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For decades, we have seen a wide variety of methods employed to improve speed and conditioning in team sports such as football, basketball, baseball, volleyball, lacrosse, and soccer. These methods often include the 300-yard shuttle, pole runs, 10×110-yard runs, gassers, down and backs, jogging laps, and more. Recently, it has come to the attention of many coaches that these methods are neither appropriate for developing true speed nor specific enough to qualify as relevant conditioning. I would say that, on the surface, this position is relatively fair, as it is difficult to imagine how these training methods relate to the sports at hand.

For example, a single play of football is referred to as “six seconds of hell” by many coaches across the country. This is then followed by a rest interval of roughly 30 seconds, so the work-to-rest ratio is about 1:5. There was a graphic floating around social media from Kurt Hester that approximated roughly 6.3 plays per drive with about 3 minutes and 26 seconds between drives. If we revisit the 300-yard shuttle or gassers, how do those compare to the actual demands of the game? Are we training milers or football players? What is concerning is that many coaches believe these slow, monotonous running modalities contribute to speed development.

What is concerning is that many coaches believe these slow, monotonous running modalities contribute to speed development, says @BrendanThompsn. Share on X

I want to start by saying that I am not here to condemn anybody. Everybody has their own methods and strategies for athletic development, and they do what they truly believe is best for their program. What I want is to provide some information to hopefully give extra tools for coaches to think critically and make calculated decisions regarding speed and conditioning programming for their respective sports.

Speed Kills

It is no secret that speed is one of the most highly regarded traits in all of sports and performance. Fast athletes tend to jump the highest, hit the hardest, and redirect and make game-changing plays more often than their slower counterparts. Because of this, speed is often at the forefront of athletic development, as it should be. However, it tends to be pursued in ways that are not conducive to speed development and may actually take away from the ability to produce and utilize the force needed to achieve top speed.

Speed Development

As mentioned above, the average miler development program of repeat gassers at painfully slow paces may not be the best way to improve speed. Increasing weight room maxes, while there is some correlation to strength capacity and speed outputs, is not the end-all, be-all for speed development.

Within team sports, we often see athletes working on various aspects of their game to improve. Trouble catching the ball? Go play catch. Trouble dribbling? Grab a ball and practice. Free throw issues? Get on the line and start shooting. It is intuitive that working on a specific task with the task is the best way to improve upon it.

So, if I want to get my athletes really fast, what should I do? Should I jog them around for 10-20 minutes in long repeat efforts? Personally, I prefer to sprint them. How some people have developed the idea that slow jogging develops speed is beyond my comprehension. Luckily, it’s not too late to right the ship!

What Is Sprinting?

Sprinting is a running effort that is at or near maximum capacity for each individual. Athletes ideally perform these efforts at distances that allow them to sustain speed for most or all of the rep duration. Additionally, recovery intervals are important in making sure that each rep is of the highest quality while also ensuring that the speed workout does not shift toward slow endurance work due to fatigue. This fatigued state of training is what some refer to as “the death march.”

If quality falls off during the workout, you can either find a way to restore it or cut off the workout completely. Examples of potential remedies are longer rest intervals, shorter sprint distances, or both. If your adjustments are not impactful, it is a sign the athlete is spent for that workout, and it is time to shut it down for the day. This is not to say that you should aim to sprint your athletes until they cannot reproduce high-quality repetitions, but to simply arm you with tools to use in the event that the quality drops.

You can’t expect an athlete to repeatedly sprint at maximal intensity when they are tired, as there will come a point of diminishing returns and possibly an ever-increasing risk of injury with each additional rep. Sprinting doesn’t have to be done in high volumes or long distances. Even max accelerations for just 10 or 20 yards are sufficient to stimulate the central nervous system and get a positive adaptation effect. However, to really work top speed, you will likely need to experiment with repetitions going into the 40- to 60-yard range depending on the athlete and their ability to accelerate to their maximum velocity. Just ensure that your rest intervals line up with the distances being run so that you stay ahead of the looming fatigue.

Speed Monitoring

There are a few ways to monitor the quality of a given workout, the most obvious of which is timing. If you can develop a baseline level for speed work and time each repetition, you can objectively identify when the times start to trend in the wrong direction. In this event, you can refer to the above to attempt to rectify the situation. If this doesn’t work, you can individually start to cut the workout for athletes who are beginning to fall apart.

Using the eye test to monitor body language and mechanical efficiency for signs of fatigue is critical in making these decisions. As the body fights through an energy deficit, the muscles may accumulate several waste products that compromise coordination, speed, power, and movement economy, as the muscles are no longer firing in an optimal physiological environment. I believe these are some of the main reasons that maximal sprinting while fatigued may jeopardize performance and the athlete’s health.

While sprinting is not the only way to enhance speed, it is the most effective training method to do so. It also doubles as an extremely robust exercise that benefits other explosive athletic qualities that are difficult to emulate in other types of training. Plyometrics, biomechanics, and a well-designed weightlifting program (among other things) are also great for developing qualities related to speed to complement the sprint work. As always, find the mixture that fits best with your program and use it well! There are many ingredients involved in the speed equation for any given team or individual, so the way each aspect affects your athletes is an important problem to figure out and manage appropriately.

Prescribing Speed Work

Once we understand what we need to do to improve speed, the big question always becomes: “How do we do it?” This is a fair question, and the answer that you may not be looking for is that it largely depends on the context surrounding your athletes and development. I’m not referring to weight training; I’m specifically referencing high-intensity sprint work. Where does it fit in and how?

• Are you able to incorporate speed by practicing with more intent in the sport?
• Do the demands of the sport contradict speed, and therefore you need to set time aside to build it into your programming?
• How often should you implement speed work?
• Will it be bodyweight speed, resisted speed, assisted speed, controlled speed, or all of the above?
• How deeply will you dive into speed?
• Are you equipped to coach the technical aspects of it?
• Are you comfortable with long rest durations?
• Do you know where to begin and how to progress it?

These are all important questions to ask yourself before going all in. Have a sound plan, put it into action, monitor progress, and adjust accordingly.

Without getting too wordy, do what you’re comfortable with. Short-duration sprinting is likely a stimulus the athletes get in their sport, so maybe this is a good starting point from a safety and familiarity perspective. A rule of thumb I’ve heard many use is to give one minute of rest for every 10 yards sprinted. This isn’t always feasible, and it isn’t a make-or-break rule, but be aware that if you cut your rest durations too short, you will begin shifting to an aerobic conditioning model.

Erring on the side of less overall volume and more overall rest intervals will likely be beneficial in your pursuit of speed development, says @BrendanThompsn. Share on X

Many would say this is the opposite of speed, and I would largely agree. Speed that has been ill-prescribed turns into monotonous conditioning, which has plagued programs for far too long, so let’s be tactful. You don’t need a ton of sprint efforts to improve the central nervous system, so erring on the side of less overall volume and more overall rest intervals will likely be beneficial in your pursuit of speed development.

Conditioning

What is conditioning? Many coaches believe it is the ability to arbitrarily run forever without getting tired; hence, the methods I mentioned above that many incorrectly utilize for relevant conditioning. I would counter this misconception and say that being conditioned means you are able to perform sport-specific tasks repetitively throughout the duration of the game while minimizing the impact fatigue has on performance. Conditioning being related to slow, monotonous running is the reason many sport coaches have pursued this as a means to condition their athletes to endure the demands of the game.

However, running long distances is not what makes an athlete resilient to the detriments of fatigue as a game or competition wears on. What it will do is make them more able to sustain their running paces for longer durations, but simply running for conditioning misses the boat. There needs to be a level of specificity that is gradually incorporated in order for the conditioning work to carry over appropriately.

Principles of motor learning say that task specificity with regard to the activity, the environment, and predictability lead to optimal carryover. If they’re performing the activity at suboptimal levels while under the influence of fatigue, you can count on the athletes learning how to perform low-quality movements. Conditioning does not need to be low-quality, mindless jogging, however; it should reflect what you want to see from your athletes as the game wears on.

As mentioned before, coaches are great at addressing other gaps in performance by practicing those specific aspects of performance. Somewhere along the way, conditioning became simplified to training milers. Just as this training will not improve speed, it also will not make your athlete magically fresh for the fourth quarter of a game. So, what will?

Prescribing Conditioning

By structuring the demands of practice to simulate what will happen in the game, we can build athletes with a greater work capacity and general resilience to game-related fatigue. If it is unrealistic to do so, then finding a way to bridge the gap through other means is your next best bet. This would include keeping similar work-to-rest ratios as the game would require as well as sustaining a given intensity for these durations.

As referenced before, in order to condition specifically, you need to be familiar with how the game tends to unfold in a multitude of ways. For example:

• How long is the average play?
• How many plays per drive or per game?
• How much time is spent in the fast break versus the half court setup?
• How many offensive and defensive possessions per game?
• How much rest between possessions?
• How many players play the entire game?
• Can you simulate timeouts when athletes break down?
• How frequently are you substituting?
• Are there points in the game where the athlete can conserve energy and choose their windows to be aggressive?

Conditioning is not only a physiological resilience but the ability for the athlete to gauge and understand what level of intensity is required for the task at hand. If sustaining high-quality performance throughout the duration of the game is important, these are things that must be addressed. Not everything must be a dead sprint every single play or down.

Conditioning should reflect what you want to see from your athletes as the game wears on, says @BrendanThompsn. Share on X

This is not to say that every practice needs to be structured exactly like a game, as it is important to find time to teach athletes the plays and correct mistakes. However, you can begin to challenge how well they retain your coaching material by starting the game simulation for conditioning purposes. Stopping the flow of this portion of practice after every single play to micromanage the players won’t be conducive to your goal of conditioning, so be sure that they’re at a somewhat proficient level of comprehension prior to throwing them in the fire. Athletes make mistakes. If they mess up on a play, sequence, or decision, you can sub them out for someone who knows what they are doing so that you can coach the player without disrupting your overarching goals of this portion of the practice plan.

As the simulation wears on, you’ll notice athletes begin to get lazy in their pursuit, execution, coordination, and overall performance of the sport demands. This is a great indication that they are gassed. Just as you manage your players in the game, you can practice making substitutions in practice as well. If you’ve got a few players who you rely on, you’ll need to manage the time they play and rest the most. The main reason for this is because you are asking them to perform at a high level and be an ironman at the same time. Unfortunately, you can’t always have both.

Pitfalls of Conditioning

At first glance, conditioning may appear as a pretty simple thing to incorporate into practice. Issues tend to arise as we try to progress these means of conditioning by increasing intensity, frequency, and duration and decreasing rest periods. Coaches begin to buy into the idea that they need the most resilient players in order to endure the demands of the game, and in going all in on this idea, they forget that they are training for a game and not the presidential fitness test.

Coaches often get so infatuated with conditioning, they ignore that the main goal of practice throughout the week is to prepare for the game or events that are to come. Every day of the week becomes a conditioning session, and the ever-increasing volumes take a toll on the body that it needs time to recover from. Not time as in minutes, but days and sometimes weeks. You cannot continue to take everything from these athletes daily without eventually paying a price. That price may come in the form of diminished performances, burnout, or injury.

Additionally, the entire team has been through an extremely demanding week of practice and is also expected to go out and perform at a high level when it matters at the end of the week. Well, looking back at the practice plan, they’ve essentially had three full games’ worth of reps over the last four days, and now they’re being asked to go out and be at their best. To be straightforward, this is an unreasonable expectation, and ultimately both parties may leave the field empty-handed.

The coach will feel like the athletes aren’t tough enough and will punish the athletes with more conditioning. The athletes give their all on the field, but no matter how hard they try, they simply can’t put together a string of meaningful performances while in this diminished state. It is a frustrating and disappointing reality that many coaches and athletes face in team sports every day.

Athletes don’t pour their hearts into practice every day while simultaneously choosing to give lackluster efforts when it matters in the game. Coaches don’t spend the majority of their time with a group of athletes with the intention to sap their performance capacity. A simple way to know when to draw the line on your conditioning: If the athlete isn’t moving the way you’d like for them to move in the game, it might be time to sub them out or end that portion of practice. You’re not in the business of creating bad habits, and running slow may be the least desirable trait you want to reinforce in your athletes.

Use Context as Your Guide

Speed is the most highly desired ability in the sports performance world, yet it is historically trained catastrophically wrong. We know that practicing a given task makes us better at the task, but somehow, we have forgotten that this also applies to speed development. If you want your athletes to get faster, they need to sprint frequently.

Traditional conditioning workouts such as gassers, 300-yard shuttles, down and backs, poles, and laps will not serve as an even remotely valuable substitute when it comes to building the capacity to create and sustain speed. The lack of acceptance for proper work-to-rest ratios can turn speed workouts into mindless conditioning very quickly. It is okay to rest longer than 30 seconds in practice, and the athlete is not wasting time by resting. In fact, they are recharging for more high-quality efforts. Normalize rest, and it will pay dividends across the board.

The lack of acceptance for proper work-to-rest ratios can turn speed workouts into mindless conditioning very quickly… Normalize rest, and it will pay dividends across the board. Share on X

Conditioning is also highly sought after in sports due to the idea that it builds athletes who can weather the storm and retain the ability to perform longer than their unconditioned counterparts. Long-duration jogging does not look like high-flying performances play after play, so it is unrealistic to expect this is what it will translate to when training athletes this way. While it may help them achieve presidential physical fitness in their PE class, it will not enable them to retain their valuable sport-specific skills and execution late into games the way that many may believe.

Use aspects of the game repetitively or simulate the game itself to build a bigger gas tank for the athletes to perform. Once the athlete begins to fall off, it is time to either let them rest or call it a day. We don’t want to create bad habits, particularly those that reinforce athletes moving slowly and losing the ability to make plays.

This is not to say that these are the only ways to develop speed or condition your athletes. It is simply to encourage program reflection and deep thought. Ask yourself:

• Does it make sense?
• Is it high quality?
• Does it look athletic?
• Does it match the demands of the game?
• Does it prepare my athletes for what is ahead?
• Is it safe and reasonable?
• Is it sustainable?

Allowing context to guide your training enables you to be more precise in your programming and help you reason out one training approach versus another. Not all training approaches make sense for all circumstances, so it is important for you to arm yourself not only with relevant contextual information, but various training methods as well. Pick what makes the most sense for your program to develop your athletes as efficiently and effectively as possible.

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

I have had the MuscleLab Contact Grid for nearly one year. Unfortunately, the timing has not been ideal, with the many restrictions in place since mid-March. My intent was to publish this months ago, but better late than never!

This article has a simple purpose: to show how you can use the contact grid, and what data it can capture. This will be a visual-rich resource with minimal explanation. I think seeing is believing when it comes to the contact grid (which I am willing to do live for anyone who lives in the Chicagoland area), but this is the next best thing that I can offer to a wider audience.

Carl Valle has written before about the contact grid and contact times (here, here, and here), and I would encourage you to read those articles either before or after this one to fill in the gaps. A few quick items to address prior to showcasing the different tasks:

• • The grid uses MuscleLab software on a Windows-based machine. I use a Surface Pro (not included in the purchase of the grid).

 

• • One portion of the grid connects directly to the Windows-based machine, while the other section is a “floater.”

 

• • Assuming you are on flat, unobstructed ground, you should be able to set up the grid in minutes. Notice the use of the word “flat” and not “level.” The grid would work fine on an inclined surface with a consistent slope, such as a parking garage ramp (perfect for acceleration work!). Tile, carpet, AstroTurf, concrete, hardwood, multipurpose flooring, and track surface all work well.

 

• • If you want to use it on grass or field turf, you will likely have to slightly raise the grid. This, of course, would decrease its accuracy, but it would still allow a coach to see trends to make the necessary adjustments to programming. For those looking for precision on obstructed or undulating surfaces, IMUs make sense.

 

• • I want to emphasize the importance of a flat surface. There is usually no problem when the sections of the grid are placed relatively close together, but when you move out to the maximum possible distance of 40 meters, interference is more likely. Keep in mind that while it is frustrating, it is a fault of the facility, not the fault of the grid. I have had minimal issues with extended distance indoors, but our outdoor facility has presented a challenge. The use of a laser level can allow coaches to quickly learn which areas of their playing surface are actually flat!

 

• At the end of the day, the possible 40-meter grid length with just two pieces of hardware, combined with the cost, is a huge strength for this product. A similar length of force plates or Optojump would cost well into six figures or more! Also, while not capturing everything Optojump or force plates collect, the Muscle Lab allows users to attain key metrics that were previously impossible to gather due to hardware cost, or too tedious in terms of time (using video to capture GCT).

At the end of the day, the possible 40-meter grid length with just two pieces of hardware, combined with the cost, is a huge strength for the MuscleLab Contact Grid, says @HFJumps. Share on X

Vertical Jump Tests

Video 1. Squat jump, countermovement jump without arms, and countermovement jump with arms.

