecting quality data are due to the limits of the technology and the way that subjects respond to instruction.

• Normalization, or creating a MVIC, is not a perfect process and subject errors are common.
• Electrodes can fail in different ways and require very precise placement. Additionally, not all muscle groups are ideal for EMG recording.
• Athletic motions or exercises are not always repeatable or easily captured, due to the subject’s reaction to having electrodes applied to their skin and body.

EMG recording, like any measurement, is only as good as the user and the equipment applied. Some bodies and some sports movements or exercises are easier to analyze because of very trivial but important factors, such as keeping the electrodes on the body in real-world settings. For example, sweat or ballistic actions will make electrodes fall off, even if elastic adhesive is used. Even an electrode staying on the skin when recording high-velocity movements is not necessarily a sign of a good reading, as skin will slide and not stay precisely on the muscle group like it does during slower activities. As stated earlier, manual isometric muscle contractions commonly create errors because new exercises are still foreign to athletes. Since experienced practitioners don’t always motivate the test subject enough or trust that the effort was maximal without objective measurement, a perfect MVIC baseline is hard to establish.

An athlete will naturally, and unknowingly, change their motion when they are aware that they’re being measured or tested. This is common with all measurements, as the simple placement of a camera during training may result in changes to technique or increases in effort. Some athletes are especially sensitive to having tactile sensors on their body, and respond negatively to the measurement because it’s distracting. No matter how accurate or precise an instrument is, the quality of the measurement relies on the quality of the action performed by the athlete. Having the athlete replicate in the lab what they do on the field is important to researchers, but in clinical settings and coaching environments, where the therapy room or field is actually the lab, repeated uses can’t disturb technique as practice time is sacred.

The quality of the EMG measurement relies on the quality of the action performed by the athlete. Share on X

Even exercise events are difficult to measure, due to motion or technique variability that is large enough to taint the data. The nature of fatigue requires the need to average repeated bouts for a valid assessment. Measuring groups becomes especially difficult when the athletes have different levels of strength and size. In general, the more explosive and complicated the movement, the less accurate the EMG information will be, but the data is still useful enough to collect. Overall, the challenges of acquiring a set of clean EMG readings are not so insurmountable that it’s not worthwhile; it just means professionals using the measurements must be consistent and thorough.

How to Interpret EMG Signals and Draw Conclusions

After data is collected, interpretation and in-depth analysis are required to solve problems or summarize athletic events. EMG signals require filtering so the readings can be converted to actual values for comparison. Several filtering options exist, and most of them “clean up” the readings so a simpler representation can be viewed and charted. In addition to each individual recording, the group of recordings is often averaged or statistically analyzed as a whole with additional software. Due to the differences between each subject, the flaw with summarizing a group of recordings by a large population is that the variability can be misleading. On the other hand, not having the variability of a large population can bias or skew data because of small sample sizing.

Interpretation of the EMG recording is a combination of statistical and mechanical evaluation of what happened over time. Most practitioners break down the activity into sequences or partial actions in a timeline. Published research using EMG analysis has divided exercises into eccentric and concentric actions, like most strength exercises, but more complex athletic motions are done differently. In general, specific milestones in each sporting action, from start to finish, are dissected so comprehension is easier for both the reader and the scientist.

EMG is often paired with other instruments, such as force plates and video capture equipment, to create deeper analysis. Extreme analysis is possible, such as in-shoe pressure, motion capture, and physiological recordings. Longer capture periods can identify fatigue, due to the power output diminishing over the time course of the data collection. On average, more data sets help define both the context and meaning behind EMG.

There’s no perfect science to drawing conclusions with EMG, as it can be abused and misused because of the accessibility of the instrumentation. For example, just because an EMG reading is higher for an exercise doesn’t mean the muscle recruitment is truly better. Again, passive and active contractions are complicated events in muscle physiology, and higher average or peak values for a motion don’t indicate superiority. Conversely, EMG readings done properly are valid assessments of neuromuscular activity.

Muscle activation is higher or lower based on mechanical and conscious awareness of the recorded subject. A subject isometrically contracting a muscle group because they are guarding against injury or just conscious of the electrode can fool even an experienced practitioner of EMG, so expertise must go beyond just using the equipment and being in the field area tested. EMG data is not difficult to collect or analyze, it just requires a good advance plan to properly design an experiment and know what you want to eventually discover.

