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“Welcome to the most important class you will ever take in high school.”

Every year, this is my standard introduction for new students in my high school weight training class. My statement is generally met with a few smiles or laughs from the students. It has been ingrained in them that math, science, and English are the cornerstones of their high school education. After all, those are the subjects that make up their standardized testing, and those are the subjects whose scores colleges will look at to determine if the student is an attractive applicant.

While it has been ingrained in students that math, science, and English are the cornerstones of their high school education, I believe weight training class is the most important class. Share on X

I follow my initial statement with, “I do not mean to devalue any course you are taking, and all your courses are extremely important. However, the things that you learn in weight training class are skills that will propel you to conquer challenges in any area of life now and for the next 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 years. In this class, you will learn how to overcome obstacles, conquer fear and failure, set lofty goals, work together, encourage those around you, and, last but not least, embrace the process of becoming the best at getting better. On top of that, this class will help in reducing obesity rates in youth and adults and improve your cognitive abilities and mental health.”

We are in unprecedented times. Almost every school around the world is trying to figure out how to operate in this coming year. Just recently, a school district outside of Boston announced an agenda that will cut their entire K-12 music, arts, and physical education curriculum and staff. The COVID-19 pandemic has many schools considering cancelling sports and either eliminating or moving physical education (PE) and PE elective classes (like weight training class) to an online format. This is very disturbing, as some evidence has shown that healthier people recover from coronavirus at a much faster and higher rate.

In this article, I want to highlight four reasons why I believe that this is absolutely the wrong decision, and why weight training class is the most important high school class students can take.

1. Improved Mental Health and Reduced Anxiety

Most of us realize the physical benefits of exercise and a properly designed strength program, but the benefits go above and beyond getting stronger and faster, reducing injuries, adding muscle, or losing fat. One of the reasons I am so passionate about my job and profession is because of all of the additional benefits of exercise.

It has been proven that daily exercise reduces the risks of major depression, stress, and anxiety. Since the body and mind are so very closely linked, when your body feels better so does your mind. Today’s youth, including all of Generation Z, is the most anxious generation ever studied. In a recent Wall Street Journal article, Generation Z participants reported they were nervous or anxious almost twice as much per month as Generation X participants reported they were.

During the coronavirus pandemic, our youth are under even more risk of increased anxiety and depression. A recent survey of adolescent athletes in Wisconsin showed that 65% of respondents said they have had anxiety during this pandemic. Reported physical activity was down 50% and those who reported being in good psychosocial health and good overall health decreased from 90.4% to 76.2% and from 90.9% to 78.4%, respectively.

Daily exercise combats daily anxiety. A 2014 study¹ found that individuals “[who] had the highest level of activity had the highest levels of well-being and the lowest levels of depression and anxiety.”

The benefits of exercise go well beyond obvious improved athleticism. If schools remove physical activity, physical education, and weight training classes from curriculums, they will put today’s youth at a major disadvantage and the risk of additional health issues. Sitting inside all day in a classroom can result in depression and higher anxiety rates. The benefits of being outside, getting sunlight and vitamin D, play a big role in improving mental health. If these classes are taken away or moved online, the time that students have available to be outside is also diminished.

2. Improved Learning and Cognitive Abilities

There is overwhelming evidence confirming that physical activity improves brain function, including a profound positive impact on mental health. Research shows that students perform better in the classes immediately following their strength, conditioning, and fitness classes.² Attending weight training class decreases stress and improves students’ ability to learn. In a 2007 study, German researchers found that students learn vocabulary words 20% faster following exercise. Participation in physical activity classes during the school day improves student test scores.

There is overwhelming evidence confirming that physical activity improves brain function, including a profound positive impact on mental health, says @KurtzM3. Share on X

Studies have also shown that children with high fitness levels have greater brain volume in the hippocampus. This is the region of the brain that is associated with memory, and the children with greater brain volume showed signs of enhanced long-term retention.³

Another study showed that students memorized new places on a map equally well, regardless of their fitness levels. However, when they were tested on their retention the following day, the student with the higher fitness level performed better.⁴

Another study⁵ made it extremely clear that physical activity and exercise are needed during a child’s academic school day. This 2015 study randomly assigned 56 school kids to one of three morning school sessions:

 

1. 1. Sitting all morning.

 

1. 1. One 20-minute workout of physical activity after 90 minutes of classroom learning.

 

1. 1. Two 20-minute physical activity workouts, one at the start of the class and one after 90 minutes of classroom learning.

 

The study found that the kids who had two workouts in the morning performed better on a test of attention, and this was true even after the researchers adjusted for the student’s baseline differences in attention.

Finally, what happens when previously inactive students begin a program of daily physical exercise?

A 2007 randomized, controlled study of inactive, overweight students found that 40 minutes a day of exercise improved their executive functioning.⁶ The executive function skill is responsible for paying attention, organizing, planning, prioritizing, starting tasks, staying focused on tasks to completion, understanding different points of view, and regulating emotions. Do you think those skills might be important in today’s uncertain world?

Another experiment replicated these results and found that 13 weeks of exercise was also linked to improved math skills and increased activity in the bilateral prefrontal cortex. This is the region of the brain associated with executive function.⁷

In conclusion, there is tremendous evidence that working out during the school day will improve a student’s cognitive abilities. Cutting physical education classes, electives, and after-school strength programs will do more harm in the long run than what it is supposedly protecting kids from in the short term.

3. Focus on What You Can Control

Strength training encourages students to set big goals, but it also teaches them to only focus on what they can control. This is extremely important in today’s uncertain world. The information we receive about the potential health risks of coronavirus changes daily, and sometimes hourly. We need to educate and empower today’s youth with the ability to recognize and focus on what they can control. With 24-hour news networks and endless information being shared on social media, our students can start to feel overwhelmed and helpless.

Strength training encourages students to set big goals, but it also teaches them to only focus on what they can control. This is extremely important in today’s uncertain world, says @KurtzM3. Share on X

In our strength training programs, we operate on the philosophy of “span of control.” This allows the individual to focus all of their energy on what they can control and not waste it on things that are out of their control. The destination is a continuous by-product of the work they put in daily.

Span of control during a pandemic like COVID-19 is critical for students. Qualified strength and conditioning coaches are extremely detail-oriented individuals. They meticulously plan every workout or class down to the minute. Sets, reps, and recovery times are thoughtfully planned well in advance. Key safety attention and planning considerations are part of the leadership in a strength program, and a fitness environment can be achieved in a measurably safe way that may be even healthier than the necessary challenges of a classroom setting. Practicing and monitoring the safe wipe-down of equipment and the willingness to protect themselves and others are part of the standard mindset in a fitness setting.

By the nature of fitness training, students are surrounded by other disciplined individuals eager to keep each other safe and healthy. These key factors provide an opportunity to create a healthy environment for students that goes far beyond the classroom setting.

As a result, instead of focusing on goals that compare them to their competition, high achievers focus on their own work ethic and attitude and how they treat themselves and others. This skill can be taught in a properly designed high school strength and conditioning program. Taking away these classes rob students of the opportunity to develop this invaluable trait.

4. Embrace Discomfort and Difficult Challenges

This is extremely important during this pandemic as well. While it is important to focus energy on what we can control, we should also be ready to embrace discomfort, sudden changes, and challenges. The weight room teaches students to overcome fears and persevere to achieve goals. The only way to improve in the weight room is to continually seek out new challenges and put yourself in uncharted territory.

In order to reach maximum potential in strength, speed development, or overall fitness level, each of us must continually fail. Embracing failure is a necessary component of reaching goals and understanding that the road to success is difficult and full of challenges and discomfort. These are traits that we nurture and develop in weight training programs and classes. If a young student can master this concept, they will be equipped to attack any difficult circumstance they encounter throughout their life.

We are currently in the Fourth Industrial Revolution; this is a time in history that has great promise and also danger. New technologies allow us to connect with billions more people than before, and increased networks allow organizations to dramatically improve their efficiency. However, all the new technology also means many current occupations and careers will become obsolete as droids, robots, and automation replace the people currently in these roles.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution will create new industries, new careers, and new occupations, but we do not currently know what those jobs will be. Therefore, schools are now faced with the task of preparing the future generation for jobs that we do not know about yet. The individual who understands how to work in a team setting, continually seeks out new challenges, embraces discomfort, and understands how to overcome failure will be a leader in the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

In Klaus Schwab’s book, The 4th Industrial Revolution, he calls for leaders and citizens to “together shape a future that works for all by putting people first, empowering them and constantly reminding ourselves that all of these new technologies are first and foremost tools made by people for people.” The weight room teaches all students all of these concepts and will help propel these students into the forefront of this new period.

In the January 2017 issue of The Economist, there is a graph showing that the most successful individuals have always been the ones who have high math and high social skills (that is pretty obvious). However, the second most successful individuals are those with low math but high social skills, and their share is growing. Math skills are extremely important, but having those skills without social skills is less important. As we continue through this pandemic and into this next era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, it is a must that we prepare our students with great social skills. There is no better place to teach them these skills than a strength program, sports, or physical education!

In conclusion, it is understandable that school administrators must analyze and make changes in order to operate schools during today’s circumstances. However, eliminating or reducing physical education and weight training classes is dangerous. It will do more harm to today’s youth than it will protect them from this virus.

I understand that school administrators must make changes to operate schools during today’s circumstances. However, eliminating or reducing PE and weight training classes can be harmful. Share on X

The American Academy of Pediatrics, which represents 67,700 pediatricians, recently released a statement saying: “Lengthy time away from school and associated interruption of supportive services often results in social isolation, making it difficult for schools to identify and address important learning deficits as well as child and adolescent physical or sexual abuse, substance use, depression, and suicidal ideation. This, in turn, places children and adolescents at considerable risk of morbidity and, in some cases, mortality,”

A properly structured weight training class teaches students to set goals and overcome obstacles and instills them with the self-confidence to know they can conquer challenges in every aspect of their life, now and in the future. It improves mental health, reduces anxiety, improves cognitive abilities, strengthens immune systems and prepares students to be leaders in their school and community.

The author would like to acknowledge the valuable contributions from Luke Kurtz and Lydia Parent in the writing and editing of this article.

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References

1. Craft, LL and Perna, FM. “The Benefits of Exercise for the Clinically Depressed.” The Primary Care Companion to the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry. 2004;6(3):104-111.

2. Ratey, JJ and Hagerman, E. Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain. Little, Brown. 2013

3. Chaddock-Heyman L, Hillman CH, Cohen NJ, and Kramer AF. “III. The importance of physical activity and aerobic fitness for cognitive control and memory in children.” Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development. 2014;79(4):25-50.

4. Raine LB, Lee HK, Saliba BJ, Chaddock-Heyman L, Hillman CH, and Kramer AF. “The influence of childhood aerobic fitness on learning and memory.” PLoS One. 2013 Sep 11;8(9):e72666.

5. Altenburg TM, Chinapaw MJ, and Singh AS. “Effects of one versus two bouts of moderate intensity physical activity on selective attention during a school morning in Dutch primary schoolchildren: A randomized controlled trial.” Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport. 2015; pii: S1440-2440(15)00236-4.

6. Davis CL, Tomporowski PD, Boyle CA, Waller JL, Miller PH, Naglieri JA, Gregoski M. “Effects of aerobic exercise on overweight children’s cognitive functioning: a randomized controlled trial.” Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport. 2007;78(5):510-9.

7. Davis CL, Tomporowski PD, McDowell JE, Austin BP, Miller PH, Yanasak NE, Allison JD, Naglieri JA. “Exercise improves executive function and achievement and alters brain activation in overweight children: A randomized, controlled trial.” Health Psychology. 2011;30(1):91-8.

As 400-meter runners in the 1970s, we were taught to be proud of our miserable training. My coach called us “The Dragons” because he was going to run us every day until our ass was draggin’. When I look back on the high volume training I suffered through in middle school, high school, and college as a 400 runner, I’m sickened. I never came close to my genetic ceiling for speed—needless volume. We never timed max speed, never ran max speed in practice. Instead, we did repeats—tons of repeats.

I entered the track and field world as a long, lanky basketball player, forever pigeonholed as a 400-800 runner (1972-1981). Speed was never addressed. And we all hated practice. At the age of 17, I plateaued as a 400 runner (50.2). No matter how hard I trained in college, my half-baked speed held me back.

Feed the Cats began in 1999 as a way to fundamentally change the experience of track athletes. Now, my slowest kids are the ones who improve the most. For example, as a freshman, Marcellus Moore averaged 23.3 mph in our winter training. That same year, Jaylon Tillman was the 16th fastest freshman at Plainfield North, running an average time of 18.5 mph. Who improved the most? Jaylon Tillman ran 22.3 mph this year and was ranked #2 in the school.

In most programs, Jaylon Tillman would have received a lifetime sentence of hard labor. Jaylon would have been fed a steady diet of 200s, 300s, 400s, 600s, and creative combinations of the like. I fed Jaylon an alternative diet, and if not for Covid-19, he would have been an all-state hurdler this year and a sub-50 leg on a great 4×4 team.

What About The 400?

What about the 400? That’s the number one question asked by the hundreds of coaches who have contemplated feeding the cats. While speed training for the short sprints makes sense, speed training for the 400 is counterintuitive. Traditional, close-minded coaches continue to spout off the false claim: “Feed the Cats may be good for short sprints, but not the 400.”

I’ve done two recent webinars on training for the 400 meters, totaling over seven hours of content. One was a compare and contrast presentation, Feed the Cats vs. Clyde Hart. The other was a four-hour debate with Ryan Banta, the author of The Sprinter’s Compendium.

Legendary Baylor Coach Clyde Hart believed the 400 was a hybrid of speed and endurance.

“The 400-meter dash is an endurance sprint incorporating the speed of the sprinter and the endurance of the half-miler.”—Clyde Hart

I respectfully disagree with the legend. I believe the 400 is a sprint. The 800 is the hybrid.

The 400m is a sprint; the 800 is the hybrid. And although speed training for the 400m may seem counterintuitive, it should be the priority, says @pntrack. Share on X

Clyde Hart also said, “The main reason we are seeing more of the sprinter-type succeed in the 400 meters today is largely due to the fact that we are able to develop stamina and endurance more effectively than we can increase the sprinting abilities of the middle-distance runner.”

Charlie Francis said the same thing, with brilliant simplicity: “It is much easier to gain endurance having maximum speed than the other way around.”

I couldn’t agree more with Clyde and Charlie. I coach high school kids who are trying to reach their genetic ceiling for absolute speed. I refuse to interfere with a teenager’s quest for speed by hybridizing their training. I refuse to give up on a kid like Jaylon Tillman and specialize his training as a long sprinter because he’s only running 18.5 mph as a freshman. The disciplined pursuit of speed is my overarching principle.

Fact: The 200 is the best predictor of the 400, not the 800.

Max speed (absolute speed) is the best predictor of success in the 100m and 200m. The 10m fly can easily measure max speed. If all of this is true:

• 10m ⇨ 100m ⇨ 200m ⇨ 400m,

• therefore 10m ⇨ 400m

“A good formula for predicting the potential 400-meter time for 200-meter runners, providing they are willing to train and to give all they can to become a top 400-meter runner, would be to double the time of their best open 200 meters then add 3.5 seconds to this.”—Clyde Hart

Note that Coach Hart’s predictor of 400 success was not the 800. Nope, the 400 is a sprint and training should reflect that fact. I often warn coaches: “Don’t plant beans and expect to grow corn.”

