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Voice from the Void: The Disappearing Middle Ground of Coaching

Disclaimer: I am not a writer—I am a coach. I have undergraduate degrees in finance and marketing, and a master’s degree in political science. Yet, here I sit at my computer, writing a blog post as a coach of track and field athletes. My initial passion was to be a lawyer. I took the LSAT, applied to schools, and was accepted, but backed out because I was intrigued and excited about a life of coaching. I can tell you it was not the most financially rewarding decision I have ever made, but perhaps the best decision I have ever made.

I worked my way up the coaching rungs one step at a time. I started off as a graduate assistant, then a junior college assistant, and then I took a pay cut to go to a Division I school as an assistant. Now, by God’s grace, I work at the amazing professional training center in Phoenix, Arizona, known simply as ALTIS. Each of those unique environments prepared me for where I am now.

I have been fortunate to have several wonderful mentors, many of whom I spoke to at length prior to writing this article. If you look closely, you will be able to identify their presence in the following lines. These thoughts come from me, but are absolutely influenced by my environment, my history, my peers, my beliefs, my failures, my successes, and, last of all, my hopes. Take them for what they are and, of course, with a grain of salt.

Background: Does ‘Any Publicity Is Good Publicity’ Still Hold True?

It’s March 24, 2017. President Donald Trump has been in office now for just over two months. Regardless of whether you voted for Mrs. Clinton or Mr. Trump, it is obvious that the nation is split decisively (and divisively) between the two political parties. Not only is it split, but the gap between the two parties is so wide that it seems the only voices heard are those from the extreme wings of each—mainly because they scream the loudest, create the most controversy, etc. While these two extreme ends continue to fervently push their respective agendas, a void has formed in what used to be the middle. I’m speaking of a middle ground of thought.

At one time the middle was a place of common sense, and rational, civil communication. It’s where ideas were heard and exchanged, and information was sifted for its value and merit. If it passed the logic test it could be assimilated into a system and used for the common good. Now the middle is quiet. In fact, those few people still in the middle are timid to speak because doing so puts them at great risk of being labeled as some extreme guru, of being typecast, of being drawn into some long argument about why what they are doing is too “old-school” or against the latest research. They’re tired of being lumped into a group that they don’t identify with because they could only explain so much in 140 characters. You get the idea, right? The current culture is polarizing, it’s trending, and it’s leaving a void where there once was a middle ground.

The middle is a place of common sense and logic; where information is sorted and used based on its value and merit.

Polarization is happening in politics, but the same goes for the argument about truth. In Party 1, everything is an absolute (my way of doing it is the only way to do it), and in Party 2, put simply, there is no truth. What about the Science vs Faith argument? Party 1 says that science is the only way to all the answers, while Party 2 says that faith should give us all the answers we need.

Do you see the pattern? One extreme to the next. Extremes are sexy. They sell. They start arguments. They garner attention. Will there ever be an end to “any publicity is good publicity?”

What in the world does this have to do with coaching? Well, to me it has everything to do with coaching. It seems like more and more these days, we coaches are falling into the same traps—myself included! Not everyone that is a member of a political party falls in line with every item on the party’s agenda, nor do they share every belief of the party leader. And they certainly don’t necessarily share the ideals of the extremists.

It’s just like how Absolutists are in a clear and present danger of an all-or-nothing attitude, and the “there is no truth” advocates must answer the question: “Is that the truth?”. Similarly, science must take steps of faith to conduct experiments (gravity will act the same way today as it did yesterday, even though we have no proof that it will), and faith must not reject the reasonable findings of science as an attack on its existence. Coaches must not lump themselves into camps that argue from extreme, polarizing positions.

Coaching: The Ever-Shrinking Middle Ground of Thought and Practice

Where does this happen in coaching? I give you the following examples:

Eccentric vs. concentric vs. isometric training
General prep vs. special prep
Short to long vs. long to short
Speed reserve vs. volume of work
Max strength vs. power
Monitor everything vs. monitor nothing
Force absorption vs. force production
Pro Bosch vs. anti Bosch
Personal coaches vs. national federations
All hurdlers should use a short, fast, lead arm vs. all hurdlers should use a long, slow, swimming lead arm
Manual therapy is the only way vs. manual therapy is for wimps
Fascia vs. everything else

Get the idea? I’m sure you can think of many more examples in your own unique environment, regardless of the industry. These are the conversations that the Twitter warriors live for. As soon as they see a post from a member of the opposite camp, it’s on. Total Twitter warfare has begun.

So far, I’ve taken a current cultural trend as I see it and given multiple examples of the trend in various realms of politics and philosophy. Then I gave multiple examples of topics where I see the same pattern mirrored in the coaching realm. What does that mean though? There is an ever-shrinking middle ground of thought and practice, or, as my friend Brett Bartholomew calls it, “conscious coaching.” (More from Brett later.)

Polarization: Be Wary of Extremes

Back when I was in my twenties, I used to fish a lot. A lot. Like almost every day all summer. I invested in every edge possible to try and catch more fish and bigger fish. I felt that a solid pair of polarized fishing glasses was one of my greatest assets. They took the glare off the water, and allowed me to see more clearly.

Those advocating for extremes may believe that they are seeing more clearly, but in reality, they are missing the forest because of the trees. Let’s take the idea of “minimum effective dose.” It’s a great idea, and certainly one that makes a lot of sense. It’s the complete opposite of the “more is better, volume is the only way, work until you vomit” philosophy, which we saw highlighted recently in Oregon. However, if you focus only on the “minimum” part and forget about the “effective” part, then you are missing the boat.

The idea of “less is more,” when taken to the extreme, can be equally disastrous as “more is better.” Common sense can’t leave the equation. Athletes do have to do some “work” to get better, and what is effective for one athlete may not be effective for another athlete.

A Breed Apart

So, in a world growing ever more polarized…does a middle realm still exist? I happen to think it does. The definition of middle is: “at an equal distance from the extremities of something; central.” I do think the middle is shrinking, and I think by nature people in the middle are quiet, reserved, and perfectly happy to go about their business as usual, regardless of whether the pundits think its archaic or not. I think they respect knowledge, but they respect common sense just as much.

I think, in the middle ground of coaching, there lives a breed of coaches who understand how to identify their environment and employ the appropriate methodology. Sometimes they may choose different strategies for different athletes as they fit best. One hurdler may have a long lead arm, one may have a short. One coach may train one middle distance runner long to short, and another short to long. If they both run fast…who cares?

The Middle Ground

I lived and worked in the Midwest (the middle ground of America) for nearly a decade.
I see strong similarities between Midwestern people (farmers, ranchers, builders, laborers) and the middle ground of coaching. In general, they keep things simple. They stick to the basics, which are the fundamental principles that have worked for decades. They generally take their time introducing anything new. They only integrate it after they have figured out whether it will add value, and have determined how to best use it in their unique environment. They work hard. Yes, that’s right. Hard work is OK.

The Midwesterners I know believe in what they are doing. They know there are things they have to do and things they would like to do, and they know the difference between the two. They know that diversity (especially diversity of income) is valuable. They place a premium on gratitude and helping others.

What I think the Midwestern people (and the coaches in the middle) have figured out is that, at the end of the day, it’s all about production. If you don’t produce, the bank still asks for the loan back. If you don’t produce, you get fired. If you don’t produce, people starve. If you don’t produce, athletes don’t get better. But, not only is it all about production, it’s about consistent production over a long, long period of time. In my experience, coaches who operate in the middle tend to produce at a very high level over a very long period of time.

Coaches who operate in the middle tend to produce at a very high level over a very long time. Share on X

Principles for Staying in the Middle

How can you stay in the coaching middle during this time of polarization and extremes? Here are some guiding principles.

Simple Is Complex Enough

It’s not that complicated. Do the simple, basic, fundamental things well. When you can do them well, do them better. It’s cliché, but it’s accurate.

At a recent ALTIS Apprentice Coach Program, Coach Dan Pfaff gave a presentation on KPIs. The lecture wasn’t filled with secret strategies, state-of-the-art technology, or intricate set-and-rep schemes. On the contrary, it was a simple, almost boring, discussion of how he determined what the key performance indicators would be for an athlete. If anyone else in the world gave that lecture, it would be a cure for insomnia. However, when someone with 45 years of coaching experience, across almost every sport, at all levels, says something is important…you listen. You listen attentively. You discover that what you might on the surface dismiss as simple or old-fashioned, is really layered and filtered through various grids in a multi-faceted matrix of decision-making.

Coach Pfaff didn’t brag about using some ultra-complex system or methodology, or that someone of his intellect is the only one who can do that. What he said was that the simple pieces of programming and coaching are so complex that even he still doesn’t have them figured out. He had to develop a system for properly incorporating basic principles, and that system is still being fine-tuned after 45 years. So how in the world would he feel comfortable adding in a bunch of new stuff that would require even more systems to understand?

‘Buy-In’ Is Crucial

Let’s be honest. There is no such thing as a perfect program or training system. If you are chasing that, you are taking yourself way too seriously. We are human beings trying to predict what other human beings are going to feel like sometime in the future. We can’t predict that accurately for one minute from now, and we sure can’t for four weeks from now. My point is that all training plans have flaws. The successful athletes we coach overcome those flaws because they believe in what we, and they, are doing. The more they believe, the better they will be. Throughout history the most successful coaches have no doubt created the most “buy-in” from their athletes. How do we do that?

I asked this question of my friend and peer, Brett Bartholomew. Brett is absolutely one of the best strength coaches in the business. He is an engaging and entertaining speaker, and he is a genius at building relationships with his athletes and fostering belief in the plan.

Brett is passionate about helping other coaches and has a book just was just published, titled Conscious Coaching: The Art & Science of Building Buy-In. It’s a must-read for all coaches. In one of my favorite chapters of the book, Brett discusses seven key tenets for building trust. One of these is empathy, and I’ve included an excerpt below that I believe should hit home with a lot of coaches:

Trust Tenet #5: Empathy, Implementation

Give Ground to Gain Ground: As coaches, we want to compose rather than control. Don’t forget that humility is the essence of connectedness and if we want to build trust we need to make sure that we aren’t afraid to humanize our interactions with our athletes. Don’t be afraid to show all sides of yourself to your athletes. Being “real” will gain you much more respect than trying to put on a show and constantly psyching yourself up to get into “coach mode” prior to a session. Invoke the spirit of reciprocity by volunteering appropriate personal information about yourself when asked, after all can you really expect them to do so on their behalf if they don’t know anything about you?

Don’t Be Afraid of Criticism or Bite-Back. Just because someone doesn’t appear to be on-board with your message doesn’t make them a detractor. Take a moment and ask them what in particular they have an issue with and get busy finding a middle ground.

Emotional Payments Accepted: Our emotions, feelings and concerns need to be validated. Letting your athletes know that you understand what their hesitations or fears may be ahead of time lets them know that you have taken their viewpoint under consideration and at the very least have done your homework in regards to trying to see their point of view.

Freedom From Rigidity

Give yourself freedom from rigidity. It’s amazing how many times I have caught myself writing a plan a certain way simply because, if I wrote it another way, it would go against some principle that I hold near and dear to my heart. The problem is that what I hold near and dear may not be the best thing for the athlete. If you are a “speed reserve” guy, what will you do with the athlete who needs volume? Will you compromise, or will you shove a square peg into a round hole?

Find the system that works best for your athletes at that stage of your career. Share on X

The problem with being a specialist or only following one line of thought is that you can paint yourself into a philosophical corner and, if you are close to the end of the spectrum, that corner can get pretty small. In the coaching world, find the system that works best for your athletes, in your environment, at that stage of your career. Work at it. Believe in it. Learn from your mistakes, but also learn from what other people who are in different circumstances are doing. File it away for another stage in your career or for that athlete who comes along that doesn’t fit “your” system.

Seek and Give Support

Seek mentors, contribute, give back. Realize that we, as a coaching community, are much better off when we avoid camps, labels, and assumptions. When you see a successful, long-producing coach doing something that confuses you or you don’t agree with philosophically, ask them why they do it. I bet they aren’t as intimidating as they seem. I guarantee you they have a reason for what they are doing, and they would be happy to explain to you the ins and outs of their methodology.

