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German Volume Training, German Body Comp, and four-digit strength training tempo prescriptions are training methods commonly practiced today. What do they all have in common? Charles Poliquin, a Canadian strength coach who introduced these ideas and many others to the athletic and physical fitness communities.

For those new to the Iron Game, Poliquin coached Olympians in two dozen sports and hundreds of elite athletes in other sports. In track and field, he worked with 2004 gold medal winners Dwight Phillips (long jump) and Adam Nelson (shot put), and in 1999 worked with Jamaican hurdler Michelle Freeman, an Olympian who now coaches at the University of Virginia. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. As a strength coach, Poliquin “talked the walk” and, spouting 19+ inch bone-crushing pythons for arms, “walked the talk!”

In contrast to today’s abundance of strength coaching and personal training organizations offering journals edited by PhDs, muscle magazines were one of the primary sources of training information in the early days of strength coaching. Flex, Iron Man, Muscular Development, and Muscle Media 2000 were among those publications treasured by strength coaches responsible for getting their athletes competition ready. Poliquin became one of the most popular writers for these magazines, and in 1997 assembled his best writings into his classic, The Poliquin Principles.

(Lead photo by Miloš Šarčev.)

Charles Poliquin distinguished himself from his colleagues with the use of precisely controlled ‘loading parameters.’ Share on X

Poliquin distinguished himself from his colleagues with the use of precisely controlled “loading parameters.” Loading parameters include training variables such as reps, sets, tempo (lifting speed during all phases of an exercise, a system he modified from a three-digit formula developed by Australian strength coach Ian King), and rest. For example, an exercise prescription for the upper body might look like this:

A. Dumbbell Bench Press, 45-Degree Incline, Pronated Grip, 5 x 6-8, 3101, rest 45 seconds

This formula would tell you the exercise order, name of the exercise and type of resistance, body position, grip, sets, repetition range, speed of muscular contractions (eccentric, isometric, and concentric), time under tension, and rest period. For example, here is a leg workout Poliquin wrote for Phillips, the gold medal winner he started training in February 2004.

A. Power Clean from Above Kneecap, 4 x 4-6, 40X0, rest 120 seconds
– Make sure shoulders are ahead of the bar at the start

B. Telemark Inertia Quarter Squat, 4 x 4-6, 40X0, rest 120 seconds
– Go to ankle flexibility

C1. 1 ¼ Front Squat, 4 x 4-6, 40X0, rest 120 seconds
– Quarter rep in the bottom position

C2. Atlantis Kneeling Leg Curl, Neutral, 4 x 4-6, 40X0, rest 120 seconds
– Foot is pointing away and neutral

Before writing an athlete’s workout, Poliquin performed a muscular balance assessment, a system inspired by the training programs of European weightlifters. Poliquin believed that to achieve optimal performance with minimal risk of injury, you must address specific ratios of strength imbalances between muscle groups.

Poliquin believed that to achieve optimal performance with minimal risk of injury, you must address specific ratios of strength imbalances between muscle groups. Share on X

Consider the bench press: Poliquin found that if the muscles that externally rotate the shoulders were weak, this imbalance could affect bench press performance and increase the risk of injury. When pro hockey player Jim McKenzie met Poliquin, he could lift 280 pounds in the close-grip bench press (hands about 14 inches apart). That result is quite remarkable for a hockey player, but Poliquin wasn’t impressed.

During his assessment, Poliquin found that McKenzie’s rotator cuff strength was especially weak. As a result, for the next three months, McKenzie did not bench press; instead, Poliquin had him focus on improving his rotator cuff strength. However, at the end of this training period, McKenzie bench pressed 331 pounds; again, no bench pressing. At this point, Poliquin reintroduced bench pressing, and six weeks later, McKenzie close-grip bench pressed 380 pounds!

Included in Poliquin’s assessment are what could be considered “functional tests.” Upon his initial assessments for long jumper Phillips, Poliquin found a muscular imbalance between his hamstrings and a quadriceps muscle called the vastus medialis oblique. Before prescribing exercises to help Phillips run faster and jump higher, he began with corrective exercises to address these imbalances.

I first saw Poliquin demonstrate several of these tests at a seminar I attended in the early ’90s in California. One of the critical tests for the lower body he taught was an expanded version of a knee stability test developed by Lois Klatt, Ph.D.

The Klatt test is performed barefoot. Standing on the edge of a low platform, Poliquin had the trainee extend one leg at a 15-degree angle, then hop off. How the trainee lands determines what muscles are weak and what corrective exercise should be prescribed. For example, leaning forward as they land could suggest a weakness in the gluteus maximus; corrective exercises could be reverse hypers or good mornings. Hopping forward could suggest a weakness in the hamstrings; corrective exercises could be leg curls or Romanian deadlifts.

Before getting into some of Poliquin’s most popular workouts, let’s explore how he became a strength coach.

The Education of a Strength Coach

As an athlete, Poliquin dedicated himself to learning the martial arts, and at age 14, he became the second-youngest athlete in Canada to earn a black belt. His sensei was Web Corcoran.

Poliquin took the bus to the dojo. During one snowstorm, the buses were not running, so he walked. However, no other students showed up. Rather than conducting a private lesson, Corcoran invited the future strength coach to lift weights with him. Poliquin was hooked and set out to pack on muscle and become as strong as he looked.

It was only natural for Poliquin to major in exercise physiology in college. For his master’s thesis, he examined the optimal loading variables for developing strength. During his studies, Poliquin discovered that the best research on resistance training could be found in European sports science journals, particularly those from Germany. Unfortunately, only the abstracts of these studies were published in English and French, so his passion for knowledge led him to learn German.

His education didn’t end there.

Not only would Poliquin travel the world to attend seminars, but he would also seek out experts in fields he was interested in and offer to pay them for personal consultations. Share on X

Not only would Poliquin travel the world to attend seminars, but he would also seek out experts in fields he was interested in and offer to pay them for personal consultations. For example, twice I recommended he consult with athletic fitness experts I knew, and he flew to both ends of the United States to see and learn from them. I should also note that Poliquin was also a voracious reader, often devoting one full day each week to study (advice he gives to his students, explaining that “Learners are earners!).

With what could be considered a photographic memory and a mastery of speed-reading techniques, Poliquin read and retained the knowledge of hundreds of books each year. During question-and-answer sessions at seminars, Poliquin often looked upward and off to the left—which he said was the side of the brain that held memories—to recite specific passages from research studies. He also hired graduate students and colleagues to collect research papers, and he would read them during long flights. I met one of these helpers at an NSCA convention, and he showed me a foot-high stack of documents he collected for Poliquin.

From Theory to Practice

While attending the university and lifting weights, a volleyball player was impressed with Poliquin’s strength and asked Poliquin to write a workout for him. He quickly became the team’s strongest athlete, so other athletes asked Poliquin for workouts. Word spread, resulting in Poliquin being hired as the official strength coach for the national team to help them prepare for the 1984 Olympics.

Athletes and coaches from other Olympic sports in Canada learned of Poliquin’s abilities. Of the 118 Canadian athletes who competed in the 1992 Olympic, he coached 78, and five won medals. Two years later, seven of his athletes won medals at the 1994 Olympics. By then, the Canadian government pressured him to become a full-time civil servant. To keep his revenue stream growing, he looked for an opportunity to move to the United States.

On one of his visits to Colorado Springs, I introduced Poliquin to Dr. Mike Leahy, a chiropractor who developed the popular soft tissue treatment called Active Release Techniques (ART). Poliquin set out to master ART, which led to him eventually leaving Canada to work out of Leahy’s sports medicine facility. Also working out of that facility was Tim Patterson, best known for the popular website Testosterone.

Poliquin eventually decided that although Colorado Springs was a good place to work, Phoenix, Arizona, was better (although he seriously considered Las Vegas). The reason was that the airport was convenient for his national and international clients, along with the many pro athletes who lived in the area. So Poliquin set up his training gym a few miles from the airport in a quiet business district. I should mention that it was a private gym: no sign out front, just a number; so, if you didn’t know that number, you would never find it. One concern Poliquin had with the sports celebrities that trained there was that he didn’t want them distracted by fans.

The way clients would work with Poliquin was distance, but the difference was you had to fly out to see him twice a year for an assessment. Thus, you would fly out to his facility and  go through testing that often included lab testing. One beneficiary of this testing was Adam Nelson. After his eventual gold in the 2004 Olympic Games, Nelson visited Poliquin in Arizona.

Nelson always had an issue gaining muscle, so Poliquin had Nelson submit to lab testing. The testing revealed that Nelson had a bacterium affecting his ability to assimilate protein, so he had his doctors treat this problem. Within three months, Nelson gained 25 pounds of solid muscle and decreased his body fat by 5%! Poliquin also found that Nelson had a shoulder injury that affected his pressing ability. He treated that with ART, and Nelson made dramatic strength improvements immediately.

Of course, Poliquin could only train so many athletes—so, to expand his audience, he focused on writing articles and books and giving seminars worldwide. In 1994, he told me he earned enough frequent flyer miles to travel around the world twice!

Of course, Poliquin could only train so many athletes—so, to expand his audience, he focused on writing articles and books and giving seminars worldwide. Share on X

I met Poliquin at a strength coaching seminar in 1988. I was a strength coach at the Air Force Academy at the time, responsible for writing and supervising the workouts for all the major varsity sports. To give my athletes an edge, I did extensive research at the Olympic Training Center Library in Colorado Springs to find everything Poliquin ever wrote and began calling him weekly.

Over the next two years, my long-distance bill to Canada equaled a month’s salary! But this investment was worth it, as I wanted to thoroughly understand what he did with athletes and why he did it. Further, with an athlete base that expanded to 875 athletes during my final year, I could effectively assess the effectiveness of Poliquin’s training methods. Two of these methods were the German Volume Training (GVT) and German Body Comp (GBC) programs.

The German Connection

Shortly after I started consulting with Poliquin, I spoke to him about a minor league hockey player, Craig Shepherd, who wanted to bulk up to market himself as an enforcer. Poliquin told me about a program he called German Volume Training. It involved executing a few “best bang for your buck” exercises, such as squats and bench presses, and performing them for 10 sets of 10 reps.

In less than three months, my hockey player gained more than 40 pounds of body weight, power cleaned 285 pounds, and bench pressed 400 pounds! Interestingly, later in his career he lost all that weight and got recruited to play for Moscow Dynamo in Russia. After that, he became a professional skater in pairs competition, teaming up with 1992 Olympic champion Natalia Mishkutionok.