I recently observed a terrific video clip from Ernie Clark (Ashland University) explaining how speed (not strength, not endurance) is the basis of the 400. When setting the world 400m record, Wayde van Nierkerk smoked his first 200 (split 20.50). Remember that 20.50 must be a sub-max speed to survive the second half of the race. Nierkerk finished slow, splitting 12.05 in his final 100. Which broke the world record—speed or a strong finish? In comparison, Wayde van Nierkerk’s 43.03 broke the previous record set by Michael Johnson (43.18). Did Wayde van Nierkerk show better endurance than Johnson? No. Nierkerk beat Johnson to the 200m mark, 20.50 to 21.32. Johnson finished strong (11.52) in comparison to Nierkerk, but speed beats endurance in the 400. 

Ernie Clark also points out a similar phenomenon with the best in the women’s 400. Salwa Eid Naser won the 2019 World Championship, running her first 200 in 23.20 and finishing at 48.14. How did Naser’s splits compare to the world record? The world record holder, Marita Koch, blistered her first 200, running 22.47, almost a full second faster than Naser. Koch’s 400m record is 47.60. Naser finished stronger than Koch, but endurance got beat by speed.

“The 30m fly is the #1 indicator of potential in the 100m dash to the 800m.”—Coach Ernie Clark. (I would argue with Ernie that the 10m fly is the #1 indicator for the success in the 30m fly; therefore, the 10m fly is truly the Holy Grail.)

Without any training for the 400m, your top sprinter will probably run the fastest 4x4 split on the team, says @pntrack. Share on X

Anecdotally, I’ve known this for as long as I can remember. Need someone to run the 4×4? Find your fastest short sprinter and put him at anchor. Without any training for the 400, your top sprinter will probably run the fastest 4×4 split on the team. Your short sprinter will be tired at the finish, but so is everyone else.

Why Speed?

The foundation of Feed the Cats is that speed is the key to performance in all track events, up to and including the 400 meters. Speed is the dominant trait of those who excel in the 100, 200, 400, both hurdle events, and the three sprint relays (4×1, 4×2, 4×4). We could argue that speed is a key performance indicator for the jumps and pole vault as well. That’s 12 or our 18 events!

The foundation of Feed the Cats is that speed is the key to performance in all track events, up to and including the 400 meters, says @pntrack. Share on X

My throws coach, Sebastian Carcione, says he’s never seen a great thrower who was slow. It’s no secret that the fastest distance runners are best in the 800m. With the addition of the shot, discus, 800, and 4×8, speed is essential for 16 of our 18 events.

Don’t plant beans and expect to grow corn. In other words, if speed is a key component for 16 of our 18 events, let’s make speed our unquestioned priority!

Speed Defined

When I talk about speed, I’m talking about maximum speed. Some people call it absolute speed. We can measure maximum speed with a high-quality radar gun. I measure it with Freelap—I have the BLE 112 system with 25 FxChips.

We run 10m flys to measure max speed. You could do it by running 20m or 30m as well, but since you’re measuring max speed, why not run the shortest distance? I convert our fly times to miles per hour: 22.37 ÷ 10 fly time = mph. My fastest kids win wristbands.

Feed the Cats

There should be a reason behind everything we do. We should have a system of beliefs, a philosophy of coaching, and an overarching set of principles that guide us. I never meant to brand Feed the Cats, but it’s grown organically into something bigger than me.

My detractors call Feed the Cats a “system,” criticizing its single-minded prioritizing of speed. My critics promote a sophisticated, complex, differentiated program. They use charts, graphs, and flow-charts to uniquely calibrate the training of each athlete and their targeted event. They quote the complexifiers: Bosch, Bondarchuk, and McMillan. Some even claim to factor-in genetics (even though genetic testing has never been implemented in a high school track program!).

“Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify, simplify! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand.”—Henry David Thoreau

Feed the Cats is not a rigid system. In truth, it’s the opposite. Feed the cats is a way to cook, allowing the recipe to evolve.

As a young coach, I coached like Clyde Hart—the way I was coached. I trained all of my “runners” as 400 guys (fact: speed is God-given, right?). Practice wasn’t supposed to be fun. Hard things make you tough. Tough athletes win. Even though my teams achieved unusual success in the 1990s, at age-40, I blew it all up and started over again. No more 10 x 200.

I wanted to change the track experience for high school kids. I wanted to attract cats (cats are fast-twitch athletes, for example wide receivers in football and basketball players who could dunk). I wanted to make track practice the best damn part of a kid’s day.

How Do You Make Track Practice Fun for Sprinters?

1. 1. Stop “running.” Sprint instead. Cats love to compete, but they hate the grind. No laps, no cooldowns, no tempo running—no Clyde Hart stuff.

 

1. 1. Make happy and healthy the priority. Happy and healthy kids do really good work. If kids really like track, someday they may love it. Human beings are obsessed with the things they love.

 

1. 1. No more long practices. Get it done in 45 minutes. Kids spend 20,000 hours sitting at a school desk. We are not after school daycare providers. Get it done and send the kids home early.

 

1. Make every practice meaningful. Don’t save performance for meets.

The Team Speed Approach to Track and Field

This is important. We all have our why.

I’ve coached entire track teams without an assistant. At Franklin High School, south of Nashville, Tennessee, I coached 72 guys, all 18 events, solo. For most of my career, I had one assistant coach (throws) earning a half-stipend. Even though I now have 3.5 paid assistants, the years of going it alone forced me to coach as an essentialist. Essentialism is the Disciplined Pursuit of Less. If you chase two rabbits, you catch neither. We chase just one rabbit.

Give me eight guys who run 23 mph, and we will dominate the IHSA 3A State Championship next year in Illinois. How? We might place multiple athletes in the 100 and 200. With all that depth, we would set state records the 4×1, 4×2, and 4×4 (Sub-40, Sub 1:25, Sub 3:12). One of those sprinters will be a hurdler. Another will long and triple. One of them will be great in the 400.

Remember what I said about essentialism and overarching principles? There it is. We will maximize team speed. Yep, give me an eight-man team of guys who can run 23 mph, and try to catch us.

One of the best things about being a speed-based track team is that sprints have a lower cost than distance events. Distance runners are seldom able to score high in multiple events. Add in the fact that the IHSA State Track Meet is a two-day meet, and the cost is even higher. In 2018, my team won the 100, 200, 4×1, and 4×2 at our state meet. We ran faster times in the finals than we did in the prelims the previous day. We set two state records. Sure, running eight sprints in two days will wear you out, but sprinters can do it. Distance runners can’t compete eight times in two days.

Myth: Feed the Cats is a program for “elites,” not average kids. One hundred percent false. Track at Plainfield North is just as nerdy as anywhere else in the country. We typically have teams of 100 boys, with the majority being freshmen and sophomores. In 2018, when we won every sprint at the IHSA State Meet, only 27 of our team’s 50 sprinters could run 20 mph. My five all-staters that year ran 24.1, 22.8, 22.6, 22.1, and 21.5 mph.

By treating every sprinter as a cat, every sprinter becomes more cat-like (fast-twitch, elastic, and fiercely competitive). Speed grows like a tree, but I have four years with my athletes. My freshmen love track (overarching principle). Therefore they return as sophomores and continue to grow. Sophomores become juniors, and juniors become seniors. Never undervalue happy athletes. Track doesn’t have to suck.

Off-Season Programming for the 400

In the off-season, pure speed is the focus. No endurance. No bullshit. When you sprint for more than five seconds, you’re working on something other than speed. If you’re doing tempo work, you are, at best, not improving speed. At worst, you may be detraining speed. If you do mileage, you are destroying speed.

Since endurance adaptations are relatively easy and speed adaptations are relatively difficult, your off-season focus must be speed, says @pntrack. #400m Share on X

Just like Clyde and Charlie said earlier, it’s easier to develop endurance than it is to build speed. This is so true that most coaches believe speed is genetic and unchangeable. Old school coaches believed coaches create milers, and God creates sprinters. I can’t be friends with these Neanderthals. Since endurance adaptations are relatively easy and speed adaptations are relatively difficult, your off-season focus must be speed.

When the season starts, your athletes will have a terrific speed base. Speed actually creates endurance. If you have a kid who can run at 23 mph, that kid can easily run a 400 at 18 mph, which would translate to sub-50 400m. To develop the ability to sprint farther, we must sprint farther. I call these workouts lactate workouts or acidosis tolerance work.

In-Season Programming for the 400

Sometimes, the best way to describe something is by explaining—in detail—what it’s not. Feed the Cats is not, in any way, similar to the most copied 400-meter training program in the history of track and field: the program used by Clyde Hart at Baylor University (“Quarter-Miler U”).

To preempt hate mail, I have the utmost respect for Coach Hart. Anyone winning 20 NCAA 4×4 Championships knows his stuff. However, we all must grow where we’re planted. Baylor University and Plainfield North High School are different ecosystems. Coach Hart’s freshmen recruits have typically run 46-second 400s before they ever met their college coach. Sometimes, my best freshmen have never attended a track meet. Also, Clyde Hart’s freshmen are 18; mine are 14. Having said that, don’t assume that I would change my program if I coached at the college level—Feed the Cats, done right, would be revolutionary in the NCAA.

Workouts in a Feed the Cats program are categorized and color-coded: green codes for rest, yellow codes for caution, and red codes for extreme. Forty-two percent of our 19-week flexible practice plan for sprinters is color-coded green. Cats sleep 20 hours a day. Speed and X-Factor days are color-coded yellow (“never let today ruin tomorrow”). Lactate workouts and meets are color-coded red and will have a 48-hour hangover.

Lactate Workouts

Lactate workouts are the hardest things we do. However, we only do them in-season, and we almost always make the next day a code green recovery day.

We measure all lactate workouts (see 24-Second Drill spreadsheet and 4×4 Predictor spreadsheet). If you attended one of our lactate workouts, you’d be astonished at the effort and performance of each sprinter on my team. I’ve had visitors tell me that our practice exceeded the atmosphere of a track meet. I agree 100%. I’m heavily caffeinated. My athletes reflect my enthusiasm. It’s showtime!

In the epic 400 debate with Ryan Banta, he criticized my policy of “apologizing” to my athletes when we do a lactate workout. I whole-heartedly defended myself. These workouts, like the 400, require a leap of faith. Acidosis creates a discomfort most athletes have never truly experienced. To call the pain intense would be like calling fire hot. The good news: the pain is temporary, the body will adapt quickly to become biochemically tougher, and we don’t have practice tomorrow!

Lactate work is the price my team pays for a pure focus on speed in the off-season. It’s the price we pay to survive a long sprint. The good news: the body is a fast-learner. Biochemical adaptations are accomplished at a magical rate compared to improving absolute speed. I see significant adaptations after our first lactate workout.

Lactate work is the price my team pays for pure focus on speed in the off-season. It's the price we pay to survive a long sprint, says @pntrack. #400m Share on X

When you run 10 x 200, you are tired at the end of the workout. However, you have not improved speed. As a matter of fact, the opposite is true. Also, you have not taught the body to deal with acidosis. The 10 x 200 is a lactate threshold workout; the body doesn’t become acidic. If given a choice between a lactate workout and 10 x 200, you might choose the 10 x 200 because it doesn’t hurt as bad. It’s just a soul-crusher. If grinding through hard, mind-numbing, two-hour workouts is your preference, you are not a Feed the Cats guy.

If you’re interested in my Training Cats to Run the 400 video (comparing and contrasting Clyde Hart Training to Feed the Cats), it’s available at Complete Track and Field.

Let’s Get Specific

I have four lactate workouts. (Everyone wants the damn recipe, no one wants to learn how to cook!)

1. 23-Second Drill
2. 600m 4×4 Predictor
3. 450m 4×4 Predictor
4. Critical Zone

All four of these workouts are linked to in-depth articles. I’ve summarized each in the slides below.

In a Feed the Cats program, all pain is self-inflicted. No one practices unless 100% healthy. I never force-feed workouts. My kids build their own house. If my guys don’t feel like doing a workout, they don’t do it. My guys all choose to do the work.

“We want to get the line 80% in shape and 100% healthy rather than the other way around.”—Harry Marra

In addition to Coach Marra’s epic quote, I’d like to say, “We want to get kids 100% fast and 80% in shape, not the other way around.” If you merge both statements, you come close to the essence of Feed the Cats.

100% Fast + 100% Healthy + 80% In Shape = Happy Athletes

Old School Math: 80% Fast + 80% Healthy + 100% In Shape = toughen up! practice was not meant to be fun!

By entering the track season with a maximal speed base, my kids are a couple of lactate workouts away from being solid in the 400m, says @pntrack. Share on X

By entering the track season with a maximal speed base, my kids are a couple of lactate workouts away from being solid in the 400. With a 19-week track season, the meets will do most of the rest. As Latif Thomas taught me 12 years ago, “The faster your maximum speed, the faster your sub-max speed.” When you consider the competitive nature of cats and their love of track and field, 4×4 success is no surprise.

The 400 is a sprint.

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…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’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the World Athletics biomechanical reports are a treasure trove for coaches and sports data mavens. The 2019 Doha reports may not be available yet, but the reports from Berlin 2009, London 2017, and Birmingham 2018 offer a wealth of data for each track and field event. I used the reports about the long jump to write Building a Better Technical Model for the Long Jump, in which I made evidence-based recommendations for training certain fundamental skills in the event. Analyzing someone else’s data is never easy, so I told myself to take a long break before doing it again. I also told myself to stay away from the biomechanical reports about pole vault because the pole vault is an excessively technical event.

The World Athletics biomechanical data reports on pole vaulting offer critical perspectives which the naked eye can rarely capture as effectively. Share on X

While writing a different piece about pole vault, I needed to check the reports from the Berlin, London, and Birmingham World Championships for a minor reference. I couldn’t help getting pulled into writing something new, and what you’re about to read is the result.

The reports are still a work in progress. A few variables may fall short of their intended assessment, but overall, the reports offer critical perspectives which the naked eye can rarely capture as effectively. A basic understanding will support coaches with more critical analysis and improved feedback for their athletes. Though pole vault seems like the wrong jumping-off point, the event is an ideal model for a case study because ample opportunities exist to collect data. I was pleased to find many similarities between the reports on pole vault and long jump:

• Runway velocity
• Length of steps
• Takeoff angle
• Vertical displacement of an athlete’s center of mass
• Performance marks

These include familiar variables and, expectedly, some new ones as well. Each biomechanical report offers raw data, graphical analysis, and written commentary for the men’s and women’s competition finals. Speed correlates with performance in almost all track and field events, and the pole vault is no exception. The top athletes consistently demonstrated the greatest runway velocities. But that relationship can be further broken down into instantaneous velocities in the last three steps before takeoff, for which more meaningful technical considerations appear. This correlation is not perfect, but it holds up quite well. Runway velocity is one of the variables present in all the reports.

