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I started my career training the general population in a commercial gym. Client retention was fairly straightforward. (I won’t say easy, but straightforward.)

I had the opportunity to develop a relationship with the key stakeholder, the client, with each and every session I delivered. They were there, I was there, we trained, laughed, became friends, chummed around, and life was good. If there was ever an issue—be it financial, with their perception of my service or training programs, or otherwise—I could talk with the client directly and hash it out.

Business was fairly simple. Again, I won’t say easy, but simple. Meet the client, sell the client, train the client, retain the client.

Then I transitioned into training youth athletes.

I realized an interesting conundrum a few months in. These kids weren’t paying for training themselves (most of them)—their parents were. But unless the parent was particularly involved and either came to the sessions or took the time to call or email, I often wouldn’t see or hear from them for weeks.

It was particularly awkward when I reached out to those who opted out of automatic payments about their monthly bill.

“Hey, I know we haven’t talked in a few weeks and we’ve only met once, but can you pay me now? Great, we’ll chat again about this again next month…”

Of course, it didn’t go down exactly like that, but that’s kind of how it felt.

Further, I can only imagine what the kids themselves said when asked about training.

“Hey little Johnny, how was training today?”

“Good.”

“Oh, good. What did you do?”

“We ran and stuff.”

“You ran and stuff…ok, cool…do you like it?”

“Yea, it’s cool.”

“Oh, it’s cool…well, alright then…what should we do for lunch?”

That doesn’t exactly leave a great impression. And it’s not the kid’s job to inform their parents about training anyway—it’s mine (and yours). It wouldn’t be long before I wouldn’t want to pay for my own children’s training if that’s all I knew about it.

A relationship with the parent is a safeguard against losing clients. It’s a lifeline of the youth development business, says @KD_KyleDavey. Share on X

This dynamic forced me to think outside the box and figure out how to build a genuine relationship with parents I knew I would rarely see. I believe it’s much easier for parents who don’t know me to remove their children from training. Thus, a relationship with the parent is a safeguard against losing clients. It’s a lifeline of the youth development business.

I’m pleased to say I think I do a pretty good job of connecting with parents now. Below are three strategies I’ve instituted to help myself out.

Always Do the Initial Consultation with the Athlete AND the Parent

You should want to get to know the parents just as much as you want to get to know the athlete. Remember, the parents are the ones paying the bill.

It isn’t necessarily wrong to do a consult without the parent present, but it is a huge missed opportunity. Having dedicated time set aside for nothing more than talking is rare. Without the consultation, you’re left with small talk before and after training sessions, phone calls, and emails to build a relationship. Capitalizing on the consultation is key for starting the relationship off on the right foot and setting the stage for it to remain strong down the road.

How exactly do you make the most of the consult? Turn on the charm you learned from How to Win Friends and Influence People?

Sure, put your social skills to work. Find common ground, build rapport, blah blah blah. Beyond that basic sales stuff, there are two sections of the consult that present significant potential in building a relationship with the parent.

History Taking

Most of you will do some sort of history taking with the athlete, asking questions like “Have you ever had any injuries?” and “What type of training have you done before?” After asking these standard questions, turn to the parent and try these three:

1. What sports did you play?
2. What have you noticed about [insert their child’s name]’s performance in the past?
3. What do you think it is that he/she enjoys about sports?

These three questions are targeted. In my opinion, it’s important you ask them in order.

Assuming the parent did indeed play a sport, the first question builds credibility and subtly sets them up as an authority on the child’s sports performance. Everyone likes feeling like an authority, perhaps even more so when it comes to their own kids.

Everyone likes feeling like an authority, perhaps even more so when it comes to their own kids, says @KD_KyleDavey. Share on X

The second question lends itself to that newfound authority, putting the parent in a position to offer critiques and recommendations about how the child can improve. The kid might not like this part very much, but the parent will. Besides, it’s not like kids aren’t used to parents pointing out where they can improve.

The final question tugs on the heartstrings and lets the parent expound on how well they know their own child. It’s an emotional question, and relationships are emotional. You’re opening the emotional door and encouraging the parent to walk through it with this one.

Regardless of the answers you get, the fact that you asked the questions in the first place shows you’re just as interested in the parent’s thoughts and feelings as you are in the athlete’s. This is a small investment in time and effort that yields a big return: The parent knows you care and likes you more for it.

Goal Taking

What is every athlete’s goal? To be the stud. Athletes say they want to run faster, be stronger, hit harder, or whatever else they think will help them become the star. You know as well as I do that you get the same superficial answers every time you ask an athlete what their goals are.

Beneath these, however, is always a deeper motivation. The infamous “why.” Asking an athlete why they want to accomplish whatever goals they’ve stated will always lead to a deeper truth. Getting an honest answer is an art that deserves an article (or a book) to itself. For now, I’ll simply say always ask why, ask in different ways, keep asking until you get an emotional answer, and ask in front of the parent.

You’d be surprised how many parents haven’t asked their own child this question or know their child’s answer. That you ask catches their attention, and if the child feels comfortable enough to tell you the truth, the parent will have learned something deep and important about who their kid is, thanks to you.

What impression do you think this leaves? Let’s just say it’s good.

Equally as important as asking the athlete’s goals is to ask the parent what their goals are for their child, both in athletics and overall in life. Try asking these two questions:

1. What are your priorities for your child?
2. What are your goals for your child’s athletic career?

Just as the parent may be surprised by the child’s answers, the child may be surprised by the parent’s answers, and they may grow closer to each other as a result. Speaking as a parent who already feels close to his children, there’s nothing I wouldn’t do to grow even closer, and I would certainly feel indebted to and appreciative of anybody who helps me do so.

Further, from a practical perspective, understanding what the parent values puts you in a better position to recommend a training program and earn the sale by speaking to the parent’s interests. If injury prevention—i.e., their child’s safety—is the parent’s number one goal, as is often the case, focus your rhetoric there before asking for the sale, for example.

Create a Viewing Space

This seems like a no-brainer as I type it. Make sure there is a space in your facility where parents can sit comfortably and watch their children train. It doesn’t need to be a five-star lounge, but it should have seating and a clear view of the training space. Bonus points if it’s close enough to the training area for the parent to hear you coach. It’s like having a sideline ticket to every training session.

There are several advantages to this. I’m convinced that parents who show up to training sessions are less likely to withdraw their children from training. If a parent has been to the facility and seen their child work hard, succeed, and (hopefully) laugh and have fun, the benefits of your program are more numerous, apparent, and top of mind than they are to absentee parents.

Make sure there’s a space in your facility where parents can sit comfortably and watch their children train. Bonus points if it’s close enough to the training area to hear you coach. Share on X

I can anticipate some of you saying, “Well the parents who show up to sessions are the committed ones, and they aren’t pulling their kid out of training anyway.” Yes, that may be true. But it isn’t an excuse for your facility’s physical setup to be aversive for less zealous parents. For many adults, an inviting space is the difference between staying for the session and leaving. Don’t miss these opportunities.

Set up a countertop or table space for them to work, make sure they have access to the Wi-Fi, and openly invite them to attend training sessions. With so many parents working from home these days, you’d be surprised how many will come and set up shop in your facility to get an hour or more of work done while their kids do the same.

While they’re there, you’ve got a golden opportunity to talk to them and build a relationship. I often do this while the kids complete the warm-up. It’s easy enough to keep an eye on the group while lending an ear to the parent, and it grants the athletes a little bit of what every young person craves: autonomy.

Here’s another great benefit of having parents stick around: If you’re really good at what you do, you’ll attract parents who know a thing or two about performance training. I’ve been surprised more than once by how knowledgeable a few of my athlete’s parents are. A few high-level football coaches have brought their kids in to work with me. A couple weeks into training, and as they began asking more questions about what we’re doing and why, I realized these guys really knew what they were talking about, and they’d been evaluating my training program and skill set from the start.

That they could see and hear everything I did with their kids bought me a ton of credibility, because they found out I knew what I was doing, too. But without that viewing space to watch and listen what went on during training, I’d be a question mark in their mind instead of an exclamation mark.

As a result, I earned from them the ultimate sign of trust: client referrals. When the head coach of a collegiate football program refers the local high school kids that he’s recruiting to your training program—well, need I say more about how good of a thing that is for business?

Last point on this topic: Get a TV that supports Apple’s AirPlay function and put it near the viewing space, especially if you evaluate sprint kinematics.

Readers of this site likely are familiar with the concept of teaching kids how to run, but the general public still isn’t. When you review film with the athletes, make sure the parents can see the screen too. First of all, it’s just cool. Many adults are curious about the X’s and O’s of how to sprint faster, so they’ll enjoy hearing you talk and watching their own kid in slo-mo.

Second, when you point out that heel striking sends more shock (layman’s terms) through the ankle, knee, and hip joints than a ball of foot strike does, and thus increases the chances of developing aches and pains, or when you talk about why anterior pelvic tilting increases the likelihood of pulling a hammy, you’ll catch the parent’s attention, because they don’t want their kid to get hurt.

If you can keep their baby safe—which, you can, as strength training and sprint technique work do decrease injury incidence—they’ll love you all the more for it. Again, spoken as a parent, there’s nothing I wouldn’t give to protect my babies from injury.

A picture is worth a thousand words. Showing a before and after photo of sprint technique can be a huge selling point, especially if it’s on day one of training, says @KD_KyleDavey. Share on X

And to wrap this section up: A picture is worth a thousand words. Showing a before and after photo of sprint technique can be a huge selling point, especially if it’s on day one of training. In my experience, cleaning up starting technique is fairly easy to do, is an important sprint KPI, and can create one hell of a before and after picture for parents and athletes alike to see.

Start a Parent Newsletter

I admit, even if you set up a killer viewing space, you’ll still train kids whose parents you never see. Maybe the kids drive themselves, carpool with buddies, or are dropped off and picked up without their folks coming inside.

How can you bridge this gap?

I answered this question by starting a parent newsletter. Every parent gets an email from me once per week called “This Week in Training” in which I share highlights of the week, give shout-outs to athletes who have set a PR or earned athletic or scholastic honors, share a tip about injury prevention, or whatever else I see fit.

This way, if I never see the parent after the consult, at the very least they hear from me once per week with good news about how awesome our athletes (including their child) are doing.

These emails demonstrate the value of training in a subtle way. The newsletter communicates “Hey, I still exist (I know you have a busy life—you didn’t forget about me, did you?). I do good work, and it shows because our athletes are doing awesome. Thanks for letting your kid train here, they are becoming more awesome with every session!”

Of course, I don’t write that, but that’s the message that gets delivered.

And while I don’t think of this newsletter as marketing so much as I think of it as simple communication, it does indeed turn into marketing, because I never remove parents from the list, even when their children stop training. They have the opportunity to unsubscribe, but I don’t do it for them.

This works out great, because whether the athlete cancelled training because their season started, for financial reasons, or whatever, the parent gets the same message in their inbox every week: “Hey, I still exist (you didn’t forget about me just because your kid stopped training, did you?), and I’m still doing great work! If your kid comes back to training, they will get a lot better, just like these kids are!”

There’s been a few times when parents of ex-clients have replied to the newsletter asking to sign their child back up. The weekly newsletter made it easy for them to do that—much easier than remembering and finding time to call or email me on their own, and much easier for me than going through my list and calling my previous clients seeking their business. In fact, in these cases I didn’t ask for their business at all, I simply wrote my weekly newsletter.

For the more scientifically minded than business-minded coach: The email provided an affordance.

To set up a newsletter for yourself, you’ll want to use a service. Don’t just copy-paste email addresses into the “to:” bar each week. It’s tacky, and I think it might be illegal (but don’t quote me on that: I’m a trainer, not a lawyer).

I use the free version of MailerLite. It’s simple, allows you to build an email template to use weekly, and (my favorite part) it gives you metrics for every email you send. These include the absolute number of opens, who opened it and how many times, the amount of times links were clicked, and who clicked them.

I can tell you from experience: When you highlight an athlete individually in the newsletter, their parent reads it, re-reads it, then re-reads it again. I’d say that’s a pretty good way to make a parent proud, provide positive associations with your business, and secure future business.

In case you did like many readers do and skimmed this article instead of reading it closely, here’s the central theme: The parents are the bill payers, and you must make targeted efforts to build quality relationships with them in order to secure their business for the long run. Aside from delivering results to their children, making it easy for parents to trust and like you is critical to your success as a youth development trainer.

Aside from delivering results to their children, making it easy for parents to trust and like you is critical to your success as a youth development trainer, says @KD_KyleDavey. Share on X

Interviewing the parent along with the child during the initial consult, allowing the parent to sit and watch training in a comfortable space close to the training floor, and communicating once per week via a newsletter are three easy steps you can take to ensure a positive relationship with the parents of your athletes, and a brighter future for your business.

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

Ah, the ’80s and ’90s—a time when muscle suits weren’t used by action heroes, the fullback was an integral part of the offense, and Nebraska dominated the college football landscape. Due to the Nebraska football program’s success, many people started to look at what separated them from the rest of the pack. How did they create these monsters on the field? The answer: good recruiting paired with proper strength and conditioning.

One key aspect of Nebraska’s program was the metabolic circuit, a man-maker of a workout designed to maximize hypertrophy while challenging the athlete’s conditioning. The circuit was used for many years with great success, and it quickly spread to programs across the country. However, at the turn of the 21st century, the circuit began to fall out of favor. Whether due to a lack of understanding, a conflict of vision, or poor execution, the circuit has been misused, abused, and cast aside in recent years.

While I do not believe that the metabolic circuit is the ‘king of all lifting programs,’ I do believe that it is a valid training protocol for athletes, says @Tate_Tobiason. Share on X

It pains me today to see how the metabolic circuit has fallen out of favor in some circles, as one of my integral mentors, Mike Arthur, was among the coaches who helped form and optimize it. While I do not believe that the metabolic circuit is the “king of all lifting programs,” I do believe that it is a valid training protocol for athletes and should be treated with consideration. On its surface, the circuit may look simple—and maybe even unscientific—but once you dive in, you’ll find there’s more to it than meets the eye.

What Is the Metabolic Circuit?

Dr. Bill Kraemer developed the metabolic circuit (or “Husker Power Circuit”) in conjunction with Nebraska Strength Coach Boyd Epley. The original circuit concept resembled a Tabata workout, with workouts crushing the athlete with 20 seconds of work and only 10 seconds of rest. However, with the help of Kraemer’s research and Epley’s firsthand experience, the circuit was tweaked over the years to maximize its effectiveness. The goal of the circuit is to induce a neuroendocrine and metabolic response from training, maximizing muscle-building.

The circuit consists of 8-10 exercises covering all major muscle groups, performed for 2-3 sets of 10 repetitions before moving on to the next exercise. Sounds easy enough, right? Now include an 80- to 90-second running clock, and the workout becomes a whole new monster.

The circuit begins with the squat or a comparable compound lower-body movement such as a leg press, belt squat, or trap bar deadlift. Note that growth hormone and testosterone levels increase more with free weight exercises than with machine exercises when performed at the same intensity.¹ Following the squat is a series of non-repeating muscle groups, focusing on the larger muscle groups first and finishing with single-joint movements at the end.

Example metabolic circuit:

1. Squat
2. Glute-ham-raise
3. Bench press
4. Cable row
5. Lunges
6. Pulldown
7. Shoulder press
8. Bicep curl
9. Tricep pushdown

or

1. Leg press
2. Bench press
3. Leg curl
4. T-bar row
5. Shoulder press
6. Leg extension
7. Chin up
8. Dips
9. Hammer curl
10. Calf raise

As you can see, you can perform the metabolic circuit many ways. But the primary principle is to start the workout with a compound lower-body movement and alternate muscle groups while covering every key movement pattern and muscle group in the body.

Within the Husker Power training plan (power-strength split), athletes perform the circuit twice a week, with a “heavy” strength session and a “light” strength session. Loading parameters should be challenging but manageable for the lifter, allowing them full range of motion with the ability to complete every set. Remember it is better to undershoot (T1 error) and raise the weight later than overshoot (T2 error) and visit the trainer. Sets across loading is recommended for its ease in group settings; however, you can utilize step loading if organized properly. Light days are a 10% reduction in total load from heavy days. The circuit is used in the off-season for 3-6 weeks for mid- to upper-level lifters.

Example week setup:

• Monday – Heavy power (clean and weighted jumps)
• Tuesday – Light circuit (3×10 @50%)
• Wednesday – Off
• Thursday – Light power (snatch and med ball throws)
• Friday – Heavy circuit (3×10 @60%)

Critiques

When discussing the metabolic circuit with fellow coaches, one critique I commonly hear is that the rest periods are too short—thus, they don’t allow the weights used to create a high enough tension. This is a valid argument and gets into the mechanical versus metabolic hypertrophy argument. However, I counter this argument with: Why do we chase the numbers on the bar to maximize hypertrophy, especially for athletes? Could there be a better way that raises other qualities while maximizing hypertrophy?

We should not reduce programming for athletes to a single-factor analysis argument. We can and must attempt to raise multiple qualities together. Of course, I will concede that there may be better ways to induce hypertrophy, and if that was all we were chasing, we could just implement Dorian Yates’ single set of 6-8 heavy reps to failure and see success. However, the case for the metabolic circuit, or any athletic training program, must go beyond a single factor such as hypertrophy.