In all in-place jump tests, it is important to ensure the test is valid. Excessive drift (landing far away from takeoff) or excessive flexion upon landing leads to false scores. You will note that there are examples shown in this article which would be invalid. We were on a time crunch! I have found the use of chalk to create a “zone” that the athlete attempts to stay in can help with minimizing drift.

In the test above, I had an athlete perform a squat jump, a countermovement jump without arms, and then a countermovement jump with arms. These can be done as individual tests, but I like having the data in one place. It makes it easy to determine if an athlete favors strength or elasticity as a movement strategy.

Reactive Strength Index (RSI) Tests

RSI can be a helpful metric to assist in guiding programming. I show three RSI tests below. Each has its own strengths and weaknesses, and I encourage readers to look at this series of articles by Eamonn Flanagan for further details. In each of the tests addressed, I utilize the RSI metric given by the grid for immediate feedback for the athlete (this is calculated by (jump height/contact time) x 1,000). After the session, I look at the ratio of flight time to contact time. As with any grid or mat system, jump height is an approximation of center of mass displacement. I prefer flight time because it is not an approximation, and it creates an apples-to-apples comparison (time/time).

I have the arms in use during each of these, as I am interested in how the athletes synchronize upper and lower body movement. If I was after a true RSI metric, the athletes would have their hands on their hips.

It is also important to remember that improving RSI is not the endgame. For me, the purpose of collecting it is to raise intent and use it to assist in decision-making, which will ideally lead to improvement in actual sport.

Drop Jump RSI

Video 2. Drop jump RSI.

Attaining a peak RSI using this method is not friendly for large groups, as it takes a highly adjustable set of boxes to achieve a true mark. I prefer using this method to overload an athlete from a height that is slightly higher than what you will see in the tests below. This challenges the athlete’s eccentric ability, which allows them to become better energy recyclers.

Rebound Jump RSI

Video 3. Rebound jump RSI.

The advantage to this test is it takes much less time to assess a big group. You could argue that it is not as accurate because the athlete self-selects the height of the initial jump. Another alternative would be to jump off both legs initially, and then land and jump off either the right or left leg for the second jump. This would allow a coach to see imbalance (especially useful in return to play) or identify athletes who could excel in the triple jump.

Scandinavian Rebound Jump Test (SJRT) RSI

Video 4. Scandinavian rebound jump test RSI.

Of all the RSI tests, the SJRT is my favorite because it teaches an athlete how to bounce. In the words of Carl Valle, it is “both a skill and a test.” I have found it to be a low-risk, high-reward activity, as it teaches athletes to synchronize their upper and lower body, interact with the ground more effectively, and assess their nervous system readiness. More than the other two tests, video adds an important layer to this test because a coach can identify energy leaks and review if a rep is valid. (It is a greater challenge to keep track of this due to multiple jumps.)

Sprinting Tests

In each of the sprint tests, the metric I look at is contact time. While timing sprints is a wonderful metric for both coach and athlete, contact time is an additional layer that is more useful for coaches. If an athlete showcases inefficient ground contact on one leg, the grid provides an objective measure to determine if the interventions are working.

While timing sprints is a wonderful metric for both coach and athlete, contact time is an additional layer that is more useful for coaches, says @HFJumps. Share on X

Acceleration

Video 5. Acceleration

Notice the decrease in contact time as the athlete progresses. Combining the contact grid and a timing system (Freelap data shown below) paints a more complete picture.

Note: For those with a larger budget, MuscleLab has additional hardware (timing gates, IMUs, laser, and a resisted/assisted device) that integrate with one another, providing a full sprint profile.

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Resisted Acceleration

Video 6. Resisted Acceleration

Here the athlete is attached to an Exer-Genie to provide resistance. Unfortunately, the device was sticking a bit, which led to a slight stumble. This can be seen in the data below (contact time of 1,060 milliseconds). Using a contact grid, timing system, force sensor, and resistance device can create a setup somewhat similar to a 1080 Sprint or DynaSpeed, for a fraction of the cost.

Possibly the most important component of the contact grid is that it allows for coaches to build a robust set of data specific to their population. Here, utilizing different resistances to achieve various sprint times, and the contact times associated with them, can help a coach build a complete acceleration profile.

Maximum Velocity

Video 7. Flying sprint.

Are there commonalities in right/left contact times between maximum velocity and acceleration? Once again, the contact grid can give objective answers.

 

Bounding Tests

Utilizing a contract grid with bounding is my favorite application of it. My previous article on bounding covers the exercise itself thoroughly, but here I will go deeper into how I use the data the grid gives. 

Speed Bounds

I tend to look at two metrics with speed bounding: contact time and power. The chart below (generated by MuscleLab software) shows the data from eight different athletes completing a single repetition of 20-meter speed bounds with a 10-meter run-in. There is a qualitative evaluation that must be taken into account here.

If you look at Athlete 5, you can clearly see a much higher power value (22.28 W/kg), which also corresponds with higher average flight time (344.25 milliseconds), and higher average contact time (206.5 milliseconds) when compared to the other seven athletes. Despite receiving the same instructions as the other athletes, Athlete 5 did not perform what I would consider a speed bound. In a small pool of data thus far, our fastest high school males have average contact times less than 140 milliseconds for this drill and average power levels approaching or exceeding 9 W/kg.

Please note that the eight athletes below are all upperclassmen and pass the eye test for speed bounds. Many high school athletes do not, and they would be better served with remedial exercises to assist their progression.

Video 8. I really like watching foot contacts during bounds. Here, you will notice a forefoot biased contact more similar to sprinting (heel is slightly elevated). This minimizes GCT. In the upcoming power bound videos, you will see a heel-toe contact. This increases GCT but allows the athlete to be more powerful.

During the next two videos, please pay attention to the arm action of each athlete.

Video 9. A 10.5-second 100m athlete speed bounds.

Video 10. A 11.0-second 100m athlete speed bounds. 

The first athlete is a 10.5-second 100m athlete. The second is an 11.0-second 100m athlete. The 10.5-second athlete produces better metrics (GCT and power) in this drill. His arm action is much more compact. Would a more compact style for the second athlete lead to better metrics in this drill? Could that transfer to faster sprinting? This is a way in which the contact grid can assist in technical considerations.

Power Bounds

As a jumps coach, I am a huge fan of power bounds. Ironically, I called them power bounds prior to having the contact grid, and it just so happens that the power metric is much higher than other forms of bounding. This drill is one of our go-to tests because of the similarities in ground contact found in the final steps in the jumps in track and field (and during triple jump). It serves as both event preparation and a unique performance measure. Our athletes get excited when we bound for power. Our best athletes have contact times around 200 milliseconds, and power outputs approaching 30 W/kg.

Video 11. Notice the heel-toe or rolling ground contacts in this power bound.

Video 12. If the athlete starts within the contact grid, it will capture the first contact. If the athlete starts outside the grid, it will not. In this case, the first contact is a signal to the grid to begin capturing data.

Bound Bleeds

Video 13. An example of a bound to sprint bleed. 

In this example, the athlete was instructed to begin the time within the contact grid with three power bounds, followed by three speed bounds, followed by a sprint. Like the SJRT, it is a skill and a test, and I like the coordination demand it places on the athlete. Similar to the first test in the article (SJ, CMJ, CMJ + arms), I find value in three different tests being present on the live screen. I can foresee using this test to assist with athlete event placement.

 

Miscellaneous Jump/Hop Tests

The following tests are ones with which I have not done too much, but I include them to answer possible questions and spark new ideas.

Horizontal Rebound Jumps

Video 14. This is a way to utilize the grid to handle standard hurdle jumps. You could use a similar setup (with wide-based homemade PVC hurdles) for actual hurdling.

Box Jumps/Hops

Video 15. I would look not only at contact time here, but also the frequency between contacts, or the amount of time it would take to reach a certain number of contacts. This can be a unilateral or bilateral exercise. While there is no substitute for sprinting, this exercise is a solid option in the winter months if you have limited or off-limits indoor space.

Hops

Video 16. The purpose of showing this is to choose the option for which foot contacts the ground in the live screen. This is a nice feature for reviewing data after a session is over. These can be done in place or with horizontal translation. 

 

Sport-Specific Tests

Here, the coach is only limited by their creativity. I have provided a couple of options, but once again, the contact grid can provide valuable data itself or provide another layer coupled with additional data to help drive programming decisions.

Short Approach Long Jump

Video 17. I am still in the infant stage of using this type of test, but I know it will be one we use often once we are back in season. I plan to combine the data obtained and compare it to the IAAF Biomechanical Reports. Elite women show a strong correspondence to elite high school males. Short approaches of the pole vault and other jumps are certainly doable.

Change of Direction

Video 18. You could implement any change of direction test (such as a 5-10-5) here, assuming the athlete stays within the grid. I would advise chalk lines, tape, or field/court/track lines on the ground to assist the athlete with steering. Note: It is necessary for the athlete to have no interference with the grid in order for it to register the next contact. Because the feet may stay close to the ground (such as a shuffle) or there may be minimal flight time (the left foot contacts the ground while the right is still on the ground), the contact grid may not capture every contact during these types of tests.

Too Much Tech?

I think the 15 tests shown, combined with the extra layer of data provided, make a contact grid the next logical purchase after a timing system, says @HFJumps. Share on X

I have engaged in numerous conversations with colleagues who coach at the high school level regarding technology and whether it provides signal or noise. Many own a timing system that costs in the low four figures. Assuming accuracy and workflow are not an issue, the question that we would need to answer is: Does the value of the contact grid exceed its cost? I think the 15 tests shown, combined with the additional layer of data provided (which can assist in programming decisions and technical adjustments), make a contact grid the next logical purchase after a timing system.

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

One thing all athletic development professionals can agree on is we want our athletes to get the highest-quality adaptation possible to whatever training stimulus we program for them to do day in and day out. The largest obstacle to that is the individual readiness of each athlete and how much it can vary from day to day based on factors out of our control. We must also look at team data to understand the big fatigue/readiness picture.

Doing our part to ensure our athletes are able to maximize performance and mitigate injury is a very important job. While intuition and observation can often give us insights into how an athlete’s performance may be affected by such influences as sleep quality, nutrition quality, and other lifestyle factors, its accuracy can be low. Often an athlete may look fatigued and perform well, or the opposite. The more insight we can gain into the true readiness of each athlete, the more ability we have to provide an optimal effective dose in our performance programming.

The reality is if you have the budget, you can invest in a very expensive athlete monitoring system (AMS). However, most of us don’t have the resources for many top-of-the-line AMS options. So, should we give up on providing our athletes with this advantage? Speaking from experience, I say absolutely not.

Regardless of your budget or technological prowess, using an AMS in your program is within your grasp, says @YorkStrength17. Share on X

I’ve used some sort of AMS for almost 10 years. During that time, it has evolved from a free, homemade version of a wellness questionnaire combined with some simple bar charts in our weight room to a multi-pronged approach featuring a complete sports science suite that includes not only a wellness survey with a body chart but daily use of a Just Jump mat and GPS. Regardless of your budget or technological prowess, using an AMS in your program is within your grasp. Adding the title of “fatigue manager” to your job responsibilities can be critical to making sure your athletes have a chance to thrive. If you have the willingness to pay the price in time, you can achieve this goal regardless of budget.

My First Experience: No Budget, No Problem

I first stumbled upon the idea of subjective monitoring of our athletes at a coaching clinic at AC Flora High School in Columbia, South Carolina. To be honest, I’d never really thought about the concept. I programmed a session for our athletes and expected them to perform. If I noticed an athlete was not feeling well or underperforming, it typically led to a conversation. Occasionally, this would result in an athlete stopping their workout and sitting out. Most of the time I made sure they pushed through.

The problem was the extent of my “if-then” questions. If they looked like they were struggling, then either they quit the workout or survived it. Neither of those choices are viable options when seeking to maximize performance.

My first look at an AMS was during a presentation in which a coach showed us a wellness survey they used that was within an expensive sports science platform. I immediately recognized that this could be a powerful tool in our program’s toolbox. The major roadblock was budget. At that moment, even a base package cost well over $1,000. There was just no way we could swing that cost.

However, a conversation with another coach at that very clinic provided me with the solution. I was introduced to Google Forms. This was a way to create a homemade survey with questions that I designed. We could weigh the answers to reflect the particular aspects of the questionnaire we felt carried the most importance (sleep and nutrition questions have a higher numerical value toward overall readiness than mood, for example). We also had the ability to mass email it to our student-athletes.

When completed, we could compile the answers in Google Sheets (similar to Excel) to give us a readiness score. Below is an example of how the original readiness survey and the team response looked. It had a total of 10 questions. We dumped the individual responses into Sheets, and I received a report that looked like this.

I also decided to add a special focus on hydration and sleep. I set up two bar-graph leaderboards in the weight room. When the athletes entered the room, the first thing they did was fill in a box on the graph next to their name if they got 8+ hours of sleep and drank 8+ glasses of water in the previous 24 hours. We used it as a type of wellness leaderboard. This not only gave the athlete a second level of accountability, but it also tapped into their competitiveness.

We used this system for just over a year. It worked well, and if faced with a budgetary shortage ever again, I would not hesitate to use it again.

Better Budget, Better Tech

As time went on, and we began to rely more and more on the data we collected to drive decision-making, the desire to improve our abilities to collect and store information drove us to look at a Web-based AMS. I reached out to the coaches I had originally heard presenting on the topic, and they directed me to a company that fit my needs. I was pleased to find that the price point was closer to the budgetary realities I was working within.

The product we chose to go with provided us with an editable wellness survey that could be sent directly to the athlete on a daily basis via a text message. I was responsible for sending the group text each day through an app on my phone. The program enabled us to produce reports and keep historical data that improved our record-keeping abilities.

However, what we were getting for the money was not that much of an upgrade from a cost-efficiency standpoint. We stuck with this platform for two years. While we continued to monitor and adjust, I still was not completely satisfied with our overall program of athlete monitoring. We needed more than a survey to help us drive important individual daily decisions.

Dialing In Our Process: Overview

In November 2017, I began my tenure in my current position at York Comprehensive High School. While it was an established sports performance program (I was the second full-time strength and conditioning coordinator at the school), the process of installing my program took precedence the first year or so. During that time, I actually stopped using any formal AMS.

After the first year, it was time to begin to work it back in. We began at the beginning, with the wellness survey. For a short time, we used Google Forms again. Shortly after that, the online strength and conditioning software we used at the time added the option of a survey. In December 2019, I switched our sports performance platform to CoachMePlus. I could go into the reasons for the switch, but this is not that article.

The AMS aspect of CoachMePlus is absolutely outstanding and takes the wellness survey to a new level with the addition of body charts, says @YorkStrength17. Share on X

CMP provided us with a sports science platform to go along with a workout distribution feature that fit our needs. The AMS aspect of CMP is absolutely outstanding and takes the wellness survey to a new level with the addition of body charts. Not only can we get a subjective survey, but now our athletes can alert us to soreness and injury with a numerical level of severity through a click of the mouse.

I am aware of any soreness or potential injury issues before our athletes walk into our room. This is obviously a huge advantage in the decision-making process for each individual athlete. We are also able to monitor multi-day patterns that can lead to conversations with our sports medicine staff early in the process. If we can pre-empt just one injury to one athlete, this is worth the effort.

The “if-then” scenario of a low or high score on the readiness survey or indication of soreness and/or injury on the body chart all begin with a coach-athlete conversation. Empowering the athlete to be part of the decision-making process is a step that can help foster trust and build a relationship with the coach and athlete that will help both to flourish. It will also often clear up any concerns.

At times, this will lead to modifications that will ensure the athlete gets what they NEED that day and not just what the coaches want. More importantly, it can alert the coaching staff to any potential injury situation that could be worsened without this knowledge. The readiness survey and body chart can be seen as a subjective pre-screening that gives us more information to make sound decisions.

While subjective data is helpful to the process, I knew I needed some way to also collect objective data to best drive the decision-making process. We have one piece of technology at YCHS that I had never had before, and it became our test of choice. This was the Just Jump mat. The mat allows us to vertical jump test a large group of athletes in a very short time.

We began with a weekly test but soon expanded to a daily, cold vertical jump. I keep a very simple spreadsheet where I record each day’s cold vertical taken from each athlete as we walk into the facility. They do no warm-up or preparation for this jump. If we happen to have done any type of activity before we jump, I will not collect data that day for that group. My thought process is that this will give us a less variable-driven score.

This is much like weighing yourself when you first rise in the morning before you eat or drink any water. I’m looking for the truest baseline score I can get each day. In the score sheet we keep an average of all jumps in a given period or training cycle. We also keep track of the best jump of the cycle. Each of those data points plays a role in any potential programming adjustment that we may make.

While monitoring team averages and trends is important, the most important aspect of any AMS is the individual athlete and the process of maximizing individual performance. The other aspect of the individual is they are part of the team. If enough of our individuals are not recovering, that will lead us to a team solution. On the other hand, optimal dosage is our goal. If a majority of individual athletes show a high level of performance, it indicates that we can increase the intensity and shoot for a higher level of training on that day.