Assessing Stride Pattern

The length of the last three steps before takeoff offers preliminary insight into an athlete’s favored technical model. The ratio between lengths of the penultimate and last step demonstrates how the athlete prepares to jump up. A longer penultimate step followed by a shorter last step most effectively allows an athlete to jump into the air—with or without a pole in hand. My long jump article directly addresses this claim and supports it with evidence from the same World Championships. The pole vault reports present a similar variation in the stride pattern data. For example, 12 out of 15 male vaulters and 8 out of 11 female vaulters from Birmingham 2018 relied on a long-short stride pattern at takeoff. In London 2017, 8 out of 9 male vaulters and 10 out of 12 female vaulters relied on this pattern.

A vaulter’s preparation to jump up is important to a vertical event while the timing of their takeoff can greatly diminish the efficacy of their jump. Professional pole vaulters seem to debunk this claim due to their impressive speed and strength. While they might rely on an even or a short-long stride pattern—which produces a less effective jump—they still manage to clear a high bar. Many athletes and their coaches might call this style, but style is no reasonable excuse for what runway velocities reveal and the naked eye cannot see.

In the early 1980s, pole vault coach Vitaly Petrov introduced and promoted the free takeoff, which requires the vaulter to jump off the ground slightly before the pole tip hits the back of the plant box. The free takeoff was widely used and popularized by Petrov’s athlete and former WR holder Sergey Bubka, who is still one of the most decorated track and field athletes of all time. The Petrov Model (also known as the Champion Model) advanced pole vault technique because it included this free takeoff.

Although a long-short stride pattern supports the free takeoff, the biomechanical reports show it does not correlate with a free takeoff. #PoleVault Share on X

Although a long-short stride pattern supports the free takeoff, the pattern does not correlate with a free takeoff according to the biomechanical reports. For example, the American record holder and Olympic silver medalist Sandi Morris relied on a long-short stride pattern in London 2017 but favors taking off after her pole tip hits the box. This is known as taking off under the pole or getting ripped off the ground. According to still-frame analysis in the 2018 report, Morris does not rely on a free takeoff in this jump because her pole has already begun bending while her takeoff foot has not left the ground. Morris is a decorated vaulter and this style works for her, but I don’t recommend beginners learn to pole vault with the same style.

The 2018 report reveals that Brazilian Thiago Braz da Silva, the 2016 Rio Olympics gold medalist, relies on a free takeoff and a long-short stride pattern. It should come as no surprise that Petrov is his coach. Another iconic athlete in the Birmingham report is former WR holder Renaud Lavillenie, who won the pole vault in the 2012 London Olympics but lost to da Silva in 2016. Though I’ve watched Lavillenie compete many times and know his jump well, I had thought he did not rely on a free takeoff. I was mistaken. Lavillenie relies on an unusual, short-long stride pattern, but the 2018 report’s still-frame analysis reveals he jumps with a free takeoff. This is also evident in his 2014 world record.

Timing the Takeoff

The data from Morris, da Silva, and Lavillenie call into question the assumed correlation between stride pattern and takeoff. These three profiles confirm the need for a new variable, which measures the time between an athlete’s last contact with the runway and their pole tip colliding with the back of the box. When the difference is positive, the athlete jumps up before the collision. This would qualify as a free takeoff. When the difference is negative, the athlete jumps up after the collision—under the pole typically. The combination of this time difference and the last three steps provides valuable assessment for all athletes and coaches. I recommend adding this time difference variable to future reports.

Pole vault needs a new variable to measure time between an athlete's last contact with the track & the pole tip colliding with the back of the box. Share on X

Some pole vault coaches value using a takeoff mark on the runway. In my coaching, I don’t find catching the last step on the runway more valuable than watching the vaulter transition from the runway into the air, so I generally ignore this mark. Other coaching tools, like mid-marks, glean similar information. However, the London 2017 report measured the displacement of the athlete’s top handgrip position relative to the last step, which the reports called takeoff foot position. The naked eye cannot easily observe this measurement, and I found the analysis very useful for the plant.

Unfortunately, these measurements were not included for each athlete. If the biomechanical project team chooses to include takeoff foot position in future reports, it will help determine which planting technique an athlete favors in their jump. Displacement in front of the foot would suggest that the athlete favors a forward plant, characteristic of Coach Roman Botcharnikov’s 640 Model. Minimal displacement, with the top hand directly above the foot—or displacement shifted behind the foot—would, instead, suggest the athlete favors the more traditional Petrov Model. Each model offers its benefits and drawbacks. While the Petrov Model is the most widely used, the 640 Model is safer and easier to learn. A trained eye knows how to determine which technical model an athlete uses, but the takeoff foot position will assist its confirmation. If the takeoff foot position seems extreme in either direction, then I recommend filming several jumps to confirm the assessment before addressing it with the athlete.

Capturing the Plant

In the pole vault, coaching motions is usually better than coaching positions, but it’s incredibly hard to find reasonable data that assess motion better than the eye. Pole angle at takeoff is not a useful variable because these measurements are nearly identical for every athlete. More fruitfully, the 2018 report includes pole angles before takeoff. This data captures the planting motion because the change in pole angle indicates how quickly the vaulter plants the pole over the last three steps. In Images 1 and 2, notice how the change in pole angle is gradual for most vaulters in their final steps. Steeper slopes, or sharp increases relative to the previous step, suggest the vaulter plants too quickly. This is known as punching the pole or flipping the pole. Seven out of the 26 vaulters plant their pole too quickly when compared to the smoother, more general trend apparent from the other 19. Pole angles before takeoff were included in the 2018 report but not the 2017 report.

Data about pole angles before takeoff captures the planting motion & indicates how quickly the vaulter plants the pole over the last 3 steps. Share on X

Like all phases in the pole vault, the plant should precede and transition into the takeoff phase smoothly and gradually. Punching or flipping can create unnecessary resistance and loss of velocity at takeoff. One way to minimize this loss is by letting the pole drop by its own weight and extending the bottom arm to guide it into the box. I found the pole angle data useful, but not completely necessary. Coaches can easily observe how smoothly their vaulters plant the pole. Analysis of professional vaulters has its value in understanding proficient or deficient archetypes, but possibly no more than that.

Applying Vertical Variables

When I noticed the reports included push height, I was thrilled. Then I discovered that push height measures “the vertical distance between the center of mass at pole release and peak height” (Bissas, 2017). Although the rise of a vaulter’s center of mass is critical in assessing technical efficiency, push height addresses this motion insufficiently because it does not account for the displacement above the top handgrip. If a vaulter produces substantial push height but their grip is relatively high, they are not jumping efficiently. Whereas a vaulter who produces average push height and holds the pole relatively low can still create an extremely efficient jump.

A vaulter who produces average push height and grips the pole relatively low can still produce an extremely efficient jump. Share on X

The vertical difference between a vaulter’s top handgrip and the bar height is a more valuable tool. This is known as push-off. I appreciate that the 2017 reports include grip height, but this data was not subtracted from each vaulter’s bar clearance to generate a push-off variable. Vertical distance variables like push height, pelvis clearance height, and swing height miss the mark. For example, Holly Bradshaw, Lisa Rizyh, and Yarisley Silva all cleared 4.65 meters with similar vertical displacement measurements. Bradshaw and Rizyh are comparable in height, and Silva is ten centimeters shorter. However, in Silva’s best jump, she spent considerably less time in contact with the pole than her two opponents.

This profile calls into question the utility of such vertical variables, when other factors, like runway velocity, may deserve greater consideration for assessing technical efficiency. Other vertical variables, like pelvis height, may offer fans a wow factor, but bar clearance matters most. The project team should present variables, like push-off and pole angles, more explicitly, while eliminating confusing variables, like push height or pelvis height.

The 2018 commentary acknowledges that the transition from the runway to off-the-ground mechanics continues to perplex the investigative team. The fastest athletes on the track do not always produce the best jumps because “a considerable amount of the kinetic energy from their approaches was not stored in elastic structures like the bending pole or in muscle-tendon stiffness” (Bissas, 2018). This may derive from “ineffective absorption in body structures,” which relates to the athlete’s favored technical model (Bissas, 2018). In all track and field events, evidence-driven skepticism like this should be an opening to define new variables and collect more data.

Although I’m encouraged by its inclusion, I think the project team misapplied their vertical displacement data from London 2017. A year later, the 2018 commentary recognizes an absence of “data concerning the upper jump phases for this competition” (Bissas, 2018). While this statement is true, I find it misleading. The 2018 commentary states that it “cannot discuss the complete mechanical efficiency of the athletes” when the very same data was collected in the year before (Bissas, 2018). The 2018 reports exclude this data, rendering limited analysis for motions off the ground, and recommends concentration on the “approach, pole plant and takeoff” (Bissas, 2018). Again, I agree—with some reservations. Grip height and bar clearance are the two most valuable measurements for the greater pole vault community.

Grip height and bar clearance are the two most valuable measurements for the greater pole vault community. Share on X

Grip height is one of a few pole specs worth including in a biomechanical report. Pole length and weight rating provide perspective on an individual’s seasonal or historical progressions. These specs can also compare performances between athletes in one competition. For example, a vaulter who clears a higher bar with a shorter pole is a more technically efficient jumper because they produce greater push-off than the opponent on a longer pole. They may not be faster or stronger than their opponent, but certainly more efficient. A vaulter who jumps on a pole with a higher weight rating when lengths are equivalent is usually heavier or faster than their opponent who jumps on a lighter pole. In both examples, I assume the two athletes clear the same height. Hopefully, runway velocities will corroborate these relationships. Grip height is nearly a proxy for pole length, but weight rating is harder to record without athletes sharing this information ahead of, or during, the competition. Neither pole length nor weight rating are included in either years’ reports. These specs deserve greater scrutiny and attention in the future. More data is always better.

Recognizing Limitations

I must recognize the limitation of my analysis. The data in each biomechanical report only represents the best jump from each athlete. The compiled results show that every athlete took at least three jumps in the competition. The best jumps may not, in fact, represent the common practices of each athlete. Even in my ignorance of any of the innumerable emotional, physical, or environmental factors present, it’s impossible to know how each athlete performed relative to prior competition without the data to support such analysis.

Only 72 total vaulters competed in the Berlin, London, and Birmingham finals. This number includes both male and female athletes. While 72 unique attempts to clear a bar provides more than enough data for analysis, this number compares poorly to the total number of clearances by all athletes when summed together. Between all three world championship finals, 72 athletes cleared a bar 194 times. Although 122 unique jumps may have been captured for analysis, they were never presented or published. I view these limitations as both reductive and motivating. They make me skeptical of my conclusions from the reports. The numbers reveal that there is more to learn from this spectacular event.

Hopefully, continued reporting & systematic compilation of data will cement some technical skills into a fundamental learning model for the pole vault. Share on X

Pole vault has evolved several times since its introduction in the 1896 Olympics. From rigid, wooden poles in the early days to flexible fiberglass of the modern era, technical proficiency has always lagged behind pole material innovation. While our understanding of fundamental skills like runway velocity, preparation for takeoff, and a smooth plant has progressed gradually, comprehensive biomechanical reports have never existed for the World Championships until this past decade. Hopefully, continued reporting and systematic compilation of data will cement certain technical skills into a fundamental learning model for the pole vault. In this learning model, I do not mean the Petrov Model, the 640 Model, or any technical model preceding either of these. Runway velocity, preparation for takeoff, and a smooth plant are simple necessities for a good jump. They are embedded within every technical model because they are fundamental skills to the event.

Beginners should focus on fundamental skills—push-off, stride pattern & smooth plant—& avoid emulating techniques of elite pole vaulters. Share on X

The 2017 women’s’ commentary states, “the model should be modified to the athlete” (Bissas, 2017). While I agree with this statement, it applies mostly to athletes with impressive strength and speed—not beginners. I fear it encourages young vaulters to emulate techniques they are neither strong nor fast enough to master in their early years. Faster athletes can grip higher. Stronger, more flexible athletes can take off under the pole more reliably. Beginners should focus more on fundamental skills like push-off, stride pattern, and a smooth plant until they reach their full height, adult weight, and genetically predetermined body proportions.

Thinking Bigger than the Pole Vault

It’s worth noting that the 2017 pole vault reports measured more variables than the 2018 reports did, but they do not explain scaling back their data collection. If it’s because certain variables need more clarity or scrutiny as to which serve the pole vault community best, then I’m encouraged by this reflective process. I hope some of those missing variables from 2017 will return to future reports. A wealth of stories exists from a century of pole vaulting, but very limited data exist comparably in the public domain. Data can help parse credible coaching practices from sheer dumb luck. While stories and anecdotes might inspire us to embrace new ideas, data drives innovation and sustainable improvement.

Data can help parse credible coaching practices from dumb luck. All coaches should read at least one of the World Athletics biomechanical reports. Share on X

I recommend all coaches read at least one of the biomechanical reports. The expanded scope of biomechanical analysis from London 2017 and Birmingham 2018 offers an opportunity to improve your professional practice. The reports provide a worthy service to the pole vault, as well as our wider athletic community. I look forward to the Doha 2019 report, and many more 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

Young kids love to run. Right after they learn how to walk, the very next thing they do is run. For them, it’s the greatest thing in the world. Half the time they don’t even realize they’re doing it, but there they go, just chugging along, smiling and laughing the whole time.

Well, not always. Sometimes it’s a tantrum-sprint in the grocery store. Sometimes it’s swift mischief, like when my two-year-old son decided my first-generation iPod needed to go in the toilet. There is no faster creature on Earth than a toddler who has something they shouldn’t. Regardless of the reason, running is one of the most naturally human things we do. We start young, and we love it.

As kids get a little older, in addition to running, they begin to love sprinting. In fact, they love all kinds of explosive movements. They don’t realize that, of course. They’re just playing. But if you’ve spent much time around young kids, I can virtually guarantee you’ve seen them run, jump, crawl, leap, climb, and hop all over creation. I’d even bet they’ve asked you to count how many seconds it takes them to get from here to there, or to see how high they can jump, or to watch them jump off of something. Kids are chaos muppets. I think we should encourage it for as long as we can.

Somewhere along the line, a lot of kids lose their love for running. Or, perhaps more accurately, adults kill it, says @TrackCoachTG. Share on X

You see, somewhere along the line, a lot of kids lose this love for running. Or, perhaps more accurately, adults kill it. Kids get yelled at for running in the house. They have coaches who use running as punishment. Their gym teacher tests them on a timed mile. Pretty soon they’ve learned that running is prohibited, punitive, or boring. And once running becomes those things, they stop doing it. But what they’ve really stopped doing is playing, and playing is one of the most important things your kids can do.

I’m not here to tell you how to raise your kids, but when my six-year-old decides he wants to jump off the coffee table, I let him. It’s made of wood. Real sturdy. And look, I get it: We don’t want them to hurt themselves or break stuff. But I promise you this: They will always find other ways to hurt themselves or break stuff.

When my kids want me to see how long it takes them to run up the stairs, I count the seconds. When they ask if they can build an obstacle course in the yard, I go get my stopwatch. As a parent, I love all of this because it keeps them active and challenging themselves. As a track and field coach, I love it for another reason: It’s speed training.