The next German-inspired program was called German Body Comp. I had called Poliquin about the female figure skaters I was working with who needed to lose body fat. He told me about a program using short rest intervals designed to lose body fat quickly without compromising strength or muscle mass. In 10 weeks, without significantly changing her diet (in fact, we increased her calorie intake significantly), one skater went from 148 pounds to 104 pounds. I wrote an article about the program for Skating magazine and a mainstream fitness magazine (although I called it the German Body Shaping System), and later Poliquin and I teamed up to produce an article for Muscle Media 2000.

Poliquin’s books and seminars were financially successful and influenced countless coaches and athletes. For three decades, I was Poliquin’s primary editor. I helped him write articles, books, training courses, and countless question-and-answer columns. I’ve lost track of how much material we produced (much that was never published), but I’d estimate it was north of a quarter of a million words. We parted ways in 2013 when he started a new company called Strength Sensei, Inc., but Poliquin continued producing written material, particularly with Testosterone and former Muscle Media 2000 editor T.C. Luoma.

Throughout our three decades together, Poliquin championed other programs that many strength coaches or personal trainers were unaware of, including the 1-6 Method, the Patient Lifter Method, cluster training, and the Modified Hepburn Method. He also wrote and lectured extensively about lifestyle, nutritional supplements, and how to use body fat testing to assess hormonal balance. Poliquin left us on September 26, 2018, passing his company to his daughter Krystal.

Charles Poliquin’s pioneering training methods and commitment to teaching helped shape the modern world of strength and conditioning. Share on X

Poliquin “talked the walk” and “walked the talk” in the world of physical fitness and athletic fitness training. It’s been said that “legends never die,” and in the case of this remarkable strength coach, it’s true. Charles Poliquin’s pioneering training methods and commitment to teaching helped shape the modern world of strength and conditioning.

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

In this new series, I will be reaching out to coaches all over the country to see what it takes to go from having an idea for your facility design to making that idea a reality. Spanning full designs from scratch to larger remodels, we will cover facilities from all over the profession: colleges, high schools, private, tactical, and even home gyms.

All facility designs come with questions and decisions to be made, such as:

• How big can or will the space be?
• What type of equipment do I need to purchase?
• Which brands, purveyors, and manufacturers should I choose?

I want to highlight how to answer those questions and many more during the design process. First, join me in looking at how and why those decisions were made at Urbandale High School in Urbandale, Iowa.

Facility Finders reached out to Urbandale Director of Strength and Conditioning, Pete Traynor, because his space is rare—especially at the high school level. I also wanted to spotlight the unique relationship his facility shares with the school board, which was consulted before the hiring of Coach Traynor to have the facility constructed in a way that would serve the needs of both the strength and conditioning department and the greater community.

Video 1. An inside look at the Urbandale High School performance facility.

Facility Decisions

Among the most time-consuming tasks of designing a new facility is figuring out how to pay for everything. For Coach Traynor, that was made possible by a school district-wide building/remodeling plan that included their weight room at Urbandale H.S. and updates across the districts, which also encompassed building two new elementary schools. Once the school board decided on the budget and what the project entailed, Coach Traynor needed to prioritize his needs. He determined the top three considerations were:

1. Quality of equipment
2. Branding capabilities
3. Costs

“We know that this is a once-in-a-25-plus-years type of project, so we had to ensure that the equipment we purchased was of the highest quality,” said Traynor.

Among the most time-consuming tasks of designing a new facility is figuring out how to pay for everything, says @johndelf99. Share on X

Because this is a community project, customized district branding—for example, the high school’s logos—was used to help separate the spaces to be utilized mainly by the public, like the studio connected to the facility, and keep people out of the high school weight room. At Urbandale, Coach Traynor works with more than 75 athletes at a time, which requires space to flow properly and efficiently.

Some of the specialty equipment that Traynor uses daily with his athletes are the belt squat station from Dynamic Fitness & Strength and flywheels from Exxentric. He believes both are useful pieces of equipment for intro-level athletes learning how to move.

“Having another joint-friendly option that works all three types of muscle contractions helps us in multiple areas of our programming,” Coach Traynor says about their two Exxentric kBoxes.

The belt squat is a piece of equipment that allows any athletes with upper-body injuries to still be able to squat. It is also a safe tool for beginner athletes. Some exercises that use both the kBox and the belt squat are eccentric-focused squats, RDLs, bent-over rows, and biceps/upper back work.

Take a Look Around

The biggest piece of advice Traynor offered for coaches undertaking a design project or remodel was to tour other facilities and meet with coaches who have been in your shoes—they can tell you about all the mistakes they wish they’d never made! Urbandale High School ended up purchasing from Dynamic Fitness & Strength, which Coach Traynor never even knew existed (shoutout to Coach Joe “Big House Power” Kenn).

Coaches undertaking a design project or remodel should tour other facilities and meet with coaches who have been in their shoes. Share on X

This company is based out of Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Traynor mentioned that the quality of equipment and their ability to customize the space ultimately led to Dynamic winning the job over their competitors. When all was said and done, Coach Traynor visited 39 separate facilities before his facility was finished, and if it wasn’t for all of those facilities, he never would’ve heard about Dynamic Fitness & Strength.

“Visiting so many different weight rooms allowed me to truly get an idea of how we were going to train our students here at Urbandale,” Traynor said when asked about his key takeaways from those tours. “Being able to see how other coaches were utilizing their space, along with different methods being used, allowed me to zero in on what methods we would be able to utilize at Urbandale to train the most efficiently and keep our students engaged. The flow of the room, safety, efficiency, and student-athlete engagement and participation were some key factors in how we wanted to design our room.”

A Dream in the Making

This endeavor with SimpliFaster is something that has been a dream of mine for a while, and now that I am involved in a capital project at my school designing a facility, this series is a way for me to learn alongside our readers. This dream stems from working alongside SimpliFaster, which provides the best information for coaches by coaches—and while I do this firsthand, I can learn from and educate other coaches at the same time. I also want to make a positive contribution to the profession and that means going out and meeting new coaches to see how their personal training style can be matched with an incredible facility.

Right now, I am meeting with companies and suppliers—quality of equipment is the top priority—while I also establish the new construction and budget for the project. I have used software called SketchUp to roughly design my plans to help the “non-athletic department” people see the vision and the need for this space.

Please comment below with other questions y’all would like answered or facilities you’d like to know more about in our future episodes.

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

When I entered the strength and conditioning field, I was told the best way to improve the vertical jump is to squat. If our squat numbers improved, our verticals would follow—and, up to a point, this is absolutely true. For athletes who are relatively weak or relatively young, developing stronger legs (along with a heightened nervous system) will lead to better jumps.

Over time, though, I found this wasn’t always the right solution. Athletes would increase their squat, but their jumps would flatline. These athetes were strong in the squat, so why weren’t they jumping higher? I saw this play out time and time again. Once my athletes obtained certain strength levels, jumping ceased to improve.

On top of that, I used to only measure jumps every 8-12 weeks. If jumping is considered a key performance indicator (KPI) in our program, why wait three months to see if it improved? What if their best day was actually three weeks into the program? What if the athletes had a bad week and that’s when we tested?

I want to know how we’re performing every week and if my program is doing what I say it’s doing.

I want to know how we’re performing every week and if my program is doing what I say it’s doing, says @coachrgarner. Share on X

Eventually, this led me to the works of Joel Smith, Cal Dietz, and Chris Korfist. These coaches drastically influenced my thought process on jump development because they were the first coaches that said heavy squats aren’t the only way to develop the jump. Instead, they discussed a variety of techniques, biomechanical and physiological differences, and key movements needed to be a successful jumper.

In my eyes, this shifted jump development from strictly a strength issue to a multi-faceted problem requiring multiple solutions. If you want to learn more about jump development and technique, I highly recommend “Vertical Foundations” by Joel Smith.

Improving the Vertical: This Should be Easy, Right?

In sports performance, the two hardest skills to improve are sprinting and jumping. These are also the most important skills to master for on-field success. Skill is defined as “the ability to do something that comes from training, experience, or practice.” For any skill, it takes substantial time, effort, and technical knowledge to create long-lasting change.

The difficulty in training these skills stems from the fact that athletes have been running or jumping their entire lives. This means techniques, habits, and neural pathways are engrained long before coaching interventions occur (which can be a good thing). In my experience, the average male and female will jump 23-25 inches and 18-20 inches respectively. Once they reach this point, we’ll see a stall in progress if we’re not training with a purpose.

For jumping-based sports like volleyball, an athlete’s technique and habits will be reinforced countless times in practice and games. An outside hitter can jump up to 120 times a match, and for players on the club circuit who play six games over a weekend, that’s 720 jumps. This further ingrains neural pathways and solidifies jumping technique and outputs. On top of that, the majority of these jumps will be submaximal, which may decrease their vertical over time. If the athlete doesn’t have a strong foundation of strength and technique, this could lead to problems down the road.

For jumping-based sports like volleyball, an athlete’s technique and habits will be reinforced countless times in practice and games, says @coachrgarner. Share on X

In most cases, the responsibility of increasing the vertical jump falls on the shoulders of sports performance coaches because jumping is typically viewed as an outputs (force) issue. Although this is a factor, it does not fully encapsulate jump development. There are a variety of strategies which can be employed to train jumping (such as techniques specific to muscle- versus tendon‑driven athletes), and it becomes even more complex as we dive into standing versus approach jumps.

Within the weight room, I believe the coach’s focus should be on developing the standing vertical, as this is the floor of jumping potential while the approach jump is the ceiling. The approach jump is a technical-driven skill which requires significant time and effort to improve. Meanwhile, the standing vertical has a lower technical barrier and is a reflection of raw power which makes it a useful tool to measure the impact of a training program.

This leads us to our main question: How do we improve a skill that has been performed thousands of times?

We refine technique, strengthen key muscles and joints, practice jumping skills, and measure jumps regularly.

Refining Technique for Takeoff

Technique is the most influential factor in improving jump height. No matter how powerful our athletes become, they cannot out-jump poor technique. The same goes for any skill in sport. When we clean up technique, athletes automatically jump higher.

When we clean up technique, athletes automatically jump higher, says @coachrgarner. Share on X

Maximizing jump height begins with refining technique at the bottom of the jump. By optimizing this position, our athletes have better chances to be successful on takeoff. The goal is to have the torso and shins at the same angle at the bottom before pushing upward, as shown in Figure 1. I learned this concept from Chris Korfist, and now it’s the first thing I notice when watching jumps.

When athletes jump, particuarly poor to average jumpers, typically their torso is bent over while their shins are more upright (see Figure 2). Instead, we want to see their torso and shin angles matching, knees over toes, and a push from the ball of their foot into takeoff. The most explosive actions in sport are the result of knees over toes and force from the balls of the foot.

Why is this important to jump height?

