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All training falls onto a spectrum. Categorizing exercise along a spectrum allows us to better program for specific adaptations and helps us organize our programs and ideas more efficiently—the individual and their needs determine where training will fall on the spectrum. We understand that the sled is a multifaceted tool for resistance training that can develop several attributes and serve as a solution to many problems, and sled training should have its own training spectrum to help lay out exercises in a structured manner.

Coaches should view the sled training spectrum as ranging between two categories of movements: those developing strength and those developing power. Share on X

Many coaches still use the sled in a one-dimensional manner, prescribing the same training plan and load for all their athletes. This isn’t an effective way to structure training, as athletes have different needs and benefit from a more individualized training approach. Instead, coaches should view the sled training spectrum as ranging between two categories of movements:

1. Those focused more on developing strength and strength qualities such as strength endurance.
2. Those focused on developing power and power qualities such as power endurance.

Some other factors, such as biological age, training age, time of the year in regard to season, and individual weaknesses, will also be relevant.

Categorizing these exercises isn’t news to coaches—it’s common knowledge that the heavier a load is, the less speed the athlete will be able to achieve (and vice versa). Putting exercises onto the spectrum, though, is the next step past common knowledge, and this starts creating a system for accurate, actionable steps.

This article will begin laying out that spectrum of exercises for sled training, showing examples of how this can be utilized throughout training year-round and within a larger team setting.

Sled Training as Special Strength

First, I think it is important to note that I will be categorizing sled training here as special strength exercises: exercises that just so happen to be utilized throughout speed and movement sessions. Any time there are restrictions, such as load limiting maximum velocity from being reached, then that exercise is not a great option to directly train for maximum velocity. Although the power-based movements are closer to this objective, nothing will be as effective as flying sprints, or high-quality sprints without restrictions, to build that top-end speed.

In my experience, though, sleds have been effective for indirectly helping build that top-end speed by developing acceleration speed and enforcing better sprinting posture. They have also worked exceptionally well with youth athletes and field-based sport athletes.

The Strength Side of the Spectrum

Beginning to lay out the spectrum, we will start with the far side of strength. These movements have a greater reliance on force and are more general in nature. Exercises categorized by strength have longer ground contact times, are higher in load, and are performed at slower speeds.

Youth and less-experienced athletes tend to require more strength-based exercises—especially since many of these athletes aren’t yet fully mature and aren’t fully prepared for the adaptations that come with highly specific power-based movements. For them, using the sled is more of an unloaded, strength training exercise.

Some examples of these exercises include (but are not limited to):

Push Sled

The push sled starts the spectrum and can be broken down into a few separate series. Sleds can be categorized by:

• The body position they’re performed at (low, neutral, high).
• The position of the arms (either bent or straight).
• The speed at which they’re performed (marching, jog/bound, or sprinting).

Each position and speed has its own place on the spectrum and targets close, yet separate, performance abilities.

The lower the body position, the more strength-based it will be due to the increase in shin angle and longer ground contact times required to push due to the position. The arm position will also influence the exercise. Bent arm position movements lead to longer ground contact times and being more strength based. This is typically due to the increase in weight since the entire body can be used to drive into the sled. Straight arm position is typically associated with quicker ground contact times and puts more stress across the trunk and spine to stabilize, as the load is farther away from the body.

You can use a variety of sleds—it isn’t necessarily about the sled you have, but rather how the athletes position themselves with the sled. Share on X

The videos demonstrate a variety of sleds being used to show that it isn’t necessarily about the sled you have, but rather how the athletes position themselves with the sled.

1. Push Sled Low – Straight Arm Position

2. Push Sled Neutral – Bent Arm Position

3. Push Sled Neutral – Straight Arm Position

4. Push Sled High – Bent Arm Position

5. Push Sled High – Straight Arm Position

Most of these movements will fall in the middle ground of 10-20 yards, but it all depends on how the athlete performs them and the goal in mind.

Pull Sled

Pulling the sled is usually associated with more of the power-based exercises, but the acceleration drags and basic forward walks are used to develop strength and the ability to produce high amounts of force into the ground.

Each variation will require a strong, neutral body position to optimally pull the sled down the field, can be loaded extremely heavy, and will be painfully slow in comparison to actual sprinting.

Forward

1. Acceleration Drag

2. Forward Walk – Waist

Dragging the sled backward is great for durability of the knees and can be used to strengthen the knee extensors, as you have to drag it by stepping toe-to-heel and deliberately extending at the knee. Like the push sled, there are various positions and speeds that you can use with dragging the sled backward.

Dragging the sled backward is great for durability of the knees and can be used to strengthen the knee extensors. Share on X

Each position will affect the efficiency of the movement, but also the other muscle groups that are involved. The pull and underhook variations will require more upper body strength and stability than dragging it with a belt around the waist. And while all the variations can be done at various speeds, having the belt around the waist will allow the arms to be involved in the exercise and make it more accessible to increase the speed of the movement.

Backward

1. Back Drag – Pull

2. Back Drag – Waist (Slow)

3. Back Drag – Waist (Fast)

4. Back Drag – Underhook

These exercises can be performed for longer distances if trying to build up strength endurance or loaded heavy to pull for short yardage to increase strength. Use them at your discretion but keep your goal in mind.

The Power Side of the Spectrum

Power-based movements are defined by:

• Being velocity driven.
• Having shorter ground contact times.
• Being performed with less load.
• Being performed at higher speeds.

These movements are more specific, and elite athletes have the most to gain from them. Some examples of these exercises include:

Pull Sled

If you have athletes pulling the sled to develop power, they have to do it with lighter weight and in a more rapid, aggressive manner. Each movement is focusing on quick hip flexion and short contact times of the foot reflexing back off the ground.

Many of the speed exercises your athletes perform, such as skips and bounds, can also be performed towing a sled; they just have to be done in an appropriate manner focusing on quality of movement.

1. Marching

2. Skips

3. Bounds

4. Sprint—moderate to light weight

Perform for sets of 10-20 yards with light to moderate load.

Piston Sprint

The piston sprint is a pull sled variation that emphasizes aggressive ground contact frequency. For each variation, you want to maintain strong body posture. Pulling will naturally be more upright compared to the push and focus on repetitions into the ground with a full range of motion.

Perform for sets of 5-15 yards with light to moderate load.

1. Push

2. Pull

Chains

I know putting chains on this list is technically cheating, but chains are a great alternative to sleds for sprints where you want to gain more of an upright body position with less drag. Since chains are lighter and have a length to them, the resistance is more spread out as opposed to a single dense weight you have to pull.

Perform for 10-30 yards with one to three chains.

1. Sprints

2. Bounds

The spectrum is not limited to the exercises shown above, and you can easily add several other movements. Even the exercises shown on this spectrum could be used for the opposite adaptation if performed properly—it is how the exercise is performed that drives adaptation, not exercise selection. However, I selected and placed some exercises on the spectrum because they better fit the need to develop those specific adaptations due to the body position, arm position, or load used.

How to Apply the Spectrum in Your Training

When implementing the spectrum in your programming, it is best to go on a case-by-case basis. Some athletes already have an acceptable level of strength and can begin with more power-based exercises. These exercises are not inherently better or more difficult than another—they are just focused on different adaptations. That also doesn’t mean that those individuals should neglect the opposite side of the spectrum; instead, they should spend most of their efforts on the exercises where their weaknesses are and try to do the minimum to maintain their strengths.

Instead of neglecting the other side of the spectrum; athletes should spend most of their efforts on the exercises where their weaknesses are and do the minimum to maintain their strengths. Share on X

You will rarely find an athlete who is completely on one side or the other. It is usually a mixture of various strengths and weaknesses.

Programming Examples

General eight-week program for a field-based sport athlete.

Ratios: (Strength: Power)

The ratios refer to the percentage of volume of exercises being performed on that side of the spectrum, not weight-based percentages. So, an athlete who is eight weeks away from season will spend 90% of their time working to develop strength-based qualities by performing movements such as heavy sled pushes from various positions and acceleration sled drags. Meanwhile, they will only spend 10% of their time working to develop power-based qualities with exercises such as lighter sled skips and bounds.

Never leave any quality out, although as they get closer and closer to the season, that spectrum will see a shift in the volume of work being performed in each category (becoming more specific in nature as the season approaches). Many strength training programs follow similar principles and will consolidate nicely.

Week 1 – 90%: 10%

Week 2 – 90%: 10%

Week 3 – 75%: 25%

Week 4 – 50%: 50%

Week 5 – 50%: 50%

Week 6 – 25%: 75%

Week 7 – 10%: 90%

Week 8 – 10%: 90%

This is a basic example and won’t fit all athletes, but it gives you a general idea of how you can lay out training. More elite athletes would spend less time with the strength side of the spectrum and younger, less experienced athletes would spend more time there.

Also, if you find an athlete who is already strength-sufficient but lacking in the power and speed department, then that athlete can start farther down the spectrum, closer to the power qualities.

Programming Applications for the Private Sector vs. Collegiate

Implementing this spectrum in the private sector has worked extremely well, as I am not limited by time of the session or what I can do with my athletes. Even in my largest group of 12 athletes, I can still take my time to equip each with what will fit them best at that moment. However, the private sector does lack the frequency of training, as many athletes are not on a consistent schedule. This is why I never recommend leaving any training quality out—while not as efficient as putting all of our eggs in one basket, I need to spread my eggs out and make sure athletes are prepared at all times. Many athletes play sports year-round and unfortunately won’t get a two- to three-month off-season to develop physically.

In the larger collegiate setting, on the other hand, each team can begin with more strength-based exercises to develop the strength needed to enhance the power exercises later down the road. In that environment, I know I’m going to have my athletes for at least a few weeks of consistent training before games, school, and personal lives get in the way.

Even with that said, creating a semi-individualized training approach could serve your athletes better. Start by profiling your team and putting athletes into two groups: one strength-focused and one power-focused. Place each group on the spectrum where you want them. I would recommend just having two groups—trust me, you do not want to spread yourself too thin. When selecting exercises, either use different movements from the spectrum or the same exercises but forced to fit within the demands of the adaptation, so the groups are performing the same exercise at different speeds, weight ranges, and ground contact time periods.

When selecting exercises, either use different movements from the spectrum or the same exercises but forced to fit within the demands of the adaptation. Share on X

In each cycle of training, an athlete could change groups. This will be based on your testing and profiling of your athletes (as discussed further in the next section). That way, you are constantly attacking the athlete’s weaknesses and never fully neglecting an adaptation.

I understand that this is not an exact science, but it will serve your athletes far better than having them follow the same program and load prescription regardless of needs or experience.

Profiling on a Continuum

I’m sure you’re wondering how to actually profile your athletes by strength or power needs. Common knowledge and the coach’s eye go a long way, but I’ve found success using Cal Dietz’s free calculator. This tool examines an athlete’s 10- and 20-yard splits to profile them within a specific training range.

Once given that range, it is easier to place them along the spectrum based off their need to develop one of the training qualities. The goal for using this spectrum and sled training in the first place is to enhance their speed, so having a 10- and 20-yard time is a good start. Defining their needs first puts you in a better position to have a why in prescribing exercise selection, load, and goals.

Training is complicated enough. There are so many branches of physical preparation that intertwine with each other, with other training models, and even with other professions. The layout of the spectrum will help save you time and more accurately prepare for your individual athlete’s needs, both of which can help make training a little less complex.

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 year, as my soccer or softball teams roll through tournament play, we stumble through one of those dazed, listless, and dead-legged performances that inspire “the talk.” As I gather the girls together for our discussion on the connection between nutrition and performance, one of the players who’s been with me through multiple seasons will anticipate what’s coming and chime in are you going to tell the hamburger story again?

And yes, I am—because it’s a useful story.

Years ago, the starting left back on my club soccer team was one of our fastest players—a previous coach had nicknamed her “the dream killer” for her ability to materialize out of nowhere and chase down opposing strikers, disrupting what otherwise appeared to be a sure breakaway goal. A tall, mature 13-year-old, she also played tennis and loved to do treadmill and bodyweight workouts on her own.

During a weekend road tournament, we wrapped up our opening game at 11 a.m. and had our next match scheduled just a couple hours later. Not much time to leave the venue and track down lunch in an unfamiliar neighborhood…and the field complex conveniently had rows of concession tents and food trucks set up. Like many athletes, shortly after competing, her appetite spiked: a food truck char-grilling meat, smells amazing. DONE! She was all over a burger and fries.

When our 1:00 p.m. game kicked off, as play on the turf picked up speed…my fast and fit left back looked like she was fording a waist-deep river of pudding. Laboring, just to move veeeeerrrry sloooooow. The first ball that came her way careened off her shin like it was entirely the wrong size and shape. The next skimmed straight past.

My center backs and holding mid began looking frantically at me on the sidelines, as they were having to pick up extra marks in transition who kept blowing right past her. After five minutes, I had to sub her off the field—she was sweating the wrong kind of sweat and her expression was equal parts physical discomfort and genuine confusion.

And that was it for her game.

Why the Hamburger Story Is Important

Coaches constantly hear discussions about the *big rocks*—sleep, nutrition, hydration, recovery, heard it heard it heard it heard it. We hear it over and over.

But the hamburger story isn’t a story about impulsiveness or self-indulgence or a deliberately risky decision—coming off the field, the confusion on my left back’s face was authentic. She was truly baffled about why her body was suddenly incapable of doing the very routine things her brain was telling it to do.

Because, until that day, she had lived her entire life without ever being told about how the timing and substance of what you eat will directly impact how you perform (and this was a smart girl from a great school district and a family of successful medical professionals). Across the youth sports landscape, despite the costly tournament entries and club dues, the private skills trainings and complex travel schedules, the $350 bats and $250 cleats, there is still a widespread lack of education on how that 75-cent donut they grabbed for breakfast can undermine all of that prior effort and expense.

Across the youth sports landscape…the players often do not yet know how to eat in order to put themselves in the best position to succeed on game days, says @CoachsVision. Share on X

At the adult level, poor nutrition choices are rightfully identified as action problems as opposed to knowledge problems: If a grown-up chooses to eat a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos instead of a bag of carrot sticks, it’s not that they don’t know that it would be healthier to eat the veggies—they just choose not to act on that knowledge. Relative to nutrition and performance in youth sports, however, there remains a genuine knowledge problem: The players often do not yet know how to eat in order to put themselves in the best position to succeed on game day.

Even among that percentage of parents who do prioritize nutrition in their family’s food choices, most often their definition of *healthy* will be based on concepts from weight loss, commercial meal plans, or food sensitivities…all of which are very different than fueling for competition.

That knowledge problem is then multiplied by the realities of competitive youth sports—local and regional travel, pre-dawn breakfasts in the car, hotel grab-and-go’s, eating out of coolers, eating at snack shacks, finding takeout places that can quickly turn around orders, finding restaurants that can accommodate sweaty and exuberant large groups, games stacked on top of games, games scheduled at 8 a.m., noon, and 6 p.m.… Logistically, the variables for proper meal-planning quickly spiral out of control.

Given the realities on the ground, I like to tell the hamburger story because it paves the way to discuss a few concepts that kids can immediately grasp:

• What happens when your “rest and digest” system fully kicks in, and why you can’t simply choose to override that natural process when the next whistle blows.
• That nutrition for sports is not about being told what you can and can’t eat so much as knowing when to eat what you like to eat. Rather than black and whites of good vs. bad, kids find it interesting to learn that, in fact, the same thing that can be a good choice 12 hours before you play could be a bad choice two hours before you play.

From a coaching standpoint, there’s very little I can do about what the players regularly eat (nor should there be). But if I can impact their approach to when they eat some of the things that they eat, that can lead to more consistent performances on the field.

If I can impact the players’ approach to WHEN they eat some of the things that they eat, that can lead to more consistent performances on the field, says @CoachsVision. Share on X

Timing. Hydration. Repetition.

The hamburger story is, more than anything, a story about timing. That helps it resonate—why the exact same hamburger two nights before you play or two nights after is a totally different thing than that burger two hours before you play. With kids, it also doesn’t hurt to throw in a word or two about ice cream, which I happen to think is a great thing on a Sunday afternoon after wrapping up multiple games on a hot field.

If you tell your players there’s a very good time for burgers and ice cream, they will be more receptive when you tell them there’s also a very good time for pasta with grilled chicken or for scrambled eggs and fruit or for half a turkey wrap and a few cucumber wedges.

In fact, I do this over and over and over.

• We’ll be playing at 9 and 10:30 tomorrow morning. Tonight would be a good night to have pasta with meat sauce or chicken and a big serving of brown rice…

• Our first game is at 1:00 p.m. tomorrow. Try to have a substantial breakfast when you wake up and then something light like a wrap and some fruit close to an hour before warm-ups…

• Our game is at 7:30 tomorrow night. Even though it’s way easier for your parents to feed you an early dinner right beforehand, try to save that full meal for after the game instead…

Within this continual process of repetition and tying timing to nutrition, the easiest of the *big rocks* to nail is hydration—no one much likes being told what to eat or when to go to bed, but there’s very little pushback to drinking plenty of water.

So, I make that part of our team culture. In all of my practice designs, I write in a water break every 15 minutes. I work with very athletic girls; we play fast, and we practice at high speed—and we take a lot of breaks. In Southern California, we compete in full sun and afternoon heat, and while repeating drink lots of water, stay hydrated, I make sure they players have every opportunity to drink lots of water and stay hydrated.

From the connection between playing hard and staying hydrated, it’s then a shorter step to the connection between playing hard and proper fueling. With the hamburger story, the important thing is not just telling it one time—the key is the repetition. Like most coaches, I have phrases and concepts I repeat again and again, focusing on communication, controlling the ball, moving with purpose, creating space—these key points become the hallmarks of my teams because I emphasize those qualities over and over.

