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By Joey Guarascio, Autumn Bartlett, and Adam Bennett

In-season, planning football training exercises, prescribing the right amount of stress, and allowing the proper recovery periods are all essential for performance in games. Throughout the off-season, the strength and conditioning coaches calculate and prescribe workouts down to the pound or yard—this same precise approach must be taken in-season. The challenge, though, is whereas everything can be preemptive in planning in the off-season, the in-season is very much reactive due to the chaotic and unpredictable nature of the game.

Having all departments in the organization on the same page is a must, as there needs to be maximum communication throughout about the current state of the team and individual players. When your job is dependent on production, you cannot leave anything to chance. The football coaches, ATC, strength and conditioning coaches, and nutritionist all need to move information fluidly back and forth to manage stress and have proper planning for future practices.

Performance isn’t about how much stress a coach can impose on the athlete, but about how much volume of stress the athlete can recover from and adapt to, and then go and compete again. It is taking the science and data and turning it into usable and actionable means. Aiding this process with recovery resources, from percussive therapy tools to supplements and shakes to recovery training circuits, can take a lot of uncertainties out of the equation and helps mitigate issues as much as possible. Coaches can’t control everything, but we strive to aid in victory as much as possible—otherwise, what’s the alternative? Do we do nothing and allow 18- to 22-year-olds to fend for themselves? Or do we educate and teach proper habits that enhance general well-being and maximize recovery?

Performance isn’t about how much stress a coach can impose on the athlete, but about how much volume of stress the athlete can recover from and adapt to, and then go and compete again. Share on X

In this article, you will get perspectives from three different departments of FAU football:

• Strength and Conditioning
• Sports Nutrition
• Athletic Training

These separate departments need to work as one to make sure we arrive on game day ready to perform. We provide a daily outline from Sunday (six days out) to Saturday (game day) with all the interventions we take.

Sunday: Six Days Out from Game Day

Following a Saturday game, players get to sleep in on Sunday morning. Our first required team activity on Sundays is a medical check-in, scheduled at noon. The check-in is mandatory for all participants in the game the night before. The ATC screens out any uninjured athletes first (as all participants are required to check in), before then addressing potential injured athletes.

The ATC starts with general questions surrounding the injury before engaging in further testing. The results of the medical check-in are communicated directly to the strength and conditioning staff, who prepare for any alterations of the day’s lift and practice. The ATC expresses the severity of the injury, limitations, mechanism, and potential time frame of future evaluations or rehab. They visit before the full staff meeting and run down the list of guys that have something going on that we need to be aware of.

When making alterations, we like to use plan B, which is the next-closest exercise that the athlete can accomplish given their limitations. An example would be if we prescribe a split squat, but the athlete has a foot injury, we could accomplish the same goal as the prescribed football training exercises with a rear-foot-elevated split squat or a pistol squat, which fits the lateralization of our split squat. This communication is key and is the lifeblood of any performance team.

When making alterations, we like to use plan B, which is the next-closest exercise that the athlete can accomplish given their limitations. Share on X

After the medical check-in, players proceed to brunch, as this is usually their first meal of the day—they typically sleep in until around 10-11 a.m. the morning after a game. At brunch, they check in with a nutritional intern to have their body weight checked. If there is a significant loss in BW (2%-4%), our nutritionist is alerted.

The first line of defense that the nutritionist takes is hydration intervention. The athlete is provided with a Right Stuff, a Liquid IV, and a 16-ounce Powerade bottle that they must drink. Each player has a custom plate assembled by the nutritional staff, depending on their nutritional goals (weight gain, weight loss, or maintain). The meal is carb-/protein-heavy to replenish what was burned the night before.

Players then report to the weight room, where they perform a 28-minute recovery circuit along with a light, regenerative lift that emphasizes restoring ROM back into the foundational movement patterns such as squat, hinge, press, and a pull. We are not trying to reinvent the wheel with the recovery circuit; we are looking to:

• Decrease general soreness.
• Increase ROM in primary movers.
• Decrease muscle tone to avoid pulls or allow compensations to form.

We use several tools, such as Donnie Thompson’s tempering rollers, the Theragun, and the PainPill from Chris Duffin. The Theragun is an amazing product because it allows us to pinpoint some specific areas that cannot be reached with general rollers.

Recovery Circuit – Seven-minute stations (athletes rotate through all four):

1. Self myofascial release (SMR): body tempering, manual therapy, and Theragun to pinpoint sore spots.
2. Hurdle mobility.
3. Athlete yoga.
4. Band stretch.

Once the players have run through the recovery circuit, they report to their assigned racks and begin the lift pictured below under the S&C coaches’ watch.

Post-lift, the players are given a recovery shake high in carbs, protein, and anti-inflammatories such as cherry juice and berries. The players are also given a multivitamin and fish oil. The shakes are customized to fit the requirements of the athlete’s desired body comp goal.

Players go to meetings post-lift, followed by a correction-styled practice to clean up mistakes from the previous game (this lasts an hour in duration). We steal some more recovery with our pre-practice warm-up, utilizing some mobility exercises.

To finish out the day, our players get to (hopefully) eat a victory meal from our training table while watching NFL games. This is usually a specialty meal and allows for the players to decompress and enjoy each other’s company.

Monday: Five Days Out from Game Day

Monday is a mandatory off day where the players can catch up on sleep and handle academic work. We encourage SMR (body tempering, manual, Theragun), general stretching, and meathead work to maintain some body armor (back machine work, push-ups, arm farm, neck work). We also provide an at-home recovery plan if the player doesn’t want to come to the facility.

If the athlete chooses to come in voluntarily, it’s another opportunity for the athlete to be provided with nutritional resources. The weight room observes open hours from 8 a.m.-4 p.m. and the training room requires that two treatment times (8 a.m.-11 a.m., 1 p.m.-3 p.m.) are met. The treatment/rehab sessions are longer treatment session times to prep for the week. Any changes in a player’s injury status are discussed with the strength and conditioning staff as well as the football staff.

It’s great for the players to get away from the stress of competition and reset before the challenges of the next opponent are presented.

Tuesday: Four Days Out from Game Day

Tuesday is a workday! Tuesday starts with a mandatory breakfast that is carb-centered to fuel the players for the upcoming full-padded practice. At breakfast, the strength staff is present and taking general soreness questionnaires for our two deep. This info is relayed to the ATCs, and players with a rating of 4/10 are recommended to come get extra recovery or treatment on the specific troubled area. We utilize a 0 (no pain) to 10 (need to see a doctor) scale for this questionnaire.

AM treatments are performed concurrently while breakfast is open. AM treatments are focused on prepping athletes for practices. The main purpose is to enable heavier modalities and be soft-tissue-based. The pre-practice rehab design is to prep the body for work. Tools such as BFR Air Band Cuffs are prescribed with football training exercises to reduce stress on the joints and bring blood flow to specific issue areas. Activation exercises are also prescribed to maximize output for the day’s work.

Video 1. Tuesday is a great day to utilize a max-velocity-themed warm-up pre-practice. The use of pogo hops, dribbles, and skips allows the athlete to retain the reactive strength and speed mechanics that were developed over the off-season.

Pre-practice warm-up for Tuesday is max-velocity-themed to retain and touch on the reactive strength components and technical components that were developed throughout the off-season. Pogo hops, skips, and dribbles are all used to refresh the athletic qualities of speed and reactive strength that can be lost in less than seven days. In-season football training exercises—from a strength and conditioning coach’s perspective—are all about allowing the athletes to maintain and gain increases in the general athletic qualities that were developed during the off-season.

Direct reactive strength training is one that, through testing depth jumps in-season, was shown to be a detrained athletic quality as the season went on. Share on X

When the stimuli are provided through the sport, it isn’t necessary to compile the stress through training modalities. It’s extremely important to understand which boxes are being checked and which ones aren’t. Direct reactive strength training is one that, through testing depth jumps in-season, was shown to be a detrained athletic quality as the season went on. The intervention of reactive strength work in our warm-up on Tuesdays combatted this and led to higher max velocities on average in the practice.

The practice is around two hours and 15 minutes and is centered on first and 10 play options and is also special teams heavy. Due to the situational down and distance, Tuesday’s practice demands more overall volume and high-speed volume for the players. In this practice, we encourage our players to try and match or surpass their best padded max velocity.

Hitting a minimum 90% of max velocity twice a week is necessary to maintain speed in-season from the data we have collected. Speed interventions will be made if that is not being accomplished by having the athlete hit one fly-10 with a 30-yard build on Thursday. Monitoring max velocity and implementing a max velocity warm-up have really helped in the reduction of soft tissue injuries.

During the practice, right around the mid-point, the coach has a 10-minute period we call halftime—here, the players sit down under tents with fans, replenish glucose, and hydrate. We supply several different snacks that range from fruit to candy. We want to practice at a high level, which means having enough gas in the tank to accomplish that.

Monitoring max velocity and implementing a max velocity warm-up have really helped in the reduction of soft tissue injuries. Share on X

Post-practice, players are provided with a carb recovery shake immediately as they walk off the field. The players have 15 minutes to change and begin their post-practice lift. We try to maximize their time by stacking the lift and practice. The travel squad, which includes around 50 players, gets their main lift of the week post-practice on Tuesday. I am in favor of a post-practice lift as opposed to pre-practice lift for several reasons:

• Practice the sport in a fresh state. (It’s football season—keep the main thing the main thing.)
• Lifting is supportive.
• Allows for more aggressive load prescription, knowing that players don’t have anything except classes afterward.
• Allows for more autoregulation based on practice stress.

Post-lift, a custom shake based on a weight gain, lose, or maintain distinction is waiting for the athlete with a high-carb and -protein lunch to go. Athletes who had high scores on their daily soreness charts have the option to come back in the afternoon to get extra treatment on specified areas. Athletes returning from long-term injuries come back in the afternoon for rehab.

We also encourage our athletes on Tuesday to take advantage of our cold and hot tubs.  Contrast bath modality is as follows:

• 3-minute cold, 2-minute hot x 2 cycles + end with 3-minute cold.

Normatec recovery boots are also available to increase the recovery process—the recovery boots are a player favorite.

Wednesday: Three Days Out from Game Day

This day is an almost exact mirror of Tuesday, with just the practice structure being modified. Where Tuesday is longer, with an emphasis on max velocity, Wednesday’s practice is shorter in duration, and “short” areas dominate. The warm-up for this practice focuses on COD mechanics, which primes the players for the day. Shuffle reaction exercises, along with deceleration exercises, are prescribed in the warm-up to reinforce proper movement patterns.

The practice is just under 1 hour and 50 minutes and emphasizes third down and short yardage. This produces less total volume but a much higher IMA count. (IMA is explosive decelerations, accelerations, and changes of direction.) High-speed yardage on average drops between 15% and 25% from the previous day. Halftime is employed as it is on Tuesday, as well as the post-practice protocols. Non-travel guys lift post-practice, and instead of lifting, the travel squad can get to classes or rest earlier.

Athletes who had high scores on their daily soreness charts have the option to come back in the afternoon to get extra treatment on specified areas. Athletes returning from long-term injuries come back in the afternoon for rehab. Just like Tuesday, on Wednesday we encourage our athletes to take advantage of our cold and hot tubs, as well as the Normatec recovery boots, to increase the recovery process.

Thursday: Two Days Out from Game Day

Thursday morning follows the same flow as Wednesday, with treatment and breakfast. Before we get into our football meetings, players have a player-led meeting to lock in the focus of the team and provide clarity on what needs to happen to win the game.

Thursday’s practice is “helmet only,” lasting 1 hour 15 minutes. Thursday is a run-through, emphasizing focus and execution of the game plan. Post-practice we administer a mandatory recovery circuit like Sundays.

Recovery Circuit – Seven-minute stations:

1. SMR: body tempering, manual therapy, and Theragun pinpoint sore spots.
2. Hurdle mobility.
3. Athlete yoga.

Custom recovery shakes are given to the players along with a to-go lunch. Athletes who had high scores on their daily soreness charts have the option to come back in the afternoon to get extra treatment on specified areas. Athletes returning from long-term injuries come back in the afternoon for rehab and meet with team physicians. Normatec recovery boots are again available along with the tubs to maximize recovery.

Friday: One Day Out from Game Day

Friday morning follows the same flow as the previous two days, with treatment and breakfast. Players have a one-hour walk-through to tighten up execution and assignments. Post-practice, we supply a specialty shake from Jamba Juice. If Saturday is a home game, the players have off until the afternoon, when we have a meeting before travel to the hotel—we stay at a hotel in town to ensure total focus is on the game and to stay in routine regardless of the venue of play.

Upon arrival at the hotel, players check into their rooms and then come down for another recovery session where the strength and conditioning staff roll out, stretch out, and administer soft tissue work on targeted problem areas with the Theragun. Dinner is a carb- and protein-heavy meal. Hydration strategies are in place, and water consumption is monitored. The players have downtime prior to a snack before bed check.

Athletes who need treatment receive it at the hotel in that downtime between dinner and snack. A chiropractor is available at the team hotel for home games to adjust and provide ART on athletes by request. Players are sent a stretching routine to do before bed if they choose. Again, we want to leave no stone unturned and nothing to chance—feeling fresh on game day is always the goal.

For away games, post-practice we give players an hour to shower and prepare to check in for the flight. Players are given lunch as they board the plane. We require that the players take three water bottles on the plane with them, along with a custom snack bag. The schedule is the same once we arrive at the hotel.

Saturday: Game Day

Game day is always different!

The excitement and anxiety of game day drives the intensity of the day. Players sleep until a reasonable time, trying to prevent any effects of sleep loss. As the players filter down for breakfast, they are handed a water bottle that they must drink.

Breakfast is a little looser in mood than the pregame meal, but it does feel distinctly more focused than the team dinner the night before. The meal is heavy carbs and protein-themed, as we want to fill that gas tank for performance later in the day. Post-breakfast, the players in their position groups do a walk and talk with their coaches around the hotel for around 15 minutes. The coaches go over tips and reminders during this time. If afforded by a later kickoff time, the athletes get around an hour break for downtime.

The players come back down roughly 7-8 hours prior to kickoff to watch tape and walk through for roughly an hour. Post walk-through, we do our game day priming workout. The workout duration is 15 minutes, consisting of a dynamic warm-up followed by three ballistic exercises:

1. Plyo push-up 3×5 reps.
2. Split squat jumps 3×3 each side.
3. Seated start vertical jump 3×5.

“Ballistic activities might provide an alternative method of inducing a PAP response that is comparable in magnitude to that induced during heavy resistance exercise.” (Mark Russell, Natalie Williams, Liam P. Kilduff, Chapter 10: “Priming Match Day Performance,” Advanced Strength and Conditioning). We are trying to excite a PAP effect going into the game without inducing fatigue. This workout is performed 5-7 hours out of kickoff.

Once the priming workout is completed, the players are given a to-go meal. We encourage the players to take a hot shower and a 45-minute nap when they get back to their rooms. There is a two-hour gap between snack and the pregame meal. The pregame meal is four hours before kickoff. All players consume a Right Stuff with a Powerade. How much food they consume is up to each athlete, as they all have their own rituals leading up to kick.

Following the meal, the team assembles for a special team callout followed by a briefing of what the head coach envisions for the game. Prior to loading the buses, the players watch a highlight tape, and then we leave the hotel for the stadium.

The aim is to get to the stadium around two hours prior to kick. Players arrive and immediately start pregame treatment or get taped in prep for the game. Heat is used pregame with heat pads, or if a home game, the hot tubs for no longer than five minutes. The chiropractor is available for pregame “tune-ups.” The strength staff is available for body tempering and targeted soft tissue work with the Theragun.

Around 1 hour 30 minutes out, players start to enter the field for position-specific warm-ups designed to dynamically warm up and prep the athlete for the game. Players are encouraged to keep headphones on and stay to themselves. Each strength coach is responsible for a position group and administers the warm-up. At 70 minutes prior to kick, the field is cleared, starting the football-specific buildup to kick.

