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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

As a strength and conditioning coach, I am well aware of the value of recognizing those experts who not only help propel me forward in my field, but also help me to assist the coaches and athletes who I work with on a daily basis to surpass their personal conditioning goals. For years, SimpliFaster has been bookmarked in my browser.

I have read articles from many trainers that helped inspire me and caused me to feel that tug between what I think I already know and what I undoubtedly want to know more about because my curiosity has been aroused. I appreciate that SimpliFaster offers a repository of articles in a digital society where many people view blogs as an antiquated way to gather information.

SimpliFaster, in my eyes, is a hub for people in the sports medicine field to share their expertise, trials, and successes. The articles that I choose to read provide me with a sense of belonging in my field. I actually told myself last summer that I would aspire to write an article or two for SimpliFaster, and since I have been granted the opportunity to do so, I decided to share seven ways that SimpliFaster has helped me as a coach.

 

1. Providing Access to Other Coaches

There often seems to be a gap between colleagues and between their practices, so a bridge is needed to span this divide. SimpliFaster has given me personal access to coaches through the articles they have written. When you read about other coaches’ training methodologies and recognize similarities with your own, it adds needed confirmation that is sometimes forgotten during the training of others. Confirmation combats the occasional uncertainty of training.

These articles, backed by science, are relatable because of shared experiences and have helped me determine the most efficient way of training for my work at DeKalb High School. This is especially true for me when being charged with changing the athletic interface of a high school through strength and conditioning. Raising a family and training athletes are tasks that keeps me busy and apart from other coaches who are outside of my coach’s circle. SimpliFaster fills that void.

I follow quite a few coaches on Twitter whose articles I first read on SimpliFaster. To say that I have received encouragement through their posts and articles would be an understatement. Iron sharpens iron. A friend sharpens a friend. These are two statements in which I have always believed.

Publications on the SimpliFaster blog keep me sharp by reminding me to adjust training habits and remain current with data, says @__JoshuaCollins. Share on X

Publications on the SimpliFaster blog keep me sharp by reminding me to adjust training habits and remain current with data. Being able to access articles from high school strength and conditioning coaches helps me analyze parallels and differences. After reading his interview, I reached out to Scott Meier, a physical education teacher and strength and conditioning coach at Farmington High School, with questions about testing metrics in his strength and conditioning classes. He was very accessible and answered every question thoroughly.

If you want answers, there are coaches willing to share information and provide research to back up the data. I may not agree with everything, but it is not about my compliance—it is about forming the relationships to have conversations that lead to practical information for the people you train. I use some of the same principles in strength and conditioning training that I learned from other experts in the field. Learn things that are foreign to you to add stimuli and have high intent when trying to help others execute.

2. Supporting Athletics Without the Kill Intent

SimpliFaster has opened the door for trainers to collaborate with each other. In a field that is overshadowed by mainstream glitz and glamour, I found out there are more people in my shoes than not. Many strength coaches who use various social media platforms are linked to SimpliFaster. They are also approachable.

I came across the Twitter page of Mike Whiteman at Hounds Speed. I appreciated his post about the science of movement and how he actually demonstrated what he speaks about throughout the exercise. He used the Probotics Just Jump System, which I own, and made workout videos in his garage similar to what I have done. I directly messaged him to ask where he got his bumper plates and barbells, and those questions later turned into me wanting to learn more about his speed-driven workouts.

In addition, his age is somewhat similar to mine (36), yet he still moves with a high force rate. Usually on breaks from work I arrange times to shadow some coaches, but since COVID-19 happened during my spring break, I thought I would virtually reach out to Mike with additional questions.

Communicating with Mike Whiteman on programming and being “twitchy” has revealed to me the personal passiveness in my workouts. I have been doing a program of his for five weeks now, and I feel great. A fair question here would be, “If things are great, what’s the issue?” The issue is that my intent was not as high as it should have been, and I had been satisfied with just doing the movements. I acknowledge that it is great in terms of the recognition that I completed a workout, but that is only the surface level for force development. My aim would be more efficient with a focus on adaptation through dynamic movement. Intent is a linchpin for adaptation, and I was lacking it.

Whiteman’s program that I have been doing is a five-day split with three intense days. This program, along with the expertise he shared with me, has enabled me to shadow him virtually. Throughout these five weeks, it dawned on me that I would never have realized that my intent was low, and that stress should be bleeding out through these violent movements. Intent can make an objective clear-cut, whereas I might have missed the objective due to my passivity.

Recording workouts has been a way for me to communicate and tweet videos to show others. As I edited my recordings, I watched natural strength with a passive mentality. I sent my rate of force development and ground time for the 4-jump to Mike. He showed me his video of 4-jumps, and his numbers blew mine out of the water. I was not even close. My numbers were rather pitiful in comparison.

In his video, I could see that he was violent during the 4-jump. He was in attack mode; it was the same effort you see in a wild animal chasing its prey. Mike’s arms were in sync with his legs, and his legs were stiff like a jackhammer smashing concrete as he jumped with so much force. Mike is three years older than me, too! As I sulked, two feelings hit me in the gut: I was fired up with competitiveness and wanted to beat Mike (with the utmost respect, of course), and I was also filled with motivation.

I thought back to the first time I spoke to Mike—prolonging Father Time was the topic. People like Justin Gatlin, Lebron James, and Allyson Felix are all professional athletes above 30 years of age who are still able to produce at the elite level. Allyson Felix had a child and still competed eight months later. Those “old athletes,” by society’s standards, are pushing forward whether or not fans notice. The evolution of the athlete is now.