Another critique of the circuit I occasionally hear is that its volume, intensity, and rest periods put athletes at a greater risk of rhabdomyolysis. I counter this argument with: Why, yes, they do. Athletics is all about pushing the limits of what the athlete can physically do. If we push too hard, bad things can happen. But on the flip side, if we push too little and fail to prepare them, I’d argue that even worse things can happen.

If you choose to implement the metabolic circuit, you must ramp up within the circuit’s parameters. Start with two sets and lower the weight initially, but don’t stay there too long. The body is amazing in its ability to adapt.

Hypertrophy Benefits

The primary benefit of the metabolic circuit is metabolic hypertrophy. The circuit works by elevating growth hormone, following high-volume programming (2-3 x10), and training with short rest periods (60 seconds).² By utilizing heavy resistance, high repetitions, and low rest, and involving many muscle groups, the circuit starts a cascade of anabolic hormones priming the body for maximal muscle growth.

By utilizing heavy resistance, high repetitions, and low rest, and involving many muscle groups, the metabolic circuit starts a cascade of anabolic hormones priming the body for maximal muscle growth. Share on X

The circuit is extremely effective at building muscle while simultaneously lowering body fat. It is not uncommon for an athlete to gain 5-10 pounds of muscle while in this phase. This isn’t “bodybuilding” muscle, but rather “armor-building” muscle: muscle mass that protects the body, not muscle mass that is all show and no go. The metabolic circuit can help an athlete not only look more like Tarzan, but also play more like Tarzan.

Conditioning Benefits (Peripheral Heart Action Training)

The metabolic circuit goes beyond being a meathead muscle-building circuit. By utilizing short rest periods and peripheral heart action training, the metabolic circuit provides a unique conditioning aspect.

Peripheral heart action (PHA) training was developed by Dr. Arthur Steinhaus and made popular by bodybuilder Bob Gajda in the 1960s. The idea is to shunt blood up and down the body, taxing the cardiovascular system to a high degree. This is believed to lead to improved metabolic rates, cardiac performance, hormonal release, and fat reduction. No two body parts are performed consecutively within the series. PHA training is intense and should only be used by experienced lifters with no risk factors.

Time Efficiency Benefits

Time is a precious commodity when it comes to training athletes. Many hypertrophy programs rely on maximal mechanical tension and can take a long time to complete. By contrast, the metabolic circuit takes an athlete under 45 minutes to complete. At its highest volume—3 sets of 10 reps for 10 exercises—the circuit takes about 40 minutes to complete (excluding the warm-up).

In addition, when used within a power-strength training split, coaches are able to program clear-cut training days with non-competing training goals. The circuit can be a very useful tool for coaches with limited time and resources.

Who Should Use the Circuit

Coaches should not use the metabolic circuit for novice or advanced athletes. In the context of the collegiate setting, freshmen should spend 6-12 months learning the basic barbell movements along with adequate conditioning before ever attempting the circuit. Furthermore, by the time an athlete reaches their senior year and beyond, the circuit may have exhausted its training effectiveness, and at this point the athlete needs to focus on maximizing the usefulness of their muscle mass as opposed to building it. The circuit is ideal for the intermediate athlete looking to build quality muscle mass. With a solid training background, they will have a fighting shot at completing the circuit.

The metabolic circuit is ideal for the intermediate athlete looking to build quality muscle mass. With a solid training background, they will have a fighting shot at completing the circuit. Share on X

The metabolic circuit was originally developed for football players looking to build what Dan John termed “armor-building” muscle. Other sports can benefit from the circuit, but the coach must use discretion. A hammer thrower looking to gain weight in the hope of increasing his distance may benefit from the circuit, but a senior hurdler looking to shave time off of their event probably will not. The coach must discern whether or not muscle mass will assist in the training goal.

Variations on the Circuit

I have never been one to be dogmatic about training programs, but rather prefer to use programs as starting points in training that I can mold and adapt to various training needs. One of the worst things a coach can do is treat every athletic program like a Russian 29-24-31-14% specific load split.

Variation #1 – Survivor Circuit

The Survivor Circuit takes the principles of the metabolic circuit but changes the exercises to become a general physical preparation circuit. Instead of muscle groups, it uses various GPP exercises such as battle ropes, prowler pushes, and lunges. The circuit can be performed set style, where athletes complete all three exercises before moving on, or in a rolling set fashion, where athletes move from station to station, completing the circuit 2-3 times. This variation is great for athletes who do not require much muscle mass but can benefit from GPP training. A coach can choose to either use prescribed repetitions or reps for time in this variation.

Example Survivor Circuit:

1. Prowler push
2. Farmers walk
3. Barbell row
4. Walking lunge
5. Battle ropes
6. Jump rope
7. Tire flips
8. Suitcase carry
9. Med ball toss
10. Push-up 

Variation #2 – Core Lift 5s

Back when I interned under Coach Epley and Coach Arthur, I learned about a circuit variation they used with upper classmen. They began the workout with 3×5 on squat, bench, and RDL, followed by 3×10 on the accessory exercises. This allows for heavier loads while still taking advantage of the growth hormone spike from 3×10 training. This method is also a great way to transition from the comparatively lighter weights of the circuit to the heavier weights of a strength training phase.

Variation #3 – Fluid Squat

This variation allows for fluidity in squat sets/reps/methods followed by a 3×10 circuit. I have used this variation by taking clusters on my squat or pause reps on my squat, or by performing Westside-style speed squats before the remainder of the circuit. It’s a fun way to mix up training and avoid monotony as you or your athletes progress.

Variation #4 – Squats off the Clock

Another way to maximize the hormonal cascade is to perform squats off the clock or without a running clock and work up to a max set of 10 around 75% 1RM. Once completed, the athlete enters the circuit as normal, with a running clock of 80-90 seconds.

Tips and Tricks

If you want to execute the metabolic circuit, here are a few tips and tricks to help the circuit go smoothly.

1. 1. Organize the circuit so that you travel from one end of the weight room to the other. Do not have players zigzag all over the weight room, leading to mass confusion. Have a coach at each major lift station with interns filling in at the single-joint stations.
   2. Perform the circuit with a rolling start, where athletes of similar strength pair up in groups of 2-3 and go through the circuit together. Organize the groups similarly to a lifting meet, with on-deck and in the hole. This will help the circuit roll through smoothly and provide clarity on who is spotting.
   3. Do not bench press unless you have sufficient spotters. Do not allow athletes to spot each other, as they will be too tired at this point in the session to safely spot. Instead, perform push-ups, pin presses, or machine/cable presses. If you do desire a barbell bench variation, raise the bench to its lowest possible incline and raise the catches to right below the chest. If the athlete must bail on the lift, they can do so safely with the bar rolling from the chest onto the catch bars.

Try It, Then Decide

The metabolic circuit is a powerful tool for any athlete looking to add quality muscle mass in the off-season while also providing a conditioning aspect utilizing PHAT principles. It is more than a single-factor workout, but rather a maximizer of multiple factors.

The metabolic circuit is a powerful tool for any athlete looking to add quality muscle mass in the off-season while also providing a conditioning aspect utilizing PHAT principles. Share on X

I personally love the metabolic circuit and use it and its variation not only with my athletes, but also in my own training. It is a gut check of a workout that will make you better on the other side. So, give it a try. See how you like it. Try some variations. If you don’t like it, great—move on to the next program. If you like it, I hope your athletes forgive you after the first week of implementation.

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. Shaner, A. A., Vingren, J. L., Hatfield, D. L., Budnar, R. G., Jr, Duplanty, A. A., and Hill, D. W. “The acute hormonal response to free weight and machine weight resistance exercise.” Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. 2014;28(4):1032–1040.

2. Kraemer, W. J., Marchitelli, L., Gordon, S. E., et al. “Hormonal and growth factor responses to heavy resistance exercise protocols.” Journal of Applied Physiology. 1990;69(4):1442–1450. https://doi.org/10.1152/jappl.1990.69.4.1442

Clubhead speed and its close relation, ball speed, are the objective standards for singular outputs in golf. These, combined with availability, are the aims of any strength and conditioning intervention in golf. Of all the objective measures we use at the European Tour Performance Institute, club head speed (CHS) is part of our quartet of isometric mid-thigh pull, countermovement jump impulse, and ball speed.

For the uninitiated, club head speed is how fast you move the head of the golf club just before impact. Roughly, for every extra 1 mph faster you swing the club, you can increase your driver distance by 3 yards. On the PGA Tour, the highest recorded club head speed is current 138 mph (Bryson Dechambeau, 2021 season) and the best 10 years ago was 127 mph (Bubba Watson, 2010 season—note Bubba’s 2021 best is 123 mph). While this is an 11-mph improvement, the tour average has only improved around 1 mph, from 112 to 113 mph. The PGA Tour itself has stated, “It can be seen that average club head speed has increased by 1.7 mph from 2007 to 2019 and ball speed by 4.9 mph.”

This isn’t representative of what the players who occupy the top 15 of the PGA Tour are doing, as all have average club head speeds higher than 120 mph. Sure, comparing players is not a one-to-one endeavor as it relates to golf performance—no one is winning club head speed tournaments—but it illustrates that motivated players can exploit output variables to give themselves more options.

Club head speed is the real-world impact measure that correlates with our other physical measures (for golf athletes), says @WSWayland. Share on X

Club head speed is the real-world impact measure that correlates with our other physical measures as shown by research performed by Wells et al. (2020) on our Challenge Tour players. Players with high club head speed are generally stronger and more explosive and have more body mass. However, club head speed alone is still a single measure and does not give us a full picture, as it should sit upon a base of health and general physical preparedness. This is something my colleagues at the European Tour Performance Institute sought to establish with our probability of impact pyramid.

“Inherently, as CHS increases so does injury risk, as the player has to sustain the increased forces associated with swinging faster. To counter this when we plan to upgrade the engine size, we also need to build a well-balanced chassis. This means increasing the ability of the relevant tissues (i.e., muscles and tendons) and structures (i.e., bones) to tolerate load. The force magnitude at the lumbar spine alone is worthy justification for the inclusion of strength training.” – Simon Brearley

While strength and conditioning has a minor probability of impact on technical outputs, it can influence tactical ones. Hitting long can be a tactical option in golf, since taking longer shots is a bounded risk that leads to more prize money. We can look at recent PGA Tour data and see that driving distance and prize money earned are very much related.

In the modern golf performance arena, nothing can be left on the table. When I started working in golf, the biggest obvious gap was a lack of conventional physical training. Once athletes started employing even the most basic of strength training routines, club head speed improved.

Why do high-force exercises like squats, deadlifts, and loaded jumps seem to transfer so well to club head and ball speeds? Well, a key part of the relationship lies in the correspondence of execution time frames. The average pro golf swing is, in a sports context, a slow movement. The often-cited number we see is most sporting action taking around 0.2-0.3 seconds. The golf swing, however, has a longer time to completion, with 0.8-1.2 seconds often reported. That is a long time in a sporting context: nearly three to four times longer. People will quibble and talk only about the downswing, which obviously is very fast, but this is trying to use reductionism to protect a notion. The whole golf swing is a slow action in respect to other sports.

High-force exercises like squats, deadlifts, and loaded jumps seem to transfer so well to club head and ball speeds…because the whole golf swing is a slow action in respect to other sports. Share on X

Now, time is absolutely crucial for producing a lot of force, and most squats and deadlifts travel at under 1 m/s versus most sporting actions being at 12 m/s. Most strength training at lower velocities and higher force production has a similar time frame—it’s generally considered slow. The ability to apply force vertically is crucial to swinging fast, and another common component of most conventional bilateral barbell training is improvements in vertical force. This helps what we call the anchoring effect (to be discussed later).

Why this; why now? Golfers are now starting to manifest the second order physicality that will produce more regular 130-mph club speeds, wanting to exploit any advantage this will be more normal than exceptional. Depending on what the R&A decide to do to slow play, as they recently argued that distance was hurting the game, I believe the ability to swing fast will be more important, not less, even with equipment changes.

So, all I need to do is train like a powerlifter? Wishful thinking, but no. There will of course be a point of diminishing returns where lateral, separation, and ballistic-based movements become important. Golf S&C has often emphasized these “specific” swing optimization approaches over a base of general preparation. I would argue possessing robustness and highly developed force-producing capacities allows specific approaches to be more effective. You cannot optimize a system that is not robust. Club head speed is a multifaceted thing, so many different factors go into it. But we can control some of those variables.

I mentioned in a previous article that roughly “80% of golf injuries are overuse-related. With this in mind, many golfers’ first port of call in supplementary training is a well-meaning physiotherapist who will often deal with the issue at hand, but not steel the athlete against its reoccurrence. Physiotherapy’s dominance in the sport can be witnessed when a golfer’s go-to piece of equipment after their clubs is their foam roller.”

I also mentioned before that this has come from what I see as a twofold issue: a culture of golfers leaning on a physiotherapist to inform their performance-related training and golfers’ flawed perceptions of strength and conditioning orthodoxy. Before I receive angry letters from physios, I respect the work of physiotherapists and call many friends and colleagues. They have a wheelhouse of responsibility that I cannot even imagine contending with.

So why has this situation come about? Well, my opinion is that many golf athletes only take supplementary strength work on board once they have been injured, and not before. Thankfully, many forward-thinking therapists now explore strength and conditioning as an avenue for injury reduction, especially when evidence dictates that these overuse injuries can be reduced by half with strength training.

When it comes to training for golfers, I usually suggest 1-3 reps, and probably no more than five, with varying loads depending on whether you want to achieve maximum velocity, power, or strength. Why? The golf swing is a very short duration, high-power, explosive activity clocking in at around 7,500 N in a full swing. (Keep in mind this force measurement is from a 1990 study, so it may be higher still.) To most strength coaches, this is considered pretty ordinary, but in the golf world it’s positively unorthodox.

As mentioned earlier, in the gym, training occurs at much lower velocities than it does during an actual sport. For comparison, the average punch is around 10 m/s, whereas the average dynamic effort bench press may only reach 0.8-1.0 m/s. A golf swing of a club travelling at 100 mph will be 44 m/s (very fast). The theory of dynamic correspondence suggests that as we approach a competition, velocity must increase to make the nervous system more specific in the way it produces force. Golf fitness has often put the figurative cart before the horse, focusing on specific velocity-focused or special strength methods ahead of general ones.

Golf fitness has often put the figurative cart before the horse, focusing on specific velocity-focused or special strength methods ahead of general ones, says @WSWayland. Share on X

As strength coaches, we know the attainment of general physical qualities can enhance sport performance in some individuals—particularly beginners. This is why novel modalities that force better bracing and ground interaction can yield positive outcomes at least initially. Once time goes on, training modalities focused on more specific exercises may, in fact, be needed for the continuing improvement of optimal transfer to more advanced athletes. This is where high-velocity peaking, contrast complex work, intent, etc. can be particularly useful, turning gym time into real-world performance statements. Real strength is the responsibility that many golfers and their coaches abdicate, so there is an opportunity for improvement that they are now starting to discover.

I am not a golf coach. My athletes do not come into the gym to practice golf—they come to build physical capacities that transfer well to golf. Getting stronger and gaining mass are the two most impactful things, from a general physical standpoint, a rotational power athlete can do, and that is what we are here to help with.

I’ve outlined the importance of strength. However, mere strength alone is only one facet of what we can affect to improve club head speed; club head speed being a key metric in the chase for distance. Most golfers need to raise the floor (get strong and robust) before they can lift the ceiling (optimize their speed).

There are other ways golfers can achieve this, and in a sport where 1 mph more in speed can equal a few yards, they are certainly not trivial. These approaches are:

• Gaining mass
• Complex or contrast methods
• Intent-based methods
• Swing optimization using GRF

Gaining Mass

One the most common concerns I hear in golf is the fear that an athlete gaining size will hurt their swing (baseball athletes worry about this as well). Both experience and research indicate the opposite. When golfers gain mass, we generally see a CHS improvement. It is important, however, that the mass gained is muscle; as they say, you can’t flex fat.

Becoming “bigger and stronger” helps with this in two ways:

1. The increased muscle mass increases the player’s ability to produce ground reaction force—the basis of the force a golfer can utilize during their swing.
2. The overall increase in body mass creates a greater anchoring effect, which helps the golfer remain stable throughout the swing.

The next point I usually get is an anecdote about how “so and so” got bigger, and it hurt their swing. There is a grain of truth to this if you take up bodybuilding to the exclusion of everything else. Then yes, your golf will probably suck.

We are currently seeing in golf what can only be described as the “Bryson Effect,” named after Bryson DeChambeau, the 2020 U.S. Open winner, whose weight gain, strength training, and club head speed improvements were well publicized. As golf is very peer-oriented, you will now see a pivot toward mass gain and athleticism by practitioners who in the past largely ignored their importance.

As a result, there has been an effort to try to explain the mass relationship in golf performance, and the equation used constantly is force = mass x acceleration. But this explanation is often misapplied scientism, with heavy focus on just the mass part. Even some of my favorite strength and conditioning experts have fallen into the trap of making this gross simplification.

