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I love the definition of consortium: “An alliance, partnership, or coalition of people pooling resources for a common goal.”

That’s it! That’s what our consortium is all about. Our common goal? Speed.

“I recruit slow kids,” has never been said by any coach in the history of football or track. Speed is universally revered.

Finding speed and training speed are not the same. Recruiting fast kids should be the number one goal for football and track coaches. However, once you get fast kids, what are you going to do with them?

Chris Korfist and I are speed coaches seven days a week. Our lives have become a quest to improve a skill that has been a part of the human experience since ancient times. Chris and I both have deep roots in football. We have assembled an incredible lineup of speakers for the benefit of coaches and athletes in multiple sports. Without question, the Track Football Consortium is unlike any clinic you’ve ever attended.

Here are my five reasons to attend TFC-4.

Stuart McMillan of ALTIS

Stuart is best known today as a sprint coach. One of his athletes is Andre De Grasse, the 21-year-old darling of the 2016 Rio Summer Olympics where he won one silver and two bronze medals, proving himself the heir-apparent to Usain Bolt.

In addition to Andre De Grasse, Stuart has worked with the following world-class sprinters:

• Ameer Webb, USA
• Dwain Chambers, UK
• BeeJay Lee, USA
• Wilfried Koffi, Ivory Coast
• Marlon Devonish, UK
• Christian Malcom, UK
• Akeem Haynes, Canada
• Jeremy Dodson, Samoa
• Curtis Mitchell, USA
• Schillonie Calvert, Jamaica
• Jodie Williams, UK
• Ella Nelson, Australia

Stuart also is very proud to have coached Kaillie Humphries and Elana Taylor. Humphries (Canada) won gold medals in the women’s bobsled in 2010 and 2016. Taylor (USA) won silver in the women’s bobsled in 2014 and bronze in 2010.

In his early years, Stuart made his mark as a strength and conditioning coach in Calgary, Canada, and Newcastle, England. He has since spent his time working with Olympic bobsled athletes, soccer athletes, NFL football players, and professional athletes of all types.

Stuart McMillan, alone, may be enough to sell TFC-4 to coaches everywhere, but I have four more reasons to attend.

Speed: The Most Neglected Skill

Bear Bryant said, “Luck follows speed.”

Speed is a priority in football and many other sports. Football coaches love speed, but most treat it as a genetic trait, not a skill. Do some football coaches recruit speed and then neglect it?

Anyone who coaches modern football with old school methods should consider attending TFC-4. Modern football is a game played at breakneck speed. Football players of the past were big and bulky and wore big bulky pads.

Today, sprinters dominate games wearing tights and almost undetectable shoulder pads.

In a recent interview, Josh Bonhotal, Director of Sports Performance for the Purdue men’s basketball team and presenter at TFC-4, described a mistake made by coaches everywhere.

“Too often, I see coaches overemphasizing conditioning during the offseason and never developing absolute capacities of strength, power, and speed. In particular, a common mistake is to attack repeat sprint ability when you have never truly developed speed and thus sprint ability itself,” Bonhotal said.

Are some high school football players faster on Monday than Friday? Practice is a grind. Football coaches demand full speed on every rep, every day. If you’re a football coach whose team is faster on Friday, I want to meet you.

Speed is the key to modern football, but too many football practices look more like boot camp than track practice. If “playing fast” is your mantra, speed considerations should be the lynchpin of weekly practice.

Do all track coaches understand speed development? I don’t think so. Too many track coaches are addicted to lengthy practices with heavy emphasis on strength, conditioning, and general fitness. The same coaches are fearful of max-speed sprinting in practice. Some track programs never spike-up and sprint. They just run and run and run.

Too many track programs have a distance coach at the helm. Sprinters are often seen as soft and lazy because they require so much rest and recovery to grow faster. Daily practice and consistent hard work are keys to distance running. Many coaches make the mistake of holding sprinters to the same standard as distance runners.

Don’t get me started on the typical weight room program. Arbitrary lifts. Arbitrary sets and reps. Many in the weight room don’t seem to understand the difference between bodybuilding and speed development.

Many coaches are addicted to the process. When process trumps content, performance suffers. What’s more important, ten hours of terrific football practice or an amazing game on Friday night? It’s the content that matters most, not the process. There’s no magic in ten hours of practice. Content must drive the process.

I believe the majority of football players practice in a constant state of fatigue. Too many sprinters have the same experience in track. If you are interested in learning about sprinting as a skill instead of a location on a chromosome, come to TFC-4.

A Pooling of Resources and a Clash of Ideas

Don’t expect repetitive presentations. Expect a clash of ideas. Chris Korfist and Stuart McMillan are terrific sprint coaches, but they may be from different planets. At TFC-4, we welcome dissent.

I am the oldest presenter at age 57. Blake Selig, who just graduated from UCLA, is the youngest at age 22. Chris Korfist of Slow Guy Speed School is the most unique clinic speaker in the country. We have Josh Bonhotal, the Director of Sports Performance for the Purdue men’s basketball team. Five high school football coaches will talk. Three Californians will speak: Black Selig, Joel Smith of Just Fly Sports, and Coley Candaele of Vista Murrieta High School.

John O’Malley, who coached Sandburg High School to a 7:37.36 4×8, will also talk. O’Malley coached Lukas Verzbicas, who owns a 3:59.71 mile in high school. Alec Holler will share the training methods he used coaching the Illinois 2016 high hurdle champion Travis Anderson (13.59). Dan Fichter of WannaGetFast and Irondequoit High School (New York) will present at his 4th TFC.

Living in the information age, we have the opportunity to read countless articles and watch videos until our eyes glaze over. But reading and watching videos represent passive learning.

The best learning happens when we are in action, when we are in the middle of a clash of ideas. We learn when we are interacting directly with those who have something to say.

Find a championship program and visit a practice. Take a respected coach out for breakfast. Drink a beer with a coach and argue with him. Be an active learner. Attend TFC-4.

Reflexive Performance Reset

Reflexive Performance Reset™ (RPR™) is a system that athletes and coaches can use to address pain, flexibility, and performance immediately. RPR was a part of our first three consortiums. Those who attend TFC-4 will have the opportunity to participate in four RPR sessions. This year, all breakout sessions will be available in a video package so attendees will have access to every missed presentation.

Football Coaches: Evolve or Perish

Charles Darwin taught us about natural selection. Football coaches instinctively understand the need to win football games. The career of a losing football coach will be painfully short.

Despite the proliferation of entrepreneurial 7-on-7 and personal trainers, track and field remains the gold standard for verifying football talent. Running track improves football’s most paramount skills. Teams with speed and power win games.

Mark Branstad of Tracking Football reports, “Make no mistake, the dozens of D1 football coaches and recruiting coordinators we’ve met and spoken to ALL say they prefer multi-sport athletes over specialization. They ALL say they look at track data on recruits and discuss how it equates to football.”

If you want to survive, take a look at the top of the food chain. What can we learn?

The Minnesota Vikings entered this season without their starting quarterback, Teddy Bridgewater. In their second game, the Vikings lost the best running back in the NFL, Adrian Peterson. Shocking the world, the Vikings have opened the season at 5-0, the only undefeated team in the NFL at the time of this writing. Defensively, the Vikings look to be the best in the NFL. Some are comparing them to the 1985 Chicago Bears. What makes the Vikings defense so special?

So the NFL loves track athletes. How about NCAA football? Alabama is 6-0 and ranked number one at the time of this writing. Does Alabama have track cred?

Here is the breakdown of Alabama’s twenty-two starters for their October 8th 49-30 win over Arkansas according to Tracking Football.

• 17 high school track & field athletes
• 8 offensive starters ran track
• 9 defensive starters ran track
• All 4 starting defensive backs ran track
• 2 of starting defensive backs were track state champions (Fitzpatrick & Humphrey)

When looking at high schools, I chose to look at the best state based on total FBS recruits (big time scholarship football athletes). Texas, of course, is number one with 1,263 recruits in the past three years (421 per year). Florida was close with 1,204. California had 994.

Do the elite football players in the best football state in the US run track? The answer is yes. An overwhelming 72.9% of the 1,263 football recruits from Texas ran track.

Even though we’ve had coaches from over twenty states attend our consortiums, most of our audience comes from Illinois. Is football the same in Texas and Illinois?

• FBS Recruits Last 3 Years: Texas 1,263, Illinois 243
• Percent of Recruits Running Track: Texas 72.9%, Illinois 44.9%

Thanks to Mark Branstad from Tracking Football for providing these statistics.

The connection between track and football is indisputable. Speed and explosive power are the common threads of both sports.

It’s not enough to simply say, “Speed is a critical skill for football players” or “Sprinters need to improve their speed.” You can repeat the phrase “play fast” hundreds of times without changing the speed of your athletes.

How do you develop speed? How do you practice during the week so your team can play fast on Friday night? If speed is your prime objective, what does strength training look like in the weight room?

At TFC-4 we’ll pool our resources and find some answers. Then we’ll question the answers until we discover what works.

Track Football Consortium IV will be held on December 2nd and 3rd at Hinsdale High School, less than fifteen miles from both O’Hare and Midway Airports. For more information, go to TrackFootballConsortium.com and sign up today.

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

There are infinite ways to improve as a coach. However, there are a few in particular that helped me progress from a young and inexperienced coach who relied heavily on having talented athletes in order to be successful, to the coach I am today, possessing the base knowledge needed to properly develop my athletes. The two things that helped me improve the most were continuing education and the implementation of training aids into my practice sessions.

Continuing Education

Opportunities to become more knowledgeable on virtually any topic are literally right at your fingertips. From the click of a mouse to scrolling through the social media feed on your mobile device, information is available to you in a matter of seconds. Continuing education is a must-have. If you want your athletes to respect your knowledge and believe in your approach, it’s imperative to seek out opportunities to become more educated on the latest trends. Successful coaches know that taking the same approach to training year after year has become a thing of the past, as sport-specific training methods are improving rapidly and the “how to’s” are there for the taking.