Popular Clinical and Training Facility Uses for EMG

The final piece of EMG science is its application in settings that are not research-based. Clinical and performance settings have more demanding needs in terms of time and efficiency, and EMG does add some preparation time before and additional analysis later. The overarching value of electromyography is its objective feedback, either instantly or gradually, for athletes. Generally, EMG is used in applied settings for these four reasons:

• To quantify a meaningful coordinative neuromuscular asymmetry beyond force production or speed.
• To benchmark changes in return-to-play training and follow-up in the years after completion of rehabilitation.
• To provide immediate biofeedback for athletes learning and mastering a skill or performing an exercise.
• To acquire new information on a specific sporting task to model better performance or more resilience to injury.

The common argument against EMG is not about its validity, but the practical need of getting a job done with little time. Most coaches and sports medicine therapists simply don’t have much time on their hands and athletes are somewhat apprehensive about getting data with electrodes, even if when placed on the surface of the skin. The amount of time needed before, during, and after EMG isn’t as large as it was in the past, due to advancements in wearable technology and better automation with software. In summary, a few extra minutes may save days and weeks if used judiciously, and best practice is not readily available in the clinical and applied performance arena today. With the rise of smart fabrics, the option of using EMG as a monitoring tool is promising.

Two main areas where EMG can influence sport are the development and the sometimes-necessary rehab of athletes. Training typically has higher demands in workflow because larger groups are involved, and rehabilitation usually has a better staff-to-athlete ratio. Both performance and medical practitioners need objective indications of change, and EMG is a more direct measure of muscle function than eyeballing alone. Combined with a talented and experienced professional, EMG adds more confidence to the true progress of the session, or can reveal regression if the athlete has a setback.

Without oversimplifying, medical professionals seek better balance to reduce injury occurrence or improve success after injury. Generally, performance staff wants to maintain ability or improve the development of athletic qualities. Both departments or fields have commonalities, but their responsibilities for injury diagnosis and training plans differentiate them. In modern sport, medical and performance roles are very hard to separate because training principles are applicable to both roles. The point where one role ends and the other begins is more ambiguous than ever.

Most EMG applications can be distilled if a muscle is underactive or overactive, or lacks specific timing with coordination. It can be easily argued that athletes will return with visual symmetry or coordination that seems efficient, but the muscle activity could reveal that more time is needed to be ready. As EMG proliferates in the clinical setting, better treatments and more effective training programs will evolve.

Deciding Whether EMG Is Appropriate for Your Environment

Electromyography is not for everyone, but nearly any level of sport can access the information without a major undertaking. EMG in research is far different than in a clinical setting, so if you are working with groups, most will find it difficult to apply. Several opportunities exist with EMG data, such as experimentation on athletic tasks and exercises, as well as return-to-play conditions. Nearly any team can make progress by adding EMG into their setting, but knowing the fundamental science behind it is a necessary starting point.

References and Suggested Research

1. Dimitrova N.A. & Dimitrov G.V. Interpretation of EMG changes with fatigue: Facts, pitfalls, and fallacies. J Electromyography Kinesiology. 2003 Feb:13(1) 13-36.
2. Farina, D., Negro, F., Gazzoni, M. & Enoka, R.M. Detecting the unique representation of motor unit action potentials in the surface electromyogram. Journal of Neurophysiology. 2008; 100(3), 1223-1233.
3. Guissard N. & Hainaut, K. EMG and mechanical changes during sprint start at different front block obliquities. Med. Sci. Sports Exerc. 1992; 24:1257-1263
4. Maffiuletti N.A., Aagaard P., Blazevich A.J., Folland J., Tillin N. & Duchateau J. Rate of force development: Physiological and methodological considerations. European Journal of Applied Physiology. 2016; 116:1091-1116.
5. Massó N., Rey F., Romero D., Gual G. & Costa L. Surface electromyography applications in the sport. Apunts Med Esport. 2010; 45(165):121-130.
6. Mero, A., & Komi, P.V. Electromyographic activity in sprinting at speeds ranging from sub‐maximal to supra‐maximal. Medicine and Science in Sports Exercise. 1987; 19(3): 266‐274.
7. Reaz M.B.I., Hussain M.S. & Mohd-Yasin F. Techniques of EMG signal analysis: Detection, processing, classification and applications. Biological Procedures Online. Springer-Verlag; 2006; 8(1):163-3.
8. Vigotsky A.D., Ogborn D. & Phillips S.M. Motor unit recruitment cannot be inferred from surface EMG amplitude and basic reporting standards must be adhered to. Eur J Appl Physiol. 2015 Dec 24.

Antioxidants and branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs) help maximize training gains and minimize recovery, especially when taken after exercise. In the appropriate dose, antioxidants accelerate recovery by reducing inflammatory damage. BCAAs also accelerate recovery and help synthesize muscle proteins.