The more you repeat simple messages, the more cognizant players will be of when and what they eat—to the point that it can become part of your team culture, says @CoachsVision. Share on X

Nutrition for performance is no different. The more you repeat simple messages, the more cognizant the players will be of when and what they eat—to the point that it can become part of your team culture.

All Those Hamburger Stories That Don’t Fit the Narrative

Amid the worst of the 2020 COVID-19 lockdowns, Victoria Hayward—a starting outfielder on Canada’s National Team and an all-around spark plug in Athletes Unlimited—generously took the time to come on a Zoom Q&A with my softball team. This was a rough stretch, as all the local fields were sealed off with caution tape and the girls weren’t supposed to see their friends. Victoria was a shining light who appeared on their computer screens to deliver an inspirational message. She answered all of their questions about the range of sports she played growing up, how she learned which positions she was the best at, whether she ever gets nervous in the on-deck circle, how she was training on her own for the Olympics, and, yes…her favorite pre-game meals.

Sure enough, Victoria had a hamburger story.

Hers, however, was a laugh-out-loud funny story from playing at the University of Washington and scarfing down a burger not too long before a game, despite knowing better. She then went on to play the game of her life. Of course, she warned the girls it was a fluke coincidence and not something they should go and do…but her hamburger story underscores one of the realities of sports: talented individuals can regularly succeed in spite of their habits.

When it comes to motivating your players to make better food choices, one massive challenge is that their parents will be able to see your hamburger story and raise you a whopping success story during which they threw every big rock straight out the window. Due to the cost and commitment of competitive youth sports, many of the players have parents who are quite driven in their own lives—and successful academic, financial, and career performance are frequently fueled by high-octane s**t.

Your second baseman’s mom will have her own story of how she passed the bar exam while living on Skittles and Red Bull. Your goalkeeper’s dad will have stories of how he survived his hospital residency on black coffee, peppered jerky, and the occasional IV. That one kid whose dad actually did play a few seasons of minor league ball will tell you how he bunked with seven roommates and all they ever ate were corn dogs and frozen hash browns.

And not only did they succeed, but succeeding while thoroughly ignoring all sound nutritional and lifestyle habits is a specific point of pride. Your second baseman’s mom loves to tell that story of how she crammed all night and was seeing tracers from the overload of taurine and citric acid, yet still managed to step up and ace the test. All those crucial final exams she passed where she started studying earlier in the week, while also eating and sleeping normally? Meh, boring! Those are stories she never bothers to tell.

We had another hamburger story on my U12 softball team this year. During a tournament stop 60 miles up the coast in Laguna Niguel, we had games at 3:20 and 5:10, and our power-hitting shortstop/catcher made a special lunch stop there at her all-time favorite burger place, Smashburger. This was important to her, as all the Smashburgers in San Diego had closed down and, like many, her family hadn’t traveled widely the previous 16 months.

The home run she launched in the 3:20 game will be, I am certain, the longest ball I ever see a 12-year-old hit. It soared over the fence in left, cleared a 10-foot retaining wall another 30 feet behind that home run fence, and then disappeared down a canyon. We wanted to retrieve the ball for her as a souvenir, but no one from the tournament had ever seen a ball go over that retaining wall, and therefore had no idea how to even access the canyon in the first place. In her first AB of the 5:10 game, she hit a three-run laser that rocketed over the center field fence and set us coasting to a win.

I’ll see your hamburger story, coach, and raise you a couple bombs.

On Picky Kids and Pragmatism

Along with the big rocks, another oft-repeated training phrase is that kids are not mini-adults—what works for college and pro athletes often doesn’t scale at the youth levels.

When nutrition information does finally get passed along to youth athletes, however, it still tends to be based on more cultivated adult palates. Eat the rainbow. Salmon and avocado and Omega-3s. Start your day with this açaí bowl or those morning oats or that spinach and feta scramble. Snack on cut veggies and hummus.

When nutrition information gets passed along to youth athletes, it still tends to be based on more cultivated adult palates…Instead of suggesting what they won’t eat, recommend what they will. Share on X

If your kid will eat those things, God bless ’em. Many, however, will be super-picky, particularly the younger they are. Some of that is just stubbornness and wanting to control one of the few things in life they can control (what goes in their mouths)—but that pickiness also has roots in biology and natural selection, taste and texture sensitivities, digestive ease, dealing with braces and retainers, and countless other factors that dictate what they’ll put on their forks.

My older brother didn’t eat a bell pepper or an onion until his 40s—as an adolescent, all his stomach could process and tolerate were the bland whites: grilled cheese and quesadillas, plain pasta and white rice, lots of apples and bananas. He was also a varsity wrestler in an era where every dude in a singlet was on a Vision Quest to cut weight and wrestle Shute, so he was already spending his high school years in a state of alarming caloric debt. For my parents, feeding him the nutritional mediocrities he would actually eat wasn’t an act of pampering—we would sit at the table eating grilled steak, green beans, and potatoes and roast the kid for wanting just a bowl of mac and cheese. But, giving him what he would eat was a better fueling option than giving him what he would not.

While less extreme, much the same will hold true with a large number of youth athletes. Instead of suggesting what they won’t eat, recommend what they will. If you have a cut-vegetable-and-hummus-eating team, fantastic, that’s a great between-game snack. If three-quarters of your team would just as soon swallow a handful of infield dirt, however, bananas, grapes, and goldfish crackers may be a better choice and will at least keep them out of the Oreos. Salmon pasta checks a lot of boxes both the night before competing and following a long day of exertion…unless your players are going to poke at the fish like it’s still swimming and then barely touch the now-contaminated noodles. In which case, fine, a full serving of plain pasta with some grated cheese is the better choice.

Take your pragmatic victories. You don’t have to shoot for quinoa (yet)—if you can get them to start having white rice on their plate the night before a game instead of curly fries, that’s a win.

During our nutrition talk, I tell my players the original hamburger story because it’s by far the most extreme and vivid example of meal choice impacting athletic performance that I’ve personally witnessed. More often, though, we’re talking about subtle gradations of performance—and how eating Pixie Stix or Flamin’ Hot Cheetos or Krispy Kremes or KFC can lead to those so-so and sluggish showings that would have been sharper if they had simply eaten differently.

One Last Hamburger Story (At Least Until the Next One)

During this same 12U softball season, in part by taking hydration, nutrition, and sleep seriously, my team battled through five games in 110-degree heat on a Sunday in Lancaster, CA, to come in second place in USA Softball’s Southern California B-State championships, advancing on to Western B-Nationals (and the crazy need to play five games in a single day will be the basis of a future article).

At the Nationals tournament in Roseville, CA, we were finally knocked out with a 2-1, seven-inning loss to a well-disciplined and fundamentally sound team from the San Fernando Valley. Afterward, our starting pitcher stopped at In-N-Out for a post-game burger, breezed on through the front doors and…what appeared to be the entire opposing team was already there, eating at the tables inside.

Cue the Grampa Simpson burlesque house gif. She 180’d directly back out, having zero desire to sit and eat amongst the team that had just squashed our extended tournament run. On her way back to their car, she looked at her mom and said, “I can’t believe they’re all eating hamburgers. They have a game in two hours. They’re going to lose.”

And, they did.

Following our crisp, error-free 2-1 game, that San Fernando Valley team then lost 9-6 to a team we had already beaten numerous times. So, the next time they begin rolling through tournament play, it’s likely that their coach will now have a hamburger story of her own to tell.

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

Broadly speaking, when we enter a collegiate weight room in the U.S. while a team is training, it is abundantly clear who the strength coach is. For the most part, this is how it should be—we should ensure our athletes adhere to the program we have written, that they perform these movements safely, and that they give great effort in the training session. The longer I spend in this profession, however, the more I’ve come to believe that the weight room should also be a place of culture development and safeguarding by the players themselves more than any coach.

I’ve come to believe that the weight room should also be a place of culture development and safeguarding by the players themselves more than any coach, says @SCoach_Aldo. Share on X

I am a 32-year-old Englishman who has played football (the real football) all my life: I have no college eligibility, every time I shoot a basketball it looks different, I never practice with the team, and I certainly never get any game time. The weight room should never be ME focused, it should be team focused. Accordingly, I want to give my guys the wheel, give them ownership of that space and their development, and be like a driving instructor sitting in the passenger seat ensuring they stay on the right track and are safe while doing so.

This is where autonomy in the weight room comes in for me—giving the athletes a say in their own development. My coaching style is democratic, not dictatorial: to get to where we want to go as a program—winning championships—the players MUST lead the way.

Simple Ways to Develop Autonomy

I have promoted autonomy with the team at various points in my career as an S&C coach in men’s basketball at Furman, incorporating it into my program through:

• Gameday lifts with the development group (low-minute guys) – “Do what will make you feel great for the game tonight.”
• Gameday lifts with the walk-ons – “Let me see you guys put together a body comp workout.”
• No set warm-up protocol in the time before a lift starts. Guys report 10 minutes before we start the session—autonomy here with stretching, foam rolling, bike, etc.
• Week of the conference tournament—whiteboard lifting options:
• “Choose your A1 and A2 exercises” – low reps (prescribed by me, specific to the exercise chosen).
• A1 – heels-elevated back/front squat, KB goblet squat, or trap bar deadlift.
• A2 – GHR, leg curl, or RDL.

This last example was an idea I got from Travis Knight at Gonzaga—arguably the best holistic development program in the country. He has really encouraged me to explore autonomy with my guys, and I am very grateful to him for that.

At the end of last season, I wanted to get a better idea of what the players valued about the weight room, how I could improve in my coaching provision for the team, and what their goals were for the upcoming off-season. So, at the end of April and start of May, I had player meetings with them all and asked them seven questions. For this article, I will just highlight the question that is relevant to this topic: What do you like doing in the weight room that you feel transfers best to on-court performance?

Here are a few of the answers:

• Prowler races: “Gives me confidence, feeling the pump in my legs and getting into my wind.”
• Cable woodchopper: “Love doing rotation work in here.”
• Power clean and hang clean.
• Chain Squats: “Feel bouncy afterward.”
• Prowler: “Competitive aspect.”
• Single leg work + SL power: “Quick burst off the ground.”
• Add a resistance band to all roller work to make it harder.
• Back squat: “Feel most springy.”
• Raptor conditioning: “Train conditioning more in the summer.”
• Medicine ball complex: “Conditioning and pump.”

My initial response was to think how cool it was that each athlete valued different things in the weight room. I certainly don’t want to become robotic with my programming, and I believe variety is important to optimally progress an athlete throughout an extended training period. Seeing the responses also made me reflect on how little I do of certain exercises, how some of these have been new concepts we’ve tried out, and how much value prowlers can have for development (and not just seen as a consequence for being late!).

Now that I’ve given you some background information, I want to share four specific ways I feel autonomy in the weight room can be a game-changer for your program:

1. Buy into training.
2. Weight room culture.
3. The weight room as a learning environment.
4. New training buckets.

1. Buy into Training

I just finished my third off-season with the Furman men’s basketball team, and we recently completed an intense, eight-week block of training during which I trained my guys in the weight room anywhere from 4-6 times each week. We had four mandatory lifting days: Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday, plus I was available for optional lifts on Wednesday and Saturday. In previous years, I would send the team a group text informing them when I would be around if they wanted to get some optional extra work in.

This summer I let the players come to me if they wanted to get some extra work in. I was curious to see who really WANTED to get extra work in rather than feeling they HAD to come. Share on X

This summer I did it differently—I didn’t send out the group text; instead, I took a step back and let the players come to me if they wanted to get some extra work in. I was curious to see who really wanted to get extra work in rather than feeling they had to come.

Below is a breakdown of the participation numbers for the optional lifts this summer. As you can see from the table, the numbers grew to the point at the end of the summer where I had 90% of the team lifting 5-6 times a week.

For the first few sessions, I told the guys to come in with an idea of what they wanted to focus on. The first few weeks, they had a conditioning improvement goal, which I programmed accordingly for them. After that, however, I had the whiteboard out there and asked them each to come up and write what they wanted to do that day.

It got to the point with these optional lifts where some guys saw the whiteboard and said, “Oh we got autonomy today. Sweet!”

The energy and intensity in the sessions were excellent, the guys were self-sufficient and attacked their sessions with focus, and I even jumped in on the Saturday sessions by doing an exercise from each of their individual sessions. The weight room became a place of development where they wanted to go and train, not a place they had to.

I feel there is a misconception with giving athletes autonomy and the thinking that they would just abuse that freedom and sit on a foam roller for 45 minutes. From my experience, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Take for example my “bigs” this summer: I had them on a high-volume 6-12-25 program for the last two weeks of the semester. Not one time during this method did they come in and “recover” for 30 minutes. Instead, they choose to train how they wanted to train: some did power cleans and box jumps, some did barbell squat jumps, some did DB bench and military press.

I can’t encourage you enough to give athletes a say in their own development. Let them write their own workout and see what they value, says @SCoach_Aldo. Share on X

I can’t encourage you enough to give athletes a say in their development. Let them write their own workout and see what they value. I guarantee, some will surprise you with the exercises they choose and what they see as being important to their own development.

Video 1. Athletes taking ownership of their development with exercises they’ve selected to perform in the weight room during off-season training.

2. Culture

Earlier, when I mentioned that this has been my third season with the team, I did so to highlight that I have trained these guys for a while and know what our team leadership looks like. We want the old to teach the new, and we want recruits coming here and feeling something different about our team. As much as I love coaching, if I can program a lift and let my older guys run it with the high standards and the deliberate improvement now mentality that I expect, then I am all for that. We seek to be a player-led program, and I take this development model seriously; as an extension of the coaching staff, I am a culture carrier and enforcer for my head coach.

These extra lifts are a great time for me to put this model of leadership to the test and let them run with it. From the outside looking in, one of these autonomy sessions would seem as if there is no coach in the room, with the players running it themselves and encouraging each other. Hear me out here. I am there in the room coaching up what I need to and ensuring safety at all times, but I am consciously taking steps back to let the guys own the room and take the wheel.

If we all want athletes who take ownership of their craft and are responsible for their development, we need to provide an environment where they can actually be exposed to building these qualities, where they can experience trial and error, and where they feel like they are the ones in charge. I want to use the weight room to expose them to this stimulus, to problem-solve, and to take charge of their strength and conditioning for a moment and show a deep care in their personal growth. Trust me, when you see the whole team in there getting after it through player-led leadership and not through your own means as a coach, that’s an incredible feeling.

Trust me, when you see the whole team in the weight room, getting after it through player-led leadership and not through your own means as a coach, that’s an incredible feeling, says @SCoach_Aldo. Share on X

Younger guys partnered up with older guys, different position groups did core work together, I let them choose the music they wanted. The older guys decided how long they would all train for (which was generally 25-40 minutes of work), and they called everyone in at their discretion. We had partnered raptor work, prowler races, guys wearing weight vests. I did all I could to encourage ownership of their development by creating an environment where they would enjoy being in the weight room.

As for the actual training sessions they wrote up and performed, our culture appeared strongly with this too, which was obviously pleasing to see. The guys didn’t come up and just write a ton of bi’s and tri’s (Muscle Beach)—they thought about what they wanted to do but also what they needed to do. My post players generally focused on more hypertrophy work while my guards did additional lower leg stiffness exercises and barbell/MB complex work. My freshman either joined in with older guys or asked can we keep doing what we’ve been doing? I presented them with some options, but it was always their choice what exercise they performed. They wrote it down on the whiteboard, and off they went to set up and get after it.

3. The Weight Room as a Learning Environment

When a student-athlete leaves college, my main aim is for them to at least be able to cook for themselves and know what a healthy diet looks like. Yes, I know I’m not a registered dietician, but please come work at the mid-major level as a strength coach and tell me you’re not leaned on for nutrition advice every day. On this same train of thought, I don’t expect them to be able to write out a six-week diet the same way I don’t expect them to be able to create a six-week training program. However, from a training perspective, I would love for them to have a baseline understanding ingrained in them of the importance of full range of motion and tempo when training.

The use of the whiteboard and the guys writing down their own programs has been a great learning experience for them. The wide array of questions when they physically have to write down and run their own session gives me a good picture of how well (or how poorly) I have taught them so far in their career. Questions such as:

• Can I do box jumps after my power cleans?
• How many reps do you think I should do on each?
• What goes well with lat pulldown?
• Should I do 20/40 on the bike?
• How can I make this exercise harder?

All of these questions were normally answered by a question from me, back to them, beginning with what do you think…?

It was interesting to hear their thoughts and push them cognitively to reflect on what we’ve done in the past. Some of our guys have gone on to play professional basketball in Europe: some of these teams had optional lifts with a local trainer, and some of them didn’t offer even that supervision. In order to best prepare our athletes to play at some pro level—or at the very least, to continue healthy habits of training and exercising after their college careers are done—the education piece of what we do as strength and conditioning professionals cannot be undervalued.

I want my athletes to see the weight room as a place of learning and development, a place where they can improve, get better at their sport, and be challenged physically and mentally every time they train. If they see it as a place of pain and a space where I try and break them off every session, then I have done something seriously wrong!

4. New Training Buckets

Another crucial element of giving athletes autonomy in the weight room is it reflects their desire to train in ways that perhaps I haven’t programmed for. In looking back at the list of exercises my guys felt best improved their on-court performance, one of my starters loves to do power cleans and other Olympic lifting derivatives. I’m not a fan of power cleans for power development with my athletes, and it’s never been a training method I like doing personally or with my teams. I wasn’t going to now give this player Olympic lifting derivatives four days a week in his A series; I did, however, make a note of this, and whenever the player came in for optional lifts and wanted to do power cleans and box jumps, I fully endorsed it and coached him up.