While monitoring team averages and trends is important, the most important aspect of any AMS is the individual athlete and the process of maximizing individual performance, says @YorkStrength17. Share on X

From an individual athlete perspective, we use one major KPI as our driving data. The initial KPI that our athletes take part in, which I mentioned above, is our cold countermovement vertical jump using our Just Jump mat. Individually, we look for outlying results that may indicate the athlete’s ability to perform at peak power output for the day.

Before the athlete jumps, we already know from their readiness survey how they think they feel that day. We use the jump to confirm that subjective data using a rolling average of all jumps during the training period. Often, we have a low readiness score followed up by a conversation that gets us thinking we potentially need to adjust the athlete’s program. Then the athlete jumps and hits above their average or even a new personal record, which will most often lead to no adjustment.

Most athletes on most days fall within the range we look for on the jump. On any given day, we may have a small handful who don’t. We repeat the jump to confirm. This is an example of how we keep this data.

Two jumps below 90% of their rolling average will result in further investigation and often a modified program for the day. As mentioned above, we also occasionally have an athlete with a great readiness score followed by a jump 100% plus of their average. This can also lead to a modification, with a slightly increased intensity level.

Coaches familiar with APRE will recognize this protocol. We are an APRE program, and this particular process is driven by that philosophy. Below is the chart we use as a guide for modification. Conversation in this instance means a brief chat with the athlete to gauge their feeling of readiness and what they would individually feel they need that day.

It’s important to note that this entire process usually takes less than five minutes. It’s imperative that you have daily modifications prepared in advance. Often, it’s as simple as lowering the intensity of the movement or the assigned load for the day. In some cases where we feel the athlete is unprepared from a fatigue or CNS perspective, we assign the individual an alternate program inside of the CoachMePlus system, which we can do from any device in seconds. Here is an example:

Our focus with these athletes is recovery. As much as we would like to utilize every minute to push strength and power adaptations, the reality is the goal is performance in the sport. To drive a fatigued athlete further into fatigue would be putting that goal in jeopardy. If both our subjective and objective data suggest the athlete needs a recovery session to maximize on-field performance, that is the direction we will go.

GPS

The latest tool in our toolbox is GPS. GPS allows us to do a deep dive into what level of stress our athletes are experiencing within their sports practice. The units give us the ability to track sprint volume, effort, and speed zones (among other things). Before we get any farther into the process, I must give any coach thinking about adding GPS to their program one word of advice. Make sure your sport coaches are on board and willing to develop a plan and stick with it.

Part of the challenge for most North American strength and conditioning coaches (particularly at the high school level) is that while we can most often control the volume and intensity, etc. in our weight rooms or our speed programs, once the athlete is at practice, we are at the mercy of the sports coaches. Unless you work with coaches who will adjust what they want to do based on what the data may say needs to be done, I’d suggest investing in other areas besides GPS. That being said, if you have coaches with a growth mindset and a willingness to work within the data, GPS can be a very powerful tool.

If you have coaches with a growth mindset and a willingness to work within the data, GPS can be a very powerful tool, says @YorkStrength17. Share on X

A second word of advice is to select a small number of data categories that will give you the best possible picture and stay focused. Too much data can become noisy fast and lead to frustration. The last thing you want is the coaches you work with to not have the time or the willingness to sift through long reports. Be precise and stick to the data that gives a clear picture of what is important to the sport.

I selected our categories to track based on a series of conversations with a high school coach who has been using GPS and my education in the process of using our units. We narrowed it to 11 categories to draw from on a daily basis. However, we draw our main monitoring data from an individual session score (a comparison of work done as compared to other players), sprint volume in yards (which was a combination of two other categories: zones of 80-89% and 90+% of previous max velocity), and top speed in mph. In addition to individual athlete data, we also keep a team average for each. This allows us to not only get an individual picture for each athlete but also one of the team overall.

Team Data: A High-Performance Practice Plan

Our football program is currently the one that utilizes our GPS units most effectively. Our head football coach is actually the reason we have GPS units, as he wrote a grant for our first four units. He is highly invested in the process, and that has led to our ability to use the GPS and all aspects of our overall AMS to develop a practice plan that’s designed to have our athletes in position to perform at their highest level on game nights. We call this our high-performance practice plan. This plan is built and monitored entirely on the team averages for each category. While there are many ways of practicing, we decided to go with the plan seen in figure 7.

On Monday, our goal is to have our highest volume and workload of the week. Traditionally, Monday is not always that type of day in high school football. We must remember that this is not necessarily tied into the sports-specific aspects of practice. It just means we want the highest volume of 80%+ sprinting for the week on this day.

Our session score, which is a comparative workload, is the second factor, and it is actually in contrast to our sprint volume. So, while we want the highest volume of sprints, we also want to see the lowest average session score. This lends itself to a slower learning pace at practice with our sprints coming from drills or post practice speed work. If you have the luxury of having the athletes in class during the day (as we do), you can also utilize that time to get some high-quality sprinting to ensure you get to your goals for the day.

Tuesday for our team is a higher intensity day from a physical contact perspective. We want to make sure that this is the day we have the lowest high-speed volume. Our goal is to keep our athletes in position to be as fully recovered as possible each day. To help that process, we keep our heaviest contact day our lowest sprint volume day.

Wednesday is a combo day. Contact is not as heavy as on Tuesday, allowing for the recovery process to begin for Friday. Sprint volume will not be as high as Monday because we have recovered more from less work done on Tuesday.

Thursday is low and low. We want to see high top velocity and acceleration data, but overall volume should be at its lowest point of the week.

Figure 8 shows an example of the data I select and download from our GPS pods for a day of practice.

We use GPS particularly with our football athletes as a lagging key performance indicator (KPI). What I mean by this is we do not monitor our GPS in real time. Instead, we collect this data and reviewed it the next morning.

The main purpose of our GPS data collection is to drive the High-Performance Practice Plan from a team perspective. This, however, does not mean we don’t also look at individual data. We monitor our individual sprint volume and session scores, looking for consecutive days of greater-than-average numbers.

We also monitor the athletes’ max velocity. We want our skill athletes to hit 90%+ of max velocity at least twice a week in practice. Our belief is that if we look at our athletes as high-performance race cars, we don’t want their first dosages of max velocity to be on race day. We believed in this philosophy even before we had GPS capabilities. Prior to GPS, we took one day a week and ran 2-4 full-speed 40- to 60-yard sprints in our athletic development class. GPS allows us to see if they hit that speed in practice, and we only sprint in class now if the data indicates the need.

From a team GPS perspective, it’s fairly simple. I give our head coach a daily report IF there is an outlying issue. This could be too much or too little volume or session score based on the plan. This could also be because of the lack of max velocity over 90% by our skilled athletes. In this instance, that is where my scope of influence ends.

The sport coaches make the adjustments based on my recommendations. Normally, they do this by modifying post-practice speed work or building in modifications to the individual sessions of practice. If an individual athlete needs modifications, the position coaches, again, handle this. As you can imagine (and as I mentioned earlier), this is 100% sport coach cooperation driven. If you don’t have a staff that has this type of growth mindset, you will become frustrated quickly.

The Best Ability Is Availability

I can sum up the driving force behind my desire to include a fatigue management program with our athletes in one clichéd phrase: “The best ability is availability.” I mean this not just for having a program in which your athletes are able to dress and participate in games and practices. My goal is for our athletes to thrive in those situations.

Using a multilevel AMS that gives us insight into both individual and team readiness allows us to put our athletes in position to be the best version of themselves while playing their sport. Share on X

Using a multilevel athlete monitoring system that gives us insight into both individual and team readiness allows us to put our athletes in position to be the best version of themselves while playing their sport. Whatever your budget is, as long as the desire to monitor your athletes is present, there is a way to do it.

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The link between sport and business is well-established, so much so that it risks becoming a bit of a tired cliché. If you follow sports coaches on Twitter, it won’t be long before you notice them sharing their recent reads, which often include any number of business books. In turn, this has led to a bit of a backlash against both this genre of books and the application of business principles to sport (or vice versa).

This pushback, however, may come at the expense of some important development and thinking opportunities for sports coaches, as there is significant potential for coaches to pick up key insights from business literature. In Prepared, the latest book from Paul Gamble (which is both excellent and highly recommended), he explores key pillars of sports coaching excellence, including creating an environment for excellence, leading and coaching others, and managing ourselves. Gamble identifies that coaching is not domain-specific; instead, it relates to being able to support and develop humans toward fulfilling their potential—be that in sport, business, or life. If we take out technical and contextual knowledge—which for sports coaches, is specific to their sport and/or event—then there are indeed commonalities in approach (which is why the skills and approach of a coach can be applicable across a variety of domains, as identified by the Harvard Business Review).

It’s not only Gamble who sees the value in “borrowing” from the business world; the Australian Institute of Sport, for example, has a partnership with Melbourne Business School to deliver professional development for coaches and performance directors. There is also an ever-increasing body of research discussing the bidirectional link between business and sport. In 2010, Robert Weinberg and Matthew McDermott explored the common factors for success in sports and business organizations, identifying key themes such as leadership, group (or team) cohesion, and communication as crucial across both domains.

Other researchers have explored organizational psychology—a discipline typically utilized within the business realm—within sport. One such study, published in the Journal of Applied Sports Psychology in 2012, identified conflict management, along with emotional control and expression, as crucial factors in optimizing performance within sporting organizations. Leadership within sport is also well-examined, with a body of research stretching back more than 30 years, and again drawing parallels to—and borrowing heavily from—business domains. Finally, management is an important part of sporting success, with performance management—the process by which athlete, coach, and support team drive success—an important part of athlete outcomes; increasingly, coaches have to manage more than just the athlete in this process.

Master of Business Administration

It’s not just sport that borrows from business; business also borrows from sport. Graham Jones, a sports psychologist, wrote about his transition to business consulting in 2002, identifying key similarities between the two domains. Dr. Sandy Gordon built on this in a 2014 paper, writing that evidence suggested that business coaches and sports coaches had a lot to learn from each other. The research base here is broad and well-established; Ievleva and Terry, in a 2008 article, wrote about applying sports psychology to business, while Graham Jones (along with colleague Kirsty Spooner) identified key similarities between coaching high achievers in sport and business. Finally, the business literature has long drawn from the sporting research, perhaps best exemplified by a 2001 Harvard Business Review article titled “The Making of a Corporate Athlete.”

This brings us to The Personal MBA by Josh Kaufman. In the book, Kaufman aims to provide a high-level business education—similar to that found in formal Master of Business Administration (MBA) courses—but without the hefty price tag. To do this, Kaufman aims to use mental models, which he defines as concepts that represent our understanding of how things work.

I want to focus on how we use business principles to enhance athlete development as opposed to making more money, says @craig100m. Share on X

I find mental models really useful, as they allow us to develop mental shortcuts (often termed “heuristics”) and also serve as a way for teams to view things in a similar manner and work toward a common goal. Kaufman’s book is split into three main sections:

1. 1. How Businesses Work, which explains how businesses operate and how we can improve their effectiveness. This part of the book is of the least interest to us in coaching terms, because I want to focus on how we use business principles to enhance athlete development as opposed to making more money; consequently, I’ll largely skip over this section.

 

1. 1. How People Work, which is highly applicable. Kaufman writes that “to understand how businesses work, you need a firm understanding of how people make decisions, act on those decisions, and communicate with others.” This is also true within the sports coaching domain; we need to understand why both coaches and athletes act in the ways they do, and how best to communicate to create influence. Having the best training program in the world is not that useful if your athletes don’t listen to you, and this section explores the importance of communication.

 

1. How Systems Work, which introduces the concept of complex systems, as well as making systemic changes. Again, this is an area of ever-increasing interest in sport, with systems thinking and design becoming increasingly well-studied across sporting contexts.

1. How Businesses Work

A key insight from this section of the book, directly applicable to coaching, is the iteration cycle. This is the process by which businesses improve their offerings (products, services, etc.) over time, and it is comprised of six key steps. While used within business, it is also highly applicable to how coaches may update their coaching practice by changing their overarching coaching philosophy or training program. Let’s take a look at the six key steps of the iteration cycle from a coaching perspective:

1. 1. Watch – Understand what works, what doesn’t, and how your athletes respond to the program.

 

1. 1. Ideate – What could you improve, and how? What innovations and recent changes, in research, technology, or facility access, can you make the most of to improve how you develop athletes?

 

1. 1. Guess – Make an informed decision. Based on what you see and what you know, which of the potential changes you could make will have the greatest positive effect?

 

1. 1. Which – Decide which change(s) to make.

 

1. 1. Act – Make the change.

 

1. Measure – Determine whether the change had any measurable effect. Should you continue down this path or reject the idea?

This cycle is always occurring, such that once we have measured the outcome of a change, we return to the watch phase…which we then use to inform our next change, and so on. By using the iteration cycle, we can constantly look to move toward best practice, while analyzing what is and isn’t effective. A related model is incremental augmentation, where the iteration cycle is used to continuously make small improvements on the training plan in an ongoing manner.

Another important mental model introduced in this section of the book is that of relative importance testing, used in business to understand what features customers want in a product. This model suggests that customers won’t accept trade-offs unless they’re forced to make a decision, at which point they will select the next best alternative. As an example, we can take the early-model iPhone camera: It wasn’t a great camera, but customers accepted it—and the trade-off—because it reduced the number of items they were required to carry and allowed them to store and access their pictures instantly and upload and share them efficiently.

Developing training programs and plans is all about making trade-offs; it’s difficult to develop numerous physical qualities at once, for example, or have a competition schedule that is absolutely perfect. Instead, we have to look for the next best alternative, the plan or program that satisfies most of our key requirements without too many negative trade-offs.

We have to look for the ‘next best alternative,’ the plan or program that satisfies most of our key requirements without too many negative trade-offs, says @craig100m. Share on X

Finally, another useful mental model is that of the minimally economically viable offer, or MEVO. This represents a prototype that can be sold to a customer, from which feedback can be collected to either determine that the product isn’t worth developing further or kick-start the iteration cycle. Applying this to coaching, we often look to put together the “perfect” training program—I know I do. Instead, perhaps we might start with a MEVO-inspired plan: What are the absolutely minimally necessary aspects I need in my plan?

You can then refine this simple framework, either in advance by adding more sessions/sections based on what the athlete has done previously, or on a daily iteration basis informed by how the athlete is responding. A MEVO-approach highlights simplicity and necessity first, before adding the extra bits later. Related to this is opportunity cost: because we can’t do everything, anything we choose to do prevents us from doing something else. So, the things we choose to do must be effective and better than what we’re leaving out.

2. How People Work

The first key mental model introduced here is that of a guiding structure; essentially, the structure of your environment (or that of the athletes you coach) is the largest determinant of behavior. As a result, if you seek to produce a specific behavior—either in yourself or in those you coach—setting up the environment to best support and drive that behavior is crucial.

Elite coaches often highlight the importance of environment; for example, in a study from Australia on serial winning coaches, the participants identified the environment that they created for their athletes—and in which they worked themselves—as a key part of their success. The study spoke in detail about developing sufficient challenges and setting high expectations. Alongside this, Kaufman writes that we should aim to remove tension within environments to enable the behaviors we want. If we want our athletes to do a specific strength exercise after a running session, they are far more likely to do it if the equipment is close by rather than a 10-minute walk away.

Similarly, behavioral rules in the environment can reinforce positive behaviors and reduce negative ones. The example used in the book is that of the sterile cockpit, borrowed from aviation; here, pilots are required to avoid any nonessential conversation when below 10,000 feet, so that they can focus on the key processes and steps associated with landing the plane. An example from sport might be a rule that does not allow negative language (or moaning) about decisions that the athlete cannot affect or alter—focusing instead on what they can control.

This section of Kaufman’s book also introduces a variety of cognitive biases and thinking traps we need to be aware of:

• • Pattern matching – Our brains search for patterns in everything, so they can develop mental shortcuts. This is negative when it comes to thinking, because we might be over-interpreting and spotting a pattern when one isn’t actually there. It is therefore important to continually question whether an identified pattern is actually present.

 

• • Pattern interpretation – Similar to the previous example, our brain uses previous information and experiences to make quick decisions. This is most obvious when we first meet someone; we often decide whether we like someone or not in the first few seconds. In sport, we might have a gut feeling that a plan or decision is wrong, but we need to question whether this is just our brains making a split-second judgment based on limited information.

 

• • Loss aversion – This thinking trap states that we respond to threats of loss more readily than the possibility of gain. For example, if we are consistently selected for national teams, we might be less willing to take a different approach in training in case we lose our place on the team; ignoring the fact that we might actually perform better as a result. The key question here is “Am I avoiding this behavior because I am overly concerned with what I might lose?”