Before I go much further with this, let me address some concerns right from the get-go. I’m about to advocate for the idea that you should speed train your young kids. Some people might call me overbearing for that. But to be clear, I’m not saying that you should put together a comprehensive workout plan to follow in preparation for the fall 8U soccer season. I’m not saying you should force your kids to go outside and sprint for time if they don’t want to. I’m not saying you should put your kids into situations that would be dangerous or harmful. And I’m definitely not saying you should start teaching your kids the mentality of “the grind.” If you do those things, your kids will start to hate sprinting, and that’s exactly what we should try to avoid.

Here’s what I am saying. When young kids engage in physical, active play, they consistently do so in ways that we as track and field coaches recognize as speed training. A lot of the movements we teach athletes at an older age—like running, jumping, and landing—are actually movements kids figure out naturally at a young age, but forget how to do because they become sedentary or start to hate physical activity. By the time they’re in high school, we’re not teaching them how to do things for the first time; we’re reteaching them things they learned on their own by playing.

Play with your kids and pay close attention to spot movements they’re already doing that foster speed development. Then, as much as possible, encourage those movements in fun and exciting ways. Share on X

If you’re a youth coach, camp counselor, or some other adult in charge of young kids, build free and active play into your programs. If you’re a parent, play with your kids and pay close attention to spot movements they’re already doing that foster speed development. Then, as much as possible, encourage those movements in fun and exciting ways. With any luck, we’ll end up with kids who like to move their bodies (instead of hating it) and who become enamored with the idea of being fast and explosive without even realizing it. With that in mind, I have some ideas about how you can speed train your children.

Sprint Drills

At the beginning of this school year, my first grader came home from school and excitedly showed me that he had learned how to skip in gym class. He looked about as coordinated as a baby giraffe, but he was excited about this new movement. That’s huge!

The level of effort I, as a parent, had to put forth to encourage him was minimal. Just saying “Wow, buddy! You’re getting really good at skipping! Can you show me one more time? It is so cool!” was enough to get him to keep working on it. We skipped together. I asked him to show me how to skip almost any time we went anywhere. He figured it out, and now he’s a skipping machine.

I tell this story because, generally speaking, if you deliver a new and appropriately challenging concept with enough enthusiasm, you can get young kids to buy in—especially if that young kid is yours and therefore happens to think you’re the coolest person in the world. You have instant credibility. Since my son started skipping, we’ve worked on lots of the same sprint drills I do with my high school athletes: walk-overs, A-marches, high-knees, skips for height, pogos, and A-switches.

Delivery is everything with this stuff. At no point have I said to my son, “Alright, champ. It’s time to do some sprinting drills. Go get your shoes on and meet me in the driveway.” All of the “work” we do comes within the context of playing. To continue to use skipping as an example, once he had gotten the basic movement down, I simply said, “I have an idea! Let’s see how high we can skip!” Bada-bing, bada-boom. Explosive muscle fiber development.

If a kid can hop on two feet, you can turn it into a speed drill, says @TrackCoachTG. Share on X

Pogos are another one. If a kid can hop on two feet, you can turn it into a speed drill. A simple challenge like “Why don’t we try and see how fast we can jump off the ground?” can add intent to a very basic movement. It’s not rocket science. Play with your kids, and when they do stuff that looks like track practice, celebrate and replicate. Here are a few things you might try:

• Follow the Leader Skips
• High Knees Tag
• One- or Two-Footed Hopscotch
• Ball Drop Accelerations
• Red Light, Green Light

Racing, Timing, and Competing

Earlier this week I saw a toddler and his dad out for a walk in my neighborhood. The kid was chattering away in mostly indecipherable kidspeak, but then I heard something unmistakable: “Weeeedddddy, GO!”

The kid took off in something like a cross between a sprint and a Godzilla-stomp, and the dad went with him. Apparently, the finish line was the fire hydrant at the corner, and the toddler won the race despite being seriously physically overmatched. He announced his victory: “I WIINNN!” and his dad celebrated with him.

I don’t know where it comes from, but I’ve never known a kid who didn’t do this. It seems like it’s part of our nature to compete. Kids love to race, and they also really love to win. By encouraging this natural drive to be fast and compete, we can foster the speed development of our kids and keep them sprinting.

By encouraging their natural drive to be fast and compete, we can foster the speed development of our kids and keep them sprinting, says @TrackCoachTG. Share on X

For some kids, once they stop winning and the race doesn’t give them the sense of happiness and pride it once did, they stop racing. This is tricky. It’s hard to explain to a kid that at age seven, whichever kid in their class is the biggest or the oldest is probably the fastest and the strongest, too. Even a few months’ age difference can be huge when kids are young. If your child is young for their grade or small for their age, it can lead to them feeling discouraged about not being able to keep up with the other kids.

But racing against other kids isn’t the only way to scratch the competitive itch. Just a few nights ago, both my sons asked me to time them in a 20-ish yard sprint. They didn’t race against each other, because they are seven years apart in age. Instead, they each ran a handful of times and tried to beat their own previous time.

Seeing how fast they can do something is a great motivator for kids. Every parent on Earth has said “I’ll count and see how long it takes you to…” Maybe you’ve even tested out the see-how-fast-you-can-do-it method on things like picking up the toys in the living room. This usually works a few times until kids realize they’ve been tricked, but the fact that it ever works at all speaks volumes to the idea that kids are motivated by time and by trying to do things fast, or faster.

A little while back I tweeted this:

I did not tell him to do this, nor had I ever busted out the tape measure while playing with him to see how far he could jump. The closest I’d come before was the time he and my older son were seeing how many squares of sidewalk section they could jump over, which I obviously encouraged the hell out of. But sure enough, he wanted to challenge himself—compete with himself—to see how far he could jump, and then try to jump farther the next time.

We time sprints and measure jumps at practice, and chasing milestones that are faster and longer becomes a great motivator. But this isn’t a breakthrough innovation among track and field coaches. Faster and farther motivates lots of kids from the time they’re young. Use this motivation! When your daughter wants to show you how far she can jump, celebrate her. Then challenge her to see if she can jump even farther. She might surprise you, and herself, with the things she’s capable of.

Jumping and Landing

I’ve already talked about jumping in the context of measurement and competition, but jumping and landing as their own activities, independent of the tape measure, are also great ways to encourage athletic development. Jumping onto a raised surface is expression of force. Jumping off a raised surface and landing is absorption of force. Jumping, landing, and immediately jumping again is transfer of force. In the sports world we call this plyometrics, but your kids don’t care about that. They will like it because they already think jumping onto, off of, and over things is fun. And it is! It’s playing! You should absolutely do this with your children.

Jumping and landing as their own activities…are also great ways to encourage athletic development, says @TrackCoachTG. Share on X

The most common place my kids and I jump is on the steps of our front porch. We have three steps. One day my son started jumping with two feet up to the first step, which looked an awful lot like a box jump to me. That gave me some ideas, so now we do all of these things:

• Two-footed jumps to the second step.
• One-footed jumps.
• Jump to the first step, then immediately jump to the second step.
• Face sideways, then jump with a quarter turn.
• Jump off two feet, land on one.
• Jump off one foot, land on two.

Look, I haven’t calculated all the possible permutations for this activity, but I can tell you without a doubt that if you have a couple of steps, you can be creative and have some fun jumping onto things with your kids.

Possibly even more fun than jumping onto things is jumping off of things. Lots of parents holler at their kids for jumping off the furniture, but mine have been leaping off couches and coffee tables for more than a decade. Admittedly, my wife and I were broke for a long time and none of our furniture was very nice, so maybe that’s why we didn’t get too bunched up about it. I’m not saying that allowing your kid to jump off the arm of the couch will turn them into an Olympian, but I am saying that by allowing it rather than squashing it you’ll encourage your kids to keep playing in active ways. If they get in trouble for this type of play, eventually they’ll stop doing it. So, after you get done jumping onto things with your kids, you should probably jump off of some things too.

Just like before, the possibilities for different ways to jump off structures are nearly endless. Here are some things you could try:

• One- or two- footed drop jumps.
• Drop jumps with quarter turns.
• Drop jumps with half turns.
• Jump down, land, and immediately jump for height.
• Jump down, land, and immediately jump for distance.
• Jump down, land, and immediately jump to the side.

Of course, make sure you’re not jumping from surfaces that are too high so nobody gets hurt, and make sure you’re encouraging good landing technique. Celebrate every jump and every crazy idea your kid comes up with, even if there is no scientifically backed reason for making silly noises or flailing your arms in mid-air.

All About the Fun

At the end of the day, we have to encourage active and athletic play in our kids. If you start paying attention, you’ll notice all kinds of things they already do that are a lot like the movements you practice with your athletes. Definitely don’t turn playing into a regimented workout plan, but definitely do enthusiastically celebrate athletic movement, encouraging them to perform those movements more often and in different ways. The best way to encourage them is to play with them, so next time you’re getting ready to tell your kids to slow down or not to jump off that stump, consider instead challenging them to run faster or climb the stump yourself and jump with them.

Don’t turn playing into a regimented workout plan, but enthusiastically celebrate athletic movement, encouraging kids to perform those movements more often and in different ways. Share on X

By skipping, hopping, and doing sprint drills, my children have become more coordinated and attuned to their movements. My son, who used to take an eternity to bounce back off the ground after landing a jump, has become noticeably more reactive. This type of playing is creating speed adaptations, and they don’t even realize it. But that’s what’s so great: They might be too young to know they’re becoming better athletes, but they’ll definitely know they’re having fun. And that’s what it’s all about.

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

We are currently in the midst of the biggest, global world-changing event in most of our lifetimes. When all of this (hopefully!) blows over, we are going to be living in a very different world. What worked pre-coronavirus might not work in the world we inhabit afterward. Lockdowns and shelter-in-place orders have provided us all with a chance to think about what matters and assess how we operate—it will be interesting to see how much changes within the world of coaching and strength and conditioning as we move forward. With a period of reflection, there are likely to be changes made in how we operate, either from things learnt or simply out of necessity.

With that in mind, one of the most comparable periods for what we are currently living through is the off-season. With a sustained period of time away from our athletes—as well as varying training environments and minimal contact time—there are many similarities between lockdown and the offseason. The off-season varies widely between sports, but is a yearly problem that every coach has to solve. So, with athletes worldwide being put into an enforced lockdown:

• What can we learn as a community of coaches from our experiences?
• What innovations can we apply to future off-seasons?
• How do we continue to impact our athletes when they aren’t seeing us day in and day out?
• Should we do anything different the next time our athletes have an extended time off?

How do we continue to impact our athletes when they aren’t seeing us day in and day out? Should we do anything different the next time our athletes have anextended time off? @peteburridge asks. Share on X

Depending on the sport and level of athlete you work with, the offseason period can differ greatly: spanning as little as 2 to 3 weeks for professional footballers to sports like the NBA and NHL, which can have as long as 4 months off between formalized training! Similarly, with the lockdown orders, there was a large variation in circumstances based on geography.

In the UK, we were allowed outside to exercise once a day but gyms were closed; in countries like South Africa, they had allotted outdoor exercise windows that lasted only a couple of hours. In countries like France, some people were confined to their homes completely, leading one brave/crazy man to run a marathon on his balcony!

Return to Play

We need to understand these constraints before we even begin to formulate a new training plan. This is the same as in the off-season, where each athlete’s situation will dictate how we may support the player and what we may (or may not) expect from them. For example, if a player has been involved in a grueling season and they only have two weeks of downtime, I’m pretty sure the last person they want to hear from is you!

Also, from a physiological perspective, you will only get very small decay of physical capacities in that short time—so you can afford to be more relaxed with what that player does or doesn’t do. Conversely, those with a large period of time off would need more support, and to be more closely monitored, because the opportunity for the player’s physical qualities to decay is high. This can lead to a higher risk of injury upon the return of training. Just look at the number of Achilles tendon ruptures in the NFL after the enforced lockout in 2011, and you can see what happens when athletes can’t (or won’t) put in the work.¹

Injury risk is probably the first and most important issue to address, and we have already seen in the Bundesliga’s return from lockdown that injuries are higher than normal. This isn’t just a football problem either: one team in Rugby League suffered two non-contact ACL injuries in the first 20 minutes of the same game when returning to action.

Performance degradation is another key element to try and address in an athlete’s off-season training. Some markers of performance will inevitably decline, but the goal of off-season training is to attenuate this as much as possible. Being in charge of an athlete’s physical condition can potentially be frustrating when you have to rely on them to remain self-reliant due to a lack of contact time.

This is a key learning point of the lockdowns: there will be times where we can’t be there to help our athletes, so we need to empower them to be more self-sufficient, says @peteburridge Share on X

This is a key learning point of the lockdowns: there will be times where we can’t be there to help our athletes, so we need to empower them to be more self-sufficient. This is where educating them and involving them in training decision-making is important, providing a deeper understanding of the training process. At times we can do too much for our athletes and they become over-reliant on us. The goal for most coaches/S&C’s is to make the player less and less dependent on you. This doesn’t sound like a good business model, but we should go from the person forging the path for our athletes to the person simply providing the guide ropes, so that our athletes can then forge their own.

Maintaining Essential Physical Qualities

The lockdowns also provided an opportunity to challenge the misconception that our athletes need to be in a gym with us to perform good-quality physical training. Very few athletes will have had access to top-flight gym equipment, so we’ve had to adapt. This is exactly like the situation we face in the off-season, so the innovations we have made in this period can be very readily applied in the future.

Many coaches have been highly creative in this period, making the best out of the hand they have been dealt. Canadian inventor Ann Makosinski has said that “creativity is born out of necessity,” and this version of the proverb couldn’t be more apt for this period. I hope that some of those innovations carry over to future training, whether that be in the novel ways we have interacted and checked-in with players, or the creative ways we have found to load our athletes to get worthwhile training adaptations without lots of equipment.

Video 1. Athletes have used sandbags, breeze blocks, backpacks filled with tins of beans, and other household items to better load movements. Even cartons of milk can be reused to load a movement!

When we look at training on a continuum—from doing nothing at one end to full training at the other—it becomes easier to pitch someone’s training. If someone spent the lockdown doing absolutely nothing, their physical capacities will have dropped off about 2-4% per week.² If an athlete spends a long off-season like this, it will likely leave them as an unwelcome statistic on an injury monitoring blog! However, we need to be aware that training isn’t an all or nothing event—once you’ve already got it, you don’t need to do a lot in order to at least cling to what you have.

Training just 20% of what you would normally do cuts losses in aerobic capacity in half. ³ Younger athletes need far less training than you’d expect in order to maintain certain physical qualities—around 1/6^th of the training input, compared to 1/3^rd for older athletes for strength and hypertrophy.⁴ Knowing this, coaches can sleep a little easier at night! Moreover, with players who tend to worry a lot during time off from training, educating them on these things can help performance anxiety that might be brought about by not training at their usual levels.

Having this minimum effective dose approach can help free up a lot more time for an athlete in their off-season to focus on things away from the sport and training. One of the challenges of lockdown, though, has been making sure we do provide an effective dose, utilizing exercises that are going to be potent enough to cause physiological adaptations. Unfortunately, random 5k runs mixed in with burpees and sets of bodyweight squats to infinity aren’t the most targeted of training prescriptions!

This is where, as coaches, we’ve had to innovate to find new exercises and also to embrace technology to make remote programming more bespoke to our athletes.