Legendary strength coach, Buddy Morris, gave a presentation at the ALTIS ACP in November 2016, and on one of his first slides he had a list of names of the people who influenced him. The font was tiny, the list was in paragraph form, and there was no space remaining. All the “master” coaches I’ve ever been around speak so passionately about their mentors, their experiences with them, and their relationship with them. They have so much gratitude that you can hear it in their voice when they speak about them. It’s that gratitude and emotion that drives them to take the phone calls, respond to the emails, speak at clinics on topics they’ve discussed hundreds of times, and give back to the sport. I know that I will forever be grateful for the coaches who have given, and continue to give, their time to me.

I would encourage each and every person reading this article to reflect on where you are in relation to the middle. How is that working for you? Where are we going as a community? What can you do to give back? Can we find the middle ground again? Do we need to? Or do we just need to be reminded that it exists? It will always be there waiting for us to return, to refocus, to truly be—as Brett calls it—a conscious coach.

For more coach and athlete resources from ALTIS, see ALTIS 360.

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Off the Soccer Field With Dr. Jesse Saenz

Freelap Friday Five| ByJesse Saenz

Jesse Saenz, D.C., CCSP, is Head of Sports Science and First Team Chiropractor at Sacramento Republic FC and has worked in the English Premier League and Championship. He is an expert in soccer periodization and has mentored with Raymond Verheijen in the Netherlands. He was previously appointed Team Physician of Team USA Skydiving and was selected to the USA Track & Field Sports Medicine Team for the National Championships. Dr. Saenz is currently consultant to Hull City AFC of the English Premier League after serving as their First Team Chiropractor during the 2015/16 season.

Freelap USA: Jesse, your team does nearly all of its conditioning on the field. With soccer creating adaptations to the body around the hips, how do you restore the body from pattern overload? With your manual therapy knowledge, could you get into how specific training can be done without creating overuse syndromes besides managing volume?

Dr. Saenz: It’s important to not only monitor physiological loads, but also biomechanical stresses and internal loads. As medical staff, we spend a fair amount of energy addressing players’ individual needs. In our treatment room, you’ll see a lot of soft tissue therapies like ART (active release technique), Graston, and chiropractic care. We want the players to be moving well when they step on the field, so we continually use manual therapies to restore hip and foot/ankle mobility and clear impingements.

Take care of your body—that’s our message to older and younger players alike. Share on X

We’ve also created a culture of proactive care as opposed to reactive care. You won’t see senior players chastising younger players for getting treatment in Sacramento. Take care of your body—that’s our message to older and younger players alike. Every player’s body is different, so we try to address them individually. We help the players prepare for training with daily, custom preact/prehab exercises based on a variety of information, including injury history and pre-season testing data. We consider our prehab/preact program not only performance enhancement, but also injury prevention. Our individualized program was inspired by the work of Cristian Fernández, who I was lucky enough to work with at Hull City. He’s a top guy who’s now at Newcastle doing great things.

Freelap USA: Practice design is paramount between games. Can you share what you do with PLAYERTEK to prepare for the game needs as well as keeping fit and fresh? Can you talk more about your team coaches and their views of what you are doing?

Dr. Saenz: The planning of training sessions is critical. We have to achieve the manager’s vision, tactically, while advancing fitness levels and preventing injury—a massive task. We are big on soccer periodization in Sacramento. Periodization provides us with an objective reference from which to plan: when to condition; when to recover; when to do sprint training; when to have shooting exercises; when to do extensive vs. intensive warmups, passing drills, and possession games: and the appropriate work-to-rest ratios for those exercises. We have tactical goals to achieve in specific training sessions and each session has physical performance targets to hit.

Periodization provides us with an objective reference from which to plan. Share on X

We use PLAYERTEK GPS to record and monitor that data. I think that more data isn’t necessarily better, so it’s my job to present the data in a way that is useful for the coaching staff without giving them a blizzard of numbers and graphs. The coaches like the PLAYERTEK data and will periodically ask for reports on certain players. The data can be helpful when talking to players about their performances and in alerting us to a player that may be underperforming for a variety of reasons.

It is also very helpful when rehabilitating players. We regularly compare pre-injury data to rehab data to see how close a player is to their normal, healthy self. That way, we can return a player to the first team session with minimal risk of re-injury and without bringing down the session quality. For example, we have a player returning from a season-ending lower limb injury who is now on the rehab pitch and hitting top speeds higher than he hit last year while healthy. We are gradually building up his workload. The numbers back up what we are seeing with our eyes, but give us that extra bit of confidence and some objective data from which to advance his loading. We’ve been very successful preventing re-injury using this methodology.

Freelap USA: Eccentric strength is trending again in sports science. Do you use any technique or approach to leverage the adaptations? Is this possible in the middle of the season with athletes that have short off-season periods and hard practices?

Dr. Saenz: Eccentrics have been hot in soccer for a few years now and we absolutely do them. Hamstring eccentrics are part of our hamstring group preact/prehab menu and part of our strength training. Hamstrings are the No. 1 injury in soccer, so for injury prevention, we will plan team eccentrics two weeks prior to a week with congested fixtures and then basically de-load the week prior. Eccentrics are very demanding, so I feel more comfortable doing them post-training as we don’t want to induce fatigue before a training session.

There are two types of hamstring injuries: the slow stretch injury associated with longer RTP, and the one we typically see—the high-speed running injury. Everyone is doing Nordics, which are great, but this injury is most commonly to the long head of the biceps femoris, so we also do exercises that seem to better target the lateral hamstrings. We make sure to mix up exercises that we classify as one of three types: those that favor the hip, those that favor the knee, and those that challenge the tendons. As with any type of strength training, we just need to ensure that everything is done on the appropriate day of the training week. So, we don’t do strength sessions on the day of soccer conditioning or the day after conditioning.

Freelap USA: The day after games tends to range from a day off to some lifting of weights. What do you do after games and does this change much if you are on the road?

Dr. Saenz: In soccer, it would be unusual to see teams lifting the day after a match. There’s so much tissue breakdown during a soccer match that match day +1 is all about recovery. It should be an active recovery day, not a true rest day. For that reason, our players have an “active recovery menu” from which to choose activities. These include pool exercises, light jog or bike, NormaTec recovery session, etc.

Match day +2 is almost always a rest day. In last Saturday’s match, I had players covering 12km total distance and sprinting 1500-1600m. It takes the average player 48-72 hours to fully recover from that load. So, we wouldn’t typically train or lift until the Tuesday after a Saturday match.

Travel in the U.S. is much different than in Europe. Last season, we played away in St. Louis, which is further than going from London to Moscow. We have long flights and hours of travel, so we make sure to do some light exercise and hip mobility workouts upon arrival. On the road, we’ll take advantage of the hotel pool to get a jump start on our recovery. It’s often straight into the pool for a recovery session after the match. At home, the routine is simpler.

Freelap USA: What are emerging problems that you are seeing now more than you did years ago? Are athletes more durable or less durable now than the past? Are the injuries just different or are they basically the same?

Dr. Saenz: Longitudinal studies show injury rates in elite soccer are fairly stable, but the physical performance data has been increasing over time. The game is quicker now than ever before. Players are running faster and running more. So, I have to think players are becoming more durable.

However, we are seeing increasing rates of hamstring injuries in training. We need to look carefully into training loads, but there isn’t much transparency in professional soccer training, so it’s up to the individual clubs to manage those loads. The most common injuries are still strains to the hamstring, followed by adductor, and then ankle sprain. Ankle sprains seem to have decreased over the last few decades, slightly. There is a belief this is due to referees protecting players better in recent years, but that’s up for debate.

Raising the Bar in the Iron Game With William Wayland

Freelap Friday Five| ByWilliam Wayland

William Wayland is a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS) through the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA). He works in Essex, U.K., where he is responsible for the preparation of UFC fighters, professional boxers, world champion grappling athletes, and professional golfers.

Freelap USA: Your videos show a lot of focus on squatting. Can you get into how general strength training is harder to advocate now, as so many sports are seeking out special exercises or quick fixes?

William Wayland: Simply put, it is intense and systemic exercise versus exercises aimed at short-term peaking in specific movement applications. Most strength coaches know the former and amplify the latter; however, special exercises and quick fixes are attention grabbers, and that counts as currency in today’s social-media-oriented climate. I don’t understand why so many are keen to create a dichotomy when we know they are synergistic. You don’t see the time put in on the big movements and get a distorted view of the training environment.

Most of the combat athletes I work with need the robustness and raw qualities that regular squatting brings. I came full circle on the issue, investing more time in unilateral and special exercises for a while, but I later realized the intensity and velocity that squatting in all forms brought was superior to what we could achieve otherwise, especially with limited training contact time. Obviously, athletes with greater training ages and a broad foundation need less systemic qualities, especially when peaking for specific expressions of movement. However, the fire of strength still needs regular stoking and this where a solid squat routine will pay dividends.

Freelap USA: Motor sports deliver unique demands on the body and many of the experts here talk about sustained fitness as a possible way to combat mental error. Can you briefly explain what your program covers and what you just may leave to the track?

William Wayland: Motorsport training convention is built largely around the keystone of cardiovascular fitness as a catch-all quality, mental error included. For many, this is received wisdom, with many riders choosing to ignore those with no skin in the game. Simply trying to change the culture and thinking about their approach to strength and conditioning is, and will be, a huge effort in itself. In a sport where every metric, movement, gear change, and acceleration is data-logged, we know plenty about the bike but very little about the rider.

A 160kg superbike does not maneuver itself around a track. Most riders start out with a chronic lack of general strength that must first be addressed. With motor athletes, two very important areas we focus on are neck and arm strength, and strength endurance. A chronic problem that many riders suffer from is “forearm pump,” numbness and weakness of the hand or arm is not something you want to deal with at 160 mph. The prevalent thinking was that more cardiovascular fitness was the answer, despite many high-profile surgeries to alleviate the issue. Fasciotomy is not something we want for anyone.

Another key area is the idea of robustness; eccentric and isometric strength. Crashes can and will happen. Having the ability to stay tight in the right places and minimize injury is crucial when falling and sliding at high speeds.

Freelap USA: You shared a link to your article on monitoring peak power for a fighter and you saw a rise in power throughout the process. When working with athletes for longer, do you ever see a drop or stagnation? I’m sure length of prep time determines a lot of what you do; especially with higher- and lower-level fighters.

William Wayland: That post was largely illustrative of change over time in readiness using the squat jump. What I’m looking for here is largely suppression of peak power values due to shifts in training load. MMA fighters intensify around eight weeks from competition. Countermovement jump height and squat jump power are correlated to an athlete’s speed (ref).

Borrowing from what I learned from Dr. Dan Baker, if the mean/average velocity is down on most reps by greater than 5-8%, we need to check peak velocities. Paraphrasing Dan, “if the peak velocities are down by greater than 10-15%, it suggests the SSC is fatigued and the athlete is overreached or under-recovered. This may be OK in a hard, training phase, but not in a peaking phase.” I communicate this back to their boxing, MMA and jujitsu coaches, who can then adjust training accordingly. They often corroborate what they see as the subjective change in the athlete’s training quality and movement. Meaning, we can reconcile objective and subjective measures.

Freelap USA: Aerobic fitness for fighting ranges from street jogging or silly circuits with light weights, to intervals and just sparring. Could you share how you prepare the fitness of fighters?

William Wayland: This is another scenario where I came full circle, I saw the over-use of long duration of steady state cardio and bought into the HIIT trend that was pervasive about a decade ago. I finally realized that we were largely dishing up more of the same energy systems training they get from regular sparring sitting in and around lactate threshold. The proverb, “if you do what you’ve always done you’ll get what you have always got,” holds true here. MMA coaches and complicit S&C coaches were joining in on collective wheel spinning and then wondering why athletes training “hard” were gassing out.

Training zeitgeists can be problematic when they embed themselves into the culture. Now I encourage a Hi/Lo approach, working both ends of the conditioning spectrum, with a focus on quality sprint work and tempo/VO2 max training throughout the training week. This is tailored to match where the athlete’s strengths sit, which then dovetails into anaerobic conditioning in the remaining few weeks of camp.

Training zeitgeists can be problematic when they embed themselves into the culture. Share on X

Freelap USA: Injuries happen in many ways with combat sports, but could you give the readers how you work around problems from the mental side. A wounded athlete also needs a mental boost when they know training is compromised. Any ideas on the psychological side of things?