Whether you are able to set aside some time to attend on-site training such as camps and clinics or to access instructional videos and articles from your home computer, becoming a more knowledgeable coach is crucial for the proper development of the athletes you work with.

There are companies and organizations all over the United States that offer continuing education, and I am personally a big supporter of taking advantage of them. While most of us find it hard to set aside a whole week, or even a just weekend, at any time during the year to attend on-site training courses, if the timing is right and you’re able to make it, I highly recommend jumping on the opportunity.

My first exposure to continuing education was simply attending a camp that some of my athletes had signed up for during my first year of coaching. I brought a notepad and stayed off to the side, just observing and taking notes. It was an eye-opener for me to see knowledgeable and experienced coaches teaching specific drills and progressions. From that point on, I was hooked.

Blogs are another great source of information. There are many different sites out there; you’re bound to find one that fits your wants and needs. It can be very beneficial to have access to constantly updated information that often comes from coaches who are in a similar position as you.

Training Aids

As a coach, I believe that it is our responsibility to ensure that our athletes are engaged in our training sessions. Therefore, we have to grab their attention to get them to focus on the task at hand. Just like students in a classroom, athletes will mentally check out as soon as instruction becomes monotonous and boring. A great way to keep things interesting is to implement training aids into your practice plans. They also add to the overall effectiveness of the training. There must be 1,001 different tools you can get your hands on to benefit your overall program, but there are a few in particular that are at the top of my list. Some are cost-effective and don’t place much of a dent in your budget, while others may take some time and effort to raise funds for in order to purchase.

Mini hurdles (some people like to call them “banana steps”) are a must-have for my practices. We use them on a weekly basis for a variety of different drills, but most specifically for the “Wicket Drill” or Max Velocity Drill. Over the years of training, I’ve found that these aids are one of the most effective ways to develop proper maximum velocity mechanics. There are articles posted online that show how to build your own mini hurdles, making them extremely cost-effective and definitely worth looking into.

Sometimes the appeal of certain types of equipment to our athletes can be enough to make using them worthwhile. For instance, young athletes love speed sleds. They see online videos of them being used and think they’re the best thing in the world. I’m not a huge believer in heavily weighted resistance when training speed, but if used properly, it can be beneficial. Perhaps most importantly, the athletes buy in and get excited to use them. When using weighted sleds of any type when training for speed, my general rule of thumb is to ensure that the resistance is light enough for the athletes to still be able to achieve the proper positioning and body angles during acceleration. (I only use speed sleds for distances up to 30m.)

I also use plyo boxes. Athletes love to compete with one another to see who can achieve the highest standing box jump, and they also look forward to the variety of other plyometric drills we do with them. Foam rollers and lacrosse balls help reduce soreness and speed up recovery. These are items I’ve seen some coaches require their athletes to purchase and bring with them daily. Medicine balls are another useful tool. They have many uses, ranging from a focus on core to plyometrics, and even acceleration.

Choose the Coaching Tools That Suit Your Needs

All in all, these were just a few examples of coaching tools that have helped me. Everyone’s situation is different, so what works for me may not work for you, and vice versa. If you’re one of the many coaches out there looking for ways to better yourself, better your program, and help your athletes succeed, I hope these recommendations help. The opportunities are endless.

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

For most consumers, the idea of monitoring movement through wearable technology is new. However, coaches, trainers, and athletes have been using lightweight sensing devices for more than a decade. While the consumer markets have focused on activity tracking and coaching, the power and accuracy available in today’s wearables are bringing lab-grade technology into the field for specialized use cases. This includes everything from tracking your golf swing to concussion sensing.

At Scribe Labs, we developed a wearable sensor for running, called RunScribe. Over the past year, we’ve amassed what we believe is one of the largest databases of “real world” run data comprised of advanced metrics, including: symmetry, flight ratio, pronation, pronation velocity, footstrike type, shock, impact Gs, and braking Gs. At last count, we’ve captured more than 45,000 runs, 200,000 miles and 245 million steps. From those runs, we’ve calculated more than three billion run metrics. So yeah, we’ve got a lot of data. With that data, we have a unique perspective on what works—and what doesn’t—when sports professionals bring wearable tech into their programs.

We’ve captured more than 45,000 runs, 200,000 miles and 245 million steps.

The Wearable Tech Opportunity

First, let’s start with the opportunity. Wearable tech offers substantial benefits. These include the following.

Real World Data

By capturing metrics “in the wild,” wearable data reflects an athlete’s natural movement. It doesn’t provide a complete or accurate picture when you’re restricted to lab environments or video analysis that can only evaluate narrow aspects of an athlete’s performance — like one or two steps of a marathon. Running on a treadmill is different than running on a trail [1,2]. With wearables capable of capturing every footstrike of a race or training program, we can get a much more accurate and nuanced view of performance, form, and risk.

Small and Unobtrusive

The last thing you want is to impede an athlete with technology. Today’s wearables can weigh just a few ounces and transmit information wirelessly. This means that athletes can focus on performance without distraction.

Low Cost = Democratization of Data

With the cost of advanced sensor tech dropping, many of these systems are priced below $200. This finally makes them accessible for everyone from high school track teams to the pros.

A Better Yardstick

When advanced metrics are accessible on a consistent basis, coaches and therapists can quickly quantify progress in performance and injury recovery, and identify areas of weakness. A couple of examples of this are:

• A coach can watch an interval session and see the entire team successfully completing intervals at pace, but some individual athletes report struggling. Looking at the data, that coach can then determine what changed in the running mechanics over the last few intervals and get a better picture of how fatigue affects those athletes. In turn, coaches can add specific drills that address those kinematic changes.
• A therapist who suspects that over pronation or high pronation velocity is contributing to a patient’s knee pain can try multiple orthotics or shoe inserts in one session. They can then collect objective data quickly and inexpensively, to see which insert may have the best result before sending the athlete out on a longer run.

Understanding Variability

Variability is a natural part of running, and understanding it is the Holy Grail. Mechanics change with pace, shoes, terrain, and fatigue. It is not unusual to see a 30% difference in a particular metric when an athlete changes terrain. Wearable technology gives an opportunity to understand variability in ways that haven’t been possible before.

For instance, while you may have previously just assumed that a forefoot striker is always a forefoot striker, this is not necessarily the case. You may shift your footstrike pattern based on the shoes you’re wearing or the terrain you’re on, or as you get fatigued over the course of your run. The understanding of variability is a huge missing piece in the way that runners are assessed and helps to make decisions on training programs and shoe wear.

Understanding Specificity

Many runners don’t understand the importance of training specificity. In order to race successfully at a given pace, an athlete needs to spend significant time training at or near that pace. Many of us that don’t train with a coach or a group will often do the same thing in training almost every session and then whine about not getting faster. Movement patterns and footstrike characteristics can be very different at race pace, as compared to an athlete’s standard training pace. If you run the same pace every day in training then, by default, that becomes your race pace. Real-world wearable data illustrates these differences and can help athletes and coaches to develop pace-specific programs.

Wearable Sports Tech Risks

Wearable technology can provide more meaningful running metrics that capture real-world performance. However, as with any technology, there are risks and reasons to be cautious.

Accuracy and Consistency

Sensor technology has become increasingly accurate with incredible processing speeds, but the devil is in the details of what you do with that raw sensor data. We’ve all heard that the accuracy of step counters and activity trackers can be off by as much as an astounding 20% [3,4]. Validating metrics through third-party research is critical to becoming a trusted tool.

Scribe Labs is one of the few wearable tech companies to publish our research and validation studies on Running Unraveled. In the rush to take advantage of wearable technology opportunities, we’ve seen a substantial range in accuracy and consistency. If coaches and athletes make training decisions based on new metrics, it’s important to research the validity of the data. Companies are always working to improve accuracy and handle outliers, but it’s important to have transparency in data accuracy and validation.

So Much Data

Did we mention that we had three billion calculated footstep metrics? That’s a lot of data, and it can be overwhelming. New metrics are less understood and there can be a learning curve to grasping their implications. Wearable technology is shortening the time frame between academic study and practical application. This is exciting, but it can also be daunting. New communities are popping up where athletes, coaches, and trainers share how they use wearable technology in their programs. Scribe Labs publishes its research and use cases on Running Unraveled.

Oversimplification

There is a deep human desire to narrow down complex information to its simplest form. In a sport like running, this can cause more harm than good. In analyzing the RunScribe community data (all three billion footsteps!), there is very little that we can generalize about running. At first glance, what seems like common sense gets twisted.

For example, to the naked eye, many world-class runners appear to be very light on their feet, so you might assume they have low impact Gs and shock. And yet, looking at data from an Olympic runner with sky-high shock values, we could see they’ve learned that higher impact values and a shorter ground contact phase help utilize elastic energy to propel them forward. However, many average runners wouldn’t be able to withstand that level of pounding for long.

There are also a number of generic “metric targets” around stride rate (180 target) or contact time (200ms) that don’t hold true for everyone, or even show consistent correlation to hitting goals. In a study done at the 2015 New York City Marathon, we compared stride rate to finish times and found almost no correlation. But we did find that flight ratio is much more likely to correlate to finish times.

Coaching

Many running wearables provide real-time feedback and coaching through a mobile app. This makes a lot of sense. “You’ve given me all this data—so tell me what to do with it!” The problem is that most of these coaching applications fall victim to the risks we’ve outlined.

The oversimplification of advice can range from being slightly useful to dangerous. Providing guidance without accounting for variability or context is a huge risk because we know there is no “one size fits all” advice for runners. For example, the Golden Rule of a 180-step rate was derived from legendary coach Jack Daniels, when he was observing middle and long distance runners at the ’84 Olympics. The key to this “rule” that is nearly always missed is that these athletes were running at race pace. We see some apps and coaches assuming that a 180-step rate should be a target at every pace. It shouldn’t.