 

• • Absence blindness – Here, we can’t identify what we can’t see. A great sporting example of this is that we might have a training program that has a high risk of injury, but because of a variety of factors (including luck), we haven’t had an injury yet. This does not mean, however, that the training program is either effective or safe.

 

• Locus of control – This thinking trap is really useful for athletes who suffer with anxiety around competition; focus on what you can control and influence, and not the rest. You can’t influence or control your competitors, so don’t waste valuable time and mental energy worrying about them. I once read a book by one of the Navy SEALs on the Bin Laden mission, and he wrote about focusing on his “three-foot box”—essentially, anything he could touch. If it was outside of that, he couldn’t influence it, so he didn’t worry about it.

The latter part of this section focuses on working with others. As a coach, your aim is to improve the performance of the athletes you work with; as a result, you put together a training and performance plan, and you need them to follow the plan. This requires you to wield power, which Kaufman defines as the ability to influence the actions of other people.

Compulsion is a poor strategy. Instead, developing the ability to positively influence others represents a crucial part of coaching development, says @craig100m. Share on X

There are two fundamental forms of power: influence and compulsion. Influence is encouraging someone to follow your suggestion, while compulsion is forcing someone to do something. For reasons completely lost on me, many coaches utilize compulsion, with punishments handed out when athletes don’t follow what the coach wants. The problem here is that people—athletes included—typically resist being forced to do something, making compulsion a poor strategy. Instead, developing the ability to positively influence others represents a crucial part of coaching development. One way of being influential is by having a strong reputation, something that can be cultivated over time. Messengers, a book I examined earlier in this series, also explores how to convey information with influence.

Another important concept raised by Kaufman is that of safety. Psychological safety is viewed as one of the key components of a functional team; which, in our case, might be the athlete and coach pair or training group, or in team sports the full squad. Psychological safety is defined as the belief that you won’t be punished for making a mistake, and it has been linked to increased creativity and enhanced communication. Kaufman refers to Crucial Conversations, a seminal book on the topic, and its STATE model for developing psychological safety:

1. 1. Share facts – Facts are less controversial, more persuasive, and less insulting than conclusions.

 

1. 1. Tell your story – Explain the situation from your perspective, taking care to use neutral language and avoid blame.

 

1. 1. Ask for other’s perspectives – How do they see things?

 

1. 1. Talk tentatively – Avoid judgments and ultimatums, allow the person you’re communicating with to “buy in” to your suggestions on their own time.

 

1. Encourage testing – Explore what data you would need to determine whether your proposed course of action would be effective and suggest training interventions that you can test the effectiveness of quickly.

Wrapping up this section, Kaufman discusses the Pygmalion Effect. This model states that individuals tend to rise to the level of people’s expectations of them. Leaning on this rule, we can see the value of having challenging (but still realistic) goals and of setting high expectations in terms of behavior and performance. By setting such a high bar, the athletes we work with are more likely to reach higher levels of performance.

3. How Systems Work

Businesses are complex systems that exist within even more complex systems, such as markets and economies. Sport is no different: the athlete represents a complex system themselves, being the integration of neuromuscular, cardiovascular, and many other systems that influence performance. The athlete may then form part of a team—another complex system—and this team then has to interact with opponents, further increasing the complexity present.

Designing a training program requires some form of systems thinking. Complex systems are full of different variables and interdependencies that need to be considered and arranged in the right order to deliver success. Complexity is further increased by uncertainty, which dictates that we are unable to anticipate all the interdependences in advance. As a result, the best approach to developing a complex system, such as a training and performance plan, is to start off with a simple system that is good enough and then consistently iterate over time (as per the iteration cycle and MEVO method).

The best way to develop a complex system, such as a training plan, is to start off with a simple system that is good enough and then consistently iterate over time, says @craig100m. Share on X

Systems have flow, defined as movements of resources into and out of the system. This can be national governing body support, sponsorship, facility access, other support staff, and assistant coaches—these all represent assets that can move into and out of the process. The extent to which we are reliant on these factors influences the fragility of the system; for example, a training process that requires a particular staff member will fall down if/when that staff member is unavailable. The goal with any system, therefore, is to limit its fragility, which ensures it can continue to operate effectively irrespective of the current state of flow.

Systems also have slack. From a business perspective, slack refers to the amount of resources present, most typically as stock. A business with a big warehouse full of products, therefore, has plenty of slack in case of a current upsurge in orders; businesses that don’t hold much inventory, however, have less slack and are sensitive to surges in demand—as highlighted by the issues with toilet paper during lockdown. From a sporting perspective, slack can be related to injury prevention; here, we want to increase the various resiliencies of an athlete so that they can tolerate more damage before injury occurs. This might include ensuring they get sufficient sleep and are optimizing their nutrition. Conversely, slack can be removed from the system; the athlete who sleeps poorly and doesn’t have good nutritional habits is, as a result, more susceptible to injury.

Systems are also in a constant state of flux, largely due to the high levels of uncertainty they encounter. Uncertainty is defined as an unknown unknown; something that could not be predicted—and hence planned for—in advance (the opposite, a known unknown, is risk). While we can’t plan for specific uncertainties, we can plan for uncertainties in general. As a result, any plan we have must be easily modifiable, and we must make modifications frequently based on new information.

From a training perspective, this includes the use of monitoring: Is the athlete adapting to the load or are they overly fatigued? Do you need to modify training because of an injury? Have they improved as much as they can in this area, or should you repeat the block? (For those interested, I tangentially discussed this concept in a paper I wrote back in 2019.) Because of pattern matching, it’s easy for us to over-interpret what we see, so the collection of unbiased data to support decisions is crucial.

Businesses also need to focus on systems optimization, and again there are important lessons we can take from this into sport. In business, optimization takes place around a set of key performance indicators (KPIs), which businesses use to measure how they are performing. In sport, we also have KPIs.

Taking the example of a 100-meter runner, the most obvious KPI is their season best: Are they faster this year than last year? The problem with this KPI is the lag time—by the time you know they’re underperforming, it is too late to make any changes, given the short time frame of the competitive season and the longer time frame required for physical adaptations. Instead, we need to develop proxy markers of success, and use these as KPIs. The challenges here are:

1. 1. You need to find tests that correlate strongly with actual performance.

 

1. You need to avoid training to become good at the test at the expense of improving competition performance.

Systems optimization also includes maximization and minimization. The latter suggests that we aim to reduce aspects that harm us from hitting our KPIs. From a training and performance standpoint, in my opinion the big two are training too hard too often (and the associated fatigue and underperformance) and injury/illness. To optimize a training system, we need to minimize factors that can cause those two main issues.

One way we can do this is by refactoring, which is the removal of factors in the pursuit of efficiency. Within a training system, this would include removing sessions and/or exercises that don’t improve the athlete’s chances of meeting their KPIs—so-called empty training. Key to this process is asking the question, “What can I get rid of without harming performance?” Kaufman refers to those exercises/sessions that we keep as the critical few—the small minority of inputs that drive the greatest output.

A subdiscipline of systems science deals with safety, and there is a concept within systems theory of normal accidents. Here, it is believed that failures and accidents, while unexpected and undesired, are the result of complexity and interactions; basically, an accident is not typically one thing going well, but numerous things going wrong at the same time.

As it is difficult to forecast these events, accidents are viewed as “expected” and, hence, normal. This means two things:

1. 1. We must design systems that prevent single failures from becoming an accident.

 

1. We must also design systems that are able to tolerate some form of failure.

The latter is termed resilience; for the former, we need to develop fail-safes, which can act as an early warning system of an impending accident. In sport, the most common “accidents” are injury or error during competition, both of which lead to underperformance.

A fail-safe from an injury prevention perspective might be improving musculoskeletal robustness through general conditioning or load monitoring; from a performance in competition perspective, it might include stress testing. Here, the athlete (or team) is subjected to realistic competition scenarios to assess how they perform, with their performance used to guide subsequent training interventions. This points to the importance of representative design in training sessions, which I wrote about for SimpliFaster in 2019. This stress testing allows for early identification of issues, which can then be rectified before the major competition.

Course Eval

By looking through the lens of systems theory, we can stimulate new thoughts and approaches to support us in developing athletes, says @craig100m. Share on X

While sports coaches reading business books is a cliché, The Personal MBA has clear lessons and mental models that apply to better coaching. For me, the best part of the book was “How Systems Work”—by approaching athlete development from the lens of systems theory, we can stimulate new thoughts and approaches to support us in developing athletes. Often, we focus on enhancing our technical knowledge; instead, if we think about how we approach problems, we might be able to better stand out from the crowd.

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

Many elite sprinters, notably many Jamaicans, drag or scrape their toes during the second stride of a sprint. For some, that drag occurs on both the first and second strides, and hurdler Lolo Jones even dragged during her third stride. Proponents of toe dragging say it helps ensure low recovery of the leg, which many think to be efficient during the first strides; they also point to increases in ground contact time, which allows for creating more force and a longer stride. Some will even say this provides a foundation for maximizing top speed (max velocity).

It is obvious to me that toe dragging does not represent a best practice in regard to the success of the total race, says @TheYouthTrainer. Share on X

It is debatable whether or not dragging the toes is a good technique. While I am not in favor of toe dragging, I also am not in the camp of I just don’t get it. My understanding of what is mechanically sound for the first three steps allows me to see what toe dragging achieves, but it is obvious to me that it does not represent a best practice in regard to the success of the total race.

Biomechanics from the Start

Ralph Mann stated in The Mechanics of Sprinting and Hurdling: “The main goal of the start is to produce maximum Horizontal velocity coming out of the blocks and during the next two steps.” This is why he considered the first three steps as the start. Mann also gives us another way to look at the start, saying, “the start consists of three very short Air Phases. These are performed to minimize the Vertical emphasis while maximizing the time on the ground and, thus, the ability to produce the forces to accelerate the body down the track.”

With this in mind, it seems redundant to intentionally drag the toes to facilitate even longer ground contact. Especially with Mann adding, “Although the ground contact time is largest during the start, the better performers minimize this result.” To me, this means that we need to focus on coordinating movements that are natural and fundamentally sound and train key abilities (such as eccentric strength) to maximize results.

Let’s take a look at a few more fundamental biomechanical aspects of sprinting. Frans Bosch and Ronald Klomp, in the book Running, stated, “During the transition from start to acceleration to speed, there is a progression from long to brief ground contact times, from explosive to reactively working muscles, and from many to a minimum number of rotations for which the runner must compensate.” During a successful sprint race, there are also other transitions that the athlete evolves through—i.e., from piston-like strides to strides that are like a cycle, and transitioning from when ground contact time exceeds time in the air to when time in the air is greater than ground contact time. Stride length should progressively increase during acceleration if coordination and timing effectively apply forces to the ground.

I maintain that dragging the toes disrupts all of what I allude to and explain above, such as the naturally occurring transitions and the accompanying rhythm and timing.

Practice Methods

Competitive 3- to 10-meter sprints provide good opportunities for athletes to work on beginning to accelerate optimally, and once ready, 20-meter sprints do as well. These short sprints can help develop an effective rate of acceleration and efficiency of movement. Very good sprinters are typically able to continue accelerating beyond the 30- to 40-meter mark.

With this in mind, you want athlete A, who’s running a competitive 10-meter sprint in training, to understand that being in front at the 3- to 5-meter mark—but being caught by athlete B at the 10-meter mark—means that if the rates of acceleration and efficiency of movement stayed the same, athlete B would be clearly ahead and pulling away by the 20-meter mark. Dragging the toes and pushing off forcefully into the next stride may give a sprinter a temporary advantage, but at what cost to the rate of acceleration and efficiency of movement? How much energy could have been saved by not dragging the toes and instead utilizing eccentric strength and coordinating natural movements to build upon momentum and optimize acceleration?

Dragging the toes and pushing off forcefully into the next stride may give a sprinter a temporary advantage, but at what cost to the rate of acceleration and efficiency in movement? Share on X

Stride #1

After using the starting blocks to explosively project the hips and body out to about a 45-degree angle, to complete stride one the leg that is in the high knee position should be aggressively pulled down and back so that the foot lands under the hip—but that landing point will be behind the body’s center of mass (more of the body will be in front of the landing point than is behind it). As Ralph Mann put it: “placing the body in a position to produce maximum horizontal (down the track) acceleration.” Also note that with each ensuing stride (stride three and beyond), the landing point of the feet get progressively closer to being under the center of mass, until at some point in the race the feet land in front of the center of mass.

I like to have the athletes do some sprints from a standing start to develop that pattern of movement. This can teach them how to effectively bend, hang, coil, and project themselves, only having to concern themselves with two points of contact with the ground: the feet. For the standing start, the weight should be centered over to the side where the bent front leg is, while putting some muscles on load to enable them to explode into a good first stride. If coming from a standing start, the athlete will then be able to attempt to execute stride two without as much of a landing force as would be present if coming from a three- or four-point start.

I believe it is a mistake to underestimate how good standing start mechanics contribute to overall sprint technique. When pushing off for the first step, while coming out of a stationary standing start, the rear foot pushes, and there is a subtle movement of the front foot before it joins the pushing of the rear foot for the double leg drive. This preliminary movement of the front foot during a stationary standing start is more pronounced for some, while only a very slight supination for others. When athletes roll, fall, or otherwise move into the start from a standing position, there typically is not the subtle movement from the front foot.

I believe it is a mistake to underestimate how good standing start mechanics contribute to overall sprint technique, says @TheYouthTrainer. Share on X

It is my belief that mistakes during stationary standing starts like stepping backward with the back foot to initiate the push-off and/or intentionally preventing the front foot from subtly moving before the push-off interferes with natural mechanics. Although there should not be the subtle movement of the front foot for three-point and four-point starts, I believe there is a positive carryover from good standing start mechanics that support the explosiveness of the push-off into step one from three- and four-point starts.

Stride #2

Ralph Mann considers this stride “the most difficult stride in the entire sprint race.” He also said, “It is the most dangerous since it is this step where, if not done properly, [it] can cause the athlete to stumble forward, rise up too quickly, over stride, or otherwise lose balance. If this occurs, then not only is the power of this single step lost, but it negatively affects the remainder of the Start as well as the transition into maximum sprinting speed.” So conversely, doing a very good job with stride two includes: effective utilization of power, appropriate stride length, preservation of balance, and helping maximize velocity in the first three or four steps, which contributes greatly to the success of the race.

• Ground contact time to begin stride two should be appropriately fast to help build upon the momentum from stride one. Dragging the toes does not allow this, since one of its aims is to slow ground contact.
• A straight back allows the dorsal muscles to work effectively during “foot contact” to begin stride two, thus contributing to the force of the push-off by way of forward pelvic tilt as the body rises (Bosch-Klomp).
• Sufficient joint stability allows velocity to increase as it should, without being slowed by collapsing joints (i.e., knees and ankles).
• Proper use of the limbs, when coming from a four-point stance with starting blocks, includes pulling up the toe (dorsiflexion) to step over the heel of the opposite foot (Valery Borzov) as the knee goes toward the chest.
• Arms are driven down with elbows moving toward the trunk, then immediately back and forth into pumping, running actions (Remi Korchemy), which helps yield maximal mechanical advantage. Arm action for the early strides when coming from a standing start is not as powerful as when compared to three- and four-point starts.
• Sufficient flexibility in the pelvic area is needed so the hips may shift forward sufficiently during touchdown (Ralph Mann).

All of this can help maximize the positive effects of “hinged momentum” (the rotary momentum when the center of gravity travels from the point of ground contact to the final moment of take-off), going from the landing at the end of stride one into the execution of stride two. Controlling the torso is also an important part of maximizing the benefits of hinge momentum and being able to effectively and efficiently move down the track. As a side note, if you can find some of the works of sprint coach Remi Korchemy, he often references the “hinged” pull of the trunk over the foot and aspects related to that, such as “foot torque” and “projecting in front of the heel.”

Stride #3

The hard work has been done, and the athlete then continues with another stride or two of relatively long ground contact to maximize acceleration down the track before ground contact time gets progressively less and less with each stride, and time in the air for each stride increases. Initially accelerating in a sound manner like this helps facilitate an effective rhythm and timing throughout the race, ideally including dorsiflexion of the foot and ankle at the right time.

Jonas Dodoo said, “The natural accelerators have no fear of falling. They can throw their torso forward, they can rotate and they can just throw themselves, they can project themselves. That natural ability is what we’re looking for in acceleration, at least in initial acceleration.” So once again, we’re looking to accentuate a natural quality, and toe dragging does not represent that.

More Practice Methods

As the athletes get better at positioning their body and projecting out at a good angle while being explosive and achieving a good landing position to complete stride one, their balance/stability will likely be challenged, sometimes resulting in some stumbling. Basic positioning during the starting stance has now been mastered, so drills and other learning methods to reinforce good technique for stride two now are most useful. Initially, holding onto something stable can help the athlete lean and get in a position that resembles the start of stride two, and then mimic what the arms and legs should be doing while executing stride two—i.e., dorsiflexion and arm movements. Soon afterward, various types of falling starts can also be used to approximate this position.