I was really encouraged by doing this, as the autonomy in these sessions gave the athletes variation in their programming from what they usually do. Some exercises were, of course, repeated in the program I had them on, but some weren’t, and it was cool to see them filling other training buckets with their choices.

Another example of this was the use of barbell and medicine ball complexes, combined with bike/ski machine/jump rope/rower/prowler to improve their conditioning. In my eyes, the summer strength and conditioning program is about growth and development; it’s about changing their bodies, and it definitely prioritizes strength. The pre-season period for me is about speed development and getting them conditioned to start full team practices, prioritizing the conditioning element more. So, to have guys want to do some weight room conditioning work was great, as again it filled a bucket that is required for high performance but isn’t emphasized as much in the June-July training period within my programming.

My final example is from my last Saturday lift with the team, when three of the guards decided they wanted to do a 1RM bench press to see what they could get up to. The team camaraderie at the end of that optional session was as good as any coach-led weight session we had all summer. The whole team was hyped and even jumped in for a rep or two themselves. Optional sessions don’t equal lazy sessions, optional sessions showcase where your strength and conditioning program is at, what the culture of it is, and whether your athletes want to push themselves because they want to improve or because a coach is making them push.

From Motivation to Action

Every strength and conditioning coach wants a healthy, high-performing team that wins championships, but the ways we all reach those end goals are different. Our training philosophies mixed with our personality and coaching style are so individual and unique—I thrive on the creativity of this job and having a blank canvas to choose what road I want to go down with all aspects of the role. The key is to listen to your athletes, to really listen, then guide them and take a step back to oversee what they are doing. Let them take the wheel in their development, let them use intrinsic—not extrinsic—motivation to guide their growth. Allow them to take ownership of optional training, then sit back and observe some high-level training sessions that you facilitated.

Guide your athletes to see the weight room as a place of development—a place that keeps them healthy and performing their best, says @SCoach_Aldo. Share on X

Guide your athletes to see the weight room as a place of development—a place that keeps them healthy and performing their best. They are at this level for a reason: they are physically gifted and they know their bodies better than we do, so find some sessions in your schedule to let them train how they want to train.

If I was presenting at a strength and conditioning seminar and asked the audience who likes always being told what to do?, would anyone raise their hand? Our athletes have the same perspective. My hope is that after reading this article, you experiment with at least one thing in your program centered on giving athletes autonomy in the weight room. Remember who is actually playing the sport—it isn’t us, it’s our athletes. We can all learn a lot from them if we give them an opportunity to show us.

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

During full range of motion (ROM) bilateral lifting exercises such as squats and deadlifts, a neutral spine posture—defined as an individual’s relaxed standing posture where the stress on the spinal column and muscular effort required to maintain this alignment is minimal²⁶—is commonly included as part of the technical model. However, lumbar spine flexion away from the neutral posture is unavoidable during these exercises.²³ During heavy squatting and deadlifting performed through a full ROM, the lumbar spine will typically flex between 50% and 80% of maximum flexion.¹⁵ In fact, even when people are coached to maintain a lordotic posture during lifting, flexion relative to a standing posture still occurs.^14,22

As spine injuries are common in sports where heavy lifting exercises are performed, avoiding end range flexion could be an important strategy to reduce lifting-related injuries. Share on X

Although spine flexion during lifting exercises is commonly thought to increase injury risk, submaximal amounts of lumbar flexion may improve lifting performance and possibly lower injury risk through the following mechanisms:

1. Decreasing the external moment arm of the barbell relative to the lumbosacral and hip joints, allowing more load to be lifted.¹⁸
2. Maximizing the hip extensor internal muscles moment arm⁹ by decreasing the amount of hip joint flexion required to lower the center of mass a given distance²⁸.
3. Lengthening the erector spinae muscles, resulting in greater torque generation capability.²⁷
4. Potentially facilitating the contribution of the lumbodorsal fascia in providing an internal extensor moment, enhancing metabolic efficiency.¹⁴
5. Optimizing load sharing by reducing the compressive loading on spinal structures such as the facet joints and the posterior annulus of the disc.²

While it is important to acknowledge the advantages of lifting with moderate amounts of lumbar spine flexion, it should also be recognized that maximally flexing the spine under the extremely high compressive loads seen in the weight room may increase injury risk. As spine injuries are common in sports where heavy lifting exercises are performed (e.g., weightlifting and powerlifting¹), avoiding end range flexion could be an important strategy to reduce lifting-related injuries. This article will present evidence for the potential risk associated with lifting in a maximally flexed posture and provide tools that coaches can use to help athletes avoid end range flexion during bilateral lifting exercises.

How Does Maximal Spinal Flexion During Lifting Increase Injury Risk?

During heavy lifting exercises (“heavy” is defined in this article as loads exceeding 10RM), the compressive forces are incredibly high¹³, surpassing the ultimate strength of the spine reported in cadaver studies²⁹. This disparity can be explained by the osteoligamentous structure’s capacity to remodel following exercise, over time building the spine’s tolerance for the compressive loads experienced during lifting.¹⁸ While it is important to appreciate the adaptive capacity of the body, it should not be regarded as infinite. Therefore, lifting technique should complement good programming to help mitigate injury risk and develop robustness.

The primary concern with maximally flexing the trunk during heavy lifting exercises is the tolerance of the spine to compressive forces. When fully flexed, the compressive strength of the passive spine has been shown to decrease by approximately 23%-47% in cadaver models compared to an alignment where the end plates are positioned parallel to each other (which represents a slightly flexed position).¹⁹

The primary concern with maximally flexing the trunk during heavy lifting exercises is the tolerance of the spine to compressive forces, says @LouisHowe_SandC. Share on X

One reason for this is that as the posterior ligaments are recruited with full spine flexion, they increase the intradiscal pressures, resulting in a diminished capacity for loading.⁷ This occurs as the posterior ligaments of the neural arch provide an internal extensor moment to counteract the flexion moment that occurs with lifting. However, the posterior ligaments possess a shorter moment arm relative to the extensor muscles and, consequently, a very high compressive penalty.¹²

Importantly, this only occurs as we get closer to end range flexion. At 50% and 75% of maximal lumbar spine flexion, ligaments are less strained, resulting in only marginal increases in intradiscal pressures relative to a position of 0% flexion.⁷ This is one reason why no difference exists in the ultimate compressive strength of the lumbar spine when comparing postures of 0% and 75% of maximal flexion.⁷

Stress concentrations may also increase on specific spinal structures with a maximally flexed posture. When the lumbar spine is moderately flexed, the superior and inferior endplates are parallel to each other, resulting in an even distribution of load across the disc.⁵ However, when the spine is maximally flexed, stress concentrations occur at the anterior aspect of the interbody joint, further diminishing the compressive strength of the lumbar spine.

Adams and Hutton⁴ found end range flexion at a spinal segment increased compression on the anterior annulus by approximately 30%, while stretching the posterior annulus of the intervertebral disc by 50%. This is one reason high compressive forces can cause wedge fractures of the anterior vertebral body when motion segments are fully flexed¹⁸, and why full flexion combined with compression can cause posterior disc herniation³.

Another consideration is the anterior shear loading imposed by the supraspinous and interspinous ligaments when recruited with full lumbar spine flexion. Relative to compression, the lumbar spine has a low tolerance threshold for anterior shear forces (approximately 2,000-3,000 N)¹⁷ that may be approached with heavy lifting.¹⁶ The interspinous and supraspinous ligaments are oriented such that when the lumbar spine is fully flexed, these ligaments pull the superior vertebra forward relative to the vertebra below.²¹ Consequently, full spine flexion will increase the anterior joint shear forces, increasing the loading on the structures of the neural arch.¹⁷

This may explain the findings of Potvin et al.³⁰, where anterior joint shear loads were greater when the lumbar spine was fully flexed compared to a less flexed posture. Lumbar flexion does have advantages when considering shear loading, as it reduces the anterior shear forces imposed by gravity.⁸ However, there may be a compromise for managing these loads, where joint shear forces can be reduced by allowing moderate flexion to decrease the loading caused by gravity, while avoiding maximal recruitment of the ligaments.

Lastly, when hyperflexion occurs as it can during heavy lifting¹², the supraspinous and interspinous ligaments may be the first structures to be damaged⁶. This risk can be attenuated by avoiding end range flexion at each motion segment by just a few degrees.¹²

How Can We Coach Athletes to Avoid Full Spine Flexion?

While avoiding maximal spine flexion has the potential to reduce injury risk, moderate flexion (60%-80% of maximum flexion) can improve lifting performance while encouraging optimal load sharing at the spine.² Consequently, coaches should encourage athletes to maintain a spine alignment that resides within the physiological limits of their ROM during heavy lifting. Generally, allowing the lumbar spine to flex to the point it flattens enables moderate flexion to occur, while avoiding a kyphotic posture of the lumbar spine will help prevent reaching end ROM.²

Coaches should encourage athletes to maintain a spine alignment that resides within the physiological limits of their ROM during heavy lifting, says @LouisHowe_SandC. Share on X

Below is a range of approaches that coaches can incorporate into their practice to help athletes develop coordination strategies that may reduce their injury risk when learning lifting exercises. Importantly, these strategies should be considered in the context of a sensible lifting program that incorporates progressive overload to drive structural adaptations.

I will also present evidence to support each approach. To accomplish this, I’ve provided images and data taken from a single athlete to demonstrate the effectiveness of each coaching tool. To record lumbar spine posture, peak flexion angles for each movement were calculated using two inertial measurement units (IMUs) positioned at L1 and S2. All values were normalized to the athlete’s standing neutral posture and the maximum flexion angle achieved during the standing flexion test.¹²

1. Cueing

While obvious, cueing spine posture is well-supported by the literature as a strategy to avoid end range spine flexion. For example, asking athletes to lift “without rounding the lower back” and “maintaining the arch of the spine” has been shown to reduce lumbar spine flexion when lifting a 7.3-kilogram box from the floor.¹⁰ While this evidence doesn’t directly relate to heavy deadlifting or squatting, it does provide proof of concept—lumbar spine flexion during lifting can be decreased with appropriate cueing. Depending on the lifting exercise and the athlete’s interpretation, cues that prevent spine motion and/or facilitate lower extremity contribution to lowering the center of mass should be used help each athlete identify movement strategies that avoid end range spine flexion.

2. Develop Awareness for Spine Position

While cueing lumbar spine posture will help most athletes avoid full spine flexion, tactile feedback can also be used to develop the proprioceptive awareness needed to prevent end ROM flexion from occurring during lifting exercises. Example strategies include placing a PVC pipe longitudinally along the spine or applying tape to the spine in order to provide feedback on when the athlete is approaching end ROM flexion during hinging and squatting exercises.

Like cueing, taping the lumbar spine (as shown in figure 2) has been shown to significantly reduce lumbar spine flexion while increasing hip and knee joint flexion during a lifting task.²⁸ Technology like IMUs has also been used to provide real-time feedback to help individuals develop lifting strategies that avoid maximal spine flexion.¹¹ These strategies should be used as a teaching tool, and in most cases, only 1-2 sessions are required to have lasting effects. Figures 2 and 3 demonstrate how tape can be applied to the lumbar spine to help athletes develop an awareness for when their posture approaches end range flexion.

Coaches can apply tape to the lumbar spine to help athletes develop an awareness for when their posture approaches end range flexion, says @LouisHowe_SandC. Share on X

 3. Tailor Exercise Selection to the Athlete

Exercise selection will have a large influence on spine posture when lifting for individuals with limited mobility relative to the exercise. For example, a snatch-grip deadlift demands large amounts of hip flexion that, if lacking, will drive compensations at neighboring joint segments. For this exercise, lumbar spine flexion is a common strategy for lowering the hands to the barbell when hip mobility is restricted.

4. Customize ROM

This builds on the previous point and is a similar strategy that you can use to control for spine flexion. There is no rulebook saying that athletes should perform all deadlifts from the floor with 17.7-inch plates. For hypomobile or tall athletes, pulling from blocks or squatting to parallel may be needed to help avoid end range spine flexion.

Coaches should consider an athlete’s capacity to avoid a kyphotic spine posture when deciding on the end ROM of the exercise, says @LouisHowe_SandC. Share on X

As spine flexion gradually increases when lifting,¹⁰ reducing the ROM of the lifting exercise will decrease the amount of spine flexion.³¹ Therefore, coaches should consider an athlete’s capacity to avoid a kyphotic spine posture when deciding on the end ROM of the exercise. Figure 4 demonstrates the effects of lifting ROM on spine posture by comparing lumbar flexion during trap bar deadlifts performed on the ground and from a 4-inch platform.

5. If Needed, Develop an Athlete’s Ankle and Hip Mobility

Having sufficient ankle and hip mobility is crucial for avoiding end range spine flexion when performing full ROM lifting exercises. For example, when ankle dorsiflexion ROM is restricted, it limits the forward displacement of the knees, causing the pelvis to move further back relative to the base of support. To maintain balance, excessive forward lean of the trunk is required, which may result in end range spine flexion.²⁴ Similarly, when hip mobility is limited, early posterior tilt of the pelvis can occur during squatting, increasing spine flexion.²⁵

Movement to Protect the Spine

The spine is incredibly robust and can bear extremely high loads in a range of different postures. During full ROM lifting exercises, lumbar spine flexion is unavoidable and has the potential to improve lifting performance. However, athletes who lift heavy with a maximally flexed lumbar spine posture may have a greater risk of injury, as the compressive strength of the spine is compromised, and the intervertebral discs and posterior ligaments are stressed/strained.

Avoiding end range lumbar flexion can be achieved by developing movement skill through coaching coordination patterns that optimize load sharing at the spine and selecting lifting exercises that account for the athlete’s physical attributes. This can be supplemented, where appropriate, with mobility exercises to help athletes access greater lower-extremity contribution to lowering the center of mass during lifting exercises.

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

References

1. Aasa U, Svartholm I, Andersson F, and Berglund L. “Injuries among weightlifters and powerlifters: a systematic review.” British Journal of Sports Medicine. 2017; 51:211-219.

2. Adams MA and Dolan P. “How to use the spine, pelvis, and legs effectively in lifting.” In: Movement, Stability and Lumbopelvic Pain. Churchill Livingstone, Edinburgh, pp. 167-183, 2007.

3. Adams MA and Hutton WC. “The effect of posture on the strength of the lumbar spine.” Engineering in Medicine. 1981;10:199-202.

4. Adams MA and Hutton WC. “Prolapsed intervertebral disc: a hyperflexion injury.” Spine. 1982;7:184-191.

5. Adams MA and Hutton WC. “The effect of posture on the lumbar spine.” The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, British volume. 1985;67:625-629.

6. Adams MA, Hutton WC, and Stott JR. “The resistance to flexion of the lumbar intervertebral joint.” Spine. 1980;5:245-253.

7. Adams MA, McNally DS, Chinn H, and Dolan P. “The clinical biomechanics award paper 1993 posture and the compressive strength of the lumbar spine.” Clinical Biomechanics. 1994;9:5-14.

8. Arjmand N and Shirazi-Adl A. “Biomechanics of changes in lumbar posture in static lifting.” Spine. 2005;30:2637-2648.

9. Arnold AS, Salinas S, Hakawa DJ, and Delp SL. “Accuracy of muscle moment arms estimated from MRI-based musculoskeletal models of the lower extremity.” Computer Aided Surgery. 2000;5:108-119.

10. Beach TA, Stankovic T, Carnegie DR, Micay R, and Frost DM. “Using verbal instructions to influence lifting mechanics–Does the directive ‘lift with your legs, not your back’ attenuate spinal flexion?.” Journal of Electromyography and Kinesiology. 2018;38:1-6.

11. Boocock M, Naude Y, Taylor S, Kilby J, and Mawston G. “Influencing lumbar posture through real-time biofeedback and its effects on the kinematics and kinetics of a repetitive lifting task.” Gait & Posture. 2019;73:93-100.

12. Cholewicki J and McGill SM. “Lumbar posterior ligament involvement during extremely heavy lifts estimated from fluoroscopic measurements.” Journal of Biomechanics. 1992;25:17-28.

13. Cholewicki J, McGill SM, and Norman RW. “Lumbar spine loads during the lifting of extremely heavy weights.” Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise. 1991;23:1179-1186.

14. Dolan P, Mannion AF, and Adams MA. “Passive tissues help the back muscles to generate extensor moments during lifting.” Journal of Biomechanics. 1994;27:1077-1085.

15. Edington C. “Lumbar spine kinematics and kinetics during heavy barbell squat and deadlift variations” (Doctoral dissertation), University of Saskatchewan Saskatoon; 2017.

16. Edington C, Greening C, Kmet N, et al. “The effect of set up position on EMG amplitude, lumbar spine kinetics, and total force output during maximal isometric conventional-stance deadlifts.” Sports. 2018;6:90.

17. Gallagher S and Marras WS. “Tolerance of the lumbar spine to shear: a review and recommended exposure limits.” Clinical Biomechanics. 2012;27:973-978.

18. Granhed H, Jonson R, and Hansson T. “The loads on the lumbar spine during extreme weight lifting.” Spine. 1987;12:146-149.

19. Gunning JL, Callaghan JP, and McGill SM. “Spinal posture and prior loading history modulate compressive strength and type of failure in the spine: a biomechanical study using a porcine cervical spine model.” Clinical Biomechanics. 2001;16:471-480.

20. Hales ME. “Improving the deadlift: Understanding biomechanical constraints and physiological adaptations to resistance exercise.” Strength and Conditioning Journal. 2010;32:44-51.