The football-specific warm-up lasts 35 minutes, and the field is then cleared with 23 minutes remaining on the countdown clock. Once reentering the locker room, the ATC and strength staff push fluid replenishment and hand out fast carb snacks such as gummies or candy. Any last-minute stretching (at the athlete’s request) is done prior to the coordinators’ briefing, followed by the head coach’s briefing. Once the head coach is finished addressing the team, they take the field.

During play, glucose and fluid replenishment is a priority. Our nutritionist aims to have our players consume 60-80 grams of carbs intra-game. We have exercise bikes on the sideline for players to stay warm during periods of inactivity, as well as the Theragun on the sideline for emergency soft tissue work. At halftime, each player has a custom snack bag with 60-80 grams of carbs coming in a variety of forms. The entire organization pushes hydration at halftime.

Coaches make their adjustments and players reenter the field for a general, dynamic warm-up comprised of six exercises. After the final whistle (and hopefully a victory), players are given a recovery shake and a carb-heavy meal to go.

The players enjoy the night, and the process starts over. Although a grind, this work week is extremely fulfilling and exciting. Watching the team compete while feeling prepared and confident gives all three departments a sense of accomplishment. Any issues or adjustments within the week due to logistical issues—or, as we call it, “sudden change”—are immediately briefed amongst the departments and handled.

We are always chasing perfection, trying to catch excellence along the way. Share on X

We are always self-auditing the week as we progress through it, so any changes that will lead to better performance will be discussed. At the end of the season, all three heads of the three departments meet with the head football coach and discuss future changes or suggestions based on notes throughout the season. We are always chasing perfection, trying to catch excellence 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

Autumn Bartlett joined the Florida Atlantic University staff in August 2021 as the football sports nutritionist. She graduated from the University of Florida in May 2020 with a dual degree in dietetics and nutrition science and completed her dietetic internship at Wellness Workdays. 

Adam Bennett joined Florida Atlantic University as an assistant athletic trainer in April 2015, working primarily with football. He then went to Minnesota for the 2016 season and returned to FAU in 2017 as the head athletic trainer for football. Before his first stint at FAU, Bennett interned with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers Athletic Training Department for a year, assisting with the prevention and rehabilitation of acute athletic injuries. He spent two years at the University of Southern Mississippi as a graduate assistant athletic trainer for football and women’s tennis while earning a master’s degree in sport management. Bennett got his B.S. in Athletic Training from Florida State while working with women’s soccer, football, baseball, and men’s basketball.

He is a Florida State Licensed NATABOC Certified Athletic Trainer and a NSCA Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist.

For coaches, it can be easy to get caught using specific sprinting drills or techniques just to check off a box, all while hoping your athletes adapt to it the way you intend. Sometimes, ensuring your athletes improve can be fixed with just a little bit more attention to detail, but achieving that isn’t easy if you or your athlete don’t know where you are going to take it next.

From my experience working with team sport athletes, they like to have a goal and know what is coming next. So, just like in the weight room, you need to have a way to both categorize and progress what technique drills you choose. Taking this extra step will help you explain to your athletes the purpose of certain drills and how they will progress down the line.

You need to have a way to both categorize and progress what technique drills you choose, says @CoachJacobDubU. Share on X

Categorization

First, let’s tackle the categorization of technique drills. I am not sure if I have seen anyone else do it exactly this way, but I think it is a vital first step to understanding how and where to put certain drills in a progression. I split drills into three main categories, which helps me decide where and when to use them.

1. Posture/Position Drills

Regardless of the level of the athlete, this is always my starting point for technique drills. These are your base-level drills, where as the title implies, we are looking to establish proper posture and positioning. Posture I define as what happens with the torso in relation to the lower body, without the movement of the limbs. Positioning I define as what positions the limbs need to get into after establishing your posture. Examples of drills that fall into this category include:

• Wall marches
• Wall holds
• Walks
• Paused walks
• Marches
• Paused marches

With team sport athletes, this is your bread and butter. The majority of team sport athletes—unless they have a track background—will struggle at first getting these positions down. I have quite literally seen NBA athletes struggle with these concepts at first. Something as simple as dorsiflexion at the ankle can be something you find yourself yelling about all the time. But, forcing them to slow down and feel those positions will speed up that learning curve tremendously.

Video 1. The A-March, used to establish posture and positioning for sprinting.

2. Force Drills

You cannot talk about sprinting fast without talking about putting force into the ground—this is where the rubber meets the road. We take our posture and positioning and then attempt to apply force into the ground efficiently. A few examples of these would be:

• Exchanges (single, double, triple)
• Single side marches
• Wall Exchanges (single, double, triple)

For team sport athletes, this is where you will start to see some breakdown of what you worked on in the earlier drills. But this time they have reference points and cues you have established with your posture drills. Especially for football players, once you tell them to do something with power, they will tense up. Constantly reference one or two points of emphasis from the posture drills and reinforce the necessity to maintain those positions.

You cannot talk about sprinting fast without talking about putting force into the ground, says @CoachJacobDubU. Share on X

Recalling and helping your athletes make that mental link is vital to bridging that mind–movement connection.

Video 2. The double-exchange drill, focusing on a violent switching action of the limbs.

3. Rhythm Drills

Finally, rhythm drills are where we add pace and varying rhythms to the postures and positions we established with our previous set of routines. Getting to a confident posture and position is one thing, but now you need to challenge your athletes to maintain it by adding or changing the rhythm.

Sprinting is a naturally rhythmic movement; therefore, we must address the ability to have some type of rhythm. If you can dance well, these will come a bit easier. Some basic rhythm drills are:

• A-Skips
• B-Skips
• A-Runs/High Knees
• Dribbles

All of these sprint progression drills will challenge your athlete’s ability to establish a rhythm and maintain their posture and positioning through that rhythm. So, be prepared to look for more breakdowns in posture or position when you progress to these drills. Their CNS is attempting to solve the more complex problem of how do I take all of the posture drills and start to translate them to sprinting.

Be prepared to look for more breakdowns in posture or position when you progress to rhythm drills, says @CoachJacobDubU. Share on X

Video 3. The A-Skip drill to improve rhythm and timing in sprint training.

This order is exactly how I progress my intra-session technique progression. Each session, I will touch on one or two of each of these drill-types, depending on the day’s goal. For example, an acceleration day early in the training cycle may feature two posture drills and two force drills. And on a max-velocity day, I may use two posture drills and two rhythm drills. By simply categorizing the drills, I can begin to create a fluid progression that builds on itself—this allows me to see what adaptations I need to prime for that day and pick my sprint progression drills accordingly.

Next, inter-session progression!

Progressing the Drills

There are three rules I will follow here, and I take zero credit for these—they are a combination of concepts I picked up from Hunter Charneski and one of my mentors, Adam Menner. These rules are simply ways to guide your thinking and see how things can start to fit together:

• Slow to Fast (Pace and Rhythm)
• Short to Long (Distance, Contacts, etc.)
• Soft to Hard (GCT and Surface)

Again, these are guides not laws, so don’t take them as such. Also, make a note to treat these as relative terms and not absolutes. These can be followed for both your intra- and inter-session progression, so let’s break them down.

Slow to Fast

This is simply pace and rhythm, starting with your slower-paced and less complex drills and working to your faster-paced and more complex drills. Focus on slowing down the movement to allow your athletes to feel, correct, and understand their actions. This is exactly what we discussed in the above section. A sample intra-session progression could look something like this:

1. Paused Wall A-Walk
2. Wall A-March
3. A-Skip

Focus on slowing down the movement to allow your athletes to feel, correct, and understand their actions, says @CoachJacobDubU. Share on X

Now, after doing that series for some time, you may look to progress to new exercises. Again, work off what you had and progress to a faster or more complex drill; however, don’t be afraid to progress laterally as well, as in the drill can go from a wall march to a stationary march. You still progressed, but are working on the same concepts. Your next progression may look like this.

1. Wall A-March
2. Single Exchange
3. A-Run/High Knee

Relatively simple idea. The primary usage is being able to mentally and visually understand the placement and purpose of each drill within the context of sprint progression training as a whole.

Short to Long

This one is straightforward, but is often overlooked. Start with shorter distances and progress to longer distances—or, if you track ground contacts, fewer contacts to more contacts. The biggest benefit to following this rule is fatigue management. Fortunately (or unfortunately), I can confirm this as I have experimentally broken this rule. Because team sport athletes have to work so hard to understand and work on achieving the right positions, I have found it drains their CNS. This leaves them depleted by the time you start sprinting—no good.

Just like in lifting, start with a less volume and progressively overload it over time. This is that same concept, and you can get creative with how you choose to do that. Whether by contacts, distance, or time, adding a little bit here and there over time will build an ability to withstand fatigue. Mind you, I never do more than four drills in a day. As I said before, the mental focus team sport athletes need to put into these is draining enough, you only want to focus on a few concepts at a time. Here is an example of one of my go-to progressions for technique drills:

Especially with technical work, I will always add volume with sets before distance. The reason being that it just gives your athletes time to rest a bit. Again, team sport athletes tend not to be accustomed to these movements if they haven’t done them elsewhere.

Especially with technical work, I will always add volume with sets before distance, says @CoachJacobDubU. Share on X

Soft to Hard

This rule references ground contact and the relative stress and force applied to each during a drill. For example, a walk or marching drill will have “softer” ground contacts than a skipping or running exercise. Again, the main reason for having this rule is to manage fatigue. Occasionally, we can underestimate the actual amount of stress that simply doing technique drills can have on an athlete. Especially if you look at all that is required to perform something as simple as a quality A-Skip—include the number of reps you can get in a 10-yard distance, and it adds up quickly.

Within a single session, this also acts as a way to prepare the tissues and tendons before they get to the actual work. Starting with walks and marches (which are a lot easier on the body) before getting into your skips will act as a warmup for the warmup. The benefits of progressive overload are well documented and can be applied for sprinting as well.

The benefits of progressive overload are well documented and can be applied for sprinting as well, says @CoachJacobDubU. Share on X

Putting it All Together

We have all been there: working something because we read “you gotta do these if we want to get our athletes better!” I have even caught myself working six to eight sprint drills in a session because “the kids need more exposure to get the technique down.” But that was not the issue—quite the opposite, in fact. I was overdoing it because I had not categorized and established the adaptations I was specifically looking to achieve. Once I implemented this strategy, my athletes and I began to work more in sync and understand the principles we were looking to accomplish.

When you start to put everything together, categorizing and having a few guidelines on how to progress makes programming an easier task. You can begin plugging in drills and asking yourself, where does it fit? Does it build on a previous adaptation? And so on. By doing so, you can take something that, initially, may have seemed overwhelming and make it far more digestible.

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

Swimming is a sport known for high yardage, two-a-day practices, and long hours in the pool. The grind of swimming is a source of pride, and if you’ve ever swum laps, you can appreciate the sport’s incredible difficulty. Holding your breath and exerting max effort is hard enough but doing both at the same time is a whole different ballgame.

For most swim coaches, the key to success is yardage and time in the pool, which has inspired coaches to use long yardage at submaximal efforts to train and develop swimmers. But when it comes to how the body adapts, this may not be the best approach for improving swim speed. Short distance swimmers are sprinters, and they need to swim as fast as possible for as long as possible. Fortunately, there are new approaches to make this happen.

What Is the High-Low Training Model?

Charlie Francis created “The High-Low Training Model” to develop world-class sprinters. This model divides training into high-intensity and low-intensity days while avoiding medium-intensity days. The goal of this model is to maximize speed and power adaptations on high days while increasing work capacity and recovery adaptations on low days.

High-intensity days are anything greater than 95% of your best time, middle-intensity days are between 76% and 94%, and low-intensity days are less than 75% (as shown in the chart above). Personally, I believe we can use efforts over 90% for our high-intensity days because younger athletes will struggle with producing consistent efforts over 95%.

I believe we can use efforts over 90% for our high-intensity days because younger athletes will struggle with producing consistent efforts over 95%, says @coachrgarner. Share on X

If you’ve worked with athletes before, you know that speed and power can be hard to develop and that improving them requires allocating a significant amount of time. Speed must be trained constantly because it will start to detrain within 5 ± 3 days (See figure 2). This means we need to train speed at least twice a week to improve this quality. With this model, we will have three high and three low days during the week, with the seventh day being a rest day.

The key to running a high-low model is to make sure our highs are high, and our lows are low. When I talk about this model with coaches and watch them implement it, their highs are often not high enough, while their lows are not low enough. Instead, something closer to the middle ground occurs (76%-94% of a best time or measurement), which defeats the purpose of this model. We end up creating an environment where athletes accumulate stress that is too stressful to recover from within 24 hours, therefore inducing minimal improvements in performance.

When stressing the body, we want to send a clear message to the brain. On high-intensity days, we want the body to be fast and powerful. On low-intensity days, we want the body to recover and improve capacity. By doing this, the body can optimally adapt to the stress we place on it. If we work in the middle-intensity zone though, the body does not know if we want it to be fast, slow, or powerful.

When stressing the body, we want to send a clear message to the brain…If we work in the middle-intensity zone, the body doesn’t know if we want it to be fast, slow, or powerful, says @coachrgarner. Share on X

In addition, all athletes have a certain bandwidth in terms of their ability to handle this middle-intensity zone. Some handle it better than others, and this zone is not nearly as trainable as the high and low zones. As a result, adaptations from the middle-intensity zone are minimal, which wastes time. We want maximal adaptation to the stresses we place on athletes, and they want the same.

Swimming and Track Are Brothers in Sport

Swimming and track share a multitude of similarities. Both sports feature short- to long-distance events, and everything is timed. If swimming and track coaches wrote down how they prepared their athletes, the lists would be hard to tell apart. Coaches use a variety of technique drills and distances to improve technical ability, speed, and capacity. Athletes perform specific drills to improve skill transfer—think pull-ups for swimming or bounding for sprinting—and the list of comparisons goes on. If asked what their main goal of training is, I am willing to bet most coaches in both sports wouldn’t hesitate to say: “Improving speed.”

Track coaches typically fall into two philosophies: high-volume-based or high-intensity-based. High-volume coaches believe that running for longer distances will help their athletes run faster and win races. High-intensity coaches believe sprinting or running at high intensity for shorter distances will improve speed. More often than not, swim coaches fall into the category of high volume: they believe that if their swimmers can handle more yardage, their swimmers will be faster.

This leads to a critical question that I ask myself all the time: Are my athletes successful because of what I’m doing or in spite of what I’m doing?

Autoregulation: The Key to Consistent Adaptations over Time

Before getting into the details of high- and low-intensity days, we first need to understand autoregulation, which I first learned about from Dietrich Buchenholz’s (DB Hammer) The Best Sports Training Book Ever! and Cal Dietz’s Triphasic Training. Autoregulation means that we base training on how we feel each day. This could be based off perceived effort, time, or outputs such as jumps or bar speed. This works perfectly with swimming because it is a stopwatch-based sport. Everything is measured, which means we know exactly how an athlete is feeling.

Autoregulation works perfectly for swimming because it is a stopwatch-based sport. Everything is measured, which means we know exactly how an athlete is feeling, says @coachrgarner. Share on X

Coaches across the country disagree on the amount of volume swimmers need on a given day or week to cause positive adaptations. By autoregulating training, our swimmer’s daily performance determines the amount of volume they do day-to-day. This means our athletes get the exact amount of volume they need, as well as what they can handle, to push the adaptations we’re looking for.

Remember, the goal for our training is to make them faster in the future, not to make them tired just to be tired. Speed work can only be done when our swimmers are fresh and recovered from prior workouts. If we use too much volume at the beginning of the week, we will leave performance improvements on the table for later in the week. Worse yet, we will weaken their performance on race day.

How does autoregulation work? On each day, the coach determines the percent drop-off for the day. What does percent drop-off mean? This refers to how much our athletes can “drop off” or slow down before they are done training for the day. Normally, we want around a 5%-10% performance drop-off per training day. This equates to 90%-95% of their best time.

We may find that some athletes can handle larger drop-offs than others and be able to recover within 48 hours. For example, swimmer A can handle a 3% drop-off, while swimmer B can handle an 8% drop-off. Due to logistics, we may not be able to individualize our training, which is understandable, but we should still make some mental notes on how well our athletes handle specific drop-offs.