Integrating Wearable Tech Into Your Practice: Coaches

So how are coaches and trainers using wearable technology in their practices? We’re seeing the RunScribe system used in very different ways, based on the type of user. For coaches, RunScribe data quantifies performance and progress, but also helps solve very specific issues. Here are some examples.

Establishing a Baseline

If you’ve got a healthy runner, get their data snapshot. This allows you to do an in-depth assessment, identify areas of potential concern (rapid and extreme pronation, large asymmetries, high shock values, and big differences in metrics in different shoes), and track progress. Additionally, if a runner does get injured, having a baseline assessment of their metrics can help coaches determine when they are fully recovered.

Tracking Progress Holistically

For running, it all comes down to pace. But we know that the way athletes get to pace can be very different. Traditionally, there have been limited metrics to guide a runner’s training, like cadence, pace, and heart rate. While useful, these metrics don’t provide a holistic view of performance. By tracking change against an athlete’s baseline, a coach can see if progress is being made with efficiency metrics like flight ratio and contact time, but with an eye toward maintaining consistent motion and shock metrics. Slow and steady improvements can win the race and keep a runner healthy.

Solving Problems

Coach and author, Steve Magness, wrote a case study on how he uses RunScribe data to help his athletes run a better race. By breaking down interval sessions, he can see when his athletes are hitting their rhythm, and can help train them to find their rhythm faster without exerting needless energy.

Understanding Fatigue

The implications of pace on mechanics are relatively straightforward: As running speed increases, impact Gs, pronation, pronation velocity, and flight time usually increase; whereas contact time drops because our feet spend less time on the ground. When fatigue is introduced, the dynamics change: Impact Gs can rise as pace decreases; contact time can increase even though a runner maintains pace. Understanding how a distance runner’s mechanics change to compensate for fatigue can open up opportunities for training to target areas of weakness and combat the impact of fatigue [5].

Integrating Wearable Tech Into Your Practice: Clinicians

For sports doctors and therapists helping athletes recover from injury, or adjusting mechanics, wearable technology is supplementing and—in some cases—replacing, lab-based systems like high speed motion capture and force platforms. In the case of RunScribe, data collection and analysis tends to have a faster turnaround time than traditional lab-based equipment and can be extremely helpful in gait retraining scenarios. Therapists can send their clients out into the real world and find out if changes seen in the lab are maintained outside.

Here are some examples of applications of wearable technology being used in clinics today.

Environmental Assessment

Wearable technology allows sports pros to capture client run data in the wild, establishing a baseline for a runner’s mechanics in their preferred environment—on a treadmill, track, trail, or road. Understanding the impact of variables on a runner’s stride creates deeper and more meaningful insights during the assessment process.

Risk Quantification

Advanced metrics can provide deeper insight into a runner’s symptoms. Pronation excursion and velocity, symmetry, footstrike, impact Gs, and braking Gs frequently provide a clearer picture of a runner’s issues.

Motion-Capture Enhancement

Accurate wearables eliminate the need for manual calculation of metrics from video footage. Physios and PTs can use advanced metrics to reinforce and quantify what they see in video footage. When tracking progress for injury recovery or the impact of orthotics on stride, wearables rapidly illustrate the changes in a runner’s mechanics.

Asymmetry Identification

Symmetry imbalances are a natural part of runner’s stride, but identifying substantial asymmetries—particularly in footstrike patterns, pronation excursions, and pronation velocities—help to assess the severity of issues and the effects of treatment over the course of multiple sessions.

Objective Feedback Loop Creation

The success or failure of a treatment plan is frequently based on a client’s ability to stick to the plan. Overdoing it or overexerting is common. By using wearable technology between appointment periods, clinicians can monitor the effects of the plan and also evaluate objective data to ensure the runner is sticking to the program.

Wearable Sports Tech Is Not a Threat

No wearable device is ever likely to replace the value a coach or clinician can bring to a runner. That wealth of knowledge and the ability to analyze the many components of a runner’s history and form is invaluable. By providing reliable and accurate measurement tools in the field, wearables like RunScribe put more meaningful data in the hands of sports professionals, which allows them to perform in-depth real-world assessments, track change, and quantify progress. As this data becomes more accessible and more broadly understood, we can learn to train smarter and improve treatment programs as a community.

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

Bios

John Litschert is the biomechanist and co-founder of Scribe Labs. Prior to co-founding Scribe Labs, John worked at the U.S. Olympic Training Center and at Colorado State University where his focus was on gait analysis.

Tim Clark is CEO and co-founder of Scribe Labs. Tim’s background in engineering has spanned consumer electronics to sports technology. Previously, Tim worked at Red Octane (Activision), MetriGear (Garmin), and the U.S. Olympic Training Center.

References

1. Nigg, Benno M., Ruud W. De Boer, and Veronica Fisher. “A kinematic comparison of overground and treadmill running.” Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise 27.1 (1995): 98-105.
2. Wank, V., U. Frick, and D. Schmidtbleicher. “Kinematics and electromyography of lower limb muscles in overground and treadmill running.” International journal of sports medicine 19.07 (1998): 455-461.
3. Sasaki, Jeffer Eidi, et al. “Validation of the Fitbit wireless activity tracker for prediction of energy expenditure.” J Phys Act Health 12.2 (2015): 149-154.
4. Dannecker, Kathryn L., et al. “Accuracy of fitbit activity monitor to predict energy expenditure with and without classification of activities.” Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise 43.5 (2011): 62.
5. “The Unescapable Fatigue Effect.” Running Unraveled, 1 August 2016, www.runningunraveled.com/2016/08/01/the-fatigue-effect.

All training programs should integrate Electrical Muscle Stimulation (EMS) to contract muscles forcefully. The best minds in sports performance all agree that EMS is a valuable tool, particularly at the highest levels of performance. However, professionals in all sports—particularly at upper levels—do not fully understand the applications and benefits of EMS technology. Many coaches and trainers have purchased EMS devices but have not yet integrated the technology into their regular day-to-day routine. With just a little knowledge, you can help your athletes make big improvements.

You may face two obstacles to making the best use of EMS for athlete performance and health. First, you cannot learn about EMS without holding a device in your own hands. Like any technology, you must fiddle with it and, through trial and error, find out what works and what doesn’t. With some of the stimulation units, consumers often complain that user manuals do not teach how to best use the technology. Rather than reading a book on how to use barbells, massage tables, or treadmills, your own determined practice can find the best application for any tool in question.

The second obstacle to using EMS regularly to aid athlete development, recovery, and rehabilitation is that many individuals feel that only certified physical therapists can use it. Your initial caution is commendable, but I can see no good reason why only physical therapists are best qualified to use EMS on athletes. EMS contracts muscles forcefully. Isn’t this what training athletes do themselves on a daily basis in the weight room, on the track, and on the field? Coaches and strength professionals understand the principles of progressive loading, recovery, and work-to-rest ratios, and the careful integration of multiple training elements in a complementary fashion.

These are the same principles required to master EMS technology with an athlete. Any coach that is comfortable with implementing effective conventional training programs should have no problem understanding the value and applications of EMS for their athletes. We must not take the attitude that coaches are children, not to be trusted with such sophisticated technology. People are using smartphones on a daily basis with technology that is a thousand times more sophisticated than a simple EMS circuit board.

But before everyone rushes out and purchases a new EMS unit, we should talk more about how it can optimize the preparation of your athletes. There are infinite reasons to use the technology on a daily basis, particularly in professional sport, where the schedules are ambitious and the wear-and-tear on athletes is significant. Remember, we are all breathing, walking, and talking because of our brain’s ability to send electrical impulses throughout all areas of our body in an exceptionally coordinated fashion. Without electricity, we would cease to be thriving organisms.

Although electricity can be considered a hazard, in the right amounts and forms, it can be used effectively to further our health and well-being. In some instances, innovative medical researchers, like Dr. Bjorn Nordenstrom, have done truly amazing things. Dr. Nordenstrom successfully used electricity in the treatment of cancerous tumors. While we do not expect all EMS users to solve the world’s health problems, we can expect to find simple and effective ways to improve muscle function with some straightforward guidelines.

Here are six reasons why the sporting community—both competitive and recreational—should embrace EMS technology on a broad scale.

Research has proved that EMS works. Positive results support the use of EMS for strength enhancement and performance gains. Like any training tool, you will achieve optimal results when using the technology appropriately in terms of specific settings, timings, frequency, and overall volume of work. In cases where EMS did not produce performance gains in trained athletes, the researchers did not use the technology appropriately in conjunction with a well-organized training program. This is the key. Simply slapping on the pads and turning up the current is not enough. You must have clear goals and objectives for EMS, as well as a plan for how and when to use the technology.

Coaches maximize EMS benefits when they integrate the units with well-planned conventional training. Many research studies say the use of EMS alone, at best, provides the same benefit as voluntary training; that EMS is no better than regular training methods. Because EMS requires no central nervous system input, it will not fatigue the brain of an already over-taxed athlete. The combination of conventional training and EMS provides a significant advantage over either method alone because the cumulative effect of both methods provides a boosted training scenario with less energy cost to the athlete. This is a win-win proposition, especially if the stresses of life and training over-stimulate an athlete’s nervous system.

EMS delivers a clean, complete muscle contraction. Our athletes are over-inundated with excessive “noise,” but not from iPods or fashionable headphones. Accumulated stress—both physical and psychological—can not only create excessive fatigue, but also interfere with athletes’ thought processes and autonomic signals within their brains and bodies. If we rely solely on voluntary strength training to prepare athletes, we are selling them short. Using an EMS, an athlete can contract a muscle group more completely and cleanly than by lifting weights. EMS bypasses the “noise” and works directly on the muscle to get a complete contraction. This is particularly important when targeting fast-twitch muscle fiber, which you can preferentially target with the correct stimulation frequency.