21. Heylings DJ. “Supraspinous and interspinous ligaments of the human lumbar spine.” Journal of Anatomy. 1978;125:127-131.

22. Holder L. “The effect of lumbar posture and pelvis fixation on back extensor torque and paravertebral muscle activation” (Doctoral dissertation), Auckland University of Technology; 2013.

23. Howe L and Lehman G. “Getting out of neutral: the risks and rewards of lumbar spine flexion during lifting exercises.” Strength and Conditioning. 2021;60:19-31.

24. List R, Gülay T, Stoop M, and Lorenzetti S. “Kinematics of the trunk and the lower extremities during restricted and unrestricted squats.” The Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. 2013;27:1529-1538.

25. Mata AJ, Hayashi H, Moreno PA, Dudley RI, and Sorenson EA. “Hip flexion angles during supine range of motion and bodyweight squats.” International Journal of Exercise Science. 2021;14:912-918.

26. Panjabi MM. “The stabilizing system of the spine. Part II. Neutral zone and instability hypothesis.” The Journal of Spinal Disorders. 1992;5:390-397.

27. Parnianpour M, Li F, Nordin M, and Kahanovitz N. “A database of isoinertial trunk strength tests against three resistance levels in sagittal, frontal, and transverse planes in normal male subjects.” Spine. 1989;14:409-411.

28. Pinto BL, Beaudette SM, and Brown SH. “Tactile cues can change movement: An example using tape to redistribute flexion from the lumbar spine to the hips and knees during lifting.” Human Movement Science. 2018;60:32-39.

29. Porter RW, Adams MA, and Hutton WC. “Physical activity and the strength of the lumbar spine.” Spine. 1989;14:201-203.

30. Potvin JR, McGill SM, and Norman RW. “Trunk muscle and lumbar ligament contributions to dynamic lifts with varying degrees of trunk flexion.” Spine. 1991;16:1099-1107.

31. Yanagisawa O, Oshikawa T, Adachi G, Matsunaga N, and Kaneoka K. “Acute effects of varying squat depths on lumbar intervertebral disks during high‐load barbell back squat exercise.” Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports. 2021;31:350-357.

It is no secret that any fighter—or any athlete—must become strong to be effective, and the indisputable truth is that achieving this requires lifting weights. But, in my time, I’ve seen countless athletes who can easily back squat enormous loads shake like jelly when they try to do a simple bodyweight lunge because they lack stability and body control. Their strength is useless because it cannot be expressed properly.

This is where bodyweight training comes in. By wisely incorporating a few exercises into your training, you will develop the awareness and proprioception needed for gains to properly manifest.

By wisely incorporating a few bodyweight exercises into your training, you will develop the awareness and proprioception needed for strength gains to properly manifest. Share on X

Plyometrics, isometrics, and slow eccentrics play a key role in counterbalancing the lack of external resistance, since they are methods that can effectively stimulate the muscles involved. What follows are 13 of my favorite bodyweight movements for martial artists, self-defenders, and combat sports athletes, presented in order of neurological demand (which would also usually be the order of execution during a workout).

Lower Body Plyometrics

Lower body plyometrics are inherently explosive, which can place high demands on the nervous system. This is why they are best performed at the beginning of a workout, right after warming up, when the athletes are still fresh.

The idea is to perform low reps with maximum intent on each set. Excessive reps will cause fatigue, and the nervous system will lose the ability to effectively recruit the maximum amount of high-threshold muscle fibers, which results in you getting slower overall.

1. Skater Jumps 

Skater jumps are often found in martial arts training programs, and for good reason—they can teach the ability to quickly move out of the line of attack in order to evade an incoming strike. If you’re fast enough, there’s a high probability that you can launch a successful counterattack as well. I also like this movement because it utilizes the frontal plane, which can be neglected sometimes as people tend to emphasize forward and backward motion.

Video 1. In order to perform the skater jump, bend one leg behind the other at an angle, but don’t touch the ground. This way, all your weight is now on the supporting leg.

Have your athletes load their weight on their hips by hinging, then launch sideways and land on the other leg by bending their hips and knee to properly absorb the force, and finish in a mirrored starting stance. Try not to touch the ground with both legs at any time during the set.

• Do 12 sets of four explosive reps (two per side) with a 45-second rest between them, starting from the opposite side every time.

2. Backward Broad Jump

Most athletes are already familiar with the classic broad jump and its benefits, but not many practice the backward variation. Jumping in the opposite direction will significantly test your coordination. That’s not the only benefit for a fighter though, as it also teaches them to quickly pull their legs out of their opponent’s reach during a takedown attempt.

Video 2. Place your feet at about your squatting width. Start from a semi-squat stance and propel yourself backward as far as possible.

Taking care to not let their knees cave in, athletes should immediately perform the next jump in a set, minimizing contact time with the ground in order to also work on their reactive strength. After the last jump, stick to the landing position for a moment. Keep in mind that the backward broad jump is far more challenging than the original, so you will not cover as much distance as you might expect. Start slow and progress in baby steps to minimize the risk of injury.

• Perform six sets of three repetitions each, with a 30-second rest in between.

3. Sprawl to Staggered Broad Jump

The sprawl to staggered broad jump is an advanced plyometric exercise designed to not only teach the athlete to move out of harm’s way when facing a takedown attempt, but also to get back up as fast as possible and generate force immediately after.

Video 3. Assume a staggered stance. Crouch and place your hands on the ground, then quickly shoot your legs back. Your front leg should extend all the way to the back, instep touching the floor, while your back leg should bend to the side for balance and support.

In the movement, make sure the athlete lies down completely, touching both belly and chest on the ground. To finish the sprawl, they get back up on their feet in a fighting stance as fast as humanly possible. Have them instantly create momentum by swinging their arms and jumping as far as they can. Although they started the jump from a fighting stance, be sure they land with both feet in line, just like in any normal jump.

• Perform eight sets of two reps with 45 seconds of rest between sets.

Upper Body Plyometrics

As with the lower body plyos, we’re talking about violent movements, so these are best performed at the beginning of your workout, preceded by a good warm-up. Plan them for after the lower body plyos if you’re doing both in the same workout.

Again, the high-sets, low-reps protocol remains. Take plenty of rest between sets—even more than what is prescribed, if necessary—in order to be as aggressive as possible in every single repetition. Just be mindful not to overdo it, as too much rest will allow their nervous system to completely relax, taking their mind out of “the zone.”

4. Plyo Push-Ups

The plyo push-up is considered a staple movement for developing upper body explosiveness. Mimicking the motion of a punch or a shove, the horizontal push is one of the most fundamental human movement patterns.

Video 4. Begin from a classic push-up position, placing your hands just outside of your sternum and keeping your legs next to each other. Lower yourself until your chest—and only your chest—barely touches the ground.

The athlete’s hips and quads should stay off the floor at all times, and their elbows should have an angle of approximately 45 degrees to the back at this point. In other words, if an observer were to look from above, they should look like an arrow. This position protects the rotator cuffs from excessive internal rotation, which can lead to injury over time.

If you find their arms are flaring out too much, have them turn their palms outward in a slight angle, which will help minimize the problem. As soon as they reach the bottom of the range of motion, they should violently push the earth away to propel into the air.

Some athletes feel the need to clap while airborne, but clapping doesn’t add any benefits to the exercise, and nobody deserves applause for completing a single push-up. (Plus, if you fail, you may literally find yourself facing off against the ground, which is not an opponent you can defeat.) So, it’s best they keep their hands in position, ready to help with the landing. As soon as they reach the ground again, they should lower their weight once more as they enter their next repetition.

• Perform eight sets of three reps each, taking 30 seconds of rest.

5. Inverted Plyo Pull-Ups

Pulling is equally important as pushing in terms of performance, but twice as important in terms of preserving the structural integrity of the body. Practically speaking, martial artists often need to pull their opponent violently to control or grapple with them. This is where the inverted plyo pull-ups really shine.

Horizontal pulling exercises greatly alleviate the muscular imbalances that athletes tend to develop due to constantly rounding their shoulders while delivery countless strikes forward. Share on X

Furthermore, horizontal pulling exercises greatly alleviate the muscular imbalances that athletes tend to develop due to constantly rounding their shoulders while delivering countless strikes forward. Add our daily habit of being hunched over our computers or phones to the mix, and you can clearly see why the anterior chain gets way more stimulation than the posterior in total, making it unevenly stiffer.

Therefore, this list would be incomplete—and probably dangerous in the long term—if it didn’t include some pulling exercises (which your workout program should include, no matter what you’re training for).

Video 5. Stabilize a bar on a rack at about your belly button’s height. Get underneath, grab it with a slightly-wider-than-shoulders grip, and place your heels on a bench so that you find yourself in a fully extended supine position, parallel to the ground. Pull explosively until your chest almost hits the bar.

Ideally, the athlete should let go of the bar momentarily as they reach the top, as if wanting to launch through it. Then, they grab it again and slowly descend back in place in a controlled manner. Their body should be in a rigid plank stance throughout the move, keeping the chest out and shoulders back. Also, this probably doesn’t need to be mentioned, but you can never be too safe: Make sure they are properly aligned with the rack during the execution to avoid displacing the bar and risking injury.

• Perform six sets of four reps each, and rest around 30 seconds in between.

Lower Body Strength

We are now moving into standard lower body strength development. Slow eccentrics and isometric holds are key in this part, as they are an excellent way to stimulate the muscles when no external resistance is available. These exercises should follow the plyometrics if you decide to perform both in the same workout.

6. The Copenhagen Hold

This version of the side plank primarily targets the adductors and will, in turn, make any stance that requires inner thigh strength very effective, like the guard position or the triangle choke for ground fighters.

Video 6. Begin from a standard side plank position, resting your upper body on your forearm with your elbow placed exactly under your shoulder. Place the upper leg on top of a bench and press into it so that you lift yourself off the ground.

The athlete should keep their whole body completely extended in this movement—no hinging the hips and no leaning the torso forward. They will raise their lower leg as well, so that it makes contact with the bottom of the bench. Hold this position for 30 seconds on each side while squeezing both legs into the bench as hard as possible.

If they find this easy and need a progression, have athletes place their top leg in the handle of a suspension trainer. Being unstable by nature, the suspension trainer will offer a much bigger challenge. If, on the other hand, you are looking for a regression, simply reduce the length of the lever by resting the knee on the bench instead of the foot.

• Rest for a full minute between sets and go for a total of four to five sets.

7. Kneeling Leg Extensions

The kneeling leg extension is a great bodyweight quad builder, but what I like about it the most is that it keeps the core and glutes actively engaged at all times, which is very reminiscent of the way the body works during combat. No matter what maneuver a fighter performs, it is never led by a single, isolated muscle or muscle group—it is always a full body movement.

No matter what maneuver a fighter performs, it is never led by a single, isolated muscle or muscle group—it is always a full body movement. Share on X

Video 7. Begin by dropping on your knees and keeping your feet flat on the ground, all the way to the toes. Tighten your core and glutes, keep your hands by your sides, and lower yourself backward in a slow and controlled fashion.

The athlete should keep their body straight and not hinge the hips. This eccentric phase should last for three seconds. When they reach the lowest possible point, they should stay there for one more second and then come back up in normal speed. If they find it hard to do, you can give them some help by attaching a band to a stable object in front of them—they will hold this with their hands extended in front of their chest.

• Perform 10 reps, rest for 90 seconds and repeat for three sets.

8. Nordic Curls

It would be unwise not to include a leg exercise for the posterior chain, and in my opinion, the Nordic Curl is one of the best of its kind. Just like the kneeling leg extension, not only will it torch your hamstrings and glutes, but it will also demand that you keep your core braced throughout the movement.

Video 8. Kneel on a soft surface, stand tall, and wedge your feet behind an immovable object.

If you’re at the gym, you can use a standard, plate-loaded bar—just be sure to secure it safely in place. If you or your athletes are doing this at home, any sturdy object that can support your weight will do, but there’s always the alternative of having a partner hold your legs down tightly.

To do the Nordic curl, athletes should squeeze the glutes, hamstrings, and abs and begin leaning forward, reaching as low as possible, to the point where they are unable to hold the weight anymore. They should get there slowly, taking a full three seconds. As soon as they are out of control, they should use the hands to break the fall and immediately push back up, just enough so the muscles can take over again and return to the starting position.

Again, have them resist the urge to hinge the hips, especially during the concentric part (when it is the most tempting). This cannot be stressed enough: In order for this to work, they must involve the hands as little as possible.

If they are having a really hard time with this and/or range of motion is too small, you can always tie a band directly behind them and around the chest so that it slows the descent and helps on the way up.

• Perform four sets of 10 reps and take 90 seconds of rest.

Upper Body Strength

Keep this part for after you’re done with your plyometrics and your lower body strength. Once again, slow eccentrics and isometric holds will trigger muscle growth more effectively and lead the nervous system to faster adaptations.

9. Diamond Push-Ups

The reason you will find many push-up variations on this list is because I am a firm believer that, as far as bodyweight exercises are concerned, they are a great tool for developing strength, explosiveness, and muscular endurance in many of the muscle groups that are involved in punching. They mostly include, but are not limited to, the chest, triceps, and front deltoids. This does not mean that the push-up is the only exercise that matters, or that you should be doing it every day: I’m just presenting some options.

As far as bodyweight exercises are concerned, they are a great tool for developing strength, explosiveness, and muscular endurance in many of the muscle groups that are involved in punching. Share on X

There are many other important upper body muscles to consider when building striking power, like, for example, the serratus anterior. With that said, when it’s time to emphasize triceps development, look no further than the diamond push-up.

Video 9. Assume a standard push-up position, but this time open your palms and bring them together so that the thumbs and index fingers touch, forming the shape of a diamond. Place your hands directly below your chest.

If the athlete performs this correctly, their elbows will point backward, not sideways, when bending them. Once more, they must take three seconds to get to the ground and, once down, stay still for another two seconds, obviously without touching the floor. Then push and get back up in normal speed. This is one rep.

• Perform four sets of 12 and rest for 90 seconds in between.

10. Wide Push-Ups

Just as before, the setup and technique are identical.

Video 10. The only difference with the wide push-up is that the hands are to be placed even wider than in a standard push-up, as the emphasis shifts to the pectorals.

Once more, the eccentric phase lasts for three seconds, and the isometric hold at the bottom lasts for two.

• Perform four sets of 12 and rest for 90 seconds in between.

11. Hollow Body Pull-Ups

As stated before, even though isolation work does have its merits, the bulk of a fighter’s program should include exercises that involve the entire body. In this sense, the hollow body pull-up is superior to its traditional, bodybuilding-oriented cousin—plus, it enforces more lat engagement.

Video 11. Grab the bar with a shoulders-width grip. Compress your abdominals, which will cause your chest to drop forward a little bit, just like when performing the first part of a crunch.

The athlete will keep their legs straight, glued together, and bring them slightly in front of them, with the toes pointed. Next, they will pull the bar until their chin is above it—if done correctly, their elbows will be pointing forward in a 45-degree angle and not sideways like in the traditional pull-ups. They should stay on the top for three seconds and take another three to slowly return to the bottom position with fully extended hands.

• Perform three sets of six to eight reps and rest for up to 90 seconds.

Core Strength

This last category of exercises focuses on the core. Keep them for the last part of your workout, after you’re done with your plyometrics and strength exercises.

12. Arch Rocks

When we think about core strength, we tend to bring the abs and general anterior chain to mind. But the core actually consists of anything that is not our arms, legs, and head; therefore, the importance of the posterior is immense too. I’m also a big fan of isometric strength, because it gives an athlete the ability to grapple more effectively and take less punishment when absorbing hits.

I’m also a big fan of isometric strength, because it gives an athlete the ability to grapple more effectively and take less punishment when absorbing hits. Share on X

Enter the Arch Rocks: a great tool for strengthening the posterior chain isometrically. As far as your back is concerned, this one will work your spinal erectors, lats, and traps, but it also greatly involves the gluteals and hamstrings.

Video 12. Lay in a prone position, with your legs stuck together and your arms fully extended above your head, biceps always maintaining contact with your ears.

The athlete will lift their legs off the floor, so that their quads aren’t touching it—same for head, hands, and chest—until their body forms a smooth, long curve reminiscent of…you guessed it, an arch. Gently rock back and forth while maintaining a rigid body.

Perform five sets of 30 seconds for max repetitions—the reason I prescribe time instead of a fixed number of reps for this one is that the quality of the movement matters greatly in order for it to work. So, instead of fixating on a number, just make sure the technique is perfect and the muscles tense, and they continue until it’s over. Take one minute of rest between sets, and if you would like to progress further, have athletes try holding a weight with their hands. Be warned, loading this exercise makes it very difficult, so start with a small plate as light as 2.5 pounds.

13. Alternating Hanging Knee Raises

Finally, it’s time to take care of the anterior. The alternating hanging knee raises will require total core strength, but they will mostly tax your hip flexors, which are key for kicking, bending, and swiveling the hips. As a side note, be aware that plenty of martial arts practitioners suffer from tight hip flexors, which can lead to many issues, including low back pain. So be mindful and keep them strong, but also mobile and flexible.

Video 13. Hang from the bar using a full grip, thumb fully wrapped around it. Bring your left knee up momentarily, as close to your chest as possible, and return the leg to its starting position.

The athletes should perform the movement slowly to avoid kipping. Repeat on the right side, and continue in this fashion, always alternating the legs.

• Do three sets of as many reps as you can endure, taking a full minute of rest in between.

Drawing Conclusions

The performance-based advantages of training without equipment were highlighted earlier, so no need to be redundant here. Still, there is one more key benefit of bodyweight exercises, and it’s pretty important nowadays: recent global circumstances have taught us that access to the gym can sometimes become a rare commodity. In those instances, we now know that we should have a backup plan for working out at home.