William Wayland: Combat athletes thrive on a volume of training not matched by many other sports—missing a single session is considered sacrosanct. MMA fighters have the luxury of focusing on a discipline maybe not affected by injury; single sport stylists do not get that luxury. The beauty of strength and conditioning is that we can coordinate with the athlete to agree on some prescribed and self-prescribed work of some sort.

To athletes that can’t train their discipline, this is never busy work but should allow them to keep a handle on certain base qualities so that, as regular training is reintroduced, the transition isn’t too harsh. I have seen too many athletes take time off completely, often to wallow in self-pity, and return to training with no lead-in period and reinjure themselves. I’m very keen on an athlete-based approach, as increased autonomy and control over the situation generally leads to greater confidence.

An Interview with Coaching Legend, Bob Alejo

Freelap Friday Five| ByBob Alejo

As NC State’s Assistant AD/Director of Strength and Conditioning, Bob Alejo oversees all of the strength and conditioning efforts of the department, and coordinates the day-to-day efforts of the men’s basketball team.

Prior to joining the Wolfpack staff, Alejo served as the Director of Strength and Conditioning for the Oakland A’s, a position he also held from 1993-2001. In that role, he was responsible for all aspects of the organization’s year-round physical preparation at both the major league and minor league levels.

Before rejoining the A’s, Alejo was the Director of Strength and Conditioning at UC Santa Barbara from 2005-2008. During that time, he was also a member of the 2008 U.S. Olympic team as strength and conditioning coach for the gold medal-winning men’s beach volleyball team of Todd Rogers and Phil Dalhausser.

From 1984-1993, Alejo served as strength and conditioning coach at UCLA, where he worked with 23 men’s and women’s teams, including the men’s basketball team while current Wolfpack head coach, Mark Gottfried, was an assistant coach. During Alejo’s tenure in Westwood, the Bruins racked up 25 national championships and produced more than 100 All-Americans.

Prior to joining the Bruins’ staff, Alejo served as strength and conditioning coach for football at his alma mater, Chico State. He earned his B.A. in physical education from Chico State in 1982 and is a member of the Wildcats’ Athletic Hall of Fame after a successful baseball career.

An accomplished lecturer and author, Alejo is a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (through the National Strength and Conditioning Association’s Certification Commission) and holds the advanced NSCA Registered Strength and Conditioning Coach distinction. He has also been elected to three halls of fame: Chico State Athletics, Chico State Baseball (inaugural inductee) and the Chico Professional Baseball “Legends of the Diamond.”

Freelap USA: You drew a line in the sand with making sure coaches knew the difference between a sport scientist and a coach who knows sport science. Could you share how coaches can ensure they are up-to-date on the latest research while not missing their coaching duties?

Bob Alejo: This is a piece I posted on Facebook about sports science: “If you record and analyze athlete tracking data (GPS, player load, etc.), body weight and body composition, training heart rates, RPE’s, averages and standard deviations of physical testing scores, and write and implement training programs while coaching… BUT don’t take muscle biopsies, etc… Then you’re a strength and condition professional! It’s not complicated. Don’t make it. I don’t do scientific research or solve scientific problems… I study the science. What I do is not science, but science-based. There’s a difference!”

The passion drives the thirst for knowledge. Reading the literature and coaching are not separate duties—know the science and be a better coach. It’s a responsibility we have to ourselves and, more importantly, to those we train.

Passion drives the thirst for knowledge. Know the science and be a better coach. Share on X

Freelap USA: Hamstrings are always a big topic, but so are groin injuries now. Could you share why some techniques in the past are now more relevant than ever? It seems that coaches are reinventing the wheel, just with shinier hubcaps.

Bob Alejo: Solid techniques with true positive results are here to stay, because the basics have always worked and will work forever. That’s not to say evolution does not occur, but how different do the bench press and squat look from 50 years ago?! It’s not like the difference between the era of no cell phones and cell phones!! It’s not the movement, but the science behind the programming of the movement.

I’ve coined the phrase, “Tell me what it is and I’ll tell you what we used to call it.” There is more programming made out of the fear of it not being new or different than the fear of it not being good! And, by the way, if you’re using the term “cutting edge,” I think you’re trying to tell me how good you are with an adjective instead of results. Shameful.

Freelap USA: You worked with some of the best pitchers in the MLB when you were with Oakland, and they followed perhaps the most pragmatic strength plan with intensity and volume over a long season. Can you get into why periodization needs to open its door a little to reality instead of only thinking Eastern Bloc countries?

Bob Alejo: The thing I am most proud of is that our pitchers lifted heavy weights, used low volume, and squatted heavy. The squat—front or back—is the most underrated core exercise of all time. We had no oblique injuries, they all threw over 90 mph, and we didn’t do one core exercise or medicine ball twists.

Every coach periodizes, including those who say they don’t. If you train for a given period of time and expect a certain result, then you periodize! Remember Mike Stone et al’s paper was “A hypothetical model….” It was a model but not stone tablets. You don’t always have a hypertrophy phase, it’s not always high reps in the beginning, and the strength phase might last an entire year. I still remain convinced that you need to block off specific periods of time to emphasize specific qualities and, at the end of the cycle, year, or whenever you need to be peaked, tie them all together for the best performances.

Freelap USA: We find it interesting that oblique injuries are a problem in baseball and you found success not doing any specific rotation exercises in-season with some of your players. What are your thoughts on medicine ball rotations in the off-season or as a way to condition athletes in general?

Bob Alejo: General maybe, and not for long. It’s like the goblet squat—that’s not a year-round strength exercise! Know the science. Med ball slams have some of the most oblique activation of several exercises; not twisting. And, unless you use a diagonal pattern, you won’t even be close. If anything, anti-rotation exercises are the key.

In my opinion, obliques are injured not by lack of strength or fitness, but by repetition. So why would you want to do more twisting if that’s the mechanism of injury?! We don’t prescribe more jumping for jumper’s knee. How about lifting weights? Question: How many oblique injuries do you hear from javelin throwers, shot putters or discus throwers? How about almost none, comparatively. They throw heavy implements a lot, but they are pretty strong. Figure it out.

Freelap USA: When you were in UCLA, you did a lot of training that still is part of your program now. Could you explain what changes you have made over 30 years and how you keep the staples in your program? With all of the additions to staff on pro teams and colleges, is a lot of expansion of HR just masking the poor utilization of a strength coach?

Bob Alejo: For sure, I think our contribution is at times minimized and underutilized. I remember, while in MLB, hearing of a team’s strategy to hire more ATCs because of the number of injuries. How about hiring more and better S&C personnel to reduce the incidence, severity, and risk of injury?!

My changes:

Squatting once per week, one leg exercise the other day;
Discontinuing the squat in-season, substituting heavy one leg activity (1-3 reps) and higher intensity pulls from the ground;
Almost entirely deleting the power clean from the floor from the program and substituting high pulls (higher power outputs with heavier loads—see Tim Suchomel or Paul Comfort’s research);
Staples stay because they work;
A more-intense occupation with technical failure in testing;
Research level testing for all sports.

Coaching Hurdle Technique

Blog| ByDominique Stasulli

Teaching proper hurdling technique to a novice track-and-field athlete can seem like a daunting task. It’s not as simple as “step-step-step-clear,” or treating it like a free-for-all obstacle race. Proper form is essential for both the safety and efficiency of the athlete. The instruction of this complex motor skill must be done in a step-wise, simplistic fashion, where each component phase is broken down and trained separately. Difficulties in learning this complex motor skill can arise in a number of ways.

Don’t Overwhelm the Athlete

Over-coaching with too many verbal cues can have a negative effect on the learning process, hindering motor development and reinforcement. If you give too much information to the athlete at one time, it could cause a stimulus overload. If the athlete receives too many cues, then the focus gets spread too thin and becomes lost. Therefore, give one cue at a time between repetitions so the athlete doesn’t become overwhelmed.

Too much feedback between trials has the same effect as an overabundance of pre-cueing. More than anything, a coach’s job is to focus on the intrinsic feedback that the athlete feels: This teaches autonomy and control over his or her own body. One concise statement of constructive criticism every few trials is the best way to ensure the athlete focuses on the task at hand and then listens for when the words do come. If feedback is too wordy or given for every trial, it will lose its effect.

More than anything, a coach’s job is to focus on the intrinsic feedback that the athlete feels. Share on X

Go Back to the Basics

Issues such as weak leg power, hip flexor weakness, ankle instability, and lack of upper body control all affect the underlying biomechanics of the hurdle form. If an athlete is struggling to complete the moves or achieve full range of motion, the coach must go back to the basics of strength development. This will ensure the athlete has the fundamental muscle and tendon power to carry out the technique.

In other words, elastic capability must come first: hurdlers are sprinters first (Rogers, 2015). Deep hip flexor muscles such as the iliacus are responsible for keeping the lead leg in line and tightly adducted (McKinnon & Comerford, 2013). A lack of necessary strength when trying to perform a certain move can quickly lead to frustration and drained confidence in an athlete, especially if not recognized by the coach, or mislabeled as defiance or a lack of concentration.

Difficulty in getting three steps between each of the hurdles can be a function of poor ground reactive force, sprint mechanics, stride power, or rhythm. Rhythm is imperative for running an efficient hurdle race and preserving running economy. Any deceleration in the three-step rhythm can cause the athlete to come up short on the next hurdle; this usually develops with poor flight or landing mechanics. If the lead leg does not follow a straight path over the hurdle, the center of balance will be off, and the landing unbalanced (Rogers, 2015). It is helpful to have the athlete perform wall drills with the lead leg and work on controlling the upper body to counter the lead leg.

Coaches can cue to lead with a slightly-flexed knee rather than the foot of the lead leg, to avoid a straight-legged “braked” landing (McKinnon & Comerford, 2013). The hurdles can also be moved closer together until the three-step technique is mastered (Rogers, 2015). If the struggle is in reaching the first hurdle, there may be poor acceleration or comfort out of the blocks; the starting legs can be reversed in the blocks to add an extra step for the correction and cue the athlete to aggressively attack the hurdles.

Difficulty staying low to the hurdle is usually a measure of confidence and flexibility. Hamstring flexibility is crucial for full leg extension and hip spread. Core strength over the hurdle is essential to balance the limbs and land with proper center of mass. McKinnon and Comerford state that core strength is about “coordination, alignment, efficiency, and controlling the body’s natural compensations for minor restrictions,” which can compensate for a less-than-perfect takeoff or foot placement if necessary.

Running over lower-height hurdles can be a great confidence builder and help overcome the obstacle fear (Rogers, 2015). Emphasis should be placed on “running” the hurdles, rather than “jumping” the hurdles.

Prioritize the Athlete

As a closing note: The athlete’s well-being should always come first. If too many trials are being practiced in a single session, the neuromuscular system will become overtaxed and burnt out. Small gains in training and milestones in skill mastery should be noted and praised in the athlete. As coaches, our first priority is always keeping our athletes healthy and safe.

Consider the other stressors in the athlete’s everyday life that may be affecting his or her training life. When an athlete feels balanced and well-rounded, the focus and motivation on skill development is less likely to waiver.

References

McKinnon, G. & Comerford, M. (2013). “Hip control issues for clearing the hurdle and reducing flight time.” Modern Athlete and Coach, 51(2): 31-34.
Rogers, J. (2015). Track and field coaching essentials: USA track & field level 1 coach education manual. W. Freeman (Ed.). Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.

Conscious Coaching: A Book Review

Book Reviews| ByChris Gallagher

Most popular books among the Strength and Conditioning community or athletic development professionals focus upon the minutiae of training: percentages, exercises, periodization, and programming. Aspiring coaches and those already taking steps along the path want to read about how past masters or contemporary mentors design and deliver effective training plans to create and develop world-class athleticism.

Brett Bartholomew’s Conscious Coaching: The Art & Science of Building Buy-In aims to delve deeper into the human aspect of coaching; teaching you how to connect with the individual, the person—and not just the athlete. It points the reader down a path of self-discovery and self-awareness, and the route to becoming a more effective, more impactful coach. This book delivers in spades!