Video 2. Without a great deal of external load, it is important to think creatively to find ways to overload. Manually resisted eccentrics are an easy way to achieve an overload—as long as you can convince someone to spot you!

Individualizing Training for a Full Squad

Most off-season programs tend to be a blanket program carefully curated on Excel. They are then ‘sent to all’ in the hope that at least some players do more than just chuck it into the boot of their cars to collect dust. Unfortunately, no matter how fancy the formatting, a generic program is unlikely to meet an athlete’s individual needs. Furthermore, unless there is some form of accountability with the athlete, the coach has likely wasted a lot of their time.

This is where athlete management systems like TeamBuildr and CoachMePlus have come into their own in the lockdown period. The software not only allows quick, simple, and adaptable programming, but also provides athlete accountability and continued engagement. On a daily basis, coaches can check in and interact with athletes, no matter where they are in the world. This technology is—at the very least—attractive for off-season periods, and some coaches may continue to use them in-season as well.

Coaches may be new to the use of apps like Smartabase, TeamBuildr and CoachMePlus, and perhaps like me are still biased towards Excel. But in a situation like the off-season, athlete management systems are great tools that are simple for the end user and can help get bespoke programs out quickly and effectively. Also, the customization of exercises and an exercise library are useful if you want an athlete to perform an exercise in a particular way, or if they are constrained by equipment. For example, one athlete I coach didn’t have access anywhere to do chin ups, but had a TRX attachment and a big tree in his back garden. TRX Tree Chin-Ups were born, and with it came a video demo of what to do and coaching cues of how to perform the exercise.

Monitoring Data and Meeting Apps

Other technological innovations that have been particularly useful during the lockdowns are data trackers and wearables. These are also hugely applicable for use in a typical off-season, bridging the gap between what a player gets at the training ground and what they might be able to track at home or on the road.

Many teams will use GPS and HR systems to track numerous metrics and monitor load. These units are expensive and require smart minds to collect, collate, and analyze the data; however, GPS apps like Strava and HR monitors in Apple watches and FitBits can provide rudimentary data on sessions. These are becoming increasingly user-friendly to upload and analyze—the accuracy isn’t what the big companies like Catapult and Polar may provide, but can help training prescription and put more accountability on the player. For example, the stories of footballers putting a GPS unit on their dog to pick up running load may be hard to prove, but it is much harder to fake the HR trace that a tough running session will provide.

Finally, another method I’m sure most coaches will have experienced is group sessions on Zoom (have you even lived through lockdown if you haven’t been on a Zoom call?!). These can be hard to coordinate and will forever be plagued by the one person who doesn’t mute their mic, but are still a very useful tool to keep a playing group together. The online meetings maintain team cohesion whilst simultaneously giving you an opportunity to get a session in with the playing group.

Don’t get me wrong, session design with varied equipment provision and a 35 man waiting room can be quite hard…but with some creativity, it can be pulled off. During the lockdown, many athletes I coach said they missed the feeling of being ‘with the lads’ in training, and often found it hard to motivate and push themselves when working out alone. Similarly, this is a problem many athletes face in the offseason and Zoom can be a great tool to solve it.

During the lockdown, many athletes I coach said they missed the feeling of being *with the lads* in training, and often found it hard to motivate and push themselves when working out alone, says @peteburridge. Share on X

During lockdown, we regularly held large-group fitness sessions so that the players could have the type of ‘shared hardship’ that would—albeit artificially—bring the guys together. We also used Zoom for 1-on-1 sessions with rehabbing players or players who needed a little more direct attention.

With a small group of our players, we even managed to run group agility/COD sessions, where the lads competed in teams against each other in relays. This was perhaps the hardest thing I’ve ever had to officiate, with players running off screen and back again as I was trying to watch for the inevitable ‘bending’ of the rules: scanning 16 tiles on my screen for who finished first at times had me like the monkey from Toy Story 3! But despite these difficulties, it was achievable and allowed me to get a squad-wide sprint and deceleration stimulus in a competitive environment—remotely—whilst the players had fun at the same time.

Using Constraints to Re-Think Training

Many coaches will have had new experiences of how we deliver, but the key learnings from lockdown have been based around what we deliver under the constraints we faced. It has been great to get our athletes back to some sort of ‘normal’ training at our facility, but come the off-season, we will face the same problems again. To steal from survival expert Bear Grylls (American readers may know him better from the internet meme), we have to improvise, adapt, and overcome. This improvisation has helped open up the toolbox to include something more than endless press-up challenges!

Achieving an effective and potent stimulus is a key outcome in the off-season, especially as we have a smaller training budget to spend. Thinking about why we do something can assist training decisions. Most programs will look to maintain strength in the off-season, but unfortunately peak force is hard to develop with just bodyweight exercises and minimal equipment, especially for stronger athletes like rugby players. This is an important quality that underpins a range of athletic actions, but degrades in about 14 days without a good enough stimulus.⁵ With some creativity, however, peak force can be achieved. Things like pushing cars, deadlifting boats, and squatting people are all potential options at the fringes of creativity.

Video 3. With creativity, overload can be found in many places—just be careful about members of the public mistaking your intentions when you do these workouts in the neighborhood!

Sometimes, simpler strategies like going to muscular failure can sufficiently maintain strength—at the very least, this certainly provides a potent hypertrophy stimulus.⁶ For stronger individuals, however, it does mean doing a large number of reps, which can be very arduous to achieve. Other strategies include maximal isometrics, which without equipment can be performed with the help of an old towel in different positions. Performed with maximal intent, these on their own can maintain peak force, and maybe even increase levels of peak force in more untrained individuals.⁷

With careful ordering of exercises, performing sets to failure preceded by maximal isometrics can make the set of max reps much, much harder, so you don’t have to go to silly amounts of reps to achieve muscular failure. Share on X

With careful ordering of exercises, performing sets to failure preceded by maximal isometrics can make the set of max reps much, much harder, so you don’t have to go to silly amounts of reps to achieve muscular failure. Finally, an obvious and easy-to-execute strategy is training single leg movements. Exercises like single-leg squats, skater squats, and loaded lunges can all serve you well (the first two in particular don’t need much load to provide a potent stimulus). The only issue is there is a higher coordinative demand to perform these, but for someone facing an off-season period of perhaps 4-6 weeks, large improvements can be made in movement proficiency if they don’t already appear in your in-season programming.

Video 4. There are multiple ways to try to achieve adaptations in peak force in the lower body when limited for equipment—here are a few that are worth trying with your athletes.

Another strategy that is useful if an athlete has access to a willing participant is the use of eccentric overloaded exercises. Not a lot (if any) plate weight is needed, you just need someone to provide a bit of resistance for exercises like chin-ups and press-ups. Eccentrics are fantastic for developing peak force. It is easily something an athlete can do with a housemate at home, or with their wife or significant other on the beach on holiday. Eccentrics are perhaps easier to perform with upper-body exercises, but with some experimentation, single-leg squats and rear-foot-elevated split squats can be overloaded this way too. Due to eccentrics being a potent stimulus, large volumes aren’t needed either, which allows more time to be spent away from training—making it a particularly appealing strategy for off-season maintenance.

Video 5. Many exercises can be performed with minimal to no equipment if you get creative.

Don’t Neglect Speed

Finally, an argument could be made that keeping up a consistent thread of sprinting is probably the most important stimulus team sport athletes should be doing in the off-season. Additionally, sprinting has been shown to help maintain/improve fascicle length, which is important to protect against hamstring injuries.⁸ This really isn’t (and shouldn’t be) counted as an innovation, but there are some out there who are just now starting to realize the potency of a regular sprint stimulus to help with performance and injury prevention.

Looking from the perspective of hamstring injury prevention, if players aren’t getting the sprint stimulus, they absolutely have to keep up some strength work in the hamstrings. This can be achieved isometrically, with exercises like long lever bridges and planks; or, eccentrically (with a bit of creativity), either manually resisted or doing exercises like Nordics off of whatever you can find!

Video 6. If you’re on your own but need to stay on top of your hamstring strength, hooking your feet under a car can allow you to do Nordics very easily.

Looking Ahead to Your Next Off-Season Break

So, what can we learn from being locked down for so long? What can we change? How can we evolve our practice? We will each take our own learnings and reflections from this period, which can then be applied to our practice. One of my key takeaways from lockdown, which I intend to apply in future off-seasons, is getting more comfortable not having total control of a player’s program. Empowering my athletes more and placing a greater focus on education should help them foster a deeper understanding of their program.

Secondly, we have to make sure we know the why of our training, so that we are achieving physical adaptations. There is a difference between exercise and training, and our job is to provide targeted training that is relevant to an athlete’s physical development rather than just doing Instagram exercises that equate to nothing more than entertrainment.

A greater understanding of the effects of detraining can also better frame our training and alleviate our fears of a player regressing too much. The volumes needed to maintain numerous physical qualities are perhaps a lot lower than we’d expect. Knowledge of this takes the pressure off and we can perhaps allow our athletes a bit more of a mental break to enjoy time away from training—as long as they do perform the minimal effective doses that we prescribe.

From there, we can prioritize certain things that need to be worked on which are actually achievable on the road, at the beach, or at home. Many coaches have shown a great deal of creativity during this period (a lot of what I’ve shared has been shamelessly stolen or adapted from other coaches’ ideas!) and this needs to continue when we are planning for off-season training. If we can continue to find novel solutions to these problems, we will be better set up for success. Whether that’s using things like maximal isometrics, creating load out of household items, or putting your partner on your shoulders and squatting them!

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. Myer GD, Faigenbaum AD, Cherny CE, Heidt RS, Hewett TE. “Did the NFL lockout expose the Achilles heel of competitive sports?” J Orthop Sports Phys Ther. 2011;41(10):702-705.

2. Maldonado-Martin, Sara & Cámara, Jesús & James, David & Fernádez-López, Juan & Artetxe-Gezuraga, Xabier. (2016). “Effects of long-term training cessation in young top-level road cyclists,” Journal of Sports Sciences. 35.

3. García-Pallarés J, Sánchez-Medina L, Pérez CE, Izquierdo-Gabarren M, Izquierdo M. “Physiological effects of tapering and detraining in world-class kayakers,” Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2010;42(6):1209-1214.

4. Bickel, CS, Cross, JM, and Bamman, MM. “Exercise dosing to retain resistance training adaptations in young and older adults,” Med Sci Sports Exerc 43: 1177–1187, 2011.

5. Hwang, Paul S; Andre, Thomas L.; McKinley-Barnard, Sarah K.; Morales Marroquín, Flor E.; Gann, Joshua J.; Song, Joon J.; Willoughby, Darryn S. “Resistance Training–Induced Elevations in Muscular Strength in Trained Men Are Maintained After 2 Weeks of Detraining and Not Differentially Affected by Whey Protein Supplementation,” Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research: April 2017 – Volume 31 – Issue 4 – p 869-881.

6. Schoenfeld, Brad J. “The mechanisms of muscle hypertrophy and their application to resistance training,” The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research24.10 (2010): 2857-2872.

7. Oranchuk, Dustin & Storey, Adam & Nelson, Andre & Cronin, John. (2019). “Isometric training and long-term adaptations: Effects of muscle length, intensity, and intent: A systematic review,” Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports. 29. 484-503.

8. Mendiguchia, Jurdan, et al. “Sprint versus isolated eccentric training: Comparative effects on hamstring architecture and performance in soccer players,” Plos one 15.2 (2020).

In developing an athlete, an important part of improving competition performance is enhancing both the intensity of key individual sessions and supporting the accumulation of high volumes of training, while at the same time avoiding injury and unnecessary fatigue. Balancing the need for performance within sessions, accumulation of load, and injury and illness reduction can be very difficult—and is potentially the hardest part of the coach’s job.

As a result, in recent years there has been a focus on what athletes do away from the track, gym, or training field to improve their subsequent performance. This focus on recovery is important; there are 24 hours during the day, and an athlete may only spend 1-3 hours per day training. This leaves a lot of time available to either support or destroy training adaptations. While some of the key drivers of recovery can be reasonably simple—optimizing sleep and nutrition—there are always new products and interventions that are purported to help. Wearing compression garments, including leggings, socks, and t-shirts, has become more popular over the last 15 years, and there are a variety of products now on the market. In this article, I’ll explore the evidence underpinning compression garments as a recovery tool, and discuss just how useful they might be for athletes wishing to enhance their performance.

Post-Exercise Recovery

The strongest evidence supporting compression garments comes from their influence on post-exercise recovery. Meta-analyses are a type of study in which the authors take the results from individual studies and pool them together into one “mega” study, which allows us to better understand the true effect of a specific intervention. When it comes to compression garments, the results from meta-analyses are clear: compression garments reduce feelings of DOMS and muscle damage. As a result, they likely enhance recovery between training sessions held on different days.

Compression garments reduce DOMS and muscle damage, enhancing recovery between training sessions, says @craig100m. Share on X

For example, a 2013 meta-analysis, published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, pooled the results of 12 eligible studies and suggested that wearing compression garments moderately reduced DOMS and moderately enhanced the recovery of muscle strength and power post-exercise. This appeared to be true when the athletes wore the compression garments after exercise or both during and after exercise.

A second meta-analysis, this time from 2016, again found that using compression garments improved the recovery of power and strength post-exercise and was also associated with lower levels of muscle swelling. A further meta-analysis, from 2017, found a significant and small—but very likely—beneficial effect of compression garments in enhancing post-exercise recovery. Importantly, there was no significant difference in the garments’ effectiveness in trained and untrained participants, suggesting that beginners and elites alike can harness a benefit. When the authors looked at different exercise types, they found that wearing compression garments enhanced recovery to a greater extent in terms of strength recovery, followed by the recovery of power and then endurance. Compression garments also supported recovery following resistance training to a greater extent than running and metabolic-orientated exercise, although they were still effective after the latter two exercises.

Currently, it’s unclear why compression garments enhance recovery. Some researchers speculate that the compression from the clothing reduces the space available for swelling and inflammation to occur. Similarly, the pressure from compression garments may promote venous return, allowing for the removal of waste products. Either way, while the mechanism is perhaps unclear, the effectiveness of compression garments in supporting post-exercise recovery is clear and well-established.

The effectiveness of compression garments in supporting post-exercise recovery is clear and well-established, says @craig100m. Share on X

It’s important to keep in mind that it’s very difficult to blind the participants in studies as to whether they’re wearing compression garments, given that we can all tell whether we’re being compressed or not. As a result, there is the possibility that some of the positive effects come from the placebo effect; because individuals know they’re wearing the compression garments, they believe they’ll recover quicker. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing—the placebo effect can be harnessed to improve performance—but it is something that we must consider when drawing conclusions.

Finally, we should consider how compression garments compare to other often-used recovery methods, such as massage and cold water immersion and ice baths. A 2018 meta-analysis did this, finding that massage was perhaps the most effective recovery technique for reducing DOMS and perceived fatigue, with compression garments and cold water immersion coming a close second. As always, by trying to be pragmatic, a mixed approach to recovery is perhaps best. Massage can be used a couple of times a week in a structured manner while we probably can wear compression garments daily.