Recent global circumstances have taught us that access to the gym can sometimes become a rare commodity. Bodyweight exercises can help you get in great shape until you return to routine. Share on X

In such a setting, can bodyweight training completely substitute for weights? No, it cannot. If you are in pursuit of the best version of yourself, you need both. But it can certainly help you get in great shape until you can return to your standard routine. These are by no means the only exercises you’ll ever need, but hopefully this list has given you some ideas to create your own bodyweight-only workout, or perhaps add to the one you already stick with. Good luck!

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

A young trainer grew dissatisfied. The gym he worked at was moving in a direction he didn’t agree with and he became more and more unfulfilled at work with each passing day. Plus, his family was growing and he needed more income than his employer could provide to sustain his family’s modest lifestyle.

He considered options. Having family-first priorities, uprooting and leaving town wasn’t on the table. Working at a competing gym? That wasn’t a better option than where he already worked. Starting his own business? That didn’t feel wise or realistic.

He felt trapped.

The very thought of changing careers made his stomach churn: he’d poured his heart into training—it was his passion, his hobby, and his profession. And yet his family was more important, so he job shadowed and interviewed for positions outside of the performance and fitness realms.

None of it felt right, but the jobs paid the bills. He’d have done anything to protect his kids, including changing careers, but it would’ve come at a price: a piece of his soul. Then, he caught wind of a sports performance-based physical therapy clinic opening in town. He knew the owner of the PT practice and got in touch.

The only problem? The owner wasn’t looking to hire a trainer.

But he did welcome someone he could trust to build the business while he wasn’t in the building—someone who would carry the torch in the right direction, a leader who could help turn a beautiful but empty building into a bustling, healing, and athletic development environment.

He was looking for someone who thought like him: a business owner.

I fit that bill, and that wasn’t by accident.

Being an Asset

I’ve made diligent study of seven areas that helped transform me from “just a trainer” to an asset for any business:

1. Leadership
2. Business Development
3. Sales
4. Copywriting
5. Marketing
6. Communication: Verbal and Written
7. Management

As a result of these skill sets (all of which have nothing to do with training), I was able to negotiate a salaried position that paid significantly more than what I was previously making. I have benefits (including a healthy retirement match), my income supports my family, I make breakfast for my kids every morning and tuck them in every night, I’ve played an instrumental role in building an amazing business that does great work for the community, and I didn’t have to sell my soul and become a person who looks forward to Friday just to make ends meet.

When God opened the door, I didn’t have to get ready. I was prepared to walk through it. Are you preparing yourself to walk through the right doors?

Are you preparing yourself to walk through the right doors? @KD_KyleDavey Share on X

Pro or Bust

Most trainers get into this business at a young age with aspirations of working in professional or Division 1 sports. The allure is understandable: you want to work with the best, share in their limelight, and—although we know in our hearts this isn’t true—the illusion that working with the best makes us the best is a captivating one.

As a young buck with nothing but time (and student loans), it’s no problem to pick up and move across the country to work for pennies (or nothing—what we in the United States call an internship). After you’ve got that experience on your resume, you might even land your first job and make $30-40k per year.

Living the dream, baby.

Division 1 or professional sports. Drive right up to the plane, no security. Wi-Fi on the whole flight. Hotels. Fans. TV. The whole nine. But along the way, you have to ask yourself what are my values in life? What brings me joy, fulfillment, and meaning? Does my career path align with those values? Do I want a family? If so, does my current role provide the time, income, and benefits necessary to meet my vision for family life?

And, perhaps most importantly: what is my purpose? 

Without clarity in these domains, you will never find happiness or fulfillment. I’m not discounting the idea of working at a high level; rather, I’m pointing out that arbitrarily making that your goal is superficial and will not result in fulfillment. Just like money doesn’t equal happiness, D1 or pro sports doesn’t guarantee it either.

Just like money doesn’t equal happiness, D1 or pro sports doesn’t guarantee it either, says @KD_KyleDavey. Share on X

The private sector can afford you a more compatible lifestyle, but whether you choose to open your business or work as an employee, you have to earn and be worth it. That’s got very little to do with training skill and very much to do with how you can impact a business.

Harsh Realities of the Private Sector

Let’s get this out of the way first: status as an ex-D1 or pro sports strength coach (or player) is NOT enough to land you a dream job in the private sector.

Thinking about starting your own business? I won’t discourage you from doing so, but I will caution you to familiarize yourself with the realities of running a business. If you think talent as a strength coach is predictive of running a successful strength and conditioning business, you are in for a rude awakening. Stretch shortening cycles and velocity-based training don’t pay the bills. We must know these and other concepts to deliver on the promises we make when selling our services, but the reality is that understanding S&C is not a prerequisite for landing sales, filling your schedule, and making money.

Isn’t Business Ownership the Dream?

Business owners often work 12-16 hour days, 5-7 days per week. This is especially true for relatively young businesses (under three years old or so). Further, sometimes owners go without a paycheck for several of the first months of business. Even further, there is typically a significant financial risk involved with starting a business. Someone has to pay for the space and equipment, and that someone is you.

If you’re the entrepreneurial type, by all means, dive in. However, starting a business isn’t a journey everyone wants to take. If you’re someone who loves S&C but doesn’t care to run a business, working as an employee may be a better fit.

I reject the notion that owning your own gym is the “next step” and pinnacle of working in our sphere. If you choose (or have chosen) to start your own show, that’s fantastic. But there is absolutely nothing wrong with finding meaningful, fulfilling work as an employee, doing a damn good job, being appreciated, and getting paid well for it.

I reject the notion that owning your own gym is the “next step” and pinnacle of working in our sphere, says @KD_KyleDavey. Share on X

Good business owners have established a strong vision. They know what they want to accomplish and what impact they want to make in the community and on the world.

In my opinion, the greatest opportunity to be successful lies in aligning your work with your personal values and vision. As an employee, that means finding a business whose values and vision you share. If you do, it will be easy to buy in 100% and pour your heart into your work and company.

That gives you potential to become indispensable. But heart alone won’t get you there—you need heart and a skill set.

Becoming Indispensable

While big businesses can afford specialists, small businesses—like most S&C operations—often cannot. A jack of all trades thus provides tremendous value. I’ve identified seven skills that will transform you from a “trainer” to someone who will be indispensable in any strength and conditioning or fitness business.

The goal isn’t to become an expert in any one of these areas; instead, you want to be like a heptathlete, above average in each. You’ll notice not one of these categories is training related—we need to be good at that function of our job, of course. But the reality is that being a good trainer is not a prerequisite for running a successful training business.

1. Leadership

A leader is someone who influences the emotions and behaviors of others. Simon Sinek describes leaders as those who “draw people into a circle of trust” and who make their employees feel safe. What Sinek means is that leaders remove unnecessary fear and tension from the workplace, allowing everyone to be fully comfortable and do their best work.

Easier said than done.

Sinek’s book, Start with Why, details the underlying principle he believes unites people in business. In his own words: “people don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.”

Compare these two sentiments:

• I train athletes to be as fast and explosive on the field as possible.
• When I was a kid, sports were the only thing that got me through. They taught me how to push myself beyond what I thought was possible, and I’ve carried that lesson my whole life. Now, I want to give back and do my part to teach kids that they can achieve more than they ever thought possible.

People don’t care what you do, they care why you do it. Staff members will work harder and be more motivated if the business has a strong “why.” Community members will be more supportive and potential clients more likely to purchase services as a result.

People don’t care what you do, they care why you do it, says @KD_KyleDavey. Share on X

In short: you’ll make more money and have a better time doing it.

Another of Sinek’s works, Leaders Eat Last, is more of a how-to guide that provides real-life examples of leadership at work, giving big picture strategies as well as practical advice on how to become a more effective leader for your team. As you can imagine from the title, taking care of those around you is a critical element of effective leadership.

A coworker recently mentioned that people notice the energy I bring to work. I smile and say hello to nearly everyone. I go out of my way to make conversation and introduce myself to people. And I make it a point to walk around the building and ask “How are you?” to each of my coworkers, first thing, every morning (which one of them eventually admitted was annoying at first, until he realized I actually cared about his response).

Some may call this habit “wasting time”—on the contrary, it is creating an atmosphere for success.

“You probably don’t know it, but those little things go a long way,” is feedback I’ve received.

I do know it. That’s why I do it.

2. Business Development

You probably have a sense of how to assess and progress an athlete—do you also have a sense of how to assess and progress a business?

• Does the business have a strong employee culture?
• Is the client experience amazing?
• Is the process from I’m curious about this place to I’m now in the building as easy and seamless as possible for potential clients?
• Are there systems in place to ensure that the business won’t crumble if an employee calls out sick or quits unexpectedly?

Good to Great by Jim Collins is widely regarded as one of greatest business books ever written. Collins analyzed businesses whose stock returns beat the general stock market by an average of seven times for 15 straight years. In other words, he analyzed businesses that did exceedingly well (in terms of money earned) for at least 15 years in a row.

The book pinpoints several commonalities between these companies. What they did, and what their competitors did not do, is what helped them take the leap from a good company to a great one. A few key elements for a company to become great were:

• Strong leadership.
• A laser-like focus on a few clear goals.
• A culture of discipline.

After reading this book while on a vacation, I came back re-energized and with a new gameplan. Following five straight months of generating lower revenues than the previous month, my team turned a corner and broke the streak. Our revenues then increased for six straight months, setting company records along the way.

All I did differently was apply the lessons learned in Good to Great. Namely, I identified each of our team member’s why, created a common goal that encapsulated each of them, and rallied our team around that goal. The vibe in the office shifted, we recommitted to our purpose and work, and the money flowed from there.

Another worthwhile read, Never Lose a Customer Again, forces you to face the reality that you probably aren’t knocking your clients’ socks off. Businesses that create fans and treat their customers amazingly are more successful than those that take a more traditional, transactional approach. Exceeding expectations and delivering a little bit of shock and awe will keep clients around longer and generate new clients faster.

Exceeding expectations and delivering a little bit of shock and awe will keep clients around longer and generate new clients faster, says @KD_KyleDavey. Share on X

People talk. Fewer clients cancelling training and more clients signing up = money in the pocket.

Never Lose a Customer Again provides a step-by-step guide designed to help you assess the client experience you deliver. Then it teaches you how to make it better. Two other amazing resources are Grit, by Angela Duckworth, and The E-Myth Revisited, by Michael Gerber.

Running a business isn’t for the faint of heart. In Grit, Duckworth defines exactly what grit is and then gives you the tools necessary to develop it so you may be successful in the long run.

She teaches how to get up after getting kicked in the face over and over and over again.

The E-Myth Revisited defines the difference between working in your business and working on your business. Many entrepreneurs make the assumption that being a good technician (for us, being a trainer) means they can run a successful business. As discussed earlier, that’s not the case. Gerber discusses the evolution of a business, how to avoid common-yet-fatal pitfalls, and how to think big, like a leader and manager should.

Lastly, Pete Dupuis, co-owner of Cressey Sports Performance, puts out an excellent newsletter once per week in which he shares the four most valuable pieces of content he’s consumed during the week. Pete is not a trainer, he’s a business guy who runs a highly successful training facility, and his insights are both practical and relatable.

3. Sales

Sales are both an art and a science, much like training. A gifted salesperson is an excellent conversationalist and an asset to any company. The most obvious link is to selling services or products, but the value does not stop there.

Any time you represent your business, you are essentially in a sales scenario. Giving a tour to a local sports club, presenting at a rotary meeting, or talking with a parent before or after a game are all opportunities to, well, sell yourself.

The better you are at this, the more value you bring to your company. The word salesman carries a negative connotation for many people: a sleazy guy trying to coax you into buying a crappy car for more than it’s worth (and with a high interest rate to boot).

But that’s not what sales is. Sales is simple problem solving.

If you have a problem and I have a solution for that problem, let’s do business together. If not, let’s not. To find out if we fit each other’s needs, let’s have a conversation about it. That’s all sales is. It’s helping people who want and need your help.

I’ve read a lot of sales guides, and the absolute best I’ve encountered is SPIN Selling by Neil Rackman. Rackman is a scientist who spent his career studying successful salesmen. He discovered the best are excellent listeners: they read between the lines, ask great questions, and understand what someone is trying to say but can’t quite articulate. Through simple, non-confrontational conversation, they learn where their product would benefit the customer (what problems it solves), and they help the customer realize the same.

The best rarely have to “close the sale”—instead, the customer usually asks how to sign up. These successful salesmen ask four types of questions (in order, hence the acronym SPIN):

1. Situation questions.
2. Problem questions.
3. Implication questions.
4. Need payoff questions.

These questions move the customer from “here is my situation” to “yes, that is a problem” to “wow, you’re right, that is a really big problem” to “yes, I definitely need to solve that problem. Can you help me with that?”

Once there, if your product delivers a solution, the sale becomes the logical next step.

4. Copywriting

Copywriting is essentially sales, but over a written medium such as email, a web page, or social media. Copywriting is much, much more challenging than in-person sales because you aren’t actively talking to someone. Instead, they’re reading words you’ve written. You don’t get to ask questions and read their tone. It’s a one-way conversation, and you have to be right on the money to be successful.

Copywriting is very powerful when executed well. Good copy grabs the reader’s attention and directs him or her down the desired path: subscribing to a newsletter, clicking a link to go to another webpage, following a social media account, or making a purchase.

Good copy grabs the reader’s attention and directs him or her down the desired path, says @KD_KyleDavey. Share on X

Bad copy doesn’t get read beyond the first few words and results in nothing but the browser closing. Being a decent copywriter puts you miles ahead of not even knowing what copywriting is. You may not land a million-dollar gig writing an email campaign (yes, such jobs exist), but with just basic copywriting skills, the engagement on your IG content will go up and your website will receive more “contact me” requests from prospective clients.

If you’re an absolute beginner, a good place to start is Why Do You Hate Money by Joey Percia. Percia is a trainer-turned-copywriter, and his book is written specifically for fitness and performance professionals. Percia teaches formulas for writing headlines that draw the reader in, tips and tricks of writing the type of copy that keeps the reader’s attention, and some technical skills (like creating effective sales funnels and email marketing campaigns).

For a more in-depth and advanced look at writing effective copy, The Ultimate Sales Letter by Dan Kennedy is a phenomenal tool. Kennedy is a copywriting and marketing legend. His track record of writing highly effective copy—meaning, composing paragraphs that result in people sending money to other people—speaks for itself. He’s also mentored hundreds of copywriters who became great. He knows what he’s doing and how to teach it to others.

Understanding the basic principles of writing effective copy makes you the clear go-to for marketing and effectively running social media platforms and online sales campaigns for your company.

5. Marketing

Marketing is an umbrella term that encapsulates every aspect of a company’s outward appearance, from social media presence to the logo to t-shirt design to the website appearance, etc.

One of my favorite marketing books is Magnetic Marketing by Dan Kennedy (author of The Ultimate Sales Letter). The premise of Magnetic Marketing is that if you have a clear understanding of who your target audience is, what pains and what motivates them—and, how you can help—then you can establish marketing materials which speak directly to these people and attract them to your business.

Hence, you need not market to everyone. You probably don’t want to do business with everyone, anyway. Instead, figure out exactly who you do want to serve, what they feel, want, and need, and then speak to them directly in your marketing materials.

Magnetic Marketing walks you through this process.

For free, highly practical tips, I’ve greatly enjoyed www.marketingexamples.com (which I discovered from the Pete Dupuis newsletter). If you sign up for the newsletter, the first five emails cover specific topics, like how to design an effective sales page, and tips for writing more effective copy.

A great resource that is specific to fitness is The Wealthy Fit Pro’s Guide To Getting Clients and Referrals by Jon Goodman and Mike Doehla. Early in Goodman’s career as a personal trainer, he recognized that most of us in fitness are pretty terrible at all things business. He founded the Personal Trainer Development Center and has since taken it upon himself to empower trainers with the business and marketing savvy necessary to financial success.

Split into three sections, the book is business and marketing 101 specifically for those of us in the fitness and performance realm:

1. “How to Get More People to Buy From You”
2. “50 Proven Ways to Get More Clients”
3. “How to Get More Referrals”

Brilliant marketers also have a firm understanding of human psychology. Knowing a bit about what does and does not make people tick provides a grasp on the underlying principles of human behavior. There are more books on psychology and behavior than anyone can read, but an absolute game changer for me was Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, by Robert Cialdini.

Cialdini, a psychology professor and acclaimed sales coach and marketing consultant, teaches what he calls the six universal principles of influence, and how you can use them to influence others.

Would you ever agree to put a freeway billboard in your front yard to promote safe driving? You’d be shocked to hear over 90% of folks asked said yes, they indeed would put a freeway sized billboard in their front yard, because they had been subtly buttered up to the idea over the course of a few weeks.

If this sounds crazy, it’s because it is. Who in their right mind would agree to a billboard that says “drive safe” in their front yard? When the right psychological tools were in play, it became an obvious choice for them. This is what brilliant marketers do: they set the right psychological tools in place to make their business the obvious choice. Influence will teach you these tools and how to use them to drive clients your way.

Brilliant marketers set the right psychological tools in place to make their business the obvious choice, says @KD_KyleDavey. Share on X

6. Communication: Verbal and Written

Effective communication is the ability to understand others, be understood, develop deep relationships, and influence actions and behaviors. Poor communication means you have little influence over the way people think and feel and are thus less effective in achieving any desired outcome.