F=ma is more of a linear concept, while most of the golf swing involves rotation. F=ma is part of the complex movement of the golf swing; it doesn’t explain what we see with Bryson’s swing. F=ma is a linear equation; the golf swing is rotational and requires an angular equation:

Angular impulse τAΔt &

Angular momentum L=Iω

Why? Well, during the golf swing:

• The club accelerates through angular impulse, increasing angular momentum of the body-club system without a sequential motion from the proximal (trunk) to distal (arm) segments; and
• Gaining large trunk angular momentum after the middle downswing is essential for achieving fast CHS. This key point is added mass anchors the athlete, allowing them to manipulate angular momentum further. Combine that with greater GRF manipulation, and that’s why mass matters so much.

This is not a full explanation of the complicated physics of the golf swing, as that sits well outside the scope of this article. And most golfers probably do not think about the detailed physics. Why? Because they apply and manipulate the variables implicitly.

One such way is by gaining mass, for instance. The others are how that mass is distributed and how angular velocity is generated. Part of the issue is that f=ma is such a neat equation it is very easy to dish out. Consider that one of my athletes swings very fast for a professional. He has recorded club head speeds of 135 mph, and he only weighs 205 pounds versus Bryson’s 240 pounds. If mass were so influential, he would just need to gain more weight to hit it even faster. Athletic muscular golfers yes; sumo-sized golfers, however, no.

I am breaking a rule I like: “Never engage in detailed overexplanations of why something is important: one debases a principle by endlessly justifying it.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Biomechanics nerds will still find this explanation inadequate, but this isn’t written for solely biomechanists.

The nutrition of gaining mass goes well beyond the scope of this article, and there is years’ worth of information available all over the internet. The point is that, while a simplistic answer to the mass issue in golf is to just gain more weight to honor the mass element of the f=ma equation, nothing is ever that simple. How you use your mass and how you accelerate are equally important.

Complex or Contrast Methods

Earlier this year, I started toying with second-generation contrast training for golf. For the longest time, I’ve advocated that getting fast swingers faster has almost always been a result of getting them stronger. Often this is the lowest-hanging fruit. What do we do, however, with golfers who are “strong enough”? This is the time to apply swing-specific strength strategies. Most golf fitness approaches prize this first over robustness-oriented general strength training.

Getting fast swingers faster has almost always been a result of getting them stronger. So with golfers who are ‘strong enough,’ it is the time to apply swing-specific strength strategies. Share on X

I’ve been a long-time advocate of French contrast training, making use of potentiation phenomena. To quote Joel Smith, “Barbell training delivers the coordinative mechanisms expressed in powerful movements,” when we marry it with an unloaded plyometric, a high-speed lift, and finally a very high speed plyo or accelerated movement, each potentiating the next. The idea of ascending correspondence means we can tailor our drills to better match our sport. So, we shift from general correspondence (least specific) to dynamic correspondence (most specific) throughout the course of a contrast sequence.

Video 1. Ascending correspondence affords us overlapping potentiation and a smart way to concurrently train multiple qualities, which is crucial for time-poor golf athletes.

French contrast works acutely and chronically. A French contrast session looks something like this:

• Heavy partial-range lift or isometric for 1-3 reps.
• Rest 20 seconds.

• Force-oriented plyometric exercise, such as a depth jump.
• Rest 20 seconds.

• Speed-strength-oriented lift for low to medium reps, 2-5 typically.
• Rest 20 seconds.

• Speed-oriented plyometric exercise of higher repetition range.
• Rest 2-5 minutes and repeat.

This method has proved pivotal in helping my athletes be more explosive, jump higher, and see this transfer in a broad sense. But golf is a sport that can benefit from that acute potentiation to improve swing speed.

Thus, by taking this mix of coordinative improvements and nervous system potentiation, we can acutely and chronically improve club head speed. I use two approaches:

Version 1 – Simply modified French contrast

• Heavy partial-range lift or isometric for 1-3 reps.
• Rest 20 seconds.
• Force-oriented plyometric exercise, such as a depth jump.
• Rest 20 seconds.
• Speed-strength-oriented lift for low to medium reps, 2-5 typically.
• Rest 20 seconds.
• Speed-based swing using lighter speed stick 5 reps. Maximum intent!
• Rest 2-5 minutes and repeat.

Version 2 – Joel Smith second-generation

• Heavy partial-range lift or isometric for 1-3 reps.
• Rest 20 seconds.
• Force-oriented plyometric exercise, such as a depth jump.
• Rest 20 seconds.
• Speed-based swing using lighter speed stick 5 reps. Maximum intent!
• Repeat sequence once more, then rest.

I usually organize these into either vertical contrast or lateral contrast depending on the needs of the individual. Generally, as the athlete gets strong, their mastery of vertical force production means we can dig into more nuanced horizontal force production.

Video 2. Vertical force expression is crucial in golf since it has a strong correlation to clubhead speed, and you should train it accordingly.

This way, we move from lowest to highest velocity in sequence. A swing radar or any speed tracker can keep intent high and also be used for a quality drop-off approach to maximum speed swing practice.

Video 3. Once athletes have improved their vertical force expression, they can explore lateral and horizontal expression in either specific or nonspecific contexts.

I am careful to emphasize that this approach is a constrained and limited one. Something I stressed on Twitter recently was: “Swing specific speed strategies work but peak out very fast, as it’s a small bucket that fills quickly.” This is obviously in context of the broader approach of foundational physicality. I’ve found its usefulness diminishes after 4-6 weeks, usually with a flattening of improvement or staleness in terms of subjective feedback from the athlete.

Once a knife is sharp, it’s sharp—we don’t want to wear it down to the hilt. This means you will see shorter acute improvements from this type of approach. Keep monitoring club head speed and ball speed, and if the needle isn’t moving, then it’s probably time to shift your approach.

Intent-Based Methods

How many speed swings, coach? I get this question a lot, and I am becoming less fond of prescribing strict numbers for speed swings. Increasingly, autoregulatory approaches give us the best results. We have been having a lot of success with speed-based drop-off strategies to get our faster swingers’ speed ceilings even higher. Speed reserve is an important concept and utilizing the concept is one way to raise the ceiling.

“The Speed Reserve effect is real. We can condition our athletes through other means. If we help an athlete raise their maximal velocity, sub-maximal efforts become less metabolic costly. Similar to the idea of raising 1RM in a lift.” – Zach Higginbotham

The aim is, in short, to make those average swings better. When you are averaging what your opponents can max out on, it is a huge advantage that you should exploit.

As I stated earlier, we used a number of contrast and complex protocols to implement this. Cueing intent is crucial—think of it less as a golf swing and more like a numbers game. There is no ball strike here to worry about. Basically, we stop once we drop past a set threshold of speed.

This is not dissimilar to velocity-based drop-off work we might do with velocity-based training, but the set termination threshold is much tighter. I have found around 5% works well. The protocol is to perform a swing every 5-15 seconds. Normally I encourage athletes to perform this on the range. Verbal cueing, intent, and freshness are all important to making this work. Below is an example table.

We stop the set after 5% drop-off and use the highest value of all sets to act as a benchmark. If the 5% drop-off is exceeded on the first swing versus the previous best, we terminate the activity. Usually we can get 3-4 sets of anywhere from 20-30 total swings.

Video 4. Speed drop-off swinging is effectively a form of high-quality cluster training and benefits from micro rests between attempts to keep movement quality high.

I have found the club type/weight is probably not important, but what seems to be a sweet spot is around 10-15% higher speeds than with a conventional driver to get the most out of overspeed approaches. As mentioned in the past, acute and chronic gains from this level off fast.

Using GRF to Guide Swing Technical Intent

While the strength coach guides the improvement of an athlete’s force production and rate of force production, in the most general sense, there is occasion when specific exercises directed by the appropriate use of GRF data can influence the use of special exercises. Three-dimensional force platforms allow insight into GRF patterns in the swing and having the ability to produce a lot of force is not the same as using it well. While I do not have 3-D platforms myself, my athletes (like a lot of golfers) have a cadre of professionals who they can see for objective input. It’s then my job to decide if it’s something for their technical coach to address or an issue that I can deal with from a constraint-led approach.

Video 5. By using 3-D GRF data, we can create drills specifically suited to the individual athlete and their specific strengths and weaknesses in the swing.

For instance, here is an athlete who needs to work on more lead leg drive and extension based on GRF swing data. He needs to push through the toes and almost hop back to add more force on the downswing. We devised two intensive contrast exercises, one with a 2-kilogram med ball and the other with a slightly heavier club. The idea here isn’t pure swing replication but smart overload of the desired element of their technical execution—something that Stefan Jones has mastered with cricket athletes.

You cannot optimize a system that is not robust, says @WSWayland. Share on X

The caveat here is that, in this example, our golfer is very robust, and as I’ve said before, you cannot optimize a system that is not robust. While similar to the fault-finding approach of the past in “golf fitness,” I am of the opinion most golfers cannot make the most of that approach because they lack the physical resources to do so.

First General, Then Specific Approaches

If you have a golfer who is particularly strong, and you feel they can get the most out these sorts of approaches, give them a try for some acute CHS gains. These approaches can also be appropriated by athletes in any rotational sport, and I use a similar approach with my combat athletes to improve striking power.

Golf professionals are now starting to grasp the fact that golf fitness has often sought overspecialized approaches to solving performance problems, or the aforementioned cart before the horse situation. Once a golfer has spent a few years getting under the bar, these specialized approaches can be inserted into the training rotation for best effect.

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

Tilley, N. and Brearley, S. “How the best golfers in the world are using Strength & Conditioning to elevate their performance.” British Journal of Sports Medicine. August 12, 2020.

Wells, J.E., Charalambous. L.H., Mitchell. A.C., et al. “Relationships between Challenge Tour golfers’ clubhead velocity and force producing capabilities during a countermovement jump and isometric mid-thigh pull.” Journal of Sports Sciences. 2019;37(12):1381-1386.

R&A Distance Insights Report

Brearley, S., Coughlan, D., and Wells, J. “Strength and Conditioning in Golf: Probability of Performance Impact.” 2019.

Brearley, S. and Tilley, N. “What Should Golfers Do in the Gym?” Golf & Health.

There is a war currently happening in track and field: a conflict centered on tempo training for sport. I tend to position myself as a radical centrist on topics until I have had the chance to formulate a clear opinion that I am ready to defend. As a rule, I try not to rock the boat unless I am clear enough, in my opinion, and I think it can provide context for others to consider.

Today, I plant my flag firmly on the mountain of tempo training. For most of my coaching career, I have used some aspect of tempo training within my program. Tempo is often described as submaximal activities with incomplete rest. Typically, it is used to develop work capacity for a specific aspect of sport.

Recently, several popular coaches have crucified the use of tempo training as a legitimate training modality. These coaches believe in nothing but acceleration and maximal velocity work at all times. Any training outside these limited training options is, at best, a waste of time and, at worst, detrimental to the health of the athlete. Thus, tempo work is training non grata.

Interestingly enough, many elite high school, college, and pro training groups do some tempo work throughout their training plan. Colleagues like Australian 400m sprinter guru Mike Hurst, Hall of Fame and Baylor Coach Clyde Hart, and World Youth Record Holder Coach Sean Burris regularly use/used tempo. Now, I know what you are thinking— “Those are 400-meter specialist coaches.” I frequently hear that argument from people, but when making the point, they’re already beginning to admit tempo seems to work the longer you take the event. However, even if I concede to you the more extended sprint argument, how do you explain the Jamaican athletes doing submaximal work right now?

If you follow sub-10-second sprinter Julian Forte on his YouTube page, you’ll see him and training partner Asafa Powell (former 100m world record holder) doing submaximal work. You don’t have to look too far to find a rival Jamaican sprint camp that featured Usain Bolt doing similar work a few years back. Indeed, the arms race on the talented tiny island certainly would discredit tempo training if it meant a distinct advantage in outperforming other training groups. Instead, the opposite is true, and submaximal work is a part of their annual plan.

You may now be whispering about genetic freaks or special supplements covering up for inadequate training. To counteract the freak theory, I would point to our coaching tree locally. Numerous coaches have adopted our methods, with tempo being a key component with high school athletes in many different environments having similar success. Implementing the system has resulted in many state championships, individual state records, and All State medalists.

Many coaches may ask the question, “Can’t I get the benefits from tempo by doing other training to circumvent the need for it?” In a practical sense, the answer is “It all depends.” Different aspects of speed/special endurance, biomechanical drills, plyometrics, general endurance work, and strength training can do what tempo does. However, the adaptations would be spread over numerous sessions and units of training. The time needed to get that done could lead to sessions that are impractical.

Tempo allows you to target a session that better prepares the athlete for the other key workouts the rest of the weeks. Additionally, mixed stimuli can lead to mixed results or suppressed adaptations to goals of the other key workouts throughout the week. Most of the enemies of tempo are not just a one-item interest group. Instead, they have a very thorough set of ideals that lead to limits in many other methods.

Examples of these limitations include mandated days away from practice, short or no warm-ups, no suppleness training, extremely short practice times, intervals shorter than 250 meters regardless of event, and no weight room. So, in reality, if the coaches don’t do tempo, they likely don’t do many other training modalities either. This philosophy has been highlighted often here at SimpliFaster and many webinars during quarantine.

It is time to bring tempo back as a proper and useful option in every coach’s toolbox, says @SprintersCompen. Share on X

Obviously, a minimalist philosophy is an attractive option for new coaches or those who need to limit workload to attract athletes who might not be all in on the sport of track and field. As we mature in our coaching, many of us get better at understanding that context is key to deciphering the methods used by others and their legitimacy to a coach’s unique set of circumstances. Somehow, a few professionals in the world of athletics have taken tempo training out of context. It is time to bring tempo back as a proper and useful option in every coach’s toolbox.

The Importance of Developing Work Capacity

Properly designed tempo training can reduce the risks for a sprinter across their entire career. I know it can seem counterintuitive to think increasing loads of less than maximal work can protect an athlete’s health, but let’s ponder this for a moment in other sports besides track and field.

First, let’s look at football. Since the collective bargaining agreement that reduced training camp practice time on the field, both minor and serious injuries have been on the rise. How many of you have had a fantasy team remain physically intact throughout an entire year? It was a well-intentioned idea to reduce training camp sessions and their length by reducing workload, but clearly, it has trended in the opposite direction.

The same can be said for replacing the value of general fitness with that of “load management” in the NBA and MLB. Many strength and conditioning coaches are spending less and less time on the second part of their job description. What happened to the days of Michael Jordan, John Stockton, or Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who started nearly every game and never got hurt? We now have many athletes playing basketball all year long in AAU leagues who never practice developing skills or work capacity to make it through an entire professional season. Now it’s becoming commonplace to sit out stars in games against the Knicks to rest for the postseason. Could you imagine Reggie Miller asking for that time off and missing the chance to make Spike Lee look foolish? Of course not.

As for the MLB, what about Bob Gibson? Would Gibby’s style and relentless mound persistence have been possible if the St. Louis Cardinals managed his pitch count? I believe they would have over-managed his pitches into an earlier career decline. He needed that time on the mound to feel strong, deliver sweet chin music, and be the most feared pitcher in the history of the game. Now they often pull pitchers artificially with less-talented middle relievers. Could you imagine asking Bob Gibson to step off the mound for a middle reliever? Yeah, me neither.

Now, what about track and field? Have you ever heard of Carl Lewis and Allison Felix? Know what they have in common? Lots of submaximal velocity training. Oh, yeah, and medals in four different Olympic Games in speed power events! Regardless of the sport, battle-tested resilience developed through training combined with an elite performer is where you find greatness.

Lactic Tolerance and Buffering

Tempo’s most commonly associated benefit is it can improve an athlete’s lactic tolerance and clearance. Tolerance certainly is essential in longer sprints like the 200, 400, 300/400H, 800, 4×200, 4×400, and 4×800. Research shows that once an athlete crosses the 40-second barrier under a maximal effort, they are no longer able to efficiently buffer the flood of waste that burns the legs. Improving an athlete’s ability to buffer this poison enables them to run faster for longer in a race. All other things being equal, this is the difference between medaling or making the final—or not.

As for lactic clearance in a high school or college championship setting, a sprinter must perform at a high level multiple times within a few hours. In some state championship settings, this can even be two events in a row. For example, in Missouri, the 100-meter dash is directly followed by the 4×200, so clearing waste becomes vital for high performance and injury prevention. Properly planned tempo training will follow an event-specific training session from the day before.

When pairing two days, you create an athlete who can handle two high-effort days. Planning your sessions with this in mind enables your athlete to perform at a high level multiple days in a row, which is necessary for nearly all championships that are more than one day of competition. We all have seen athletes look like gods on day one of a championship, only to come up short or injured in the finals because they have never seen sessions or meets where they must compete for multiple days in a row.

Having the fastest maximum velocity is essential, but if you get injured before the championship, it doesn’t matter. Think about the careers of Xavier Carter or Usain Bolt. One has a fast, individual personal best, and the other is the greatest legend in track and field—repeatable high performance and injury prevention matter.

The Advantages of Using Tempo

Doing some submaximal work helps get you to the finish line and perform your best when it matters most because it supports all the other work and restoration needed to complement your critical workouts. In a week with a race on Friday or Saturday, we only have one tempo session. Having at least one tempo day a week allows for an extra session every week for the season versus a strict high/low system that many minimal systems have within a microcycle. Throughout a typical 13-week high school season, this gives you nearly two more weeks of training sessions compared to a high/low program. When properly planned, this can go a long way to separating your athletes from the competition.