If you plan to use EMS as a sole means of eliciting strength gains in muscle, you can be certain you will get a more effective muscle contraction—albeit using an appropriate amount of current—than when training three times per week. However, I do not recommend that you rely exclusively on EMS for your strength training unless you are using it for rehabilitation purposes, or you are trying to reduce wear-and-tear on a specific joint structure. EMS works best when integrated with a conventional training program that requires a coordination component for more efficient transfer of the training adaptation. You will achieve the best results by supplementing conventional voluntary training with EMS sessions in proper proportions, supported by general conditioning and recovery.

Using EMS makes us more intelligent coaches and rehabilitation professionals. Not only does the use of EMS make us think more about the recruitment characteristics of skeletal muscle, but it also helps us to diagnose problems related to fatigue and injury in both the peripheral and central nervous systems. When an Olympic weightlifter suffered a significant knee injury, voluntary strength training was not restoring the atrophied quadriceps muscle. In essence, the lifter’s brain was not allowing the muscles to contribute fully to the movement of the knee joint in basic squatting and pulling motions. Because the message from brain to muscle was not getting through, inhibition was dominating the program. Even when my team started using EMS, the amount of current required to contract the quadriceps muscles on the injured leg was two to three times that of the healthy leg. As a diagnostic tool, the EMS unit also indicated when the inhibitory response was dissipating, and larger volumes of conventional exercise could be successfully reintegrated into the athlete’s training program without re-injuring the knee.

The reconditioning specialist, Bill Knowles, brought up a good point that all peripheral injuries are also “brain” injuries. A muscle injury damages the connections between mind and body and thus disrupts the brain. EMS helps to repair those connections and work through the inhibitions created by the brain’s self-imposed protective mechanisms. In the case of the Olympic weightlifter, the use of EMS was essential in moving past the obstacles and inhibitions to provide maximal recruitment of that muscle group on the injured leg, particularly since we could strengthen the quads without stressing the knee joint. Once recruitment patterns were re-established and, the quadriceps muscle was fully restored through both isolated EMS use and superimposed EMS training, the knee did not present any further problems for the athlete.

In cases of both fatigue and injury, the signals between the brain and the body are easily disrupted. EMS can not only restore, but also enhance those connections. Additionally, EMS can help assess the neuromuscular system by monitoring the amount of current required to contract the muscles in question. As the neuromuscular system improved through the rehabilitation process, less and less current was required to attain a full contraction. Monitoring the levels of intensity on the EMS unit can show the progress of muscle rehab (and the central nervous system) in injured states.

EMS facilitates recovery. In tight schedules, when athletes might not have the time or energy to implement recovery and regeneration protocols, EMS is an extremely useful tool. Active recovery protocols that encourage circulatory mechanisms within the body help facilitate a more complete and expedient recovery. Optimally, athletes can implement tempo running, but sometimes stationary bike intervals or swimming-pool exercises can hasten recovery. Because not all situations are optimal, other tools can aid recovery. Athletes can take the EMS units home after training and apply them while riding home (not while they are the driver, of course), or when sitting down and reading or surfing the web. Typically, an athlete places the EMS pads on larger muscle groups and employs a pulsing program not only to promote circulation, but also to loosen muscle and reset tone.

EMS is effective in situations where athletes must travel. Long trips and waits in airports can be not only exhausting, but can also lead to the stiffening of muscles and joints. If athletes perform periodic recovery protocols with an EMS unit, they can keep their bodies supple and well-maintained, in terms of oxygen circulation and the removal of waste products. Athletes report feeling significantly better after using the EMS unit on their trip, and some sleep better when they arrive at their destination.

It is also important to note that athletes using maximal strength, power, and speed protocols with EMS have reported feeling more recovered the next day in terms of muscle looseness and joint mobility. EMS has the ability to essentially reset muscle tone and provide athletes with not only the means to contract muscle more efficiently, but also to relax and de-contract muscle more effectively. This benefit is critical in explosive cyclical movements, such as sprinting, where the nervous system is required to contract and de-contract muscle in a very short amount of time, at very high speeds. EMS can help these athletes minimize muscle stiffness, cramping, and general peripheral fatigue.

Current portable EMS devices are exceptionally convenient. My first EMS was a large device that fit in a medium-sized suitcase. EMS devices now are slightly bigger than a smartphone and can pack a pretty good punch. The portability of the devices, combined with easy-to-use adhesive electrodes, make them a strength training and recovery tool that you can carry in your pocket. As mentioned previously, the travel benefits of EMS are obvious. Having one in every athlete’s gym bag is an obvious solution for getting that extra edge, particularly if you don’t have an entourage of support staff to help you with recovery and massage. If Bill Gates wanted a personal computer on every person’s desk, why can’t every athlete have a personal EMS unit in their equipment bag? The portability, power, and efficacy of these devices are indisputable.

My recent conversations with a number of professional sports teams (NFL, NBA, and NHL) confirm that athletes who rely on their bodies for their income realize the benefits of EMS. The schedules and demands of the regular season are so stressful that every athlete needs help with their recovery and the maintenance of strength. EMS provides a simple, convenient solution to this problem.

It is important to note that not all EMS devices are created equal. Less-expensive EMS devices are available online in the $100-$300 range. While it may seem that this is a cheap way to get into the market and still get the benefits of electrical stimulation, there are some significant shortcomings with the cheaper units in terms of power, flexibility, and build quality.

I chose to work with Globus Sport and Health technologies on their SpeedCoach series of muscle stimulators because they have very robust and powerful units. Their lead sport technology engineer, Giovanni Ciriani, created programs and protocols that work with athletes. We work iteratively to determine which programs yield the best results with athletes in different sports, and we make changes to accommodate their needs. In the last few years, we have developed programs and protocols that no other company has in their units. Because we work with athletes on a daily basis, we have the ability to monitor progress and make changes where necessary. This information is funneled back to Giovanni at Globus, and he makes the necessary adjustments to waveforms, frequencies, pulse widths, and timings.

My hope is that more and more coaches and athletes recognize the benefit of EMS technology in the next few years. The technology has not changed much since the 1970s, but we have made great inroads into the development of the protocols surrounding the technology. This is where the big advances will be made: The optimization of protocols and the most efficient integration with conventional methods. Such advances can only be accomplished by working with EMS and athletes on a daily basis. So don’t wait any longer—get yourself a high-quality EMS unit to advance your knowledge and improve the development of your athletes.

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

Dr. John P. Sullivan is a Sport Scientist and Clinical Sport Psychologist. He has more than 20 years of clinical and scholarly experience, and he has worked with the same team in the National Football League (NFL) for the past 16 years, coordinating clinical care and sport science.

Freelap USA: Clinical mental health has focused mainly on symptoms stemming from concussions in sport, but depression and other challenges of the human condition affect athletes just as much as the rest of the population. Can you go into the reason that the profession of psychology should move towards a compass model instead of being typically on the bottom of many organizational totem poles? The brain is the top organ, yet it is often left until the end of any investigation into complex problems.

John Sullivan: What I think you are asking is what the barriers are for sport psychology to be optimally and fully integrated into sport. First, I would say that this question certainly has cultural context for each sport organization, so there is not just one model for all organizations. That being said, sport psychology and the brain sciences continue to take a one-down position in sport which is—in part—due to a lack of education about the brain and a few lingering myths in sport.

In general, we tend not to learn much about the brain in our education systems. In fact, unless someone has specialized in the study of the brain, there would be very little working knowledge about its impact on our daily lives. What is even more concerning is our lack of knowledge about brain health as the driver of our quality of life. That is one of the many reasons why Chris Parker and I have written the book, The Brain Always Wins (release date October 2016), to assist in closing this gap in knowledge.

To be clear, when I use the term “brain,” I am not speaking of “the mind,” as they are very different scientifically. That is, the brain is our organ that drives eleven other sub-systems, and the mind is our consciousness, which science (to date) does not fully understand.
The first myth in sport that often acts as a barrier is the belief that performance and health are separate concepts or processes. The evidence is clear that our ability to perform in any context is based upon our health, and this starts with the brain.

The second myth is that “mental toughness” and “grit” are sufficient, or even protective, barriers against the actuality that sport is trauma. The actual evidence about mental toughness and grit is that they have little to no scientific validity. The importance of context is ignored (most significantly, psychophysiology) and, when used as blunt tools or terms (which they often are, such as an athlete/individual being blamed for not being “tough” or “gritty” enough), we are ignoring the point that performance is comprised of many factors.

Mental toughness and grit have the illusion of validity, and people have belief bias concerning the terms because they seem to make sense. However, in actuality, they are overstated concepts that lack validity. The scientific truth is that the brain is wired to survive—so performance and survival are not about toughness or grit, and instead are the result of training, which allows for adaption, and eventual evolution.

The third myth that shifts us away from including the brain in sport is that we desperately want to believe that sport and high performance are achieved via a simple formula, consisting of engaging in repetitions or perhaps having the right genes. However, the reality is that high performance is a complex multifactorial process that includes the brain every step of the way.

Although I think that psychology as a field can do more to advocate for incorporating brain health, it is also the case in sport that we critically need to work with others in sports medicine and sport science in a transdisciplinary fashion. This would require genuine collaboration with licensed and properly trained professionals, including licensed sport psychologists who have completed proper training in sport. It is also key that sport organizations advocate for these sorts of positions as a priority.

Freelap USA: Many sports technology companies try to ride the excitement of pro sports for bigger markets because venture capital (VC) money wants a big return on investment. This has left coaches feeling used or having management invest in the wrong technology because science—specifically biology—was out of the equation. Can you share how teams can invest into sports technology wisely, as nothing is perfect but it must be valid and accurate/precise enough to be effective?