We all know that coaching idiom: “It’s not what you know, it’s what you can get your athlete(s) to do.” Conscious Coaching is all about this! Brett quite correctly points out that many people in the field of strength and conditioning are experts in the hard science of performance. We know all kinds of training theory and planning models, and the mechanics and physiology of movement. Where many of us may be lacking (and I concede after reading Brett’s book that this is an area in which I can more consciously focus on my development), is in getting our athletes to believe in what we are trying to sell them.

Bartholomew Strength — Image 1: In *Conscious Coaching*, author Brett Bartholomew points out that people in the field of strength and conditioning are experts in the hard science of performance. However, many of us have a hard time getting our athletes to believe in what we are trying to sell them. Brett shows us how to change that.

The sports performance and coaching library is awash with books on the science and practice of training. How to run faster, jump higher, or squat more. How to organize training, recover more effectively, and enhance physical performance. Our field is not deficient in books that provide technical and scientific information to coaches. Instead, there is a dearth of accessible knowledge and tools to help intelligent and insightful coaches connect more effectively with the people they work with. Resources that help coaches understand the mind and the drives of their athletes, and then help these coaches develop their skills to bring alive their technical knowledge and intricate programs for the diverse populations they work with daily.

Now more than ever, coaching and great communication must be synonymous. ~ Brett Bartholomew

Throughout Conscious Coaching, Brett repeatedly highlights how authenticity, personal stories, and trust are vital to achieving buy-in from athletes. When you share more of yourself, your stories, and your experiences, or when you can highlight a specific example of how your coaching impacted performance and success for another athlete, you will get greater adherence and belief in your program with the present trainee. There are parallels in Brett’s writing in this book that reflect that in an uncanny way.

Brett opens up early in the book with an account of one of the defining moments of his life, and then throughout its pages continually drops in short anecdotes from his coaching career. Allied to this, there is the whole chapter on “Archetypes” and the individual “coaching clinics” from high level coaches within Brett’s network. These personalized stories bring the greatest degree of credibility to, and trust in, the value and effectiveness of the information, skills, and tools Brett shares in Conscious Coaching. This is trust and buy-in from the reader that would not be generated by the standard cold facts of a typical coaching manual.

Coaching Clinics — Image 2: The chapter on “Archetypes” in *Conscious Coaching*. The author writes about each type of archetype, including their strengths, weaknesses, and how to connect with them. The listed coach for each archetype presents a “coaching clinic,” describing their experience working with that type of athlete and their methods for connecting with them.

One of the great strengths of this book is that it makes you think more deeply about what you are reading. This is not a mere strength training manual where you read and absorb facts and methodologies that, once understood, can be almost mindlessly replicated. Conscious Coaching asks you to reflect on and self-analyze your coaching practice. To question what you are currently doing. What do you do well? What can you do better? Where are your opportunities to grow?

A common criticism of sports science students coming through the innumerable undergrad courses around the time I completed my first degree was that they had great book smarts but often didn’t know how to apply it. Brett has identified that this is an issue and Conscious Coaching can be a resource to help bridge that gap.

As coaches, we all have experiences with athletes for whom our strategies and interventions have been more effective and those for whom we have not been so successful. Being more mindful of the impact of different individual’s personality types, attitudes, behaviors, and drivers can help you to mold your coaching to the individual and the individual situation. What is maybe less obvious is how our own version of “reality” impacts the coaching and learning process, and how we need to delve more deeply into our psyche and motivators and not just those of the young people we coach.

This is not some overnight fix or cure. It is a long-term process. The initial steps are reflection and awareness. Reflect on your current practice and become more aware of strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities. That is the easy part. The next step is to use this knowledge to impact your coaching for the better.

The conscious coach needs to appreciate that it is not simply how you connect with athletes, but how your own personality, feelings, and behaviors will shape and affect these interactions. If you understand yourself better, then you can affect everything else more effectively. Ultimately, your interaction with athletes and your interventions will be positively enhanced.

The information in Conscious Coaching is invaluable here. Brett provides examples and guidelines on tangible things you can actually do to improve as a coach; once again, above and beyond the basic knowledge collection and experience of delivery on the shop floor. It is not just theoretical knowledge spread throughout the book’s pages. There are practical ideas, suggestions, and applications to inform and enhance your coaching.

“Brett provides examples and guidelines on tangible things you can actually do to improve as a coach.”

This book has made me think about specific situations I have experienced with the different archetypes, as identified in the book, and how an increased awareness of individual personalities, behaviors, and drivers will ultimately allow me to be a more effective coach as I consciously work at it.

In fact, even in the two weeks spent reading this book, there was an influence on my interactions with athletes. I can think of a specific scenario where I sat down and really tried to get to the heart of the issue with an athlete and understand their behaviors and drives in a way I may not have had I not been more consciously thinking about my coaching. This book is not a stand-alone answer. I understand it will require more conscious application of the lessons within, allied to challenging introspection. But Conscious Coaching is a vital addition to any and every coach’s library.

One aspect I have not touched upon is the obvious amounts of extensive research that went into writing Conscious Coaching. The material in the book is drawn from a broad range of history, culture, fields, and backgrounds, to educate the reader in all the various facets of what being a conscious coach means. The wealth of information and the diverse topics it is drawn from once more add to the quality of what you are reading and ultimately should aim to apply.

Overall, Conscious Coaching is an excellent book for the motivated, intelligent, and forward-thinking coach. It “does exactly what it says on the tin.” The major themes are: awareness, self-reflection, growth and development, communication, connecting, and relationship building. The real value will be in exploring and developing these areas as you move forward in your coaching career.

As Dan Pfaff says in his foreword: “This book is needed, and its time is now.” Purchase your copy today at Amazon.

Three Drill Series to Improve Form Year-Round for Speed

Blog| ByChris Korfist

During my years of coaching, I’ve had athletes who became very good at the drills I gave them, but they didn’t improve their form or speed. At times, my athletes have gotten so good at the drills, they were no longer challenged, and they stagnated. I wasn’t challenging their systems. The drills in this article address important points of movement and show how to progress your athletes to make their bodies organize.

My Learning Progression

There is nothing like the spectacle of a track meet. The tension of 100m and 4x100m races gets everyone up in the stands before the gun goes off. The bell laps in distance races when everyone waits to see who has been hanging back and make the fatal mistake of making a move too early. The final jumps or throws in the field events when the crowd claps in unison to motivate the athlete for a bigger performance. And who can forget the drama of a final 4×400 when the meet is on the line.

Even before the meet, there are memorable images. My favorite is when all the pole vaulters are lined up in a big meet, waiting for their run-through. It reminds me of a jousting tournament with all of the knights lined up, waiting their turn.

Equally enjoyable is watching the variety of warm-up drills different teams use: watching runners go through their A skips in perfect unison, runners lying face down doing scorpions, or up against the fence with their hip mobility drills. I wonder how and why coaches pick their warm-up drills.

I, too, bought the speed dynamics video and used it for years. It was fairly easy to implement and, if others were doing it, I believed I should too. I saw Loren Seagrave twice in packed halls, and everyone was sold. He changed the culture of the warm-up.

Questioning the Purpose of Specific Drills

But then I hit a few hurdles. I questioned what I was doing when I had athletes who could do the drills very well, almost as good as the video, but weren’t improving their form or speed. Also, we were getting so good at the drills that they were no longer challenging. It almost became something we did just “because.”

I had athletes that could do the drills very well but weren’t improving their form or speed. Share on X

Then, I started to question the purpose of the drills. A perfect example is B skips. I know people love them, but I don’t think there is much pawing of the ground. To change things up, we went to a warm-up with a variety of stiff legged runs (Payton’s or Prime-times, depending on what part of the country you live in). They worked great early in the season but again, we stagnated.

Then, I found some things that really helped my athletes move along. The first was the implementation of Reflexive Performance Reset (RPR). Athletes use a particular recruitment pattern to move their body. Most of the time, athletes are in a neurological survival mode, which means they’re using smaller muscles to do the work. As they strengthen these patterns, their bodies default to these movement patterns.

For example, when an athlete sprints, he’ll initiate hip flexion with his psoas muscle and extend with this glute max. But when an athlete goes through his strength tests, these muscles fail. By performing RPR wake-up drills, an athlete can get his prime movers, or performance muscles, to become the initiators of the movement pattern. From a coaches’ perspective, they run differently. From an athlete’s perspective, they feel lighter and faster.

Frans Bosch

Also, I figured out Frans Bosch. I bought the DVD, Running: The BK Method, watched it quickly, and discarded its contents onto a pile of other DVDs. But for some reason, I was brought back to the DVD. And it clicked. So, I bought the book, Running. I think my copy has more of my pencil markings than the ink used to print the book. I started an email correspondence with Frans to learn more. I started to implement his drills in our practices and saw the impact on how my athletes moved. A big impact, in fact. We ran very fast. Some of the fastest times in the history of the state with kids that had no business being on that stage based on their looks.

But again, I hit another hurdle. We got really good at doing the drills about four weeks into the season, and then we stagnated. We were doing the drills just to do the drills. We weren’t challenging our systems.

Bosch then released Strength Training and Coordination: An Integrative Approach which offers insight into challenging the motor learning system. The basic drills are the elements of running—quick foot off the ground followed by a hip drive with strong lateral support. The result is toe off position with the knee under the glute and the swing knee out in front for a positive running position.

Drills for Progression

As we get better at specific movements, we need to challenge the body to find the point where the body self-organizes when challenged and where the body is allowed to get out of a limited self-protection mode. If we change the environment or pattern, we teach the system to reorganize and strengthen the patterns we want to strengthen. (Trying to explanation this would be a whole article in itself). The book explains this concept throughout multiple chapters. For a nice quick summary, check out bettermovement.com.

I use some basic movement patterns that we drill. I don’t like calling it a warm-up. Too many athletes think a warm-up is a social time when things are done just to get the blood moving. These drills become worthless once that attitude surfaces. I sometimes change when we do the drills in practice to challenge the “state of the body” or challenge the body when fatigued. The drills address important points of movement and show how we progress to make the body organize.

High Knee Action

We call these booms.

Purpose: To train the high knee action with support from the opposite hip. At least that’s how it looks. It’s actually a movement that trains the scissoring motion of the legs and teaches the “foot from above” principle. It also teaches a high hip posture of the stance leg. Once we’re strong in this position, we learn to scissor the leg in a fast action.

Progressions: Stress the movement while other actions occur, always challenging the movement to be as clean as possible. It becomes the go-to position. Key points are tall posture and reaching for the ground, and knees passing as high up as possible to simulate positive running.

Week 1: Boom, just a switch of the leg, workout (WO) 2 hands overhead, WO 3 hands push or press, WO 4 halos.
Week 2: Boom-Boom, same progression
Week 3: Boom-Boom-Boom, same progression
Week 4: High knees, same progression
Week 5: High knees onto 1- to 2-inch mats with the same progression
Week 6: High knees with a stop every 3rd or 4th step, same upper progression
Week 7: High knees mixing week 5 and 6, same upper progression
Week 8: High knees with a twist, rotate 45 degrees every 4 to 5 steps, same upper progression
Week 9: High knees with 10lb bar on back
Week 10: Up to 8-inch box with a stop, same arm progression as week 1
Week 11: Stairs
Week 12: Stairs with a stop
Week 13: Stairs with light bar on back

Hip Hike or High Hip Action

Purpose: To teach a better position for the hips. Ideally, when an athlete is on one leg at midstance phase, the hip of the stance leg should hold the leg in place directly underneath the hip socket, and the outside of the foot should line up with the outside of the body. The hip of the swing leg hip should be slightly higher than the hip of the stance leg.

Week 1: Spiderman crawls, lateral crawls
Week 2: Step downs
Week 3: Weighted step downs
Week 4: Weighted step downs, wall touches with bounce
Week 5: High knees with a bounce, lateral high knees with bounce
Week 6: Weight overhead high knees with a bounce, lateral high knees with bounce
Week 7: Weight overhead, skips over hurdle
Week 8: Skips over hurdle, WO 2 overhead
Week 9: Skips for power (speed and distance)
Week 10: Skips power and speed with bar on back (no rotation)
Week 11: Skips power w/twist
Week 12: Skips power, halo

Ankle Foot Action

Progression: Works on the stiffness of the ankle. The key is to keep the ankles as stiff as possible.