Additionally, weather can play a role where a maximal training session is impossible, especially in programs that nerf warm-ups that don’t “slow cook the meat.” Tempo allows for a safer option on inclement weather days when the surface or temperature makes training maximally very risky, thus giving your program more flexibility to pick the choice weather day of the week without just sending the athletes home. This will pay dividends mentally when athletes feel they can race in any weather because they have seen it in practice, albeit at a moderate intensity level.

Tempo allows for a safer option on inclement weather days when the surface or temperature makes training maximally very risky, says @SprintersCompen. Share on X

Belief is the most powerful performance-enhancing drug. Coaches can use training back to back or in bad weather to help their athletes believe they are ready for the real challenges ahead that are typical in a spring sport. Additionally, slowing things down and adding some specific load gives a coach a chance to help the sprinter improve their mechanics in a less-intense environment so the sprinter learns the proper way to move. Eventually, they’ll be able to take those technical cues and spin them into a high velocity.

Tempo training also gives the body additional stimulus to improve slower adaptive connective tissues like tendons and ligaments and the skeletal system, which is not much different than the benefit of phasing in hypertrophic weight training in an annual strength training plan. Additionally, when it comes to ancillary activity, sprint coaches often love to use plyometrics due to their specificity being similar to running. However, tempo achieves a similar training effect and similar contact times. Still, it can repeat the loading at larger volumes and similar contact times while often being the safer option for athletes who might not be able to land or execute plyometrics correctly.

Tempo can also be used as a go-between to improve movement efficiency and impulse while an athlete acquires the skills to implement bounding or advanced plyometric menu items safely. The frequency of biomechanical action should improve the efficiency of the technique and robustness of an athlete. Moreover, one of the hidden ways tempo training can help a sprinter is through an improved circulatory system. Before he passed away, Charlie Francis discussed this with speed coach Derek Hansen as one of the hidden secrets to tempo training.

Charlie Francis said that one of the hidden secrets of tempo training was that it could help a sprinter by improving their circulatory system, says @SprintersCompen. Share on X

Obviously, lengthy general aerobic work based on distance training is a non-starter for most sprinters. However, tempo is often a bridge between anaerobic and aerobic. How does an improved circulatory system keep you from getting hurt? An athlete with a warmer body that can move in blood and move out waste has enormous advantages over someone with a system that’s not as efficient. Furthermore, think about how much an improved circulatory system can help an athlete who regularly competes in colder climates or rainy conditions like in the Northern United States, Canada, and Europe.

Implementing Tempo for Sprinters in Practice

Tempo work has become a large part of many top-quality sprinter programs around the world. A sprint coach can use either intensive or extensive tempo training. Extensive tempo is part of programs like Charlie Francis’s bipolar system and Clyde Hart’s long-to-short periodization models. Extensive tempo elicits different adaptations depending on the intensity of the intervals. Charlie Francis liked to train tempo workouts at 70% intensity to stimulate aerobic adaptations that he believed would add to the value of active recoveries.

Sean Burris, Nick Buckvar, and I used our tempos with 80-85% intensities. Our tempo work, in conjunction with short recoveries, creates waste and fatigue. However, we use these tempos to teach pacing for the second 200 meters in a 400-meter dash or 300/400H race. In addition to pacing, we choose to use these intensities because they allow the body to improve its buffering capacity. The buffering capacity comes from elevated sodium bicarbonate levels, enabling your athlete to push harder and longer.

Inexperienced coaches might look at these potential adaptations and try to extend the intervals. As a word of caution, sometimes more is not better. Long or lactic threshold runs are not ideal for short or mid sprinters. After a certain distance and with low intensities, there is an increased potential for poor posture and long ground contact times. Shorter distance tempo sprints allow for the athlete to still think about their running mechanics while at the same time maintaining a consistent pace. A sprinter who trains too slowly for too long adapts to the training, making them better at running slow for a long time. Not ideal for sprinting.

The other issue that comes from longer runs is psychological: A sprinter tends not to handle that type of training very well. A negative self-voice can be very destructive, and the longer a sprinter is out on a long run, the louder the voice becomes. Intervals on the track allow you to communicate with the sprinter to keep them appropriately motivated to finish the training.

Logistics and Communication

When performing tempo 200s, it is best to do your 200-meter work in the middle of the straightaways on the track, rather than a traditional full turn and the full straight. Since tempo workouts usually have short rest periods, this method gives the coach closer proximity to athletes by merely walking across the field. Crossing at mid-field helps the coach record accurate times without the need of an assistant to catch their finish, plus it gives them the advantage of frequent, clear communication with the sprinters as they run.

It also allows for emphasizing a critical area of every event—the finish. In finishing intervals, athletes come off the turn with only 50 meters left, and they only need to stay focused for a short period while they are fatigued. Therefore, with a shorter straightaway, they can concentrate on proper mechanics to help maintain their tempo and running form as they exit the turn for “home.” Simple cues such as “stay tall,” “hammer the arms,” and “short quick stride” will become ingrained in the sprinters every time they finish a race.

We typically choose to do our tempo work both clockwise and counterclockwise. I opted to reverse course to limit injuries from continually loading one side of our athlete’s bodies at high speed. If you are on an indoor track, it’s more important to go both ways, since the tight turns create significant centripetal force straining the body. It’s also best to train tempo in outside lanes in an indoor track environment to reduce the stress as much as possible. If you are doing 100 tempo repeats, you should still stand in the middle of the straightaways or athletic field. This way, you can cue your athletes to maintain proper posture.

Always remember, the rest periods are just as critical to the workout as the actual running intervals, says @SprintersCompen. Share on X

Ensure your athletes do not fall on the ground or walk far away from their “go” mark. Sprinters falling down or wandering away from the go mark can disrupt the entire construction of the workout. If they don’t pay attention to their location, they can miss the proper recoveries that must be short to maintain the correct adaptations. Always remember, the rest periods are just as critical to the workout as the actual running intervals.

Used as a Cooldown

We frequently use decrescendo tempo 100-meter striders to cool down. We usually do 6-8 on the turf, starting fast at 90% and working our way down to 50%. We cut the intensity for each pair.

We have found that this format of a cooldown reduces our number of catastrophic calf muscle cramps at the end of the session. These cramps usually appear when you have your kids run two ugly laps around the track. Cramping often happens because you ask the athlete to load up extremely fatigued muscles that are being overloaded, and you don’t balance out the force demands from all the leg muscles in the posterior or anterior chain. When running these the athletes go barefoot on the turf, weather permitting.

Seasonal Progression of Tempo for Sprinters

Tempo must change as you move through the season as well. When we start the season, we use the previously mentioned percentages to guide our paces. As the season progresses, we use our tempos to simulate our comeback 200 on a 400-meter run. We run this after we establish a competition 400 or relay split.

The loads we start with are at the low end of the suggested volume. The volume moves higher as the athlete tolerates it for three weeks, with an unloading microcycle on the fourth. Rookies, untrained veterans, and trained veterans have different load progressions.

Once we get to six weeks away from the state championship, we begin the unloading phase. As we unload the tempo sessions, they transform in their purpose. They go from being tempo training to becoming a speed endurance session that backs up the previous Key Workout #1 on Monday. Besides unloading the volume, the recovery between reps enlarges, and the intensity slides up as well.

As we unload the tempo sessions, they transform in their purpose, says @SprintersCompen. Share on X

The implementation of changes coincides with our race schedule of single-day meets until we reach the state championship, typically a two-day competition unless storms play a factor. Back-to-back days of training while unloading volume to the overall plan provides a two-day experience that simulates a state meet schedule for our sprinters. It also takes the pressure off our athlete’s need to do anything later in the week before the season’s championship phase, when competing with fresh legs is of the utmost importance. I discuss these concepts in further detail here.

Interval Distance: The distances should be 80 meters or less (short sprinters). For extensive tempo distances, intervals should be between 100 and 200 meters (mid and long sprinters).

Recoveries: Intensive tempo recoveries between sets can be much larger because the shorter distances allow intensive intervals. These sets of intensive tempos are not just fatiguing aerobically and building waste, but they can trash a sprinter’s central nervous system (CNS). Understand the reality that multilayered fatigue recovery between sets can be much longer than extensive tempo training.

Recovery between intervals can be anywhere from 30 seconds up to five minutes if the athlete needs more time. However, to indeed be tempo, the rest should be concise and avoid longer recoveries. If they require more rest, I allow the sprinter’s recovery between interval sets to be more substantial and keep the athlete’s rest shorter between repetitions. Recovery between sets can be 3-10 minutes. Extensive tempo with 200-meter intervals recoveries can be from 45 seconds to two minutes.

I typically stay with two minutes until we reach the peak phase. During the peak phase, the theme of the repeat 200s changes by increasing the intensity, lengthening recovery, and changing volume. For the 100-meter intervals, your recoveries can be as short as 30 seconds up to 1.5 minutes. Recovery between sets with 100-meter tempo work can be up to two minutes.

Some coaches will choose to make the rest between these intervals active by adding a push-up, bodyweight squats, or other bodyweight activities to add stress between intervals. Another option for a long sprinter’s tempo recovery is to make it an active restoration with a 200-meter recovery run. Active recovery runs tend to be more commonly used by distance runners. Making the recoveries active will increase the difficulty of the work.

When using active recoveries, the sprinter should not run anywhere near the speeds they cover during the actual training interval. However, do not let the sprinter shuffle jog. The recovery run should never take longer than double the time it takes to complete the tempo interval.

Here is an example of a 400-meter hurdle tempo session I ran with NCAA D2 multi-event recorder holder Brent Vogel.

Load: Intensive tempo loads can be 800-2,800 meters. Extensive tempo loads can be quite large. Baylor Long to Short Sprint Coach Clyde Hart usually starts with the largest number of tempo repeats at the beginning of the season. In most club and high school programs, my suggestion is to begin with lower volumes. As the season progresses, a coach should add volume and then reduce the amount again when athletes reach their peak phase. Extensive volume for short sprinters is anywhere from 1,000-3,000 meters. For mid sprinters, the volume can be 1,800 to 3,000 meters. For long sprinters, the load can go from 1,800 to 4,000 meters.

Percentages and Placement of Tempo Training

You can justify all training. depending on the athlete’s sport, event group, environment, and genetic makeup. I know there have been many discussions (some heated) in some different forums about the percentage of effort for tempo work. Charlie Francis’s influence is evident on people who support the concept of keeping tempo percentage down to 70-75%. Coach Francis used these considerably lower intensities on tempo training to develop capillary beds to enhance the circulatory system for enhanced recovery and improved body temperature regulation. However, if you train at 85%, you teach the body to adapt by creating buffers to hold the performance-crushing waste product back for an increased amount of time.

As stated earlier, your tempo training should hinge upon what event you are trying to train for as a competitor. I never put tempo training at the beginning of the week on Monday. The type of sprinter you are training will dictate what days and types of tempo will be the focus:

One of the most significant aspects of tempo workouts is that you will get something out of running at 70-75% or even 85%. Additionally, your sprinter can still maintain better mechanics in training tempo than pounding out aerobic work. Protecting the biomechanical model from the mid-range intensity is good, so they don’t learn lousy motor skills. Trudging through horrible workouts with no value is just a waste of time. Everything you do should have a purpose.

One of the most significant aspects of tempo workouts is that you will get something out of running at 70-75% or even 85%, says @SprintersCompen. Share on X

If the 400 is your event, you probably want to run faster during tempo training. If you have a 100-meter sprinter specialist who can bring their “A” game on “key workout” high-intensity days, lower-intensity tempo days are required. Lower-intensity tempo days for 100-meter specialists make sense due to the nervous system needing 48 hours to recover before it can provide you with the 95% effort necessary to achieve positive training effects for the highest-velocity sprints.

As previously stated, the themes I provided try to build in recovery for our sprinters depending on their strengths. If the weekly structure is too much for an athlete you are working with, I would move the weekly design to a 2/1/1/1/1 system. For example, a sprinter would be on a relatively heavy load for two days (Monday/Tuesday), off for one (Wednesday), on for one (Thursday), off for one (Friday), and on for one (Saturday).

Break Down the Walls

Remember, context is everything when developing a training plan. Those who live in absolutes lose themselves when defending something rigid like a brick—with enough force, it crumbles under the weight of reality. As it is difficult to know what the world will put in front of you, you must be flexible, or you will be unable to apply the best solution to common and uncommon problems alike.

Tempo training is a solution to some of the common challenges of athletic development. I have intended to provide insight as to why I still fly the flag of tempo training. When properly applied, it can improve biomechanics, race strategy, buffering capacity, and injury prevention; simulate championship conditions; and allow schedule flexibility in a training plan. Don’t automatically reject a common practice that has led to good results and progress because it doesn’t fit someone’s narrative.

Don’t let social media algorithms put you in a silo, unaware that the answers you seek for the athlete(s) you coach could be right on the other side of the wall, says @SprintersCompen. Share on X

As coaches, it’s important to challenge less-nuanced ideas respectfully. Constructive criticism is particularly vital if it is your friend, as you’re often one of the only ones they will listen too. Don’t let the social media algorithms put you in a silo, unaware that the answers you may seek for the athlete(s) you coach could be right on the other side of the wall.

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 term “Indy” has commonly been used amongst creatives as a reference to “independent” filmmaking. Directors and filmmakers would find efficient and effective ways to get out from underneath large studio executives in an effort to create their own vision without interference or creative differences. In NFL circles, “going to Indy” in the new year has meant traveling to Indianapolis for the annual NFL Combine event to assess potential draft picks for the upcoming season.

With the news that the 2021 version of the NFL Combine will be exceptionally different due to COVID-19 precautions—with Indianapolis being ruled out as a central gathering site for evaluations—an excursion to “Indy” this year will inevitably mean that “individual” assessments will be much harder to accomplish, and prospective players (and their agents) will have to work harder “independently” to cultivate interest from general managers and scouts. While the NFL works this week to come up with alternative plans to the traditional scouting event, combine preparation groups, agents, and players are trying to get a better idea of how to navigate the next few months.

For the 2021 NFL Combine, as with everything related to the global pandemic, adaptability, flexibility, patience, determination, and precise execution will win the day, says @DerekMHansen. Share on X

A recent article published by Sports Illustrated outlines some general thoughts discussed by the NFL and teams on alternative arrangements to date, but nothing has been officially laid out by the League at the time of the writing of this article. I thought that I would outline some general issues and concepts for a revised approach to the 2021 NFL Combine, as well as identify some pivoting points for players, agents, and combine preparation professionals. As with everything related to the global pandemic, adaptability, flexibility, patience, determination, and precise execution will win the day when it comes to putting your best foot forward.

Medical Evaluations

One of the more difficult processes to duplicate in a non-centralized environment will be the medical evaluations. I have had the privilege of sitting in on the orthopedic evaluations for a number of teams at the NFL Combine and was impressed at the thoroughness and efficiency of these sessions. When I attended, eight meeting rooms in the convention center were dedicated to player evaluations, with medical staff from four teams assigned to each room to collectively assess individual athletes. They had access to recent imaging visuals and reports and supplemented this information with hands-on physical examinations. Large semi-trailers containing MRI machines and other imaging technology were also on-site if team physicians require additional information.

It’s quite a sight to see, resembling something along the lines of a high-tech livestock evaluation prior to auction. Team physicians also conduct internal medical examinations to collect information on cardiovascular, kidney, liver, and pulmonary health. Needless to say, there is a lot of close-proximity, hands-on involvement throughout the day, with more than 300 athletes being examined by 32 teams and associated doctors and medical staff. Everyone is exhausted at the end of these examinations.

As you can understand, seeing the individual players in-person is a significant requirement of this process. Since the traditional centralized Indy version of this process cannot be carried out under the current COVID-19 circumstances, it has been suggested that regional versions of this setup be established in close proximity to players to minimize travel. Because many prospects currently conduct their training in warm-weather parts of the country, there has been talk of having the majority of regional medical exams in places like Florida, Texas, Arizona, and California. Such an arrangement could limit the air travel required for athletes, NFL officials, and team staff, with only a minority of prospects required to fly to their in-person medical examination.

Since this would be one of the only official close-proximity in-person requirements for the prospects, it may have to be accompanied by COVID-19 testing protocols to help minimize the possibility of viral transmission and infection. Medical staff could conceivably have received their vaccinations for COVID-19 by the time of the regional examinations, but it is doubtful that young prospects would have received theirs.

I anticipate that teams would view this element of the traditional Combine evaluations to be of the highest priority and, therefore, would invest the most time and resources to ensure that it could be carried out in person in the most efficient, most effective, and safest manner. A bubble scenario might be possible during the duration of these examinations, but it would depend on the number of athletes attending each site and the length of time required to complete the assessments. Teams will be happy to get these sessions in the books, as they certainly help to determine the health and potential longevity of their draft picks.

Zoom and Video-Conferencing Interviews

I know this may come as a surprise to many physical preparation and strength professionals, but many NFL teams view the prospect interviews to be the next most important element of the NFL Combine event after the medical exams. These give teams a practical opportunity to see how individual prospects handle themselves in an interview scenario, responding to questions about their football knowledge and their personal life, as well as evaluate the players in a stressful situation that demands effective communication and thinking on their feet. It also helps them determine whether a given player will fit into the culture of the organization and has the right chemistry to gel with other key existing players in the locker room. Regardless of an athlete’s physical performance and medical status, if a player is not the right fit, it must be determined sooner rather than later so as not to create disruptions and future headaches.