When we begin using autoregulation, it’s wise to start out using a 5% drop-off and see how our team responds. As previously stated, we may need to lower the percent drop-off depending on our team and training schedule. The more we practice, the lower the drop-off. The less we practice, the higher the drop-off.

Weekly Practice Layout

The weekly practice layout will alternate between high and low days. As strength and conditioning coaches, we should also align our high and low days with the practice plan. This puts a greater emphasis on each day but also sends a clear signal to the body that today is a high- or low-intensity day. Remember, we want the highs to be high and the lows to be low. On our high days, we should work on strength, power, or speed qualities. On low days, we should pursue aerobic or recovery-style training.

Below is an example of a six-day training week following the high-low model.

High-Intensity Days: The Details

The key to high-intensity days is performing sets that are greater than 90% of our best time with complete rest in between. As stated previously, I think 90% is useful for most athletes out there. If we want a higher-quality day, then we may want to use 95% instead. This all depends on our athletes, our situation, and what our goals are. See figure 4 for proper work-to-rest ratios based on our work interval.

What does 90% of a best time look like? If our athlete hits a PR for the day at 25 seconds, then they cannot swim times slower than 27.77 seconds. If we used 95%, then times would need to be under 26.23 seconds. However, if the swimmer sets a new PR later in the workout, then we now use that number as our drop-off. For example, if they swam 25 seconds on their second set and then 24.5 seconds on their fourth set, we would use 24.5 seconds as our new PR for the fifth set.

This can also be applied to a jump height or sprint time in a workout. If we are looking to individualize our swimming program, then each athlete would perform as many repetitions as they can until they miss their required time or until practice time expired. This means some athletes swim three reps while others hit eight.

As previously stated, we may not want to individualize it this much—if not, we can begin tracking our swimmer’s times to see where most of the team drops off. Once we find this number, we can simply assign a fixed number of sets for the day and proceed. For example, if we performed eight sets of 50-meter sprints and found that most of our team dropped below 90% of their PR time on the fifth set, for our next practice we could assign five sets and call it a day.

As a side note, in the weight room I regularly have athletes set PRs on their last set of jumps or sprints (we do 5–6 total sets each day). If I can, I like to have my athletes leave on a PR or close to it because it builds buy-in to the program.

The tricky part of these days is that our swimmers may not “feel” like these are hard days because they are not gasping for air or their muscles are not straining with each stroke. Most come from a background of high yardage, and that is all they know. Remember, high intensity is referring to nervous system stress, which is often a hard concept for athletes to grasp (think central versus peripheral fatigue). Make sure you take the time to explain the differences between high- and low-intensity training because this will help with buy-in.

High-Intensity Days: Time Brackets

I first read about time brackets from The Best Sports Training Book Ever! and Triphasic Training as well. These brackets refer to specific time zones where one of the three energy systems is predominately active. The body’s energy systems operate based on how long you are straining during a set.

The alactic system is used when training for 15 seconds or less. The glycolytic system works between 15 and 60 seconds. The aerobic system is trained when straining for 60 seconds or more. In other words, peak speed, power, and strength are trained under 15 seconds. The capacity to handle more speed, power, and strength is trained between 15 and 60 seconds. Your ability to recover and breath more efficiently improves when training more than 60 seconds.

Time brackets are a great way to organize training and provide variation day to day. Figure 6 is a chart that shows an example of 15-second time brackets that could be used for swimming. I use 15-second brackets because they are easy to manage and apply working constraints to.

The key to high-intensity days is making sure our athletes are completely recovered between sets. As shown in figure 4, our athletes need a 1:10 work-to-rest ratio to be ready for max speed work. This means if they swim for 10 seconds, they need 100 seconds of rest to recover. Now, I believe resting around 60–90 seconds works fine, but the point is we need to give them ample time to recover. Otherwise, we begin entering the middle zone and building up lactate, which is what we are avoiding on speed days. I am not saying we can never go there, but for high-intensity speed days, we don’t want to live there.

When we use distances instead of time, we play a guessing game in terms of energy system development. Although we may not realize it, that is what we are doing when we assign distances: we assume “x” distance will train capacity or aerobic while “y” distance will train speed. By timing sets though, we know exactly what energy system is being stressed.

When we use distances instead of time, we play a guessing game in terms of energy system development, says @coachrgarner. Share on X

Low-Intensity Days: The Details

The goal of low-intensity days is to develop aerobic capacity, improve cardiovascular health, and enhance recovery. These days create a circulatory response within the body, which promotes blood flow and enhances the transfer of nutrients and waste products in the muscle, promoting and optimizing recovery. In addition, by improving cardiovascular health, we lower our resting heart rate. Why does this matter? When we lower our resting heart rate, our heart pumps more blood with each beat. This means our body can work less to accomplish more, creating a more efficient cardiovascular system. In swimming, this is vital.

On these days, we do not need new PRs but can instead reference the athlete’s PR for the week or year. If our swimmer’s PR is 25 seconds, then they must swim 33.33 seconds or slower for low-intensity days. We can also put a time on the clock and have them swim for 20+ minutes at a <75% pace. Within the weight room, this is where circuit training is useful: for example, I like using 20-minute one- to five-rep aerobic circuits.

The focus these days should be on pace and technique or, as many coaches like to say, “feel for the water.” When our swimmers execute these sessions, they should not be gasping for air. Yes, they will be breathing more than on high-intensity days, and their heart rates will be consistently higher, but these sessions should not be something our swimmers dread. The key is to make sure their heart rates do not shoot too high: our goal is 120–150 beats per minute.

Low-intensity days are also great opportunities to incorporate some dryland work. Practices can get monotonous, but dryland work can freshen things up and bring a new stimulus to the table. For example, we can have our swimmers perform 50-meter laps with whatever stroke they like, then get out of the water to perform five pull-ups, five lunges, and five medball slams. Repeat for 20 minutes and get in as many rounds as possible.

We can use whatever we want for dryland: the point is to stimulate our athletes. Remember, it’s all about the heart rate and time bracket. Within those constraints, we can do what we like.

Low-Intensity Days: Time Brackets

The time brackets for low-intensity days are typically greater than 60 seconds, but we can also do submaximal aerobic work for less than 60 seconds. As shown in the previous example, we can assign a 75% pace based on a PR of 25 seconds, because this is considered low-intensity work. As long as the effort is <75% intensity, we can go as short or long as we would like. Again, the key is to get the heart rate between 120 and 150 beats per minute.

Putting It All Together

Here’s an example of what our week can look like. As the coach, we need to decide the swimming events, drills, and variations we perform. We can use boards, paddles, fins, power towers, or whatever we can imagine to generate the adaptations we want.

• Monday – High
• • Time Bracket = 15–30 seconds.
  • Physical Goal = power capacity.
  • Distance/Stroke = depends on swimmer and average time of event.
  • 5% Drop-Off.
  • Dryland = strength, power, or speed development.
• Tuesday – Low
  • Time Bracket = 60+ seconds.
  • Physical Goal = aerobic capacity.
  • Workout = 75-second swim, rest until heart rate is below 120 bpm. Repeat for rounds.
  • Intensity = 70%
  • Dryland = aerobic circuit.
• Wednesday – High
  • Time Bracket = 1–15 seconds.
  • Physical Goal = max speed.
  • Distance/Stroke = 25–50 meters and whatever stroke you want.
  • 5% Drop-Off.
  • Dryland = strength, power, or speed development.
• Thursday – Low
  • Time Bracket = 45 minutes straight.
  • Physical Goal = aerobic capacity/fat oxidation.
  • Workout = 50-meter swim, 5 pull-ups, 5 lunges, 5 medball slams for rounds.
  • Intensity = 65%.
  • Dryland = aerobic circuit.
• Friday – High
  • Time Bracket = 30–45 seconds.
  • Physical Goal = speed capacity.
  • Distance/Stroke = depends on swimmer and average time of event.
  • 10% Drop Off.
  • Dryland = strength, power, or speed development.
• Saturday – Low
  • Time Bracket = 30 minutes straight.
  • Physical Goal = aerobic capacity/recovery.
  • Workout = 5-minute swim, 2.5-minute dryland x 4 rounds.
  • Intensity = 60%.
• Sunday – Rest

This model is designed for short-distance swimmers to develop speed in the water and create a robust aerobic energy system. Every week we chase PRs, all while ensuring our athletes get the proper stimulus. If the swim coach and strength and conditioning coach are on the same page, this model sets teams up for elite and long-term success.

Author’s Note: I am a sports performance coach with experience training swimmers. I am not a swim coach, but I have developed a framework for coaches to apply the best way they see fit. This model has been implemented by Heath Grishaw and me at Liberty University. Coach Grishaw developed the daily swimming drills, while I implemented the dryland training. Please feel free to contact Coach Grishaw or me if you’re interested in learning more.

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There is an ever-increasing use of—and reliance on—data within sport. This primarily takes two forms:

1. Coaches and practitioners collecting and analyzing data to inform their decision-making processes.
2. Coaches and support staff using published (or even unpublished) research to guide their decisions.

This is largely a good thing. Being data-informed (as opposed to data-driven) often means that we can make better decisions, which in turn means that the athletes we work with perform better.

There is a dangerous flip side to this, however. As outlined in the now classic How to Lie with Statistics, we can often manipulate the numbers to support whichever message we desire. This is fine if we have the time and expertise to thoroughly vet the data we’re working with, but in today’s time-poor world, we’re often so rushed that we don’t have time to think—and unfortunately, critical thinking skills are in short supply.

Fortunately for us, Tim Harford of Undercover Economist and Cautionary Tales fame has written The Data Detective (published in Europe as How to Make the World Add Up). In this book, he strives to give us the confidence to use the information we gather to accurately scrutinize the world around us and make better decisions, while also escaping the flawed logic, cognitive biases, and emotions that poison our ability to think clearly. Harford does this through a number of key rules that, while designed for the real world, can be highly applicable to us in sport. Given the increased prevalence of data-derived and -informed approaches in sport, its publication could not have been timelier.

Search Your Feelings

In the Cautionary Tales episode “The Art Forger, the Nazi, and the Pope,” Harford tells us the story of Abraham Bredius. Bredius was a Dutch art collector and historian who was well established as an expert on the paintings of Johannes Vermeer; indeed, Bredius made his name in the 1880s by identifying works wrongly credited to Vermeer. Bredius was highly effective at spotting fake paintings, and in 1937, he published a book identifying 200 paintings incorrectly attributed to Rembrandt. Shortly afterward, Bredius was approached by a lawyer, who sought his opinion on a newly discovered painting called Christ at Emmaus, which was thought to be a Vermeer. Bredius had no doubts; he declared the painting the masterpiece of Vermeer, his best work ever.

Only, it wasn’t. The painting was a forgery, painted only a few months before. Bredius, however, wasn’t the only one who had been fooled; soon after he identified it as a Vermeer, the painting was purchased by a museum for the modern-day equivalent of £10 million. With the benefit of hindsight, art experts today can clearly see that Christ at Emmaus is not a Vermeer, but almost a century ago, Bredius—the pre-eminent art expert of his day—was easily fooled.

The key question to ask ourselves here is why? How can someone with so much expertise be so easily fooled? The answer, writes Harford, is because he almost wanted to be; he let his feelings get in the way of his analysis, making an impartial decision hard to come by.

The lesson here for all of us to heed is that when analyzing data or receiving information, we need to be wary of our current feelings and opinions on the subject at hand, says @craig100m. Share on X

The lesson here for all of us to heed is that when analyzing data or receiving information, we need to be wary of our current feelings and opinions on the subject at hand. Harford writes “we often find ways to dismiss evidence we don’t like. And the opposite is true, too.” This is something termed motivated reasoning; a phenomenon where we use emotionally biased reasoning to make the decision we most desire, as opposed to that which is supported by the evidence. In essence, we believe what we want to believe.

I’ve made this mistake myself. When I was doing bobsled, a common training and testing method was to push a roll-bob—a metal frame on wheels—over a set distance, comprised of a run-in and a timed 30-meter section. One day, training at Loughborough, I broke all the existing national push records, which made me wonder whether I had measured the run-in distance correctly. In my head, there were two competing explanations for my performance:

1. I was in very good shape.
2. I had measured the distance incorrectly.

I went with the former because it’s what I wanted to believe. Sadly, I was wrong—instead of the 10-meter run-in distance, I had actually set it up for 15 meters.

Harford suggests that it isn’t necessary to become an emotionless processor of the information we receive, but merely acknowledge the role emotions play in how we understand and filter the information and take it into account when making our decisions. When I hold an opinion, I often ask myself “what information would I need to see to make me change my mind?” Asking myself this before I get the information sets a target, and if that target is hit, I have to update my viewpoint. This doesn’t always mean that I change my mind, but perhaps I hold a given opinion less strongly or search for more information that might make me better informed.

And so, to Harford’s first key point—when presented with a new piece of information:

• Stop and think.
• Examine your emotions.
• Notice if you’re straining toward a particular conclusion.

Ponder Your Personal Experience

Visualization is a common technique utilized by many athletes as a way of practicing performance. A recent meta-analysis demonstrated that across a number of studies exploring its effectiveness, visualization and practice enhanced performance to a greater extent than practice alone. Similar research was around when I was an athlete, so I started to utilize formal visualization training, setting aside a time each day to do so.

For me, it didn’t work—it just became another thing to add to the to-do list, and I found it really hard to get a positive outcome from the time I was spending.

Here, what I was experiencing as an individual was contrasting with what the research suggested I should experience.

This leads us to Harford’s second rule: we need to consider whether the information we’re receiving correlates with our personal experiences, and if it doesn’t, we can explore the underlying data more closely. It’s clear to see how this could be the case in sport; we collect a lot of data related to wellness, for example. Some of this data suggest that the athlete is in a state where they can train and perform optimally, but as the coach, we can see that they are struggling. We might find it hard to quantify why we feel this.

Potentially, it’s something in the way they’re moving in their warm-up, their overall mood and affect, or something they’ve said. This is the value of the coach’s eye, whereby we gain inherent knowledge through years of experience, allowing us to identify patterns and make decisions. This is in line with Harford’s suggestion: when our experiences don’t correlate with the data, we need to look for the underlying reasons why.

This becomes increasingly important when we consider Goodhart’s Law, which states that when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.

Again, I have plenty of examples of this from my own career. In 2010, I became increasingly concerned that my performances were beginning to regress, so I started to carry out much more testing within training. I insisted on using timing gates for everything and measuring bar speed in my major lifts. My belief was that if I performed well in these tests, I’d perform well on the track. I did perform well in these training tests. I did not perform well on the track, having my worst season since I was 17. And this wasn’t all that unexpected based on how I had been feeling; training was a struggle, and I was increasingly fatigued.

Had I placed more weight on my feelings than on the data, perhaps I’d have had more easy days and been more recovered. The flip of this is also true—many times before a personal best performance, I’ve had a bad training session which has been reflected in my testing data. Rather than focus on the measure, I was instead able to focus on my feelings and experience; I knew I was in good overall shape, so I wasn’t too concerned. The key point here is that any data we collect, outside of actual competition performance, is just a proxy—and so we should consider it as such.

The key point is that any data we collect, outside of actual competition performance, is just a proxy—and so we should consider it as such, says @craig100m. Share on X

If we understand the statistics, we actually understand little; we need to be curious about what we experience in the real world as opposed to just on a spreadsheet. Or, as Harford puts it, we need to combine the “bird’s-eye view” of data with the “worm’s-eye view” of experience.

Avoid Premature Enumeration

When we receive a piece of data, it’s crucial that we ask ourselves what it actually means. In my training data example, I was conflating performance in a single test of a single performance aspect with competition performance, which isn’t the case at all.

This becomes increasingly important when we work with data that could be considered binary. Take sports injuries as an example: either you’re injured or you’re not. But we can define “injury” differently. If I have a niggle that is affecting, but not stopping, my ability to train, I might not consider myself injured, while another athlete would.

This becomes important when we’re interpreting injury data between two athletes, training groups, or sporting teams: have they all defined the outcome in the same way or is there ambiguity in a given term? Similarly, the word injury is vague: an athlete who misses a day’s worth of training with a sore foot and an athlete who misses a whole year following surgery could both be said to have experienced an injury—but the magnitude of the differences is huge.