Week 1-2: Legged toe pops
Week 2: 2-legged toe pops with weight
Week 3: 2-legged pops onto mats/boxes (6-8 inches)
Week 4: Alternating toe pops
Week 5: Single leg pops
Week 6: Single leg pops with mat on side, double leg up a hill
Week 7: Single leg pops with box on side, alternating up a hill
Week 8: Single leg up a hill, double skip prime time
Week 9: Single up a hill distance, double skip prime time overhead
Week 10: Double leg hurdle jumps small to big, single leg pops on box
Week 11: Small box over hurdle over hurdle, single leg hops over hurdle
Week 12: Hurdle bounce box bounce hurdle, single leg hops over hurdles
Week 13: Consecutive big hurdles

A coach can adjust the drills at any time. While the goal is to constantly challenge the body to learn better movement, if the athletes are stuck, there is nothing wrong with repeating a week of work or slowing things down. To get a better picture of what the drills look like, I have some rough videos of the progressions for sale through my websites, Slow Speed Guy and videos here. Thanks for the support.

For those who missed the Track and Football Consortium 4, we have the entire Consortium filmed. We have great topics for download. Here is the link for the Consortium, including my hour presentation on the subject of this article that further explains the exercises.

Data in Sports Performance: Why Your Measurements Matter

Blog| ByMatthew Hauck

Data collection has been a part of the daily routine of strength and conditioning coaches since well before the invention of software-based spreadsheets. There has long been a focus on quantifying heights, times, distances, weights, and much more within a strength and conditioning program. Regardless of programming paradigm, the ability to objectively define improvements in performance is a central need of strength and conditioning coaches.

While handwritten records have largely progressed to a digital format, the process and procedures involved in testing and recording data have not experienced the same evolution. The logistics of data collection and recording in a large team environment where supervision and coaching take precedence creates many issues for strength coaches. The result of these actions creates an issue: How sure are we that the data we are recording in strength and conditioning, practice, competition, nutrition, rehabilitation, wellness, and recovery is accurate and reliable?

The quality of information we have available limits our ability as coaches to make truly informed decisions. To better understand this issue, it is worth diving into the field of measurement in research, statistics, and analytics to gain a mastery of foundational elements affecting the quality of the information you collect on athlete performance.

Your Methods Matter

Whether you are using advanced technologies, a pen and pad, or a simple questionnaire, the method to your measurements matters. The measurement of physical performance metrics such as speed, time, weight lifted, length, height, acceleration, distances covered, heart rate responses, and heart rate recovery is a crucial element when assessing activity and performance in many team-athletic populations. Although measurement is only one of the many aspects that strength coaches, sport scientists, and all allied health staff must give attention to, its impact has the potential to directly affect nearly every area of performance. Given this reality, it becomes paramount to establish a systematic approach when considering measurement of physical performance. Because of the objective and quantitative nature of the data associated with human performance in sports, a more classical view of measurement may be appropriate:

Measurement: The assignment of numbers to objects or events according to rules^[1].

While the majority of information collected on performance is highly quantitative in nature, there are instances where critical analysis and understanding of the data collected becomes more subjective. For example, this may happen when practitioners evaluate the total distance of sprinting performed by an athlete during a single practice session, and subsequently try to establish a relative indicator of the intensity of that practice session.

There are many subjective factors that might affect the athlete’s perception of the session RPE that may not match intensity scales used by practitioners. Some of these factors include: the daily readiness of the athlete to physically perform, the physical preparedness levels of the athlete, the content of the drills performed, the nature of instruction given to the athlete, peer and authoritative feedback, and atmospheric conditions. In such cases, a second definition of measurement is applicable:

Measurement: The process of linking abstract concepts to empirical indicants^[1].

In this instance, consider the abstract concept as the relative intensity level of the practice session given by practitioners to describe the physical effects on the individual athlete. Even in cases where more qualitative analysis of information occurs, a systematic approach to measurement is still necessary.

As an operational definition of measurement is established, it is necessary to discuss the desirable qualities of the measurement process and instrumentation. A primary quality lies within the idea of reliability, or the extent to which the experiment, test, or measuring procedure will yield the same results on repeated trials. Reliability is an element concerning the consistency and repeatability of the measurements performed by both technology measuring performance, such as GPS, accelerometers, and HR monitors, as well as manual measurements taken by practitioners, including RPE scales, ROM and orthopedic testing, sprint timing, and weightlifting maxes.

Proper data interpretation will ultimately determine the success of the application process, where collected information affects future decision-making when planning activities. However, the reliability of the tools and methods is a primary factor that affects the entire data analysis and application process for practitioners. Because of this factor, attention must be directed to issues that negatively affect the reliability of measurements and create measurement errors.

The reliability of tools and methods affects the entire data analysis and application process. Share on X

Practitioners must accept that measurement error will almost always be present during the data collection process, despite efforts to minimize their effects. Practitioners must outline a procedure that reduces non-random error, or error due to a systematic biasing effect on measurement instruments. Non-random error for practitioners using high-tech tools may be due to the calibration of GPS units, connectivity of HRM to skin, an untrained intern incorrectly administering an Omegawave scan, or incorrect positioning of barbell velocity equipment. With low-tech interventions, non-random error could be due to improper wording of a question on a recovery survey, or peer influence on task knowledge.

Conversely, random error is inversely related to the reliability of the measurement instrumentation and is associated with unknown or unpredictable changes. An example of random error for practitioners using high-tech tools are an HRM losing contact with a player’s skin because of contact with another player during a drill, GPS satellite spacing affecting local connectivity to athlete units, batteries dying in an electronic timing unit, or other equipment breaking during testing. There are few ways to predict exactly when and how it might happen, but practitioners can expect random error to happen at some point of the measurement process.

It is important to understand that measurements taken by tools such as GPS, accelerometers, tendo units, and HRM will yield an observed score for a particular aspect, such as peak speed, heart rate ranges, distances covered, or acceleration, in addition to many other parameters. Observed scores can also be taken when coaches manually time sprints, measure jump heights, or record the results of a maximum weightlifting test. The observed scores obtained by the instrumentation and tester are composed of a true score and an error score:

Observed Score = True Score + Error Score

The duty of practitioners is to minimize the error score within the measurement process by identifying factors that can be controlled. The true score many never be fully known; however, a structured and systematic approach to measurement of human performance may allow a clearer picture of the true score to be realized. When accounting for sources of error, consider the following elements:

Participants

Consider the daily readiness of the individual athlete being monitored. If an athlete has incurred any level of acute or cumulative fatigue from prior practice or training sessions, the readings of that day may not give an accurate representation of normal performance standards.

Additionally, the motivation, mood, or intentions of an individual may cause errors in measurement readings. If an athlete feels they must prove themselves in any matter while being monitored or measured, they may give an effort above and beyond a normal daily expenditure. This resulting data would not give an accurate reflection of normal practice or the training parameters of that individual athlete.

Previous practice, prior experiences, or a lack of either may also account for errors in measurement. If an athlete is experiencing a drill or activity for the first time, the resulting physical performance may not be a true indicator of the athlete’s actual ability level. The readings would then reflect a portion of the learning and adaptation process rather than the athlete’s true ability level within the activity. An example of this is the monitoring of maximum speed during a particular drill during practice where athletes are learning a new skill or technique. While a maximum speed reading will be obtained from the drill, it would not reflect the true ability of the athlete at that particular activity due to a lack of practice and a lack of prior experience with the drill.

Testing Procedures

Regarding the actual activity being monitored, clarity of directions for the activity being introduced will affect performance outcomes. If the athletes are supposed to run at a specific pace during a conditioning drill, but deviate from that speed because of unclear instructions, the interpretation of the information collected is based on a false premise of uniformity in running speeds. This element is also present in various movement screenings where uniformity of instruction may alter the performance of one athlete to the next, regardless of their capabilities.

After administering instructions, it is also important to monitor how well the procedures are followed. Consider giving additional emphasis to the quality and clarity of initial instruction; external feedback may ensure that athletes fall within the desired constructs of the activity. In order to perform repeated sprints within certain heart rate ranges while monitoring recovery markers, speed, or time, athletes must adhere to specific start-and-stop prompts so they don’t create an error in the measurement of the specifically designed task.

Consider also the uniformity and type of feedback and directions administered by practitioners during activities—i.e., when a group of practitioners are present during an activity and offer conflicting coaching or motivational reinforcement to the athlete or group of athletes being monitored. This may materialize with variances in measurement of the activity performed, such as varying ranges of speed, heart rates, or scoring on a movement screen.

Scoring

When observing, scoring, or classifying data measured by high-tech tools and manual measurements alike, the competence or experience of the scorers and observers will also affect reliability. The practitioners must possess content knowledge of the physical activity performed, which necessitates an understanding of physiology, mechanics, technique, and tactics. Additionally, they would need experience with the proper use and care of the equipment, as well as in monitoring and classifying the parameters being measured during the activity.

When assessing data measurements, the competence of the practitioners will also affect reliability. Share on X

If the practitioners in charge of live monitoring or post-activity data classification lack competency regarding population norms of the parameters being measured, view any interpretation offered by those practitioners with caution. For example, practitioners unfamiliar with the potential for error in readings of speed, heart rate, or human movement may portray erroneous readings as being accurate and valid.

These errors can often compound, as is evident using heart rate monitors, for example. The subsequent caloric expenditure that is partially based on heart rate would also be incorrect if issues arise and are not identified. The practitioner reporting these figures to the sports nutritionist would be presenting figures that are inaccurately high because of erroneous readings. This is only one example of the importance of having observers and scorers that are both experienced and competent.

The scorer’s attention and dedication is also important, as oversights during the data collection and classification process will lead to erroneous readings. During real-time data collection in practice, training, or testing, scoring error may occur if the tools being used experience technical difficulties from uncharged batteries, excessive position alteration of straps and harnesses supporting the equipment, a change in location of the activity away from the predetermined activity space, or the unwillingness, in some cases, of the athlete to wear devices at all times during the activity.

Post-activity data summary and classification would require the practitioner to upload and review information measured during the activity. During the review, outlying values of all parameters must be identified to determine if they might be erroneous scores or if they are a reliable and accurate measurement. Making this determination requires content knowledge and measurement experience, as well as attention to the activity as it was measured in real time.

Instrumentation

Tools like GPS, HR monitors, accelerometers, bar velocity units, and other items used to measure physical performance can also act as a source of error during the measurement process. Basic calibration of both software and hardware features of the equipment can ultimately affect the measurement and scoring process, which in turn would affect classification of the activity. Initial calibration of software and hardware is a cornerstone of the set-up and installation procedure, and it is also necessary to insure that these parameters have been maintained during the course of normal use.

As the equipment is used daily, its actual setup on the athletes being monitored may differ if intertester reliability is low. Essentially, different practitioners setting up the equipment on the same athletes may not obtain the same scores for the same tests. Because of this, uniformity of instruction and technique of the allocation and fitting of the equipment is of paramount concern during this process. Any deviation from the adopted instructions and techniques may contribute to variances and the collection of unreliable information. A consistent and objective approach to the allocation and equipment-fitting process is a necessity for practitioners.

The Takeaways: Steps to Enhance Reliability

When approaching the measurement process, the strength coaches, sport scientists, and all allied health and performance staff must acknowledge that, to enhance reliability of the entire process of measurement, efforts must be focused on measuring on an individual basis. As attention is given to each individual athlete and each individual data collection session, practitioners should strive to enhance consistency of their efforts during each data collection process and apply it to each successive measurement in the same manner.

Practitioners should strive to achieve consistency of effort during each data collection session. Share on X

When focusing on the methodology used to enhance reliability, the standardization of procedures and protocols becomes the foundational focus of the process. Include all practitioners in group training sessions where working knowledge and mastery of the equipment, software, and technique is gained. As methods for implementation are developed, a written form of a standard operational procedure manual may be utilized as a step-by-step reference for the setup and use of the specific equipment being implemented by the practitioner. These written instructions can serve as the basis for:

Preparing the physical environment for data collection:

Determine the physical area of activity to establish the proper setup of live- monitoring stations, test recorders, spotters, and equipment, according to manufacturer specifications. All equipment must be placed at safe distances from the athletes and activity to avoid collisions. For low-tech monitoring, the practitioner should be stationed in areas close enough to safely monitor all aspects of the activity.
Think of the needs of the tools you are using. For example, if practitioners can choose a space for training activities, an area outside that is away from tall structures may be the most ideal setting, as technologies like GPS units rely on connectivity with satellites that may be affected at times during outdoor training activities.