John Sullivan: Since sport technology is a free market system, it can be difficult to differentiate what is actually “science” versus “marketing.” Furthermore, with the technology we have available to us at this time, we can measure almost anything. So, one way to answer your question is to provide critical questions that should always be considered when utilizing sport technology:

• Is there any chance of harm?
• Why and what are we using the technology to assess/measure?
• What are the ultimate goals?
• Who will be handling the data? (e.g., How are you protecting the data and who has the competency to interpret it?)
• How will the data be used, as well as what validation research has been conducted on the technology itself (e.g., construct, signal, laboratory, and ecological validation)?

In the September edition of the International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance, you can find a commentary on this topic. “Wearable Technology for Athletes: Information Overload and Pseudoscience” was a project that I had the pleasure of working on with Dr. Shona Halson from the Australian Institute of Sport, and Dr. Jonathan Peake, Lecturer in the Faculty of Health, Queensland University of Technology.

Freelap USA: Injuries and burnout are real at lower levels and continue up to the pro levels. What do you feel is a great resource for coaches to help with the retirement of elites and even very successful athletes at lower levels? Giving up a sport forcefully because of age or injury is rough, and this process is often neglected with sports psychology because athletes usually come for help with cliché problems like “choking” and other similar things. What are good resources for this?

John Sullivan: Retirement from sport—either by choice or otherwise—comes with inherent challenges and health concerns. There has been a great deal of psychological research conducted in this area (e.g., 95,000 scientific articles on retirement from sport, and 2,090,000 scientific articles on psychological factors related to injuries (1)). A critical issue, considered another way, is the extent of involvement and support within organized sport with the goal of helping athletes transition from sport (e.g., by providing education and career planning), as well as having a focus on the integration of well-established psychological science in rehabilitation from injuries. Although some transition and planning programs exist, they are often not based on best practices or even sufficiently funded. A good starting place for learning more about this is the International Society for Sport Psychology’s (ISSP) “Position Stand: Career Development and Transitions of Athletes” (2).

We can all be doing a better job for this effort by asking for such programs within our organizations, including a team of properly trained professionals who can support and facilitate care. Furthermore, sport coaches and strength and conditioning practitioners can engage with continuing education to increase their awareness and competency regarding identification of issues, and thus know when to refer to licensed psychologists if/when brain health issues arise.

Another resource comes from the National Athletic Trainers’ Association (NATA), which has led a multi-association call for increased competency (3,4). They will soon also be offering further continuing education focused on brain/mental health.

Properly executed sports medicine and sport science require collaborative efforts, so increasing our working knowledge of other areas will allow us to increase the health of those we serve. Noting that health is the foundation of high performance ensures that talent is protected and allowed to develop.

Freelap USA: Sleep is a very popular topic of discussion, but few teams actually assess sleep beyond subjective questionnaires. Could you show how teams need to slow down and audit the process instead of skipping over things and giving superficial advice? Many athletes need more than casual suggestions like setting their alarms differently, darkening their rooms, or changing mattresses. Sleep is often disturbed by overreaching issues or personal problems like financial and family stressors, and athletes are human. Could you share anything you think teams are missing the boat on?

John Sullivan: There is no single panacea, but I would say that the lack of proper assessment, interpretation of data, and tailored, systematic programming with athletes are all keys with regard to sleep.

From my observations across a range of populations and cultural contexts—e.g., youth to elite sport, and individuals on different continents—I think that sleep is often misunderstood and underestimated. What I see with regard to sleep being misunderstood has to do with proper human intelligence/expertise, programming, and tools. The work needed to educate individuals about sleep is varied and complex, and this challenge is typically intensified when dealing with athletes who have a tremendous amount of human variation and demands on their systems. What I have observed with regard to programming is that sleep is either being ignored or there is no systematic approach to enhancing sleep behaviors. The belief is often that providing information alone will lead to the desired changes. Although providing information is an element of behavior change, it is far from sufficient to facilitate lasting change.

Importantly, tools that are used to evaluate sleep have often not been properly evaluated for their reliability and validity, so they offer little to no value. In some cases, where the tools/assessments are scientifically appropriate, the recipients of the data are not trained and therefore unable to translate the data accurately, so no value is added even still. Sleep is any organization’s No. 1 performance enhancer because of its protective factors for the brain and, ultimately, its impact on optimal performance and brain health.

Freelap USA: Fatigue is always seen as a neuromuscular factor, which oversimplifies the situation into a weak muscle or lack of specific exercises. While strength and conditioning is clearly a prime variable, general fatigue from meetings, emotional strain, and countless human components are also factors. Can you go into some fresh ideas that coaches can tap into regarding fatigue without getting too esoteric? Right now, we are seeing a lot of pseudoscience creating confusion here. It would be great to know how we can manage fatigue better without just doing the known physiological monitoring.

John Sullivan: A helpful way to think about fatigue is to understand that our brain is very focused on energy management because it stores very little of its own energy. Therefore, if we do not establish habits that provide energy balance, our central nervous system (CNS) reacts by shifting into varying degrees of survival. This, in turn, reduces essential adaptation throughout all of our systems and sub-systems (e.g., enteric nervous, cardiac, endocrine, skeletal, and neuromuscular systems).

This domino effect emphasizes the crucial need for systematic assessment of a performer’s habits through examination of strengths and areas for development—the outcome of which should be a developed plan that increases readiness and resiliency. Everything we do loads the brain, thus impacting our energy balance: Therefore, an ecological assessment (e.g., in situ review of daily activities) is key to assisting a performer and protecting their ability to recover and, in turn, increasing their readiness, resiliency, adaption, and evolution.

Similar to the points raised above regarding implementation of tangible plans related to sport technology, injury, and sleep, there is no single answer or “6:00 abs” response to share. Instead, it is critical for athlete success and care that we take a comprehensive and collaborative approach to proper assessment, interpretation of data, and tailored, systematic programming based upon sound scientific principles.

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

References

1. Google Scholar search conducted 9/8/2016
2. Stambulova, N., Alfermann, D., Statler, T. and Côté, J. “ISSP Position Stand: Career Development and Transitions of Athletes.” International Society for Sport Psychology (2009).
3. Neal, T.L., et al. “Inter-Association Recommendations for Developing a Plan to Recognize and Refer Student-Athletes With Psychological Concerns at the Collegiate Level: An Executive Summary of a Consensus Statement.” Journal of Athletic Training. 48(5) (2009). doi: 10.4085/1062-6050-48.4.13.
4. Neal, T.L., et al. “Interassociation Recommendations for Developing a Plan to Recognize and Refer Student-Athletes With Psychological Concerns at the Secondary School Level: A Consensus Statement.” Journal of Athletic Training. 50(3) (2015). doi: 10.4085/1062-6050-50.3.03.

Team Culture

A few years ago, I decided to take our girl’s track and field program a step beyond workouts to become something truly special. With the help of my coaches and team captains, we came up with several ideas to improve the team’s sisterhood.

Big Sister Little Sister Program

One of the first things we implemented was the Big Sister Little Sister program. Track and field is one of the few sports kids don’t experience in elementary and middle school outside the scarce physical education (PE) track unit. We felt it was important for our rookies to bond with teammates during week one.

The big sister’s job is to help a rookie on the team through the tough first couple of weeks. They partner-stretch their little sisters during warm ups and help teach them the weight room routines during strength training.

After the first few weeks, they buy their little sisters personally decorated water bottles to bring to practice and track meets. The water bottles are handed out during our Red Carnation Ceremony. The Red Carnation Ceremony is a bit of an initiation where the big sisters fully welcome their little sisters by giving quick speeches about how excited they are for their little sisters to join them on the path to greatness.

At the Red Carnation Ceremony, each new athlete receives a flower from me. I address the new athletes as a group, officially welcoming them to the program. I chose the red carnation because red is our high school’s main color as well as the color of my college and fraternity. In my fraternity, TEKE, our flower was the red carnation which we gave to fraternity sweethearts. I’m a sentimental chap, and I always wax nostalgic at the Red Carnation Ceremony.

Team Theme Days

We stole this idea from Jim Lohr of Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School. The morning before most track meets, the girls dress up in goofy ways to celebrate the coming day’s meet. This is always meant to be fun and is never hazing kids.

Our go to themes are Dress Nice and Tennis Shoes, Pride & Pig Tails, and Twins. When other students see our kids dressed in a unique way, it gives our athletes the chance to tell their classmates about the upcoming competition.

We developed Dress Nice and Tennis Shoes to keep the kids from wearing outrageously dangerous stilettos or sandals that harm young people’s feet and ankles. Pride and Pig Tails is a fun way to dress up in school colors, face paint, accessorize with ribbons, etc. Twins is a day where the big sister and little sister dress the same. Girls who don’t have little sisters team up with a pair of girls to form triplets.

The girls decided Twins day was a nice way to honor my wife, who lost two of our triplet babies in a difficult pregnancy. Two of our daughters didn’t make it past in utero to this world, but this doesn’t mean their lives or anyone who loses a child to miscarriage should be diminished. The kids tend to do this team theme during the infertility week.

To say there are very few dry eyes would be the grandest of understatements. Kids will surprise you in unique ways. As heavy and sad as this seems, it allows me to share our story and celebrate the miracle that is our child, Isabelle, who lived. The message I try and share with the kids is life can be tough, but with the faith and love of a friend, we can overcome the most difficult things in life.

Team Breakfasts

We hold Team Breakfasts on the morning of a track meet. It’s hard to control what happens during the twenty-one to twenty-two hours your athletes are away from you. By providing a team breakfast, we give the kids a chance to have at least one healthy meal on the day of their event.

Our kids meet in my room which allows me to touch base with each of them before the meet for special instructions, injury issues, event changes, etc. The kids are responsible for bringing the snacks, plastic items, and drinks. Each week, we choose a different group of kids to bring the goodies. While we’re snacking, I play an Olympic or World Championship track meet highlight reel on my overhead projector. It’s fun and gets the kids inspired. Once we get a large enough number of athletes together, we take a group picture to post on social media.