While an in-person interview conveys all sorts of valuable information around body language and physical communication, we have now all become more accustomed to and accepting of video-conferencing scenarios. This may be one of the easier NFL Combine elements to replace with technology.

Video calls do not require the same distancing and shielding requirements, with high-definition video providing as much facial detail as you need to assess anxiety or calm, says @DerekMHansen. Share on X

Teams could easily schedule the necessary interviews with players at their convenience, recording the sessions for review by all pertinent staff. And, as I have discovered with any in-person exchanges as of late, face masks can impair the speech audibility and the luxury of seeing a person’s facial expressions and mouth movements when interacting with team staff. Video calls do not require the same distancing and shielding requirements, with high-definition video providing as much facial detail as you need to assess anxiety or calm. I would even encourage teams to conduct video interviews where you can see the prospect’s whole body to assess their level of comfort or anxiety in their body language.

Regional Combine Events for Performance and Skill Evaluations

While it might seem like combining the in-person medical evaluations with the performance and football-specific skill evaluations at a number of key regional sites is a commonsense solution, we have to remember that these additional contacts will not only extend the duration of the event, but also introduce a greater number of close-proximity exchanges among prospects, evaluators, and other staff. Longer contact exposures and a longer-duration event will only increase the probability of infection unless strict bubbles are established for these regional centers with quarantine periods leading up to such events.

I cannot see the NFL agreeing to combine the activities, particularly when medical tests are deemed significantly higher priority for their decision-making. Increasing the risk of infection with a longer event will only jeopardize the integrity of the main reason for meeting in person in the first place. Every positive test further delays the process and creates a risk of closing down the entire effort.

This does not mean that satellite performance and skill-testing sessions could not be carried out at a separate date—well after the medical evaluations have been concluded—with smaller groups meeting at select locations. Teams would be given the option to send a limited number of scouts to keep the numbers manageable, and a video feed of the evaluations would be made available to all pertinent scouts, coaching staff, and medical staff. As with any in-person evaluation, it simply gives teams an additional look at the prospects in controlled scenarios.

Prospects would still be required to prove their fitness and perform under pressure, albeit at a smaller scale and with less fanfare. And, if any positive COVID-19 cases are detected, the event has not jeopardized the other key elements of the Combine evaluation (medicals and interviews), with other opportunities available to showcase their physical talents (pro days).

Pro Day Events

Depending on the local lockdown and event restriction guidelines established in each state, county, and university around COVID-19, college pro day events may still be a viable means of evaluating prospects. However, if infection cases continue at the current pace, it will significantly impact the desire of scouts to travel to as many events as they may have done pre-COVID-19. Local university staff may still be able to run an event with all of the physical tests and football skill drills, but it may be necessary to provide comprehensive video streaming or, at the very least, a detailed video recording of the event to distribute to NFL teams.

If a specific state, county, or institution does not permit gathering for a pro day event, it will be up to individual prospects to inquire about gaining access to another pro day event at another school or within a different state. The name of the game at this time of year is getting your performances in front of NFL teams by any means necessary. The job of the prospects and their agents is to make it easy for scouts and teams to see the athletes at their best. If that means hiring a camera crew to take the video for themselves, then do whatever it takes to get it done. This may be their only chance to be seen.

It will be interesting to see how programs innovate and hustle to get their players recognized during this time while also holding a safe event on their campuses says @DerekMHansen. Share on X

College programs also have a vested interest to get their players drafted and on an NFL roster. Hence, it will be interesting to see how programs innovate and hustle to get their players recognized during this time while also holding a safe event on their campuses.

Private Sector Facility Showcases

There is no shortage of private sector coaches and professionals preparing athletes for pro day and football combine events, even during a global pandemic. In fact, I would assume that private sector operations have experienced more business over the last year due to the pandemic closing down pro and collegiate facilities during the various surges of the pandemic. The role of these private facilities will continue to loom large as both pro organizations and college campuses may not be able to assemble large groups of athletes for formal training for the foreseeable future.

In the last few weeks, private combine preparation operations have been waiting anxiously to determine when they can showcase the results of their hard work over the past six to eight weeks. If there is no formal centralized NFL Combine event, private coaches have to figure out when and where the key alternative events may happen and then adjust their training schedules as required. These events may be scaled down and dispensed in greater numbers in an effort to piece together a semblance of a combine experience.

In some cases, combine preparation coaches may be afforded more time than in previous years, as organizations take more time to organize safe and efficient events for prospects and staff. The onus is on the combine prep specialists to give their clients the best possible opportunity to be ready at a moment’s notice and produce their best performances, sometimes on several occasions.

“Given the information we currently have about the NFL Combine, we will still be preparing our athletes to be ready for any scaled-down version of the Combine such as regional combines. This includes not only the physical prep, but the mental prep, interview prep, and getting guys healthy. This really isn’t much different from our normal process. Typically, the dates of pro days are not announced until after the start of our NFL Draft Prep Program. For us, being fluid has always been a vital component to the success of our program.” – Augustine Agyei, Landow Performance, Centennial, Colorado

Another benefit of having additional time to prepare for combine events is that prospects with any injuries from the previous season are afforded more time to undertake the necessary rehabilitation work. In some cases, having an additional two to four weeks can make a significant difference for athletes hoping to showcase their talents. Feeling rushed during a return to play effort is never a confidence-building process. Simply knowing you have a few more weeks to prepare can make all the difference for a prospect’s confidence and ultimate performance.

I also believe the individual combine prep facilities could run their own showcase events with their own cohort of prospects. Although some people may think that these could be biased evaluations that do not represent the true stresses of a Combine-like scenario, I truly believe that providing more exposures and information about your prospects can only benefit their chances. As I suggested previously, make it as easy as possible for NFL scouts to view your clients in a positive light. We live in a world where prolific repetition of sensational images and video clips carry tremendous influence, and they can be the difference between getting a second look or finding a new line of work.

Standardization of Performance Assessment Methods

If remote testing and evaluation of prospects becomes a more common method of implementing the combine experience, standardization of testing methods and technology has to be an integral part of the process. I remember watching American Idol 10 months ago, in the early stages of the global pandemic (just the beginning of my unscrupulous COVID-19-influenced television binge-watching habits), and the show was very good at pivoting to finish out the competition. Because contestants had to be sent home in early March 2020, American Idol staff had to come up with a reasonable method of displaying the performances of singers on a level playing field. As such, each contestant was sent a remote performance kit including a brand-new iPhone 11 Pro, tripod, ring light, and microphone to ensure that all performances were captured and presented using the same equipment. Zoom sessions were conducted with contestants by American Idol technical staff to ensure that the equipment was set up optimally for all 40 participants across the country.

If remote testing/evaluation of prospects becomes a more common method of implementing the combine experience, standardization of testing methods & technology must be integral to the process. Share on X

Any NFL-affiliated physical testing events should be evaluated using the same equipment and technology, as well as the same protocols for implementation of the tests. Standardization will only add credibility to any remote or satellite event used to evaluate prospect performance. In addition, this equipment, technology, and protocol standard should be shared with each and every college and private sector event evaluating and showcasing talent. If the performance tests used in the NFL Combine are deemed valuable, more effort should be made to solidify the integrity of the results.

Relying on colleges and private sector facilities to use different timing technologies and protocols only introduces more doubt into the results. Even providing these groups with protocols around filming at higher frame rates (e.g., 100-120 frames per second) and identifying key vantage points for filming and extracting accurate times from the footage would be useful. High-quality digital video footage at no less than 100 frames per second can be more than accurate for identifying first movement by a prospect and finishing a run. The company Dartfish already works with the NFL; standardizing it with the inclusion of GoPro or similar hardware would make the process easier to scale.

This is also a great opportunity for equipment and technology companies to get involved to help with standardization of technology and associated settings, as well as distribution of this equipment to various regions of the country to make sure everyone is evaluated on the same level playing field. Although we cannot control weather and other environmental factors, scouts can still see the athlete performing via high-quality video using standardized equipment, and determine relative abilities based on temperature and testing conditions. If all of the necessary steps are taken to ensure the integrity of the evaluations are preserved, viewing a performance “in-person” may not carry the same value as it once did.

Staff Professional Development Sessions

My own personal experience with the NFL Combine in Indianapolis in recent years has been through my presentations to Athletic Training (PFATS) and Strength & Conditioning (PFSCCA) staff at their professional development events held as part of Combine festivities. It was an opportunity for staff from all teams to confer and participate in continuing education activities outside of a normally hectic season. Experts were brought in to speak to both groups, and everyone was able to collect continuing education credits for the sessions too. These events were accompanied by trade show exhibits that gave vendors an opportunity to connect with staff from all teams in one central venue.

I hope that both of these organizations continue to offer virtual continuing education sessions during this off-season period for all members, as it has been a valuable time for all professionals to connect and further their knowledge. I do know that a number of teams are taking the initiative and holding their own internal virtual continuing education sessions in February and March in anticipation of a modified Combine strategy. This approach provides greater flexibility with the experts that a team chooses to put in front of their staff who may fit better with their overall philosophy and culture, as opposed to watching the same presentation in the same room as 31 other teams.

The Possibility of COVID-19 Obsolescence

Like any convention held regularly prior to COVID-19, there will be the chance to accelerate change and move on to new ways of doing business. If you were a provider of office space for technology companies prior to the pandemic, you are obviously facing a new landscape of market demand and have had to pivot quickly or find a new line of work. We have all heard about the plight of Blockbuster Video and the rise of Netflix, but how can that scenario help us prepare differently for post-COVID-19 realities? The next few months of athlete evaluations will have a big impact on how all sports view their talent evaluation methods moving forward. If we can derive useful information from a less-is-more approach using technology and remote evaluations, who is to say that this will not continue for the foreseeable future?

If we can derive useful information from a less-is-more approach using technology & remote evaluations, who’s to say that this won’t continue for the foreseeable future?, asks @DerekMHansen. Share on X

The city of Indianapolis might take the biggest hit after all is said and done. The NFL Combine was an annual event that ensured that hotels, restaurants, and the convention center were all fully booked for over a week. Television coverage of the event also helped to put the city in the spotlight every February. If the NFL decides to scrap a centralized event and replace it with smaller regional events, it would mean the end of the traditional NFL Combine in Indianapolis. I know that there would be some relief on the part of team staff, as it would mean one less trip on their typically busy schedules. It also makes me wonder if a re-evaluation of testing methods would be warranted moving forward as part of the 2021 experience, providing a more streamlined approach to physical testing.

Embracing a New Paradigm

While it is very easy to throw your hands in the air and wish for a return to the good old days of off-season preparation and evaluation for professional sports, the brutal reality is that we are further reminded of the need to continue to adapt our methods to fit the circumstances. We could argue as to the efficacy of one method versus another, but those who are determined to succeed will continue to find the best ways to conduct their daily routines.

Most teams likely have a good idea of who they want to put on their wish list for the draft based on game film and statistics. A good medical evaluation will allay any fears of fragility and risk, and the remote interviews will give a better indication of knowledge, communication skills, and character. But most teams’ efforts in 2021 may go into re-evaluating the tests and drills that they use to assess the talent that could change their fortunes in the future. Coaches and staff come and go, but games are decided by players in the final analysis.

Those who are determined to succeed will continue to find the best ways to conduct their daily routines, says @DerekMHansen. Share on X

I do believe that 2021 will represent a move toward greater independence and individuality on many levels. Professional teams will be pushed to become more proprietary and independent with their own evaluations of talent. Prospects, agents, and private facilities will be pressed to develop methods and approaches to differentiate their abilities from the competition in more innovative ways using all sorts of technology and marketing methods. Moving out of high-density and close-proximity scenarios and into more home-based, dispersed methods of developing, evaluating, and promoting talent will be the norm moving forward. It is a brave and exciting time for individuals who are switched-on and comfortable with embracing change and making opportunities out of perceived setbacks. On which side of history will you place yourself?

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

By Kyle O’Toole & Mike Young

Whether performing a change of direction on the field or a squat in the weight room, an athlete’s ability to generate force eccentrically is vital to their ability to decelerate before forcefully reaccelerating in another direction. Eccentric strength is an important and often overlooked physical component for athletes to improve if they want to become faster or more powerful in their sport.

Unfortunately, eccentric training is often not administered appropriately to optimize anticipated adaptations. When administered inappropriately, athletes will not benefit from the desired training effects due to failure to reach their eccentric training threshold. This is most noticeable toward the latter portion of the eccentric training continuum while attempting to reach eccentric overload. Eccentric overload occurs when peak eccentric forces and peak eccentric power output are higher than what we can produce during a concentric action. If the external forces or the speed of the movement are not sufficient to reach eccentric threshold, then an eccentric overload is not produced.

Eccentric strength is an important and often overlooked physical component for athletes to improve if they want to become faster or more powerful in their sport. Share on X

Coaches should understand that to attain an eccentric overload, the athlete must get to a point where they use loads that are higher than their concentric one repetition maximum (1RM). Furthermore, the risk of injury may increase if they don’t follow appropriate progressions. Since many of the more advanced eccentric exercises can involve both a high load and a high rate of loading, athletes need appropriate preparation to be able to safely handle them.

Administered properly, eccentric training maximizes the development of physiological properties that reduce the likelihood of injury and increase athletic performance. Eccentric training provides a training stimulus that builds muscle better suited for explosive athletic movements. In this way eccentric training greatly enhances speed and power development.^1,2

What Is Eccentric Training?

Eccentric actions occur when passive muscle tissues lengthen while resisting an external force or load. Muscles are lengthening while contracting. The other two actions that occur are concentric actions (muscles shortening as they contract) and isometric actions (no changes in muscle length). Eccentric contractions occur when muscle fibers lengthen, and the passive elements exert force to resist being deformed. It is this eccentric capacity, or the ability of the muscles to resist forces while lengthening, that helps create faster, more explosive athletes.

Examples of common eccentric training modalities:

• Submaximal slow eccentric phase lifts.
• Weight releaser training.
• Flywheel training.
• Depth drop jumps.

Eccentric training can enhance joint stability, increase the efficiency of force transfer through joints, and improve deceleration abilities.^3,4 If you are involved in a sport where you stop and go, plant and cut, or accelerate frequently, then eccentric training should be a regular part of your strength training program.

If you are involved in a sport where you stop and go, plant or cut, or accelerate frequently, then eccentric training should be a regular part of your strength training program. Share on X

We are much stronger in our ability to produce force eccentrically than concentrically. In other words, we are capable of producing more force while yielding than we are when overcoming those forces. Research has shown that we are up to 160% stronger in the upper body eccentrically and up to 80% stronger in the lower body eccentrically.⁵ For this reason, traditional strength training methods, which are focused primarily on concentric actions, are not an optimal stimulus to enhance eccentric capacity. Training that specifically targets eccentric capacities has been shown to improve measures of power and rate of force development more than traditional, concentric-focused training¹ while producing similar outcomes on maximal strength, muscular hypertrophy, and injury reduction.^4,6,7

Eccentric Training Progression

You should implement eccentric training throughout your annual strength training program. Most of the strength training should center around developing physical capacities (strength, speed, endurance, flexibility, coordination) through traditional strength training, but you should also incorporate eccentrics regularly throughout the year. Just like traditional strength training, eccentric strength training should follow a structured approach that progressively builds strength and power over time. Because fast/maximal eccentrics require extremely high loads and intensities indicative of sport, it is important that athletes regularly incorporate an eccentric training stimulus on a weekly basis. This ensures the passive tissues (tendons and ligaments) remain resilient enough to endure the higher demands in intensity being placed on them in future training and during competition.

We lay out a systematic approach to eccentric training below. Coaches will want to note that eccentric training should be used as a tool to complement traditional strength training. If we were to use percentages, roughly 80-85% of the yearly training would focus on traditional strength training designed to increase physical capacities. The remaining 15-20% would focus on eccentric strength training designed to further increase eccentric capacity.

Not all athletes will need to move entirely through the continuum. As strength and conditioning coaches, we need to decide what role eccentric strength plays in execution for sport. In a sport like track and field, where hundredths of a second separate the fastest athletes in the world, progressing through the entire continuum and emphasizing shock loading strategies could ultimately influence a podium finish.

The progression toward fast/maximal eccentric loading starts with submaximal isometrics and evolves into maximal isometric work before advancing into slow submaximal eccentric training. Isometric muscle actions are essential for explosive motion. For the joints to be able to move in rapid succession, both the passive and contractile elements within muscle need to be able to efficiently transfer energy and conduct locomotion at a high rate. It is for these reasons that isometric strength is addressed before prioritizing eccentric strength development.

In practice, this progression targeting eccentric strength development in the posterior chain might look like this:

1. Athlete performs a standard Romanian deadlift (RDL) using moderate loading.
2. Athlete performs an RDL with a controlled eccentric phase.
3. Athlete performs a deadlift concentrically and an RDL on the eccentric phase (thus permitting greater loading than the athlete could safely perform with an RDL concentrically). This is known as the strong-weak method.
4. Athlete performs a bilateral RDL concentrically but a single leg RDL eccentrically (again permitting greater loading on the eccentric phase). This is known as the 2 up 1 down method.
5. Athlete performs an RDL where they drop the weight or allow it to “free fall” from the top of the movement and rapidly decelerate it at the bottom of the movement using stiffness through the posterior chain. This is an example of shock loading.