Preparing the subject for data collection:

Educate the athlete on what they need to do when wearing or using specific equipment. The athlete must understand that they are to work and practice in exactly the same manner as they have in the past, unless specifically directed otherwise by a coach. The testing and monitoring should not change their normal effort!
Establish a dialogue with the athlete to help them understand the importance and benefit of assessing their performance. If any portion of this process becomes a burden to the athlete, their motivation to continue to adhere to the process will be diminished if they do not see a benefit. Give strong emphasis to benefits of measurement and direct dialogue away from all negative notions of assessment. In some cases, measurement of performance fosters competition between athletes. Use this to your (and their) advantage.
If the fitting of equipment is involved in your measurement or assessment process, give the athlete a simple reference for keeping the equipment secured during activity. A trained staff member should not only administer the fitting, but should also give instruction to the athlete as to how the equipment should stay in place and steps the athlete can take to address fitting issues. This applies to equipment that athletes wear, like GPS or HR monitors, as well as equipment the athletes might use, such as timers, jump mats, or bar velocity measuring units.
Ensure that the dialogue between practitioners and athletes is in relatable and understandable terms for the athlete. We can’t expect all athletes to have a mastery of Hz sampling rates in GPS monitors, or positioning of triaxial accelerometers as being algorithm-specific. What we can communicate to them is that these tools are also found on their cellphone, like a map application for directions, or the way their phone screens flip when they tilt their phone.
Communicate to the athlete that practitioners will be present on the field or around the weight room during training or practice to assist with any equipment issues.
Provide opportunities to foster autonomy when outfitting or setting up equipment in order to enhance motivation to participate in the measurement process. Getting the athlete involved in this process facilities a feeling of ownership over their results.
Give simple and relatable feedback to the athlete based upon measured performances. This engages the athlete with the process and further encourages a sense of ownership over performance metrics and accomplishment during activity.

Performing outfitting, adjustments, and collections of equipment:

Outfit all units on athletes or equipment in the weight room according to manufacturer guidelines and standard operation procedures prior to activity, giving attention to the way that other equipment, such as sport specific padding, specialized braces, or other equipment, fits around your devices.
Ensure each piece of equipment is powered on according to manufacturer guidelines.
Allocate staff members to be present during activities to assist athletes with all adjustments of equipment.
Make efforts to collect individually worn pieces of equipment from each athlete in person post activity to allow for the communication of any equipment issues.
Give attention to manufacturer guidelines in regard to keeping units powered on or turned off post activity and prior to data upload.

Live monitoring of activity:

Determine which staff members will observe activity, be available for equipment adjustments, and manage live data monitoring devices.
Identify parameters to be evaluated in real-time monitoring, as well as staff members that are to be notified regarding changes in the defined parameters.
Define markers of activity by creating manual or automated time markers corresponding to specific drills or periods of practice and training.

Practices for data uploading, input, and analysis:

Ensure that all units have been collected post activity and they remained powered on according to manufacturer guidelines.
Clean units prior to data upload, or according to manufacturer recommendations. If required, connect each unit into uploading stations and ensure that the uploading dock itself is connected to a power source. This is especially true for equipment like heart rate monitors, accelerometers, and GPS units.
If using technology specific to one athlete, like a GPS unit or heart rate monitor, check in the specific software package supplied by the manufacturer and identify all units as being assigned to the correct athlete prior to confirming the data upload process.
If necessary, have a staff member present during the actual upload process to ensure the upload occurs without interruption from software updates or computer error.
After the data input or upload from the session is complete, normalize activity parameters to reflect the actual time and events of the activities performed. Additionally, manually review data to determine if outlying data points are present and attributable to error in measurement.
Summarize information in accordance with the desired application of data. (This is the subject of a future blog—stay tuned!) Formulate a summary of activities using either offerings from existing manufacturer software or manually derived means such as an Excel spreadsheet.
Send a digital or hard copy of data reports to necessary program members from sports performance staff, sports medicine staff, team nutritionists, and sports coaching staff.

Regardless of the type of technology used, these concepts will allow for the data collected from athletes to paint the most accurate and reliable picture of performance as possible. Data reliability is a central issue impacting our ability as coaches and sport scientists to make informed decisions, and is essential as part of the foundation of performance analysis in sport.

Reference

Carmines, E. & Zeller, R. (1979). Reliability and Validity Assessment. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc.

The Compression Movement

Blog| ByDominique Stasulli

During the past 10 years, compression garments have been slowly taking over the athletic gear market. The days when loose running shorts to stay cool and sweats for warmth dominated are long gone. The compression movement has spread across all sports, and athletes of all ages, in a short period of time. There is a use for it in every facet of the game: compression for the heat, compression for the cold, compression for performance enhancement, and even compression as a restoration tool. Here, I will examine the use and effectiveness in the research of wearing this type of gear with the intention to speed recovery or enhance performance.

A 2010 study by Sear et al., examined the effects of full-body compression on a metabolically taxing workout regime with interspersed bursts of high-intensity intervals and bouts of rest, specifically in team sports (Sear et al., 2010). They found that the compression produced a slight enhancement in tissue oxygenation and, thus, exercise performance. It was proposed that compression garments improve the availability of oxygen after high-intensity interval bursts, speeding reoxygenation of peripheral muscles and metabolic recovery between intervals. This can be traced back to the therapeutic use of compression in hospital patients, especially diabetics, to increase circulation and prevent blood from clotting. Some studies have found that compression garments decrease muscle oscillation during contraction and prevent venous blood pooling, leading to increased stroke volume (the amount your heart pumps with each cycle) and cardiac output.

The compression-wearing group had considerably less muscle swelling than the control group. Share on X

The most well-known claim is that compression of the muscles can help speed post-workout recovery, by virtue of its effects on the circulatory system. A study measuring the effects of compression garments worn in the 24 hours post resistance workout coincided with this notion (Kraemer et al., 2010). The markers for muscle damage, such as creatine kinase (CK) and lactate dehydrogenase (LDH), were both significantly reduced in the subjects who wore the compressive gear. Ultrasound technology was used to assess the muscle swelling in both the experimental and control groups, and found a considerable reduction in swelling with the compression-wearing group.

Some athletes prefer to think that the elastic nature of the material gives them an added torque in speed and power production, such as with jumping or sprinting. Research to support these anecdotal claims is scarce, however. Unfortunately, there is also little support for the use of compression gear for recovery from explosive power-type workouts (DeGlanville & Hamlin, 2012). Many research studies have found no positive correlation between recovery and performance enhancement with the use of compression during anaerobic exercise; however, aerobic performance demands respond very differently.

One study aimed the focus on a 40-km endurance cycling time trial in which trained multi-sport athletes wore graduated lower-body compression gear—which applies the greatest pressure distally (at the ankle), and the least pressure proximally (at the hip)—during the 24-hour recovery period between trials (DeGlanville & Hamlin, 2012). There was substantial improvement in the compression versus the placebo group in the subsequent time trial performance, with a 1.2% improvement observed. This may seem like a small benefit to reap, but for a number-crunching, top-tier athlete, these small percentage points may make all the difference in breaching the next level of performance.

What began as a therapeutic modality in medicine has truly evolved across athletics with a wave of acceptance and implementation. Much of the “performance enhancement” qualities of compression gear are merely anecdotal or placebo effect, rather than proven by true research. However, as discussed above, research across the full spectrum of sports continues to support and validate the use of compression gear as a means of post-workout recovery.

References

DeGlanville, K. M. & Hamlin, M. J. (2012). “Positive effect of lower body compression garments on subsequent 40-km cycling time trial performance.” Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 26(2): 481-6.
Kraemer, W. J., Flanagan, S. D., Comstock, B. A., Fragala, M. S., Earp, J. E., Dunn-Lewis, C., … Maresh, C. M. (2010). “Effects of whole body compression garments on markers of recovery after a heavy resistance workout in men and women.” Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 24(3): 804-14.
Sear, J. A., Hoare, T. K., Scanlan, A. T., Abt, G. A., & Dascombe, B. J. (2010). “The effects of whole body compression on prolonged high intensity intermittent exercise.” Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 24(7): 1901-10.

3 Tips for Building Your Training System for Athletes and Clients

Blog| ByKyle Kennedy

Starting out in the strength and conditioning industry can be a little daunting. You know the basics of physiology and theory, but you haven’t fully discovered the tricks and characteristics that define YOU as a coach. You want to implement the newest program or exercise you’ve seen from texts, videos, or conferences you’ve recently attended. I’m not blaming you; these coaches present a topic to make it look exceptional, and maybe it is. The thing is, not every program, protocol, or exercise will be right for you. There are almost unlimited possibilities and variations when it comes to training your athletes or clients, and experienced coaches have their own unique system.

If you’re a new coach, how do you develop YOUR system?

Your system will be based around the characteristics that you believe are most important in developing athletes. These are the macrocycles, microcycles, little exercises, drills, and progressions that help your athletes achieve the characteristics that you are looking for.

You will figure out the best combinations, loads, and progressions to help you reach these goals for both short-term and long-term clients. These could be things like: how to improve short-term power for jump tests, how to shave some time off a sprint test, or how to improve Olympic lifting or bench press. As a new coach, you may have ideas of what you like, but, realistically, you probably don’t yet have the experience to optimize the achievement of these goals.

Even though you may not have figured out your perfect system or your go-to protocols yet, it doesn’t mean you have to sit and wait. Here are three tips to help you become proactive and build the systems that will work best for you.

Read the Research and Talk to Other Coaches

Getting my first certification through the NSCA gave me an opportunity that many other trainers don’t have—access to journal subscriptions. From my first day as a CPT, I was already getting issues of the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research and the Strength and Conditioning Journal. In the past eight to ten years as a coach, I’ve realized that most trainers don’t read the research.

Don’t program blindly; use proven protocols to get results. Share on X

Do yourself a favor and look through research to find topics that interest you. For me, it was always jump power/height/distance, sprint speed, or power and strength in lifting. Every time I saw a paper on one of these topics, I read about the protocol used. Saving these papers has given me certain protocols that I have experimented with and know are effective. Don’t program blindly; use proven protocols to get results. The point of these studies is to try and isolate variables and experiment with ways to improve them. In my opinion, studies are one of the best ways to figure out your basic characteristics. Next, you need to figure out how to train for them.

The second half of this point relies on the human element. Find other coaches to intern with, talk with, or just watch. Talking to coaches can give you insights that you haven’t discovered yet. You don’t have to follow blindly or take their opinion as gospel, but you can expect that the coach has put time into their ideas and you can continue your research off what they share.

100 meter track — Image 1: Learn from other coaches by watching them and talking to them. While you don’t have to take their word as gospel, consider their ideas and research them further, if necessary. I didn’t start as a track-specific coach, so I asked other coaches many of the questions I had about speed training. Their answers helped me in the way I trained non-track athletes.

Everyone will have different questions and working with other questions can help you answer questions about data. For me, the first questions I started asking (about speed training), revolved around competition: How early do I taper? What volumes should I use? How much is too much? Since I didn’t start as a track-specific coach, some of these issues helped the way I trained non-track athletes. Fellow coaches and mentors can help you with real-world scenarios.

Collect the Data

The only way to know if something is improving is to track it. When I first started coaching, I focused mainly on the quality of the movement and skill acquisition. I could see my athletes improving, or so I thought. Realistically, I didn’t collect enough data to show if their performance was actually improving.

The more data you collect and the more variables you track, the better you will understand what your program accomplishes. This could be as simple as tracking volume load, ground contacts, and sprint volumes. Pair that with the results of your monitoring or testing and you have some explanations for your results. If you want to get more complex, use athlete questionnaires, HRV, and other tools to monitor recovery. This can give you a read into the way your athletes recover from your programming. You can then either adjust your programming to the athlete or work with the athlete to improve their recovery habits/protocols.