Antioxidants, Adaptation, and Inflammation

Intense physical exercise creates an inflammatory stress reaction within the body that produces both adaptive and maladaptive physiologic responses. Antioxidants can eliminate additional stress by converting reactive oxygen species (ROS) to less reactive molecules.

So far, researchers have not determined whether taking antioxidant supplements during training encourages adaptation. ³

Researchers do know that, if ROS accumulate excessively, athletes may experience such overtraining symptoms as chronic fatigue. ³ Uncontrolled oxidation can also cause lipid, protein, and DNA damage, which diminish cellular function. ³ DNA damage, in particular, can interfere with the DNA’s positive adaptation to exercise-induced stress. ³ And disturbances in our homeostatic balance may affect the function of our metabolic, neuroendocrinologic, oxidative, physiological, psychological, and immunologic systems.

A low dietary intake of antioxidants may decrease our body’s ability to combat the build-up of ROS during exercise. ³ An excessive intake of antioxidants, however, can cause the opposite reaction and suppress oxidation reduction at the cellular level. This hinders the beneficial effects of exercise on our cells.

Consequentially, ingesting antioxidants can prevent adaptation during and after exercise. One study, for example, showed that taking 1,000 IU of Vitamin C and 400 IU of Vitamin E inhibited training-induced increases in skeletal muscle protein.³ Prolonged antioxidant supplementation may also reduce oxidation. However, there are no long-term studies about this specifically. ³

Antioxidants such as Co-enzyme Q10, tart cherry juice, and pomegranate juice can accelerate recovery by reducing inflammatory damage. ³ There seems to be an optimal dose of antioxidants to create an adaptive, anabolic, regenerative, and enhanced state of performance and recovery (see figure below). We need more research to solidify the reference ranges for athletes. ³

For testing purposes, most studies consist of an acute bout of exercise to induce drastic muscular damage. Researchers then compare supplementation against a control for immediate study.

BCAAs for Muscle Protein Synthesis and Recovery

It’s widely accepted that BCAAs are essential for supporting recovery and optimal performance health. Since BCAAs regulate skeletal muscle protein synthesis and accelerate recovery, researches examined whether BCAAs would help calorie-restricted athletes undergoing a heavy resistance training regimen retain lean body mass.²

During the study’s eight-week body building program, athletes took 14g BCAAs pre- and post-workout while a comparative group took carbohydrate-based placebos. The BCAA group lost fat mass and maintained lean body mass, while the carbohydrate group lost lean mass and body mass.

BCAA study group lost fat & maintained lean body mass; placebo group lost lean & body mass. Share on X

Both groups increased the 1RM in the squat, but the BCAA group improved more significantly. In the 1RM max for the bench press, the BCAA group improved, while the carbohydrate group decreased in strength. The proposed theory on the mechanism behind the success of BCAAs for maintaining body composition and improving strength has to do with their effect on the hormones responsible for protein synthesis.

Exercise induces a change in the balance of hormone levels after exercise. Testosterone, insulin, and cortisol, particularly, become elevated. ¹ Testosterone, insulin, and insulin-like growth factor are anabolic hormones, meaning they favor muscle growth, whereas cortisol is a catabolic stress hormone favoring muscle breakdown.

It’s ideal to keep anabolic hormones running strong after exercise to promote muscle growth and repair and to relax cortisol levels to prevent the reversal of this repair process. ¹ One study aimed to find the effect BCAAs’ had on these hormone levels when taken in a 200mg/kg dose thirty minutes before exercise. ¹ Twenty young soccer players in this randomized, double-blind study were split into supplement or placebo groups.

In the BCAA group, serum insulin and testosterone were significantly higher than the placebo group after exercise. There was no difference in cortisol concentrations between the two groups. This indicates that BCAA supplementation may contribute to muscle protein synthesis as a direct result of elevated anabolic hormones after exercise.

Foods Rich in BCAAs and Antioxidants

BCAAs can be ingested naturally from animal products such as chicken, fish, and eggs. Vegans and vegetarians can find BCAAs in beans, lentils, nuts, and soy protein.

Fruits high in antioxidants are cranberries, blueberries, and blackberries. Beans, artichokes, and Russet potatoes are at the top of the list for vegetables while pecans, walnuts, and hazelnuts are the highest-ranked nuts.

Of course, if adequate dietary intake is not feasible, high-quality supplementation can accomplish the same goals.