Submaximal Isometrics

Starting with submaximal isometric exercises is a safe first step that all individuals can take in the progression to more advanced and focused eccentric training. Submaximal isometrics are characterized by performing intentional pauses at one or more positions in the range of motion while using submaximal loads that can be overcome when desired. Submaximal isometric exercises build strength at specific positions and are a first step toward maximal isometrics. An example can be seen in image 1.

Maximal Isometrics

Unlike submaximal isometrics, with maximal effort isometrics the athlete is unable to overcome the load. In other words, the athlete makes a maximal attempt to move an immovable object. It is absolutely critical that they perform these exercises with maximal intent. Examples of these exercises include pin presses or pin squats into the rack. These exercises are best performed near the end ranges of motion to more specifically train the specific joint positions associated with athletic movements.

Slow/Submaximal Eccentrics

Submaximal eccentrics are characterized by performing exercises with an intentionally slow eccentric phase using loads that the athlete can overcome on the concentric phase. These exercises will emphasize a slow and controlled descent through the eccentric portion of the lift. The eccentric phase of these exercises should last 3-5 seconds.

Fast/Maximal Eccentrics

When performing maximal eccentric training, remember to work with loads that are above an athlete’s concentric training max (greater than 100% 1RM). Maximal eccentric training increases type II muscle fiber size and enhances an athlete’s ability to express their strength at higher velocities.

Eccentric Shock Loading

The final and most demanding step in eccentric-focused training is eccentric shock loading. Although this category includes commonly used plyometric exercises, it also includes specialized strength training activities characterized by the rapid imposition of a high load that forces the athlete into an eccentric action. These loading parameters are especially challenging and mimic the actions and velocities witnessed in sport.

Incorporate Eccentric-Focused Work

An athlete’s ability to generate force eccentrically is critical to performance and injury prevention. As with any performance indicator, it is important that you adequately address eccentric strength in training. Traditional weight room protocols may not sufficiently develop eccentric capacity. As such, it may be beneficial for athletes and coaches to incorporate eccentric-focused methods into their yearly training program. When incorporating any new method, but especially one as physically demanding as eccentric-focused training, it is advised that coaches follow best practices of planned and progressive overload.

We suggest incorporating eccentric-focused work into strength training programs regularly and consistently throughout the entire year of training. Share on X

The progression we have provided will allow athletes to safely handle the higher loads and velocities associated with maximal effort eccentric training. We suggest incorporating eccentric-focused work into strength training programs regularly and consistently throughout the entire year of training. Focus on progressively building eccentric capacity and do not rush through the progressions. Allow plenty of time for athletes to recover from the prior training session and slowly build their threshold for more training. Eccentric training will build an athlete’s ability to resist forces and increase their speed, explosiveness, and change of direction ability in their sport.

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. Douglas J., Pearson S., Ross A., and McGuigan M. “Chronic Adaptations to Eccentric Training: A Systematic Review.” Sports Medicine. 2017;47(5):917-941. doi:10.1007/s40279-016-0628-4

2. Friedmann-Bette B., Bauer T., Kinscherf R. et al. “Effects of strength training with eccentric overload on muscle adaptation in male athletes.” European Journal of Applied Physiology. 2010;108(4):821-836. doi:10.1007/s00421-009-1292-2

3. Papadopoulos C., Theodosiou K., Bogdanis G.C., et al. “Multiarticular Isokinetic High-Load Eccentric Training Induces Large Increases in Eccentric and Concentric Strength and Jumping Performance.” The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research. 2014;28(9):2680-2688. doi:10.1519/JSC.0000000000000456

4. Roig M., O’Brien K., Kirk G., et al. “The effects of eccentric versus concentric resistance training on muscle strength and mass in healthy adults: a systematic review of meta-analysis.” British Journal of Sports Medicine. 2009;43(8):556-568. doi: 10.1136/bjsm.2008.051417

5. Hollander D.B., Kraemer R.R., Kilpatrick M.W., et al. “Maximal eccentric and concentric strength discrepancies between young men and women for dynamic resistance exercise.” The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research. 2007;21(1):34-40. doi:10.1519/R-18725.1

6. Fleck S. and Schutt R. “Types of strength training.” Orthopedic Clinics of North America. 1983;14:449-458.

7. Roig Pull M. and Ranson C. “Eccentric muscle actions: Implications for injury prevention and rehabilitation.” Physical Therapy in Sport. 2007;8(2):88-97. doi:10.1016/j.ptsp.2006.11.005

Mike Young, PhD, is the Director of Performance for Athletic Lab, the North Carolina Courage, and North Carolina FC. He’s also the head coach of Athletic Lab Track Club. In individual sports, Mike has coached athletes to international teams in four sports (weightlifting, skeleton, bobsleigh, and track and field). In team sport settings, Mike has worked in the MLS, USL, and NWSL and most notably has assisted the winningest women’s soccer team in American history and more than a dozen World Cup players.

Creating a test battery can be difficult for many sports performance professionals, especially those with limited staff, equipment, space, and budget. However, it is our job as professionals (whether you are a strength and conditioning coach, athletic trainer, or sport coach) to provide the most appropriate test battery to assess our athletes as best we can.

Picking assessments can be challenging since many field-based sports contain so many dynamic performance attributes—it can be overwhelming when deciding where to begin. Working at the high school level and with a small budget, I do not have access to expensive equipment. This article will be for those coaches working with the bare minimum and making the best of it. I can confidently say the ideas provided will benefit team field sports.

Technology Is Your Friend

I originally wrote this article with the idea that these tests I mention will only require a field, tape measure, and a stopwatch; however, I have changed my mind, as there is plenty of inexpensive technology that coaches should invest in. So maybe, on second thought, we ditch those stopwatches and invest in technology.

The amount of technology that can fit into a cell phone or mobile device is astonishing. A coach can nearly have a mini sports lab at their fingertips. Not having a reliable or objective way to time or record linear sprints, vertical jumping, horizontal jumping, or change of direction tests is unacceptable at this point in time.

So maybe, on second thought, we ditch those stopwatches and invest in technology, says @KCPerformance_. Share on X

For linear speed tests, I personally use a Freelap timing system. I purchased it myself because I wanted something reliable. If you are currently using a stopwatch or your smartphone to time linear speed, consider making an investment in a Freelap timing system. It will save you a lot of time and you can time a lot of athletes very smoothly.

If you do not have a few hundred dollars in your budget to afford a Freelap timing system, there are companies who have created affordable apps that can be used to record the time of linear sprints. There are a few other apps I use for other tests which I will address.

Test Selection

In order to decide what tests to use, the administrator of the test needs to break down the biomechanical and metabolic demands of the sport. Make sure the tests that are selected are valid and reliable. Each test should be able to assess the correct ability, and each test should be able to retest accurately over and over again. The selected tests should be administered several times during the year, which is why it is vital to select tests with high reliability.

Environmental factors play a role as well: testing surface, temperature, and the time of day all affect results. Tests are not just for identifying talent or fitness but are also ways to gauge athlete readiness to return to play after sustaining an injury. Reduce the guessing and subjectivity of return to play assessments and use these tests to properly evaluate the recovery of an athlete.

Every sport is different in some way, so make sure you customize your test battery to cater to the demands of the sport, says @KCPerformance_. Share on X

If they are pain-free but their testing is significantly worse than before the injury, they might not be ready—a harsh reality for the athlete and coaching staff, but it is the safe and appropriate decision. Nothing kills an athlete’s confidence and motivation like back-to-back injuries.

In the high school setting, tryouts last about a week. In order to respect the available time of the coaching staff to evaluate specific skills of the athletes, it is best to perform the test battery in a single day. Since many of the tests may be assessing completely different physical qualities, it is important to perform each test in a certain order. That order being:

1. 1. Body-composition tests (I personally do not perform these because I am at the high school level)

 

1. 1. Change of direction tests

 

1. 1. Max power

 

1. 1. Sprint tests

 

1. 1. Muscular endurance

 

1. 1. Anaerobic capacity tests

 

1. Aerobic capacity tests

These are all just potential examples. Every sport is different in some way, so make sure you customize your test battery to cater to the demands of the sport.

Change of Direction Testing

The ability to change directions is key for most team and individual sports. These types of assessments are typically performed well by those who can achieve higher velocities in linear speed assessments. However, in my experience, many coaches (especially in football) do not always value linear speed and believe change of direction tests are better at evaluating “game speed” and ability.

If you follow the NFL and its combine, you’ve probably heard of DK Metcalf. He had a blazing fast 40-yard dash but a poor three-cone drill (commentators even mentioned how it was worse than Tom Brady’s). DK Metcalf has been doing just fine in the NFL despite his three-cone drill results.

Some other assessments made popular by the NFL combine are 5-10-5 (pro-agility shuttle) and the L-drill. However, you can always create your very own change of direction test and customize the angle of the direction change, which can range from 45-180 degrees.

I would caution coaches against making the test longer than seven seconds so as to keep the test anaerobic and alactic. I imagine these tests to be power/speed tests more than anything else. For example, 300-yard shuttles are assessing something much different and are not an evaluation of change of direction in my opinion.

Change of direction tests can also be used to evaluate asymmetries. Evaluating an athlete’s performance when pushing off or changing direction on both the left and right legs can be important in determining if the athlete is proficient at absorbing/producing force on both limbs.

Change of direction tests can also be used to evaluate asymmetries, says @KCPerformance_. Share on X

Assessing both limbs is important for understanding potential movement problems or deficiencies. An athlete with a large deficit between their limbs could be at risk for injury. Knowing how each limb performs independently can also help determine if an injured athlete is ready to return to play based on their test scores in rehab.

The Freelap timing system can be used to time change of direction tests as well. Visit the SimpliFaster YouTube channel and you will find informative videos from Christopher Glaeser on how to do this.

If you do not have a few hundred dollars to invest in a Freelap timing system, there are more affordable options: Dartfish Express is a film analysis app (that costs about seven dollars) which has a built-in chronometer that can be used to accurately measure time down to one hundredth of a second. If you want to be able to export the videos, you have to upgrade to Dartfish Mobile, which is five dollars per month.

Linear Speed Testing

This is the test that can literally change the course of an athlete’s career. Many colleges are heavily recruiting based on speed these days, and if an athlete is not performing well in linear speed, colleges probably will not be taking a chance on them—no matter how impressive their high school highlight tape is.

The most popular linear speed assessment in the states is the 40-yard dash. This again is another test popularized by the NFL combine, but other sports have their own linear speed assessments: MLS uses a 30-meter dash test and the MLB uses a 60-yard dash test. They all are evaluating linear speed over different distances.

Make sure you are using a reliable timing system. I reached into my own wallet to purchase my own Freelap timing system for my school. Having a reliable timing system will increase your value as a coach. Working at the high school level, I have had the opportunity to time hundreds of athletes. Timing sprints is great to see how athletes are performing and gives them perspective on their abilities.

During my first year at the high school, before I began working with the football team, the starting running back tore his ACL. I tested him in the off-season, after he had recovered from his ACL tear, and found his 40-yd dash time to be less than stellar: 5.28. That is a below-average speed for a starting varsity running back. I explained to him that this was an area in which he needed to improve and that he had not had a carry over 20 yards the previous season, nor did he score any touchdowns. That athlete ended up training at a private facility that performed zero speed work in training.

Flash forward to his senior year, his 40-yd dash time barely improved to a slightly-less-slow 5.23. He lost his starting role to a sophomore who had been training with me for the previous two years and ran a 4.87 40-yard dash. Not blazing fast, but a very respectable time for a 16-year-old in a small school.

Visual feedback is one of the best tools for me and my athletes, says @KCPerformance_. Share on X

Even though I have a fully automatic timing system, I still like to film my athletes’ reps from time to time. Visual feedback is one of the best tools for me and my athletes. A high school lineman sprinting with excessive butt-kick and over-reaching is hard to cue simultaneously, and it may be even harder for them to understand what I’m trying to explain.

Filming the rep and showing them what I see and what I want them to change or focus on has made technical improvements happen much quicker than before. It still takes time and patience but change happens sooner with visual feedback.

Unrealistic Training Expectations

Training high school athletes means you have to deal with parents. Parents have very high expectations and sometimes even unrealistic ones. If you train athletes outside of school for money, these assessments are essential for evaluating the athlete to show exactly what their abilities are. It is important to compare the athlete to other athletes their age, but also to collegiate athletes so the parents can understand which physical qualities are necessary to compete at the next level.

If the athlete’s profile is not great, be positive with the parents and athlete, but also realistic. Sometimes an ego can be crushed but it is our job to turn that into motivation.

Athletes and parents alike need to understand that training is a long process. If they come to you as a sophomore hoping to play in college, you have time to improve their athleticism with smart training, but nothing significant will change after a month. If things don’t improve after a few months, then please do something different in your training.

Try not to rely on hand timing or using your timing system incorrectly, so times will not be inflated, says @KCPerformance_. Share on X

Follow the best protocol that the equipment offers and, as previously stated, make sure it is precise and reliable. Try not to rely on hand timing or using your timing system incorrectly, so times will not be inflated. Now more than ever, social media has given us absurd fly-10s and 40-yard dashes at the high school level; all that does is give your athletes a false representation of their actual abilities. Buying a timing system is not to fuel egos or post social media videos for the sake of it—use it to collect accurate data to evaluate athletes.

Jump Testing

Jump testing is a good way to determine jumping ability, but also lower body power and elasticity. I personally like measuring a squat jump, counter movement jump with hands on hips, counter movement jump with arms, and RSI.

A lot of jumping test results I see on social media are inflated due to athletes understanding how to cheat the test by manipulating their body to increase flight time and delay landing. Make sure your athletes understand the directions before they jump. A squat jump should not have any counter movement or that will inflate numbers as well.

Don’t worry if you cannot afford a jump mat or force plate. Carlos Balasobre-Fernandez is the creator of My Jump 2, an inexpensive app that uses the camera of your smart device to film and analyze vertical jumps, horizontal jumps, RSI, force velocity profiling, and right-left asymmetry jumps.

I like testing both legs separately to gather information to see if there may be a huge asymmetry present. This could provide valuable information that a limb is at risk for injury. The app has been proven to be reliable and objective in research and is a fraction of the price compared to jump mats and force plates. All that is required is a smart phone with a camera and a couple leg measurements of the athlete, and you can collect jump data.

Obviously not many sports require great jumping abilities to be successful. Jump testing will be more important for basketball and volleyball, but the information gathered from jump testing is still important. Jump tests can track athletes’ readiness as well. But maybe the most important guideline for jump testing is making sure the athletes are giving 100% effort.

The most important guideline for jump testing is making sure the athletes are giving 100% effort, says @KCPerformance_. Share on X

Over-testing jumping abilities could become monotonous and boring, leaving the athlete to appear as if they are not improving when they might just be lacking motivation. Read the room; if the energy isn’t there to collect good jump data then reschedule it for another day.

Fitness Testing

Fitness testing is a way to measure if the athlete’s energy system is robust enough to keep up with the demands of the sport. There are several different fitness tests that field sports can use to evaluate this. Football requires a different level of fitness than soccer, and this can be analyzed even deeper by breaking down the demands per position.

A few similar and popular tests include the shuttle run beep test, yo-yo intermittent tests, and 30:15 intermittent fitness tests. These named tests have shown reliability in closely predicting maximal aerobic speed. At the very least, this test gives a good indication that the person has the fitness or running speed necessary to compete in intermittent field sport.

Think of these intermittent fitness tests as showing how fast an athlete can run in-game versus the linear speed test which shows how fast the athlete is capable of running. Some will debate whether these test results truly test aerobic capacity or just the ability to run shuttles with short rest periods. These tests are not perfect; for instance, some athletes who can achieve higher sprinting velocities can do well on this test even if their fitness or aerobic capacity may not be stellar.

Martin Bucheit has an app named 30-15 IFT, which essentially talks the test-taker through the test. It works best if connected to a speaker that can be brought to the field. Athletes can listen to directions as they complete the test. The app is free and is available for iOS and Android.

A popular test I see at the high school level right now (and one I do think has merit), is the simple 1.5-mile run test. I think it is a fair assessment of aerobic capacity during running. If an athlete performs poorly, it might be a sign that they cannot sustain a decent running speed for an extended period of time.

A lot of people think a test like this will kill an athlete’s sprinting velocity and that all their hard work during off-season speed training will be a waste. To this I say: it is just a single test. Most team sport athletes need to be able to maintain the skill of running for an extended period of time. If running 1.5 miles makes you as a coach or your athletes nervous, then they may be out of shape.

Show Your Value

Coaches usually know if they are making a meaningful contribution to their school or athletes. Making a large positive impact means you have value. But do other coaches know that about you yet? If the answer isn’t definitively yes, then it’s time to change how you go about things.

When I first started out at the high school level, coaches just thought I was there to teach kids to lift weights. They were confused when I would take them outside for speed training. Now they understand the real impact I can bring to their teams. Coaches seeing their players power, speed, and conditioning increase each year on paper is great, but when they also see it translate to game play is when you gain the coaches’ trust for real.