Reward Systems: All World List, PR Bar, and Interval Cards

Pundits criticize rewarding kids for fulfilling basic expectations. On the other side of the spectrum, old school coaches rarely give their athletes a complement let alone a trophy or prize. Even the grandmaster of sport psychology says athletes should find intrinsic motivation, and extrinsic rewards don’t create the type of motivated athlete we are looking for long term.

Throughout the year, I do like to do small things for athletes of different abilities to help motivate them. It creates many small moments of positive energy that can be contagious to the rest of the team. Kids also become more aware of their progress.

All World List

When I first started coaching, I found it crucial to uncover as much of the girl’s track and field history I could. I wanted to create an accurate top ten list for our record book. Thankfully the few years before I started coaching, the leadership kept great records.

But as I worked back to the mid-1990s, I had no clue what former athletes ran, jumped, or threw in the regular season. I even went so far as to enter the Missouri State High School Athletics Association’s vault to look at the old state media guide and searched for Parkway Central state qualifiers. Sadly, I only found a handful of athletes.

I realized a historical top ten list would always be incomplete. At this point, I changed direction and created the All World List.

The All World List is different from a top ten. Instead of adding names to an increasingly difficult top ten list, I created a standard based on numbers and distances athletes must hit to be placed in Parkway Central’s track history books.

In the 200 dash, for example, an athlete must run under 28.00 seconds. The trick to the All World List is that the standards must require a high enough performance that most team members can’t hit the numbers without some talent or work. On the other hand, the standards need to be attainable to provide early motivation for athletes entering the program.

After a major meet, it’s always fun to add names to the list. I hope these lists become so long that our yearly track and field media guide will become hundreds of pages long. I always let the kids know when they’ve made the list and where they rank in school history. It’s so much fun to see the kids climb up the list during their school careers.

PR Bar

After reading Coach Guthrie’s book from his tenure at UW-Lacrosse, I implemented a Personal Record (PR) Bar reward system. Any time an athlete gets a PR, they earn a candy bar. Every couple of meets, we buy bags of individually wrapped candy bars to reward dozens of new PRs. I like the idea because even the slowest or least talented kid on the team will get many PRs throughout the season.

Occasionally giving the kids a candy bar also sends the message that it’s ok to enjoy sweets or treats. I always tell my kids, “It does not matter what the scale says, instead it’s about how you look and feeling in your clothing.”

We hand out the bars near the beginning of practice during our team huddle. We have all the athletes who hit a PR at the previous meet stand. Once all the PR athletes are standing, we go around from left to right and have the athletes tell us how many PRs they got and the mark they hit in the event.
Each PR gets a Colt Clap. A Colt Clap is one loud unified clap by the kids. The single clap quickens the time it takes to recognize all the PRs and limits wasted time if you have a long training session planned for the day.

Interval Card

I developed the idea for an interval card while watching Willy Wonka when the characters found Golden Tickets. We give the interval card to an athlete who has done something truly special in practice or at a meet. An athlete can use the ticket to sit out an interval during any workout the rest of the season.

It’s amazing how much harder a sprinter will work for the chance to get out of an interval in the future. Having this option also lets a kid who needs a break to take one without feeling guilty. What I find really humorous, though, is that some of the athletes never cash in the ticket.

To use this reward effectively, specific rules must be followed, or the interval card could be abused.

• I never allow sprinters to use the card on the longest interval in practice. Speed endurance is an important component of success on the track. This sends the message that everyone has to do the longer and tougher intervals when scheduled.
• An athlete can only use one per practice. I have key workouts in the middle and late part of the season, and I don’t want my athletes to hoard the cards to miss an entire practice. A complete absence from practice disrupts our training plan.
• If an athlete misses a practice and the absence is unexcused, the sprinter cannot use the card for a week. They don’t lose the card, they just lose the right to use it for a week.

Social Media

A couple years ago, my assistant coach told me about a team that used social media to promote their program to a large audience of alumni and parents. At that moment, I decided we could enhance our presence on social media by increasing the number of weekly updates by our coaches.

Before, during, and after a track meet, it’s now common to hear about our team’s accomplishments during the week. Getting the word out and spreading the love is always good for the kids, parents, and track alumni to see. #bantavsweather is a funny ongoing social media battle I have with good ole Mother Nature on a private Facebook page.

I love the way new and old athletes and our coaches share their love of the sport. It can be highly entertaining to see a former Parkway Central athlete and state record holder yelling, “Pay the MAN!” and former athletes making plans for road trips to see their old team achieve state dreams.

Connecting the past, the present, and the future is a valuable way to build energy and community for the program. When and where possible, create an easily accessible social media homepage dedicated to your program for people to visit, share, and add to the positive energy. Social media can also help you to communicate last minute changes and adjustments to your athletes and a much needed quote of the day to help steer the conversation at practice during the team huddle.

Secret Track Buddy

Secret Track Buddy is a game like Secret Santa. During the season, I take the team roster and put everyone’s name in a hat. Once we start the game, the secret buddies have a week and a half to do three sweet things for their buddy. These do not need to cost money and can range from a personal poem to a gift card to St. Louis Bread Co.

We usually schedule the Secret Track Buddy reveal the day of a track meet. The kids have a chance to hand off their last gift at our team breakfast or before our warm up for an evening track meet.

Six Recruiting Ideas

Create communication between the high school and middle school programs and PE departments. You can do this several ways. For example, post a bulletin board in the middle school highlighting your team’s accomplishments.

Our middle school PE program does one track and field unit. During this unit, teachers record each performance and reward the top performers in each class. I receive this list every year and target the kids who I believe can help us.

The middle school also has a yearly intramural track and field meet with the middle schools in our school district. Each year I go to this meet so I can see the kids in action.

Have a middle school teacher on your coaching staff. This isn’t always easy because middle school usually has a different daily class schedule that conflicts with practice time. But if you can sacrifice having them at the beginning or end of practice, they can help build relationships, spread the word, and open the door to the possibility of running track in high school.

Every year, I send each of 300-plus incoming freshmen a letter highlighting our program’s accomplishments. I also mention the benefits our sport provides young people–goal setting, fitness, improving their main sport, and participation. As we all know, there is no bench in high school track and field.

For the best prospects in the high school, I write each a personal letter discussing how they could help improve our program. I mail this to the athletes’ parents. I also bold face the personal part of the letter. This is a little trick that creates an opportunity for the parents and kids to have a positive conversation about our sport and to receive a nice letter complimenting them.

Hold a team informational meeting and post fliers before the season starts. I like to send the letters six weeks before the season starts and hold the informational meeting a couple of weeks later. We talk about team expectations, rules, and complete a lot of the paperwork.

After the meeting, we post fliers highlighting action pictures of our athletes. The fliers include important information about the season, including the start date.

Spread out the events mentioned above to stay in the kids’ thoughts and, at the same time, avoid becoming a wall of noise.

Offer an offseason conditioning program. Each state has different rules on how many days you can meet and what things you can do during conditioning. In Missouri, we’re lucky because the rules allow us to get our kids into shape.

This program should be open to everyone and any sport. If done correctly, it will prepare your kids for success. It may also help you attract athletes who enjoy the time you spend with them so much they’ll join your team in the spring.

The time spent in the offseason can dwarf the time spent coaching during the regular season. The time commitment is intimidating but, in the end, it’s well worth the effort.

If all else fails, personally introduce yourself to a talented kid, shake their hand (very important), look them in the eye, and tell them how much you would enjoy the chance to coach them.

Promoting the Program: Coaches are Cheerleaders

Coaches have to be the biggest cheerleaders for their kids. Before our season starts, I plaster the walls in our building with large laminated color posters of current athletes in previous track meets. These posters can be very expensive, so each year I make about eight to add to the collection.

Before our school switched how we made announcements, I would have a detailed track and field statement after all track meets. We would announce the team score, varsity event winners, and any records set in the process. Spring sports tend to be forgotten amid the end of year responsibilities, and I like to keep them on people’s minds.

For every kid who’s awarded an All-State Track, XC medal, or becomes a Division I athlete, I hang a framed black and white picture on my wall among the social studies maps, presidents, and other famous people I have displayed in my room.

I also like to display the trophies we win in my room for potential athletes to see. Since my room is now getting crowded, I’ve decided that my assistant coaches will display, on a rotating basis, any upcoming trophies we win other than the conference, district, or state trophies. Sharing these trophies is another way to positively reinforce our program to athletes in places other than my classroom.

Speaking of assistant coaches, it’s important to build a group of diverse but popular personalities inside the school. There are always kids who won’t have a relationship with you. Other staff members can help bring these kids into the program or help retain them from a previous season. My current staff is the best group I’ve coached with, and we grow closer each season. My assistants have done an outstanding job promoting our program and pushing our athletes to their potential.

Kids Spell Love as T.I.M.E.: Winter Conditioning and Summer Track

Attitude reflects leadership. If you want your kids to commit 100%, you can’t give them 50%. This means you’re there on cold winter days and during hot summer months. You ride the bus. You’re the first person to the track and the last one to leave. Even when you’re ill, you show up as long as you’re not contagious.

Athletes need to train all year to become great. This doesn’t mean you blast their legs out all year long. Each season should have a different point of emphasis to build toward the important championship phases of indoors, outdoors, and cross country seasons.

For more on team culture, see my podcast with Joel Smith sponsored by SimpliFaster

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

This past summer, I was lucky enough to spend some time with JB Morin. I was excited because I am always interested in learning more about acceleration. In my typical fashion, I immersed myself in the topic to the point of borderline OCD. I bought a 1080 Sprint to experiment with my athletes. Then, about a year ago, JB published his paper on acceleration, “Sprint Acceleration Mechanics: The Major Role of Hamstrings in Horizontal Force Production.”