The more data collected & variables tracked, the better you’ll understand what your program achieves. Share on X

When I started, the tools at my disposal were either out of my reach, due to cost and availability, or very rudimentary, like a stopwatch. There’s nothing wrong with a stopwatch, but we have better options now. For speed, I like using apps like the MySprint App (below) and Coach’s Eye for both technical feedback and force-velocity data, but at a minimum you need to collect sprint times. Whether you use an app on a smartphone or a Freelap system, you need to collect consistent sprint times to know if your athletes are getting faster.

Experiment to See What Works Best

If you’re curious and competitive, you’ll have a million ideas on how to make your athletes just a little bit better. Some of these ideas will be supported by science, but some will be hypothesized from anecdotal information or science that might be loosely related. The only way to know for sure whether it works is to experiment with it. Pick an athlete or a group of athletes and try adjusting their program. Be sure to track their progress so that you know how the adjustments affect them. This will lead to some pretty monumental discoveries.

One of these discoveries came to me just after I’d left university. When I played, it was a given that we followed a four-day per week lifting program. This is old school football mentality—the more the merrier when it comes to moving iron. Due to a busier schedule, my brother and I both dropped down to lifting 3x per week. We were both done with football at this point. What we noticed is that the results seemed to be even better than when we played. After looking at it, I realized that as a University football player, 4x lifting with practices and sprint/plyo sessions was an insane workload when paired with reduced sleep and probably less-than-optimal nutrition. Don’t get me wrong, I was trying to do the right things, but lifestyle and external factors weren’t always in my favor.

For my next group of football players, I dropped to 3x per week lifting. My athletes preferred it, and it was the best coaching decision I’ve made to date. Instead of constantly being overloaded and overreaching, good results came faster. My belief is that the volume was more manageable, increasing the overall quality of the work, as well as the resources available for adaptation.

Don’t Be Afraid to Make Changes

Without experimentation, I might have stuck with the style of programming that I grew up with as an athlete. Instead, I had some great athletes who trusted my judgment and I took a risk. In turn, I made some important discoveries about my ideal programming methods.

As times change, your coaching will evolve and change as well, but you can evolve faster when you have a plan. I’d hate to see you sticking with something in your program that isn’t providing results just because you’re afraid of making a change.

Just like you are in the gym every day tinkering with cueing and technique, there are sports scientists researching different variables. You never know when the next “tool” or idea is going to be discovered. We often hear coaches say that relying on evidence puts you five to ten years behind intuition. If you open your network to the people testing these theories every day, you can start acting on information before a publication finally comes out with that information in print. This can flip that cliché on its head and put you on the cutting edge.

Remember, It’s About Getting Better!

Rehabilitation, Restoration, and Reconditioning with Doug Kechijian

Freelap Friday Five| ByDoug Kechijian

Doug Kechijian is a performance-based physical therapist who specializes in treating orthopedic injuries and chronic pain. He recognizes the continuum extending from acute rehabilitation to high-level sports conditioning. His comprehensive and integrated approach helps to not only relieve one’s symptoms, but also address the underlying biomechanical and neurophysiological patterns that contribute to injury. A co-founder of Resilient Performance Physical Therapy, Doug consults with professional sports teams and military and law enforcement special mission units.

Before completing his doctoral studies, Doug was a pararescueman in the U.S. Air Force, where he trained and conducted operational missions with elite military units throughout the world. He is a nationally certified paramedic with advanced training in emergency, trauma, and wilderness medicine. In 2015, he was selected as the Noncommissioned Officer of the Year by the U.S. Air Force.

Doug received his AB in Biology from Brown University and MA in Exercise Physiology/Doctor of Physical Therapy from Columbia University. He is Postural Restoration Certified, and has undergone advanced training in joint and soft tissue manipulation, movement screening, and dry needling.

Freelap USA: You have a lot of experience coming from the military and have voiced your displeasure with the clichéd “toughness” style workouts that sometimes lead to injuries. What are your top lessons of real training from the military that can help sports versus just looking like a wannabe boot camp at 5 a.m.?

Doug Kechijian: The construct of mental toughness is too abstract to apply across multiple domains because, in practice, an athlete is either adequately prepared or insufficiently prepared. Preparation is context specific. Military special operators are not prepared to pitch in Game 7 of the World Series or to play on the defensive line in the Super Bowl, despite their ability to endure sleep deprivation and extreme physical hardship. The way in which the military influences the sporting world generally has nothing to do with training. When selecting civilian candidates with no aptitude for small unit tactics, marksmanship, parachuting ability, and other combat-related disciplines, the military must find a way to impose physical and psychological stress in a controlled, logistically manageable environment.

An athlete is either adequately or insufficiently prepared. Preparation is context specific. Share on X

The military relies on the boot-camp-style workouts adapted by many fitness professionals because it can’t effectively simulate combat stress in untrained people. Once special operations candidates have been selected, they don’t run around with boats on their heads or bear crawl for two hours anymore. Instead, they individually and organizationally prepare in a way that’s much more specific. The manner in which the military trains to exchange bullets with enemy forces is, in principle, no different than the way the cast of a Broadway show prepares for a tour. Both groups individually and collectively rehearse until they can confidently execute under “game like” conditions. Instead of unnecessarily tiring athletes with military-style workouts, sport coaches should implement these practices utilized by the military:

Truly demanding accountability to one’s teammates
Planning for a variety of contingencies
Implementing systematic training progressions and adhering to standards
Emphasizing procedure and execution instead of playing with emotion and passion
Performing frequent after-action reviews
Cultivating leadership at every level

Freelap USA: Do you have a quick thought on the more aggressive “training” we see with physical therapy; a trend that is growing with sports medicine? How can we use the two professions, sports medicine and sports performance, to get better outcomes? It seems we have a problem with roles and skills.

Doug Kechijian: The distinction between physical therapy and performance is mainly political and legal, but not always practical. As a medical provider, it really doesn’t bother me when well-educated and competent coaches perform a manual therapy technique on an athlete or supervise an exercise that addresses joint position. Fundamentally, physical therapists really just help to establish movement variability, capacity, and power—not much differently than coaches do. Both physical therapists and coaches do need to know when a movement-related problem is of structural or medical origin so they can refer out. While physical therapists are licensed medical providers, they don’t “fix” medical problems. They’re effectively movement teachers with a license to touch people and evaluate the neuromuscular system.

The distinction between physical therapy and performance is contingent upon self-awareness and knowledge. Individuals from both professions should be honest with themselves about the scope of their expertise. How can a physical therapist that doesn’t understand sprint progressions legitimately discharge a running sport athlete without first consulting another professional? Likewise, how many times should an Olympic weightlifting coach cue an athlete about technique before recognizing that one or more of the requisite joints, not motor skill, is the performance limiting factor?

In both these instances, the physical therapist and the coach both need to broaden their knowledge and/or collaborate with another professional, while respecting any legal restrictions. In a collegiate or professional setting, the distinction between physical therapy and performance is a matter of leadership. Ideally, a program manager would define the expectations of the medical and performance staffs very clearly to avoid any ambiguity. Transparency and humility ensure a seamless integration between medicine and performance, regardless of the setting.

Freelap USA: Pain science is a topic that gets kicked around, but when the rubber hits the road and we are in the clinical world, how do we listen to patients or athletes? Some problems we are seeing with injuries are because subjective feedback is often difficult to separate from chronic pain symptoms. Re-injury and “brain pain” are hard to differentiate with coaches; how do we do better here?

Doug Kechijian: Your question speaks to why pain science alone is an insufficient paradigm for sports medicine professionals. For the sake of this discussion, I’m assuming that a structural or medical red flag is not the pain generator. While coaches and medical providers should certainly value an athlete’s emotional experience, pain is too subjective and too poorly understood to serve as a primary outcome measure.

Most coaches, physicians, and therapists are not objectively measuring activity in the limbic system before and after an intervention. Sheets of paper with different relative degrees of happy and sad faces aren’t particularly productive outcome measures either. Good “pain science” is process-oriented because pain-based outcome measures are so abstruse. This process should consist of the following steps:

1. Evaluate painful movements and the constituent joints to assess the variability of the movement system. In other words, try to determine what the athlete does not do well from a positional or motor control standpoint. It’s not uncommon to hear that there are no movement absolutes. While that may be true, missing 30 degrees of passive shoulder flexion on a treatment table might be problematic for an Olympic lifter complaining of pain with overhead activity. That flexion needs to be restored to maximize performance regardless of whether limited range of motion is the symptom or the cause.

Pain is a protective response that limits the degrees of freedom in a variable system. Different sports require different degrees of freedom for optimal performance. The more adapted people become for a particular type of activity, the more delicately they navigate the tightrope between performance, health, and pain.

2. Once variability is restored with interventions (passive or active) that don’t further elicit a protective response, the athlete is systemically exposed to load, speed, and fatigue until the specific endpoint is achieved. Again, these progressions should be non-threatening to avoid additional sensitization. Pain is the body’s smoke alarm. You want it to go off when the house is on fire, not when you’re boiling water on the stove. With chronic pain, the smoke alarm goes off when there is a gross discrepancy between an actual threat and a perceived threat. Moving as aggressively and often as possible without setting off the smoke alarm helps to reset the threshold.

Using the Olympic lifter from the previous example, she might be able to substitute snatch pulls and kettlebell arm bars for the full snatch without symptom provocation en route to performing the full snatch. This paradigm requires objective tests that actually influence treatment (not screening for the sake of screening) and an expansive repertoire of regressions and progressions for an array of movement categories. No commercial screens or special tests are as diagnostic as the training process.

There is nothing wrong with chasing pain to provide relief to athletes and patients. Without an objective and systematic process that a clinician trusts, however, pain can be too confounding an outcome measure from which to gain meaningful insight. To be clear, pain education alone is not a good physical medicine.

Freelap USA: With your video working an Olympic weightlifter gaining popularity for its straightforward explanations, how do you use PRI (Postural Restoration) in a way that really demonstrates measurable change? Evidence-based medicine is trending, but is now requiring outcome data as well. How do you use the information you have to show results that are objective?

Doug Kechijian: People often develop emotional attachments to commercial exercise and rehabilitation models, and to their social media personas, which hijacks them from seeing the bigger picture. For me, PRI provides a more-integrated biomechanical and neurophysiological lens through which to evaluate movement than the method I learned in physical therapy school. PRI provides an insightful way to evaluate and maximize movement variability because its emphasizes specific adaptive patterns above the myopic structural diagnoses (none of which a non-surgical provider can actually do anything about) that tend to characterize traditional orthopedic physical therapy. PRI’s tests aren’t especially unique, but the way in which it connects various dots allows for a more efficient plan of care. PRI is a way—though certainly not the only one—to restore joint position, low threshold motor control, and variability.

Therefore, a “PRI” intervention might improve any outcome measure an evidence-based provider would use to evaluate these qualities, assuming they deem them important enough to assess. PRI is really a system of graded exposure whereby the process of progressing somebody through a series of non-threatening exercises provides information about their sensitivity and variability with respect to motor output. PRI does not explicitly tell you how to build power and capacity once sufficient variability has been restored, but you can extrapolate the biomechanical concepts it espouses to performance training.

Freelap USA: Medical imaging is either overly relied on or believed to be useless, with very little middle ground. Can you share when getting an MRI or similar makes sense with an athlete who is struggling?

Doug Kechijian: As you suggest in the question, a centrist approach is most reasonable. Imaging is probably overprescribed but it still matters. When warranted, it provides better information than that achieved with orthopedic special tests. The MRI is indeed the gold standard for structural diagnostic capability. Imaging should be prescribed more liberally in cases of severe trauma and when pediatric athletes are involved. Assuming an atraumatic mechanism of injury, MRIs are most warranted when motor weakness and significant sensory alterations exist and when motor control cannot be achieved even during low-level exercises secondary to joint instability or pathology.

Last week, I encountered a patient complaining of back pain who couldn’t actively dorsiflex his right ankle during the evaluation, even in supine. He had seen a primary care physician a few days before who told him to try acupuncture for a month. I’m not kidding. I told him that, if at the end of our session he was “passing” my normal movement and orthopedic tests but still couldn’t actively dorsiflex his ankle, he should get an MRI instead of following up with me. At the end of the session, his objective movement tests improved but his inability to dorsiflex persisted. An MRI a few days later revealed that a bony fragment was impinging in his L5 nerve. He had back surgery a few days after that.