By syncing the torso and shin angles at the bottom, the athlete is setting up for a syncronized takeoff, which makes them leave the ground faster and ultimately get to the point of attack faster. If they are bent over, then the torso has to travel further upward before the legs begin extending, leading to an inefficient and slower takeoff. In sports, we want to improve our ability to display power quickly by limiting the amount of time it takes to complete explosive movements.

In sports, we want to improve our ability to display power quickly by limiting the amount of time it takes to complete explosive movements, says @coachrgarner. Share on X

Once we establish a solid bottom position, we need to shift our focus to the takeoff. The key to an explosive takeoff is syncing up the torso, arms, and legs when leaving the ground. All of the athlete’s body parts should be fully extended as they are jumping. By doing so, all of the body’s energy will be unleashed at the same time.

The arms play a significant role in aiding the jump. Their main job is to make the body “lighter” as we’re driving up. Think of the arms as serving the same purpose bands do for band-assisted jumps. The momentum of the arms allows the legs to uncoil faster than they would normally. However, if the legs extend before the torso and arms, then the athlete’s feet will leave the ground before they are finished applying all their potential momentum. This is why an athlete’s jump dramatically improves when they start jumping regularly. As they get a feel for it, they’ll begin syncing up their arms, torso, and legs upon take off, leading to higher and faster jumps.

Note: When measuring standing verticals, athletes tend to over-exagerrate the dip, which can lead to an extremely bent over torso as shown in Video 1. However, they can still have an incredible jump. The athlete in the video has a standing vertical of over 40”, but is spending more time on the ground than what is available in sport. This is useful in terms of total-body development, but not for specifc sport application—something to consider when developing the jump.

Video 1. This is a 40+” vertical on a Just Jump Mat. As you can see, he over exaggerates the dip, but still jumps well.

Isometrics Set the Floor

One of my mentors always says that “eccentrics and isometrics develop and concentrics express.” If we’re not training all three phases of the muscle contraction, then we’re not developing our athletes optimally. Eccentrics increase strength potential and the ability to absorb force. Isometrics improve the body’s ability to withstand and reapply force, and recruit more muscle fibers at once. Isometrics provide a powerful stimulus with two significant benefits to jump development:

1. Isometrics raise the work capacity that our tendons and muscles can handle. With standard repetitions, we’re training the weakest position of the movement for a split second. After several reps, there’s only a few seconds of full tension at the weakest point. This means the amount of capacity developed is limited. With isometrics, we’re placing constant tension on the muscles and tendons, meaning every second spent in the position is causing a training effect while raising capacity.

2. Isometrics improve the structure and function of tendons leading to healthier athletes.¹ When we hold positions, our muscles are continuously contracting; as they’re contracting, the muscles are shortening, but the tendons are lenghtening. The slow lengthening repairs the tendon’s structure, leading to improved function and longevity. This is opposite of what explosive actions do to tendons, as they improve stiffness (which leads to higher jumps). As sports performance coaches, we must balance between explosive movements and isometrics in order to keep our athletes healthy over the long run.

Key Isometric Movements

We have three isometrics that are staples in our program:

• Spring ankle series
• Split squats
• Mid-thigh pulls

The spring ankle series, developed by Chris Korfist and Cal Dietz, strengthens the feet, ankles, and knees while teaching the proper bottom, middle, and full extension positions of the jump. Studies have found that isometric holds strengthen the joints 10 degrees above or below the given angle. By using various heights, the spring ankle series develops the entire spectrum of jump depths and joint angles needed to be a successful jumper.

Video 2. Spring Ankle Series Position 1 & 2. Notice how the shin and torso angles are matching. This reinforces the bottom position we want to see in the jump.

The key to implementing this series is matching the torso and shin angles, further engraining proper positioning and strengthening the muscles and tendons at the specific joint angles. We have to coach this up every day because athletes will struggle to maintain posture or keep the knee over the toe. Posture equals power. When introducing this:

• Start with 3-5 sets of 10 seconds, which keeps movement quality high.
• Each week, add 5 seconds until you reach 30 seconds.
• Once they’re able to hold the position for multiple 30-second sets, start over at 10 seconds and add load.

Isometric split squats provide a high return on investment because they train several areas at once. Depending on your goal, these can be performed as yielding, overcoming, or oscillating isometrics. Yielding is the preferred method for teaching positioning and posture. For maximal effort, overcoming is the way to go. My suggestion is to perform yielding isometrics until the athletes have mastered the position, and then introduce the overcoming variation.

Isometric split squats provide a high return on investment because they train several areas at once, says @coachrgarner. Share on X

In our program, we perform isometric split squats with the front heel elevated so the athletes are strengthening their feet, ankles, and calves. They are also actively pulling in their front foot to contract the hamstrings, which improves their strength and capacity. For the rear leg, they are stretching their hip flexors while driving the big toe into the ground, leading to improved mobility. We work up to holding this position for 60 seconds, and then we can add load and shorten the time. If I use this as a warm-up, we’ll hold the position for 30-60 seconds with just bodyweight. If this is part of the workout, we’ll add load and hold for 10 seconds or less.

Mid-thigh pulls are a powerful overcoming isometric. This movement creates a total body training effect and elevates the nervous system. Before implementing this movement, make sure the athletes have strong foundations in posterior chain development and can maintain good posture when applying maximal effort. Remember, posture equals power. The last thing we want is for their backs and shoulders to be too round while they are pulling against the bar.

Although this isn’t a variation I use often, I’ll go through phases where athletes perform this once a week within a circuit. My suggestion is to perform 3-5 second pulls with a 3-second build up. This means athletes will slowly build up to max effort over 3 seconds and then pull as hard as they can for 3-5 seconds.

Concentrics Raise the Ceiling

Concentric movements refine the nervous system and display max outputs. Concentric actions need to be smooth as they’re what are the most visible in the end. For concentric power and strength of the quads and glutes, there are countless movements and strategies to use. As the coaches, it’s our job to determine what the best method is for our athletes. We’ve heard coaches say “the best method to use is the one you believe in” and the same applies here.

The main lower body movements in our program are the split squat and trap bar deadlift. I believe these movements are the best options to train the lower body, because we’re using both unilateral and bilateral positions. Unilateral positions are arguably more athletic in nature, but bilateral positions may transfer to the jump more effectively. By using both, we make sure our athletes are getting a well-rounded program.

Unilateral positions are arguably more athletic in nature, but bilateral positions may transfer to the jump more effectively, says @coachrgarner. Share on X

In our program, the split squat is considered our strength movement due to the time under tension and the amount of load our athletes can handle in this movement. I predominately load split squats in the strength zone (>80% relative intensity or RI) for 1-5 repetitions, but we’ll also use lighter loads for power development.

I prefer split squats because it takes the low back out of the equation, and I’ve never had an athlete be unable to perform them due to mobility issues. The learning curve is minimal and most athletes are able to handle more weight in a unilateral squat versus bilateral squat. In addition, we can implement a floating heel which further strengthens the feet, ankles, and calves.

Most athletes are able to handle more weight in a unilateral squat versus bilateral squat, says @coachrgarner. Share on X

For trap bar deadlift, we typically perform sets in the power zone (60-80% RI), but we’ll also use loads greater than 80% RI for 1-5 repetitions to train strength qualities and potentiate the nervous sytem. If we’re training heavy squats during the week, we’ll keep our deadlift lighter and vice versa.

Due to the high handles on the bar, most athletes will be in a half or quarter squat position, which is exactly what we want. The bottom position of the jump will be around these depths. By using the trap bar, we’re training the body to produce high levels of force at joint angles that align with jumping.

Measure and Track Jumps

In any training program, we must measure and track what we deem important. What we measure is what improves. With technology like the Just Jump Mat available, jumps are easier than ever to track. In our program, we use the Jump Mat almost every day, and we can quickly measure a room of 30-40 athletes without any disruption in training. This data shows us how our program is impacting our athletes, but also tracks the readiness of each individual.

What we measure is what improves, says @coachrgarner. Share on X

We can use this data to guide our programming decisions as well—the more data points we have, the more informed our decisions can be. If we’re seeing a downward trend in jump height, do we need to switch up modalities or are the athletes just tired? As numbers rise, we know what we’re doing is working and we don’t need to make any changes until we see stagnation or regression.

As previously stated, jumping is a skill; we need to let athletes practice and train this reguarly. Our athletes will perform either broad or vertical jumps every workout as part of a circuit or superset. This gives us 5-8 high quality jumps every session, with each one being measured. By incorporating the jumps into a circuit or superset, we’re potentiating the nervous system which leads to better performance over time.

At the end of the day, what’s the best way for athletes to improve their jump? Let them jump frequently, measure every jump you can, and progress accordingly.

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

Resources

1. Oranchuk DJ, Storey AG, Nelson AR, Cronin JB. Isometric training and long-term adaptations: Effects of muscle length, intensity, and intent: A systematic review. Scand J Med Sci Sports. 2019

Training for speed should be a non-negotiable for any team sport athlete. There are big mistakes still being made in training for speed, however. Once they’re corrected, it can springboard your athlete’s development.

1. Training Speed After Lifting

The biggest mistake I continually see in training is trying to do speed work following lifting. There are four primary reasons that this becomes a problem.

1. Athletes need near maximal speeds to develop that quality.

• To raise the ceiling of maximal velocity, speed training requires the body to be fresh from fatigue.

Why?

• Developing speed is highly intensive and demanding on the nervous system. The faster the athlete, in fact, the more demanding it is. Lifting creates fatigue—impulses sent through the nervous system between the brain and muscular system don’t move as fast when fatigue is present.

Lifting not only fatigues the CNS but also creates damage to the muscle fiber itself. Tired and damaged muscles don’t have the ability to contract and relax at the speeds necessary to develop the quality of maximal speed. Valuable training time and energy are spent trying to run fast without being able to do it.

2. Heavy lifting beforehand creates a tension-filled training session.

We’ve all left the weight room with that tight, blood-filled, muscled-up feeling. Top end speed relies on the ability to stay relaxed. Reactivity is a key ability in elite-level sprinters. It is the ability of the muscle to cycle through contraction and relaxation. That happens faster when athletes are relaxed in motion, not when they are tight and tense following a heavy weight session.

3. The risk of hamstring injuries following a fatiguing lifting session rises exponentially.

It doesn’t take a genius to understand the risk to the hammies after you’ve done heavy sets of five on the RDL before sprinting. The faster the athlete, the greater the risk. They don’t take thoroughbreds off the plow just prior to running in the Derby.

The risk of hamstring injuries following a fatiguing lifting session rises exponentially… They don’t take thoroughbreds off the plow just prior to running in the Derby, says @ZachDechant. Share on X

4. Field work such as sprinting should be the priority with all team sport athletes because that truly is their sport…sprinting on a court or field.