Harford terms this premature enumeration—where we rush to use numbers (or information) before we really understand what it’s supposed to mean. In the increasingly complex world of elite sport, it can often be difficult not just to quantify what is happening, but also to define it—paying attention to both things will make us better able to utilize the data we’re provided with.

Step Back and Enjoy the View

If we collected sprint testing data every training session, we would see a lot of variation between sessions. This could be linked to a variety of aspects: accumulated fatigue, normal daily variation, the presence of training partners, motivation on a given day—the list goes on. Within a given training block—such as a week—we might see a general trend emerging; perhaps we are getting faster or slower.

Regular collection of data encourages us to focus on micro-trends; we become fixated on what we’ve achieved that week. Sometimes, it might be better to take a longer view. If we view our sprint testing data over a year period, the trend is much less sensitive to small, day-to-day variations, giving us a truer overall sense of where we are. If our sprint time is typically tracking downward over this extended period, the training we’re doing is effective. As such, being able to take a step back and view the data collected within the overall context in which we’re operating (which, in athletics, is yearly seasons) likely yields more informative insights.

It’s easy to become hyper-focused on a single metric or a short time period, but sports performance is a long game, and viewing things through this lens enables better decisions to be made. Share on X

Upon getting information or data, Harford suggests taking a step back, adopting a wider lens of analysis, and attempting to put the information in the context of the bigger picture. It’s easy to become hyper-focused on a single metric or a short time period, but sports performance is a long game, and viewing things through this lens enables better decisions to be made.

Get the Back Story

If you toss a fair, standard coin, there is a 1 in 1,024 chance of getting 10 heads in a row. Here’s a video of Derren Brown, the British illusionist, achieving it. This isn’t a trick, per se; Brown does actually achieve the 10 consecutive heads from 10 tosses—it’s just that it took him nine hours of continuous coin tosses to achieve this run of 10. This is an important point: things that have a low probability can happen when you carry out the action many times. Something that has a one in a million probability of occurring likely will happen at some point during a million attempts.

Remembering this is very important when it comes to placing the results of scientific studies into context. I’ve written about this before, when I explored p-hacking and HARKing as drivers of the replication crisis. As a massive oversimplification, scientific researchers often use something called a p-value to determine whether a result is significant or not. What the p-value tells us is the probability of achieving a result this extreme and the null hypothesis being true—essentially, the probability of saying there is an effect when there isn’t.

The typical p-value cut off is 0.05, which means that if p = 0.05, there is a 5% chance of us getting the results we see and there actually being no effect. For any individual study, this is quite a low threshold, but 5% represents a 1 in 20 chance. That means that, for 20 studies in a given area, we would expect one study to report an effect being present when there actually isn’t one.

This is generally fine when there are lots of studies on a given topic; we can look at the overall literature base, see what most studies find, and then make up our minds. It becomes more of an issue when there are fewer studies in this area. If there are only two studies, with conflicting results, it can be hard to understand which study is “correct.”

This becomes even more of an issue when publication bias comes into play. Publication bias is where studies that report an effect are much more likely to be published than those that report no effect. This is problematic, because if we have 20 studies, 19 showing no effect, and 1 showing an effect, the 1 showing an effect may well be published, while the others wouldn’t be.

Harford presents an example that demonstrates the ridiculousness of this situation. In 2011, esteemed psychologist Daryl Bem published a paper that demonstrated humans could predict the future. This is very interesting but also highly implausible; you and I both know that humans cannot predict the future. Bem’s methods were replicated in other studies, all of which failed to demonstrate evidence for humans being able to predict the future.

However, the journal that published the original research refused to publish these studies, stating that it did not publish replications. There is no suggestion that Bem fabricated his results, merely that his findings were chance occurrences that we would expect to happen less than 5% of the time—but, of course, if you refuse to publish what normally happens, what happens 5% of the time looks true!

Ask Who Is Missing

One of the first articles I ever wrote, back in 2015, was on understanding sports science for coaches and trainers. In that article, I wrote “the results of a study are only applicable to the type of people recruited to the study.” A common goal of research is to find results that are generalizable: if we take the intervention used in a given study and apply it to the broader population, do we get the same results?

Within sports science, this is a bit trickier. Arguably, we don’t want generalizable results, because we don’t work with the general population—we work with elite athletes. Such athletes, by their very definition, are rare, and this creates a problem for sports science researchers: how do you convince an elite athlete to try something that might not make them better, just for your study? This is obviously very difficult (I speak from experience), which is why most sports performance research is either observational in nature, or if interventions are utilized, the participants are often either university students or recreational or sub-elite athletes. This is important to keep in mind when evaluating information—are the participants in the research you’re utilizing similar to the ones you’re working with?

This is important to keep in mind when evaluating information—are the participants in the research you’re utilizing similar to the ones you’re working with?, says @craig100m. Share on X

This is even more of an issue if you coach women. A 2019 paper identified that fewer than 20% of all sports science research papers included any female participants and fewer than 5% were comprised exclusively of females. Again, this causes us issues in taking the results of a given study into practice, because men and women are vastly different.

This is why Harford’s sixth rule—ask who is missing—is especially important within the sports performance research sphere, because the answer could well be the very people we’re most interested in. This doesn’t mean we have to discard all sports performance research, but as discussed above, we use science, and scientific research, as a method of informing our practice; it’s a starting point from which we experiment and adapt, as opposed to the answer to all our questions.

Demand Transparency When the Computer Says “No”

We live in the era of big data, and we use progressively more complex methods of analyzing this data to get answers that inform our decisions. An increasingly common approach is the use of machine learning, where we “teach” a computer to provide answers based on the information we put in. This creates an issue: we often get answers, but we don’t understand why the computer came up with these answers—which makes it very difficult for us to spot when a mistake has been made.

A great example of this comes from when researchers taught a machine learning model to differentiate between dogs and wolves in photographs. To do this, researchers show the computer a picture of either animal, allow it to guess, and then tell it whether it is right or wrong. Over time, the computer “learns” how to differentiate dogs from wolves.

In this case, the researchers could reverse-engineer how the computer was deciding between dog and wolf: if the picture had a white background (i.e., snow), the computer labelled the animal as a wolf; if it didn’t, it labelled it as a dog. This is a clever way of the computer being able to distinguish between dog and wolf when presented with photographs, but it’s obviously not very useful in the real world—the solution the computer comes up with is not broadly applicable, because what it has “learned” is essentially to cheat.

This is becoming an increasingly big problem in sports performance due to the use of “black box” algorithms in proprietary equipment/software, such as those that measure training load. As companies develop products that promise to predict certain outcomes, they naturally want to protect their invention—as such, they don’t let us know how their models come up with a given answer, or why. This means we can’t evaluate them for ourselves; we must either blindly trust the machine or ignore it.

For reasonably mundane decisions, such as whether an athlete should train today or not, that’s mostly fine—but you can see how this could become an issue when it comes to selection. How can you explain to a player why they’re not selected if you don’t understand it yourself? What if the computer is wrong?

This is the crux of Harford’s seventh rule: do not simply trust that algorithms do a better job than humans. But similarly, also recognize that humans have their own biases and mental shortcuts—just because an algorithm is flawed doesn’t mean a human would do better. The key here is to strike a middle ground—understand that both computers and humans have bias, keep an open mind, and try to critically appraise all information you receive before acting on it.

Remember That Misinformation Can Be Beautiful Too

One of my favorite books is Information is Beautiful, by the graphic journalist David McCandless. As per the title, information can be beautiful—but so can misinformation. A cleverly designed infographic or catchy framing of a piece of information can draw us in, even if the underlying data and facts are not accurate or are being misrepresented. The ease of sharing this information and infographics on social media, in turn, allows this misinformation or incorrect information to spread, and before we know it, the wrong message is being accepted.

A cleverly designed infographic or catchy framing of a piece of information can draw us in, even if the underlying data and facts are not accurate or are being misrepresented, says @craig100m. Share on X

Harford has some key guidelines for us to keep in mind when it comes to interpreting beautiful visualizations:

1. Check our emotions: A well-designed graphic can invoke an emotional response, so acknowledging and being aware of this is crucial in our interpretation of what we’re seeing.
2. Check we understand what the infographic purports to show. Is context being given? Can you access the source data?
3. While it isn’t the case with many of the infographics used from those in sports performance, we must consider that someone might be trying to persuade us to think in a certain way, and given their meme-like qualities, infographics are almost uniquely effective at doing this. 

Keep an Open Mind

Changing our mind is uncomfortable, particularly if we have forcibly set out our stall (declared our intention) previously. But the best thinkers update their beliefs based on the evidence—academic and real world—that they receive. This links into the work of Phil Tetlock, popularized in Superforecasting (which is a High Performance Library topic for another day).

Tetlock’s research suggests there are two key types of people: hedgehogs and foxes. Hedgehogs typically have one big idea, which they use to explain the world around them. They are a specialist in that area of knowledge, are very confident in their predictions, don’t consider counterarguments, and don’t like to change their predictions once made. Foxes, on the other hand, tend to be multidisciplinary thinkers. They have broad knowledge of different areas, and they are more open to criticism or alternative views, more cautious in their predictions, and more likely to update their predictions as they get more information.

Harford writes that very often we make mistakes not because the information we need is not available, but because we refuse to change our mind based on this information, says @craig100m. Share on X

Foxes are much better at making predictions about the future because they’re consistently updating their mental model of the world as they receive new information. Being willing to change our mind, ultimately, makes us better thinkers. In summing up this chapter, Harford writes that very often we make mistakes not because the information we need is not available, but because we refuse to change our mind based on this information.

The Golden Rule – Be Curious

Harford’s final rule, the one that supersedes all his other “commandments,” is the golden one: Be curious. Look deeper and ask questions; undertake active inquiry as opposed to blind acceptance; seek out wider sources of information.

By following the key rules outlined by Harford in The Data Detective, we can all become more informed consumers of information and data, allowing us to make better-informed decisions to support the performance of the athletes and teams we work with. Given the abundance of information out there today, these are important lessons—and something we should all aim to get better at.

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

Coaching speed can seem like a complex task: the act of sprinting involves more muscular activation and mental stimulation than most exercises, and this is even before considering the tactile involvement of evasion and change of direction required by field-based sport athletes. To sprint optimally, the body needs to be in sync with the mind and both must be operating on all cylinders. With this heightened level of movement, it requires more than just the typical verbal or visual cue to get your message across. Speed needs to be developed primarily through tactile learning and performing.

Coaching sprinting and speed movements to younger athletes—those who have yet to fully develop mentally or physically—is a different challenge as well. Physically, the process is highly dependent on where the athlete is in terms of puberty and where they lie on the PHV chart. This will affect whether their nervous systems are even prepared to deliver the high-power outputs needed to run fast. Regardless, working with youth athletes is a wonderful opportunity because they should be exposed to general athletic movement patterns such as sprinting, jumping, skipping, throwing, change of direction movements, and more on a consistent basis.

So, while you may not be able to create the next junior Olympian, you can give the athlete a better chance of reaching their full athletic potential when the time does come.

The Building Blocks of Speed

There is no such thing as “perfect running mechanics”: coaching speed is not a one-size-fits-all scenario. As coaches, we need to stop putting athletes in boxes and labeling them with no apparent strategy in mind. We cannot create robots who only function under perfect conditions while we (and they) analyze every aspect of their movement.

There is no such thing as ‘perfect running mechanics’—coaching speed is not a one-size-fits-all scenario. Share on X

I have actually trained some of these types of robots—kids who were taught there is only one way to run and only one way to jump and land, and anything else is wrong. I also can honestly say that those kids did not win many races or games, especially those involving multidirectional movement, deceleration, and quick thinking.

I do, however, believe we should equip our athletes with the building blocks to successfully develop their speed. Traits such as relative body strength, coordination, rhythm, and timing should be a priority during this early development. We should also help set them up for success by putting them in movements and situations where they can get the most out of their training and see positive outcomes: movements they can navigate on their own, easy tasks given by their coaches, and tactile cues that help get those messages delivered (while also being fun!).

Video 1. The medicine ball punch run fits the above description perfectly. While the objective of the movement is to improve frontside running mechanics, you don’t have mention this to the athletes.

In the medicine ball punch run, simply explain to the athletes that they’re going to hold the medicine ball at their belly button and sprint down the field with the intent to have their knees driving toward the medicine ball.

Leave it at that, and then base the next step on how they perform the drill in real time.

As coaches, don’t go into a movement expecting an athlete to succeed or fail and don’t mention the difficulty beforehand. This is something I had to learn the hard way, as I would talk about how we were going to be doing a difficult movement before showing it. That put negative, preconceived thoughts into the athletes’ minds that it was going to be hard, and few had success. Now, I just teach those same movements and let the athletes find out on their own, which has resulted in a much higher success rate and less hesitation to perform.

As coaches, don’t go into a movement expecting an athlete to succeed or fail and don’t mention the difficulty beforehand. Share on X

Youth athletes don’t particularly care about the why of their training if that why is being defined with an anatomy textbook. It is important to provide logic and information instead, so you establish that you understand what you’re speaking about while explaining things in language they understand.

So, if you want an athlete to come out in a better position for acceleration, don’t tell them to come out of their sprint position at a 45-degree angle with their chin tucked while focusing on effective forward propulsion. Instead, I would say something simple like “explode out of your starting position like an arrow being shot out of a bow.” Then I would set them up in a drill such as a push-up or falling start where they would achieve the body positions that I’m preaching about with little to no difficulty.

Videos 2 & 3. For athletes working on better acceleration positions, in addition to cueing in terms they understand, I set them up in a drill such as a push-up or falling start. This ensures they achieve the body positions that I’m preaching about with little to no difficulty.

Over the years, I’ve discovered that the less I say during coaching, the better my athletes seem to do. Along with increasing my listening and observation of the athlete’s movements, I have made my coaching cues simpler, more direct, and delivered in a manner that’s appropriate to my audience. Limiting the noise and focusing on what is most important should be the first step when coaching the youth athlete. These kids are usually clouded in their minds already and adding to that is just going to make your job more difficult.

Limiting the noise and focusing on what is most important should be the first step when coaching the youth athlete. These kids are usually clouded in their minds already. Share on X

Communication via Cueing

If you’ve ever sprinted as hard as physically possible, you know how the world begins to close in around you. You can’t hear anything and are unable to make anything out visually other than the final target.

Now, imagine running as hard as physically possible and having someone screaming at you—screaming multiple complex motor tasks for you to fix while you’re sprinting at full speed.

KNEES UP! TORSO UPRIGHT! ARMS AT 90 DEGREES! CHIN TUCKED!

How do you think that would affect your results and end goal? Most likely, this added noise would create an increase in anxiety and doubt. Screaming more cues at our athletes leads to the opposite of success for the task they are trying to complete. The less we say, the more our message can be heard.

Instead, build this highly complex task of speed and sprinting by presenting information in chunks or using a block system of learning. Pick one aspect of sprinting for that session and execute movements to help enhance that single aspect. For example, if we decide to work on the starting position of the sprint, then we would specifically put our athletes in situations and movements to enhance aspects of the starting position (such as obtaining a positive shin angle and optimal push-off of the starting line).

Videos 4 & 5. Starting positions such as a deep bend or half kneeling position will help enhance the athlete’s abilities to obtain the shin angle we are cueing, and the athletes can also feel it. I always tell them to really exaggerate these starts because if they can successfully perform them, imagine how easy sprinting out of a standard two-point starting position will be!

Athletes in field-based sports—or sports that require them to perceive and read information rapidly, gather information about defenders, recognize where they are in space, and so much more—must constantly be playing that sport and be exposed to situational-based learning scenarios. This can also be presented in a block system.

When the athlete just needs to focus on one specific task, they can excel more at that single element. This method of learning is effective with kids because they are not being pulled in several different directions. Youth athletes are like sponges: they soak up information that we present to them; we just have to do so in a manner that allows them to get it. Also, many of the aspects of speed and sprinting are dependent upon one another. If an athlete doesn’t understand or can’t even get into an effective starting position to lead into a sprint, then why would other aspects such as arm mechanics matter?