I recommend achieving competence from a standing start before putting one or two hands on the ground, says @TheYouthTrainer. Share on X

Once again, 3- to 10-meter sprints with and without competition can be instrumental in developing effectiveness during the first three strides. I believe it is important to encourage the athlete to be aggressive and, as Dodoo said, not be afraid of falling. Being conservative will result in underachieving.

Filming the athletes and reviewing the film with the athletes is also an important part of the process. This includes showing them other athletes to emphasize the techniques being executed at a high level. Sprinting at submax levels of about 80% intensity and above for distances up to 10 meters or so can also allow athletes to be more aware of how they are executing the techniques, since things will be occurring slower. Although, with the action/reaction nature of sprinting, the less intense push into the ground will result in a bit different reaction than would occur if at max intensity.

As I stated before, I recommend achieving competence from a standing start before putting one or two hands on the ground. After the standing start, I believe the next challenge should be starting from the type of three-point stance that is used at football combines for the 40-yard dash. The front foot should be at least be 6 inches from the line, sharing the weight between the feet and the hand on the ground, with the weight centered to the side of the bent front leg.

When the athlete can:

1. Bend, hang, and be coiled and loaded to explosively start in a way that—when competing in 3- to 10-meter sprints—projects explosively and effectively, and
2. Also achieve a good landing point for stride one that presents a challenge to stability,

then it is time to slow things down and work on second step execution in the same ways as previously described. During three-point and four-point starts, the arms perform a powerful sweeping motion during the first stride and perform more powerful movements during initial acceleration as compared to when coming out of a standing start stance.

The same process is used after moving on to four-point starts without starting blocks and eventually to four-point starts with starting blocks: learning to effectively share the weight and pressure between the hands and feet, centering the weight to the side of the bent front leg, and being loaded and able to project and land effectively before slowing things down to work on second step execution in the same ways as previously described.

How long it takes the athlete to reach a high level of competence at each stage of learning is dependent on the level of instruction and, if given good instructions, the ability of the athlete to successfully apply themselves to the task of creating and effectively building upon the momentum from stride one in a manner that complements the rest of the race.

A Final Word on Toe Dragging

Because the legs recovering low to the ground during the start and initial acceleration is very common among good sprinters, some may be able to pull off dragging the toes without too much difficulty. Especially those who opt for what Ralph Mann calls the “Jump Start.”

Ralph Mann identified two factions with regard to starts: the “Shuffle Start” and the “Jump Start” (both of which he considers to be sound methods). Mann said the jump start can be effective but “With the emphasis on pushing off the blocks as long as possible, the Jump Start places the body into the unwanted Backside Sprint Mechanics position.” In other words, a leg to the rear may naturally be in a position to be dragged without too much trouble. FYI—Mann describes the shuffle start as consisting of short strides, a quick turnover, and more easily developed front-side mechanics from the outset.

If we’re talking about dragging during the second stride, the push-off after the toe drag does utilize the “hinge momentum” that I previously explained, and as I alluded to earlier, I don’t doubt that a longer stride could result. In the context of maximizing velocity, however, utilizing eccentric strength, coordinated natural movements, and a sufficiently fast ground contact makes far more sense. We have to consider how toe dragging affects the rest of the race, and technique in general.

We have to consider how toe dragging affects the rest of the race, and technique in general, says @TheYouthTrainer. Share on X

Yes, there are extremely successful sprinters who drag the toes, but also great sprinters who don’t. I suggest focusing on what makes sense from a mechanical standpoint, with the objective being to accelerate effectively and efficiently to a max velocity that represents the athlete’s potential.

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 fine line that exists between “how to” and “how not to” can often be very thin. The related minutiae and the attention to detail required are often what stratify levels of success (or lack thereof). It is no surprise that there is great value to be found in being able to effectively communicate best practices.

However, our innate desire to explain efficiency often comes at the expense of being able to explain why something else is inefficient. At times, explaining why something may be ineffective can prove to be just as important. Being able to teach something shows true mastery of a subject, so articulating the potential roadblocks that limit growth can most certainly provide further insight or even portray the subject from an altogether new angle that would have been otherwise overlooked. Everyone learns differently, so timely doses that elaborate on inefficient practices can be just what the doctor ordered.

With that said, as a supplemental follow-up to my previous article on building a better bounce, I will now highlight seven common mistakes related to ‘teasing out the twitch’ in an effort to provide even greater insight to the stretch-shortening cycle that just might be limiting you or your athlete’s performance.

1. Misidentifying Jumps With Plyometrics

Far too often, I see simple jump training incorrectly characterized as plyometrics. Plyometric exercises are extremely specific sets of tasks targeted at enhancing the ability of a muscle to transition from stretching (yielding) to contracting (overcoming) as rapidly as possible. To truly develop this highly sensitive quality and enhance the speed of the stretch-shortening cycle, time is of the essence! The entirety of yielding to overcoming should occur within approximately 0.2 seconds, preferably even faster.

This is where simple, singular jumps (such as vertical and broad jumps), and even jumps in a series, get mislabeled. Jumps take far too long to develop and are more a reflection of hip-dominant torque as opposed to lightning-fast elastic twitch.

Being able to jump higher and further can often be manufactured merely by squatting and deadlifting more in the weight room, as specifically developing high degrees of max force (85%+) and rate of force (55-75%) can go a long way. Plyometrics however, reside at the fastest end of the force velocity curve and require flat-out speed (<10% load). To facilitate the speed and force required, exercises such as pogo jumps, drop jumps, depth jumps, and sprints (max velocity) with maximal intent and full recovery are necessary.

These high-force, high-impact exercises are stressful tasks, so managing acute vs. chronic loading becomes critical for long-term sustainability in relationship to health and continued growth in performance. As a simple guideline to enhancing twitch, remember that jumps require lots of bending of the hips and knees as well as time “dwelling” on the ground, so instead favor exercises that develop fast, forceful ground contacts with good athletic positions.

2. All Intensive, All the Time

Maximal outputs such as sprints, depth jumps, and heavy lifts (85%+) are extraordinarily powerful tools. As with all tools though, they are only useful if used appropriately. These potent stressors can be fantastic performance enhancers as well as lethal poisons. Respecting this truth and thoughtfully intervening at the correct time will serve as the foundation for managing acute vs. chronic loading.

Too frequently, though, there is a rush to demonstrate at the expense of appropriate development. Exclusively chasing intensive efforts may yield quick results (overreaching), but it is not best practice for sustainability for either health or performance.

Whether on the field or in the weight room, all intensive efforts must be supported by a strong, well-structured base. An extensive foundation of GPP, mobility, and soft tissue prep to ready the body for increasingly higher levels of stress may not be sexy, but it is necessary.

Specifically referring to bounce, not practicing due diligence to gradually condition tendons with the requisite eccentric and isometric contractions, as well as low-impact plyos, will eventually limit performance, if not lead to injury. Our priority as professionals in the performance field is to make sure our athletes are healthy and capable of performing their craft. Ill-advised, high-impact plyometrics often can do more harm than good, so taking a conservative approach and choosing to go extensive is often best practice.

Ill-advised, high-impact plyometrics often can do more harm than good, so taking a conservative approach and choosing to go extensive is often best practice, says @houndsspeed. Share on X

3. Irresponsible Use of Constraints

The more I coach, the less I find it necessary to use props such as boxes and hurdles at all. Well-executed plyometrics only require two things: speed and force being delivered into the ground. To optimize these two attributes, athletes need nothing more than themselves and some serious intent.

Barriers by nature are restrictive and inhibit (to varying degrees) completely organic ground contacts. This can be good at times to shake things up and provide the subtlety necessary to stimulate further progress; but constraints are too often made too extreme, causing athletes to lose the plot altogether and lead to bad ground contacts and bad landing mechanics.

Excessive knee tucking and poor force production for the sake of landing on or clearing higher obstacles is not the intended function of these constraints. However, given the glut of ‘parlor tricks’ glorified on social media, it is easy to see how somebody might confuse this as the end goal. As it relates to intensive bounce, uninhibited, well-executed pogos, depth jumps, and sprints should always remain the primary course, with the addition of constraints being occasionally offered as nothing more than a tasty side.

4. Too Linear, Too Much

For multidirectional athletes who need to decelerate and change direction regularly, not including lateral and rotational efforts into their speed and power development does them a tremendous disservice. A broad base of quality multiplanar ground contacts should comprise most of a multidirectional athlete’s bounce development—and too frequently it is neglected altogether.

This typically coincides with an overly intensive approach to speed and power as well. Being comfortable with striking the ground under a variety of conditions and at all angles is the foundation for good agility development. A healthy diet of isometric and eccentric soft tissue prep in conjunction with extensive multiplanar ground contacts with only timely, measured portion sizes of intensive effort is best for preparing an athlete for the field while being mindful to not overdo it.

Although no equipment is needed to develop these attributes, this is the one scenario in which I do strongly advocate the use of constraints. Very low boxes, small hurdles, and Polish boxes are great for subtly challenging an athlete and stimulating further progress.

Very low boxes, small hurdles, and Polish boxes are great for subtly challenging an athlete and stimulating further progress, says @houndsspeed. Share on X

Movements in the frontal and transverse planes inherently require more hip and core stability as well, so they are great at not only generating more realism as it relates to on-field movements, but also fantastic at increasing the bang for your buck, as they facilitate multiple skill sets simultaneously. Specifically, warm-up is always a great opportunity to take ten minutes to integrate multiplanar movements because of the potential for such high return on a relatively low-risk investment.

5. Big Engines With No Brakes

Running more swiftly and producing higher levels of force faster are universal goals for the performance industry. However, being able to absorb and effectively control these forces frequently goes overlooked. For athletes that must change direction frequently, being able to decelerate and hit the brakes under an unlimited number of circumstances is a must.

To effectively prepare an athlete for these demands, conditioning their muscles and tendons with isometric and eccentric strengthening is critical. Overlooking the necessary soft tissue prep for the sake of continually chasing higher max outputs will lead to imbalances that will eventually manifest themselves in degradation of performance or, even worse, injury.

A balanced muscle that can efficiently hold good positions and yield accordingly is more likely to remain a healthy one. Not to mention that often what separates elite athletes from good ones is their ability to relax. Being able to develop the ability to relax more quickly should be a large part of any well-structured plyometric regime.

A balanced muscle that can efficiently hold good positions and yield accordingly is more likely to remain a healthy one, says @houndsspeed. Share on X

I am a big fan of concurrently developing speed, power, and strength conditioning year-round, as all our youth soccer athletes compete continuously and the professional off-season grows shorter and shorter. With that said, I do like highlighting certain attributes at various times to accentuate certain qualities.

This can just as easily be done in small meso cycles (2-4 week blocks) with the different types of muscular contractions as well. Times in which isometric, eccentric, and concentric development are emphasized can help to ensure that the balance necessary for both health and performance is maintained.

Similar to the extensive multidirectional ground contacts, the three types of muscular contractions can be embedded within the intensification process of any individual session. In fact, layering in isometrics and eccentrics around quicker, elastic movements is very effective at firing up the nervous system and preparing the athlete for the more intensive efforts to follow.

6. Stretch-Shortening Cycle, NOT Stretch-Shortening Conditioning

Teasing out the twitch is a very delicate endeavor and highly specific to each individual athlete. A unique mixture of soft tissue prep, strength, and extensive and intensive efforts are necessary to achieve the desired results. A high degree of vigilance is necessary with consistent observation to make sure the process is on track. Due to the high degree of sensitivity, the use of intensive plyometrics and sprinting needs to be done responsibly.

These efforts must be timely, in the appropriate dose, and executed with the utmost skill. Maximal intensity is also required and, because of this, the volume must remain low. The extraordinarily high intensity and low volume needed for appropriate development makes these efforts alactic by nature, but too frequently they turn into glycolytic demonstrations or are thrown haphazardly into cardio circuits.

Proper intensive bounce and speed development should never be utilized as means for conditioning! If proper restoration protocols are not being adhered to between sessions and full recoveries not granted within the session, then the athletes are merely doing work for the sake of work and losing the plot altogether.

Experience and lots of useful data using a Freelap Timing System and a Just Jump contact pad has shown that even my most highly-prepared soccer athletes can only maintain quality for 200-250 yards of legitimate speed work, or retain peak power for 8-15 maximal jumps. I suggest collecting data and profiling the energy demands of your athletes to draw your own conclusions on appropriate volumes, but using the numbers provided above should be a good starting point.

7. Losing Sight of the Ultimate Plyometric

In the end, maximal sprinting at max velocity still remains the most potent plyo exercise. The forces created and systemic stress generated cannot be replicated by any max-effort lift or depth jump, and losing sight of this or believing it can be manufactured by alternative means is a fallacy. Chasing numbers in the weight room and overvaluing the vertical jump can help an athlete overcome inertia in the start and may improve the initial few steps of acceleration, but beyond that, nothing will be able to accurately replicate sprinting like sprinting.

In the strength and conditioning community, value should be placed on efforts that give the most return for time invested; and to that end, max speed checks off the most boxes. As well as enhancing speed, sprinting regularly will also improve an athlete’s resilience to injury by conditioning the soft tissues in the most sport-specific way possible. Copenhagen planks and Nordic ham curls are nice—and most certainly necessary to supplement sprinting and maintain health—but undervaluing actual sprinting in favor of other efforts is dangerous.

In the strength and conditioning community, value should be placed on efforts that give the most return for time invested, says @houndsspeed. Share on X

More speed also means more fitness. As the athlete becomes faster, life gets easier for them at sub-maximal speeds and energy conservation improves. To avoid this specific pitfall, keep it simple as there is no need to overcomplicate—sprint more frequently!

Sometimes good development is not about searching to find the single right thing, but is rather about avoiding a litany of smaller wrong things. Just remember, twitch is delicate and highly unique to the individual, so when in doubt: it is likely better to do nothing than to try to be overly creative. There is beauty in simplicity!

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

As in all walks of life, mistakes are fairly common in sports: a wide receiver drops a catch, a soccer player misses a penalty, or an athlete makes a small technical error. Generally, these errors aren’t catastrophic and death or serious injury in sports are, fortunately, extremely rare events.

However, mistakes can have a huge effect on performance outcomes. Many knockout matches in soccer are decided by a penalty shootout, which continues until a player misses. The 1994 World Cup was settled by such a method, with Roberto Baggio, that year’s runner-up in the Ballon d’Or (the award given to the world’s best player), missing the decisive kick. Mistakes can also happen outside of competition. A coach might make a programming error, for example, which can lead to underperformance or injury having a major negative effect on an athlete’s career.

The Person Approach

How we view errors can have a significant impact on how we go about preventing them. Traditionally—and even today—we most often take a person approach.

Here, errors are viewed as being driven by the person making the mistake: through inattention, carelessness, recklessness, lack of ability, lack of knowledge, or any other perceived moral or personal weakness. When using the person approach, we blame the person who made the mistake, view it as their problem, and move on.

In the case of Roberto Baggio, he got the blame for missing the penalty. In a 4x100m relay, the athlete who causes a botched changeover gets blamed—something I know from experience.

The person approach is problematic. As a competitor at the Olympic Games with a very strong chance of winning a medal, I was highly motivated to not make an error. And yet, I still did. Roberto Baggio needed to score his penalty and absolutely did not want to miss. And yet, he did. People who make errors typically don’t want to make the error, and yet we view these errors as often being due to a fault in, or by, that person.

Blaming the error on the person also prevents lessons from being learned. We criticize the person for being flawed in some way and move on, only to make the same mistake again on a team or program level. In my relay example, a person was blamed, the team moved on, and then was either disqualified or did not finish in the 2010 European Championships, the 2011 and 2013 World Championships, and the 2012 Olympic Games. Clearly, the required learning—what was needed to prevent errors from happening in the future—did not happen.

Similarly, Italy’s football coaches could—and did—blame Roberto Baggio for missing his World Cup Final penalty. But they were destined to have players miss penalties in the future—as happened at the 1998 World Cup (where Baggio, in a storyline of redemption, actually scored his penalty try).

It’s easy to blame the person, but as discussed in Black Box Thinking by Matthew Syed, such an approach actually prevents adaptation; meaning, we are destined to make the same mistake time and time again.

The System Approach

In contrast to the person approach, we have the system approach. Here, humans are viewed as being fallible, with mistakes and errors almost being expected. In this approach, the context of why the mistake happened is analyzed and understood, taking into account broader, systemic factors. So, when a player misses a penalty in a shootout, a person utilizing the system approach would explore why this happened by asking questions such as:

• Had the player practiced penalties under conditions simulating competition?
• Were they able to regulate their emotions?
• Did they have a set routine?