Set yourself apart by using technology to improve the way you record data and gather information. The technology and apps suggested in this article are tools that I have used successfully. Technology should not create headaches or create more questions than answers. Make sure you are collecting the data you want to collect.

Set yourself apart by using technology to improve the way you record data and gather information, says @KCPerformance_. Share on X

Freelap has given me the ability to gather information quickly and efficiently while the inexpensive apps have helped me collect important data I thought I couldn’t collect without expensive equipment. These suggestions have been a game changer for me and my athletes. New technology has made assessing my athletes easier than ever.

Work With Your Coach

What do you get when you combine all these assessments? Despite the small budget, a pretty solid evaluation of athletes’ strengths and weaknesses. You can even create diagrams and athlete profiles to show the coach so they can fully understand the meaning of the results and what to do with them moving forward. If a coach accepts your offer to perform the testing battery, it is a sign that they’re probably open-minded and willing to hear your feedback.

Don’t forget to retest these qualities to evaluate how the season is affecting certain physical qualities and report back to the coach. Great coaches understand how to smoothly embed testing in practices during the on- and off-season without it feeling forced. Seeing positive results after retesting makes sport coaches happy and gives you the opportunity to continue to work with the team.

Remember to evaluate your demands of the sport before choosing these assessments. Use what is useful to your sport and ditch what is not relevant.

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

Derived from the work of Dr. Yuri Verkhoshansky, the terms intensive and extensive have increasingly been applied in the programming of plyometrics. These two labels are used to categorize plyometric movements by the intensity those movements yield on the body.

While this can be very useful in providing coaches with a way to categorize these movements, it becomes pretty obvious when we divide up our training that smaller, less impactful movements can be done at a much higher volume than our high-impact (shock method) variations. The split starts and ends there when it comes to categorizing plyometric movements, but with such an array and variety in plyometric landings, questions arise.

From my own coaching and research experience with plyometrics, this framework is not enough to provide others with the tools to build a program around dynamic movement development. Below are five reasons that explain why this is the case.

It becomes pretty obvious when we divide up our training that smaller, less impactful movements can be done at a much higher volume than our high-impact (shock method) variations. Share on X

1. How Do We Determine “Intense”?

The intensive vs. extensive divide derives from a split between shock methods (depth jumps) and what Verkhoshansky termed “low-impact” plyometrics, where the angular vector of force effort has more horizontal coupling than the vertical angular vector of high-impact plyometrics. Interestingly, some research has suggested vertical angular forced movements don’t always produce higher-intensity landings than their horizontal counterpart¹.

Do you know the difference in ground reaction force (GRF) between a depth jump and continuous hops? 

Coaches and athletes need to understand the differences in landing forces when it comes to different angles of momentum and how that influences landing forces and loading patterns.

Potential issues with the split in angular momentum:

• Research suggests that hopping (unilateral landings on the same leg) has significantly high GRF², but in some cases is deemed extensive.
• Unilateral and bilateral differences are overlooked when comparing the two movements mentioned above.
• Ground contact times (GCTs) aren’t considered half as often as GRF among coaches when plyos are divided between intensive and extensive. Highly dynamic movements such as bounding or leaping (bilateral landings) can possess very short GCTs, which in turn could be due to the effective coupling through the musculotendinous unit (MTU). This subsequently also produces very high GRF that could be deemed intensive! To an extent, it is difficult to drive fast GCTs without delivering high GRFs.

2. Differences in Athlete Type

Differences between athletes can play a major role in how they deal with exercise intensity.

• Neurally driven athletes may find locomotive plyometrics like bounding for distance relatively easy on the body, but also find vertical angular-driven movements such as depth jumps very intense.
• Concentrically driven athletes will tend to be the opposite, finding force expression easier on them than high volumes of more locomotive horizontal plyometrics.

2.1. The Unilateral and Bilateral Divide 

Similar to athlete typing, there can be a potential divide in how athletes execute unilateral and bilateral landings.

• I have often seen (but it’s not always the case) that concentrically driven athletes will favor bilateral movements such as leaping (bilateral landing and takeoff) due to longer push-off phases.
• Neurally driven athletes may prefer unilateral landings that cover ground, as they’re able to utilize more tendon reflexes stored in the series elastic component (SEC), as opposed to longer muscular contracting movements.

Note: This may not be the case with all of these athlete types, as some will just optimize their landing strategies to best fit their type (for example, neural athletes may utilize a much shorter coupling effect for optimal jump height during a depth jump).

With the examples above, we have an athlete who is well adapted for this intensive and extensive format, while the other may struggle to get the training exposure you programmed for. Therefore, the phrases “intensive” and “extensive” plyometrics become hard to use when two athletes might experience different responses from the same stimulus.

3. Breaking Down the Variety Among Extensive Plyometrics

Although there are issues with the intensive category, coaches should find it simple to recognize that it should only include movements in around the top 10% of highly demanding landings, often with the highest GRFs.

The extensive side can become very broad in that it fills the other majority of “plyometric” movements under the top percentile of intensive plyos. This therefore leaves us with some relatively intense movements as seen below:

Video 1. Ping: Hops for distance

Video 2. Light: Leaps — at the other end of the spectrum!

As you can see in the two videos, these movements are significantly different in landing forces and GCT.  It is understandable that you can use less-intense movements to expose athletes to a higher-volume stimulus, but ask yourself these questions:

• How intense are these movements I’m using for each individual?
• How close are they kinematically to the intensive plyometrics I’m programming?
• Most importantly, am I using the same volume for both extensive examples?

These questions should help you select and program the appropriate movements to elicit the training adaptations that you wish for. In my opinion, if you are not posing these questions, the potential for issues to arise will increase. Being critical of every layer of your training could be the difference between a well-timed peaking phase and tipping over the edge into potential injury.

Being critical of every layer of your training could be the difference between a well-timed peaking phase and tipping over the edge into potential injury, says @mcinneswatson. Share on X

4. Intent

Intent is an important factor to consider when you’re dividing intensive and extensive movements. Usually, when an athlete has established a considerable background of plyometrics, they develop greater pre-activation methods that can increase their capacity to drive intent with dynamic landings.

Inexperienced athletes lack the neural control and skills learned from thousands of landings. This often shows when athletes are striving for maximal height and/or distance but end up stamping the ground (which tends to bleed all the force they’re producing into the ground, equaling longer GCTs and poor concentric output) or being highly tentative and absorbing most of the forces through joint distortion. Both types of inexperienced athletes struggle to control intent not only within their landings, but with all dynamic ground strikes.

Remember: All movements considered “plyometric” are highly dynamic and do not come without high force and shock upon the body, so make sure your athletes are well prepared before cueing for any kind of maximal intent.

The skills athletes need to learn to deliver the intent you need for dynamic landings are:

• Heightened landing precision for foot placement.
• Increased joint stiffening speed = faster coupling of eccentric to concentric phase.
• Subsequent faster GCT.
• Greater locomotive capacity to maintain velocity and/or utilize force.

With the skills and ability to deliver greater intent, many extensive movements can become very intense. Examples below show the same movement in two very different variations.

Video 3. Light: Hops. As you can see, this unilateral landing pattern shows small, cyclical landing with relatively low GRF (typical extensive plyometric).

Video 4. Ping: Fast Hop – High Hop. This variation shows a fast, accelerated hop to initiate a highly loaded eccentric phase to the second landing, propelling the athlete vertically. There is a significantly higher GRF and loading pattern through the lower extremities and posterior chain (typical extensive plyometric).

The second variation (Ping: Fast Hop – High Hop) clearly has the potential to be very intense in nature due to the driven intent of the fast hop to deliver a much faster eccentric loading rate (something typically found in hopping: unilateral, unipedal landings). If an athlete is ill-prepared to deliver this kind of intent, then a whole host of issues can arise. So, when you have extensive movements that are programmed for intent, consider the differences and level of development required for this so-called “submaximal” movement.

5. Issues with Extensive to Intensive Programming

The typical strategy of implementing plyometrics with the extensive and intensive divide is to move exactly in that way: Mapping the year out to start with extensive and become more intensive, often with a general to specific strategy as athletes gets closer to competition.

While this is logical, in some cases (beginners or underdeveloped athletes) we have a large cohort of athletes being subjected to the plyometric version of the long to short sprinting model that coaches are now critical of. As we garner further evidence year on year that suggests specificity to our events (or in this case, GRFs, GCTs, and multiple other specific parameters we see during competition) is critical and often requires regular programming throughout the year, we must question these ideologies.

If we use the extensive to intensive model, then similar issues that appeared in sprinting with the long to short model may arise. Where some athletes may thrive off this kind of programming, the diversity of the athletic population may mean other methods are more suitable. There are obviously many ways in which you can program plyometrics, but it is worth considering the impact of a regular insert of more intensive movements. If sprinting and speed models consider the value of sprinting at specifically high speeds regularly, then why would plyometrics be any different—especially when sprinting is deemed plyometric?

If sprinting and speed models consider the value of sprinting at specifically high speeds regularly, then why would plyometrics be any different—especially when sprinting is deemed plyometric? Share on X

Note: The general to specific methods are valuable, as you can subject the athlete to competition-specific loading patterns and GCTs without it being event specific. For example, a long jumper can use bilateral landings and still evoke intense stress on the lower extremities.

Okay, well, where next? What’s the solution to a better way of categorizing plyometrics?

Revisit my previous SimpliFaster post, Plyometric Training Systems: Developmental vs. Progressive. That article illustrates a great way to break down landing dynamics into four simple categories that you can supplement within any phase of training throughout the year to develop everything from reactivity and elasticity to mobility and stability. You will notice that most will be deemed extensive or Verkhoshansky’s “horizontal angular momentum” movements, and that none of the tiers are “shock method,” per se. Understand that the ping and medium tiers elicit great GRFs in very short time frames, and when performed unilaterally can warrant high stress upon the MTU. Movements like ping tier speed hops also drive a higher level of specificity toward events such as sprinting and locomotion during sport, which is arguably not seen in a bilateral depth jump.

I hope that these are some questions you can now ask about your plyometrics programming and whether you’ll tread carefully along the intensive and extensive divide. There is more to this training method then just fast and slow or heavy and light.

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. Mero, A. and Komi, P.V. “EMG, force, and power analysis of sprint-specific strength exercises.” Journal of Applied Biomechanics. 1994;10(1):1-13.

2. Perttunen, J., Kyrolainen, H., Komi, P.V. and Heinonen, A. “Biomechanical loading in the triple jump.” Journal of Sports Sciences. 2000;18(5):363-370.

Volleyball is a sport that requires several different levels of physical skills, including speed, power, change of direction, agility, and strength as well as the ability to repeat those movements. In order to play the sport at a high level, skills aside, you need to have a training plan in the off-season to develop each of these qualities.

In the article below, I’ll show you how to map out a training program, both sprinting and lifting, including examples of programs I have used over my six years training volleyball players.

Warmup and Observation

Before I get into the main focus of the workout, I want to quickly go over what I have coined the Ignition Series. We start each lift with some variation of the following:

• • Breathing Drills/Reflexive Performance Reset

 

• • Spring Ankle Concepts/Foot Activation

 

• • Marches/Skips/Prances

 

• • High Knees

 

There is nothing groundbreaking here, but I found following this outline prepared my athletes for the activities ahead better than any traditional dynamic warmup has. Not only do I think it’s a great series to improve performance, but you can learn a lot just by observing an athlete during these exercises.

I look to see how fluid the athlete moves during all these exercises as being able to observe athlete movement is one of the best assessments we have. It is skill to be able to relax during movement, so we put a big emphasis on this during this period.

Being able to observe athlete movement is one of the best assessments we have. It is skill to be able to relax during movement, says @bigk28. Share on X

Another important movement I am looking for is dorsiflexion of the foot when the foot comes up from striking the ground. It is a bad habit that when the knee comes up to have the foot in an improper position (inactive foot). The athlete loses a lot of the power of having that foot dorsiflexed ready to rapidly attack the ground. Keep an eye on this because this is very common amongst all team sport athletes that I have worked with.

Other movements I am looking for from my athletes is for them to be actively punching the ground from the middle to front part of the foot. Way too often, I see athletes strike the ground with the heel, which is detrimental to improving speed.

Athletes need to be aggressive in all these movements and by teaching them to punch the ground as opposed to just lifting their knee, they will get a better training effect. Switch your dynamic warmup to the ignition series and you will see a significant change in your athlete’s readiness.

Video 1. A hurdle mobility routine is easy to do before a lift in order to prepare players for the movements scheduled. Pick a couple of movements, such as the ones in this video, and complete anywhere from 5 to 10 reps focusing on good postural positions.

Acceleration

Acceleration, power, and movement in short spaces are key in the sport of volleyball. When looking at acceleration training, look no further than Al Vermeil’s chart found in Carl Valle’s ‘Kinetics Manual’.

In this chart, Vermeil covers different exercises and their direct effects on different areas of sprinting. These are my following go-to exercises when looking to improve an athlete’s acceleration capabilities and the order I use them in when constructing a workout. As you will notice, they progress in a way that prepares the athlete for the highest-intensity activity:

1. Med Ball Throws: There are so many variations to use, but I like anything where total body movement is being incorporated. My go-to med ball exercises are underhand backward, underhand forward, and push press, as well as anything rotational. As in warmups, you will see during med ball throws which of your athletes are violent in their movements. I teach my athletes to rapidly load and fire that ball as far as they can, like an approach jump during competition.

Athletes that struggle with rapidly loading and concentrically firing will struggle with acceleration and those that can’t accelerate in volleyball will struggle. Even my strongest athletes have shown huge struggles with med ball exercises and I think this limits their overall ability to be strong at accelerating. I usually aim for two-to-three sets of four-to-five reps for all my med ball exercises.

2. Plyometrics: To me, all plyometric work needs to have a theme. If acceleration and strength are your primary objectives, use the following parameters:

• • Single or double leg
  • Deep to middle position in a counter movement
  • Pauses
  • Weighted

• I like to use these drills when I am specifically working on acceleration development. I will, more times than not, pair an unweighted movement that has a pause with a loaded movement. Remember, the goal here is to improve strength levels that affect acceleration, so the load for the weighted movements should be significant.

Form should never take a hit, but by my calculations you should see greater than an 80% detriment if you are looking to affect acceleration. For instance, if an athlete has a 20-inch vertical, you will need to find a load where the athlete is jumping four inches or less. A common pairing I will choose is a two-second paused SL maximum-effort jump with trap bar jumps, for three sets of four reps.

3. Resisted Sprints: There are several avenues to take with resisted sprinting, but the ones I enjoy the most are hill sprints and sled-resisted sprints. I like to make sure the players are well-rested between reps, so the goal is 100% effort the entire distance of the rep. That should be almost common sense if the goal is to improve acceleration, but more often than not I see coaches get frazzled because their athletes are standing around, and they turn what was supposed to be an acceleration-based workout into a conditioning session.

• When looking at sled work, I usually look to keep the sled weight range to 30% and below of the athlete’s bodyweight. I have seen with weighted sled sprints, athletes self-correct with their technique. If you have poor technique with a heavier resisted sled, you will struggle to move the load.

Always start with a lower amount of reps and weight and see how the athlete’s times are responding. I usually start in the six-rep range for 10-yard accelerations. As the weeks go on, I will add in more reps and start increasing the distance to 20 yards.

4. Timed Accelerations: This should be a staple for everyone in their training, but you should constantly be timing your athletes in their 5/10/20-yard sprints. Not only does it make the athletes extremely competitive amongst one another, but it truly helps inspire people to give maximum effort. At the end of the day, no athlete wants to be the slow athlete.

Outside of pure motivation, it gives you a great indication as a coach on how your training is impacting each athlete. If things are continuing to trend in the right direction, stick with the plan. Not everyone will improve their accelerations every single time you measure it, otherwise they would turn into Olympic-level sprinters. We are just looking for trends in the data so we can make changes to our program when necessary.

Video 2. Resisted sprints, including hill sprints, have a huge carryover to acceleration, particularly the first 5-10m (which is important for volleyball). Couple this with med ball work and a well rounded lifting program and you have the tools you need to improve acceleration.

Bottom line, although volleyball success has a huge part to do with skill and reactiveness, if you are proficient at acceleration and you have the prerequite skills, you will have a higher likelihood of success.

Maximum Velocity

I work with 23 different sports, and I have yet to find one where the fastest team doesn’t have a distinct advantage. Speed dominates in every sport and usually the teams that are the fastest are also compromised of the better athletes.

Even though acceleration plays king in the sport of volleyball, maximum velocity plays a huge role in the development of the athlete, says @bigk28. Share on X

Even though acceleration plays king in the sport of volleyball, maximum velocity plays a huge role in the development of the athlete. When looking at designing a program for a volleyball player, you must include both acceleration and maximum velocity training.

Video 3. Although volleyball players will never be in a position where they are moving at max velocity, training max velocity still provides a ton of benefits that carry over to their sport. Using such tools as wickets and fly 10’s will help train and assess how your players’ max velocity is improving. In theory, if our max velocity is improving, so is our acceleration: a quality very important in the sport of volleyball.

I know many coaches that will say that if an athlete never hits maximum velocity in a game, they won’t waste the time working on it. I think there are several benefits of training at top speeds that will never be accomplished with acceleration-based work only. Three key factors as to why I think training maximum velocity is a necessity for all sports:

1. 1. The speed and forces the body produces at maximum velocity will never be matched during any other training stimulus. I know in Ken Clark’s research about forces at top speed, he said Olympic-level athletes hit somewhere in the range of five times their bodyweight. We must treat maximum velocity sprints as an exercise to improve athleticism.