Youth athletes are like sponges: they soak up information that we present to them; we just have to do so in a manner that allows them to get it. Share on X

Once a particular block of movement has been covered, when that movement is revisited, it is an easier and faster process for the athlete to review. Categorizing these blocks or clumps of information for sprinting will allow you to begin laying out a more manageable training structure.

Structuring a Program

Training will be dependent upon several variables—such as the length and time of the training as well as the current abilities of the athletes you have—but even so, training will follow a similar layout to allow clearer, more focused goals and teaching progressions.

The four sections of a training program we use are:

1. Preparation.
2. Technical movements.
3. Application movements.
4. Games.

1. Preparation
The preparation section should be structured loosely to allow freedom of several different movement patterns. If there is a highly specific day of training with a more experienced athlete, then you can begin incorporating more specific movements to meet the muscle action and needs of the session.

Video 6. Movements such as various skips, hops, crawls, rolls, and throws can be part of this preparation section.

2. Technical Movements

These movements are used to enhance the main focus or application of that session—they don’t refer to technical as being directly tied to running mechanics per se, but movements to better set up the athlete for that day.

Video 7. Applying drills that emphasize the session’s primary focus helps the athletes recognize how all speed training can be interconnected.

An example would be utilizing the lateral load and lift drill above before coaching athletes to do a speed movement involving curved running. Both involve force being produced through the outside edge of the foot and will put the body into particular positions involving aggressive knee angles. This first drill will help the athlete better feel the movement in a more controlled, stationary movement. Doing this helps with the cues because the athletes now feel what they are attempting to accomplish before they work to apply it.

Video 8. The forward low walk forces the knee to continuously roll into positive shin angles as the athlete walks down the field.

Another example of a technical movement would be utilizing the forward low walk (above) when working to develop acceleration. This would be a good movement to pair with the deep knee bend or half kneeling start sprints mentioned previously.

3. Application Movements

These movements are where we are trying to get the most bang for our buck by focusing on a single, specific task. This is where we implement the movements to set our athletes up for success: movements where they don’t have to think about execution, and where we almost trick them into doing it with limited cueing.

Using these movements accomplishes a great deal. It allows for a high success rate of performing the movement, as well as a high transfer rate. At the end of the day, we don’t want the athletes to get better at drills, we want them to get faster to increase their potential for sport…and have fun doing it!

Video 9. If the lateral wall drill was used to enhance the athlete’s abilities for the day, we would then want to utilize an application drill for the athletes to apply, like curve running. 

4. Games

The final portion of the session is going for a more realistic and competitive application through participation in games. Coach Nick DiMarco from Elon University has popularized these games throughout training by breaking them into categories to fit certain goals:

• Chase.
• Mirror.
• Dodge.
• Score.

Each category has its own unique objective for the athletes to excel. When getting kids to compete in these games, I have seen athletes who had previously shown little to no ability or enthusiasm during the session completely crush everyone during the game.

When athletes compete during the games, it requires no cueing whatsoever. This is their time to take the wheel and do what makes them most successful. As coaches, we should place our athletes in the appropriate situations to get the most out of them, whether this be by adding constraints to the games to make it more challenging for athletes who seem to have little struggle or to tip the scale in the favor of those athletes who can’t otherwise manage to win. We’re not just going to give them the victory but create a situation in which success is at least actually possible.

Videos 10-12. Multidirectional chase, 2v1 chase, and flag “wrestling” are examples of chase and dodge games.

Making It All Work

A couple of examples of full-speed sessions are:

1. Multidirectional-Focused Speed Session

Preparation:

Technical Drill: Lateral wall drill load and lift 2-3×5 each

Application Drill: S-curve sprints 4-6x 15-20 yards

Games: Multidirectional chase

2. Acceleration-Focused Speed Session

Preparation:

Technical Drill: Low forward walks 2-3×10-20 yards

Application Drill: Deep knee bend sprints 4-6x 10 yards

Games: 2v1 Chase (any linear chase drill)

Coaching youth athletes through a speed session should not only be a fun experience for them, but for you as well. Share on X

Coaching youth athletes through a speed session should not only be a fun experience for them, but for you as well. We must set our athletes up in movements and in a system where they can be successful, in which coaching is direct, simple, and done in an appropriate manner for the kids to comprehend. Feeling and performing will always trump the chalkboard talks, and while everything has its place when attention spans are fading, we have to communicate quickly and effectively to have more engaging, meaningful, and fun sessions!

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

Coaching is the ultimate problem-solving activity. Each athlete is their own unique puzzle, but none is a standalone if the athlete is part of a team. Some puzzles are simple—the colors and patterns make it easy to see which pieces go together. Others are extremely complex, littered with shades of gray and chaotic patterns. To further add to this difficulty, we are dealing people, not stiff pieces of cardboard, so what happens when you feel you have pieces that should go together but they don’t quite fuse? What steps can you take to link physical output in training with physical performance in competition?

In the first part of this series, I outlined the new approach I used for our jumpers at Homewood-Flossmoor High School during the unique 2021 track and field season. Five drills were presented in detail, and links to additional drills addressed in previous articles were given.

Due to a shorter season length and a higher percentage of athletes being new to the jumping events, I decided to increase the frequency of these drills during “pre-practice” sessions—planning these two to three times per week with the hope of fast-tracking the learning curve of our athletes. The drills each athlete would complete were assigned individually, based primarily on what I found to be the most significant gaps in their technique. While it is the norm for athletes to improve upon their performances over the course of the season, I felt a portion of their improvement was due to what was being addressed by the drills—in other words, the specific part of a jump addressed by the drill was transferring to a full jump when it was performed.

If the appropriate drills are chosen for an athlete, improvements can occur, even if they are several generations removed from the actual event, says @HFJumps. Share on X

I would like to reiterate that I feel the most valuable learning occurs when athletes improve in activities that are as few generations (if any) as possible removed from the actual event. However, if the appropriate drills are chosen for an athlete, improvements can occur, even if they are seven generations removed. In this article, I will lay out the drills chosen for a specific athlete: while the previous piece addressed the why, what, and how of those drills in terms of the entire jumps crew, this post will take a similar approach but narrow it down to a single athlete.

Background

The athlete in question—Jamar McMillian—was a senior in 2021. During his four years in our program, he always tested well in comparison to his peers:

• • From 2018-2021, Jamar was always in the top 10 in our program (100+ athletes) in the countermovement jump (with arms). His best jump was 35.5 inches (via a Just Jump Mat).
  • In 2020 and 2021, one of our fun “sprinter challenges” was to see who could obtain the highest peak power utilizing a 1080 Sprint. Jamar was almost always at the top of this competition.
  • For the strength crowd, Jamar could deadlift more than three times his body weight. His isometric belt squat (crane scale) was almost twice as much as our other jumpers.

Although many of these numbers indicate an opportunity for elite performance at the high school level, I struggled to get Jamar’s ability to shine through in the jumping events. He was always a significant contributor, but his performances in competition did not match the outputs he had during testing. His bests of 1.11, 1.06, and 1.03 during his freshman through junior years correlate with an ability to jump well over 20 feet, which did not happen. Here is his four-year long jump progression:

• Jamar started off the 2021 season strong, with a 19-9.75 on a chilly day (April 24). While he continued to progress, I was not convinced that he could be a state qualifier in long jump (22-2) until May 15, when he jumped 21-5.75 in wet, mid-50° F conditions. He continued to participate in long and triple jump through our conference meet, as I was hopeful for a big PR in triple. Unfortunately, that did not transpire, but sometimes having it all means not having it all at once!

After conference, we decided not to pursue triple jump any further. Jamar’s individual physical plan was divided into two categories: gait correction and take-off correction. I will not discuss the items that were only specific to triple jump.

Gait Correction

Most of a jump attempt occurs on the runway, and if an athlete is not maximizing their ability through quality acceleration and upright mechanics, they will hit a false ceiling in the actual jump. Jamar was a tough case to crack. As seen in the video below, his feet rotate externally prior to ground contact.

Video 1. While slight external rotation is common in sprinters, in Jamar’s case it was definitely excessive. Chris Korfist used the analogy of his feet looking like oars turning over in water. This video was taken in the summer of 2020.

Before getting into specifics, I should point out that the gait correction strategies I use are highly influenced by Chris Korfist. Living in the Chicago area has allowed me to see him present more than 40 times, through Track Football Consortium, Reflexive Performance Reset, and ITCCCA.

I have also made numerous trips to his legendary basement: in 2020 (Jamar’s junior year), Chris became a part of our track and field staff, which made every day a learning experience. His ability to see issues in sprinting in real time and create correction measures is incredible.

Gait Correction #1: Ankle Rocker

During Jamar’s freshman and sophomore years, one item given to him for “homework” were ankle rocker exercises. Ankle rockers are where the shank rotates forward, resulting in dorsiflexion to help propel the body forward. Dr. Shawn Allen of The Gait Guys gives six compensation patterns for people who are unable to reach the needed amount of ankle rocker in this video. Jamar’s compensation was the second compensation addressed (external rotation of the foot).

The main exercises given to Jamar were ankle rocker shuffle and moonwalks, ankle rocker single leg squats, and ankle rocker jumps. Unfortunately, despite thousands of repetitions, this did not solve the issue of excessive external rotation of the foot prior to contact.

Gait Correction #2: Low Lunge Walks

Fast forward to Jamar’s junior year. Chris Korfist was now on our staff, and we began the season with A LOT of time devoted to low lunge walks. I have sung the praises of this exercise in multiple pieces, and I’m going to do it again. The benefit of this drill is that it takes the athlete through all four phases of rocker (heel, ankle, forefoot, toe) in gait. I truly believe this was the missing link for Jamar.

A common thought here would be: Was all the time spent on ankle rocker his first two seasons a waste? Could one just fast forward to this exercise? My assumption is that the ankle rocker work set the table for him being able to transfer the low lunge work to his running gait. So, it definitely was not a waste. That being said, if I could hop into a DeLorean with a flux capacitor, I would have Jamar perform ankle rocker exercises and low lunge walks concurrently.

If you watch an athlete perform the low lunge walk, the way they initiate and lose contact with the ground is the same way they do it in running gait. It tells the story before the story is told. Share on X

Another side note of the low lunge walk: If you watch an athlete perform the exercise, the way they initiate and lose contact with the ground is the same way they do it in running gait. It tells the story before the story is told. I am still waiting for a case where this is not true. This exercise has been an absolute game-changer in gait assessment and correction.

Gait Correction #3: Spring Ankle

Chris Korfist and Cal Dietz partnered to create the Triphasic Speed Training Manual, and a big part of it was what they termed the “spring ankle model.” The lower leg and foot are often overlooked in training, which is probably the strangest aspect of sport training since almost all locomotion is formed from the foot contacting the ground. The spring ankle model involves yielding isometrics, which can eventually progress into overcoming isometrics and other variations. The goal is to get the foot and ankle to be able to handle the forces generated from the whip of the hip. For Jamar, an additional benefit was to get his brain comfortable with the position of pressure on the ball of the big toe without excessive external rotation.

As a side note, I think overcoming isometrics are a training menu item that should be used with care due to their high intensity. However, I feel that the foot and ankle being able to handle load is so important that I would be comfortable using the spring-ankle exercises in an overcoming isometric style with most populations after time spent in the yielding style.

Gait Correction #4: Wickets with Arms Across the Chest

Many coaches use wickets to help improve running technique. A subset uses wickets with various arm positions. Another subset is able to dial in those variations based upon what the athlete presents in gait.

Because the arms act as a counterbalance, we eliminated them (arms across the chest) during wickets to present a greater challenge to the foot, says @HFJumps. Share on X

Jamar received a steady diet of “hugs” (arms across the chest) during wickets and other plyometric type activities. The reason he was given this specific variation was that by eliminating the arms, a greater challenge is presented to the foot. This is because the arms act as a counterbalance. When the athlete is at toe-off on the right foot, the left arm is back and the right arm is forward, making it easier for the right foot to roll through to the ball of the big toe. Taking away the counterbalance poses a more difficult task for where the issue lies.

Video 2. While different arm positions can be used for all athletes, knowing the why behind them makes them even more valuable.

Gait Correction #5: Exer-Genie with Diagonal Resistance

A by-product of Jamar’s excessive external rotation was periodic toe-offs where he would exit the ground off the fourth and fifth toes as opposed to the first and second. To assist with this “finishing ability” to go along with his improvement in not externally rotating the foot as much, we added exercises (sprints and bounding complexes) with diagonal resistance. This was stolen from Chris Meng via a Track-Football Consortium question and answer.

I really like this variation because it begins with a huge amount of lateral resistance on the left foot. As Jamar gets further away from the Exer-Genie, the lateral load becomes biased to sagittal. The enhanced load puts him into the pattern we are looking for, and then he is able to maintain that pattern in a more realistic setting.

Video 3. The exercise becomes more “realistic” the further he goes.

Gait Correction #6: 1080 Sprint Assistance

Seeing Chris Korfist present and working with him has caused me to view assisted sprints and jump complexes as more of a technical correction tool as opposed to just a training stimulus. Simply put, the assistance causes the body to move faster, which makes the brain feel threatened and have a desire to get the foot on the ground as soon and as safely as possible.

The result for Jamar?

Not enough time to externally rotate the foot prior to contact. This can be seen in the video below during a bound complex (it should be noted that I hypothesize this was even more effective because of all the foundational items mentioned above). Video 5 shows the same exercise with resistance. I included it because it shows that even when Jamar did not feel threatened, external rotation was small. For clarity, while watching videos 4 and 5, focus on the leg interacting with the ground.

Video 4. Assisted bound complex using the 1080 Sprint.

Video 5. Resisted bound complex using the 1080 Sprint.

By the end of the 2021 season, Jamar looked like a different runner—still room for improvement, of course, but much more efficient overall. Here is a video of him during the last few weeks of the season, running in socks. What sticks out to me compared to the 2020 video is his reactivity off the ground.

Video 6. Jamar from the front near the end of the 2021 season.

Take-Off Correction: Anti-Penultimate Box

The anti-penultimate box drill was discussed in the previous article, and it was one Jamar completed multiple times per week. Jamar’s biggest issue in the actual jumping part of long jump had always been too low of a take-off angle. Unfortunately, it is nearly impossible to get quality and consistent jump video at a high school track competition; however, I think the videos below show his improvement in this regard.

Positive change is rarely due to one component, and there are certainly many factors which led to huge improvement for Jamar. Improved sprint speed and sprint technique and an increase in strength certainly played a big role. So did his flight style (free leg extending down instead of forward—a product of thousands of gallops and run-run-jumps). Furthermore, his landing improved because his flight improved because his take-off improved because he was more efficient on the runway. All this being said, I do think that the anti-penultimate box drill allowed him to dial in the feeling of what needed to happen to project himself into the air.

Video 7. Jamar long jumping in 2018.

Video 8: Jamar long jumping in 2021.

Additional Parts of the Equation

Reflexive Performance Reset (RPR): In the fall of 2019, I was invited to preview the beta version of RPR Level 3 Training. My partner was Neuqua Valley’s brilliant head coach, Mike Kennedy. When we were instructed on “the back 5,” Mike mentioned that he felt this method helped Neuqua’s jumpers’ performances skyrocket in 2018. I witnessed this incredible improvement firsthand as Neuqua’s jumpers performed incredibly well down the stretch and were a big reason why they edged us 52-48 in the 2018 state team competition.

Jamar had back issues throughout his career, and toward the end of this past season, they started to flare up again. I had a flashback in a dream of Mike telling me about “the back five,” and we started implementing those specific tests and reset techniques into Jamar’s plan. As so often is the case with RPR, Jamar felt a big difference (his phrase was “I feel like a new man”).

RPR is often a hot topic for debate in the social media world, but at the end of the day, I will take an athlete who feels “like a new man” on the runway over one who feels like an old man every day of the week and twice on Sunday. Whether it is correlation or causation that Jamar’s best jumps happened once we started this could be debated and ultimately never settled, but it certainly did not hurt!

Whether it is correlation or causation that Jamar’s best jumps happened once we started RPR could be debated and ultimately never settled, but it certainly did not hurt, says @HFJumps. Share on X

It would also be wrong of me to not include the fantastic job our athletic training staff (Brad Kleine and Danni Werner) did with Jamar. A basketball player can be 80% and still put up 30 points. In many cases, a track and field athlete at 80% might as well be at 2%. It often takes a village to help get an athlete to the finish line, and we are very fortunate to have a great village!