Acute Performance

While the evidence for using compression garments to support recovery is strong and well established, many athletes use compression garments in competition in an attempt to improve performance. Here, the evidence is less clear. For example, a 2007 study, comprised of two separate experiments, showed that the use of knee-length compression socks did not enhance performance in two repeated shuttle running tests an hour apart. Still, they did reduce DOMS the next day—again, further suggesting that recovery was enhanced. A similar study, this time from 2011, showed that the use of compression garments did not acutely improve 10-km running performance but did improve performance in a vertical jump test that took place immediately after the 10-km run. Similar results have been reported for other running distances, varying from a 400m sprint to a half marathon.

These results, and others like them, were analyzed together in a 2018 meta-analysis—the highest tier of evidence—published in the prestigious Sports Medicine journal. The authors noted that, while compression garments are often effective for supporting performance variables, such as time to exhaustion and running economy, these variables are not directly associated with sporting success or failure. Meaning you don’t win a gold medal for having the best running economy; you win the gold medal for covering the race distance in the shortest time.

Wearing compression garments during competition offers no acute performance gains, but they also don't harm performance, says @craig100m. Share on X

Focusing on lower limb compression garments, the researchers looked for any performance advantage during competition for all running distances. They concluded that wearing compression garments offered no acute performance gains during competition. It’s important to point out, however, that compression garments don’t harm performance either.

Conclusions and Recommendations

Based on the evidence discussed above, we can draw some tentative conclusions from the research to date about the use of compression garments in sport:

1. Compression garments appear to be effective in enhancing post-exercise recovery following different types of exercise, with the size of effect potentially greatest following resistance training. These benefits can be seen very quickly—one meta-analysis states between 2-8 hours—but are perhaps most robust when it comes to the 24- to 48-hour (and potentially up to 96) window after exercise.
2. Wearing compression garments during exercise does not appear to enhance performance acutely, but it also isn’t negative. And there might be some psychological benefits from using compression garments through the sensation of pressure.

As a result, we can recommend wearing compression garments for athletes looking to maximize their recovery and optimize performance in their training sessions in the days following a hard training session, especially following resistance training.

Wearing compressions garments during exercise may offer psychological benefits through the sensation of pressure, says @craig100m. Share on X

In terms of the timing of wearing the compression garments, the evidence is less clear and quite hard to determine from the meta-analyses. In some studies showing a compression garment’s beneficial effect on recovery, the participants wore the garments during and after exercise. In other studies, they wore them only once the exercise session was complete. Typically, the compression garments were worn for 12-24 hours following exercise. This can end up being a big ask—I can’t think of many people that want to wear compression garments most (if not all) of the day, including while sleeping—and it could well be uncomfortable.

It might pay to be pragmatic; wearing compression garments for some of the time is likely much better than not wearing them at all. So putting on compression clothing following training—and then leaving them on for as long as possible—is probably the best approach. During my career, I used to wear compression leggings for 5-6 hours following training (maybe a bit longer if I was lazy). And after competitions, I would sleep in a pair of compression socks, which I perceived to enhance my recovery. In summary, it appears that compression garments are worth exploring and experimenting with for athletes looking to take their performance to the next level.

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

My views on a plyometric program for a women’s volleyball team have shifted. I used to focus on improving jump height: the higher a player can jump, the better she will be. In line with that mindset, my methods emphasized having strong legs, improving coordination through better mechanics, and reducing ground contact time. And it worked—my athletes improved how high they could jump.

Except it didn’t seem to matter. I would have a player improve her jump height while not appearing to “play higher.” Furthermore, every season we had foot, ankle, and shin issues popping up with the players: tendonitis, stress reactions/fractures, plantar fasciitis, etc. But that’s volleyball. The sport involves a high volume of jumping and landing impacts, so there is going to be some strain on the soft tissue and joints. And these injuries are bound to happen, right?

Something wasn’t adding up.

This got me thinking about how I designed my plyo program for my athletes. I needed to reconfigure my plan so that I could still improve jump height but also reduce the risk of injury. I’ve been fortunate enough to work with a local positioning system (LPS) that allows us to have what can be described as an indoor satellite. The data we get gives us objective information on what our players are exposed to. Part of this dataset is a simple jump count, but more importantly, how high each jump is. I took a dive to see how often we’re jumping at maximal heights.

The Numbers

I pulled data from the last two seasons, which includes all practices and matches (I did not include Liberos and Defensive Specialists). I will note that, at Stanford, our back row players go through the same plyometric program as our front row players. For the sake of brevity, I find that being efficient at applying force into the ground not only makes you a better jumper but also probably a better athlete who is more efficient at covering ground. I find immense benefits for our back row players—at specific times of the year—to go through the same plyo program. Moving on, here is what we observed after pulling our data:

These numbers somewhat surprised me. As a non-volleyball player, I used to think of the sport as an outside hitter flying over the net and then bouncing balls right at the libero’s face. However, our data may tell a different story. As seen here, just under 40% of our total jumps fell into what I call “Band 3,” where jumps are max effort and are higher than 15 inches. Almost 60% of jumps fell in to “Band 2″—medium amplitude jumps between 7 and 15 inches. I found this very interesting, yet unfulfilling. And it got me thinking: are these ranges too big? Is 15 inches too high? Not high enough? I decided to take a deeper dive and adjusted my bands to 2-inch increments.

We can derive a few things from this data:

1. Over a third (36.74%) of jumps are between Band 4 (10-12 inches) and Band 5 (12-14 inches).
2. Almost two-thirds (63.88%) of jumps are at heights 8-16 inches (Bands 3-5).
3. Ultimately, there is a large variety of jump heights.

This makes so much sense. While it’s fun to watch players fly over the net and crush volleyballs or stuff block an opponent, the reality is that volleyball isn’t played at these sky-high levels as often as one may think. The tempo of the set, the accuracy of a pass, and the setter’s ability to find their hitters are just some of the variables that affect the height at which a player will need to jump. Simply put, volleyball is a game of variability.

A volleyball athlete needs to not only be able to maximize their jump height but also jump effectively at lower heights and have the ability to perform these jumps repeatedly. I believe this is where the injuries start to creep in: the lower limbs get beat up with a high density of jumping volume. This volume is at all levels of intensity. We know that high amplitude jumps will have the most landing forces. Mixing that in with the repeated nature of the sport, landing on one leg—and landing not quite square—all factor into the potential for injury to occur. To improve performance and reduce injury, we need to answer a couple of questions:

• How do we train for the variability?
• Do we need to change the way we train altogether?

Prioritizing the Training

Let me be clear—just because we have a table of jump heights showing that volleyball may not be played as high as we think doesn’t mean it’s not important to improve max jump height. It most definitely is important. It also doesn’t mean that we need to focus solely on low intensity, repeated jumps.

I suggest that we have an opportunity to train more effectively while improving jump height and reducing injury risk. The numbers we see offer a sightline to how we can best implement a plyometric training program. The goal is to blend improving performance and reducing injury. To help achieve this, we need to reprioritize jumping focus, specifically focusing on an uptick in low and moderate-intensity jumping. A weekly breakdown may look something like this:

First, let’s quickly define each focus.

• Max Amplitude

Exactly what you’d think: max effort jumping. Countermove squat jumps, box jumps, full approach jumps, etc. Max amplitude jumping aims to get as high as possible. Broad jumps can also be categorized here. While they don’t achieve height, a max effort broad jump incorporates a very similar stimulus. These types of jumps also work on landing mechanics and help the lower body tissue adapt to high forces seen when landing.

• Medium Amplitude

These are the jumps that fall into a gray area regarding effort and “how high.” I’ve found that a lot of unilateral jumping achieves a medium amplitude: split squat jumps, single-leg squat jumps, and skater hops. Other bilateral methods include repeated jump methods with an emphasis on speed and quickness off the ground and hurdle hops. I consider a medium amplitude jump to be one that happens when the jumping becomes repetitive, and we start sacrificing height for speed off the ground.

• Low Amplitude

Jumps that are more focused on stiffness and reaction to the ground—pogos, jumping rope, etc. The idea is that we can crank on the volume and do something like this all day without having a major concern for injury.

By redistributing our jump volume, we can better match the jumping demands of volleyball while reducing risk of injury, says @tfrieds75. Share on X

By redistributing our jump volume, we may better match the jumping demands of the sport while reducing risk of injury. Let’s look at this through the lens of metabolic conditioning. Training at VO₂max intensity is a very effective way to improve fitness. However, if we only trained at this high intensity, we would most certainly begin to accumulate fatigue quickly and thus increase our risk for a potential injury. Incorporating both low and moderate intensities in a weekly microcycle of conditioning provides significant benefit to our overall conditioning levels while reducing injury risk.

By having a solid mix among high, medium, and low intensity conditioning work, we can improve work capacity at levels where we do not accumulate as much fatigue and thus reduce the risk of injury. Let’s apply that same logic to plyometric training. Primarily training at max effort levels of jumping will undoubtedly help to improve how high our athletes can jump. However, this high exposure to high-velocity forces will also undoubtedly put our athletes at a higher risk of injury. Mixing in low and moderate jumps allows us to improve a skill and expose the tissue to a high volume of jumping. Exposing the tissue at low and moderate intensities reduces the risk of acute injury while allowing the tissue to adapt to jumping stress.

Sample Training Plan

So let’s get right down to it. Below is an example of a 3-day plan where I’ve mapped out the first 2 weeks of what could easily be a 4-6 week plan. I will note that this is just an example and should not be copied and used verbatim in another setting. What’s not shown is a complimentary strength and conditioning program to partner with this plyometric program, which will undoubtedly affect how a plyometric program will look. That being said, the key takeaways here are:

1. It is very simple to fluctuate jumping intensities
2. We can achieve a very high volume of jumping on a weekly basis

As seen here, we can increase our total by almost 100 jumps between week one and week two. There is also a good mix of low, medium, and high intensity jumps—not only throughout the week but also within each day. With this mix, we can have higher jump exposures and fully ensure the athletes are warmed up and ready to jump.

Final Thoughts

I want to be clear: in the sport of volleyball, the need for maximal jump height is extremely important. My goal in writing this post is to highlight that training and jumping maximally is not the only method we need to use. Incorporating variability of jumping heights into a plyometric training component helps accommodate for the specificity of the sport while exposing the tissues to a high density of jump volume, thus resulting in more robust and resilient tissue. Also, a highly complementary strength and conditioning program is needed to help to maximize all training aspects you employ. Using a variety of plyometric training will undoubtedly enhance the training and performance of your volleyball athletes while keeping them healthy!

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

After spending a lifetime in the sport, in 2015 I realized I had many questions about swimming for which very few answers were available.

• How do you explain feel for the water to a swimmer who doesn’t already have it?
• What is the difference between a distance swimmer and a sprinter?
• Which is more important—pulling or kicking?
• What happens after a few hundred meters, when the initial great feeling wears off?

Looking at the big picture, I thought that myths, beliefs, and traditions weren’t allowing proper development of swimmers, and I was working half-blind trying to improve the athlete’s technique using trial and error. Moreover, the performance of many swimmers was getting worse while I knew for a fact that they were in better shape than ever before.

To help the swimmers progress, I needed to answer the very basic questions that had bothered me for a long time. Therefore, I decided to build a sensor that measures the propulsive force of the hand strokes.

Feel for the Water?

Feel for the water—or hold on the water—are common phrases referring to the swimmer’s ability to gain traction. While it seems to be a natural ability with gifted swimmers, it also can be taught with various drills (at least to some extent). The “feel” is vitally important to swimming success. However, it’s very difficult to explain and impossible to compare without quantifying it somehow. Fortunately, if you can feel the hold, you can also measure it.

A good feel for the water should efficiently generate propulsive force to the swimmer. Essentially, you should know the magnitude, direction, and timing of the force. As examples, the force of the strokes for a distance swimmer and a sprinter are presented in Images 1a and 1b. The figures show force as a function of time from the entry to the end of the push phase.

The stroke of a typical distance swimmer is characterized by a fairly long glide phase, during which all forces are minimal (Image 1a). Force production is maximized at the end of the stroke, and almost all of it should be propulsive (green). Sprinters, on the other hand, need to produce propulsive force right at the beginning of the stroke. Both the propulsive force and the stroke rate should be maximized even at the expense of optimal direction. It’s very common to see sprinters produce a large vertical force (red) at the beginning of their stroke. Even a substantial drop in the force at the end of the stroke is not critical, because the strokes overlap heavily thanks to a high stroke rate.

With SmartPaddle, the feel for the water becomes visible both to the swimmer and the coach. You can identify possible problems in stroke technique and verify the effect of corrective actions. For example, the force graph of a developing swimmer is presented in Image 2. It doesn’t do the swimmer much good if water is pushed in wrong direction (in this case lateral), especially during the strongest part of the stroke. Losing the force at the end of the stroke is also very common with developing swimmers.

What Is the Difference Between a Distance Swimmer and a Sprinter?

As could be seen in Images 1a and 1b, the force graphs for a distance swimmer and a sprinter are quite different. Aside from the athletes’ pure physiological capabilities, a major difference is that swimmers usually master either the sprinting technique or a technique more suitable for longer distances. When swimmers try to apply their technique in the wrong distance, their performance is invariably below their true potential.

In a pool, my daughter was considered a pure sprinter excelling in 50m butterfly—but she couldn’t even finish a 200m distance despite several trials. In track and field, however, she was an adept long-distance runner while her sprinting performance was clearly below average. It was obvious to us that she needed to develop different swimming techniques for each distance to compete in them successfully.

According to our measurements, her greatest asset in sprinting distance was her powerful dolphin kicks. To use them even more efficiently, she needed to increase her stroke rate. She could achieve this by decreasing the force she applied with her hand strokes.

Using a high stroke rate and a powerful kick was not an option, however, if she wanted to finish a 200m race. Unfortunately, decreasing the stroke rate created a problem with a huge drag. But she could overcome this problem by adding a third kick in her stroke. During the third kick, she focused on attaining an extremely streamlined body posture, which made starting the hand stroke very easy. Using this technique not only made her strokes lighter but also decreased the number of strokes by 40%. After swimming the first 150m with the 3-kick technique, she could switch to a 2-kick technique for a very powerful last lap.

Which Is More Important—Pulling or Kicking?

This is really a trick question, as the answer depends on the swimming stroke, the distance, and the individual swimmer. Moreover, to be very successful, the swimmer has to master both. What’s often overlooked, though, is that the kicks can make the pulling much easier. Or haven’t you noticed that, when using fins, your feel for the water improves substantially?

The effect of the kicks is most pronounced in the catch phase when the swimmer’s velocity is at its lowest. Many swimmers pull their hand too fast at the beginning of the stroke and don’t gain much traction. With kicks, the swimmer’s velocity increases during the catch phase, and it’s much easier to get a good hold on the water. Consequently, the effect of the kicks is most important for swimmers who otherwise struggle with their catch phase.

With SmartPaddle, you can easily measure improvement in the hand strokes by conducting the test with and without kicking. According to our measurements, swimmers can produce approximately the same amount of propulsion at a certain stroke rate, regardless of whether they’re kicking (Image 3a). The difference is that with kicking, the strokes are significantly longer, and thus the speed is substantially higher (Image 3b). The effect of the kicks is pronounced at a low stroke rate because the speed variation is also greater.

What Happens After a Few Hundred Meters?