Motion is lotion, but it doesn’t remove bony fragments from nerve roots. Share on X

In no way do I tell this story to suggest that I did anything particularly noteworthy. This referral was perhaps the easiest I’ve ever had to make. This story is worth telling because extreme aversion to imaging is just as egregious as its overutilization. This patient was a trainer who has studied under movement gurus with large internet followings. One person told him he couldn’t dorsiflex his foot because his gluteus medius is weak. Another person told him he needed to selectively strengthen his transverse abdominis. There is still a very important place for traditional orthopedic and Western medical thinking. Thankfully, this patient didn’t keep sucking in his belly button while doing band walks until he started pissing himself. Motion is lotion, but it doesn’t remove bony fragments from nerve roots.

Improving Speed in the Weight Room

Blog| ByChris Korfist

It’s easier to show that an athlete is getting stronger than to show they’re getting faster. And if the athletes are gaining weight for bulk, it’s difficult to get them faster. The concept of “bigger, faster, stronger” is a myth. It should be “bigger and stronger” or “faster and stronger in proportion to your body weight.”

So, why do we lift? What can we do in the weight room to improve speed? We can improve force, power for acceleration, and eccentric/isometric strength to improve reactivity.

At TFC4, I was lucky to see Stu McMillan’s presentation, “Strength Training for Speed.” In this article, I modify his topic and take it back a level. I want to explore why we lift if we’re trying to run faster. And what we can gain by going into the weight room instead of running.

History of Strength, Conditioning, and Running

Let’s start with a brief history as to why the drive to be more muscular exists. If you look at statues of the original Olympians, they all look like they spent time in the weight room, if there was such a thing in Ancient Greece. More contemporary athletes like Jim Thorpe—jacked. Jesse Owens—jacked. These images created an ideal that all great athletes must look jacked.

Then, in the early 1970s, NFL players started to lift weights to grow bigger and stronger to dominate their opponents. Steroids were easy to get and became the rage as players could look physically imposing with their added weight. Linemen started gaining weight with the added mass. When the trend hit the Pittsburgh Steelers and they started winning Super Bowls, it caught fire. To keep up with the Steelers, other teams followed suit. The same parallels can be drawn with the University of Nebraska.

Enter the dawn of the strength coach. Boyd Epley institutionalized the concept of the strength coach with the NSCA. Now coaches could be certified in strength training if they followed NSCA’s program. If a single coach is responsible for 100 athletes and needs to prove he should keep his job, what better way than to put every athlete on a similar program with exercises that are fairly easy to improve on. Especially when the athletes are introduced to the training table and have access to thousands of more calories than previously. Size comes easily with extra calories as do gains in the weight room.

When college coaches go to high schools and see kids they’re really not interested in, they tell the kids they need to get bigger or stronger as their excuse for not recruiting them. High school coaches then take it upon themselves to get their kids “bigger, stronger, and faster.” They follow a program that the colleges use so they can say they’re doing the same as University of X. And with the various strength journals, a coach can feel backed by research. Now a coach can fend off pesky parents and meddlesome athletic directors if they’re feeling pressure.

Where do the speed athletes come into the picture? They’re lumped into the mix of athletes who are in the weight room under the control of a strength coach and are told that lifting makes them faster. And most athletes believe their coach. And unless someone puts a clock on them, no one knows if the program is working. And they don’t put a clock on them. Most athletes run a few 40’s that matter in their career. Even to get ready for the NFL combine, many players find a speed coach.

To be fair to the strength coach, maybe we lift because it’s the best we can do with the logistics we’re given. We have no space to sprint, so we need to do something in hopes that it will make us more prepared to play. It’s like the concept of the overspeed treadmill created back when horse racing was a major sport in the US. Some owners couldn’t afford to send their horse down south in the winter. So they built a treadmill for the horses to sprint on to stay in shape for the next season. Was it effective? Possibly. It was better than doing nothing. I hope this is the scenario for most strength coaches. With the best intent, we are doing what we can with what we have.

If that’s the case, what can we do to make sure that we have some carryover to the track or field? What can we do to make our athletes more explosive and faster?

Acceleration and Force

Let’s start with acceleration. I believe a critical component of acceleration is the concept of force/kg of body mass. (Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Nequa Valley track coach and physics teacher, Einstein Fellow Emeritus, for the explanations here.) Force is the change in momentum/change in time. It is the ability to get moving as quickly as possible. It is the first two gears in a sports car. In some research, it’s 80% of the difference between elite and sub-elite athletes. It’s the ability to project the center of mass further forward so the foot strike is further behind the body and can keep more horizontal force.

Force is the component that allows athletes to change momentum over time. Share on X

There are few problems with getting bigger and stronger. As athletes get bigger and bulkier, it takes a proportionally larger force to produce the same acceleration. However, if you cannot produce a proportionally larger force, your ability to accelerate will decrease.

I know people will argue that the guys in the NFL are big. Yes, but they are the elite freaks. Their body sizes are very large but proportional. They don’t look like bodybuilders. The skill players are small boned and look big on TV because they have no body fat. Most have their mass in the center part of their body, not on their limbs. Big, heavy appendages create more momentum going in places other than forward which makes bad running form even worse.

The other problem is the lifting. All athletes need to accelerate. The great ones do it faster than the others. In fact, some of the skill players in the NFL who don’t have great running form turned in good 40 times because they got out of the hole faster. They had great projection.

Force is the component that gets us to change momentum over time. To create force we need to push our body faster. More specifically in sprinting, the key is to generate and transmit a lot of force, in the right direction, very rapidly. This is where strength becomes important. So for the squat proponents, this could be your ticket. Standing up with a large weight requires a high amount of force. Maybe.

I find putting a bar on a back not only changes posture but also takes up the slack in the system. These two factors make the squat a different exercise than an unweighted projection from the blocks. Also, the intention of the movement is not the same.

If I put a ton of weight on an athlete’s back, their goal isn’t to project their body forward but to stand up with the weight. Watch how little an athlete’s hips move when they squat. And the stance in a squat is neutral. It’s a completely balanced and stable movement. In contrast, the most important aspect of a start when running is being balanced in an awkward position. Coming out of the blocks is a purely concentric activity. Squats have eccentric and isometric moments.

Coming out of the blocks is a purely concentric action. Share on X

If we’re trying to overload the system to learn how to create more force, we may need to lift or push something heavy. So some weight room alternatives could be a trap bar deadlift or a pin squat. I think both are good for pure force production but still have the problem with slack and balance. So maybe staggered legs. I do use the pin squat as well. Shoving a heavy sled for 2 to 4 steps might be a good alternative, as suggested to me by Ken Clark.

Personally, I use a Shuttle MVP. With the athlete facing down on one knee, we load the sled to body weight, and they shove back on the plate. We measure the distance or speed with the GymAware. The best equipment for this I’ve found so far is the kBox. In a single leg squat, we load the kBox with 2 or 3 plates and do just the concentric portion of the lift. We are creating momentum from a stop, like a pin squat or deadlift, but without the limiting factor of poor posture under heavy weight and hand strength in a deadlift. The force created by the disc also remains constant throughout the movement with no compensatory acceleration.

If you want to train without muscle slack, which is created when a bar goes on your back, any single leg jump without a horizontal or vertical counter movement is great. Block jumps without a counter movement are good as well. This is where one foot goes on a 12-inch block, and the other is on the ground, and the athlete jumps from this position. The goal is to increase momentum, and jumping does that.

Power

Maybe in the weight room, we can create power. The equation for power is power= force x speed. Power is gears 3 and 4 in a race car. There is already a change in momentum, but power takes you to top speed the fastest. In the weight room, we again try to replicate this with more strength.

More advanced coaches will try to add a speed component to their lifts. This is where micro muscle labs, tendon units, and GymAware come into play. You can measure bar speed or power output. In fact, some of my most powerful athletes were the fastest at moving the bars in the weight room. To make sure you hit all parts of the force-velocity curve, follow the Triphasic programs with overspeed movements. These not only eliminate slack but also teach the body to cocontract more efficiently.

While this is a good addition to the weight room, again the issue arises that the change in momentum happens with a bar and not the center of mass. Sled pulls become a good alternative. Pulling a heavy sled forces an athlete to create more momentum in an overload situation in a scenario where the athlete needs balance, lean, and proper posture. Keeping one of the variables constant can be a measuring tool. Track how far an athlete can pull a sled in 3 to 4 seconds. Keep the sled’s weight constant. Once the athlete stops improving, add weight to see if they can cover the same distance.

Sled pulls create momentum with overload and require balance, lean, and proper posture. Share on X

If you don’t have room for a sled or a prowler or can’t use them because they might wreck the floor, try an EXER-GENIE. Want something nicer with no floor wear, try a Run-Rocket. Want the best, buy a 1080 Sprint. Not only does it record all of the runs and captures data, but it also adds an element that no other equipment does—eccentric strength.

In addition to the power needed to pull the line out to spin the drum, it has an element of eccentric strength. While most sleds continue to slide after a stroke is completed, the 1080 continues to pull back. The athlete is slightly pulled backward while in the air, and the contact creates an eccentric overload on the hamstring, forcing a more powerful contraction. My athletes have sore hamstrings after a 1080 workout. No other form of training can replicate what the 1080 provides.

Eccentric Training

Eccentric strength is another worthwhile aspect of training in the weight room. I put eccentric and isometric into the same category. When we’re lowered into a heavy isometric scenario, the weight pulls us down. In a fast eccentric, the intention is to be isometric, but the drop will force us further down. A slow eccentric means holding a weight for a set amount of time. With my athletes, we like a split squat. A fast eccentric is a drop of some kind. Again, I like landing in a lunge.

Unconventional and contrary to research, my athletes do best with 30-second slow eccentric holds. Share on X

My fastest athletes are the best at these exercises. I know it’s unconventional and contrary to the research, but my athletes do the best with 30-second holds. We drop the time when they can’t hold the weight, and this develops some grit. These two components make up two-thirds of the Triphasic training.

Supramaximal Training

Supramaximal training is incredible to take workouts to the next level. Cal Dietz started using it with his athletes who made incredible gains in strength and power. However, in a truly eccentric overload scenario, an athlete cannot come out of the eccentric. I discussed this last summer with Henk Kraaijenhoff, who was around for the design of a flywheel with Carmelo Bosco, and he explained the reason to use flywheel training is to have a safer environment.

The coach can help athletes increase the wheel’s speed by pushing the wheel and create a larger overload than the athletes could create by themselves. They have to stop the leg curl with the extra speed. Using this technique brought my work with the kBox to a whole new level. We’ll do 1 to 2 reps unassisted in a squat, 1 rep with heavy assistance (the coach pulls the cable up hard with a handle) with the athlete going down on one leg and stopping the wheel, hopefully. If done correctly, they won’t stand up from the squat.

Author’s Note

I stole the topic of this article from Stu McMillan who spoke at TFC4 about “Strength Training for Speed.” His exercises were different than the ones I present here, and I’ve focused on other things as well. Stu has much better facilities so he can run year round and wear a winter coat when it is 50 degrees. Chicago weather is not so kind to allow us to run, so I need good equipment. Nothing, however, is as good as running to develop sprinting speed.

Stu rarely speaks at clinics, which is unfortunate because he’s an excellent speaker who challenges a coach to think. Both of his presentations are available for download.
You can check him out at Track Football Consortium.

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Background: Does ‘Any Publicity Is Good Publicity’ Still Hold True?

Coaching: The Ever-Shrinking Middle Ground of Thought and Practice

Polarization: Be Wary of Extremes

A Breed Apart

The Middle Ground

Principles for Staying in the Middle

Simple Is Complex Enough

‘Buy-In’ Is Crucial

Freedom From Rigidity

Seek and Give Support

Suggested Reading

Don’t Overwhelm the Athlete

Go Back to the Basics

Prioritize the Athlete

References

My Learning Progression

Questioning the Purpose of Specific Drills

Frans Bosch

Drills for Progression

High Knee Action

Hip Hike or High Hip Action

Ankle Foot Action

Your Methods Matter

The Takeaways: Steps to Enhance Reliability

Reference

References

Read the Research and Talk to Other Coaches

Collect the Data

Experiment to See What Works Best

Don’t Be Afraid to Make Changes

History of Strength, Conditioning, and Running

Acceleration and Force

Power

Eccentric Training

Supramaximal Training

Author’s Note

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