In the case of my relay, I was running last leg for only the second time in my life and had been regularly leaving early in training sessions—an error that was uncorrected prior to the competition. By taking a systems approach to the relay, we can build out some important lessons: relay teams need to have plenty of competitive practice, athletes need to be confident and experienced in running their leg, and errors in training need to be noticed, highlighted, and fixed.

This approach, viewing the error of the person as a symptom of problems in the system, prevents those systems—relay teams, soccer teams, etc.—from being doomed to make the same mistakes time after time. Essentially, instead of asking who made the mistake, we need to ask why the mistake occurred.

Essentially, instead of asking who made the mistake, we need to ask why the mistake occurred, says @craig100m. Share on X

This in turn has a knock-on effect. If we use mistakes as a learning experience—which we can in this scenario because we’re not scared of being blamed or motivated to blame someone else—we’re able to take steps to avoid the error in the future.

When a relay team is disqualified, athletes are very quick to distance themselves from being identified as the cause of the mistake, because they know they will be blamed for it—something that is even more common and unpleasant in the social media age. If, instead, the relay coach and team took a system approach—with no individual blame being apportioned—they could be open and honest about why the mistake occurred, reducing the chances of it happening in future.

Reducing the shame, embarrassment, or punishment associated with making a mistake is a crucial step in being able to avoid the same mistake later on, as it allows a more open and honest discussion around why it happened. If the same mistakes occur repeatedly—e.g. a relay team that is repeatedly disqualified—it’s likely not an issue with the people, but the system itself.

Avec Fromage

What does this have to do with cheese?

A leading error researcher (yes, that is a thing) James Reason developed the “Swiss cheese model of system accidents” as a method of explaining and examining error. This model holds that any system has a set of barriers that prevent accidents and errors from occurring, which are represented as slices of cheese. In the case of a nuclear power plant, these defense systems would include sensors to detect when something was awry, alarms to notify human controllers, and automatic shutdowns to prevent catastrophe chain reaction events from occurring.

From a sports coaching perspective, a common accident is a training injury, which is a complex event with many feed-in causative factors. If we view injuries (somewhat simplistically) as an interaction between load (both acute and chronic) and tissue tolerance, then there are a number of defense barriers that can prevent the accident from occurring. These include building tissue tolerance, identifying when tissue tolerance is insufficient or compromised, understanding acute load, and monitoring chronic load.

Ideally, all of these defensive layers are intact and resistant to errors, strength imbalances are identified through effective and validated methods, and load is fully understood and quantified. However, as Reason writes, each defense layer is instead full of varying holes—much like a slice of Swiss cheese. However, unlike Swiss cheese—in which the holes are permanent and stable—in the Swiss cheese model, the holes are fluid, opening and closing in line with environmental, person-based, and systematic variations.

An important part of this model is that any single hole in the cheese does not cause a bad outcome, because the subsequent defense layer (or slice of cheese) offers protection. In extreme circumstances, however, the holes in the cheese align in such a way that an error or accident occurs. As a result, to avoid errors, we need to:

1. Develop sufficient layers of protection.
2. Ensure these layers are resilient enough to not fail—or develop holes—in the same place or time.

Holes in the cheese can arise for two main reasons: active failures and latent conditions. An active failure is an erroneous (or, in the original model, an unsafe) act committed by people within the system: a missed scoring opportunity or leaving too early in the relay. Importantly, active failures have a short-lived, highly acute impact on the resistance of the system to error.

Leaving early in a relay is an active failure, but it’s also “savable”—the incoming runner can call for the outgoing runner’s hand earlier, or the outgoing runner can slow down slightly. Active failures are typically the obvious mistakes that are identified as the reason the larger scale error occurred—but, as detailed above, they are often a symptom of underlying issues as opposed to the direct cause.

By focusing on active failures as the direct cause, we are doomed to continue to make the same mistakes in the future. Instead, we need to focus on the second of the two common causes of holes: latent conditions.

Reason refers to latent conditions as “resident pathogens”: problems in the system that increase the downstream chances of error. Any decision in “design”—which, within a sporting context, includes both the training program and individual training session design—can have downstream, unintended consequences, which are often both hard to predict in advance and challenging to identify after the fact.

Latent conditions can serve to increase the size of the hole, the time the hole is open, or both, as well as create conditions which increase the risk of a mistake being made. Returning to the sprint relay example, latent conditions might include a lack of funding from the governing body to conduct sufficient relay practices to mitigate the risk of a mistake, or a lack of speedy feedback to the athlete when a mistake is made, preventing rapid corrections from being made and practiced.

To reduce the risk of errors, and the magnitude of the consequence of these errors, we therefore need to be able to:

1. Reduce and limit the occurrence of errors.
2. Build tolerance within our system, such that errors are easily identified and better tolerated to reduce the risk of a catastrophic failure.

Again, the example of a sprint relay comes to mind: by exposing the relay team to high-level competitions before the major Championships—along with developing realistic training sessions—we can expose the athletes to a variety of scenarios from which they can learn, adapt, and make the correct response when under pressure.

Relay exchanges rarely go exactly to plan; there is often some combination of the outgoing athletes leaving early or late, or their hand being in not quite the right position, or interference or pressure from competing teams. The athletes involved in the changeover—the incoming athlete in particular—need to actively manage the changeover, making rapid decisions under pressure to allow the change to happen.

Practicing changeovers in non-competitive conditions allows for the basics to be learned, but does not expose the athletes to these pressures and decisions, reducing tolerance in the system—in this scenario, the relay exchange. Exposure to relay changeovers under competitive conditions increases the library of potential scenarios—and the means of successfully executing a changeover in these scenarios—that the athletes have access to, building tolerance to error within the system.

Towards Fondue

Expanding further on the Swiss cheese model, in 2014 Yunqiu Li and Harold Thimbleby developed the hot cheese model. This is a more active model than the original, with its purpose being to highlight the interaction between defense layers.

In the original model, the defense layers—represented by the slices of cheese—are discrete and separate. In the hot cheese model, the layers of cheese are visualized as slowly melting, dripping down onto—and therefore affecting—the next layer down. If an error slips through a previous defense layer, it exerts a force on the subsequent slice of cheese, increasing possibility of a hole developing.

In the sprint relay example, realistic training sessions make athletes better able to complete a changeover under pressure. As a result, implementing realistic training is, in the case of the model, akin to inserting a slice of cheese.

During the realistic training sessions, however, if the athletes make errors that are either not identified or corrected—for example, being inconsistent around leaving on the checkmark—then this puts pressure on the newly inserted slice of cheese, increasing the risk of a hole or a drip developing.

Conversely, introducing this new layer of cheese in the form of competitive practice may introduce a new risk to the system—perhaps the athletes become overconfident in their abilities to complete a changeover based on their limited success in training so they don’t take an upcoming competition seriously enough.

A Process (Not Processed)

These cheese models can teach us how to support athlete performance. We must be able to detect errors by actively searching for them and replicating the scenarios under which they might occur.

Much like a fire drill can detect how efficiently a group of people can evacuate a building, regular tests of athletes can allow us to understand how they are progressing. However, anyone who has taken part in a fire drill will recall that, in almost all scenarios, they don’t actually believe there is a fire; consequently, their behavior might not mimic what they would do in an actual fire.

Much like a fire drill can detect how efficiently a group of people can evacuate a building, regular tests of athletes can allow us to understand how they are progressing, says @craig100m. Share on X

While we probably can’t start setting fire to buildings, in sports we can expose athletes to much more realistic training scenarios, either by utilizing representative design principles, or by exposing athletes to lower level “practice” competitions prior to a major championship, which would allow them to better identify any errors in their preparation. If the error we’re seeking to avoid is injury, then early identification of risk and detection of issues is important.

Secondly, it’s important to keep in mind that errors are learning opportunities. By having a blame culture in place, learning will be limited since people will seek to cover their backs and avoid taking ownership of mistakes.

By framing mistakes as errors within the system—latent conditions—as opposed to individual mistakes, we can better reduce the chances of this happening in the future. If a mistake is made by an individual, asking, “Why did the person make that mistake?” is far more useful than thinking, “That person made a mistake, and is therefore inept.”

It’s important to keep in mind that errors are learning opportunities, says @craig100m. Share on X

We must also develop defensive barriers—slices of cheese—to reduce the risk of future errors. Crucially though, these barriers must not unnecessarily constrain athlete performance. The easiest way to never miss a penalty kick in soccer is to not take one…but this isn’t an option. Instead, using training and other methods, we must increase the capacity of athletes to be resistant to making an error—perhaps by making them better able to perform under pressure, or having a wider library of potential solutions that they can call upon to solve any given problem.

Finally, and in line with the hot cheese model, we need to be wary that whenever we introduce an additional defense barrier there can be unexpected downstream effects.

For example, by implementing an increased number of relay practices, we potentially reduce the risk of errors made in competition; conversely, we also increase the exposure of athletes to high speed running which, if they’re not resilient enough to handle it, increases their risk of injury. Often, we can’t predict these downstream effects, so a period of heightened alert after making a change is often required to detect any potential issues.

There is a well-worn saying that “all models are wrong, but some are useful.” The Swiss and hot cheese models of error are imperfect yet important models which allow us to better understand why mistakes are made in sports, and how we can do a much better job of reducing their incidence in the future.

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

I have previously decried the current narrative that exists around training for surfing performance: a type of quasi-preparation with methods plagued by futility and driven by surf websites (and even the coaches of elite surfers). The approach is typical of what we would refer to in our own circles as Mickey Mouse S&C—a bit of a joke. My criticisms are not an effort to fun-sponge and restrain surfing’s essential, free-spirited culture. Rather, my point is to clarify that evidenced-based methods of preparation are what work and provide the potential for surfers to actually have more fun by fueling progression, keeping them in the water and allowing them to have even greater confidence in their abilities.

Due to their low training ages and high surfing frequencies, the development of whole body strength and power would be the appropriate first step in a performance model for surfers. Nevertheless, considering the sport’s intermittent nature and requirement for high levels of speed and fitness, the training of the appropriate energy systems is another critical element.

Typical approaches to this training for surfers range from things that look really naughty, hard, and fast like your classic battle ropes, prowler pushing, and sand sprints, to things that look boring and tragic like swimming endless lengths in the pool with the OAPs (old-age pensioners). Simply, these approaches do very little for replicating the unique demands of the sport. They are void of specificity.

Get creative in trying to make these approaches for speed and fitness development for surfers as fun as surfing. Share on X

What follows are approaches that work. My challenge to you as the coach is to read this, get out surfing yourself, direct your beaten body in the direction of the shower, and then sit down to get creative in trying to make these approaches for speed and fitness development as fun as what you just experienced.

Speed in Surfing

What’s Happening Here?

Speed (alactic capacity) in this context does not refer to the speed of riding a wave—this is too dependent on a myriad of uncontrollable factors, such as the location’s bathymetry, type of break (beach, reef, point, etc.), and size of the wave. Instead, in this context speed refers to a surfer’s maximal sprint paddling (MSP) speed, ability to change direction (COD), and agility in the water. We know surfing involves a lot of paddling, but much of it is submaximal. All-out MSP efforts account for only approximately 5% of total time in a surf session¹, yet they provide a platform for the whole purpose of surfing: riding waves.

Higher levels of MSP and COD allow a surfer to:²

• Catch steeper waves or take off on a more critical area of the wave.
• Have a faster entry into waves, enhancing initial momentum and number of potential maneuvers.
• Reposition, gain a positional advantage over other surfers in the lineup, and better negotiate the ocean.
• Have less chance of potentially getting “caught inside” and taking a beating.

For recreational surfers, the benefits of the above are obvious. For competitive surfers, all of these will maximize the following judging criteria in competitions:

• Evidence of commitment/degree of difficulty
• Combination, variety, and innovation of maneuvers
• Display of speed, power, and flow

How Do We Improve It?

Speed and agility, as in most sports, are central in surfing to both excelling and entertaining. Thus, they should be sought insatiably. Paddling velocity itself is a function of stroke length (meters per stroke cycle) and stroke rate (strokes per minute), and improving either of these technical parameters independently has been found to result in improved speed.³ COD has yet to be studied in surfing, but we know from the research that it is underpinned by MSP and that their mechanical determinants are similar. Thus, to enhance MSP and COD, a combination of typical approaches that are also used on land should be employed with surf athletes:

1. Improve the related underlying capacities in the gym.

For most surf athletes, neural adaptations to strength training should be sought while minimizing hypertrophic adaptations. This is due to a) relative strength being found to be more influential than absolute strength with high force-to-mass ratios desired and b) neural adaptations appearing to be primarily responsible for increases in swimming performance.³ You must take the surfer’s needs into account, but all else being equal, the more propulsive force a surfer can apply in a stroke, the faster their MSP will be. When the upper body (UB) strength standards are in sight, employing exercises across the load-velocity spectrum will ensure the development of other key capacities such as RFD and power.

2. Practice moving fast and changing direction at high speed.

Introducing max effort sprint paddling efforts with long rest periods (with and without changes of direction) over both accelerative (~5-10 meters) and max velocity distances (~15-20 meters) will provide a stimulus absent from most surfers’ regimens and provide novelty to the body in the form of recruitment of fast twitch type II fibers.³ Pitching athletes against each other for a total volume of ~100-125 meters in paired or group “racing” efforts will provide competition and ensure 100% effort. Coupled with improving the underlying capacities, both of these approaches should be the coach’s first port of call.

3. Impact paddling technique.

This could take many coaches down a rabbit hole, but it doesn’t have to. The whole goal is to reduce horizontal and lateral drag in the water.³ You should address bad habits like head rolling (side to side) and slumped posture. A high chest through thoracic extension (“banana” shape) optimizes stroke length and allows a more vertical elbow on entry, providing a more powerful stroke. You should also examine turning efficiency from 45 degrees (repositioning/redirecting) to 180 degrees (turning to then paddle for a wave). Consistently reinforcing technique through simple cues will show gradual improvements in these skills.

4. “Transfer bridge” the underlying capacities through resisted paddling work.

This is a novel method that, to the best of my knowledge, has yet to be researched in surfers. However, it has been shown to have significant effects on performance in swimmers.³ It has also been proven to provide a transfer bridge between newly established capacities developed in the gym and the target task.⁴ For example, resisted paddling may provide the opportunity to apply newfound UB strength in the relevant intermuscular pattern of recruitment when paddling.

You could add resistance using a band or bungee (you can hold it or attach it to a diving block to the waist of the surfer) or chute (attached to the waist of the surfer). Another option is MSP and COD efforts using very low volume boards (~20-25 liters), slightly increasing resistance and energy cost due to a higher drag across the surface of the water, which may lead to potential improvements in speed on the surfer’s usual board.⁵ Not dissimilar to resisted sprinting on land, a stimulus of both higher resistance (e.g., using a chute over accelerative distances) and lower resistance (e.g., using lighter resistance band over max velocity distances) could be effective.

5. Reduce fat mass.

Shifting some “nonfunctional” mass is a tried and tested way to aid speed development by reducing resistive forces in the water and increasing force-to-mass ratios. A no-brainer.

Overall, you should implement a combination of these five approaches. Surfers should be reminded of MSP’s importance as a discriminator between different levels of surfers, and that surfers achieving better competition results have been shown to be faster. Dr. Jeremy Sheppard, formerly of the Hurley Performance Centre in Australia, recommends competitive surfers shoot for an MSP over 2.0 m/s.⁶

You should ideally train and test surf athletes for speed on their board in a standard 25-meter indoor or outdoor pool to eliminate the effects of wind and currents that might disturb training sessions in the ocean. Suggested acceleration (5-meter sprint) and max velocity (15-meter sprint) standards are outlined below, with suitable COD tests yet to be established.

Aerobic and Anaerobic Fitness in Surfing

What’s Happening Here?

The influence of speed on the sport is undeniable, but what use is it if a surfer isn’t fit enough to recover and repeat-sprint continuously throughout a one- to five-hour session? Waves pass unridden (or other surfers take them), they wipeout and get an unnecessary hold-down, they get caught inside by a rogue set, or they can’t complete their maneuvers when on the wave itself. For competitive surfers, the ultimate cost of this is reflected in lower scores and rankings; for recreational surfers, it’s unnecessary disappointment. Consequently, in a sport characterized by repeated high-intensity intermittent paddling efforts combined with multiple continuous endurance bouts, surfers need to have well-developed aerobic and anaerobic capacities.⁷

The influence of speed on surfing is undeniable, but what use is it if a surfer isn’t fit enough to recover and repeat-sprint continuously throughout a 1- to 5-hour session? Share on X

As discussed, MSP occurs predominantly when paddling into waves and paddling for the outside when a big set rolls through. However, surfers also paddle at moderately high intensities when paddling against currents, wind, and advancing waves or to reposition themselves in the lineup. Low-intensity paddling takes place across longer distances, when paddling out to the “peak” or takeoff zone (where the waves begin to break).