They don’t lift a barbell or bench press on the field/court. Lifting should always be supplemental to the movement patterns and speeds that are in the game.

CNS fatigue from highest to lowest should dictate the order of training. To maximize training, movements that happen at high speeds should be early in the training sessions when athletes are freshest. The order that we use is as follows:

2. Not Giving Enough Rest Between Reps

To get the desired training effect of speed development, rest intervals become critical. Too little rest between sprints and fatigue begins to accumulate, causing quality to diminish. When it comes to speed training, QUALITY is the most important aspect. Coaches often see the low volumes and long rest periods as not hard enough and eliminate proper rests.

There are many ways we can fill the rest intervals to have the appearance of being busy. Joey Guarascio has a great article on SimpliFaster detailing his approach to team speed training. Waterfall starts are an idea he discusses that we have used for many years. These not only allow us to view each athlete’s rep individually, but they take up more time as well. That extra time adds up to longer rests and higher-quality work.

A great benefit that rarely gets talked about is each athlete gets to watch their teammate’s previous rep. We all know that teaching is best done through watching, listening, and doing. Watching the previous athletes perform the movement and get coached adds another level of development for each person waiting in line.

A second method we’ve utilized to enhance rest times is super setting non-competing work like medball throws and/or jumps. Our athletes perform their sprint, then walk to another area of the field and perform a few reps of a medball throw variation or jump variation. The long walks between stations add to recovery time, while adding in throws/jumps allows us to attack another issue.

Developing speed is not meant to be extremely fatiguing on the muscular and cardiovascular systems. Athletes should not be tired when training to get fast, says @ZachDechant. Share on X

Developing speed is not meant to be extremely fatiguing on the muscular and cardiovascular systems. Athletes should not be tired when training to get fast. Mental toughness does not apply during speed training, although many coaches make the mistake of cutting rest times because it’s “too easy.”

The ideal guidelines that we have traditionally tried to follow are one minute per 10 yards of distance. A 40-yard sprint requires four minutes of rest prior to another sprint.

This becomes incredibly difficult within the time parameters that team sports must currently follow at the collegiate and high school levels. In essence, we have modified those original parameters to fit our needs. The modified rest parameters that we currently use include a leisurely walk back to the start along with a short rest when there.

Shorter distances from 5-20 yards aren’t as demanding on the nervous system as longer full-speed sprints, so we have more freedom in rest periods. The key is to make sure athletes have not only caught their breath but feel restored before the next rep begins. The ultimate goal is speed development, not just running, so restoration means attaining the highest possible velocity in the next rep. When it comes to speed and acceleration development, quality over quantity always.

3. Not Consolidating Like Stressors

On the topic of rest and recovery comes consolidating stressors during the week. The best way to ensure recovery for training sessions is to organize training and practices properly. That means organizing high-intensity elements together and low-intensity elements together.

All too often, the silos of sports performance override this. The weight room is programmed separately from sport practices, with each coach having their own agenda. When we don’t have high-output days surrounded by either rest or low-intensity days throughout the week, fatigue accumulates. When fatigue accumulates, intensity/maximal outputs suffer, injury risk goes up, and performance gains cease to exist. For ultimate athlete health and performance, all areas need to be aligned holistically.

This applies not only in the weight room, but in sport practice as well. Not adhering to this model between ALL training comes at a cost. If sport practices and training don’t consolidate stress, athletes rarely get a chance to recover. Between sport practices and training, it’s not unusual for athletes to experience high-intensity sessions every day when we don’t adhere to a holistic model.

It’s not uncommon to see the above example on a weekly basis for team sport athletes. Coaches believe that to get better, they must attack each element with high intensity on alternating days. The thought process of why can’t we train with high intensity when we have a high-intensity practice day exists. The inherent problem that this creates is when do the athletes have a chance to recover? This is why sport/skill coaches and performance staff must all be on the same page with the weekly plan. Consolidating ALL stressors throughout the week is a must for recovery.

We must keep in mind that athletes do not just experience stress in sport. Stress is holistic for all aspects of life, and we must program accordingly, says @ZachDechant. Share on X

We must keep in mind that athletes do not just experience stress in sport. Stress is holistic for all aspects of life, and we must program accordingly.

4. Believing Submaximal Training Has No Role

Athletes don’t break PRs every single time they train. The intent may be maximal but realized intensity as a percentage of their absolute best may fall just short. By nature, if they aren’t breaking PRs, then their training is submaximal.

Regardless of semantics, that’s not the submaximal I’m referencing in this instance. We’re talking about one click underneath maximal intent. I would classify most maximal intent sprints at 96%+ and submaximal speed work in the 88%–95% range. Many people think submaximal sprint training is a waste of time. Earlier in my career, I would have agreed. However, thanks to ALTIS and Stu McMillan, I’ve come to realize there are benefits to submaximal speed training.

Sprinting—and especially maximal velocity sprinting—is a skill. As such, that skill often needs to be refined and/or altered. Any skill is difficult to change or refine when performing it at absolute intensity.

Certain drills can play a role in decreasing maximal intensity and helping to build technical proficiency, including:

• Wickets.
• PVC runs.
• MB runs.
• Technical buildups.

These drills are generally performed at submaximal velocities, either because of the constraints of the drill or purposely at lower intensities to allow for skill enhancement.

For real-world evidence, look no further than a recent study done by Jurdan Mendiguchia: “Can We Modify Maximal Speed Running Posture? Implications for Performance and Hamstring Injury Management.” The study aimed to examine whether a specific, six-week intervention of combining lumbopelvic control and running technique exercises could induce changes in pelvic kinematics at maximal speed and improve sprint performance.

The results of the study speak for themselves. Not only did the researchers have success showing that they could refine and improve maximal velocity mechanics, but they also had significant decreases in time, resulting in improved performance.

The way in which they achieved their results is what we’re after here. In the technical warm-up for a training day, the study used traditional drills that many coaches use on a regular basis with their athletes. These included variations of the A-series and dribbles. The main portion of the sprint training, derived at maximal outputs, included many drills and again dribble variations. These drills give credence to the fact that submaximal speed training can be very useful for speed gains.

Creating Adaptations

Following a few key principles with speed development will create a better chance for your athletes to create specific adaptations:

1. Order training from fastest to slowest.
2. Quality is the most important variable, which means optimal rest times in training sessions.
3. Consolidate stressors (both on and off the field).
4. Use the range of opportunities to develop speed submaximally.

Lead photo by Juan DeLeon /Icon Sportswire.

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

Dechant, Zach. Movement over Maxes: Developing the Foundation for Baseball Performance. 2018.

Mendiguchia J, Castaño A, and Jimenez-Reyes P, et al. “Can we modify maximal speed running posture? Implications for performance and hamstring injuries management.” International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance. July 2021. doi:10.1123/ijspp.2021-0107

“Almost every significant breakthrough in the field of scientific endeavor is first a break with tradition, with old ways of thinking, with old paradigms.” – Stephen R. Covey

The concept of unilateral training continues to gain greater mainstream acceptance every year. In 2009, when I sarcastically said, “bilateral squatting is dead,” I was laughed at. To understand that reaction, we can turn to German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, who proposed the idea of three stages of truth:

Stage 1: Ridicule – When I began to espouse my thoughts on unilateral training in the early 2000s, most strength coaches simply made fun of me: I was soft. I was not a good enough coach. If I were a better coach, my athletes wouldn’t have back pain. Many said this even though they silently suffered with back pain themselves.

I was ignored by many but continued to build a following. The “meathead” crowd simply laughed at me, up until they realized that lots of coaches were listening to my message. That’s when the attacks really started. Conventional, bilaterally oriented coaches questioned my character, my motivation, and even my coaching skills because…

Stage 2: Opposition – As more coaches listened, thought, and experimented, the old guard became nervous. This was when the negative YouTube videos started, and I was invited to debate the old go heavy or go home crowd on podcasts. One clown on YouTube went so far as to say that my anti-squat stance meant that no one could ever use a toilet again. Others referred to me on their podcast as a p**sy. I was now portrayed as a salesman, hustling for likes, views, and customers. But I was still “anti-squat” because I couldn’t coach difficult-but-important lifts.

Stage 3:  Acceptance (or Self-evidence) – We are almost there, but not quite. The old powerlifting/football crowd is still firmly stuck in stage 2.

The reality is that we have found unilateral movements to be not only safer, but more effective, says @mboyle1959. Share on X

The reality is that we have found unilateral movements to be not only safer, but more effective. It’s important to note that we do continue to do bilateral power exercises (Olympic lifts and variations), as well as both unilateral and bilateral jumps, hops, and bounds. In addition, with healthy athletes, we continue to use trap bar or hex bar deadlifts.

What we don’t do are bilateral squats! So, let’s get to the misconceptions.

1. Unilateral Training Traffics in Likes, Clicks, and an Agenda

The number one misconception of unilateral training—particularly as it applies to me—is that I’ve advocated unilateral training in order to create controversy and further my career. That could not be further from the truth. In fact, nothing generates likes and views like telling a bunch of people what they want to hear. The man who thinks he is right loves affirmation. I could have generated far more approval through the years by simply catering to the status quo.

My agenda is attempting to help teams win and athletes stay healthy. In the interest of full disclosure, I do also sell information products—trust me, though, they do not represent a majority of my income. Additionally, I do not sell equipment. I do, however, work for an equipment company (I’m a speaker for Perform Better), but I have not ever been involved in equipment sales as a profession.

2. Unilateral Exercises Are Less Effective

I think one of the biggest misconceptions about unilateral exercises is that they are less effective than the bilateral versions. Like many of the misconceptions about unilateral training, this belief is generally put forth by those who don’t use unilateral exercises. I love people who insist something doesn’t work in one breath, but then proceed to mention that they have never tried said method.

The research reads differently. In the past five years, I have seen and read numerous studies that compare bilateral exercises (primarily squats) to unilateral exercises (primarily split squat variations). In almost every study, unilateral exercises were, at worst, equal to bilateral exercises in the areas studied.

If we can use a lift that is safer, uses less load, and provides the same result, doesn’t common sense tell us to do it?, asks @mboyle1959. Share on X

If we can use a lift that is safer, uses less load, and provides the same result, doesn’t common sense tell us to do it?

3. Unilateral Exercises Produce an Inferior Hormonal Response

Many of the bilateral defenders espouse the hormonal benefits of heavy bilateral lifting. The thought process seems to be that hormones have load receptors and that a load in a unilateral exercise is not recognized like a heavy bilateral load in an exercise like the back squat. I can’t tell you how often I have seen the hormonal response idea used to validate heavy bilateral lifting.

Although evidence exists that heavy lifting produces a positive hormonal response, there have been no studies that I know of on unilateral versus bilateral training in regard to hormones.