One part of his paper that caught my attention was the displacement difference between the best and worst runners. Or, in other words, how fast each athlete got to his first step. If you study Frans Bosch’s “Strength Training and Coordination: An Integrative Approach” (and it is a book to study, not read), muscle slack and co-contraction principles can really help with this. I will talk more about this in another article.

Another point that interested me was about power: It is not how much horizontal power an athlete can produce, but rather the effectiveness of the power he uses. Morin uses a unit that he calls the Drf, or the decrease of effectiveness of horizontal power. His claim is that a good starter only loses 5% of the effectiveness of his horizontal force production as he runs toward top end speed. A slower athlete will lose 10%. To improve the effectiveness of this force, he recommends heavy sled runs. However, sometimes the body may not be ready for a heavy sled run, or even a light one, either. The effectiveness may break down due to biomechanical issues.

I was sent a series of videos to review because the athlete in them seemed to stagnate on his progression. I don’t know him and I have never seen him run in person. As I watched the video clips I was sent, I thought about his Drf. If I weighed a sled for him to pull—heavy or light—I thought the results would be minimal, due to some of his movement patterns or lack thereof. I responded with a breakdown of what I saw in the start. After all of the feedback I received from my Building a Champion article, I thought I would do the same with this athlete.

Acceleration: Toe Off and Ankle Stiffness

I started with the side shots. His toe off is picture perfect and he gets good glide time. A telltale sign of that is when his toe comes off the ground, there is a delay on the landing with the next foot. Better yet, at toe off, the swing leg knee is still moving up. His foot placement is good. It is close to underneath his center of mass (hard to tell for sure at the angle). However, when his foot hits, his right ankle gives or lacks stiffness, and the problem it creates changes the angle of his shin. As the ankle sinks and he goes to push forward, the force becomes less horizontal and more vertical because, as the ankle softens, the shin becomes more vertical, resulting in less effective horizontal force.

This might be why that stride length is smaller than the next step. The same thing happens with his next right leg stride: He collapses and pushes vertical. If I were to have him pull either a heavy or light sled, would his ankle become more rigid? Or would it become softer, due to the force opposing his push, and cause a new compensation pattern?

Video 1: This is a left-side view of a sprinter toeing off. He demonstrates perfect toe off, good glide time, and good foot placement. But when his foot hits, the right ankle is not stiff enough and this changes his shin angle. The result is less horizontal and more vertical force, which may be the reason his stride length shrinks.

Video 2: This video shows good toe off. The sprinter shows very little break in the ankles as he accelerates. As he pushes back, his body/ankle is rigid. He would do better with a heavy sled. In fact, we used EXERGENIE for resistance and I used to anchor it to my four-way hip machine. When he accelerated, he pulled the whole machine on its side and dragged it down my driveway. He ran a 6.2 FAT 55.

This view is from the front and, again, he takes a great first step. But as he lands, you can see some rotation in the right leg that causes a push not only back, but to the right also. His knee shifts to the right. The force is now pushing to his one o’clock and his foreleg ends up on the wrong side of his body. This causes a balance issue and forces his right arm to throw farther, creating another balance issue. This could be because he missed his big toe and found another part of the foot to push from. However, that remains to be seen until we look at him from the back.

His left foot gets to the big toe, and that is why he has a better drive from that side. In fact, you can see the stiffness when he lands and goes through a moment of ankle rocker to get the momentum going forward and keeping his horizontal forces horizontal. The second right step again has a spin to it and his vector is not straight. The footage of when he is close to the finish line show his right foot clearly pushing to the right. As he becomes more upright, his left foot starts to roll to the outside and he doesn’t make it to his big toe. This can account for his block 10 and block 30 times. He has a decent block 10, but his block 30 does not correlate. So his Drf is probably not as good as it could be.

Video 3: A view of the runner from the front. While his first step is great, the landing leg is rotated, throwing him off-balance. He has better drive on his left side, pushing through his big toe, but the left foot starts to roll to the outside as he becomes upright. This decreases his horizontal power (Drf).

The back is an interesting angle. His first step is really good. He is coming off his big toe and, at toe off, his swing leg hip is reaching up to his armpit. At mid-stance of his first step, his hips are almost parallel to the ground and his swing stays under the corresponding hip. But, that toe off position from the right creates some lateral movement, which is shown by the drop in his right hip. He doesn’t get his left swing leg up to his armpit. From that point, he stays on the outside of his feet and never comes through to his big toe. This becomes cyclic as he moves down the track.

Video 4: This view of the back of the athlete shows a good first step. However, his toe off on the right creates lateral movement and, instead of coming through his big toe, he continues to stay on the outside of his feet.

What is interesting is that this athlete’s vertical jump video from the back will also show that he pushes through his feet in the same fashion as he does when he comes down the track. Maybe this is why there is a correlation between vertical jump and acceleration times. A good jumper will go through his big toes, like a good starter.

Video 5: This shows the same athlete jumping, from behind. Notice that he pushes through his feet in the way that he does when sprinting down the track. This may be the reason that there is a correlation between his vertical jump and acceleration times.

This video of the Asafa Powell vs. Tyson Gay comparison shows two different techniques. Powell was going through his toe drag phase, which is quite a clever technique. The drag causes a pretension in the opposing hamstring, which may cause it to be more reflexive. Both men keep their hips parallel to the ground, which allows for better balance. Both men show the ankle stiffness that rolls into an ankle rocker to improve their Drf. And both drive to their big toe to get a true triple extension.

Video 6: While runners Asafa Powell and Tyson Gay have two different acceleration techniques, they share some commonalities in form, too. Both get better balance by keeping their hips parallel to the ground. Both improve their Drf using stiff ankles rolling into an ankle rocker, and both drive to their big toe.

Outward Explosion From the Start

Again, we are looking for how effective an athlete’s acceleration can be. In the previous section, we saw the importance of getting to the big toe and ankle stability. An athlete can have all of the hip extension power in the world, but if the ankle is not rigid or the drive in the foot is not forward, they will not accelerate well. Or they will have a poor Drf.

Now, we have a different case. This athlete is different than the previous one. His needs are almost the opposite. While this athlete has a better vertical jump, he does not have the outward explosion that the previous athlete does. So, let’s take a look.

From the side, his first step has some explosion. To see this, I am looking at the hang time from toe off to contact of the opposite foot. But, his torso is curved quite a bit, which can reduce some power output. It is more difficult for the body to organize and release power when the spine is as curved as this athlete’s. The collapsed torso will also inhibit how high his knees come up as well, which means his foot strike is out in front of his center of mass. This will delay the time for the next push because the mass takes time to move forward.

This is the reason that explosion out of the blocks is critical. It gets the momentum moving faster, so foot strike underneath is more probable (JB Morin’s research about velocity differences before first contact). This athlete also lacks some ankle stiffness. Watch as his ankle hits the ground and his heel sinks downward and to the rear, which forces his shin to move to a more vertical angle. His horizontal velocity now becomes more vertical in nature.

Another reason for his vertical force is that his knee is extending without his hip extending. His hips seem to stay behind in his start as his legs do the work. His next step almost happens at the same time that his toe off occurs. This shows a lack of power, which could be either from the lack of toe off or from his curved posture. There is no insight as to why this happens at this point. Step No. 2 has an ankle give as well and he is becoming more vertical. Again, at toe off, Step No. 3 is about to hit the ground and contact is becoming more out in front.

Step No. 4 shows some good ankle rocker but lacks stiffness elsewhere. The front and side will show more, and the timing is critical at this point. The lack of hang time is not allowing for the swing leg to follow through and, with his center of mass not moving quickly, the foot contact will be premature. He is now “late in his gait.” The concept of Drf is that effectiveness of the acceleration. By Step No. 5, his shins are almost vertical. His horizontal force is all created by his lean and his arm drive.

Video 7: As we study explosion, we notice that the athlete in the video has some explosion in the first step. However, his torso is curved, which reduces power release and delays the next push. Additionally, his ankle isn’t stiff enough, which forces his shin to a more vertical angle and leads to vertical velocity instead of horizontal velocity.

Video 8: This view is of the same athlete, but a little more to the side/front, showing the points made in the previous video. The vertical force is also due to extension of his knee without corresponding extension of his hip, His toe off needs improvement, as it’s currently premature. His lean and arm drive are creating horizontal force, but not his legs.

From the front, we are looking for cues that will show that, despite his ankle rocker, something else is not rigid to allow ankles to work properly. In his stance, with no blocks to help align his feet, he is already off balance. His feet are lined up behind one another. Without balance, all else will fail. His main concern at this point is to not fall. Acceleration has now become secondary.

The initial push is through the big toe but, due to his stance, he is already moving to the side. Additionally, his posture doesn’t allow for space to let his hips and shoulders move. At toe off, it looks as if his hips are staying behind. Previous to contact, he is already rotating his pelvis and his right shoulder is falling behind and his left arm is crossing. This rotation continues throughout his start.

Video 9: The athlete starts out off-balance, with not enough rigidity despite his ankle rocker. The result is that he remains off-balance and moving to the side, with rotation through his pelvis, a falling right shoulder, and a crossing left arm. His focus is not on acceleration—as it should be—but on not falling.

From the back, at toe off, his right hip doesn’t come forward at all. In fact, to get distance, he drives his knee laterally. On steps 1, 3, and 5, his lateral chain collapses and he loses power from the additional rotation of the wind-up he uses to push forward. This may cause problems with his timing of his hips. His hips never seem to advance his body forward and he loses his ability to move his center of mass. Watch the back view in reverse—it looks like he is falling into a hole on his right side. This is the lack of stiffness on that side and it is a huge power leak.

Unlike the previous runner, this runner has good ankles and toe off, but the rest of his body is lacking in timing and stiffness, especially in the hips.

Video 10: The back view of this athlete shows that his hips are ill-timed, which means they don’t seem to advance his body forward. Instead, he relies on his knees. While he has good ankle stiffness and toe off, he still needs more stiffness in the rest his body, as well as better timing.