Mean paddling bouts have been found to be ~20-30 seconds, with the majority (~60%) between 1 and 10 seconds.² Yet, this does not conclude the demands on fitness qualities for surfing. Paddling efforts are interspersed with duck diving oncoming waves and breath holding in wave hold-downs after getting caught inside or wiping out. Coupled with paddling, both of these place immense demands on the surfer’s aerobic and anaerobic abilities due to their hypoxic nature, as well as the potential element of danger. It must be noted that the conditions and type of break will always dictate the intensity and duration of any efforts performed in a given session. Swell size, swell period, wind speed/direction, tides, and currents all determine the work required: Mother Nature calls the shots.

Tynemouth is my home break here in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, and most days it is a breeze to paddle out and duck dive my way to the peak—seven duck dives and a couple of minutes’ work. In contrast, on my last trip to Dominical in Costa Rica, I watched a surfer take just shy of 40 duck dives to get outside and well over 10 minutes to reach the peak. Nearly 40 duck dives is obscene; most surfers would whip their board around and get themselves right back to the beach to try again another day.

As for breath holds when getting caught inside or after wipeouts, these are usually of a short duration (~2-4 seconds) and can be successive. This would be bearable when calm and with a peaceful resting heart rate, but throw in big surf, adrenaline, lots of paddling, a boatload of duck dives, and long session durations, and you can have some severely taxing work taking place.

Recovery periods can vary hugely from session to session, again heavily dictated by the conditions. In some sessions, the surfer can spend up to 55% of total time just sitting on their board waiting for lulls to pass and the waves to surge back in.² More than half of a session spent sitting stationary can seem like a lot, but keep in mind that typical surf session durations can be outrageous. In other sessions, recovery periods can be very short, and surfers must have the ability to recover rapidly (64% of recovery periods are between one second and 10 seconds).¹

It also appears that there are significantly higher work-to-rest ratios at beach breaks compared to point breaks due to the different bathymetry. Further, point breaks involve more low-intensity continuous durations of paddling due to longer rides, whereas beach breaks can see more frequent but shorter high- and moderate-intensity paddle efforts.⁸

Clearly, from the demands outlined, surfing strongly stresses all energy systems. Share on X

The strenuous actions of paddling, repetitive duck diving, breath holding, and then waveriding provides a melting pot of effects: moderate (140 b·pm^-1) to high (190 b·pm^-1) heart rates, 6.8 to 8 mmol·l^-1 in peak blood lactate, and a total paddling distance covered of 1-2 kilometers in sessions.⁹ Surfers have also been recorded as having VO_2peak values of 44 to 50 (mL·kg·min^-1), comparable to swimming.⁷ This is significant, given the fact that VO_2peak tests of the UB are around 30% lower than LB tests (running, cycling, etc.) due to peripheral factors, such as earlier onset of lactate threshold in the lesser muscle mass of the UB, rather than central cardiovascular limitations.³ Clearly, from the demands outlined, surfing strongly stresses all energy systems.

How Do We Improve It?

Before implementing fitness sessions, there are two issues you must consider:

• With access to consistent waves, both competitive and recreational surfers can accumulate some serious paddling volume and fatigue.
• Competitive surfers can often have an intense and unpredictable competition and travel schedule that leaves little opportunity for capacity development.

The physical development of surfers in wave-rich areas can prove much more difficult than those in less consistent areas. These surfers can rack up typical surfing lows of 12 hours per week and highs of 25 hours. This is 8-12 hours of paddling per week. If the waves are firing and the conditions are perfect, 40 hours of surfing per week has been recorded.¹⁰ This is roughly 20 hours of paddling in a week!

This is all good fun for a surfer, and the desire to get some decent waves can mask the sheer volume of work. These surfers already perform a lot of specific fitness work. The addition of extra paddling sessions during or following a spike of favorable and consistent surf would be counterproductive and would risk overuse/repetitive injuries by adding unnecessary training load to a surfer already under the grips of fatigue.

The addition of extra paddling sessions during or following a spike of favorable surf would be counterproductive and risk overuse/repetitive injuries by adding unnecessary training load. Share on X

Consequently, you must carefully plan specific fitness sessions by chatting with the surfer and tracking surf forecasts. If the area’s waves are firing, surfing will take priority. However, no matter where you are based, there are often distinct seasonal flat spells. In the U.K., summer is often flat on and off for weeks on end—autumn into winter is when the beaches and reefs emerge from their slumber and begin to light up. Summer is then our down season and our primary window of opportunity for the development of physical capacities. Even during surf season, however, there can be times when the waves turn mediocre or even flat and the surfer will spend less time in the water. These lower-volume weeks are the secondary window of opportunity to integrate fitness sessions.

In these windows of opportunity, a lower volume/load and time-efficient approach to improving fitness is practical. High-intensity interval training (HIIT) would meet these requirements, while also replicating surfing’s repeated high-intensity paddle efforts with short rest periods. Buchheit & Laursen have discussed at length the different protocols that you can apply here:¹¹

• Short intervals (SI) have been shown to improve aerobic capacity (endurance paddling) and moderately improve repeat sprint ability.
• Sprint interval training (SIT) (and likely repeat sprint training (RST)) significantly improves repeat sprint ability but does not appear to improve aerobic capacity.¹² At first, this is surprising, as you would expect both types of training to more strongly assist one another; but it appears that they provide different physiological adaptations, and this reinforces the need for the implementation of a mixed methods approach.
• Repeat high-intensity effort ability (RHIE), pioneered by Gabbett in the team sport context, should also be considered.¹³ RHIE may present a highly specific method of improving surf fitness through the inclusion of a combination of key actions (MSP, submax paddling, duck diving, breath holding, waveriding, etc.) with short rest periods, precisely meeting the demands we want. Given that surfers are commonly engaged in such bouts, it is likely to be beneficial.⁸ However, quite understandably, a RHIE test is yet to be established for surfing.

Coaches can implement the protocols in table 2 with only modest increases in paddling volumes, limiting the training load on a surfer. I would recommend 2-3 times per week in the down season and 1-2 times per week during small/mediocre swells or in transition phases between competitions.

During these transition phases, the selection of an appropriate protocol would be useful. For example, if a surfer’s upcoming competition is at a point break, you could use SIs to prepare them for the longer durations of continuous paddling. For a beach break and small surf conditions, the emphasis could switch to RST or SIT to emphasize shorter, more high-intensity efforts.⁸ RHIE could act as a tool to prepare for competitions with big waves and the chaotic nature of these conditions (wave hold-downs, crazy wipeouts, and lots of duck diving). Finally, various types of breath-hold work are also a necessity throughout; both when calm and in more taxing situations, e.g., successive duck diving without a breath, resisted swimming underwater, and underwater boxing. All protocols have their place if thoughtfully planned.

Like speed training, surfers should perform both training (table 2 above) and testing (table 3 below) for fitness on their board (and in a pool) to retain specificity. It is tempting to just use swimming for these protocols, but this does not replicate the UB specificity, appropriate body positions, and paddling demands of the sport closely enough. Swimming has its place, but you should consider it more of a method of cross-training for surfing along with classic paddleboarding (alternating arms and double arm), ski erg (seated or standing), and burpee work (into a surf stance), applying the same protocols in table 2.

Swimming has its place, but you should consider it more of a method of cross-training for surfing, along with classic paddleboarding, ski erg, and burpee work. Share on X

Suggested standards for aerobic and anaerobic fitness are outlined below. For the 400-meter endurance paddle, place two buoys 2.5 meters in from each end to provide a 20-meter distance. The surfer would paddle 10 laps (up and back), turning 180 degrees each time at the buoys. Record the total time, and you can then calculate MAS.

The repeated sprint paddling test (RSPT) would involve 10 x 15-meter maximal sprint efforts, going every 40 seconds. The RSPT would determine the surfer’s total time for the 10 efforts along with the decrement (fatigue index) between efforts (first 15-meter effort minus the slowest effort). A decrease in either of these would provide potential evidence of improved RSA. Unfortunately, however, RSPT standards haven’t been established, as there’s little data in the research.

Make It Fun

Throughout this series, I have tried to sidestep the fluffy BS that permeates surf training and build a performance model based on the available evidence. I have attempted to summarize this model by addressing the big qualities: first strength and power; now speed and fitness.

S&C coaches working with surfers are challenged to not just utilize effective methods of physical preparation, but also convince surfers of a method’s benefits and achieve engagement by making enjoyment the chief objective of sessions. As coaches, we hope that every athlete we work with will be diligent, curious, self-reliant, and coachable. The reality is that most surfers probably don’t like to train. They like to play.

Surfing is the ultimate form of play—and they do loads of it. Waveriding accounts for only ~4-8% of total time in a surf session.³ Yet, if the conditions and waves are right, these could be the sweetest combined seconds of a surfer’s month, year, or even their life.

Exciting and competitive training sessions within a novel program of development can help maximize surfing’s peak experiences. Share on X

As coaches, we aim to maximize these peak experiences. Exciting and competitive training sessions within a novel program of development can facilitate this. If we do this and deliver results, we will contribute to a change in the narrative around surf training.

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. Tran, T.T., Lundgren, L., Secomb, J., et al. “Comparison of Physical Capacities Between Non-Selected and Selected Elite Male Competitive Surfers for the National Junior Team.” International Journal of Sports Physiology & Performance. 2014;10(2):178-182.

2. Farley, O.R.L., Harris, N.K., and Kilding, A.E. “Physiological Demands of Competitive Surfing.” The Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. 2011;26(7):1887-1896.

3. Crowley, E., Harrison, A., and Lyons, M. “The Impact of Resistance Training on Swimming Performance: A Systematic Review.” Sports Medicine. 2017;47(3).

4. Brearley, S. and Bishop, C. “Transfer of Training: How Specific Should We Be?” NSCA Strength & Conditioning Journal. 2018;41(3):97-109.

5. Ekmecic, V., Ning, J., Cleveland, T.G. et al. “Increasing surfboard volume reduces energy expenditure during paddling.” Ergonomics. 2016;60(9):1-20.

6. Sheppard, J. “Masters & servants: How the preparation framework serves the performance model.” UKSCA Conference Presentation. 2017.

7. Farley, O.R.L., Harris, N.K., and Kilding, A. “Anaerobic and Aerobic Fitness Profiling of Competitive Surfers.” The Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. 2011;26(8):2243-2248.

8. Farley, O.R.L. “Assessment of Competitive Requirements, Repeated Sprint Paddle Ability and Trainability of Paddling Performance in Surfers.” Edith Cowan University Ph.D. Thesis. 2016.

9. Farley, O.R.L., Abbiss, C.R., and Sheppard, J.M. “Testing Protocols for Profiling of Surfers’ Anaerobic and Aerobic Fitness: A Review. NSCA Strength and Conditioning Journal. 2016;38(5):52-65.

10. Sheppard, J. “HIITing the lip in professional surfing.” HIITscience.com. 2018.

11. Buchheit, M. and Laursen, P.B. “High-intensity interval training, solutions to the programming puzzle: Part I: cardiopulmonary emphasis.” Sports Medicine. 2013;43(5):313-338.

12. Farley, O.R.L., Secomb, J.L., Parsonage, J., and Lundgren, L.E. “Five Weeks of Sprint and High-Intensity Interval Training Improves Paddling Performance in Adolescent Surfers. The Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research.2016;30(9).

13. Austin, D.J., Gabbett, T.J., and Jenkins, D.J. “Repeated high-intensity exercise in professional rugby league. The Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. 2011;25(7):1898-1904.

What links crows, dolphins, otters, mongooses, and octopuses? No, this is not the setup to a bad joke. These guys appear to be the only members of the animal kingdom to creatively use tools outside of the great apes, the animal family that we humans belong to. The apparent reasons for belonging to such an exclusive club can be saved for another discussion on another day, but what is clear is that animals have consistently figured out that applying knowledge to objects can get them more of what they want.

At its heart, this is what links all technologies—to save time, money, or effort per unit of productivity. Despite being wildly different in their application, the great technological leaps of human evolution, from agriculture to metallurgy to industrialization to digital technologies like computing and the internet, share this common trait. And today I’ll make the case that, for these reasons, in sport we still have much to learn when it comes to our use of technology.

In sport we still have much to learn when it comes to our use of technology, says @RUGBY_STR_COACH. Share on X

In 2018, the global market size of sport technology exceeded $9 billion a year and was expected to grow by another 20%. At the time of writing, Catapult—one of the biggest brands in the business—has a market capitalization over $400 million on the Australian Stock Exchange. If you’ve worked for a big institution or sports organization, you’ll know that deciding to partner with one provider or another is often a six-figure decision with multi-year agreements.

As professionalization of sport at all levels continues to propagate, the ubiquity and consequence of sport technology cannot be overstated. Speed timing gates, motion capture systems, force plates, velocity-based training tools, athlete management systems, online programming platforms, and injury screening devices are just a few examples of the potential solutions that coaches must filter on a daily basis.

Despite the potential implications of these technologies on operational budgets, work habits, and ultimately the productivity of their staff, too many coaches and teams enter into the process blindly, squandering money and putting technological square pegs into round holes. In this article, I will explore the good, the bad, and the ugly of sports technology, with a view to developing a decision-making filter through which you may pass your next tech-buying decision. I hope that it saves you much time, money, and frustration along the way.

The Good

Gaining Time

In a time-poor profession like strength and conditioning, where there is an inherent need to free oneself to work on the system and not in it, time-saving technologies are a must. This can be as simple as reducing the time taken to complete repetitive tasks. It sounds trite, but even basic purchases like more effective cleaning technologies, particularly in the era of coronavirus, can save many hours per person, per month.

The overarching goal of technology should be to automate wherever possible and without dilution of human judgement, says @RUGBY_STR_COACH. Share on X

Likewise, the outsourcing of human tasks to digital tools can greatly reduce staffing costs for simple daily processes. A Google form, an email or text reminder, and a prod to the less-compliant members of the team are a lot more streamlined than one intern asking the same set of questions hundreds of times after every session.

The overarching goal should be to automate wherever possible and without dilution of human judgement. If there is an optimal solution to the task without need for interpretation or decision-making, it is a simple decision to spend a little time now to save a lot of time later.

Data collection, processing, and visualization scripts for software solutions like Excel, R, or Python are one such example, particularly in data sets where several hundred thousand data points per year are collected. Excel can also be useful in the prescription of training loads and in formatting, delivering, and adjusting programming. However, in my experience, platforms such as Teambuildr, Train Heroic, and Bridge Athletic are more user-friendly and offer greater integration and functionality.

Gaining Money 

As I’ve alluded to in previous articles, most problems in institutionalized sport are money problems in disguise. The pursuit of a higher mission is extremely difficult when losing money hand over fist, and ultimately becomes impossible when the organization spends itself out of existence. Conversely, an abundance of money tends to forgive all other sins and is a self-perpetuating cycle, from talent ID and recruitment, to staff development and retention, to marketing and sponsorships.

Specific to physical preparation, the biggest financial drain on professional sports teams are wages and productivity lost to injury. In the most lucrative sports leagues in the world, millions per year are spent on injured athletes. The etiology of sporting injury is multifactorial, and of course, a non-zero number of injuries per year is inevitable. But what is clear is that soft tissue and non-contact injuries are inherently more controllable than traumatic ones, and training stress balance is a major risk factor. I personally liken managing injuries without accurate load or stress response measurement to driving a Ferrari with the dashboard covered up. You can do it, but it’s not advisable!

Thus, any technology that can more accurately measure training activity or the response of the athlete to that training offers valuable insight. In field-based sports, accelerometry, GPS, and cardiac monitoring are commonly used and validated tools to assess the input side of this equation. On the output side, a similarly broad array of options is available, including hormone assays, heart rate variability, cortical potential, and neuromuscular monitoring tools such as Nordbord and GroinBar.

The correct blend of technologies you use will depend on your sport, the problems you are trying to solve, and your available budget, says @RUGBY_STR_COACH. Share on X

Note that due to the multifaceted nature of both training load and the stress response, no one solution can act as a cover-all. The correct blend of technologies you use will depend on your sport, the problems you are trying to solve, and your available budget. But when median salaries exceed several hundred thousand dollars per week, spending $100,000 per year on sports technology can return many times that sum in increased availability or more consistent or productive training. Even in the world of college sport where labor is free, keeping star players on the court or field in the pursuit of a tournament or championship run can have multimillion-dollar implications.

Gaining Insight

At its worst, the physical testing of athletes can be a waste of time. Collecting data to say “See, look! The program works. Please can I have a contract extension?” serves the coach more than the athlete. Call me cynical, but it’s supposed to work! Putting aside the politics of justifying one’s own existence to decision-makers, testing can often just confirm what we already instinctively know from training.

We know where athletes lie in comparison to their peers, and it is relatively easy to gauge from the training itself whether the programming is working or not. (The weights are getting heavier or moving faster!) Dedicating an entire day or week to testing to find out what you already knew isn’t the best use of a coach’s time. Likewise, expecting an athlete to “peak” for testing day simply doesn’t tally with the experience of even the most accomplished coaches, and judging a program on one day of data is like trying to guess the plot of a novel from one page.