There is support for the idea of heavy lifting producing positive hormonal responses. There is also some data showing that unilateral and bilateral are similar in this regard.

4. You Use Less Weight in Bilateral Exercises

Are we soft or are we smart? In our “hardo” strength coach world, things like unilateral training or functional training are seen as soft. Real men and women use big loads in big exercises.

This is another misconception that shows the bilateral crowd’s lack of math skill. Most experienced unilateral lifters will expose the target muscles (glutes, quads, hamstrings, etc.) to far greater loads than what can be seen in bilateral exercises.  However, because coaches don’t multiply by two, the load is perceived as less. The key is to look at weight lifted per leg, not weight lifted. Alex Natera has done some excellent work to make this math easily understood.

What does not get exposed to higher loads is the spine. Take a look at some of the “Hatfield Squat” videos on the internet. I will 100% guarantee that the lifters in the videos are using far more than 50% of their best bilateral squat.

The load per leg in unilateral exercises can be much higher than in bilateral exercises. If we agree that the target of squats is the lower body, than this is very much in line with my “force transducer” argument from 2009.

I stated in 2009 that the back was a bad transducer (a transducer moves force from one area to another). The back is the transducer from the bar to the legs, and the reality is that it does a bad job. When the back fails, the failure often results in injury. If the target is not the back, why force the back to be the transducer at all? Why not allow the back to deal with half the load?

The back is not an effective vehicle to get force from a bar held on the back to two legs. That is just reality. The back becomes the limiting factor in squatting. That is not opinion; that is fact. You can watch hundreds of failed squats and you will rarely see the legs give out, while the torso remains solid and erect. I have competed in powerlifting and have watched literally thousands (maybe millions) of squats, and the vast majority of the time, failure occurs via a rapid lumbar flexion.

Frans Bosch states, “not only is the value of deep squats questionable, but so is the claim that double leg squats are particularly suitable for improving strength in the legs. Strength in the back muscles may be the limiting factor, rather than strength in the legs, and so double leg squats may in fact be a maximal strength exercise for the back muscles.”

5. Unilateral Exercises Are Fine…for Everything but American Football

Football strength coaches cling to the back squat for all the reasons above and probably a few more. Many strength coaches who do not have to deal with macho football coaches who grew up on back squats can easily switch to a unilaterally oriented program.

Any attempt to have a back-squat-less football program is immediately viewed as soft. One thing to try to remind sport coaches is that the most desirable ability in sports is availability. Great coaches understand that you win when your best players are playing!

Many strength coaches who do not have to deal with macho football coaches who grew up on back squats can easily switch to a unilaterally oriented program, says @mboyle1959. Share on X

Conclusion

I love the Henry Ford quote: “If I had listened to everyone else, I would have invented a faster horse.”

All I ask is that you give unilateral training a real try. So many of the opponents of unilateral training fight something they have never tried. Forget your bias. Forget what you like. Forget what your high school or college coach did. Give unilateral training an honest attempt.

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

Speirs DE, Bennett M, Finn CV, and Turner AP. “Unilateral vs. Bilateral Squat Training for Strength, Sprints, and Agility in Academy Rugby Players.” Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. 2015 Jul 11. (Epub ahead of print).

Over the past several months, while researching different methods and systems for training, I’ve often landed on a home page explaining the ABCs of a given program. This would usually include a few action photos, a couple of catchy one liners, and some video examples: sprinting, jumping, lifting, and perhaps other standalone drills performed as part of a warm up or plyometric circuit.

Reading the comments and feedback from the consumers, I can tell that many of them are more enamored with the presentation and polarity of the program rather than the quality of the content. In other words, wrapping a philosophy up with a bow might make it look and sound great, but is it really doing what it claims? Additionally, does a philosophy holistically develop the athlete from the standpoints of speed, strength, agility, power, aerobic fitness, resilience, and technique? Or does it intentionally leave out certain aspects to pursue others ad nauseum? Are those aspects pursued at the potential risk of the athlete’s health and wellbeing? Are the right performance attributes being prioritized? How does each aspect in a given philosophy contribute or take away from performance?

These are a few of the questions in my mind when assessing any philosophy, whether in S&C, track and field, team sport development, academic study, or practical research—questions I don’t believe are thoroughly thought about nor addressed with enough intention.

Perfect Form for Lifts, but Not Sprints?

I currently run and operate a lone wolf, physical therapy clinic (one year) and athletic performance program (four years). When I am consuming information, working with physical therapy patients, or building programs, I often find myself switching and combining my roles and skillsets to help develop a more holistic picture of what is going on. Recently, most of the commotion on social media is generated around arbitrary outputs, whether it is lifting for max bar speed, max weight achieved, max sprint velocity, max effort, the list goes on.

In the presence of all of this max output, I find consistently that there’s rarely an emphasis on max technique, max finesse, max fitness, max resilience, or max strategic execution (outside of the weight room). Additionally, everyone is all about increasing speed reserve, but what about skill reserve? When I watch the videos, I am often in awe at how athletes at various levels can stay healthy while performing these exercises with blatant lapses in technique and posture, particularly in sprinting.

In the presence of all of this max output, I find consistently that there’s rarely an emphasis on max technique, max finesse, max fitness, max resilience, or max strategic execution. Share on X

I believe maximally performing sprints in this fashion creates ticking time bombs for various athletes in the form of injured hamstrings, shins, hip flexors, quads, feet, etc. Just as caution is demonstrated when overloading athletes in the weight room, I think it’s generally a good idea to allow technique to determine how often we push the limits in sprinting and other field-oriented activities (agility, deceleration, multi jumps, etc.) rather than forcing the output and hoping for the best.

This obsession with max outputs seems to have led many to forget that technique is often the limiting factor and that by solving the technical issue, the ceiling can be raised further in training density and in outputs. Ironing out the technical issues takes a skilled coaching eye and patience, as I’ve outlined in previous articles. In addition to identifying the technical flaw, the coach has to link it to injury risk so that they can make informed decisions with that athlete moving forward.

For example, when having an athlete squat in the weight room, most coaches would never have them put a bar on their back and ask them to max out if they have poor form. Why? Poor form shifts the concentration of stresses away from the desired muscles and towards more vulnerable muscles that aren’t ideal for bearing the brunt of the load in that given movement. Many coaches understand that this makes the athlete unnecessarily susceptible to injury and thus are typically on form patrol to ensure that doesn’t happen.

This obsession with max outputs seems to have led many to forget that technique is often the limiting factor, says @BrendanThompsn. Share on X

Acceptable form? Increase the weight. Sketchy form? Lower the weight. This concept is seemingly universally accepted and applied in the strength and conditioning community, most notably in the weight room. If the best ability is availability, why is sprinting treated differently?

Asking the Right Questions to Create Better Outcomes

When approaching training strictly from a performance standpoint, I often find myself watching and rewatching videos while looking for a set of qualities in the athlete or team, including:

• Intent
• Movement economy
• Subjective strain
• Other aspects of technique and execution

Along these lines, I start thinking about what I might change or reinforce. How might I cue them? What deficits do I see? What drills and other tasks might I give them to shift them to a better place on the mechanical spectrum?

These questions then begin to open up my physical therapy line of questioning. In the absence of a technical fix, what soft tissue structures are most likely vulnerable? What muscles are dominating this action and what tests might I perform to see if I’m right or wrong? Where are the major stresses occurring and why? Is there a reason for this compensatory pattern? What might my three biggest focuses be when building a preventative and corrective program for this athlete and why?

This is the type of internal dialogue I’m constantly having with myself to guide decision-making. It creates a cycle of using my physical therapy tools to help me design a performance program, while my performance tools often return the favor in helping me design a physical therapy program. Athletes are not simply performance machines where all that goes into performance is arbitrary output. Rather, they are a complex integration of psychology, biology, kinesiology, and other core sciences that make up the individual. Being complex organisms doesn’t mean that we have to expose the body to complex inputs, but rather simple inputs with strategic implementation that go well beyond being an arbitrary stimulus.

Athletes are not simply performance machines where all that goes into performance is arbitrary output. Share on X

Compare and Contrast: Sprinting vs Lifting

There is obviously a large difference between overloading a bar for a relatively unnatural movement sequence compared to maximally moving your own body weight in a rhythmic sprinting motion. A max squat and a max sprint only last a few seconds each, followed by substantial rest. Sprinting is a much more natural, (sometimes referred to as reflexive) motion than squatting and thus less likely to have the same magnitude of deficits as you may see in a squat.

Athletes have been running since their body allowed them to in early childhood development and the body has a way of self-organizing movement around its unique structure and function to get the task done. A coach can maximally sprint many in the general population without much risk, it just might not be fast. This is the side of the argument that says max sprinting is generally safer than max squatting, and I do agree that there is some validity to all of these points.

Let me paint a different picture, one that some may not consider when comparing the stimuli. Max weight room testing tends to be between 1 and 5 reps at a given weight (1RM, 3RM, 5RM,etc.), whereas a max sprint may be anywhere from 20-60+ reps (each foot strike is a maximal rep). In a typical sprint workout, you may accumulate that same amount of steps 4-10+ times. So overall, you’re accumulating 100s more maximal reps in repeated sprinting than in a max weight room test.

To take this a step further, a sound lifting program is maxing out 1-3 days per month at most. The majority of structured lifting occurs at submaximal loads, with max day being the reward for the athletes after a tough block of training. Maximal sprints are performed several times, sometimes 2 to 4 days per week. Over the course of the month, the athletes have performed anywhere from 8 to 16 days of maximal effort sprinting. This means the athlete has accumulated 1000s more maximal reps (remember each step is a max effort motion) worth of sprint work compared to maximal lifting.

Now we can consider velocity. The bar speed during max testing is likely <0.5m/s, whereas the center of mass may be moving between 7-11m/s during a maximal sprint. For perspective, that sprint velocity is at least 14-22x faster than the bar speed expressed during max testing. Additionally, each step of a sprint may create ground reaction forces up to 5x the athlete’s bodyweight. While a max lift may have similar ground reaction forces, the discrepancy of 1-5 reps compared to several sets of 20-60 reps (steps) for sprinting shows that the cumulative stresses the body endures with sprinting over a session will far exceed that of a typical max lifting session.

Each step of a sprint may create ground reaction forces up to 5x the athlete’s bodyweight, says @BrendanThompsn. Share on X

When thinking about overload and wear and tear, is the athlete more likely to sustain an injury pushing their body to the limit in weights during max week once every month or two, or during regularly programmed max effort sprints that they do all the time? How does technique amplify or minimize this?