Poor communication means you have little influence over the way people think and feel and are thus less effective in achieving any desired outcome, says @KD_KyleDavey. Share on X

Strong communicators make very effective leaders. Obtaining buy-in from staff members and clients alike is critical to achieve business and training success.

Communication is how you get it.

The book Just Listen radically changed my life: it’s made me a stronger husband, father, son, manager, employee, and leader. The book teaches you how to deeply connect with people so that they trust, respect, and like you. As the title implies, closing your mouth and listening to others is the first step. By doing so you allow the other person to feel understood, which is a building block for bonding and developing a strong relationship.

Without feeling understood, behavior is unlikely to change, whether it’s a marital spat or a poor habit at work. Hence, listening is a critical skill for effectively communicating and eliciting behavioral change.

I would be remiss not to mention perhaps the most famous book on communication, How to Win Friends and Influence People. The timeless advice given is easily digestible, highly practical, and quickly applicable. From simple suggestions, like smile more, to deeper concepts, like asking questions that entice others to open up to you, this book is full of advice.

Conscious Coaching by Bret Bartholomew is another great resource specific to S&C. The book is specifically written about connecting better with athletes, but the general skills he teaches are equally applicable to everyone you interact with. Bartholomew identifies several different types of athletes (from easygoing to entitled to hard-working to lazy) and lays out how to connect with each. These personality archetypes also exist in our employees and other co-workers, so knowing how to positively interact with them is valuable.

Communication via a written medium is part of daily life for us: text, email, social media, etc. Possessing strong writing skills effectively conveys your intelligence and helps you better express yourself.

Elements of Style by William Strunk teaches you how to let your own voice come through in your writing. It also touches on some technical concepts, like best uses of semicolons and commas, but it’s mostly written to teach the reader how to confidently express him or herself via writing.

7. Management

In my opinion, management is really just a combination of leadership and communication. Anybody can learn to make schedules or crunch numbers in a budget. That’s not what management is about. Management is about motivating a crew of people to do their best work so the business thrives. Thus, the manager’s dilemma is to increase employee satisfaction (so employees are happy and stick around) and create a culture of excellence.

Management is about motivating a crew of people to do their best work so the business thrives, says@KD_KyleDavey. Share on X

First, Break all the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers do Differently is the culmination of over 80,000 interviews conducted by the Gallup Organization. They narrowed down what effective managers do and do not do. Some of the key concepts include treating every employee like an individual, focusing on enhancing strengths vs. improving weaknesses, and measuring and rewarding desired outcomes.

Sounds basic, but when executed well, these tenets have profound organizational effects. They keep employees happy, engaged, and motivated, which is a key part of the recipe for business success.

Effectively managing people is essential for smooth business operations and is a highly sought after skill. Being a strong manager makes you a more attractive candidate in the job marketplace.

Go, Do, Be

The most successful businesses have great cultures and happy employees, are led by strong leaders, and have fantastic sales and marketing systems that drive customers toward the business.

If you possess each of these qualities and skill sets, you bring tremendous value to the workplace. You put yourself in a position to demand and deserve a great salary—especially if you also deliver training such that you offset the cost of your own salary.

No savvy employer wouldn’t at least consider such an employee. A jack of all trades is what small businesses need, and if you become that jack you are indispensable.

Become indispensable and create your dream job and dream life.

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

I recently posted an article examining my reservations and growing reluctance on using static loading with my athletes, so naturally I wanted to follow that up with a practical and detailed look at how and why I utilize band loading. If you’ve followed me on social media the last few years, you know my affinity for bands is hardly a secret. Over time, what began out of honest demand (as well as the necessity to find ways to load my athletes while circumventing injuries), has evolved into more consistent applications, of which there are many. Through the years, I’ve found that, if nothing else, resistance bands are extremely versatile and can be tremendous resources in training, irrespective of the athlete’s health or abilities.

Despite the goofy stuff we see circulating on social media, I would encourage you to keep an open mind to the incredible versatility of resistance bands, says @danmode_vhp. Share on X

The propensity for global misuse and misappropriation of band training has, unfortunately, given the method a bad reputation, making it inadvertently perceived as something only for social media clout or attention grabbing. But despite the goofy stuff we see circulating on social media, I would encourage you to keep an open mind to the incredible versatility of resistance bands and see how some of these applications can be utilized for the athletes or individuals you work with. My hope in this article is:

• To provide comprehensive descriptions of how and why to use resistance bands in training.
• To include for what populations or situations their inclusion would be pragmatic.

Given this is a rather extensive list of applications, let’s save the small talk and dive right in.

(To see a playlist of exercises in each category, click the subhead title.)

1. Applied (Primary Load)

 

When it’s the primary load, band tension provides an isoinertial resistance type, meaning the muscles are contracting against a constant resistance. This is the primary difference as compared to static load, in which muscular effort is variable throughout the range of motion (ROM) depending on joint position/angle (think about the top versus bottom portion of a dumbbell bicep curl).

Having the working muscle under tension throughout the entire ROM provides a greater total work output, increasing the workload efficiency. The load-length relationship is curvilinear, meaning the further the band is stretched, the greater the imposed resistance. As such, this provides an eccentric overload effect, placing an emphasis on terminal strength/stability. An important disclaimer here: Band tension is at its lightest resistance during the bottom ranges of motion (typically, deep flexion), so for this reason, it’s critical to recognize you still need to use static load to develop the complete ranges of motion.

Band loading offers the distinct advantage of loading multiple vectors or planes. Moreover, athletes can coordinate their most natural path of motion (POM) to achieve these certain movements. The precision and specificity of bands also make them great for confidence, which motivates the athlete to have more ownership over the movement. Being able to isolate and include very specific vectors is especially helpful for rehabbing injuries, but also for emphasizing positional/plane deficiencies or avoiding overstressing particular joints.

Band tension offers optimal muscular loading and tendon stretching while de-emphasizing compressive joint load. Because the moment arm is constantly changing throughout the POM, it prompts the athlete to position themselves for better mechanical leverage as they move. As shown by Jakobsen¹, band tension may also produce greater muscle activation on certain exercises and at critical phases of these movements (e.g., tension increasing during a split squat at 10- to 30-degree knee extension).

Band loading offers the distinct advantage of loading multiple vectors or planes. Moreover, athletes can coordinate their most natural path of motion (POM) to achieve these certain movements. Share on X

It has also been shown there’s generally a greater proprioceptive demand when using bands. These subtle changes in how the movement is being executed challenge proprioception naturally and are a simple way to maximize your programming. In my opinion, this rep-to-rep variation provides a great stimulus that requires the athlete to remain alert throughout the entire set, as no two reps will be identical.

 2. Unloading/Assisted

Band unloading is intended to help athletes perform certain movements or ROM that cannot be performed at bodyweight. This is typically best suited for novice athletes or those coming off injury.

This tactic has been particularly helpful for me when working with athletes battling chronic joint pain, recently coming off surgery, or who just have positional or localized weaknesses. Using band tension in this fashion creates an inverted length-tension relationship to the movement.

In other words, as the athlete moves into deeper ranges of motion (typically flexion), they are generally at their weakest point of the movement. Meanwhile, the band is being stretched to its greatest point, thus providing the most amount of assistance for the athlete. What this effectively does is reduce body mass proportionally to distance traveled and “unloads” the athlete in the bottom ROM. The band assistance can be progressively reduced and done so in a very incremental manner, providing a smooth and natural transition working back to bodyweight.

I also use this application for healthy athletes for a few reasons, though this is infrequent. The unloaded setup can be useful for athletes who need to monitor overstressing certain joints (e.g., tendonitis, arthritis) or just curbing stress accumulation altogether (e.g., in-season athlete, high-intensity training phases). A good example here is a band supported bent row for an athlete who battles mild low back pain but needs to strengthen their hinge position.

3. Accommodating (Static/Dynamic Hybrid)

Accommodating resistance—likely the most common band application—was popularized by Louie Simmons of Westside Barbell in the early ’90s. As Louie has shown, this can be used for a litany of movements, but it is most commonly applied to compound primary lifts (i.e., bench/squat/dead) and common accessories such as RDLs, bent rows, and split squats. While Westside is obviously a powerlifting philosophy, there are several reasons to model these methods in the sport world—the foremost being that band tension is a great tool for developing speed and power. Accommodating resistance has been shown to be highly effective for optimizing power and rate of force output.²

Because of the increased resistance at terminal ROM, there is an increasing demand for acceleration as the athlete approaches end range. As such, they may offer an optimal application for the stretch-shortening cycle (SSC)³, as the tensile nature of the bands has shown to be beneficial for elastic strength properties such as tendon elasticity. Because band tension increases linearly with displacement, there is a greater demand for force output throughout the entire ROM as compared to the same load, but static.² The force due to band tension in conjunction with forces due to gravity collectively challenges all structures and systems in a unique way, and when applied appropriately, can be highly effective throughout an athlete’s training cycle.

Athletes absolutely need both static and dynamic resistance types, and there are endless variables we could argue that will influence the rates, frequencies, and intensities at which each load type should be applied. All things being equal, however, I look at it like this: Develop functional strength through static load first and actualize the foundational strength through dynamic loading with more tenured athletes.

For young/novice athletes (less than 15 years old), static load is preferred due to its simplicity and general carryover. Similarly for developmental athletes (15-24 years old), static load is best for applying significant load and force, and dynamic loading can start to be introduced in a variety of situations. For this demographic, bands can start to have more practical inclusion and be sampled with big lifts. Dynamic load is best reserved for high-velocity/power loading, introducing new and multiple vectors, vector-specific loading, and general motor control/proprioception development.

4. Joint Distraction/Traction</h2

Another method that has been increasingly adopted by coaches is joint traction, popularized by Kelly Starrett in his groundbreaking book Supple Leopard. The theory here is that the band tension helps to disassociate (or distract) the joint socket, thereby providing a better opportunity to move through a full ROM or bypass particular painful sites.

To my knowledge, there isn’t much (or any) formal research on the efficacy of joint traction. However, anecdotally, this method can help increase localized passive ROM, help with nerve/circulatory entrapment, and be an effective tool for improving joint capsule adhesion and immobility. Beyond the mobility component, I include this often just for the circulation effects. Even if it’s transient, increasing the localized presence of fluids such as synovial fluid, hyaluronic acid, and lymphatic fluid generally does more good than harm for the athlete.

5. Offset Loading

 

Offset loading is a much less common application, but one I’ve personally had a lot of success with. The thought process here is to use band tension as a means to load the frontal plane while performing a sagittal-based movement.

Video 1. Kettlebell Offset Band Split Squat.

This application can be simply and intuitively added to common movements (e.g., push-up/split squat/bridge), providing intermediate progressions. Say, for instance, a push-up progression is:

1. Starting with bodyweight.
2. Band offset.
3. Plate loaded.
4. Band resisted.
5. Plyometric overspeed push-up.

In this fashion, offset resistance can be a foundational piece for developing robust rotational strength, as introducing a frontal plane tension specifically challenges trunk stability (anti-rotation/bending) and general proprioception. While the powerhouse rotational muscles include lats, obliques, the glutes, and adductors, smaller refined muscles such as QL, transverse abdominis, and erectors are also significant here. I believe offset resistance is an effective way to stress some of these smaller muscles that can be difficult to stress in conventional compound loading.

I believe offset resistance is an effective way to stress some of these smaller muscles that can be difficult to stress in conventional compound loading, says @danmode_vhp. Share on X

6. Chaos Method

The chaos application has been scrutinized more than applauded, likely due to recent viral videos where it was shown in an imprudent fashion. I’ll say upfront this isn’t something that you should use often, and certainly not with athletes who lack foundational strength or stability. Nevertheless, when applied safely and correctly, this can be a great option to challenge motor control, muscular co-contraction, proprioception, and trunk stability.

I’ve also found this setup particularly useful for joint injuries—for my athletes with shoulder, wrist, or elbow pain/limitations, I use chaos push-up and inverted row variations in place of the traditional. This does two things:

1. It removes the presence of compressive load (on the push-up), which reduces the magnitude of stress on the joint itself.
2. The absence of external stability prompts greater demand on the joint receptors, along with promoting optimal co-contraction between muscle groups to create intrinsic stabilization.⁴

This can also be used as an advanced method—one that I was introduced to (extensively) by Cal Dietz. Using the heavy bands for movements like hamstring tantrums and cuff tantrums offers a unique way to create a massive overspeed effect, exposing the body to speeds it couldn’t reach normally. This application is believed to be effective for challenging autonomic (antagonist) inhibition, which would potentiate faster firing rates. The ballistic demand with this application makes it a great option during max speed/power phases, and it can be highly beneficial for the joint and soft tissue receptors.

7. Unloading (Supra Strength)

This form of band unloading is much less commonly practiced, but another one we can attribute to Louie Simmons and Westside Barbell. Also known as a “reverse band” setup, this application reduces the total mass of the barbell at the greatest point of strain. When using static load by itself, we are inherently limited by the concentric phase of the movement, as we are fundamentally much stronger eccentrically³. This means that when using static load, we are somewhat underloading the eccentric phase, and as we know, we are weaker in deep flexion.

So, with the unloading mechanism providing peak tension at the bottom portion of the movement, we get the most assistance when we need it most. I particularly like using this setup for bench press, rack pull, and overhead press, which are movements that typically have sharp sticking points.

Beyond using this to work supramaximal intensities, this approach can also be used for efficient volume accumulation. I add this into hypertrophy phases to perform “excess” volume without overtaxing the joints. An example, using the bench, would be:

• Finishing a primary block of 4×6 @ 80%.
• Then doing 4×6 @ 90% with band unloading as your secondary block.

While pure eccentric load is obviously needed, this can help pace the workload without having to get away from heavy loads entirely. This is another application that I’ve noticed older/veteran athletes tend to appreciate, and not even as supramaximal.

8. Unloading (Overspeed)

Finally, we have an overspeed application, which I was also introduced to via Cal Dietz. While this is similar to the supra strength application, here the bands unload body mass to allow athletes to move faster than they normally could. By doing so, it reduces the amortization phase of the stretch-shortening cycle (SSC), which promotes an accelerated contraction². The overspeed method is another advanced tactic that shouldn’t really be utilized until foundational strength and speed have been well established. For advanced athletes, however, this is a fantastic programming tool that can help emphasize elastic/reflexive traits, speed, and proprioceptive response.

For advanced athletes, the overspeed method of unloading is a fantastic programming tool that can help emphasize elastic/reflexive traits, speed, and proprioceptive response, says @danmode_vhp. Share on X

Video 2. Band-overspeed depth jump to countermovement jump.

A few of my common go-to’s include pogo hops, RFE split jumps, and push-ups. And for advanced athletes, I like to use this setup for depth jumps as well (see above). It’s important these types of movements are coached clearly, and the movements must be executed with full intent. The purpose of reducing mass is to help move as fast as absolutely possible. A high intent and alertness are required to get the most of this type of application.

Bringing It All Together

As surprising as it may seem, there is still quite a bit unknown regarding resistance bands and their utilization or effectiveness in training. By far, the most important thing to recognize is intent is the key variable to it all. Whether using static or dynamic loading, the way in which that exercise is performed is often more significant than the exercise or load type.

Bands are extremely versatile, and while we’ve seen a few popularized applications over the years, I’d encourage you to examine some other ways to include bands (e.g., offset, unloading, vector-specific loading). Static loading is tried and true. When aiming for absolute force, the primary emphasis should be static loading. When emphasizing speed, power, motor control, or proprioception, dynamic resistance may be the better option.

Foundational speed/strength should be developed predominantly through static load before extensive band loading. Given the significantly increased demand for intrinsic stability with band loading, it may be imprudent for young and/or developmental athletes to prioritize dynamic loading. There is always a tradeoff between static and dynamic resistance. Understanding where your athletes are in their development and in their sport’s calendar are the critical variables to determine how much of each you should include.

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

References

1. Jakobsen, MD, Sundstrup, E, Andersen, CH, Aagaard, P, and Andersen, LL. “Muscle activity during leg strengthening exercise using free weights and elastic resistance.” Human Movement Science. 2012;32(1):65-78.

2. Walker, S, Blazevich, AJ, Haff, GG, Tufano, JJ, Newton, RU, and Hakkinen, K. “Greater strength gains after training with accentuated eccentric than traditional isoinertial loads in already strength-trained men.” Frontiers in Physiology. 2016;7:149.

3. Aboodarda, SJ, George, J, Mokhtar, AH, and Thompson, M. “Muscle strength and damage following two modes of variable resistance training.” Journal of Sports Science & Medicine. 2011;10(4):635-642.

4. Ebben, WP and Jensen, RL. “Electromyographic and kinetic analysis of traditional, chain, and elastic band squats.” The Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. 2002;16(4):547-550.

Every once in a while, I choose a book that happens to be perfectly in sync with the stage of life I’m in. When I picked up Prepared: Unlocking Human Performance with Lessons from Elite Sport by Paul Gamble, I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect. Gamble is the author of a number of books on the technical side of coaching (including, strength and conditioning and speed and agility), but Prepared is a step above in terms of levels of thinking.

At that same time, I had become even more interested in coaching and in understanding what makes a good coach. I was less concerned with the technical Xs and Os and more on:

• The non-technical skills and actions of effective coaches.
• The psychological attributes of elite coaches (which include having a drive for personal development, and possessing high levels of emotional awareness, understanding, and control).
• How coaches learn (a mixture of on-the-job experience, discussions with others, experience as an athlete, and formal education).

The aim of Prepared is to explore how to enhance human performance—which, as Gamble points out in the prologue, is not just constrained to sport but can be applied to high-performing individuals across a variety of domains. This is important because elite coaches are able to apply their knowledge from a wide variety of disciplines in differing contexts. The book is split into four key sections:

1. Part one explores the creation of the environment, which is where coach–athlete interactions occur and where optimization can support sustained success.
2. Part two looks at leading and coaching others, which is a recognition of the importance of both leadership and development as important functions of the coach.
3. Part three explores the art of coaching.
4. Part four focuses on the importance of managing the self in coaching.