Maturity: One of the best parts about coaching track and field is that I am able to coach athletes for their entire high school track career. It is extremely rewarding to witness the growth athletes undergo, not only as athletes, but even more so as people. Jamar was always a dedicated athlete. When given specific “homework,” I could trust that he would do it. When given a task to complete during practice that I may not have been able to oversee because I had to work with high jumpers, I was always confident that Jamar would take care of business.

Jamar’s dedication to his craft allowed me to navigate what was and was not working with his training. The truth is, during his four years, I had more misses than makes in his programming, but because I could trust his adherence to the program, it allowed me to identify the misses earlier and make adjustments. Jamar was the driving force behind the interventions resulting in improvement in performance, and all credit should be directed toward him.

A by-product of Jamar’s dedication was the disappointment that came along with not achieving desired results. During Jamar’s first three seasons, if his first event did not go well, it was a significant challenge for him to put it behind him. This often snowballed into him struggling in the other events in which he competed that day. This was also seen during a series of jumps: If his first two jumps did not go well, it was probable that the remaining jumps would not go well either.

In 2021, there were multiple times where Jamar showcased the ability to put what he deemed a bad attempt or subpar performance in the rearview mirror and not let it impact what he did moving forward. While I had many conversations with him during the tough times, the most credit in this area should be given to his mother, who was a constant source of support. While the incredible improvement in long jump was a pleasure to watch, Jamar’s improvement in being able to effectively deal with adversity was, without question, my favorite part of the 2021 season.

Jamar does not know this, but during our sectional competition, he was well short of the state qualifying standard after his first two attempts. I texted our coaching staff and said, “not looking good for Jamar.” In previous years, Jamar would have let the first two attempts send him into a downward spiral; however, Jamar was able to keep his poise and exceed the qualifying mark on his third attempt.

I was never happier to eat my words than the ones I had sent in that text to our coaching staff!

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

Every strength and conditioning coach in team sports secretly dreams about one thing—being called the “Fitness Guru” by journalists and peers in the field. There is no better feast for the ego than hearing the announcer in a televised match stating this with excitement, in terms like “They are dominating the physical battle!”

Indeed, in team sports, what we really strive for as S&C coaches is to somehow make our players less inclined to fatigue than our opponents as the game progresses. Being the mastermind behind a team that outworks the opposition, snatching win after win in the dying moments of the game regardless of any technical or strategical superiority…this is what we live for.

In team sports, what we really strive for as S&C coaches is to somehow make our players less inclined to fatigue than our opponents as the game progresses. Share on X

Surprisingly, with so much at stake, nobody has yet come forward with the magic recipe for fitness dominance in team sports. Even worse, *conditioning* is the aspect of physical performance training that casually displays the least specific definition. If strength or speed development is discussed at length by purported field experts and academics—spreading clear principles and guidelines all over the internet—conditioning is left in a fog, subject to interpretation. Fitness in team sports is a complicated topic, where the range of efforts, durations, and intensities is wide and constantly varying—but this won’t prevent us from trying to establish a guideline usable for any team sport.

Knowing the Demands of the Sport

If you ask me if an athlete is fit or not, I can’t answer until you narrow that down to fit for what? Fitness in team sports and conditioning as a training component has three main purposes:

1. To allow the players to meet the energy demands of the game they play.
2. To prepare for the worst, the most intense, passages of play.
3. To build mental and physical resilience.

The first role of a conditioning program is nothing complicated or tricky. The energy demands of the game you play is a known known. All the information needed is readily available through game analysis.

The difficult part here is to accept that nothing fancy or new is required to nail that aspect of a conditioning program. Energy system pathways have been widely studied, and it is with good confidence that one can heavily rely on the findings from scientific papers when designing a conditioning plan. Everything we do requires the transfer of energy adenosine triphosphate (ATP). This is our body’s currency, and the more work needed, the more ATP needs to be produced. Because the intramuscular stores of ATP are relatively small (~5 mmol per kilogram of wet muscle), they are unable to sustain contractile activity for extended periods; therefore, other metabolic pathways must be activated.

Three basic energy systems exist in muscle cells to replenish ATP:

1. The phosphagen system (anaerobic alactic): Provides immediate energy for short bursts (1-15 seconds) of maximal-intensity exercise by using energy stored in the muscle (phosphocreatine) without requiring oxygen (anaerobic).
2. The glycolytic system (anaerobic lactic): Takes over just before the phosphagen system runs out and provides energy for moderate- to high-intensity exercise (10 seconds to 3 minutes) using energy from the breakdown of carbohydrates (glucose) and requires no oxygen (anaerobic).
3. The oxidative system (aerobic): Predominant energy supplier for low- to moderate-intensity exercise, starts to predominate after about 2-3 minutes of exercise, and is the main source of energy after 3-4 minutes. It produces ATP through the breakdown of both carbohydrates and fats for energy and uses lactate as an energy source too. This system requires oxygen (aerobic).

Designing a successful conditioning program starts by identifying the athletic abilities critical to the sport & the energy system involved in providing the necessary fuel to perform that ability. Share on X

The level of development of the various energy systems has a significant impact on translating athletic abilities into performance—therefore, designing a successful conditioning program starts with identifying which athletic abilities are critical to the sport and which energy system is involved in providing the necessary fuel to perform that ability.

If this is a good place to start, unfortunately the relationship between an energy system and an athletic ability isn’t static. During exercise, the dominance of one energy system over the others depends mainly on these four factors:

1. Exercise intensity.
2. Duration of effort.
3. Number of efforts produced.
4. Type and duration of recovery between efforts.

In team sports, the last two are sometimes forgotten. With the obsession for repeated high-intensity efforts, it isn’t rare to come across coaches—armed with GPS targets and heart rate monitors—nailing the running intensity and mirroring their game demands in term of bout duration. But quite often, those same coaches arbitrarily define the number of efforts and the work:rest ratio used, increasing the former and shrinking the latter as a mean to progress the drill.

If an effort that is perfectly designed to target the lactic system is repeated too many times or without a proper work:rest ratio, it soon becomes a subpar aerobic stimulus, which may completely miss the specificity of the sport.

Coaches often feel pressured by time constraints when planning a conditioning session in team sports. The need to maintain the rhythm of the session to avoid facing a group of bored players waiting around for their next run makes it difficult to plan the long rest periods needed to target the lactic system. Moreover, rarely do S&C coaches get offered stand-alone conditioning sessions, and the fitness work must somehow fit in sessions that also include technical and strategical work, often in slots not exceeding 20 minutes.

A way to deal with such limitations is to work our way backward from the needed work:rest ratio to determine the duration of each effort. Instead of planning the effort duration in order to match a pre-identified key metric (e.g., average play duration) and the number of repetitions to match a subjective expected metric number (e.g., distance or number of sprints)—sacrificing without too much second thought the work:rest ratio—I would argue that we would often be better off ensuring we hit the target we want, physiologically speaking, before worrying about what the GPS will say.

I would argue that we would often be better off ensuring we hit the target we want physiologically speaking, before worrying about what the GPS will say. Share on X

Let’s imagine, for instance, that we are planning a session of repeated high-intensity efforts aimed at stressing the lactic system. We are given 10 minutes. Alone with our whistle, we cannot afford any individualization of the runs’ timing, so it is convenient to go with the start-on-the-minute system. We can then select our effort bouts’ durations depending on the number of efforts we can afford in 10 minutes while respecting an optimal work-to-rest ratio. If we choose to go for 20-second bouts, at an ideal work:rest ratio of 1:5 to maintain the stress on the lactic system for the entire duration of the drill, we will get about six repetitions.

Planning Conditioning Games

Getting the work:rest ratio that you need is a relatively straightforward quest when the conditioning stimulus is obtained through a physical-only drill such as runs, jumps, or ground-based/wrestle-style activities. With the days of fartlek, MAS running, and repeated sprinting seemingly behind us, nowadays the trendy S&C coach vents to whomever is happy to listen about how they get their players fit and ready for the competition without taking away the specificity of the game. In the era of obsessive need for specificity, conditioning games and “worst-case scenario practice” are at the center of sports teams’ conditioning programs.

However, while throwing a ball around may slightly increase the technical demand placed on the players, if it comes at the expense of physiological specificity or strategic principles, we may well be wasting our time.

As Yogi Berra once said: “If you don’t know where you are going, you may never get there.” And that is exactly the pitfall of programming conditioning games. Taking players to exhaustion by means of a fun and engaging activity sounds like a great deal—we get tons of running volume, sprinting, jumping, and sports-specific additional mechanical demand such as collision if we want to. Through the rules, space, and duration utilized, we can get anything we desire in term of physical output. Instead of facing players looking sadly at their feet, waiting anxiously in line for the whistle to be blown during a traditional MAS running block, we can get them happy and fully engaged by disguising the fitness work in a game.

The GPS reports are flattering, the technical coaches are involved, the players are cheerful… conditioning games can quickly become like a drug for the S&C. But the moment we realize, as performance practitioners, that we are designing our conditioning drill to be as entertaining as possible, we need to pull ourselves out of the circus we created and go back to the drawing board.

I remember once visiting a rugby team training. From the sideline, I watched—stunned—as the players suffered through a conditioning game that screamed torture, while listening incredulously to their strength and conditioning coach’s explanation. His aim was to increase the lactic capacity of his players because analysis of the game revealed that most ball in play sequences lasted 30 to 45 seconds. Forcing his troops to go all out for 30-second bouts with 30 seconds of rest in between, by the fifth bout the GPS data may well have been through the roof, but the drill stopped targeting the lactic system. The poor players were doing aerobic work, unable to change gears anymore, while trying their best to make it look “high intensity.”

Some kind of model or guideline seems like it should absolutely be required when it comes to conditioning games, because it is so easy to get carried away and get it wrong. First of all, even the basics of conditioning programming—volume, intensity, and work:rest ratio—can quickly become a nightmare to plan and result in unsatisfactory compromises, especially when technical coaches get involved. You may, for instance, have all agreed that the aim of the conditioning game is to stress the aerobic system. Everything is going according to plan: the effort bout’s duration, the intensity, the work:rest ratio are all in their optimal range. Then, suddenly, the head coach—vexed by the number of technical errors—decides to punish the players by moving from touch to full contact (raising the involvement of the anaerobic system considerably) or to deliver a lengthy rant, blowing away the work:rest ratio.

Involving technical coaches in conditioning games is a fantastic way to ensure that the game isn’t just a way to make conditioning work more pleasurable for the players, but a real learning experience that will contribute to improved performance in the technical area too. However, before doing so, it is absolutely necessary to work with them on developing a common language and understanding surrounding the boundaries defining each type of game.

A first option is to categorize conditioning games according to the energy system targeted. The duration of the physical bouts and the intensity required, as well as the work:rest ratio and the nature of the recovery, are specified, and all staff members involved during the conditioning game are responsible for enforcing those parameters. The central nervous system (CNS) involvement—especially through explosive actions such as jumping or accelerating/decelerating and changing direction—and the number of impacts or collisions complete the list of agreed-upon defining parameters due to the effect of those on energy system pathways.

Indeed, for a conditioning game to be classified as an aerobic capacity one, not only should the duration of each physical bout exceed eight minutes and the work:rest ratio be maintained below 1:1, but the CNS involvement and number of collisions need to be kept very low. Too many explosive changes of direction and physical duels would increase the anaerobic contribution to the overall energy production, swiftly shifting the game toward a more lactic dominant activity.

If such a model surely provides some basis to a more efficient and smoother conditioning games programming, it is still far from exhaustive. There is much more to a conditioning game than just a physiological stimulus.

Running and jumping load are not enough to clearly picture the actual energy demand of a conditioning game, nor the amount of fatigue it creates. In addition to the physical load, coaches need to add the cognitive and emotional loads.

To clearly picture the actual energy demand of a conditioning game and the amount of fatigue it creates, coaches need to add the cognitive & emotional loads in addition to the physical one. Share on X

The brain consumes more energy at rest than any other part of the human body, and it is a safe assumption that increasing the cognitive workload during a conditioning game will compound the resulting level of fatigue and energy spent. Factors weighing in on the cognitive load of a conditioning game are:

• The density and volume of decision-making.
• The number of technical gestures involved, as well as the quality and precision required in their execution to meet the task demand.
• The level of expectation asserted by coaches standing by.
• The complexity of the strategic plan and the extent of cooperative efforts needed to achieve them.

Emotions are known to be able to change physiology. A player feeling anxious or stressed will undoubtedly undergo a rise in their cortisol level, impacting their ability to adapt and recover efficiently, as well as a rise of catecholamines directly impairing their ability to take on new information, learn, and remember. If it is sadness, disappointment or regret that is swallowing the poor individual, then a dopaminergic crisis follows and increases their chances of feeling pain, of contracting a non-contact injury, or of maladaptation to the training load. On the other side, excitement, happiness, or alertness contributes to an optimized adaptation to the physical stimulus as well as learning abilities.

It is important to be aware and to understand that a game designed to target the aerobic capacity system will have a completely different impact on the player’s physiology, fatigue, and adaptation if it includes technical gestures or tactical plans looked over by a head coach in a bad mood—yelling and threatening at every mistakes—or if it is a relaxed and fun activity without any other aim than getting them to run a certain volume without complaining or looking bored.

Physical, cognitive, and emotional loads all contribute to the stimulus a conditioning game delivers to its participants. There is no magic formula, nor any right or wrong—the ability to manipulate those three variables in order to obtain a certain kind of adaptation are at the center of the art of planning conditioning games.

Moreover, we tend to consider conditioning games as exclusively a means to get a particular physiological stimulus, but if we look at it in a more holistic way, we quickly realize that for technical coaches, conditioning games can be used as learning experiences reinforcing some critical technical skills and tactical principles, or for developing more general cognitive abilities.

Conditioning games are a powerful training drill able to stress multiple important qualities required to achieve high performance. To grasp the full scope of potential benefits of conditioning games, beyond just energy system development, as well as to provide some guidelines on how to better plan them, it is necessary to come up with a model. Here comes the quadratic model.

The Quadratic Model

The quadratic model classifies conditioning games according to their position on two continuums. The first continuum addresses the main goal of the activity, opposing straightforward physiological stimulus (the purpose of the game is just to be less boring than a traditional running drill) and learning experience (the purpose of the game is to improve the team’s technical and tactical knowledge and mastery).

The second continuum is the one of specificity, from sport specific (the game played is designed to involve technical and tactical components of the sport) to general development (the game played involves technical and tactical components that best serve the development of a particular ability or quality, irrespective of their origin).

Such a proposed modeling allows the inclusion of three different types of loads and combines them to optimally serve the purposes of the planned conditioning game.

Each quadrant comes with a set of principles that the practitioner can use as general guidelines.

Quadrant A: Sport-Specific Physiological Stimulus

Games in this quadrant have as a main objective to stress a particular energy system while reinforcing technical (and to a lesser degree tactical) proficiency by incorporating a similar ball, rules, and scoring opportunities as the actual sport. To ensure this objective can be achieved, three principles ought to be observed.

The 80-20 Rule

Eighty percent of the game should be identical to the sport played. This means that amongst the five main design components, four should be consistent with a match situation:

1. Duration of activity and rest.
2. Size of pitch.
3. Number of players.
4. Game rules.
5. Intensity of actions.

The remaining 20% are subjected to regulation in order to emphasize the desired energy pathway and musculoskeletal stimulus. Examples of regulation are:

• Small-sided games: to target aerobic power and anaerobic capacity through an increase in acceleration/ decelerations, sprints and change of direction, as well as increased density of displacement (work/rate).
• Bigger field games: to target aerobic capacity and speed endurance through an increase in distance covered at medium, high, and very high intensities.
• Pre-set sequences of play: to target the lactic system and overall stamina by repeating passages of play for a standard duration with a stable work:rest ratio.
• Rule modifications: aimed at encouraging or removing a particular behavior in order to better induce a certain physiological stimulus (no contact, set pieces replaced with live ball injection, can only score after a certain number of passes, etc.)