This isn’t to say don’t sprint or that either exercise is superior to one another; it is more to conceptualize that max sprinting potentially induces far more stresses to the body than max lifting and that if coaches are wary of max lifting when someone has bad form, they should be equally or more cautious with max sprinting someone with hazardous technique too frequently.

The Concept of Skill Reserve

As mentioned before, speed reserve is often pursued endlessly along with a variety of other max outputs, sometimes at the expense of the skill that goes into those outputs. Speed reserve is the idea that the faster an athlete is at max output, the faster that athlete will be when operating in a submax capacity or under fatigue. It will be easier for them to achieve, carry, and repeat higher submaximal speeds than their slower counterparts.

Now I’ll spin this into a related concept that we will call skill reserve, efficiency reserve, technical reserve, etc. The more skilled, efficient, or technical somebody is when operating at max capacity, the more skilled, efficient, or technical they will be when operating in a submax capacity and under fatigue. This concept can be applied in a multitude of ways across sports, work, life, and other tasks.

Every sprint is an opportunity to build efficiency, coordination, power, relaxation, finesse, rhythm, and more. This is what makes sprinting potent. It is not the simple fact that the outputs produced are difficult to match anywhere else; more so, it is the combination of attributes and energy systems working together in synchrony that stress the body in a variety of ways that very few exercises can (if any).

Every sprint is an opportunity to build efficiency, coordination, power, relaxation, finesse, rhythm, and more. Share on X

As a workout wears on, the body must also learn how to operate under fatigue to maintain a level of proficiency to complete the task. If a fresh athlete has poor mechanics and an associated higher mechanical susceptibility to injury, that same athlete—when operating under fatigue—will multiply that risk by some factor as their mechanics exponentially deteriorate with each additional rep.

The body actively copes with the stresses induced on it during a workout and will compensate accordingly. If the task at hand is to get from A to B as fast as possible and the body is nearing a breaking point, it will sacrifice coordination and rhythm in the name of speed to achieve this goal. To see this in action, look no further than the final 100m of the 400m dash or 400m hurdles; watch the last 200m of the 800m or the final lap of the mile. The athletes that break down the most also tend to decelerate the most, oftentimes costing them a spot in the final or a medal on the podium.

In the context of team sports, as fatigue sets in with an athlete, watch how sloppy their quality of play becomes. Uncharacteristic turnovers, bad throws, poor shooting, giving up plays they typically wouldn’t—the more flawed a given skill is when fresh, the more that skill will deteriorate under fatigue.

In contrast, the most skilled athletes when fresh will still be operating at a technical level head and shoulders above their opponents and peers when working under fatigue. Watch a local high school conference championship and compare the 8^th place runner with the first place runner in how they look when battling throughout the race. Next, compare that experience to watching Olympians battle it out where the skill discrepancy is far less than at the high school level.

There’s a certain grace to elite performance that is often overshadowed by their brilliant performances and otherworldly outputs. Unless an athlete is at a certain standard of excellence already, it is extremely difficult to work on the skilled aspects of performance when operating in top gear all the time. It takes skill to demonstrate grace while operating at maximal outputs, and ultimately this balance is what leads many to expressing their optimal performance when it matters: competition.

There’s a certain grace to elite performance that is often overshadowed by their brilliant performances and otherworldly outputs, says @BrendanThompsn. Share on X

To add to the concept of skill reserve, it is helpful to revisit the idea of how fatigue impacts performance. While two athletes may have identical skill levels, the athlete who is more resilient to that fatigue will ultimately express that skill competency much longer than the athlete who is susceptible to fatigue and breakdown. Additionally, when comparing two athletes, an athlete with greater skill may outperform an athlete with lesser skill for a period of time.

But if the more skilled athlete has a susceptibility to fatigue that the athlete with lesser skill doesn’t, the skilled athlete may eventually perform worse than the less skilled athlete as a game or competition wears on. This is why it’s generally good to train holistically, as it addresses every aspect of the game rather than a select few attributes that may only last for a short period of time.

Applying Skill Reserve to a Training Program

To bring things full circle now and apply this concept to sprinting, it’s helpful to revisit the weight room equivalent. When developing form, technique, and precision for someone in the weight room, is it best to practice with max or submax loads? In other words, is the athlete operating near their max when working on technique, or with a weight that is manageable that they feel they have good control over?

The answer here is simple: the manageable weight. As the athlete demonstrates mastery at said weight, they’re allowed to graduate to the next weight to continue challenging their body under harsher conditions. Once they’ve demonstrated a level of competency that seems to prove to you that their form will only falter when they’ve encountered a weight that is too heavy, it becomes easier for a coach to allow them to test the waters of where their current ceiling may be because it is not as big of a perceived risk as it was before.

Applying this type of progression to sprinting is difficult. Athletes demonstrate different mechanics at submaximal and maximal speeds that don’t seem to mirror each other as much as might be preferred. An athlete may look like they’re jogging during tempo and like they’re fighting for their life when going all out. With sprinting, I tend to take a reverse approach to the weight room squatting example. Rather than starting them off jogging and whatever else, I want to get an idea of what they look like when they sprint first and go from there. Does it appear forced? Rushed? Weak? Exaggerated? Awkward? Hazardous?

Athletes demonstrate different mechanics at submaximal and maximal speeds that don’t seem to mirror each other as much as might be preferred. Share on X

After a quick video assessment, I’m able to see what their immediate needs are and correct them with cues. The athlete then takes these cues and does another max sprint (or several). If they appear to be struggling with the changes at max effort, it is time for submax reps for practice. Take the timer away, take the arbitrary distances away, and let them experiment with the cues where they feel most comfortable and have a sense of control.

Repetition for these athletes will be their best friend in making meaningful changes. As a coach, it is important to problem-solve to find a way for the cues to click for them. This can be achieved by exposing the athletes to a wide variety of feedback, constructive drills, and positive reinforcement. Once an athlete has reached this point, I spend a large portion of time addressing these factors each session and then periodically letting them test the waters with what they’ve learned. I dial the sprinting back for the same reason we start athletes with lighter weights in the weight room: they need to be under control to make necessary adjustments.

I dial the sprinting back for the same reason we start athletes with lighter weights in the weight room: they need to be under control to make necessary adjustments, says @BrendanThompsn. Share on X

Patients that exhibit movement faults in my clinic don’t tend to respond well when the exercise is graded too high. Take, for example, a patient with a hip drop and the posterior gluteus medius not doing its job during the gait cycle. If I start them on a difficult exercise that exceeds their capacity for controlling the hip drop, the likelihood of that particular exercise improving the gait fault is slim to none.

So, it’s necessary to grade down to the nearest level where they demonstrate control, but still challenge them. As they demonstrate competency in the exercises or tasks I’ve given them, they can dip their toes in the water of more demanding tasks for better carryover and eventually conscious manipulation of the task I am trying to correct—in this case focused gait training with typical circumstances (variable surfaces, variable grades, distractions, stairs, differing speeds, etc.).

I look at sprinting and other training the same way. If I see faults at X-intensity that the athlete can’t consciously correct, the likelihood I can make meaningful mechanical changes at that intensity is low. Grading that level of sprinting down to a lesser intensity and searching for the sweet spot of controlled yet challenging will yield greater benefits to the athlete from a technical standpoint. In similar fashion, as they demonstrate some competency, it’s great to graduate the athlete to the next level or allow them to experiment with their new skills at max output to see if the carryover is there. If it is, awesome! If not, it’s my job to figure out why and what I can do about it.

Training is one big experiment with each athlete I encounter: finding what works for whom, when to implement it, and to what degree while continuing to assess strengths, weaknesses, and how I can continue to holistically build the athlete throughout.

Training is one big experiment with each athlete I encounter, says @BrendanThompsn. Share on X

Submax, Tempo, and Technical Mastery

I know up to this point it probably seems like I am against max sprinting but I most definitely am not. As a high level sprinter who has been exposed to long, slow training and short, fast training, I know there is a balance that must be struck to achieve optimal results. Too long and too slow builds the aerobic system more and won’t develop fast twitch fibers to the degree they need to reach the speed ceiling.

Conversely, too much short, fast training will yield a very explosive athlete who may not have the gas tank to repeat performance or even sustain a highly technical performance for a single repetition. Breakdown may happen prematurely, and as mentioned earlier, technique decay increases injury susceptibility, especially at maximal outputs.

Technique decay increases injury susceptibility, especially at maximal outputs, says @BrendanThompsn. Share on X

I am a big fan of maximal sprinting and a big fan of technical training, whether through tempo, drills, or submaximal sprinting. Many of you may be reading this and thinking submax sprinting and tempo are the same thing. By definition, submax just means anything under an all-out effort, so yes, tempo is technically submax sprinting—but I differentiate the two.

I look at submax sprinting as dialing the thermostat back from 100, to 99, 98, 97, etc. until I find the point at which the athlete can still run extremely fast while sustaining control. It looks and feels like a sprint, but without operating with the pedal to the metal. Conversely, tempo is a much slower, controlled, rhythmic type of run that helps the athlete learn how much effort they need to give to hit x pace, minimizing strain, and maximizing repetitions. Athletes that display control with tempo and submax sprinting tend to show some level of carryover in their skill mastery when resuming max sprinting.

The transitory period between submax technical improvements and testing the waters in max sprint carryover varies from athlete to athlete. Some athletes may catch on fast and be ready to implement relatively quickly, others may take more time before seeing meaningful changes made in that domain. Athletes will progress at their own pace, with a tendency for novice athletes to take a bit longer than those with a higher training age and maturity. Additionally, athletes that have gone through a significant growth spurt recently will have difficulty developing that coordination in a timely manner, as their body must reform connections to catch up with its recent changes.

Athletes will progress at their own pace, with a tendency for novice athletes to take a bit longer than those with a higher training age and maturity. Share on X

Technical changes that need immediate intervention tend to stand out in a bad way on video. A short list might include:

• Wild arm swing
• Excessive trunk rotation
• Lack of postural awareness
• Degree and progression of body lean
• Heel recovery
• Foot strike
• Hip and knee mechanics
• Head control

Some reasons for fixing these items include:

• Energy leakage
• Efficiency
• Power outputs
• Excessive stress to soft tissues
• Poor timing and sequencing
• Excessive braking
• Insufficient propulsion
• Other factors that may lead to suboptimal performance and injury

Excessive casting of the knee in a sprint places the hamstring in a lengthened position and typically the most vulnerable position. Now imagine an athlete does this habitually over 1000s of steps over a training period. This is where the ticking time bomb I referenced earlier tends to come into play in the form of a hamstring tweak, pull, tear, tendinopathy, tendonitis, etc. The injured athlete must then go to their primary care provider, athletic trainer, physical therapist, and/or other supporting staff to help remedy the situation through rehab, training modifications, and other means.