Have you ever wondered why you seem to hit a wall in long-distance swimming? In the beginning, swimming seems easy, and you make good time without much effort. After a few hundred meters, however, your arms seem to go numb, and each stroke is a struggle—even if you’re not particularly winded. Technique drills and video analysis don’t offer much help since these are always done when you’re fresh. That’s not when you experience the problems.

SmartPaddle provides a view of the changes taking place during long-distance swimming. For example, the impulse of each individual right-hand stroke is presented in Image 4 during a 14-lap test. In this case, the propulsive impulse (green bar) in lap 6 (between 40-50 strokes) decreased by half from the original. After that, it remained more or less constant for the rest of the test. Because the right hand was much weaker than the left, the speed of the swimmer always decreased when he pulled with it. As the right hand got weaker, the speed variation increased substantially, and the swimming became even more inefficient.

The swimmer was instructed to focus only on maintaining the force in his right hand. He also balanced his swimming by adding kicks to help the catch phase of the right-hand stroke. Within a week, the impulse of the right hand increased by 63%.

The swimmer improved his time in a 400m trial by more than 20 seconds while maintaining the same stroke rate. @Trainesense #SmartPaddle Share on X

The swimmer improved his time in a 400m trial by more than 20 seconds while maintaining exactly the same stroke rate. This development was possible once the swimmer became aware of the weakness in his technique.

How it Works

SmartPaddle is a wearable sensor that measures the force, speed, and orientation of the swimming strokes. SmartPaddle shows whether the swimmer can apply the right amount of force in the right direction at the right time.

SmartPaddle is a wearable sensor that measures the force, speed, and orientation of swimming strokes to reveal a swimmer's strengths & weaknesses. Share on X

The SmartPaddle sensor is attached to the swimmer’s fingers, and the measurement is carried out with a mobile app (Image 5). You use the app in the same way as a regular stopwatch—it recognizes strokes and laps automatically and calculates a detailed analysis of the technique. The feedback is available immediately at the pool deck from the web service. All data is stored in a database for review, comparison, and follow up.

Time-Dependent Force

Force graphs presented in Images 1 and 2 give a good overview of the swimmer’s feel for the water. With time-dependent force data, the swimmer can visualize, for example, how the propulsive force varies during the measurement. As I demonstrated previously, variation may be an important source of inefficiency.

Average propulsive force provides information on speed variation, a major reason for losses in swimming performance. @Trainesense #SmartPaddle Share on X

In Image 6, you can see that in this test, the right hand produces significantly more propulsion than the left. When the propulsive force is above the average force, the speed of the swimmer increases. Conversely, when propulsive force is below average force, the swimmer decelerates. Therefore, the speed of the swimmer increases during the right-hand stroke and decreases during the left. Thus, the average force provides information on the speed variation, which is one of the major reasons for losses in swimming performance.

The possibility of downloading the time-dependent force data also lets the user combine the force with advanced video analysis tools (Image 7). By creating a force overlay into a video, it’s easy to visualize and observe the propulsive, lateral, and vertical force components. Such a view provides unprecedented clarity to the force measurements.

Conclusions

As a scientist and an engineer, I value empirical testing over beliefs. Coaching still requires us to make educated guesses, but I prefer to base them on hard data. I find the motivation to train increases when the results are clearly visible. The better the swimmer is aware of their strengths and weaknesses, the easier it is to prepare for competitions—and being well prepared is the best source of self-confidence needed for winning.

When I first started testing the SmartPaddle, my daughter’s best swimming stroke was 100m butterfly, where she was ranked 21^st in her age group in Finland. In two years, she became the Finnish junior champion in 50m butterfly, reached 2^nd position in 100m and 3^rd in 200m. She also took several podium positions in medley as well as backstroke. She might have reached that level without testing, but I never trust luck when there is another option.

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 best program that any coach can put together is one that they can adjust at any given moment, so it’s no surprise that the quote I have heard a lot of coaches speak about lately references that the best ability is adaptability. This statement rings even truer during this time when most coaches are out of their comfort zones and trying to find a path to designing effective programs with little to no equipment. When we finally do get back to a state of “normalcy,” coaches will likely go back to the basics and adjust programs based on what was lost during the time they spent away from their athletes.

The best program that any coach can put together is one that they can adjust at any given moment, says @bigk28. Share on X

In this article, I cover areas of adjustments that we, as coaches, need to make on a weekly and/or daily basis in order to design an optimal program to keep our athletes fresh and continue to drive adaptation.

1. Training Goal – Weekly

For my program specifically, I run an undulated block model, so each 2- to 3-week block needs to have a specific goal to facilitate adaptation. I have found this method to be the most effective, since we are forcing the body to adapt to only one specific stimulus (absolute strength, speed strength, etc.), as opposed to pulling it in a million different directions in a single workout. With this type of approach, you must be cognizant of residuals so that you continue to maintain qualities that were previously trained.

We are misguided in thinking every athlete can benefit from the same type of training program since there are so many factors that go into the correct sports performance prescription (training age, playing time, body weight/strength ratio, speed, DSI, etc.). Not only is it important to be able to prescribe the proper training goal to continue to improve performance, but also to be able to scale back when you notice a decline in performance (which could be an indication of overtraining and potentially lead to injury).

I have built sprint training into part of our testing protocol that we do 2-3 times per week. To me, sprinting should be the base upon which all programs are built, so testing a category that has relevance to all sports is a good place to start. I get either 5/10- or 10/20-yard splits, depending on the sport.

After evaluating sprinting numbers, I look at two types of jumps: squat jump and countermovement jump. Using these numbers, I find the athlete’s eccentric utilization ratio (EUR). These two numbers also paint a good picture of what the athlete needs to work on—strength, power, speed, or some combination of them—for their lifting and jumping. This allows me to constantly change the program and help the athlete continue to adapt to the new stimulus being presented.

2. Volume – Weekly

Your program is only as good as the player’s performance in their specific sport. Volume is a huge factor in whether your players are going to feel fresh and ready on game day or overworked and unprepared. Manipulating volume is an art form that coaches must understand early in their career if they want to achieve the goal of improving sports performance.

I preach minimum effective dose and finding the absolute minimum they should do in order to elicit a change. I believe weekly testing allows us to see whether the dose we prescribe is effective in producing change. When you are in-season, manipulating volume is crucial in order to get to peak performance for each competition.

The best approach for manipulating volume so that you find the balance of feeling fresh and addressing the proper stimulus is to develop a base in your off-season and preseason—nothing beats consistent training all year round. Also have weekly testing measures built into place (jumps, sprints, etc.) to be able to see how athletes’ bodies respond to the training. If athletes continue to improve, you are on the right track and have found the correct dose. If athletes start to have decrements in performance over a two-week period, it is time to manipulate volume.

Sometimes the best tool we have as coaches is rest. Another big factor to look at for volume is the number of competitions per week. The volume for the week will change when players have only one competition versus 2-3 competitions in one week. As long as you manipulate volume the proper way, you can maintain the same lift schedule whether they play one or multiple competitions in the same week.

My general rule of thumb is that I have a set number of sets and reps I know they need to hit in order to attack a stimulus. If we are far out, we will hit either the medium or low end of the volume scale. On the day before a game, always hit the low end of the necessary volume and never be afraid to knock down the volume as long as the effort is high. You can even manipulate volume with VBT by having a cut-off point for each athlete once the speed moves below a certain threshold. This tailors the program specifically to each athlete, without getting crazy with exercise selection.

3. Exercise Prescription – Weekly

Your exercise prescription must match the training goal for the specific block. When my goal is to develop absolute strength, I look to do my squatting movements through a full range of motion. In that same block of absolute strength, I like to do all my weightlifting movements from the ground, as you are working more of the force end on the force-velocity curve. As we get to more power- and speed-based movements, depending on training age, I transition my athletes to more partial range of motion squats (either half or quarter squats) to work joint angles that are more similar to actions completed in their sport. I also begin to transition my Olympic movements to below the knee and power positions with a lighter load, working more on the velocity end of the force-velocity curve and increasing the RFD.

4. Exercise Selection – Daily

It doesn’t matter what your exercise selection is for a given day—you must be ready to change the exercise based on a few factors: practice volume, games, injuries, autoregulation measures, etc. I believe as a coach you have two ways to go with changing the exercise selection:

 

1. 1. Stick with it no matter what (except in the case of injuries).

 

1. 1. Give players options for exercises that will have similar outcomes.

 

To me, the best plan is one that can be changed at any given moment. For example, my first tier of exercises for Day 1 is a back squat (most of the time). I know if it isn’t an option for the day, we can switch to a front squat, deadlift, trap bar deadlift, safety bar squat, etc. All of those exercises give me a similar outcome to what I am looking for with my first tier.

Have your training day outlined with movements rather than specific exercises. Movements give you multiple options that you can deviate from at any given moment, says @bigk28. Share on X

For the most part, I like to stick with the first option because in the collegiate environment, I think it’s easy for the athletes to get confused with what they actually need versus what they actually want to do. I would give the second option to a more experienced group of players and professionals who have a better idea of how their bodies react to different training stimulus.

Have your training day outlined with movements rather than specific exercises. Movements give you multiple options that you can deviate from at any given moment.

5. Load – Daily

You must manipulate load on a daily basis because body readiness changes on a daily basis. I heard Bryan Mann reference a study where the 1RM of an athlete fluctuated anywhere from 30 kilograms above to 22 kilograms below on any given day. Travis Mash reiterated this same point when he said that your max can fluctuate 17-18% on any given day.

I think the days of just working off of percentages alone are outdated. VBT is the future, and without it, you will never be able to autoregulate efficiently. There are so many affordable options for VBT out there that it should be a priority for strength coaches at all levels. Companies like Vmaxpro do a great job of offering a reasonably priced product for coaches that provides a ton of feedback and valuable information. This lightens the load of inputting numbers and making graphs/charts by yourself and allows you to focus on things that actually help your athletes.

I have found that the most effective strategy for manipulating load is to prescribe percentages to your athletes based on their 1 rep max for that particular exercise and manipulate the load based on the VBT. This requires getting a pre-test measure of 1RM; with the right VBT choice, I can develop load-velocity profiles and look at different ranges the athletes should fit into. It really is simple from there: If the athlete is moving the bar faster than the pre-test measures, increase the load for that day, and if the speed is down for the day, decrease the load. This increases the efficiency and effectiveness of your program.

6. Set Number – Daily

Once again, I think the belief that all athletes need the same exact set numbers for a given exercise in order to drive a particular adaptation is outdated. Athletes are unique individuals, and we must treat them as such. This is where VBT has a huge impact, once again.

By using VBT and working with percent velocity drop-off, you can determine how many sets an athlete can effectively do without overworking them. For some athletes, 3×1 at 85% load might be enough to develop the stimulus for the given day, but if I see the bar moving fast and the quality is still high, we do “bonus” sets to hit the higher end of the threshold and adapt the program specifically to the athlete. Like I said, it is important to have a plan for what your ideal sets and reps range is. Once you have that in writing, you can start to manipulate both ends of the spectrum.

7. Sprint Prescription – Daily

If sprinting is a big part of your program, timing sprints should be too. Timing sprints allows you to make an effective sprint prescription for your athletes daily.

I set the upper limit on my athletes’ sprinting at three reps, as I have found that to be the minimum effective dose necessary to continue to develop speed. However, if I see a significant drop-off from their best on that day, I know that athletes may not be in the optimal state to do the upper limit of speed work.

Timing sprints allows me to see, on any given day, how the nervous system of the athlete is responding, and whether or not we can work up to three reps for that day, says @bigk28. Share on X

Timing sprints allows me to see, on any given day, how the nervous system of the athlete is responding, and whether or not we can work up to three reps for that day. I usually compare their first two reps to their all-time best. If I see times that are significantly slower (roughly two-tenths), I know that it may not be the right day to test their limits. So, while it may not be ideal, we still get two reps of high-speed, high-intensity reps.

Timing sprints also allows you to manipulate load if you choose to do resisted sprints. I’ve heard coaches discuss what the ideal drop-off time is when doing resisted sprints, and I have found the sweet spot to be 125-150% of an athlete’s best time. So, for an athlete with a 20-yard sprint time of 3.0 seconds, the ideal resisted sprint time window is 3.75-4.5 seconds.

I always err on the safe side and aim for the lower end of the range, but at least this gives you a formula to work off of when looking to add or decrease load for resisted sprint work.

8. Plyo Prescription – Daily

This goes along the same lines as the sprint prescription: If jumping is a big part of your program, measuring jumps should be too. When you measure qualities that are part of your everyday program, it creates more value for your athletes. I believe that a system that measures jumps should be one of the staples of any sports performance program. I just bought the MuscleLab Contact Grid, and it might be one of the greatest things I have ever purchased in my career. The amount of information that I can use to help my athletes immediately is beyond anything I could have ever imagined.

I believe that a system that measures jumps should be one of the staples of any sports performance program, says @bigk28. Share on X

Use the same strategy here that you used for the sprints. If you have jumps scheduled as part of the plan, you need to measure each set to see how the athlete’s body is responding for that day. If the athlete’s numbers are significantly lower than what is expected, you should scale back on the volume of jumps. If the numbers are on par or higher, you can go with the planned volume. The default number for me when workouts are spread out over 24-48 hours is three sets of jumps. If athletes don’t have the numbers they usually do, we scale back to 1-2 sets.

The same goes for weighted jumps when looking at prescribing the appropriate load. Let’s look at an example of how I prescribe load for looking at jumps:

• Player A vertical jump height: 20 inches

Goal of the day: maximum strength @ 90% load

Goal for vertical jump: 20 x .9 = 18 inches

20 inches – 18 inches = 2 inches

When performing a weighted jump exercise for this particular goal, I want my athletes in the range of 2 inches. If the athlete picks a load and jumps higher than 2 inches, they need to increase the load. If the athlete jumps lower than 2 inches, they need to decrease the load. Once again, you must do a pre-testing measure on the jump in order to be able to make this correction in prescribing the appropriate load for jumping.

Effective Programs Need to Be Adjustable

The most effective program is one that you can change at any given moment depending on how your athlete comes into a training session. There are things we need to change from week to week, and there are factors that change daily. Your ability as a coach to manipulate factors will ultimately be the biggest determinant of how effective your sports performance program design is.

Your ability as a coach to manipulate factors will ultimately be the biggest determinant of how effective your sports performance program design is, says @bigk28. Share on X

Never lock yourself into a given workout or exercise selection, as athletes are fluid beings who experience changes in their readiness daily. Finding tests that are easy to perform at the beginning of your workout is key to being able to manipulate your program for that specific day. Having equipment that can be used seamlessly in your workout is another big factor in improving the effectiveness of your program.

Never be afraid to go away from the plan and adapt your program when you feel it is necessary. You can still stay with your core beliefs as long as adaptation and results are your main objectives.

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

Eccentric loading has been shown to be incredibly effective when it comes to building muscle mass and strength, as well as reducing the risk of a number of injuries. As a result, interest in being able to effectively program and implement eccentric loading within an athlete development program has grown. One space-efficient method is to utilize a flywheel, which harnesses the force the athlete produces during the concentric phase to provide resistance during the eccentric phase—allowing better regulation of load.