Objective Assessment:

The game is designed to meet objective, quantifiable, and measured targets, as recorded by a GPS tracker or heart rate monitor. At any time during the game, the type of regulation can be modified to ensure those targets are met, as they are reflective of the physiological stimulus imposed. Game duration and intensity can be altered to continue fitting the pre-set objective goals of the drill, no matter if the scoring requirements of the proposed game have been met or not.

Redundancy:

Technical gestures and tactical cooperation needed to play the game are kept basic and well known. As cognitive and physical demands compete for the players’ resources, the burden placed on the brain is eased by requiring only a skill set that the individuals are very comfortable with. Novelty is avoided here whenever possible, and the same games are played over and over again, thereby inducing low levels of stress, anxiety, and learning in order to allow physiology to be the limiting factor.

Quadrant B: Sport-Specific Learning Experience

Games in this quadrant have as their main objective improving tactical and technical performance to positively impact the next match result. To ensure this objective can be achieved, three principles ought to be observed.

Dynamic Feedback:

Games in this quadrant do not include any sorts of regulations that go against the normal flow of the sport practiced. Unlike those of the three other quadrants, games designed to be a sport-specific learning experience sanction or reward behaviors that are exactly what would occur during a match. For instance, during a conditioning game of quadrant A, a player making a line break and providing a scoring opportunity can be stopped before the end of their action and the ball can be given to the opposition in another area of the field in order to force a rapid reorganization and increase the work rate.

Such a negative consequence of a very positive action for a player and his team is comprehensible when a physiological stimulus is targeted, but it is completely against the logic of the sport. Therefore, when the goal is to create a learning experience, positive actions need to be rewarded with positive outcomes and negative ones sanctioned by tur-overs and loss of territory.

Games in this quadrant leave the actions and decisions of both teams to dictate the rhythm and outcome of plays, using unplanned stoppages (errors, scoring) to reset and debrief with little regulation other than referring according to the rules of the sport.

Subjective Assessment:

Here, sport science technologies are run in the background as the coaching eyes prevail. The ultimate goal of a learning experience is to acquire knowledge and reinforce proficiency in a particular domain. Therefore, to tell when the actions of the players demonstrate a successful learning experience is up to the technical staff. The number of repetitions and the volume, intensity, and work:rest ratio of such games show the optimal acquisition of the tactical and technical principles the team is working on. The physiological stimulus obtained may therefore be different from one practice to another, and it is the responsibility of the physical performance staff to have options planned around the game itself to compensate for an above or below expectations physiological stimulus.

Differentiation:

A sport-specific learning experience game differs from other tactical and technical drills by targeting learning through differentiation. Games in this quadrant should offer the players a situation in which no two repetitions are the same. Indeed, a sport-specific learning experience game should not be a process of repeating a solution (rehearsal) but a process of finding and adapting a solution (discovery). Learning is obtained through “repetitions without repetition,” where players mostly implicitly gain understanding and mastery of a tactical or technical aspect of the sport by differentiating between successful solutions and less prolific ones. Since strong negative emotions can shut down learning and memory, it is important to create a situation where players feel safe and encouraged to be creative and explore solutions without fear of being criticized and judged.

A sport-specific learning experience game should not be a process of repeating a solution (rehearsal) but a process of finding and adapting a solution (discovery). Share on X

Quadrant C: Physiological Stimulus Aimed at General Development

Games in this quadrant have the objective of delivering a strong physiological stimulus with an emphasis on a specific energetic system, while keeping players engaged and motivated through the use of a collective task requiring collaboration rather than traditional conditioning drills. To ensure this objective can be achieved, three principles ought to be observed.

The 80-20 Rule (reversed):

Flipping the 80-20 principle observed in quadrant A, this time, 80% of the game is subjected to regulations that aim at targeting the desired physiological stimulus (see examples of regulations in the quadrant A section), and only 20% is kept specific to the sport. Trying to obtain a strong physiological stimulus by playing a game that is completely foreign to the players or less than 20% specific poses the problem of a higher cognitive demand (new skill set to learn and acquire) competing with the physical demand for limited resources. In order to maximally focus on the physiological stimulus, you better keep the cognitive demand low.

Objective Assessment:

(As discussed in quadrant A.)

Cohesion: 

Targeting a physiological stimulus through a non-sport-specific game is subject to more variability and fewer precise and individualized outcomes than traditional conditioning drills. To justify choosing a less optimal mean to achieve a physiological goal such as the development of an energy system, “making the players happy and more motivated” isn’t enough. Games in this quadrant should be designed to enhance cohesion through situations requiring groups of players to collaborate, work for one another, and support each other. Non-specific conditioning games are generally planned during the pre-season—coupling energy system development with team bonding seems an interesting prospect.

Quadrant D: Learning Experience Aimed at General Development

Games in this quadrant have as a main objective to improve general cognitive abilities such as vision, problem-solving, reaction time, dexterity, or tactical sense. To ensure this objective can be achieved, three principles ought to be observed.

Transfer:

Despite not being present as such in the sport played, the situations created and the skills required to answer them require players to find cognitive and motor solutions that are transferrable to their actual needs. For instance, a game played in a much larger field than the one used for their sport can improve football players’ peripheral vision. Since peripheral vision is a critical aspect of football performance, the learning experience created through the means of a non-specific game requiring a larger field (such as Aussie rules) has a transferrable solution to the sport of football. Another example would be catching a smaller and faster ball, therefore improving the dexterity of the players’ hands—this is meaningful and transferrable to a rugby player or a goalkeeper.

Downregulation:

The use of a conditioning game to target the development of a general cognitive ability should be aimed at continuing to improve performances while giving the player a break from the fast-paced, cutthroat, and repetitive day-to-day practices. Taking a step back—both away from the sport and toward an activity that has no intent to overly stress the body or directly improve the team tactical or technical mastery—can considerably lower the pressure gauge. When faced with a congested competitive schedule or environmentally and emotionally draining situations (such as travel crossing multiple time zones or a rivalry series), games in this quadrant can offer an opportunity to continue to create meaningful learning experiences while avoiding more stress and strain on the players.

Cohesion:

This is shared with quadrant C. If a game is the vehicle chosen to deliver a learning experience aimed at general development instead of individual skill work, it should be because of the cohesion aspect it brings. A tennis-volley game is superior to a kick-to-target drill to enhance general kicking accuracy for a football player because of the communication, collaboration, and shared emotions it creates amongst the participants in each team.

If a game is used to deliver a learning experience aimed at general development instead of individual skill work, it should be because of the cohesion aspect it brings. Share on X

Bringing It Together

All fundamental goals of a conditioning program for team sports—to meet the demand of the game, to prepare for the worst, and to build resilience—can be achieved through the proper planning and design of conditioning games.

To accomplish this, practitioners need to look beyond the style of conditioning drill a game has to fit according to the physical performance program needs. Instead, they need to work with technical coaches to decide where on the specificity and learning experience continuums the activity should be placed to optimally fit the overall plan.

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

You have just become the head track coach at a small school. The school has athletes, but how do you convince them to run track? You have a track, but what do you do when it’s cold? Or raining? Or snowing in March? What do you do with athletes that miss time because they play baseball? Or miss the first several weeks because they play basketball or wrestle? How do you get kids to show up over the summer, when football is the most important sport?

These are some of the dilemmas that small school track and field coaches have to deal with on a yearly basis. Being competitive year after year at a small school can be a challenging and daunting task, but it is absolutely doable. These are tactics that I have found to be the most effective in creating not only a successful track season, but a successful, long-lasting program that produces high level athletes and results on a yearly basis.

Being competitive year after year at a small school can be a challenging and daunting task, but it is absolutely doable, says @SFStormTrack. Share on X

1. Recruit

Ask any coach in a small school and they will tell you there are athletes walking the halls that choose not to do sports—not just track, but anything. While that is most certainly their prerogative, my goal is to get the best athletes in the school on the track team. Find ways to interact with the athletes you want on the team. Stop them in the hallway and strike up a conversation. Talk to their friends on the team and find out what the drawback is relating to track and find a common solution. If they do play another sport, go cheer them on, they’ll notice you there—my family and I went to our first high school soccer game to cheer on one of my athletes, but also to look at a few other potential track members.

Also, for those playing another sport, talk to their coaches. Sell them on the idea of how track can benefit them for their primary sport—other coaches can be your best ally if approached properly. The good part about recruiting for track is you have an entire semester to convince athletes to come out. We are a “Feed the Cats” type program, which utilizes max speed and max rest, which is another great selling point. The main part of recruiting for me is stressing how transferable track and field skills are. The movements that we perform translate to every other sport, making it the perfect way to train in the off-season.

2. Utilize the School Day

Most small schools don’t have a S&C coach or a state-of-the-art weight room. It is important then to utilize what you have during the day. One of our PE teachers, who is our new girls track and field coach, recently started an Advanced PE class. The class is designed for athletes to get workouts in during the day and includes:

• Weight training specific to the season phase they are in.
• Speed workouts.
• Recovery techniques.
• Nutrition.
• Plyometrics.
• Other great things you would see in a good track program.

The benefit of this are three-pronged.

1. It saves coaches time. Things that can be done in PE are done in PE, allowing in-season coaches to focus on more sport-specific practice plans as opposed to finding time to incorporate sprinting and lifting. They work on sport-specific lifts in-season, as well as explosive lifts throughout the year. All coaches want fast kids, and this allows our kids to work on and maintain speed throughout the school year, not just during track season.
2. Athletes in high school are student-athletes. They have lives outside of school and practice. The same can be said for coaches! The better we can utilize the time they have to be here during the school day, the better.
3. Students can find joy in sprinting or maybe discover they are faster than they thought they were and our Advanced PE class can oftentimes work as an extra recruiter.

3. Convince Other Coaches

One of the best things that I have done in the past few years is collaborate with the other coaches at our school. I frequently speak with Steve Trompeter, our Girls Track and Field Head Coach, about best practices and how we can get better; however, we both decided we also needed to do a better job of working with coaches outside of our sport.

One of the best things that I have done in the past few years is collaborate with the other coaches at our school, says @SFStormTrack. Share on X

For the last two summers, track, football, and basketball have worked together to create a common schedule over the summer in order to get as many of our athletes as fast and explosive as we can. Two days a week, all through the summer, we sprint. I don’t mean just track kids—I mean football and basketball and soccer and volleyball and anyone else that wants to show up. The track kids bring their spikes, everyone else runs in flats and everyone sprints. Everyone works on form. Everyone jumps. Everyone gets timed. We celebrate PR’s, whether it is a football lineman going under 6 seconds for the first time or the fastest kid on the track team running his new best time.

During the pandemic-delayed football spring season in 2021, the schedule overlapped with track season for a month. Our Advanced PE class didn’t sprint last year because we were on a half-day schedule all year, 25 minute classes. My initial thought was “What am I going to do for a month without a team and how am I going to get this team ready for the season?” The solution? Work together. Football practice started on Mondays and Wednesdays with speed training. We ran 40s on Monday; on Wednesdays, skill-position players ran Fly 10’s and linemen ran 20-yard sprints out of a stance. Problem solved. Everyone benefitted—especially the kids. Oh, by the way, after having most of the football team speed training for the last 5 months, they started their fall season 3-0 with a lot of fast dudes scoring long touchdowns.

4. Don’t Try to Make Up for Lost Time

During the season, we deal with a lot of adversity. At our school, we have athletes that are dual sport athletes, 3- or 4-sport athletes that come into the season later than others. We deal with weather in central Illinois throughout the winter and spring, and we lack facilities. We are going to use the time we have and not try to move backwards.

At a small school, the number of high level athletes is limited, some years more than others. As coaches, we encourage our athletes to be multi-sport athletes for many reasons: we want our athletes busy in the off-season, they can help recruit from one sport to another, and all of us coaches in the same school are friends and want to help each other out.

Track starts in January, wrestling and basketball end in late February/early March. That’s okay! Give them some rest, let them come in on their own time. Track is a long season and it doesn’t matter so much until May. It’s not about where you start, it’s about where you finish. We also have dual athletics, meaning students are allowed to participate in more than one sport in a season. Again, it helps at a small school to have athletes on your team even if you have to share. In 2019, we won a state title. Three state qualifiers, including our all-state shot and discus thrower, were also on the regional champion baseball team.

It’s not about where you start, it’s about where you finish, says @SFStormTrack. Share on X

In 2021, some of our state-qualified sprinters—both a part of the state 4×200 champion relay team and the state 4×100 runner-up relay team—were also wrestling at the same time! There were times when they missed practice for wrestling meets. Did I try to get them “caught up” in track? No. The reason was rest—it doesn’t help to make them more tired than they already are by catching them up on missed workouts. As Tony Holler often says, “tired is the enemy, not the goal.” Young athletes are resilient and will recover if given the opportunity. I would much rather ease athletes into the season than force workouts on to them that they aren’t prepared for. This can lead to injuries and ultimately derail a promising season.

Another problem that arises in cold weather states (like Illinois) is trying to make up for lost days when the weather is too cold or too snowy or too rainy to do anything outside. As a track coach, you have to be creative. We don’t have a fancy indoor facility. Our high school gym is busy with basketball from right after school until usually 7pm. In the spring, softball gets the gym, not track. We have no hallways in our high school that are conducive to running.

So, what do we do? Find somewhere the kids can jump.

For us, that’s the weight room. We work on explosiveness as much as possible. Find the best area you can possibly find to “sprint.” We walk to our elementary school, which is luckily just a parking lot away—and in there we have the longest hallway we can utilize. It gives us enough space to “sprint” in flats for about 40 yards until we have to slow down to not slam into a wall. Is this ideal to become the fastest versions of ourselves? No, but it’s what we have to work with. Still, we don’t work backwards—if we are forced inside, we do what we can with the day and move on to the next day. We can’t make up for lost days.

5. Cut Out the Fluff

Anyone with a Twitter account who follows as many track and S&C coaches as possible can quickly be inundated with hundreds of different drills, techniques, and workouts that their promoters claim to be the best. While all may have a purpose, it is important to utilize what works best for YOUR program.

While all drills may have a purpose, it is important to utilize what works best for YOUR program, says @SFStormTrack. Share on X

In my early days as a coach in northern Illinois, I wanted to incorporate as many different ideas as possible into my program. Then I realized that sometimes excessiveness was a detriment: kids weren’t improving like I wanted, kids weren’t enjoying track as much as I wanted. I felt as if I was letting my team down. Once I moved to Catlin and adapted my philosophy, the team started to reap the rewards.

As a Feed the Cats program, I buy into the idea that we sprint, we jump, and we get acidic, but only intermittently. The last 6 teams I have coached at Salt Fork, we have averaged only 19 kids per year. I anticipate about the same amount this upcoming spring season. However, we have high buy-in from the kids that are on the team. They learn the system and they become experts at what they do because speed is important but technique is equally as important.

When teams are willing and able to focus on the little things, big changes can happen. These can be done with relatively little of the “tired factor.” Don’t run over countless hurdles day after day—instead, work on the form, focus on knee drive, arms, posture. Don’t sprint every day—instead, work on form, knee drive, foot position, arms, starts, posture. Don’t jump every day—instead work on take off angles, stride pattern, jump form, landing position.

When teams are willing and able to focus on the little things, big changes can happen, says @SFStormTrack. Share on X

All of these can be done with simple drills that may seem repetitive to athletes at times, but when taught properly can yield huge gains. This method has resulted in 47% of our team making it to the Illinois state track meet over the last four seasons. Not only that, but of the 60 events we have competed in, at the last four sectional meets, we have qualified in 35 of them (or 58% of events). Cutting out the fluff isn’t just for sprinters—it is for all events to promote high level mastery of technique while incorporating as much rest and recovery as possible to reduce the chances of injury.

Communication Breeds Success

Being a small school track and field coach can be extremely frustrating at times, without the same facilities, money, and numbers as schools that have larger classes than we have kids in our district. However, when done right, it can be extremely rewarding and fulfilling.

In my years of coaching track, I have found that there is no right way to run a program. I know and talk to other successful track coaches from small schools that operate similarly to us, and also others that operate totally different. The common denominator in all of these key attributes of our program is communication.