I would argue the true value of testing is twofold:

1. 1. To detect long-term trends or changes in physical performance.

 

1. 1. To derive new information or insight that informs subsequent decision-making.

 

The former, which Mladen Jovanovic has termed “embedded testing,” relies on the use of technology to consistently gather data as the program is implemented without significant interruption to training itself or the generation of unnecessary fatigue. This is invaluable to an iterative process like training, where assumptions must be questioned and updated on a daily basis.

Tracking bar speed with devices like GymAware, Tendo Unit, or Rep One, timing sprints with devices like Freelap, or simply measuring heart rate response to a given workload within systems like Polar or First Beat are all good examples of how coaches can “test without testing” and make informed decisions earlier and more frequently with no additional time or fatigue cost.

The latter, which Dr. Bryan Mann has termed “diagnostic testing,” is concerned not just with what the athlete did, but how they did it. The measurement of absolute outputs like vertical jump or maximal sprinting speed are valuable in their own right. But different athletes may achieve identical outputs via different strategies, for example via leaning on more force or more time in the instance of jumping, or faster stride frequencies versus longer stride lengths in sprinting.

As training age rises, the likelihood that a specific training intervention is required to address the rate-limiting factor within the system increases. Using technologies to infer which course of action is most appropriate can greatly increase the productivity of training. Force plate systems like Hawkin Dynamics and Force Decks are popular solutions in jumping-intensive sports, whereas sprint-based tools like Ergotest and 1080 Sprint may have more application in running-based sports with deep pockets.

The Bad

Increases Time

As valuable as technologies can be to sport performance, we have to remember a simple fact: It’s supposed to make life easier! Bad technologies or bad utilization of technologies forget this simple maxim and create more work than they save. Even in professional teams (certainly in college and high school teams), when organizations go shopping for GPS systems, the expectation is that an existing, already overworked member of staff will be tasked with its oversight. The end result is a net increase in time spent in the system for the unfortunate individual.

Data and graphs are informative but toothless if they cannot persuade a reluctant sport coach to modify practice loads, says @RUGBY_STR_COACH. Share on X

Similarly, GPS data is only as useful as the coaching behavior that it influences. Data and graphs are informative but toothless if they cannot persuade a reluctant sport coach to modify practice loads. The political capital and time required to help key decision-makers understand such data, care about it, want to use it, and then have the technical ability to see it through to completion should not be underestimated. Overall, this scenario represents a net time cost for not much concrete gain.

Buying a Hammer, Then Looking for Nails

To reiterate, technology is the application of knowledge to things to give us more of what we want for a given input of time, effort, or money. Phrased another way, technology simply helps us to better solve our problems. To steal a quote from Judea Pearl, “You cannot answer a question that has not been asked.”

It should therefore follow that good sport technology decision-making begins with the identification of a problem. The next step is to understand the nature of the problem. Based on the understanding of the problem, the coach will then consult the various offerings within the marketplace (whereas engineers will simply create one). They are evaluated on their merits and suitability to answer the questions posed by the problem, then a buying decision is made, and the technology is implemented.

Good sport technology decision-making begins with the identification of a problem, says @RUGBY_STR_COACH. Share on X

For example:

• • “We’ve experienced a spike in hamstring injuries.”

 

• • “Research appears to indicate low relative eccentric strength is a predisposing factor to non-contact hamstring injuries.”

 

• • “Nordbord is a commercially available tool for tracking various force metrics of the hamstrings.”

 

• • “Based on our budget, staffing, and last year’s wage losses due to non-contact hamstring injuries, if we can reduce our incidence by 20%, any intervention costing up to $20,000 per year will represent a positive return on investment.”

 

• “OK, let’s invest in Nordbord.”

Bad technology decisions tend to flip the process on its head, begin with a buying decision, and go from there:

• • “OK, let’s invest in Nordbord.”

 

• • “Measure all the guys, let’s see who has weak hamstrings.”

 

• • “Take a look at the hamstring guys, were they lower than everyone else?”

 

• • “What are the key metrics we need to look at anyway?”

 

• • “Is Nordbord the best tool to track this stuff? I hope so, because we signed a three-year deal!”

 

In short, beginning with the problem first, asking questions, and following them to their logical conclusions can save you a lot of time and money. Do not succumb to the sales and marketing pressure to buy a $10,000 hammer, then go looking for nails that might not even exist.

Decentralized Technology Purchasing

In traditional performance models, each sport coach is an island. They have their own (largely unqualified) philosophies and beliefs with regard to physical training, they have their favorite conditioning methods and assessments, and unless they have to share, they tend to hire their own strength and conditioning coach, who the university merely rubber stamps after a background check.

Importantly, they also make their own technology decisions. They are courted by technology companies in the marketplace, swayed by trends within their sport, counseled by members of their professional network, and ultimately, they make a buying decision. The new piece of equipment is promptly delivered to the strength coach, who is told: “Here is what we’re using now. Figure it out.”

So far, not too bad. But now multiply this scenario by the number of sports a strength and conditioning coach is responsible for. What happens when lacrosse uses Catapult, but soccer uses Kitman Labs? Baseball wants to use Tendo for their VBT because X team uses that in their weight room, and we need to get kickers from football on the GroinBar. This is an extreme example, but I’ve seen it happen. Every new piece of equipment from competing companies is another platform to learn and integrate with the AMS; another sales rep to deal with.

If nothing more, centralizing technology-buying decisions with the school harnesses economies of scale while greatly decreasing the time needed to upskill, use, and maintain sports technology equipment, and places the buying decision in the hands of a qualified high-performance manager/team. The price per unit for a given technology drops precipitously when you’re buying for a few hundred athletes versus a few dozen, and the positive PR of landing a school-wide deal can be leveraged.

Not only this, but centralized technology and data more easily facilitates comparisons between data sets. It prevents allegiances being switched to another brand following coaching changes, minimizing the potential loss of data. And it allows for shared skills amongst all members of the high-performance staff so coaches can be quickly and easily reassigned to different sports with no need for upskilling on “our” technology. Notch up another win for the high-performance model.

The Ugly

Virtue Signaling

As I highlighted previously, most sport coaches make the decision to invest in a piece of technology because another coach for a bigger, more winning team swears by it. They can’t handle the fear of missing out, they want the success of bigger teams, and they want the respect of their peers for being so forward-thinking. The purchase is usually swiftly followed by a media release by the organization about how the team is using the same technology as X team. Twelve months later, the coach’s work habits are the same as before, and the tech is gathering dust. Personal experience: I was almost a year into my time in Tokyo when my assistant informed me that we had “one of those GymAware things in the cupboard.”

We strength coaches are not immune. The rise of social media over the last two decades has coincided neatly with the uptick of tech in sport, and the various platforms today are awash with coaches showing off their toys. We eagerly post up kinograms, R outputs, bar charts, Dartfish comparisons—you name it. We get a pat on the head from our followers, then immediately go back to implementing the same program we were going to do anyway.

Flexing on social media is a part of the game, but there are cheaper ways to do it. The Running Man Challenge is free, a weight room full of VBT tools is not, says @RUGBY_STR_COACH. Share on X

The next time you see a fellow coach post on social media about their use of a particular technology, ask yourself: “Is this actually being used to make decisions or uniquely answer questions in the program? Is this changing how they work? Will it still be used a few months from now?” The answer is no, more than we care to admit.

Flexing on social media is part of the game, but there are cheaper ways to do it. The Running Man Challenge is free, a weight room full of VBT tools is not.

Technology as a Recruiting Tool

I’ve argued in previous articles that most weight rooms suffer from being showrooms in disguise, designed more by equipment manufacturers and administrators than the coaches who end up using them. For most institutions, weight rooms are, unfortunately, for recruiting first and training second. Expensive technologies are the expensive cherry on top, and many tools are purchased that don’t need to be there, get purchased in excessive numbers, or don’t get used once the shine has worn off.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: If we win with people, those people will probably feel more valued if you don’t tell them the cupboard is bare out of one side of your mouth, while demanding they upskill themselves on a new (and unnecessary) platform that costs $10,000 per license. Ten grand is a lot of staff appreciation lunches, it’s books and clothes for the interns, and it’s a comfy couch and a coat of paint in the staff locker room. The recruits won’t notice the tech missing from the weight room, but your staff will notice the extra attention, and it’ll pay far higher dividends for morale and productivity.

A Stick to Beat People With

The case for regular data collection is a simple one. The higher the sample size, the larger the pool of data, the more easily and accurately potential trends can be identified. The declining size and price of technologies have greatly opened up the market for wearable tech such as Fitbit, Apple Watch, Fatigue Science, and Whoop. Now we are able to collect data 24/7 without the athletes even realizing. But we have to label this for what it is: an invasion of the athlete’s privacy. It may be with consent, but it is an invasion, nonetheless.

Pre wearables, when athletes left the facility, their work stayed. However, post wearables, work follows the athlete home, and the coach is granted ever-growing insight into the athlete’s habits and behavior outside of work, which is ripe for abuse. Anecdotally, the abilities to infer sexual activity during nighttime hours, to see who was really sleeping and who snuck out to the club, and even who partook in drink and drugs are all possible with commercially available wearable technologies.

With some wearable technology, there is a clear need for the establishment of agreed-upon rules, informed consent, and perhaps most importantly, the ability to opt out, says @RUGBY_STR_COACH. Share on X

To say this is a moral minefield is an understatement, and as this becomes the norm, there is a clear need for the establishment of agreed-upon rules, informed consent, and perhaps most importantly, the ability to opt out.

The Ideal Technology

Great technology is groundbreaking. It integrates so seamlessly into our daily lives and offers such time efficiency and such drastic increases in productivity or ease of use that you forget how you ever lived before it came along. In just my lifetime: broadband internet, smart phones, Uber, and electric vehicles like Tesla are just a few technologies that have changed how we live. This is the same ideal that sport technology should strive toward.

Conversely, when I was 12, Tamagotchis were extremely popular. They harnessed advancing computer technology that made it possible to shrink down a basic computer program for a digital pet into the palm of your hand. They sold by the tens of millions, but as far as I can figure out, the pet did absolutely nothing. It was such a trivial technology that it was rewarded with an Ig Nobel Prize (the parody version of the Nobel) for economics. Two decades later, they’re an entertaining memory and nothing more. Food for thought…

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

Perhaps no drill is more overlooked for speed development than the drum drill, a timeless exercise used by coaches for decades to help develop frequency. The problem with the drum drill is its popularity never really got off the ground (pun intended), as it required a lot of homework from the coach. In the past, the drill was not convenient to do without a combination of timing and film. Today, the drum drill is now practical thanks to technology and perhaps more valuable than ever, as it fosters more than frequency.

Perhaps no drill is more overlooked for speed development than the drum drill, a timeless exercise used by coaches for decades to help develop frequency, says @spikesonly. Share on X

The drum drill isn’t for everyone, as it does need a lot of skill to perform and a coach who can teach it. In this blog post, I cover everything you need to know to get started and present just enough science to satisfy skeptics. The drum drill is a special exercise—perhaps even more useful than wickets and other similar routines.

What Is the Drum Drill?

The drum drill is exactly what it sounds like: a sprint exercise that requires the runner to cut off their stride slightly to emphasize rapid frequency. In theory, reducing the stride length parameters should slightly increase frequency, and this is where much of the science and mathematics can get tricky. With all of the attention strangely on wickets, the drum has surprisingly been disregarded and ignored. Intuitively, wickets seem more useful, since many athletes look good running over them at first glance, as posture and other qualities show up almost immediately. The drum is not as obvious to the coach, despite having a clear purpose.

The drum drill is simply a flying sprint with an expectation that the athlete will run at full frequency capacity (five strides a second) at 10 m/s. In theory, reduced stride length with high frequency would then be extended as the athlete becomes more sophisticated and skilled, thus improving general speed qualities for the future. This outcome is something I have failed to see in high-speed film, and I have spent years struggling to replicate the promises of its proponents with my own athletes.

Video 1. Brendan Thompson uses modified drums to throttle frequency up and down for nervous system development. The goal in training is to use frequency drills for long term development, not as a quick fix or similar. You can use markings or keep the track or field naked, depending on your own training philosophy.

The drum drill requires the coach to know the trochanter or leg length of the athlete and be able to cue the athlete in such a way that they don’t artificially score well in the repetition and falsely appear fast due to carrying momentum. An athlete can fake frequency for 10 meters, but they will not be able to carry speed and frequency over 20 meters or more. In fact, I have only seen an athlete hold an unnaturally higher frequency and high velocity for 30 meters once in 20+ years. Keep in mind that I have seen hundreds of athletes on video, many of them medalists and national champions. Legendary coaches such as Gary Wickler and Tony Wells are famous for using the exercise, and Cliff Rovelto has been a proponent as well.

How the Drum Drill Works

The drum drill is an advanced exercise, and young athletes who are growing into their stride should not use it. You can use modified versions with youth athletes as a way to sharpen their nervous system, but when you work with an adult athlete, make sure they can perform quality flying sprints before they start adding complicated versions such as this exercise. Having an athlete who isn’t polished or skilled employ the drum drill may cause them to regress or even learn bad habits.

Having an athlete who isn’t polished or skilled employ the drum drill may cause them to regress or even learn bad habits, says @spikesonly. Share on X

The drum drill isn’t just for advanced athletes; only master coaches should use it. Drills, as I mentioned before, work on their own and are not always perfect. Some drills have a knack for doing much of the heavy lifting with form or technique development, but coaches must be vigilant to ensure drill’s intentions are instilled in the session they are part of. I believe that extensive experience with floating sprints can make the leap to the drum drill far easier, but the nuances of acutely modifying stride frequency and contact times make it hard, especially as athletes develop their speed near their genetic ceilings.

When the athlete performs the drill, the expectation is that they cut—they use a stride movement strategy that doesn’t disrupt the sacred contact time, stride length, and contact length balance. I have mentioned the importance of knowing contact length and being able to measure ground contact time. Frequency often improves when contact times decrease, while stride length rarely increases at the same rate.

Each athlete will have different development patterns. Some athletes are frequency heavy when they are young and may grow their length as they become more powerful, but usually both stride frequency and stride length will mature at the same rate until athletes hit a genetic ceiling. Then, based on my observations, they will need to reduce ground contact time in order to continue to improve. Thus, many coaches gravitate to the drum drill because they know that it takes a long time to improve contact times and rapid turnover.

Why the Drum Drill Can Fail

Frankly, if you don’t tell others what can go wrong with a drill or exercise, you do them a disservice. The drum drill can be magical, but as with any tool, it does come with its own unique challenges. First, many athletes find the drum to be difficult to perform since it only works if you can keep velocity nearly identical to your top speed. Some coaches feel that you should run and hit five steps per second, and this may be very foreign to a long strider who is tall or has low frequency. Such an abrupt jump is very awkward and unnatural; thus, I prefer a slowly saturated frequency if possible.

Athletes can find the drum drill difficult to perform since it only works if you can keep velocity nearly identical to your top speed, says @spikesonly. Share on X

An easy way to determine frequency is to use the ground contact times and air times of a flying sprint and divide the sum into 1,000. I don’t use a chronometer and video anymore, as the process is time-consuming, but you can do so if you are pressed for a budget and don’t have MuscleLab equipment.

Many athletes try to run faster by either putting more force into the ground or shutting off power, thus extending ground contact times or tightening up. The irony is that trying to improve speed or even a component of speed may cause the reverse to happen, where an athlete either slows down or decreases their frequency slightly. Higher-frequency athletes tend to struggle with enhancing something that is already there, and athletes who have low frequency can become slower in efforts to increase velocity.

Athletes with long strides that are artificially proportional to their leg length tend to need frequency drills to improve their strike points (Hunter 2020), and this will solve excessive air times that come with long striders. Those who are “reachers” tend to have a problem decelerating knee extension and/or fail to push down actively during the backswing. Frequency drills such as the drum drill can clean up that small error, and this often results in fewer hamstring injuries. The knee lift, specifically the hip flexion angle at takeoff or later, should not be dramatically disrupted, or the athlete will tamper with the braking and propulsion balance of their foot strike.

March to the Beat of Your Own Drum

The drum drill is just one option in stride frequency development. Most of the time, the drum drill can be seen as just a rhythm drill that allows an athlete to relax and experiment with the right range of motion and bounce. A solid background in floating drills and developing reactivity should help athletes mold their stride into a balanced motion that maximizes their speed.

I have used frequency drills for years and now understand the nature of stride development mainly from shaping the stride parameters we all have known about for a long time. The drum drill is a special exercise that can make a great change in athletes who are receptive to improving and with a coach who is worth their salt in instruction. The drum drill is just one option for improving an athlete, and it’s more than fine to use any method you see fit that helps improve stride frequency.

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