Elite coaches are able to apply their knowledge from a wide variety of disciplines in differing contexts, says @craig100m. Share on X

1. Creating the Environment

The environment in which we coach can be highly influential in terms of supporting athlete development. Research into Talent Development Environments (TDEs) by Russell Martindale and colleagues, for example, has identified some key traits of successful TDEs, such as having a long-term vision, purpose, and identity; coherent support and messaging; role models; and regular review processes.

Similarly, research into Athletic Talent Development Environments (ATDEs) by Henriksen and colleagues, led to the development of two models of successful ATDEs: the Athletic Talent Development Model and the Environmental Success Factors working model, both of which highlight the important role aspects such as family, school, peers, the media, various sporting programs, and espoused values play in the development of future athletes.

In Prepared, Gamble writes that effective change begins with the environment over which we have stewardship. As a coach, controlling and optimizing the environment of practice is an area that, while often poorly considered, could reap potentially huge rewards. This also links into the second part of the book on leadership. When I look at sporting systems (which is a slightly esoteric way of saying how elite sport is delivered across a country), I tend to consider it through “spheres of influence.”

As a coach, controlling and optimizing the environment of practice is an area that, while often poorly considered, could reap potentially huge rewards, says @craig100m. Share on X

A performance director has a wide sphere of influence. It is macro in nature: they have to work with various partners and set strategy, which filters down to the system. The next level is national coaches; their sphere of influence is also quite large but constrained to their own event group—they have ownership of performance in their area of expertise, and again have to influence down (to the coaches in their event group). The next level, that of personal coaches, is the most granular sphere of influence: the individual coach working with their own group of athletes. While this might be the smallest sphere, it’s also potentially the most important, as it is where champions are made. As a coach, your sphere of influence is composed of the group of athletes you work with, therefore creating the environmental conditions for success is crucial.

So, how do we do this?

Firstly, we need to create a culture of high performance. Gamble identifies the fluffiness of the word culture—he refers to it as the ‘C’ word and quotes a paper that refers to it as “the most vaguely deployed term in social science.” This means that we must live the values and behaviors we want our athletes to exhibit; we can’t expect them to be on time if we’re constantly late, and we can’t expect them to exhibit resilient behaviors if we’re consistently moaning. There must be clarity for your athletes and any support staff you work with about the standards and behaviors that are required from them—but, crucially, you must also model these behaviors and live up to these standards.

Next, Gamble examines the dynamics of the performance environment we create. If we want high performance from our athletes, then we need to create an environment that is conducive to high performance. Key among this is setting a climate that is motivational for the athletes who are in it, something which the All Blacks rugby team took very seriously, as outlined in a seminal paper on their approach. Everyone involved in the environment (in this case, coach and training group) must be aligned on a shared goal, which everyone works towards.

As a coach, you likely have goals for the athletes you work with; the key here would be to work with them to ensure that your goals and their goals align. Once alignment has occurred, the next step is to develop a set of process goals and key performance indicators—milestones that let you know that you’re on your way to success and identify small deviations from the path before they become large ones. Leadership style is also important here, with most successful coaches utilizing a transformational leadership approach. This includes:

• Possessing inspirational motivation (articulating your vision to the people you work with).
• Having high performance expectations.
• Being an effective role model.
• Providing individual consideration to the athletes you work with.

Transformational leadership is the ability to motivate and inspire others to success and, as such, is an important component of a successful talent development environment—certainly more so than a transactional leadership style.

When it comes to setting a performance environment, Gamble also writes about the value of diversity—particularly cognitive diversity—as a way of fostering better decision-making processes. Attempting to gain insights from people with different experiences can bring new ideas to the table. Seeking out and analyzing new ideas and fresh ways of thinking—from a variety of different domains—is very useful. This, in turn, helps guard against binary thinking—another of Gamble’s key performance environmental pillars—whereby we view issues as either/or, and miss the context (something increasingly important in the tribalism demonstrated on social media).

Attempting to gain insights from people with different experiences can bring new ideas to the table. Share on X

2. Leading and Coaching Others

In this section, Gamble discusses some of the contemporary issues in coaching today, identifying key traits of elite coaches that are present across a variety of different sports and domains, such as curiosity, skepticism, and divergent thinking.

These skills come in handy for coaches in the modern era, where there is more information and research being shared than ever before. Coaches need to be able to critically analyze what is being offered, before integrating what they think will work into their practice. An example of this is the illogic of being data driven; we should not blindly accept the data output we collect, but instead use it to inform our decisions about what approach to take.

Elite coaches also tend to possess high levels of both inter- and intra-personal intelligence (knowledge of others and knowledge of self), two skills that broadly comprise emotional intelligence. These, along with emotional management and being able to understand emotions in others, are the cornerstones of developing functional relationships. Emotional intelligence in coaching is crucial; the athletes we work with will experience a variety of stressors throughout their life, both in their sporting and personal lives, and a healthy coach–athlete relationship can provide the athlete with the tools to successfully navigate these stressors. But it’s also important in managing our own coaching abilities—if we can successfully understand and control (or regulate) our emotions, we can make better decisions, understand when we are acting with bias, and be less likely to respond with anger.

If we can successfully understand and control (or regulate) our emotions, we can make better decisions, understand when we are acting with bias, and be less likely to respond with anger, says @craig100m. Share on X

Being able to manage and control our own emotional states means that, as coaches, we can take steps to insulate our athletes from some level of stress. For example, at a major championship, a coach who is nervous and anxious is far more likely to:

1. Pass this nervousness and anxiety onto their athletes.
2. Make poor decisions that harm performance.

The first point relates to stress contagion, whereby our athletes pick up on our feelings of stress and anxiety and begin to exhibit them too—it’s clear to see how this may harm their performance. Similarly, being able to understand the emotional states of the athletes we work with—a further hallmark of emotional intelligence—means that we can identify when they are struggling to regulate their own emotions. In turn, this allows us to develop strategies to make them better in this area, which Gamble outlines through his strategies for manipulating challenge and perceived threats during training. This then allows the athlete to develop resilience and perform better in subsequent competitions.

The final pillar Gamble identifies in this section is a big one: agency.

Gamble writes that agency allows us to avoid a victim mindset—both in ourselves and in the athletes we work with. In part, this is by acknowledging that our choices and actions have a significant influence in creating our reality. As such, being accountable for our outcomes and accepting responsibility for when things don’t go well, is crucial—something that can be effectively role-modelled by coaches to their athletes. Elite athletes, for example, are much more likely to make the choice to practice the skills they’re not so good at—they are accountable for their performances and want to be successful, so, given the choice, they select a process which supports their success. In essence, they own their performance.

Elite athletes are much more likely to make the choice to practice the skills they’re not so good at, says @craig100m. Share on X

3. The Art of Coaching

In part three of Prepared, Gamble explores contemporary issues affecting sports coaching and human performance. One of these aspects is iatrogenics. In medicine, this refers to an illness caused by a medical examination or treatment (i.e., accidently harming someone). This is in contrast to the notion of first, do no harm (or primum non nocere). Gamble explores the concept of iatrogenics in sports and coaching—it is perhaps best illustrated by medal targets, which, in the face of recent sporting scandals, have had the unexpected effect of driving unethical (and, in some cases, illegal) behavior.

Similarly, training too intensely or too often, while coming from the hope of improving athlete performance, actually has the opposite effect, leading to overtraining and underperformance. Load management is another area where Gamble identifies iatrogenic behavior in practice—while the idea of quantifying load to identify at-risk athletes is useful in theory, in practice we often see athletes incorrectly designated as at-risk, who then see an unnecessary reduction in load—and, as a result, perhaps underperform due to a lack of stimulus.

In this section, Gamble also discusses tempering, whereby we use training to impart strength and toughness into the athletes we work with. By applying stress to our athletes, we can drive positive adaptations. This means that we might have to reconsider some commonly held beliefs. For example, when it comes to training loads, we are typically counselled to avoid any major spikes. However, Gamble writes that something without any tolerance for deviation from normal is a fragile system; so, by attempting to reduce any unpredictability, we’re actually harming our athlete’s performance longer-term. Utilizing both variability and volatility in our program, therefore, allows us to create performers who are both future-proof and highly adaptive—similar to the worst case scenario approach to developing training programs.

Something without any tolerance for deviation from normal is a fragile system; so, by attempting to reduce any unpredictability, we’re actually harming our athlete’s performance longer-term. Share on X

4. Managing the Self

The importance of this is identified in the section introduction, where Gamble writes: “Our physical and mental wellbeing is integral to our ability to fulfil the requirements of our role in service of athletes; we have an obligation to fulfil these responsibilities.”

This underpins the importance of taking care of ourselves so that, like our athletes, we can perform at the highest level. It also relates to knowing how to get the best out of ourselves, including self-improvement. Whole chapters are devoted to navigating the information age and the importance of sleep—two aspects all coaches potentially vie with from time to time.

The final chapter outlines how stress affects our ability to think clearly—something which affects us all with increasing regularity—and provides some strategies we can use to optimize our own performance under stress and pressure.

A Spot in Your HP Library

Prepared was the best book I read in 2020. Ensuring we understand that coaching is much more than just technical knowledge, and then taking steps to ensure we’re taking care of the other aspects, is a crucial yet potentially under-explored area of understanding when it comes to optimizing human performance.

In Prepared, Gamble provides a clear framework to begin thinking about some of these issues and considering how to implement them in our practice. I got so much from the book when I first read it and, going over my notes when writing this article, I was reminded of even more practical take-homes. The reference list alone is worth the price of the book and taking time to go through some of the papers and resources listed there will expose you to many new ideas and ways of thinking. As I said at the start, I came across this book at the time of my life where I was primed to get the most out of it—if you’re involved in coaching in any capacity, there will be a lot you can take from it as well.

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

Picture this: You are coming off a great winter track season. You’re getting ready for spring and about to have a preseason meeting. There are several upperclassmen on your team, and now you must decide who will be captain. You give it a lot of thought and decide on a junior because he has great leadership skills and is an outstanding overall team player—at the preseason meeting, you announce the decision.

Later that night, when you are home, you get a phone call from a disgruntled parent who TELLS you his son should be captain and that he is the fastest athlete on the team.

What do you say?

For me, the answer was: “I don’t choose my captain based on how fast an athlete can run, and although your son is a talented athlete, he isn’t the fastest. Your son has many positive attributes but is not quite ready to be in that position right now.” Over the years, I’ve found the best way to handle situations like this is to listen to what the parent has to say and then respond in as nonconfrontational a manner as possible (and if a situation does get escalated, then I would talk to my AD).

These lessons have helped me turn situations with teenage athletes and their parents into productive rather than destructive experiences. Share on X

If you’ve experienced similar situations dealing with teenage athletes and their parents, you’re not alone. I’m here to share five recommendations that I’ve picked up through 15 years of coaching that have allowed me to turn this scenario—and others like it—into productive rather than destructive experiences.

1. Learn how to deal with teenagers.
2. Know their why.
3. Understand how each athlete learns.
4. Accept that parents won’t always agree with you.
5. Be okay with breaking your own rules.

1. Learn How to Deal with Teenagers

Understanding the physical and psychological development of high school athletes will ultimately benefit both the coach and the athlete. If you haven’t spent time with teenagers lately…this could be difficult. In my case, I have five kids of my own and have lived through the ups and downs of raising adolescents. In addition, my kids were very involved in organized sports (bringing with them a house full of their friends who were also teenage athletes). Having exposure to my own kids and their friends gave me an edge at understanding and working with this age group.

What can you do if you don’t have your own kids?

Interact with relatives around this age or friends who have teenage kids: spend some time with them and have conversations with them. Observe how they think and recognize what is important to them. Talk to them about their experiences with sports, but mostly listen and learn.

You will be spending lots of time with your athletes, and it’s a good idea to have some idea about how they operate. Coaching high school kids is an adolescent roller-coaster ride, and you just bought a ticket as they mature from insecure freshmen to confident seniors, with plenty of growing pains in between. I have learned that coaches become significant fixtures athletes depend on, so if you “get” them, they appreciate it, and things will go more smoothly.

Beyond that, take the time to learn to understand what motivates teenagers from an athletic standpoint. When it comes to figuring out what makes each athlete tick, late quarterback coach Tom Martinez describes it this way in the book Outliers: “Every kid’s life is a mix of shit and ice cream. If the kid has had too much shit, I mix in some ice cream. If he has had too much ice cream, I mix in some shit.”

Understand that these are kids, and sometimes it’s not their fault that they’ve been fed ice cream all the time and treated like everything they do is great. As coaches, we need to figure out strategies for dealing fairly with each of these extremes, as well as everyone and everything in-between.

Kids act a certain way for a reason. There may be pressures at home, school, or with peers that are having a significant impact on their behavior. Be aware of withdrawn, depressed, or concerning behavior—if you think there is an issue, don’t ignore it. All teens handle pressure differently.

If I suspect an athlete is acting differently, I ask how they’re doing I in a way that they won’t feel judged. The important thing is to listen. Share on X

In my experience, if I suspect an athlete is acting differently, I ask how they are doing in a way that they won’t feel judged. Kids have opened up to me about all kinds of things: bullying, depression, anxiety, and family issues. The important thing is to listen, and if you feel it’s something that needs to be further addressed, speak to the school counselor or parent.

2. Know Their “Why”

Why did this athlete come out for the team? What is their motivation for being there? You may think you know, but don’t be so sure—remember, your mind works very differently than a teenager’s.

With my athletes, during the first week of the season I started simply asking the question and having them write their answer down on an index card. Some of the responses I have gotten are:

• To get faster for a different sport.
• To keep in shape.
• To make friends.

If athletes come out for the team for non-competitive reasons—for example, just to make friends—I don’t care, because if they are a contributing factor and work hard, it’s all good. In some cases, they end up really enjoying the sport and flourish! If an athlete says they want to compete in college, then you can have the realistic conversation of what it takes and the standards they must hit. From there, you can be on the same page, and they know it will take hard work.

Some athletes need relationships before competition, others need competition before relationships. I believe this is where boys and girls differ—after spending my first seven years coaching in an all-girls school, then moving on to a coed high school, I have experienced a difference. Girls often value the relationship before competition, and boys the competition before the relationship.

Some athletes need relationships before competition, others need competition before relationships. I believe this is where boys and girls differ. Share on X

To help fill that social bucket, I have the athletes take an unstructured lap before we start practice. They can do it in groups or with one of their close friends, and it gives them a few minutes to unwind from their school day and socialize before we get started.

3. Understand How Each Athlete Learns

Aside from the psychological aspect of coaching, it is important to consider how each individual athlete learns. You can explain something to two equally talented sprinters, and one will get it right away and the other may need a physical demonstration. Some athletes are visual, some are auditory, and some need both. Add to this mix differences in chronological age, training age, social age, and personality, and you have a million different possibilities.

As an example, I will use two different long jumpers: one male, one female, both talented. Both juniors (and also talented sprinters), the male was jumping mid-22 feet and the female high-17 feet. When going over the penultimate step with both, the male became fixated on it and continued to overthink it, while the female just ran and jumped. This was how they approached school: one was an overthinker, and one was not. Make sure to adjust your coaching style to meet the needs of the athlete.

In the case of the two jumpers, what I found successful was to give much less technical information to the male jumper and work on only one cue at a time. For example, one cue I gave him was to focus on a tree visible in the sightline beyond the pit so he wouldn’t look at the board. This simple cue kept him in an erect upright position. As far as the female jumper…if it’s not broke, don’t fix it. If I showed her a video, she could adjust without too much of an explanation: less was more with her.

As coaches, it is our responsibility to get the best out of our athletes—to do this, you must realize no two are the same. Share on X

As coaches, it is our responsibility to get the best out of our athletes—to do this, you must realize no two are the same. Mike Boyle summed this up, saying: “Don’t strive to show how smart you are. Instead, strive to show what a great teacher you are. I believe the key to Keep It Short and Simple (KISS) is to strive to Make it Simple and Short (MISS).”

4. Accept That Parents Won’t Always Agree with You (and Five Keys to Building Successful Relationships)

When you have been coaching for years in high school, you end up dealing with hundreds of parents, and you can count on some of them not agreeing with you. I have had my issues in the past—and some of the parents have been difficult—but for the most part, the majority have been very pleasant.

Five keys I’ve learned over the years to establish successful relationships with parents are:

• Establish your expectations. Hold a preseason parent-athlete meeting, which can be over Zoom or in person. Discuss practice expectations for parents and athletes, uniforms and practice wear, competitions…anything you as a coach find important to running a successful team. You will find that some of these items stay constant over the years and some change. As we all know, this last year was very different and, as a result, so was the information we covered.
• Review your school’s athletic department policy. Get to know your Athletic Director and their school-wide policies—every school is different. Help them understand your coaching style and what your goals are. You want to make sure your AD has your back as a coach and will stand up for you when needed. I have had outstanding ADs who were always willing to help and do what was best for the athlete, coach, and program.
• Write and distribute your own rules and expectations. When things are in writing and everyone is on the same page, it prevents future problems.
• Review your team goals, priorities, and philosophy. These are some of the first things covered in the beginning of the season. Also added to this list are personal goals athletes have for themselves and upperclassmen’s desire to play at the next level. (That’s a discussion for another article.)
• Encourage athletes to speak with you before bringing a parent into the conversation. When students start high school, I encourage them to learn to advocate for themselves. If they have a problem, they should speak to the coach first instead of having their parent call. I also encourage them to speak to the captain if it is something they think is appropriate. This allows captains to become leaders and problem-solvers. If the captain thinks it is something that needs to be discussed with the coach, they will direct it that way. I have found this a great way to teach many different lessons to athletes.