Without communication, we would have never collaborated as coaches to design a PE class for our athletes or set up a summer program that benefits all of our athletes. Without communication, we wouldn’t be able to share athletes properly throughout the school year or within the same season in a way that avoids injury. Without communication, it would be difficult to find space to utilize throughout the season. Without communication with our student-athletes, it would be impossible to recruit new members to the team or to be up to date on their recovery during the season. And when small schools put it all together, they aren’t just small school fast, they are CHAMPIONSHIP FAST.

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

By Gabriel Mvumvure and Kim Goss

If there’s one bold statement that we can make about hamstrings pulls, it’s “whatever most athletes are doing to prevent them, it’s not working!” It seems no matter how much an athlete stretches or what special strength training exercises they perform, hamstring injuries are still some of the most common injuries among those who need to move fast.

Let’s explore why so many athletes get hamstring injuries and what can be done to prevent it.

Is Sprinting Dangerous?

There is a widespread belief that sprinting is an unnatural activity that causes the body to become “quad dominant,” increasing the stress on the hamstrings. It follows that to stay healthy, sprinters must get their sprinting muscles in balance by performing special knee flexion and hip extension exercises. We contend that sprinting itself is not the cause of hamstring pulls, but rather, poor sprinting technique is to blame.

One issue we’ve seen with many freshman sprinters is they have compromised their technique to achieve lower times. “Run faster, turn left!” as the saying goes. Not only are the technique faults from such training a challenge to correct, but they can cause chronic injuries we have to address when the athletes enter our program.

One issue we’ve seen with many freshman sprinters is they have compromised their technique to achieve lower times. Share on X

The most common technique fault in sprinting is overstriding, such that the contact foot lands too far in front of the athlete’s center of mass (see video 1 below). One study found that “the runners with hamstring injuries demonstrated 4.9° greater overstride angles compared with the healthy control runners.” The researchers said one cause of these injuries could be excessive tension. “When the foot lands on the ground with overstride mechanics, the hamstring musculature may be stretched eccentrically, which may facilitate in increasing the tension on the hamstring muscle bundles.”

Video 1. Overstriding increases the stress on the hamstrings, making the athlete more susceptible to injury.

Optimal sprinting technique involves placing the contact foot in a position where it can apply maximum force into the ground. The more force applied into the ground, the greater the stride length. The greater the stride length, the more ground covered with each step and the faster the athlete moves. For example, in 1991, Carl Lewis took 43 steps when he established his 100m world record of 9.86 seconds. In 2009, Usain Bolt needed just 40.92 steps to cover that distance and finished in 9.58 seconds!

If the contact foot lands in front of the hips, less vertical force is applied to the ground and stride length is decreased. That’s not good, but what’s worse is that the athlete’s hamstrings must work harder by pulling the foot across the ground, increasing the stress on these muscles. So how can overstriding be corrected? Let’s start with an off-track sprinting drill.

In video 2 below, one of our sprinters demonstrates a drill to correct overstriding that can be performed in a gym. The setup involves attaching an elastic band to the top of a power rack and hooking the other end around the ankle of the working leg. From this starting position, the athlete performs a high step march in place, focusing on driving that foot to their center of mass. We especially like that the drill has a built-in feedback quality, because the athlete will lose their balance if they step in front of their center of mass.

Video 2. A gym-based drill using bands to correct overstriding.

Next, let’s look at a track drill to correct overstriding. In video 3 below, one of our sprinters demonstrates a wicket run that promotes optimal front-side mechanics with a high heel recovery. If an athlete overstrides, they will gallop over the wickets. Galloping results in a slower time, as the force production is less vertical. In addition, overstriding makes it more likely they will hit the wickets, causing them to lose their momentum.

Video 3. A wicket drill to correct overstriding.

Anatomy of a Hamstring Pull

Extensive research has revealed how most hamstring injuries occur and what area(s) of the hamstrings are most likely to be injured. But before going further, let’s address the belief that increasing hamstring flexibility is the key to preventing hamstring pulls.

A study on Australian rules footballers involved 67 athletes who were tested in the standing toe-touch before the season. During the season, eight players suffered a hamstring strain, but researchers found “no relationship between pre-season results of toe-touch test measurements and hamstring strains sustained during the football season.” Another study involved 34 athletes from rugby, hurling, and Gaelic football. Sixteen of the subjects had no history of hamstring injury during the preceding year. The researchers found that “differences in hamstring flexibility are not evident between injured and noninjured groups.”

Many other studies suggest that hamstring flexibility, along with static stretching intervention programs, have no influence on preventing hamstring injuries. However, we’re not saying that static stretching has no value—just that it appears to have little influence in preventing hamstring pulls. But let’s move on.

Most sprinting injuries occur during the late swing phase, immediately before the foot strikes the ground. During this phase, the long head of the biceps femoris completes the longest stretch of all the hamstring muscles; it is also the area of the hamstrings most likely to become injured. If there is excessive tension in the biceps femoris during sprinting, an injury can occur. This is not a new concept.

The issue of incomplete muscle relaxation is a concept that must be considered when selecting exercises to strengthen the hamstrings. Share on X

“Soviet era research of muscle relaxation dates back to at least the 1930s,” says weightlifting sports scientist Bud Charniga. “The critical role of muscle relaxation; especially the speed of muscle relaxation; has been a consistent theme in efficacy of sport technique in East European literature ever since those days.” Charniga adds that Soviet sports scientist L.P. Matveyev referred to the incomplete relaxation of a muscle after contraction as “coordination enslavement.” Whatever it’s called, the issue of incomplete relaxation is a concept that must be considered when selecting exercises to strengthen the hamstrings.

The Case Against the Nordic Curl

A typical workout to prevent hamstring pulls might include one exercise for the knee flexion function of the hamstrings and one for the hip extension function of the hamstrings. For complete development, the exercises could be varied every few weeks. For example, to strengthen hip extension, one exercise could focus on the top range of the resistance curve (reverse hyper), another the mid-range (45-degree back extension), and another the bottom range (barbell good morning).

Although the number of sets and reps and other loading parameters can be debated, this approach seems to make sense. After all, as shown by the accompanying photo, many professional bodybuilders have proven that performing a variety of hamstring exercises with various resistance curves can add tremendous size to the hamstrings. However, when training an athlete, you must consider more than just resistance curves and workout protocols that make muscles pop out when you flex.

In addition to addressing movement patterns, limb speed must be considered when selecting the best resistance training exercises for the hamstrings. That is, how quickly muscles contract and relax and how connective tissues stretch and recoil. According to Charniga, exercises such as the Nordic curl are characterized by prolonged muscle tension that is “inconsistent with what actually occurs in the late swing phase of running and sprinting.”

Another factor to consider, which Charniga says is often ignored in the literature about hamstring injuries, is that the ability of the hamstrings to relax is influenced by other muscles, “especially from muscles such as the bi-articular gastrocnemius which cross the knee from below.”

The anatomy of the gastrocnemius is such that it can assist the hamstrings with knee flexion. You can easily experience the influence of the calves on knee flexion strength by performing leg curls. Point your toes (plantarflex) as you perform the exercise, work up to a max weight set of 10 reps. Now pull your toes toward you (dorsiflex) and use that same max weight—you will find this set to be considerably easier, such that you could probably perform another set with 5-10% more weight.

Putting this together, it makes sense that tension in the calves can affect the ability of the long head of the biceps femoris to stretch. “These muscles cross the knee from below,” says Charniga. “Any extension of the knee joint up to 180° can only occur if these muscles relax and lengthen, i.e., knee extension is affected from an ‘overlap’ or a ‘choke’ point of muscle attachments from above and below.”

If there is an injury-prevention effect of the Nordic curl, it doesn’t appear in the numbers. Share on X

The Nordic curl produces prolonged tension of the hamstrings with the calves held in a fixed position. As the hamstrings lengthen, the calves contract isometrically—this is not how these muscles function in sprinting. “Teaching an athlete to develop eccentric strength of the hamstring group to prevent injury with grinding, slow eccentric strength exercises is probably counterproductive; because sprinting actually requires a rapid onset of a late ‘braking phase’ as the leg swings forward and extends for ground contact, i.e., low tension followed by tension from stretching,” says Charniga.

Charniga says the Nordic curl is a popular exercise in the NFL, but he makes a strong case with injury data that extensive use of the exercise may be causing hamstring injuries. For example, the 2018 NFL season began on September 2, 2018. Despite a long off-season of strength and conditioning and controlled practice environments, 74 athletes were placed on the injured list with hamstring injuries. Before the start of the 2019 season, 43 athletes were sidelined with hamstring injuries! Further, between the 2018 and 2019 seasons, at least 25 athletes on average could not play due to hamstring injuries. If there is an injury-prevention effect of the Nordic curl, it doesn’t appear in the numbers.

Another issue is that the knee joint is fixed with the Nordic curl. “Any time you fix a joint, you increase the shear stress,” says Paul Gagné, a Canadian strength coach and posturologist. “For example, bodybuilders who focus too long on exercises that fix the elbow, such as preacher curls, often develop tendinitis in the elbow.” Gagné also has found that the Nordic curl places adverse stress on the popliteus muscle, which is involved in knee flexion and knee stability, and the meniscus. “My sports medicine colleagues have worked with numerous athletes who developed knee pain in these two areas from performing the Nordic curl for long periods,” says Gagné.

As for sport specificity, Gagné says the Nordic curl’s value must be questioned because the feet are not in contact with the ground & the hamstrings work w/muscles of the foot to produce movement. Share on X

As for sport specificity, Gagné says the value of the Nordic curl must be questioned because the feet are not in contact with the ground, and the hamstrings work with muscles of the foot to produce movement. Dr. Michel Joubert, a podiatrist and posturologist who has treated many of Gagné’s athletes, said it’s rare for him to find someone who has a hamstring injury who does not also have problems with the arches of the feet.

Although a complete hamstring strength program is beyond the scope of this article, we would like to leave you with a few alternative gym exercises to the Nordic curl.

The Elastic Strength Approach to Hamstring Training

Muscles must contract and relax quickly in sprinting, but athletic performance is not just about muscles. To produce the highest levels of speed and power, the tendons and other connective tissues must stretch and recoil quickly.

Elastic strength training methods look at these connective tissues as biological springs that absorb, store, and release energy. The more energy these tissues release, the faster and more powerful the movement. Charniga notes that the ground support time for an elite sprinter is so short that it “is not possible from mere muscular contraction.” And based on the data we’ve seen, Florence Griffith Joyner recorded the shortest ground support time ever for a woman, and Usain Bolt had the shortest time for a man.

One of the best sports for developing elastic strength is weightlifting, and the large range of motion these lifts require makes them especially effective for injury prevention. Most weightlifting coaches will never have to deal with a hamstring, ACL, or ankle injury because they are so rare. Let’s look at a real-world example.

One of the best sports for developing elastic strength is weightlifting, and the large range of motion these lifts require makes them especially effective for injury prevention. Share on X

From 2007 to 2012, 480 women competed in the European Weightlifting Championships. This event lasts about a week, and competitors do several workouts before they compete. These athletes performed perhaps as many as a quarter of a million total reps in snatches, clean and jerks, and squats during this period. Further, many of these lifts were performed with maximal weights. With this sample size, plus the women’s “fragile knee anatomy” and fluctuating hormones that are often blamed for their high injury rate (especially with the ACL), you would expect a horrific injury report. Not quite.

The number of hip, knee, hamstring, and ankle injuries reported during this period that required medical attention was zero. Again, zero. Compare this to most American sports, where about 70% of all knee, hamstring, and ankle injuries are non-contact and occur without load. As many motivational speakers are fond of saying, “Success leaves clues!”

In addition to weightlifting, there are many effective exercises that improve elastic strength. We want to leave you with a few we have our athletes perform.

The first exercise uses a Swiss ball and focuses on high-speed knee flexion, and the second uses bands and focuses on high-speed hip extension. Both exercises are performed at maximum speed and for a time limit to maintain quality, such as 30 seconds. (Note: we take no credit for creating these two exercises.) The exercises are demonstrated in videos 4 and 5 below, but first let’s go over a few notes.

In contrast to a prone leg curl—where the limbs move relatively slow—with this first exercise, the athlete moves their limbs as quickly as possible, kicking the ball with their heels as they do so.

Video 4. A high-speed knee flexion exercise.

For the second exercise, the athlete lifts their hips off the floor, maintains a neutral spine, and stabilizes their upper body with their arms as they perform a flutter kick as fast as humanly possible. We also have our athletes perform it with various foot/leg positions to emphasize different areas of the hamstrings.

Video 5. A high-speed hip extension exercise.

The last exercise is a single-leg assisted squat jump using a dumbbell. Kenneth Hunt, the jumps/combined events coach at Brown, deserves partial credit for creating this one. It could be considered an elastic strength exercise involving rapid contraction and relaxation of the thigh and calf muscles.

• Set up a power rack with a barbell resting inside of the bar catches, such that the supports will stop the bar if you pull back too hard. The bar should be raised to about chest height.
• Grasp a dumbbell in one hand and hold the bar with the other hand.
• Dorsiflex the foot of the working leg and lift the thigh until it is about parallel to the floor.
• Bend down to about a parallel position, then straighten your leg and hop a few inches off the floor—do not allow the opposite foot to touch the floor.
• Immediately squat down, focusing on reversing directions quickly at the bottom.

Perform all the reps in a set for one leg, then repeat with the opposite leg. To increase resistance, hold a heavier dumbbell.

Video 6. A single-leg assisted squat jump where resistance can be increased by holding heavier dumbbells.

These are just three of the many elastic strength exercises we use with our sprinters. One benefit we noticed from such training is a remarkable increase in vertical jumping ability in short periods, even for those who already have good verticals.

A complete hamstring prevention program involves many components that are beyond the scope of this article. For example, relatively weak glutes or collapsed foot arches (valgus) can increase the stress on the hamstrings. It’s also possible that athletes who have suffered serious hamstring tears may need medical intervention. For example, researchers have found that if an athlete has a previous hamstring injury, scar tissue can develop and linger that can “alter contraction mechanics” during running, increasing the risk of reinjury. This scar tissue may need to be addressed, such as with Active Release Techniques treatment®.

The bottom line is that sprinters, sprint coaches, and strength coaches must carefully consider running mechanics and the true value of strength training exercises for the hamstrings. Share on X

The bottom line is that sprinters, sprint coaches, and strength coaches must carefully consider running mechanics and the true value of strength training exercises for the hamstrings. Give the ideas presented in this article a try to keep your athletes moving fast and injury-free!

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

Kim Goss has a master’s degree in human movement and is a volunteer assistant track coach at Brown University. He is a former strength coach for the U.S. Air Force Academy and was an editor at Runner’s World Publications. Along with Paul Gagné, Goss is the co-author of Get Stronger, Not Bigger! This book examines the use of relative and elastic strength training methods to develop physical superiority for women. It is available through Amazon.com.

References

Bennell, K., Tully, E., and Harvey, N. “Does the toe-touch test predict hamstring injury in Australian Rules footballers?” Australian Journal of Physiotherapy. 1999;45(2):103-109.

Charniga, Bud. “How Is It Possible Weightlifters are Stronger,” May 11, 2020, sportivnypress.com.

Charniga, Bud. “A Stability/Instability Convexity,” April 23, 2021, www.sportivnypress.com.

Charniga, Bud. “Hamstring Injury: Prophylaxis Fallacies in Sport,” June 29, 2021, www.sportivnypress.com.

Charniga, Bud. “Hamstring Injury in Sport,” July 21, 2021, www.sportivnypress.com.

Hennessey, L. and Watson, A.W. “Flexibility and posture assessment in relation to hamstring injury.” British Journal of Sports Medicine. 1993;27(4):243-246.

Slider, A., Heiderscheit, B., Thelen, D.G., Enright, T., and Tuite, M.J. “MR observations of long-term musculotendon remodeling following a hamstring strain injury.” Skeletal Radiology. 2008;37(12):1101-1109.

Sugimoto, D., Kelly, B.D., Mandel, D.L., et al. “Running Propensities of Athletes with Hamstring Injuries.” Sports. 2019;7(9):210.