In the absence of a meaningful technical change, the athlete will go back to sprinting the same way they did before and the likelihood of another injury to the same tissue is greatly increased. The process is likely to repeat itself again and again. If you do what you’ve done, you get what you’ve got.

If you do what you’ve done, you get what you’ve got, says @BrendanThompsn. Share on X

This is one of many examples to illustrate the cumulative stresses of sprinting and the cost of poor technique. It’s not to say that sprinting is inherently dangerous and needs to be avoided, it is more so to say that in the absence of technical coaching, a sprinter with poor technique may underperform, increase their risk of injury, and subsequently, battling that injury over time will lead to chronically underperforming and further injuries.

My career progression is a great example of this as my high school peak was 10.98s 100m and 22.41s 200m my senior year, which wasn’t much better than what I ran as a freshman in high school (11.12s/22.83s). I trained, but I never understood there was strategy in racing, value in technique, or levels to performance. I just went for it every single day and only ever knew one gear: GO.

After entering college, I shaved time consistently each season, eventually achieving 10.57s/21.18s, a sub-21.0s time trial in practice, a 46.2s 400m split, and a 9.4s split on an All-American 4x100m that ran 39.12s at the NCAA Division I Outdoor Championships. With the help of coach Joey Woody, I was able to mature as an athlete and really understand how to apply the skill that allowed me to progress the way I did. This led me to eventually have the most healthy and prosperous season of my career.

I’m a sample size of n=1, but I’ve personally witnessed athletes all over the country follow similar progressions. Learning sprint technique was career defining for me and it took me really dedicating myself to learning the art of sprinting to finally have my moment in track and field.

Taking it to the Track

In summary, the current state of training is heavily focused around arbitrary max outputs, particularly in sprinting, without the appropriate technical focus needed to balance and hone those max outputs. I have found success in sprinting 2 to 3 days per week for advanced sprinters, but the largest improvements I’ve seen in performance have been through technical training and changing the speed demands of sessions to balance output with requisite posture and technique. Being willing to take the time to identify technical faults and iron them out has been one of the hardest, yet most fulfilling changes I’ve made to my program. It should not be beneath someone to slow things down to work on these alterations.

Lessening the loads in the weight room to refine technique and control is intuitive, and sprinting is no different. A submax sprint, tempo running, or other methods for instilling technique have been some of my most fruitful uses of time to complement the output aspect of training. Going 90-95%, while less physically demanding, is extremely demanding from a technical perspective. The cognitive demand during the task makes the submaximal efforts more demanding because it is working against the athlete’s natural tendencies, requiring total concentration throughout.

Taking the time to experiment with different cues, drills, and demonstrations to help my athletes understand what they’re doing and what is expected has helped them piece together better tendencies and many eventually have massive breakthroughs in their performances, all while staying healthier along the way.

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

ACL injuries receive a tremendous amount of attention at all levels of sport, and for good reason. It is estimated that 250,000 ACL injuries occur annually in the United States, representing approximately $2 billion in medical and rehabilitation costs.¹ Many of these injuries occur in competitive athletes, with females demonstrating a particularly high risk for ACL injury in field- or court-based sports (e.g., soccer, lacrosse, basketball). The occurrence of a single ACL injury may result in many future complications, including reduced activity levels, cessation of sport participation, and a high risk for future ACL injuries.²

So, what do we currently know about ACL injury?

Without rehashing too much of a previous post on ACL mitigation strategies, most of the research and clinical practice has focused on biomechanical- and neuromuscular-based interventions. While these programs have been demonstrated to be successful³, the rates of ACL injuries are actually climbing in adolescents⁴ and remaining somewhat steady in professional athletes (figure 1).⁵

In this blog post, I share what we currently know about the sensorimotor contributions to ACL injury risk, as well as how we can utilize technology- and field-based training strategies to improve sensorimotor performance in our athletes.

*Author’s note: I define sensorimotor performance as the integration between perceptual sensory input (e.g., vision, hearing, touch) and biomechanical movement output (e.g., running, jumping, cutting, decelerating). There are varying definitions, but for the sake of clarity, this is my working definition for the remainder of the post.

A New View of ACL Injuries?

As you may know, many individuals—myself included—have devoted entire careers to understanding ACL injuries and strategies to mitigate this injury risk. My doctoral research examined the relationship between sports-related concussion and lower extremity/ACL injury risk in adolescent and collegiate athletes. With concussive injuries being classically defined by a temporarily altered sensorimotor state, I started to wonder how these attributes contributed to ACL injury (outside of athletes with a recent or past concussion history).

Previous research has identified biomechanical and neuromuscular contributors to ACL injury risk (dynamic knee valgus, quadriceps-to-hamstring strength ratio).⁶ However, this is not necessarily conclusive in all athlete populations.^7,8 While it is outside the scope of this article to discuss the extreme complexity of ACL injury, my current research has led me to believe that perhaps we are somewhat ignoring another important contributor to ACL injury…the brain!

My current research has led me to believe that perhaps we are somewhat ignoring another important contributor to ACL injury—the brain, says @JasonAvedesian. Share on X

Ultimately, the central nervous system (we can generally think of this as the brain and spinal cord) is the central driver of biomechanical and neuromuscular control. Before getting into the actual research, I want to take you along a theoretical approach to how the brain and sensorimotor performance may contribute to ACL injury.

Adding the Brain and Sensorimotor Performance to the ACL Injury Risk Equation

Let’s first give some thought to the actual complexity of a dynamic sporting environment. Take, for example, a collegiate midfield soccer athlete performing in a very intense match. Some of the key sensorimotor attributes to successful performance and staying injury-free may include:

1. Working memory and pattern recognition – Remembering and recognizing the opposition’s defensive scheme when in a certain position on the field.
2. Dual-tasking – Receiving the ball from their teammate while scanning the field.
3. Visual attention and multiple object tracking – Spatial recognition of the changing position of teammates and opponents.
4. Reaction time and processing speed – Avoiding oncoming defenders.

All of this must be completed within hundreds of milliseconds! When viewed from this perspective, we truly take for granted the complexity of sporting environments (and how athletes can make their performances in them look rather “effortless”). Any movement performed on the field requires a complex interaction between the environment and athlete (we can think of this as sensorimotor integration).

Basically, any interaction an athlete makes with their environment is based upon three general concepts: the nature of the information, the complexity of the action to be performed, and the number of available response options (figure 2). Regardless of the task, movement behavior is a constantly evolving process constrained by time, space, and decisions (figure 2).

What Does the Current Research Tell Us?

Much like examining movement biomechanics and muscular activity patterns, what if we could determine how an athlete’s central nervous system is performing? Luckily, researchers have initiated these studies in the hopes of quantifying sensorimotor performance as it relates to ACL injury risk. In this section, I will highlight some studies that have been conducted, along with areas for future research and sports science directions.

One of the first studies on the relationship between sensorimotor performance and ACL injury risk was conducted by Swanik and colleagues all the way back in 2007.⁹ In this study, the researchers collected preseason performance on a common concussion assessment (ImPACT) and then longitudinally tracked non-contact ACL injuries in a group of collegiate athletes. Compared to athletes of the same sport and position, athletes who sustained an in-season, non-contact ACL injury performed worse on all measures of the assessments, including reaction time, processing speed, and working memory.⁹

Follow-up studies in collegiate football athletes have demonstrated an association between worse visuo-motor reaction time and greater risk for non-contact lower extremity injury.^10,11 A recent investigation from one of my colleagues (Dr. April McPherson of the USOPC) determined that individuals post-concussion are at a 1.6x greater odds for an ACL injury compared to those without a concussive injury history.¹² Hot off the press last month, researchers determined that female lacrosse athletes are at a fivefold increased risk for ACL injury up to one year post-concussion.¹³

Compared to more established biomechanical & neuromuscular data, quantifying the influence of sensorimotor performance on ACL injury risk is relatively lacking and still very much in its infancy. Share on X

Compared to more established biomechanical and neuromuscular data, quantifying the influence of sensorimotor performance on ACL injury risk is relatively lacking and still very much in its infancy. From what we do know so far, however, there are three brain areas that may be most influential to sensorimotor performance and, in turn, risk for ACL injury.

1. Prefrontal cortex – Responsible for many roles, including information processing/filtering, executive function, and working memory performance.
2. Thalamus – Acts as a relay of motor and sensory signals to the cerebral cortex for higher-level processing.
3. Lingual gyrus – Responsible for visual perception and recognition of complex vision information.

My overall conclusion of the sensorimotor research to date is that athletes with relative deficits in sensorimotor performance may be more susceptible to ACL and lower extremity injuries during conditions of increased arousal (i.e., a sporting environment). While certainly more research is required (and there’s a lot of exciting work coming down the pipeline), we can at least begin to ask: how can we train the sensorimotor system?

Athletes with relative deficits in sensorimotor performance may be more susceptible to ACL and lower extremity injuries during conditions of increased arousal (i.e., a sporting environment. Share on X

Training the Sensorimotor System – Technological Advancements

Over the last decade, there have been some major advancements in “train the brain” technology. Devices and software such as sensory boards, reactionary light devices, stroboscopic eyewear, and virtual/augmented reality* attempt to target various sensorimotor performance attributes: visual spatial-attention and reaction time, working memory, pattern recognition, and multiple object tracking (figure 5). 

*Disclaimer: This blog post is not intended to be an endorsement of any one product. I am just sharing my personal experiences with these devices, along with some research-grade evidence to support their potential utility.

Before we decide to invest in new technology, let’s consider a recent paper from Hadlow and colleagues¹⁴ on the framework for utilizing sensorimotor technology (figure 6).

Based on the Hadlow model, there are three considerations when implementing new technology to train the sensorimotor system.

1. Targeted Perceptual Function – The ability to discriminate between athletes of various skill levels (e.g., professional athletes should perform better than adolescent athletes).
2. Stimulus Correspondence – Sensorimotor skill improvement should improve through targeted training (e.g., visual-spatial attention and processing speed should improve with stroboscopic eyewear training).
3. Response Correspondence – Trained sensorimotor skills should translate to enhanced on-field performance and reduced injury risk.

Of these three factors, response correspondence is the least studied in the sports science literature. However, it offers plenty of opportunities for researchers and sports scientists to explore how current sensorimotor technology/training strategies influence performance and injury risk. In the next sections, I will take a deeper dive into a few of these sensorimotor technologies.