5. Be Okay with Breaking Your Own Rules

Rules are essential for any successful team, BUT it’s also important to know there are exceptions to the rules. You’re the coach—when you feel you need to break them, it’s okay; you just need a valid reason.

For example, one of my rules for practice over break was that you had to make at least four of the practices during the week to compete. One athlete was not showing up to most of the practices. When I asked him about it, he told me he lived with his mom, and she had to work—and that it took him two hours to get to practice with public transportation. That would be four hours a day to get back and forth to practice. In my book, this is a valid reason for me to break the rules.

A Coach Is Always Needed

In Martin Rooney’s book High Ten, I found the quote “Because everyone always needs a coach, a coach is always needed.” This is a sentiment many of us feel and the reason why we should evaluate and reflect on lessons we have learned from year to year. Every year I learn something new, whether it is how to better train my athletes, communicate with them, or create a better team culture. These are the things that keep us doing what we love and motivate us to move forward.

This past year was very difficult for athletes and coaches because of the pandemic. When I reflect, I think about how happy I was, first just to get to coach at all, and then with the performances: a freshman male breaking 11 seconds in the 100m and freshman female hitting a 12.2. Those are the things that get me excited, but I also think about how disjointed the team felt.

This is when I must think about the team culture and what it was lacking. We had kids missing numerous practices, relays that weren’t cohesive, and athletes not reaching their potential. I just figured it was a pandemic and need to ease up on them, but I was wrong, and I learned some new lessons that will help me.

How do I move forward and improve my team? I take my notebook and write down what kind of team culture I want to create. Our motto will be #trusttheprocess, and I will get wristbands to remind them.

How do I start to create team culture? It starts with the coach motivating them to believe in themselves and the team—behaviors reinforce our beliefs and that will lead us to where I think we should be as a team.

After 15 years of coaching high school track and field, I know I LOVE it and NEED to do it, but I also need to learn from my own lessons. I hope that my years of experience will get you thinking and sharing with other coaches—at the end of the day, as one of my ADs said to me, “you are changing lives, one at a time.”

If you’re a coach starting out, there will be days you go home and feel like hanging up the stopwatch and clipboard. DON’T! It will get better. Share on X

If you’re a coach starting out, there will be days you go home and feel like hanging up the stopwatch and clipboard. DON’T! Trust me, I have been there, and I still have my moments, but it will get better. Taking the coaching roller-coaster ride with your athletes over their high school career is something you don’t want to give up on. The enormous sense of pride and satisfaction far outweighs the frustration you may feel from time to time.

Look at your coaching journey as an education: the lessons you learn from one season will benefit you in the next. The first year you coach you are like a freshman; four years later you are a senior. One day you will turn around and 15 years will have passed, and you will realize how many young athletes you have helped—and that’s worth it because if you are a coach, you NEED to help people.

I hope my lessons will help you. Hold on tight and enjoy the ride!

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

The bench press exercise may be one of the most popular conditioning exercises to build upper body strength and muscle development. In the sport of powerlifting, it is one of the three main lifts used in competition, along with the squat and deadlift. The goal to try and maximize the weight successfully lifted in competition involves a combination of optimal biomechanics and muscle physiology to result in the generation of a high amount of force from the upper body. With this in mind, we will look at some of the factors that can go into the decision to find an optimal grip width to maximize outcomes.

We chose the ‘simple’ approach to investigate whether a wider grip would have a favorable effect on the mechanics and physiology of the lift and lead to potentially greater results. Share on X

Our study here begins with a competitive powerlifter who was looking to improve his bench press performance. With a variety of techniques available that can have an effect on lifting performance—such as elbow position, degree of arch, speed of approach, location of the bar in relation to the shoulder and chest, etc.—we chose the “simple” approach to investigate whether a wider grip would have a favorable effect on the mechanics and physiology of the lift and lead to potentially greater results.

Materials and Methods

To tackle this issue, I used an inertial sensor (G-Sensor) and eight EMG sensors from BTS Bioengineering to track the kinematics of the bar and to analyze the neuromuscular contribution from the left and right sides of the body, respectively. I chose to examine the chest, arm, and shoulder muscles, as these are the muscles considered to have the largest contribution to the movement and that are commonly used in research about the bench press.

The G-Sensor was attached to the mid-point of the bar on the side opposite to the lifter. As the G-Sensor uses a triaxial accelerometer to measure acceleration, the sensor was oriented so that the Z axis was perpendicular to the bar, with the X and Y axes consequently being parallel to the bar. Positive acceleration in the Z axis is away from the ground, in the X axis, it’s toward the lifter’s left side, and in the Y axis positive acceleration is away from the lifter. In addition, the inertial sensor also contains a triaxial gyroscope and a magnetic sensor to measure angular velocity and angles along the three axes. This results in positive values when the sensor is rotated about the axis in a counterclockwise direction.

The wireless FREEEMG sensors were placed on the sternal portion of the pectoralis major, anterior deltoid, long head of the biceps brachii, and the long head of the triceps brachii according to the locations specified by SENIAM standards and Cram’s Introduction to Surface Electromyography, 2nd Edition. The sites were cleaned with alcohol, and a skin prep gel was used to ensure a strong signal.

To enable a good comparison between both lifts, we chose to perform them on the same day while keeping the electrodes in place—this reduced confounding variables that can come from replacing the electrodes and inter-day performance variability. The lift intensity was estimated to be greater than 90% MVC, and the same weight was used for the two lifts after an incremental warm-up with progressively heavier weights and rest of at least 3-5 minutes between. The grip widths varied by approximately 3.5 inches, and our lifter had trained and competed with the narrower grip. However, both grips felt similar on execution, hence the problem of choosing a “better” grip.

Both the narrow and wide grips (they varied by approximately 3.5 inches) felt similar on execution, hence the problem of choosing a ‘better’ grip. Share on X

As is common in the research, I have divided the lift into five key events:

1. The beginning of the eccentric phase, defined as where both the acceleration and velocity are zero or below zero.
2. The concentric portion of the lift, where velocity returns to zero.
3. The start of the sticking region, where acceleration drops below zero.
4. The end of the sticking region, where acceleration returns above zero.
5. The end of the movement, where velocity and acceleration return back to zero.

*Note that with a sampling rate of 100 Hz, some of the events may not be exactly at zero but very close to it.

You can see that the narrow grip resulted in lower acceleration and, consequently, lower velocity throughout the lift. This resulted in a longer time to complete the repetition. There was no attempt to control speed, as the lift was to be performed at the normal pace used in competition.

Remember, the higher and lower acceleration values are a result of higher and lower forces applied to the bar (force = mass x acceleration). Since the weight was the same in the two different techniques, we can see there were substantially higher forces applied around the start of the concentric portion to the beginning of the sticking portion during the wider grip press compared to the narrow grip. The opposite was true for the eccentric portion, as there are lower forces acting on the bar to lower it (lower accelerations) at the beginning of the eccentric portion for the wider grip.

In order to lower the bar, the combined forces of the muscles need to decrease to below the force from gravity. As the bar accelerates downward, the muscles then have to increase the force to decelerate the bar to a stop and then continue to apply force to overcome gravity and lift it back up. The narrow grip required less force to move into the concentric portion of the lift because the deceleration force wasn’t as great to overcome.

Jerk is also known as the rate of change of acceleration (calculated by taking the derivative of acceleration), which in this case would also relate to the rate of force development, since the mass of the bar is the same. Jerk can also indicate smoothness of technique during the lift. In general, a better execution or technique application will be smoother and less choppy on the bar. The best portion to compare our different techniques is the sticking region, since the acceleration and velocity are similar. Looking at the values for the different lifts, we can see a higher mean and standard deviation for the wider grip, which indicates a choppier or jerky movement during the sticking region.

Assessment and Prescription

In examining the path of the bar, the narrow grip resulted in a greater horizontal movement of approximately 40 centimeters away from the shoulder as opposed to the more vertical path of the wider grip. Vertical displacement was similar, with the wider grip being slightly deeper, most likely due to the position it touched on the chest being slightly lower. Overall, vertical displacement was greater in the narrow grip press.

Our graphs on the right give insight into how the bar tilted, rolled, and rotated during the lift. We can see the bar is very stable laterally, with more roll in the narrow grip at the bottom of the movement. Inexperienced lifters often show much less control during a maximum or close to maximum lift, with substantially more tilt and rotation compared to an elite powerlifter. Although not apparent in our case, significant tilt and rotation differences may also indicate a left/right imbalance, which should be investigated further to determine the cause.

Although not apparent in our case, significant tilt and rotation differences may also indicate a left/right imbalance with the lifter, which should be investigated further to determine the cause. Share on X

Now that we have an idea how the bar moved through space, let’s take a closer look at how the muscles contributed to the movement.

Remember that increased activation does not necessarily mean increased absolute force for the different muscles. For example, we can see that the left pectoralis had lower EMG voltages compared to the right—although that could mean there was less activation, it doesn’t necessarily mean it occurred. Our EMG sensors measure the combined action potentials of the motor units immediately under the skin, and to a certain depth within the muscle. Factors that can affect the EMG reading include:

• The electrode position in relation to the innervation zone.
• The thickness between the top of the skin and the muscle.
• The conductivity of the skin.
• The alignment of the electrodes with the muscle fibers.

These factors are controlled for by carefully landmarking the position and angle of the electrodes, as well as cleaning and preparing the skin equally at all sites. Generally, a difference within 10% is normal, with anything above 20% indicative of a possible imbalance.

In our case, the pectoralis and triceps are outside of that range. This would warrant a closer look to see if a strength difference exists in order to rule out possible electrode misalignment or differences between muscle structures. This can be done either with unilateral strength testing particular to that muscle or by performing an appropriate isometric maximal voluntary contraction (IMVC) for each of the muscles and normalizing the EMG to the peak value obtained. This would give us a better idea how the muscles work in relation to their maximal capacity while also rechecking our electrode locations and positions.

We are more concerned about how the left & right muscles activate during the two different techniques, and not so much about possible force production differences between the sides at this stage. Share on X

In addition, assessing muscle fatigue through spectral analysis and comparing the change of median frequency during the lift can also provide insight into how the muscles are responding.

Although a strength discrepancy would be relevant to the performance, our objective is to determine if a technique change could result in a better performance. We are more concerned about how the left and right muscles activate during the two different techniques, and not so much about possible force production differences between left and right sides at this stage.

In order to have a fair comparison, the results are normalized to the highest of the peak value obtained from the two attempts. This is referred to as the dynamic peak method and helps us compare the two lifts better.

These graphs represent the normalized activity of three of the four measured muscles as well as the mean of the three prime movers (pectorals major, anterior deltoid, and triceps brachii). I chose to remove the biceps from the overall mean to remove the possible confounding effects. In the bench press movement, the biceps is generally considered to be a stabilizer as well as an antagonist, and not a major contributor to the lift.

Looking at the normalized EMG values, intuitively we would expect lower activation during the eccentric component because of the reduced force required to lower the bar combined with the mechanical advantage of the muscle fiber’s ability to generate higher tension with less activation during eccentric contractions. This would then be followed by rapidly increasing activation at the beginning of the concentric movement and continued activation in all muscle groups until the end of the sticking region. Once out of the sticking region, better biomechanics should result in less activation overall to continue to lift the bar to the finish.

In examining the actual normalized activation patterns, our previously described general trend seems to carry over until the approach of the sticking region in both lifts. The left side appears to have a burst of activity about halfway between the start of the concentric and the start of the sticking region, and then it decreases. Activity appears to recover at about the midpoint of the sticking region and resumes its climb until the end of this region. After the sticking phase, there is a general decrease in activation to complete the movement.

In both lifting techniques, the left side hit a peak of combined muscle activity at the end of the sticking region, whereas the right side hit peak activation at the start of the sticking region. In theory, part of this initial burst of activity could be enhanced by post activation potentiation, although this is thought to dissipate by approximately 0.3 seconds after initiation (especially after factoring in electromechanical delay) and is not believed to have a large contribution in a slower movement like the bench press.

As less activation is described as a decrease in EMG amplitude and is generally associated with less force production, it is plausible that this decrease in activation contributes to the sticking portion of the lift. However, contrary to this specific issue, some studies have suggested that the decrease in acceleration is more likely caused by a poor mechanical position rather than a decrease in muscle activation.^1,2 Note that the wide grip had a larger mean negative acceleration (lower force acting on the bar) than the narrow grip. In this lifter, the problem is probably compounded by less muscle activity at a time when more force is required.

The level of muscle fatigue should also be considered when trying to determine which technique may be optimal for our powerlifter, especially considering the time difference between the two lifts. Maximal exertion can rapidly decrease metabolic and neural reserves, and this can obviously affect the amount of force the muscle can generate.

Since the EMG signal is made up of many motor unit action potentials registered in the form of electric waves, it is possible to dissect the final EMG signal mathematically to give us an idea of the mean and median speed of these motor unit waveforms in the form of an overall frequency. Median frequency shifts have been widely researched in both isometric and dynamic contraction, and it is generally accepted that a lower median frequency is a result of fatigue within the muscle. This is as a result of metabolic and neural factors such as a slowing of the conduction velocity, as well as changes in recruitment patterns and motor unit size, to name a few. This can give us more information as to how much fatigue may be a factor in the final lift performance.

Looking at the sum of the normalized frequencies for the three prime movers in the two lifts for both the concentric and sticking portions, the narrow grip press showed a trend of decreasing values across almost all muscles except the right triceps, whereas the wider grip only suggests fatigue in the pectorals and right deltoid.

Decreasing median frequency is widely believed to be related to fatigue, while increasing median frequency is usually associated with recovery or increasing neural efficiency. These results could also lend support to further investigate the potential for a difference in strength levels between the left and right sides.

We must also consider that the narrow grip press lasted longer (timewise) and may have exhausted the muscles capacity earlier than the shorter wide grip press. Also, the wider grip press was performed after the narrow grip press, and the lifter may have experienced greater fatigue effects, which could show as an increased slope in the trend line.

Should our lifter change to a wider grip from the narrow grip? Here are some deciding factors.

As you can see, our decision is multifactorial and has advantages and disadvantages. There appear to be more reasons against staying with a narrow grip than with the wider grip. However, retraining neural patterns can take time, which may not fit into every competitor’s schedule. Considering both attempts were perceived to be near maximal, and the narrow grip had been the historical grip used, we may get faster progress by switching to the wider grip, as we have potentially more room to improve.

If we stay with the narrow grip press, we could improve performance by increasing hypertrophy of the prime movers and addressing the apparent deactivation at the start of the sticking period. Share on X

If we stay with the narrow grip press, ways to improve performance would be to increase hypertrophy of the prime movers and address the apparent deactivation at the start of the sticking period. Hypertrophy is typically achieved by using exercises that target the muscle with an increase in volume at moderate intensities. Changing activation throughout the movement can be approached by increasing resistance at the onset of decreasing activation (chains or elastics applied to the bar using straps for the appropriate increase in resistance at the right time, manually applied resistance, machines with appropriate force curves, changes in acceleration, etc.) while minimizing techniques that can aggravate the situation such as forced reps and assisted reps.

If we switch to the wider grip, we would still do all of the above since these are universal issues; however, we might emphasize pec hypertrophy more and focus on incorporating the new grip into training while trying to minimize risk of injury during the transition. Neural adaptations in performance happen faster than hypertrophic adaptations, so we would expect an improvement in approximately six to eight weeks. This would also be a good time to retest to compare again and determine if we achieved the specified goals.

If we switch to the wider grip, we might emphasize pec hypertrophy more and focus on incorporating the new grip into training while trying to minimize risk of injury during the transition. Share on X

Since there is also the possibility of a strength imbalance between the left and the right, it would also be wise to confirm this through unilateral strength testing. We could do this with an EMG assessment, with each muscle normalized to an IMVC to see how the left and right sides perform compared to their max. Although the bench press may be a maximum lift, and you might think we could just use the lift as the maximal contraction, all the muscles may not be performing at maximal activation, so an individual IMVC needs to be performed for each muscle group involved. Higher activation in a muscle group relative to its maximal force production compared between the left and right sides might confirm if the left side is working harder than the right.

Final Takeaways

It’s important to remember that the factors we’ve assessed are only one aspect of evaluating the bench press movement. Future assessments might consider how additional agonist muscles, along with antagonist muscles, activate—doing so to examine how the whole musculature contributes to the final performance. By examining antagonist muscle groups, you may find some are more or less active during the movement, thus affecting the final force production to move the bar. Also, this was just one trial, and it is usually advisable to have at least three trials to confirm the first trial wasn’t unique.

The use of new technology to help decipher complex interactions between factors that can improve performance is a constantly developing process. The fact that you can combine and sync physiological effects such as EMG results along with kinematic and dynamic information from inertial sensors opens up a wide range of possibilities that would not have been likely with observation alone.

Although the amount of data you can receive can sometimes be overwhelming, staying focused on one aspect can help keep you on track as to what information is relevant and what is not. I know for myself it has really opened my eyes to the complex process that goes on behind the scenes of a movement that seems simple, like the bench press.

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References

1. Elliott B., Wilson G., and Kerr G. “A biomechanical analysis of the sticking region in the bench press.” Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise. 1989;21(4):450-462.

2. Stastny P., Gołaś A., Blazek D., et al. “A systematic review of surface electromyography analyses of the bench press movement task.” PLoS ONE. 2017;12(2):1-16.