So, how do you improve on this? Come to the Track Football Consortium from December 2-3 in Hinsdale, Illinois. I’ll have a lot of cool stuff to share on acceleration.

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

Regardless of the level you are coaching or competing at, it is always a goal to try and prolong a peak level of performance for a long period of time. The question is, how do you do this? In the traditional system of periodization, it is common to hit peak for one big meet and then try and hold this peak for as long as possible. This is especially true in the U.S. for both the collegiate and professional seasons.

College athletes and coaches have to be prepared for conference meets, regional meets, finals, possibly the U.S. Nationals, and even the World Championships and/or Olympics. Professional athletes have to be ready for nationals and then try and hold that peak until the worlds or Olympics, often while trying to make money at Diamond League or other European meets. Looking back at both past and present performances, holding this peak level of performance using a traditional periodization program has proven not to be so easy. However, looking at this year’s results, Coach John Smith did a great job accomplishing this with Raven Saunders. She was able to win NCAAs, have a great result at nationals, and then throw a personal best and finish fifth at the Olympics. The question is, how do we go about doing this using Dr. Bondarchuk’s System?

To review, in the past two articles I wrote (The Cycle and Exercise Classification of Dr. Bondarchuk’s System and Choosing Exercises and Applying Data Using Dr. Bondarchuk’s System), I discussed the different cycles built into this system: Exercise Selection and Implement Selection. Although I discussed the Maintenance Cycle briefly, I would like to go over in detail how to set up and implement it effectively. I was originally exposed to one way of implementing a Maintenance Cycle within this system. Now those of us who use this system have two ways to set up a Maintenance Cycle. I will begin by detailing the first way, and follow up with the second—the most current way we are using to maintain a peak level of performance for a long period of time.

It is important that you first know in which sessions your athletes hit peak form. This is important because, in order to have an effective Maintenance period, you have to go into the Maintenance Cycle at peak form. For example, I know that my peak form during a Developmental Cycle takes place in anywhere from 14 to 22 sessions. If I only have two SPEs, it will take 14 to 20 sessions. If I have three SPEs, 16 to 22. This has been true for every Developmental Cycle I have ever completed. Therefore, if I know that I have a Maintenance Cycle next, I will start my Maintenance Cycle two to three sessions after I hit peak form: either at 16 or 18 sessions. In my opinion, it is important that you start the Maintenance Cycle earlier in peak form then later. You don’t want to wait too long in peak form and start to have your performances decline.

Before we get into the setup of the Maintenance Cycle, let’s first discuss how you determine that a Maintenance Cycle will follow your current Developmental Cycle. It would be optimum that you only compete when you are at peak form. However, this is not always the case for athletes at the high school or college levels because there are often dual and invitational meets every week. Therefore, you may compete in many meets when you’re not in peak form. However, once you reach peak form, it may be necessary that you stay in form for the next number of weeks because all of the bigger meets are back to back.

For example, once our big meets start at the high school level in Southern California, they don’t end until the state meet is over. This period can last six weeks, including a league meet, CIF Prelims, CIF Finals, Masters, and the state meet. This is five meets, but I say six weeks because the league meet is often a week and a half before the next major meet, which is CIF Prelims, so you have to be at peak form for up to six weeks.

The same is true for college. However, there are less meets in that span of time, including conference meets, regionals, NCAA Finals, and even U.S. Nationals. These meets usually fall two weeks apart from each other, which means that you have to hold peak form for up to eight weeks. So back to the point: How do we determine when to go into Maintenance? It is determined by looking at when your athlete hits peak form and deciding if there is enough time to run another Cleanse/Rest Cycle and Developmental Cycle before the next big meet. If there is not enough time to run both those cycles again, then going into Maintenance would be the best thing to do.

“Go into Maintenance when there’s no time to run Cleanse and Development cycles before the next meet.”

Let’s have a look at two hypothetical situations. I will use both high school and college examples, to make it easier to understand how this works. At the high school level in So Cal, we have a meet called the Arcadia Invitational at which many coaches and athletes would like to perform well. This can be considered to fall in the middle of our season, although the latter half of the middle. I would have my athletes hit peak form for this meet, knowing that I have enough time to run both a Cleanse/Rest Cycle and Developmental Cycle again so that they can hit peak form for a second time starting at our league meet. Once they hit peak form at the league meet, I know that each of the following weeks are big meets that have eliminations. Therefore, I know that we cannot go into another Cleanse/Rest phase or another Developmental Cycle, due to the importance of each meet.

I will now choose to go into Maintenance for each of these meets. I can choose to go into Maintenance either at the league or CIF prelim meets, based on how long my athlete holds peak form during the Developmental Cycle. If I have my athlete hit peak form on the day of the league meet, I know that they have roughly six sessions of peak performance. I can manipulate the number of sessions that we have between these two meets to hold off going into Maintenance until after CIF Prelims. This is where the art of the coaching profession comes into play. You’ll have two options, and the best way to figure out what to do is to experiment.

When applied to the college setting, we can compare the Arcadia meet—which falls in the middle of the season—to a major dual meet against a cross-town rival that is extremely important to your program. Examples are USC vs. UCLA, Cal vs. Stanford, etc. It may be of extreme importance to hit peak form at this meet and then again starting at your conference meet. Therefore, you have to determine if enough time lies between the two to run both a Cleansing Cycle and Developmental Cycle. If it does, then you do so; planning to hit peak form again at the conference meet. After hitting peak form at the conference meet, it would be time to move into Maintenance for the remaining big meets—regionals, finals, nationals, etc.

Setting it Up

As I mentioned before, we have two options. I call one “The OG Maintenance Phase,” and the other, the “The Terracing Maintenance Phase.” To begin, both are set up as so:

• CE
• SDE
• SPE#1
• SPE#2
• GPE Circuit
• A. Twist
• B. Back
• C. Frontal Plane
• D. AB

Like I said, the Maintenance Phase is set up exactly like any Developmental Phase. However, the way it is implemented is entirely different. Yes, it is still important to keep good data. However, the point at which you change the cycle varies depending on whether you’re doing the “OG style” or “Terrace Style.”

When using what I call the “OG Style,” you switch all exercises every 14 days no matter what. It doesn’t matter if you got four sessions or 10 sessions during this period. At Day 14, everything changes. New implements (CEs), new SDE, new SPEs, and new GPEs. Personally, I have held a level of performance of +/- 20cm for up to six weeks after hitting peak form using this style of Maintenance.

When using the “Terrace Style,” exercises are switched in a more conservative style. This concept is to cause less shock to the body. So how do we apply this style?

The first thing you do after hitting peak form and determining that it’s time for Maintenance is to change the implements or CEs. After two to three sessions using new implements, you switch out the SDE. Now you have the new implements and a new SDE. After two to three more sessions, you switch out SPE No. 1. After two to three sessions more, switch out SPE No. 2. Finally, after two to three more sessions, you switch out the entire GPE Circuit. At this point the entire training plan is different and you start to repeat the sequence for as long as needed.

I have not personally used this style. However, I have applied it to my athletes and we have held a level of performance after hitting peak form for up to six weeks as well. To make it a bit clearer on how this style would look, I have included a chart below with a hypothetical situation.

Original

• Throw: 16-14-6k
• SDE: Nieder Press: 3×5
• SPE #1: Hang Clean: 3×5
• SPE #2: Back Squat: 3×5
• GPE Circuit (3 sets)
• Long Twist x10e@10K
• RDL: x8@60K
• KB Windmill x8e@12K
• Ab Wheel x10

Start of Maintenance

• Throw: 18-16-15
• SDE: Nieder Press: 3×5
• SPE #1: Hang Clean: 3×5
• SPE #2: Back Squat: 3×5
• GPE Circuit (3 sets)
• Long Twist x10e@10K
• RDL: x8@60K
• KB Windmill x8e@12K
• Ab Wheel x10

2-3 Sessions into Maintenance

• Throw: 18-16-15
• SDE: Nelson KB Throw: 3×5@16K
• SPE #1: Hang Clean: 3×5
• SPE #2: Back Squat: 3×5
• GPE Circuit (3 sets)
• Long Twist x10e@10K
• RDL: x8@60K
• KB Windmill x8e@12K
• Ab Wheel x10

4-6 Sessions into Maintenance

• Throw: 18-16-15
• SDE: Nelson KB Throw: 3×5@16K
• SPE #1: Close Grip Snatch: 3×5
• SPE #2: Back Squat: 3×5
• GPE Circuit (3 sets)
• Lon g Twist x10e@10K
• RDL: x8@60K
• KB Windmill x8e@12K
• Ab Wheel x10

6-9 Session into Maintenance

• Throw: 18-16-15
• SDE: Nelson KB Throw: 3×5@16K
• SPE #1: Close Grip Snatch: 3×5
• SPE #2: Speed Step Up: 3x5e
• GPE Circuit (3 sets)
• Long Twist x10e@10K
• RDL: x8@60K
• KB Windmill x8e@12K
• Ab Wheel x10

8-12 Sessions into Maintenance

• Throw: 18-16-15
• SDE: Nelson KB Throw: 3×5@16K
• SPE #1: Close Grip Snatch: 3×5
• SPE #2: Speed Step Up: 3x5e
• GPE Circuit (3 sets)
• Long Twist x10e@10K
• RDL: x8@60K
• KB Windmill x8e@12K
• Ab Wheel x10

As you can see, after 8-12 sessions all of the exercises are completely different. This style offers a slower change; in theory, causing less shock to your system. However, we have had success using both styles and it is up to you to figure out which works best for you or your athlete.

I’m hoping this article wasn’t too long-winded in reaching the main point. However, I must stress the importance of knowing when your athlete hits peak form and knowing if there is enough time to run another Cleanse and Developmental Cycle or move into Maintenance.

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