Sensory Board Technologies

Sensory board training devices have become a popular tool for assessing and training a variety of sensorimotor abilities. From a sports science standpoint, here are a few considerations to collect the most accurate data from these devices:

1. Standardize the time of assessment – Sensorimotor performance can be affected by many internal and external stressors, including sleep quality¹⁵, anxiety levels¹⁶, fatigue¹⁷, and prior injury¹⁸. Therefore, longitudinal sensorimotor measures should be collected at the same time of day to minimize these effects. For example, it would not be ideal to collect a baseline preseason assessment at 6 a.m. and compare that to future assessments collected in the mid-afternoon during the season.
2. Standardize board height and distance – Most existing sensory board technology is based upon upper extremity sensorimotor performance. During each assessment, athletes should be placed at standardized locations relative to their height and arm length to ensure accurate comparisons across time. This standardization will be helpful in minimizing effects on central and peripheral visual reaction time.
3. Standardize attentional focus – This is the toughest standardization to implement without actual eye tracking technology. Devices such as Dynavision and Senaptec Sensory Station offer central fixation targets during certain sensorimotor assessments. It is important to instruct athletes to fixate on these targets, especially if the sports scientist or researcher is interested in collecting peripheral visual-spatial performance.

While sensory boards are a bit more costly than other sensorimotor technology, these devices can assess and train many important attributes such as eye-hand and eye-foot coordination, central and peripheral visual-spatial attention, multiple object tracking, working memory, and reaction time. Research indicates that worse performance on sensory boards is associated with greater risk for lower extremity injury in collegiate football athletes.¹⁹ Even if we do not have access to sensory board technologies, there are other options for assessing and training sensorimotor abilities.

Stroboscopic Eyewear

Stroboscopic technology within elite sport has been around for quite some time (check out this article dating back to MJ in his prime). Nowadays, the technology is very easy to use and implement within a sport and clinical setting (figure 7). The goal is to limit visual information by alternating between clear and opaque visual states while performing sport-specific activities. This technology may be particularly helpful for athletes who are over-reliant on vision (often the case in athletes during rehabilitation from lower extremity injury such as ACL²⁰) by re-weighting sensory input to vestibular and somatosensory systems during dynamic postural control tasks.²⁰

There are several sensorimotor abilities that may be trained when using stroboscopic eyewear, including external attentional focus, visual-motor processing speed for enhanced visual efficiency, working memory, anticipatory trajectory estimation (e.g., ball flight, oncoming opponent), and transient visual attention.^21,22 While this technology certainly requires more research and data, it appears that beneficial training effects may be seen in as little as three weeks.²³

Virtual Reality

Sports-specific virtual reality (VR) is another up-and-coming technology that will begin to permeate through training environments. In one of my previous stops at the Emory Sports Performance and Research Center (in partnership with Cincinnati Children’s Hospital), the research team developed sports-specific scenarios integrated within biomechanical analysis to better understand ACL injury risk during more realistic conditions.

The utilization of VR for sensorimotor training comes with many potential benefits for practitioners and clinicians:

1. VR offers fully immersive environments within clinical and/or laboratory settings for better replication of sports-specific demands.
2. Practitioners gain the ability to simultaneous collect neuromuscular and biomechanical outcomes related to ACL injury risk during VR assessments.
3. Similar to stroboscopic eyewear, utilizing VR may help an athlete transition from a predominately internal attentional focus to an external attentional focus during training.

Training the Sensorimotor System – Revisiting Technological Advancements

Overall, there are many emerging technologies that can be used to train the sensorimotor system. While the research and data still relatively lag clinical practice (spoiler: they usually do), there is certainly utility for all the previously discussed technologies. When revisiting the Hadlow framework¹⁴, it appears that stroboscopic eyewear and sports-specific VR may be the most effective devices for training, while sensory board technology may be best for standardized assessments and monitoring change over time (figure 8).

Stroboscopic eyewear & sports-specific VR may be the most effective devices for training, while sensory board technology may be best for standardized assessments and monitoring change over time. Share on X

To reiterate, much more sports science research is required on all these technologies, but I am confident that we will see much more of that over the next few years. My advice to clinicians and sports scientists looking to invest in sensorimotor technology: first determine how feasible it will be to implement within your athletes’ specific training environment. Once you decide that, you will be able to make the appropriate choice(s) that fit your needs.

While we all love technology and the great strides it has made for training our athletes, we must all consider more “field-based” training strategies. In this next section, I will discuss how we can capitalize on agility training to develop sensorimotor abilities.

Agility vs. Change of Direction

Before diving too deep, I must first briefly discuss the differences between agility and change of direction (COD) training. While both have merit within a training model, it is important to distinguish between the two to target desired outcomes. As defined by Sheppard and Young (2006)²⁴, agility is a rapid, whole-body movement in response to a stimulus, while COD is a rapid, whole-body movement that is pre-planned. Keep in mind, COD qualities are instrumental for agility performance. But when examining the two from a sensorimotor perspective, there are important differences:

• Agility attributes – Anticipation, visual-spatial attention, pattern recognition, visuo-motor processing speed, and reaction time.
• COD attributes – Technique, linear/horizontal speed, neuromuscular asymmetry, and eccentric and deceleration control.

The environment we place our athletes in may also be quite different when targeting agility versus COD attributes. Agility-based training is more random and chaotic (open-skill abilities), while COD training tends to be more controlled and pre-planned (closed-skill abilities). COD training is inherently stable, while agility situations present an unstable environment in which an athlete is under various demands/constraints from teammates and opponents, all while having to anticipate and make decisions under time and space constraints (see figure 2).

While all athletes can benefit from both styles of training, novice athletes or those in the early stages of injury rehabilitation should be initially placed in COD environments and then progressed to agility environments. The figure I created below provides a quick overview of the important aspects of agility and COD (figure 9).

Much like neuromuscular strength training, we can progress agility training to place greater sensorimotor demands on our athletes. Check out a previous blog post in which my colleague Corey Peterson (University of Minnesota) provides a great progression from COD training to agility training. There are near infinite possibilities with agility training.

Determine the sensorimotor demands placed on your athletes and mimic your training environment to better replicate those demands, says @JasonAvedesian. Share on X

The bottom line: determine the sensorimotor demands placed on your athletes and mimic your training environment to better replicate those demands.

Sensorimotor Considerations During Injury Rehab

Unfortunately, we will not be able to prevent all lower extremity/ACL injuries from occurring in sports. In the event of an ACL injury, we must be aware of the sensorimotor contributions during rehabilitation so that we can reduce the risk of future injury. As we know, ACL injury rehab can be very complex and may not follow precise timelines due to setbacks. In the sub-acute, acute, and even chronic stages of post-ACL injury, physiological responses such as pain, stiffness, and swelling may occur.^25,26 This may lead to ruminating-type behaviors and psychological distress appearing in the form of anxiety, fear of reinjury, and decreased confidence to return to previous performance levels.²⁷

We can think of this psychological response as simply stress that athletes must manage while returning from injury. High stress levels are associated with delayed reaction times²⁸, reduced attention capacity²⁹, and internal attentional focus³⁰, all of which can be thought of as sensorimotor deficits (figure 10).

Aside from restoring neuromuscular and biomechanical performance capacities, we must consider the restoration of psychological and sensorimotor abilities during ACL injury rehab. The previously mentioned technologies are fantastic tools for these exact purposes, especially early in the rehab progression when athletes may not be able to get full “physical reps.”

Besides restoring neuromuscular and biomechanical performance capacities, we must consider the restoration of psychological & sensorimotor abilities during ACL injury rehab, says @JasonAvedesian. Share on X

*Author’s note: If you are interested in the actual brain neurophysiological response to an ACL injury, I would highly recommend checking out the work of my colleague Dr. Dustin Grooms at Ohio University. He has done tremendous work in this space and has been greatly influential on my current understanding of the sensorimotor contributions to ACL injury.

Relationship Between Concussion and ACL Injury

Much of my personal motivation on sensorimotor contributions to ACL injury came from my PhD studies at UNLV and Michigan State University. My dissertation research focused on how sports-related concussion and neurocognition influenced lower extremity biomechanics and injury risk in adolescent and collegiate athletes.^31–34 Prior data has determined that athletes and military personnel are at approximately 2–3 times greater risk for lower extremity injury post-concussion (figure 11).^35–39

As mentioned earlier, recent research indicates a specific relationship between concussion and ACL injury risk.^12,13 Transient deficits in cognition and oculomotor performance are hallmark signs of a concussive injury, but researchers are beginning to think that more subtle sensorimotor deficits may still linger even after athletes have been cleared to return to sport. The previously discussed sensorimotor topics in this blog post can certainly apply (and perhaps be very effective) during the acute and chronic time periods post-concussion to mitigate future risk for lower extremity and ACL injuries.

Concluding Thoughts – Future Opportunities to Reduce the Risk of ACL Injury

While we know quite a bit about ACL injuries from biomechanical and neuromuscular perspectives, we still have much to discover in terms of how sensorimotor performance contributes to ACL injury risk. With the research and information I have gathered at this stage in my career, here is my proposed pathway to ACL injury (figure 12):

1. Cascading events that begin with decreased visual-spatial attention, delayed reaction time/processing speed, and/or reduced working memory.
2. Perception-action mismatch between the athlete and surrounding environment (e.g., mistimed estimation of a defender’s trajectory toward the athlete).
3. Delayed neuromuscular response (e.g., anticipatory quadriceps and hamstring response) that results in increased load on the knee joint during high-impact loading events.
4. Increased risk for ACL injury.

If you take one thing away from this entire blog post, I hope it is that we have a great opportunity to modify sensorimotor risk factors and incorporate sensorimotor training within previously established neuromuscular and biomechanical interventions to reduce the risk of ACL injury.

Header photo by Tony Quinn/Icon Sportswire.

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. Bates NA, McPherson AL, Rao M, Myer GD, and Hewett TE. “Characteristics of inpatient anterior cruciate ligament reconstructions and concomitant injuries.” Knee Surgery, Sports Traumatology, Arthroscopy. 2016;24(9):2778-2786.

2. Paterno MV, Rauh MJ, Schmitt LC, Ford KR, and Hewett TE. “Incidence of contralateral and ipsilateral anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury after primary ACL reconstruction and return to sport.” Clinical Journal of Sport Medicine. 2012;22(2):116-121. doi:10.1097/JSM.0b013e318246ef9e

3. Webster KE and Hewett TE. “Meta-analysis of meta-analyses of anterior cruciate ligament injury reduction training programs.” Journal of Orthopaedic Research. 2018;36(10):2696-2708. doi:10.1002/jor.24043

4. Beck NA, Lawrence JTR, Nordin JD, DeFor TA, and Tompkins M. “ACL tears in school-aged children and adolescents over 20 years.” Pediatrics. 2017;139(3). doi:10.1542/peds.2016-1877.

5. Injury Data Since 2015. NFL.com. Accessed August 7, 2021. https://www.nfl.com/playerhealthandsafety/health-and-wellness/injury-data/injury-data

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