 

1. 1. Research shows that sprinting at maximum velocity is the best exercise for hamstring health. The best availability is availability, so including maximum velocity sprints should be a staple when trying to keep your athletes healthy.

 

1. A sprint done at maximum velocity requires rhythm, coordination, and relaxation; this is also true during other athletic movements. While this is anecdotal, I have rarely seen a high-functioning athlete whose body was in a constant state of stress and tension.

Running a longer-distance sprint and working on body control and movements will carry over to relaxation during other athletic movements. This has just been my eye test and not something I have the research to back up but to me it makes a lot of sense that a more relaxed athlete makes for a more productive athlete.

I have rarely seen a high-functioning athlete whose body was in a constant state of stress and tension, says @bigk28. Share on X

When measuring peak velocity, I have seen one common trend: our volleyball athletes who performed the best in the Flying 10 also had the best acceleration scores, jumped the highest in both their vertical and broad jump tests, and showed the best repeated power scores during the Scandinavian Rebound Jump Test (looking at reactive strength index).

While some may think a Flying 10 isn’t the best test for acceleration-based athletes, it does give you another piece of the puzzle in terms of an athletic profile. I also believe it gives you another valuable piece of your assessment tool. If you have an athlete who has the fastest Flying 10 on the team but one of the worst acceleration/power profiles, acceleration work should probably be most of the focus. Here are a few of my go-to exercises when I am trying to improve our volleyball athletes’ peak velocity.

1. Bounding: I consider bounding in the category of reactive-based plyometric; in other words, a plyometric where you are working on a brief load followed by an explosive movement with as little ground contact as possible, covering as much distance or height as possible.

• This is a higher-level movement so you might have to break it down into simpler movements such as skips or single movements before you progress to

bounding.

The good thing about bounding is that you can progress the sets, reps, and distance in order to elicit a different response. Some of my favorite bounding exercises include speed bounds, single leg bounds, bounds for distance, straight leg bounds etc. I would start with two sets of 20 yards of repetitions and progress from there.

2. Wicket Sprints: This drill is traditionally used to improve the sprint mechanics with field sport or track athletes who hit peak speed frequently throughout their competition, but remember the goal for our purposes isn’t to improve technique at maximum velocity, but rather to help improve the top speed we move at. Moving at a faster speed means we are putting more force into the ground, meaning we will have a greater carryover to other athletic movements.

• You don’t have to look cool and use actual hurdles; simply use cones and have athletes run on the side if they aren’t fit exactly to their stride length. You want a one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to wickets, otherwise you will spend an obscene amount of time figuring out individual wicket differences.

I like to do wicket sprints with cones mapped out for acceleration as well, since most athletes struggle with technical cues during acceleration. You are killing two birds with one stone when you have the athletes giving maximum effort and practicing good sprint habits for both acceleration and maximum velocity.

3. 3. In and Out’s: This drill is accomplished by having your athletes sprint to maximum velocity, followed by a distance with a drop in the intensity, then an increase in intensity over another distance. Again, not directly relatable to the sport itself, but I believe that by improving maximum velocity we are improving qualities that will carry over specifically to the sport of volleyball.

 

3. Timed Maximum Velocity Sprints: This is the same concept as the above-mentioned timed sprints in acceleration. Time your sprints, relay the scores, and rank your athletes amongst one another. Athletes love feedback and want to know where they stand. Once again they aren’t going to hit PR’s every workout, but over time you should see progress.

I know some coaches love the term “sport specificity,” but to me, anything that will positively impact the physical attributes of my players is beneficial.

I know some coaches love the term *sport specificity,* but to me, anything that will positively impact the physical attributes of my players is beneficial, says @bigk28. Share on X

There is a huge correlation between maximum velocity and other characteristics that are related to volleyball. I have seen athletes improve their Fly 10 time, while simultaneously improving their strength levels, vertical jump, reactive strength index, and repeated broad jump.

We must use maximum velocity as another training stimulus: if you are taking out said stimulus, you are limiting the ceiling on the players’ athletic development.

Conditioning

I believe a majority of your “playing shape” preparation should come from high-intensity practice. However, that doesn’t mean that you should completely neglect the aerobic/repeat alactic quality.

I read years ago in Buddy Morris’s book on football preparation that football is primarily driven by two systems: aerobic and alactic. I believe volleyball is very similar. Buddy’s description gives you a very simplistic approach for a very complicated and intertwining system.

Video 4. Constantly be re-assessing your athletes and determining where the program needs to be tailored to fit their specific needs. The contract grid, by Musclelab, is one of the best jump tools out there and allows you to measure all types of jumps. While the regular vertical jump provides value on improvements in vertical power, the Scandanvian Rebound Jump Test gives you a bunch of data including reactive strength index (RSI).

The alactic system controls the jumps, accelerations, and all fast-moving actions, while the aerobic system feeds in the recovery of that system so athletes can repeat those actions over and over again. Here are some of my go-to modalities for conditioning the volleyball athlete:

1. Tempo Runs: There are many benefits for tempo runs, including working on running efficiency, but for the purpose of this article, I think it helps develop an aerobic base. Tempo runs are exactly what they sound like; runs done at 70-75% intensity with the main goal being to build a base before moving on to other higher-intensity movements. I am still preaching good sprint mechanics—upright body position, foot strike under the body, good arm action, and neutral head position—but the main goal is to accumulate volume over the weeks of training.

• Some sports will do longer tempos, but I don’t believe it is necessary for volleyball to go over 50 meters (or midfield on a normal football field) per rep in their tempo runs. I follow each tempo run rep with a 50 meter recovery walk.

The rest here should not be overlooked; volleyball is a fast-moving sport with little recovery (somewhere from 16 to 20 seconds). The ability to recover faster than your opponent is a critical one. In between reps, I tell the athletes to focus on their breathing to bring their body back to a state of calm. I’ll start at 1200-1400 meters and make my way up to 1800-2000 meters total per workout.

2. Lifting Circuits: These are pretty general circuits where am I having my athletes working with less than 50% load (I just tell to them to pick a relatively easy load) and perform for three-to-four sets of maximum repetitions in 30 seconds.

I will always start with a lower body movement to start the workout (5-10 rep range depending on the day and movement), followed by an Olympic movement used to reinforce good positioning before the circuit. I usually pair the following exercises to make a tri-set circuit: upper body push, upper body pull, and accessory.

3. EDT Lifting Circuits: The best description I’ve heard of EDT circuits from Cal Dietz is that they are designed to condition power sport athletes. That is exactly how I utilize them with my volleyball athletes. I usually pick three primary movements from this set: squat/deadlift, clean/snatch, and dumbbell horizontal/vertical push.

I set the load at roughly 70-75% of our one-rep maximum and we go for a set amount of reps, performing singles of each exercise, trying to finish as fast as possible. I really love this to develop work capacity under load, or as a reload day following a central nervous system high/low routine. I have seen athletes significantly improve their work capacity by doing this type of workout two times a week.

Volleyball is a fast-moving sport with little recovery (somewhere from 16 to 20 seconds). The ability to recover faster than your opponent is a critical one, says @bigk28. Share on X

Strength Training

Strength training has a huge impact in three main areas: setting the foundation for training other qualities, health and resiliency, and mass-specific force.

Strength has a huge carryover to acceleration, which tells me that my volleyball athletes need to be strong. My parameters for strength include loads heavier than 85% or less than .4-.5 m/s, depending on your athlete.

We spend a good part of the off-season working on strength. If your athletes aren’t strong, you are asking for trouble when they reach the demanding in-season schedule. My athletes usually play three games per week, and with that workload you are risking injuries and declining performance.

I think this where the outline of your lifting program is of the utmost importance. A lot of coaches put a number in their head for where their athletes need their strength to be and for some, that number may never be achievable in their career. So coaches spend years chasing numbers that will never be obtained and in essence miss out on developing other qualities in their lifting program.

Coaches have also wrongly correlated improvement in strength numbers as a way to assess their programs’ effectiveness. There are several problems with this, especially if the coach doesn’t have the highest integrity when performing maximum testing with their strength-based lifts.

I know most of the time people just want the recipe, but the truth is, each athlete is so different, there is no generic plan I could give you. I could have an athlete that comes in with a strong training background, and with traditional strength development, and they might make little progress on their maximum strength.

However, if you have an athlete that has little training background, strength work will continue to develop them holistically as an athlete. It can take up to two years to develop a base of strength, but it can pay off in other ways.

For example, during this period of strength development, I have seen my athletes simultaneously improve their acceleration (10/20 yard sprint), change of direction and power output (vertical/broad jump).

For our off-season programming (far out from the season) we will have three general prep blocks (aerobic, lactate, anaerobic) followed by three maximum strength blocks. Again, with a more experienced athlete you may have to change the plan to address any deficiencies. With that being said, I believe all athletes need to build a base with general prep work as well as retrain the eccentric and isometric qualities. From there, you can start to design blocks specifically for your athlete’s needs.

With this general program outline, I have seen all physical qualities improve throughout the entire year. More importantly, we have seen virtually no games missed throughout the course of each season.

Once an athlete has become ‘strong enough’ you can make the lifts more specific to the qualities you want to impact. For example, I have seen full seasons where athletes do mostly speed work in the weight room to supplement our acceleration/speed work.

Video 5. Olympic lifts are effective for developing power, while teaching eccentric absorption and kinesthetic awareness. Don’t be afraid to go overhead with your athletes, as we get strong posterior development with movements like the snatch.

I think everyone still benefits from GPP, eccentric, and isometric work, but where you go after that depends on your athlete. These are the main movements we focus on throughout the year:

1. Squat variation
2. Deadlift variation
3. Safety bar split squat
4. Clean variation
5. Snatch variation
6. Bench variation
7. Olympic push variations

The sport doesn’t limit the athlete, rather the history of each athlete should determine the restrictions of the program. There will be times when certain things may need to be restricted based on injuries or ailments, but if you are extremely limiting your athlete in the weight room, then I struggle to see how that athlete will stay healthy throughout the course of an entire year.

As I mentioned earlier, the best ability for an athlete is availability, and lifting plays a huge role in keeping your athletes healthy, especially in a sport with such repetitive upper- and lower-body movements. Not only does lifting play a huge role in reducing the risk of injury, it also sets the foundation for developing all other qualities. Bryan Mann once said, and I paraphrase, if you skip out on developing strength, you will limit the potential of developing all other qualities.

If you skip out on developing strength, you will limit the potential of developing all other qualities, says @bigk28. Share on X

The best read of my entire career has been The Triphasic Manual by Cal Dietz and Ben Peterson. It is scientifically backed with the rationale needed to make outstanding progress in the weight room. I have used it for the last several years and have seen nothing but incredible results with regards to strength, speed, and power in a timely manner with my athletes.

Cal talks about undulation, but with a slight twist. Instead of traditional undulation where the volume drops as the intensity increases, we switch the days and approaches to each day.

Athletes usually coming back from a long weekend and then aren’t at their prime, so they need what I call a ‘primer day,’ with a moderate load with some medium volume to ‘activate’ the body for the week. After the body goes through that primer day, it is ready for the heaviest load of the week with the lowest amount of volume. The last day of the week is reserved for the lowest load with the highest volume, giving the athletes 72 hours to recover before the next training.

With a beginner, you will experience progress no matter what program, but as your athlete becomes more experienced, they will need a more specific program. The program can be one of three blocks: strength, power, or speed. Depending on your assessment, you will see which one of these your athletes need the most and in what end of the spectrum they need to work on.

There are several methods to use, but I primarily use the 10/20 yard sprint as well as the countermovement jump vs. pause squat jump to see where my athletes need the specific focus. If I have a beginner athlete, they will progress through these qualities in order.

Video 6. Squats are a great tool to develop lower body strength in all athletes. If a player is new to training, you should continue to see improvements in power and speed as their squat continues to improve.

Each training block should have a specific theme. As Cal talks about, the body will respond better when it is presented with one specific stimulus (i.e. a training block dedicated to strength). Presenting the body with several different stimuli forces the body to adapt to them all at the same time, never really excelling at any.

Presenting the body with several different stimuli forces the body to adapt to them all at the same time, never really excelling at any, says @bigk28. Share on X

Serve and Hitting Speed

One of the more important metrics to assess and track with your volleyball program is serving speed. I labeled this section for both serve and hitting speed because if you train for a faster serving velocity, that will carry over to hitting. This is important because the team that has the faster serving speed will be the more challenging team to serve-receive against.

The speed reserve concept for sprinting comes into play here as well. Volleyball players may take anywhere from 60-120 swings in one given match. Not only is that a high volume of swings, but they usually must repeat this performance for several games spread throughout the week.

No matter how high your hitting speed, it will drop as the games start to pile up. Our off-season plan is to raise the ceiling on our hitting speed so we will still operate at a high level when we start to fatigue.

This test is relatively easy to perform. All you need is a radar gun. Personally, I use the Pocket Radar. I have the athletes perform five serves using their normal serve (standing float vs jump float vs topspin) with the radar gun positioned behind them. Only measure the serves that land in bounds as serves blasted at the back wall at high speeds are of little value.

Your lifting plan will have a big impact on how much serving speed will improve from year to year. I have seen serve speed improve by following a total body training protocol. I think it goes without saying that the more powerful you are the harder you will hit the ball, but a big factor of training I want to dive into further is training the upper body, a hotly-debated topic for overhead athletes.

Training the Upper Body

In my six years working with volleyball players, we have had ZERO upper body injuries. For an overhead sport, that is outstanding. Here are my go-to movements for developing the upper body, making your volleyball athletes more powerful and durable:

1. Olympic Lifting: Olympic lifting has a strong carryover to acceleration, so we clean and snatch all year long with our volleyball athletes. Most of the work we do is singles, but if we are doing a teaching phase, we will go all the way up to four reps.

• I will not go into the specifics of the

benefits of Olympic lifting

because the list is massive, but I believe we get good development of the upper back and posterior shoulder when performing the Olympic lifts year-round. Also, teaching the body to absorb a large amount of force eccentrically is something not many other exercises can do.

2. Horizontal Pushing: Horizontal pushing is a staple movement we perform all year. Everything we do is low volume, one-to-three reps, depending on the emphasis of the block. There are no restrictions here. People often forget how important horizontal pressing (as well as vertical) is, not only for upper body strength and power, but also for stability of the shoulder overhead (i.e. serratus and pec complex). My go-to horizontal pushing exercises are:

• • Barbell bench (regular, close grip, incline)
  • Dumbbell bench (regular, floor press, incline)
  • Pushups (weighted or unweighted)
  • Medicine ball pushes

3. Horizontal Pulling: You want your overhead athletes to be strong pullers. The rule of thumb I use is that whatever we are pressing, we should be able to at least pull the same load. If you want your athletes to stay healthy, you need a well-developed posterior chain and horizontal pulling will be a big weapon in your arsenal. My go-to horizontal pulling exercises are:

• • Pendlay row
  • Barbell row (pronated and supinated)
  • Dumbbell row (standing and chest-supported)
  • Cable row

4. Vertical Pushing: We do vertical pushing exercises all year as well. We do primarily two vertical pushing exercises throughout the week: Olympic-based and strength-based. Volleyball is a sport that requires synchronization between the lower and upper body to perform movements at a high level. I think Olympic overhead movements check all these boxes. Use the same concept here as the other pressing movements—high loads and low volume. This is our overhead Olympic movement progression:

• • Push press
  • Power jerk
  • Split jerk

5. Vertical Pulling: As with horizontal presses and pulls, we will do a vertical push paired with a vertical pull. I like my athletes to do most of the work with a supinated or neutral grip in-season to relieve the stress on the shoulder, but in our off-season we do everything under the sun with regards to vertical pulling. Chin-ups are a staple throughout the year, and we aim to go from bodyweight to loaded for a low amount of reps. These are my staples for vertical pulling:

• • Chin-ups
  • Pull-ups
  • Banded pull down
  • Lat pull down
  • Supinated lat pulldown

6. Triceps/Biceps/Shoulder: When it comes to arm health, I believe the triceps, biceps, and shoulder play a huge role. However, I will not spend a ton of time programming to focus on these because I believe we hit a lot of these areas during our main movements. But if for some reason I feel like we need the accessory work, I will program any of the following:

• • Dumbbell skull crusher
  • Dumbbell hammer curl
  • Dumbbell supinated curl
  • Banded curl
  • Banded overhead triceps extension
  • Banded triceps extension
  • Face pulls
  • Band tears
  • Reverse flys
  • Banded shoulder series

 

Chasing Potential

Volleyball is an extremely versatile sport that requires a unique combination of speed, power, and strength. To maximize the potential of your volleyball athletes, you need a well-versed program that covers all areas that are required for success.

Train your athletes in both acceleration and peak velocity, as both will contribute to speed, rhythm and coordination on the court. Do not neglect the weight room, as strength sets the foundation of the house for all other athletic movements.

However, don’t be obsessed with chasing numbers. We are here to make the best volleyball athlete and it must be a fully encompassed program to accomplish such. If you follow the outline in this article, you will have the tools you need to maximize the potential of your athletes.

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