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. Atashak, S., Baturak, K., Azarbayjani, M. A., Ghaderi, M., & Azizbeigi, K. (2014). “Hormonal Responses to Acute Resistance Exercise After Branched-Chain Amino Acids Supplementation.” International Medicine Journal, 22(1), 1-5. Uploaded February 14, 2015.
2. Dudgeon, W. D., Kelley, E. P., & Scheett, T. P. (2016). “In a single-blind, matched group design: branched-chain amino acid supplementation and resistance training maintains lean body mass during a caloric restricted diet.” Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, 13(1). doi:10.1186/s12970-015-0112-9.
3. Slattery, K., Bentley, D., & Coutts, A. J. (2015). “The Role of Oxidative, Inflammatory and Neuroendocrinological Systems During Exercise Stress in Athletes: Implications of Antioxidant Supplementation on Physiological Adaptation During Intensified Physical Training.” Sports Medicine, 45(4), 453-471. doi:10.1007/s40279-014-0282-7.

 

Recovery is no longer a word looked down upon by coaches, trainers, and hard-core fitness enthusiasts. Instead, they are beginning to realize the multiple improvements that happen when they take the time to allow the body to recover from activity. After all, physiological adaptations occur during recovery. Our systems remodel and rebuild during rest periods, and sleep, nutrition, and hydration are so important during this time. So how can we accompany these aspects of recovery to promote improved and optimal outcomes that support a more demanding training stimulus later?

After years of rest being looked at as “wimpy and weak,” most coaches and trainers are now accepting it as an important part of the training spectrum. While there are plenty of modalities, theories, and practices, the focus of this article will be on the benefit of compression therapy. Many forms of compression therapy exist, from manual therapies to socks, sleeves, and pneumatic devices. I will discuss one of the more popular pneumatic compression devices, the NormaTec Pulse Recovery System.

It’s Not Just Static Compression

NormaTec has been a leader in the industry for years at the professional and collegiate levels. Recently, their presence in the private sector has begun to grow as therapists, trainers, coaches, and private facilities all start to invest in compression technology. This has come about because of feedback and, more importantly, athletes making requests as they return to these settings.

The difference between NormaTec and other compression modalities is that NormaTec uses a patented dynamic pulse massage pattern, as compared to the static compression (squeezing) of other systems on the market. This means that NormaTec’s compression starts distally on the targeted limb segment and works its way proximally to promote lymph and venous return toward the heart for dispersion and distribution of metabolites. By ridding the metabolites from soft tissue, it promotes a quicker healing response, which leads to improvement in muscle recovery time. When coaches combine this with proper rest and nutrition in an individualized way, we can directly impact the success of our programs.

When combined with proper rest, NormaTec can directly impact the success of our program. Share on X

The recovery process begins as soon as the workout, training session, or game ends. It is important to know how we can influence recovery with a system like NormaTec. The pulse system provides gradients of air pressure that will mold to the shape of the athlete’s limb, providing a standardized force across all segments in a circumferential manner. When you combine this with a timed pulse, the NormaTec system promotes optimal metabolite dispersion to promote recovery. Its seven levels of resistance and options to concentrate on certain zones give you plenty of choices and you can focus the intervention to adapt to your athlete’s needs.

 

Another little-discussed aspect of compression therapy is the sense of peace that it brings by providing the recipient with a proprioceptive pressure that assists system stability and overall relaxation. We all know the sense of calm that we feel when tucked under a thick blanket or during a firm hug; the NormaTec uses deep pressure touch stimulation to give that same deep feeling. It stimulates calmness in the central nervous system, helping to shift the person towards a more parasympathetic state through the release of serotonin and melatonin—chemicals that promote happiness, elevated moods, and sleep.

The addition of the NormaTec to our programs has been an effective influence post training, as it also helps athletes to focus on other aspects of recovery. Once athletes feel and experience the benefits of the NormaTec, it serves as a great introduction to many other recovery methods. A simple 20-30 minutes in the boots allows us to work on breathing drills and switching off from the sympathetic nervous system into a more parasympathetic dominant state (which is still a battle for most athletes today). It is in this way that the NormaTec can induce both physiologic and psychological changes to promote improved recovery and performance.

Special thanks to co-author Jon Herting. Jon Herting, PT, DPT, CSCS, ACSM CE-P has been involved in rehabilitation and strength and conditioning for 10 years and has built a reputation among athletes as a clinician who promotes quick results and optimal outcomes. Jon has worked with athletes of all levels, from adolescent to Olympic level, and believes in a holistic approach to rehab, believing there is not a distinct line between rehab and the training process. Jon is a partner in The Training Room of Garnet Valley in Philadelphia, PA, currently serves as adjunct faculty at Widener University and has developed several continuing education courses for clinicians and certified strength and conditioning professionals based around assessment and rehabilitation techniques.

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