A leading flywheel with coaches and athletes is the kBox, manufactured by Exxentric in Sweden (and providing a nod toward the flywheel’s Scandinavian origins). Here, we take a look at the popular kBox articles on SimpliFaster, outlining why it might become an important tool in your toolbox.

10 Reasons Your Gym Should Buy a kBox

Where else to start but this iconic article from Sean Smith? Here, Smith discusses why all gyms should have a kBox, telling us how his initial skepticism about the product was quickly laid to rest by the results he and his athletes achieved. The reasons for having a kBox, as identified by Smith, include:

 

• • Improved results.
  • Enhanced safety.
  • Portability.
  • A strong level of science underpinning the tool.

 

Flywheel Training vs. Weights: What Does Science Say?

 

This is perhaps the seminal SimpliFaster article on flywheel training, authored by Fredrik Correa, founder of Exxentric (the company behind the kBox). Here, Correa breaks down the science underpinning flywheel training, discussing a 2017 systematic review and meta-analysis that detailed the effectiveness of eccentric overload flywheels as a resistance training tool. It’s always crucial to have good science backing up practice, especially when it comes to commercial products, which makes this article especially important.

Exxentric kBox 3 Review

 

Drew Cooper talks us through his thoughts and experience with using the Exxentric kBox 3. Cooper notes that the kBox is surprisingly light—just 27 pounds—and therefore highly portable. The addition of a kMeter—a wireless Bluetooth transmitter displaying kBox training data—allowed Cooper to track and monitor the performance of his athletes, understanding aspects such as their levels of readiness to train and how they were adapting to their training loads. Overall, Cooper was a fan of the kBox, strongly recommending it as a tool in every coach’s armory.

7 Methods of Isoinertial Training Strength Coaches Need

 

In this article, Shane Davenport takes us through the various techniques coaches could utilize to develop their athletes through isoinertial training. This includes:

 

• • Using the kBox for supplemental ancillary training.
  • As a replacement for main exercises (such as the calf raise).
  • As a way of loading athletes under high speed.

 

Davenport also touches on using the kBox as a means of potentiating athletes prior to a major training session or competition, and as a method of harnessing the performance benefits of contrast training. An important read for coaches looking to add isoinertial training to their practice.

Eccentric Rotational Training: Elevating Club Speed with kBox and kPulley

 

Chris Finn of Par4Success guides us through some principles for improving the performance of golfers, with flywheels such as the kBox playing a prominent role. Finn placed 20 golfers into three groups: one group that utilized barbells and standard cables in their training; one that utilized the kPulley for their standard lifts (bench press, back squat, deadlift, bent-over row) and rotational work; and one that used the kBox in a similar manner to the kPulley group. The results demonstrated the effectiveness of the flywheel training in enhancing rotational strength and power—making it an important tool in your toolbox.

Better Coaching Through Science—How to Collect Data That Matters

 

In this article, Chris Finn takes us through his process of what data to collect in the weight room, how to do so, and what it all means—a powerful read for all coaches. The kBox makes an appearance as a recommended tool, with its ability to track power and speed metrics labelled as a huge positive.

How Peak Eccentric Forces Reduce and Rehabilitate ACL Injuries

 

In this article, Carl Valle makes a bold promise: that he will identify the external factors that result in higher ACL injuries, and assist us in reducing their occurrence within our own programs and squads. Valle writes how lower levels of eccentric strength increase the risk of ACL injuries—testing and developing eccentric strength with the kBox is therefore a crucial component in reducing ACL injury risk. Doug Gle cites this article as the main reason he chose to add a flywheel to his program.

How Flywheel Training Can Help Vertical Jump Performance

 

In many sports, jump height is an important component of successful performance, and in this article Sean Smith breaks down how to use flywheel training—such as the kBox—to enable athletes to jump higher. Smith discusses how he uses force plate data to identify athletes who might be a good candidate for eccentric flywheel training before detailing his methodology for creating great jumpers using a range of exercises carried out on the kBox.

Screening, Injury Prevention, and Sport Technology Implementation with Ryan Horn

In this article, one of the Freelap Friday Five series, Coach Horn discusses how he uses the kBox to develop athletes, labelling it as one of his most versatile and trusted training weapons. Horn details the progressions he uses, comprised of two-week blocks of eccentric, isometric, and concentric emphases. It’s always great to understand how coaches use key pieces of equipment in the real world, and this article certainly delivers.

Sport Science of Flywheel Resistance Training

 

Similar to Fredrik Correa’s article detailed above, this from Carl Valle outlines:

 

• • How flywheels develop athletes.
  • Whether they have an advantage over free weights.
  • What specific adaptations are possible when athletes utilize flywheel training.

 

Valle also explores who can benefit the most from flywheel training—the short answer being “everyone.”

High-Speed Eccentric Resistance Training in Sports

 

In this article, Jason Feairheller allows us to understand the role of eccentric muscle action in sport, and how we can harness the principle of specificity when it comes to developing eccentric strength. The main method Feairheller outlines is the kBox, describing it as “the best option for high-speed eccentric resistance training.” Feairheller rounds out the article with an overview of the science underpinning eccentric flywheel training, citing studies that demonstrate the tool’s effectiveness.

Eccentric Overload with Flywheel Training and Rehabilitation

 

While we might often focus on the use of flywheel training as a method of improving sports performance, eccentric loading is also an important way of creating bulletproof athletes. In this article, Brandon Marcello details how the kBox can be used to create eccentric overload, which in turn prevents athletes from getting injured—demonstrating the utility of eccentric flywheel training in athlete enhancement.

A Buyer’s Guide to Flywheel Training Equipment

 

In this article, SimpliFaster breaks down what you need to know before purchasing any flywheel training device, and gives an overview of some of the main companies on the market.

How to Use the kMeter to Develop Eccentric Power

 

The kMeter is a sensor that is utilized alongside the kBox flywheel, giving us an estimate of the work done per repetition and set. To get the most out of it, we need to spend some time considering what this actually tells us and how we can export and analyze it, and then use this information to improve performance—all expertly laid out in this article by Carl Valle.

Eccentric Training and the Younger Athlete

 

While it may be tempting to think that eccentric training is just for senior and elite athletes, this article by James Baker discusses how eccentric training can be safely and effectively programmed for developing youth athletes. Baker discusses how he introduces the kBox to his athletes, allowing him to safely and effectively increase eccentric overload in a group-wide manner. A crucial read for those looking to utilize the kBox with younger athletes.

6 Sure-Fire Eccentric Exercises to Build (and Rebuild) Athletic Monsters

 

Carl Valle profiles eccentric kBox squatting, discussing how his experience using the kBox with athletes provided “the fastest drug-free changes I have seen on paper.” Valle’s protocol with the kBox is six sets of six bilateral squats at the end of a session, and it’s a powerful endorsement for adding the kBox into your program.

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

Science. Strength coaches love to use the word “science,” and they are the first to point out and defend their backgrounds “in science” or discuss how their program is “based on science.” Additionally, I’ve never seen or known a group of people prouder of the letters behind their name than the strength and conditioning community.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not jeering—I’m just stating observations. Perhaps fueling our insistence is that when it comes to strength and conditioning, a level of ignorance pervades most of society—and even the greater athletic community. Of course, science provides the backbone for the profession, and in any given training session, a coach may use information from multiple disciplines of science to perform their job. The science is undoubtedly important, but being a strength coach entails just as much, if not more than, the science we’re all so obsessed with.

The science is undoubtedly important, but…for all that science to have any relevance, the relationships and training environment must come first, says @rachelkh2. Share on X

Much of what transpires in a successful training session is the result of coaching our tails off day in and day out, as well as the relationships we build with our athletes. For results to abound, and for all that science to have any relevance, the relationships and training environment must come first. A successful environment is indicative of numerous intangibles, many of which are not solely based on science. Establishing these things requires a great deal of communication and persistent work by the strength coach, but they are instrumental in reaping weight room dividends.

The following four principles are the building blocks I have in place to establish a successful training environment. Points 1 and 2 discuss the inflexible but important nature of structure, while points 3 and 4 revolve around the interpersonal side of coaching. Although vastly different, their coexistence is possible and necessary for success.

1. Safety as the driver.
2. Unwavering expectations.
3. Education and relevance of training.
4. Emphasizing the individual.

1. Safety as the Driver

It is not the basis of this discussion to provide a multipoint checklist for weight room safety, but I would be sorely remiss if I overlooked safety’s importance and overarching role in a successful weight room environment.

Regardless of level or scenario, safety in the weight room is the principal concern and should provide the backbone for the whole of the environmental structure. While culture and team building have tremendous importance, their influence should never compromise safety. Additionally, the weight room should be a controlled environment where rigidity and structure are standard, not only for safety but for positive training outcomes.

Regardless of level or scenario, safety in the weight room is the principal concern and should provide the backbone for the whole of the environmental structure, says @rachelkh2. Share on X

When it comes to garnering support, particularly at the high school level, sport coaches, parents, and administrators are much more likely to be in your corner if they know safety is your primary concern. I have witnessed this time and again in my own situation, whether it be through parent meetings or in persuading my administration to make changes to the weight room.

Lastly, a rigid environment does not mean the weight room can’t be enjoyable—quite the opposite. It teaches athletes how to set their mentality for work but simultaneously find enjoyment in a safe manner. For me, there is hardly a better feeling than watching my teams work while enjoying camaraderie or jamming out—although I do adhere to a recommended decibel level.

2. Unwavering Expectations

When safety is the foundation, it’s easier to establish everything else. Establishing expectations helps ensure safety and positive training outcomes in a variety of ways.

Expectations look different from coach to coach, and program to program, based on each unique situation. For me, the expectation of attention to detail cannot be overstated, and I would contend it is the main reason my teams thrive in the weight room. For me, everything, from following instructions to re-racking weights, should be completed with the upmost attention to detail. If you don’t do the small things right, the big things will never come to fruition.

This expectation begins when I first interact with my athletes at the middle schools. During my initial visits, we practice getting into warm-up lines, which we may do multiple times in a day until we get it right. I tell them how many lines I want and how many people I want per line. Once the warm-up lines are set, I demonstrate and explain the warm-up movements, along with some specifics I want them to follow. For instance, making sure their front foot is straight when performing a backward lunge, and that they finish everything through the line.

We practice and rehearse simple, basic things over and over and then gradually keep adding. Having an expectation of attention to detail is no different than teaching an exercise progression. Start basic, establish proficiency, and continue building, never neglecting the original focus on detail.

Note: Anecdotally, I’ve found younger athletes are the most impressionable and soak up everything you teach in a most enthusiastic way. If you’re able to get face time with your youngest group, I highly recommend doing so.

Freshman year is a highly formative time for my athletes because everything they do revolves around strict attention to detail. The training process is extremely gradual for them, as progression is dependent on their ability to consistently perform according to my expectations. They must perform all movements, no matter how basic, with exacting proficiency before we progress.

This is also when they learn how to clean up and replace equipment according to my preferences—which, like many coaches, is precise. The status of the weight room at the end of a session is under scrutiny, and we don’t break out until it meets the expected standards. It takes some time, but eventually it becomes automatic and evolves into a group effort of communication and teamwork.

The weight room is a perfect place to set expectations, and although carrying out expectations is on each athlete, it’s the job of the coach to consistently see that those expectations are met. As adults and coaches, we are responsible for molding kids into what we expect. They can and will rise to the bar we set, but it is our job to help them reach it.

3. Education and Relevance of Training

Although education and relevance are similar, they aren’t the same, and each has a different focus and delivery in my program.

Education

Weight room education plays a large role in safety, but it’s also my goal to impart some training knowledge to my athletes for when they graduate and are responsible for their own fitness.

I place the most importance on the following four beliefs when it comes to lessons about the weight room and general exercise education:

• Technical proficiency is imperative.
• Consistency is crucial.
• More is not better.
• Enjoyment is a must.

We have no curriculum or set plan, but we utilize teachable moments to impart the importance of these four points and others on a consistent basis. I specifically like to emphasize that exercise can and should bring enjoyment. Strength training is a vital part of athletic performance, but not everyone possesses a passion for lifting, and that’s okay. Post athletics, we should want our athletes to lead active lives and do so; finding an enjoyable form of exercise helps ensure sustainable, healthy practices.

Beyond these four points, the teachable moments have proven to be bigger than just lessons about working out. Several of my athletes have gone on to pursue degrees in exercise science, education, and health care because of interests sparked in the weight room. Education is empowerment and weight room time should be utilized for more than just moving heavy things around. For the majority of kids, athletics will only be a temporary part of life. Use your platform and influence as a coach to continue bettering your athletes after they graduate and move on.

Relevance

I’m just going to come right out and say it—if you want compliance with your expectations and the weight room to be safe and productive, you’d better be able to make it relevant to whomever it is you’re training. This is perhaps truest when coaching kids and youth athletes. Middle and high school-aged kids have the best BS detectors on the planet. If you can’t explain to them why they need to front squat in terms they understand, you might as well be invisible.

If you want compliance with your expectations and the weight room to be safe and productive, you’d better be able to make it relevant to whomever it is you’re training, says @rachelkh2. Share on X

Relevance is important, and when someone is able to understand the why, how, and what of whatever it is you’re attempting to impart to them, their buy-in will be authentic. This is true for female and male athletes.

I’m making a point to address this because the archaic narrative that only females need context for the weight room is tiresome and quite frankly incorrect. Males may feel more comfortable in the weight room or may be more inclined to voluntarily lift weights, but this in no way equates to their having a better understanding of how strength training can benefit them. It is prudent and only logical to spend time explaining how the weight room can benefit everyone you train regardless of sport or gender.

4. Emphasizing the Individual

For the weight room to be successful, each athlete needs to feel valued. Investing the time to build individual rapport and treating everyone fairly, regardless of ability, will give you a major return through individual buy-in.

One way I accomplish this is by making it a priority to give feedback to every athlete I train each day. This doesn’t require lengthy conversations or detract from training, but every athlete, whether a starter on varsity or a non-starter on freshman B, leaves the weight room knowing that I pay attention and see them among everyone else.

Another way is by meeting your athlete where they are in regard to training. Every athlete in the care of a strength coach has different and unique training needs, and each deserves due consideration. I’m not implying you need to make a different workout for every person, but being observant and coaching to the needs of each athlete is the job of the strength coach and shows that individual that you are looking out for their welfare.

Listen and pay attention to your athletes: If they tell you a certain exercise hurts, don’t blow them off. There’s always the proverbial grain of salt, but taking a minute to listen to a kid may do more than create buy-in—it may open a door of trust where that athlete feels comfortable enough to confide in you about their life.

Lastly, although the weight room environment is rigid and structured, my athletes know there is always an open line of communication with me. They know we are going to train, and we are going to train intelligently, but how we train may differ at times based upon their needs. They understand the importance of communicating and feel empowered to do so because they know I care about their well-being.

Making Science Matter to Others

Earning the trust and support of your sport coaches is vital for building a successful weight room environment. Your athletes will be your best marketers and will greatly influence this relationship.

Sometimes it may just take time, humility, and genuine conversation before all that science between your ears matters to anyone but you, says @rachelkh2. Share on X

Sometimes it may just take time, humility, and genuine conversation before all that science between your ears matters to anyone but you. Strength coaches should understand that even with the practice of scientific principles, it takes exposure and consistency to produce results. This goes for people, too.

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