I can tell by Mike’s 4-jumps that he believes he can preserve and maximize what’s left in his athletic tank. As my reflection of that conversation came to an end, I expressed gratitude to Mike and committed myself to continue to reach my personal goals as I work out. I will follow suit by having strong intentions.

3. Embedding in Me the Knowledge of Training

I am doing really well as a trainer at DeKalb High School. I give everything I can to both myself and my athletes each year. Different training programs and protocols have given me a better understanding of when to use different approaches with athletes. I have improved and become a better trainer, and I have seen results, whether in the reduction of injuries or in increased athleticism. SimpliFaster has helped me attain these results.

I have improved and become a better trainer, and I have seen results, whether in the reduction of injuries or in increased athleticism. SimpliFaster has helped me attain these results. Share on X

Athletes fill up my strength and conditioning classes throughout the day. Teams fill the weight room to maximum capacity after school. The community is getting used to my face, and the coaches are starting to trust me. I seem to be doing well but know that at times I can do better. There are training concepts that I still want to learn so I can teach them to my athletes and coaches so that we, in turn, can all become the best competitors in our respective sports.

People in the industry like Max Schmarzo of Strong by Science and Jake Tuura of Youngstown University convinced me to learn more and to spread knowledge widely. I thought I was giving everything I had to DeKalb High School but actually realized I was nowhere near giving them my full potential. I had so much more I could improve upon and share: programming, learning basic physics for data reading, and more.

I have made connections with the athletes, but I want better for them. No—I want the best for them. I understand that not every high school has a strength and conditioning coach. A lot of coaches do not have one either. This realization has made me want to dig deeper and provide more for everyone.

I am excited knowing that there is no cap on what I can learn. There will always be more for me to learn and teach. This ignites my passion even more and causes me to go to SimpliFaster to read more books, talk to more coaches, and reach out to experts in their fields to continue my personal education.

I started becoming smarter by listening to what my colleagues have to say, by watching what they do, and by recognizing what they have their athletes do and why. The “why” is the most important part of doing something; it shows intent of an action. If intent falters, you learn from it versus just having athletes sweat and do a workout because it seems cool. I must admit I have done that before, but I wanted to drift away from the practice because it’s morally wrong in my eyes. If my expectations are to have athletes train wholeheartedly, then my program and instruction must also be up to par for them and at an elevated standard.

I started becoming smarter by listening to what my colleagues have to say, by watching what they do, and by recognizing what they have their athletes do and why, says @__JoshuaCollins. Share on X

4. Sponsoring the Just Fly Performance Podcast

With podcasts being the prevalent go-to for information of personal interest, the Just Fly Performance podcast has been nothing short of essential for me. Host Joel Smith interviews an array of people who have accomplished amazing feats under the strength and conditioning umbrella. I have done case studies from claims by some of his guests, like Keith Barr, Ph.D.; Ebonie Rio, Ph.D.; and many others.

The podcast is great because I can play it through my headphones when I work out and still stimulate my mind with information when I am not able to read. Dr. Keith Barr’s interview about tendon health helped me to understand how tendon tightness is dependent on collagen and that tendon tightness aids in athletic movements. If you’re loading with good nutrition, you will have a high turnover rate and will see the dynamics and functionality of the tendon. I must have listened to that particular interview 50 times. Each time I listen to it, I learn something new, and I am led to research new concepts to try on myself and on the teams that I train.

Hearing theories from the podcast and reading articles about the experiences grew my excitement while challenging me to read. I may not be an athlete anymore, but I use the same competitive qualities to get better at my job. My intention is to level up through training and teaching my classes. I love training athletes and monitoring their adaptations. It has bred a passion to read current research and given me the ability to cite credible sources. SimpliFaster has been a part of that.

As a kid, I despised reading; as an adult, I love it. It is easy to read up on certain topics, and it helps when they are applicable to my job. I’m blessed to be working in a field that I love, and because of that, I have learned to appreciate reading. The podcast is nice and all, but SimpliFaster puts all the content in one hub so that all I have to do is pick a topic of interest to read. The sources are credible because I have read older articles from years ago that are current today. So, for that, I am greatly appreciative of having content in one place that I can rely on for learning.

5. Teaching Me How to Program

Being a student of the game, or in this case, strength and conditioning, has led to other areas in the training paradigm. SimpliFaster publications humbled me. When science can prove that what you’re doing is not as efficient as it should be, something must change. When I began in this field, my programming focused on the exercise and the uniqueness of how it looked. That may be okay for likes on social media, but just because it looks cool does not mean it transfers to athletic development.

SimpliFaster publications humbled me. When science can prove that what you’re doing is not as efficient as it should be, something must change, says @__JoshuaCollins. Share on X

Through reading and listening to others in my field, I have gained an understanding of training concepts and isolated exercises. Training concepts organize training principles into a program that most athletes need and appreciate. Concepts also provide further knowledge on the why and how of movement goals as opposed to just being familiar with how to perform an exercise.

Knowing concepts allows you to determine what exercises to use at a given time. Just knowing an exercise when you work with teams does not determine when you should do it or why. It may look cool, but when you understand concepts, you have the clue to understanding what exercises to use. You can build a program around concepts but not around one exercise movement. As a high school strength and conditioning coach, it is imperative that I program in this conceptual manner to have a better grasp on large groups of different teams.

6. Introducing Technology for Sport

Early in my career, before I became a high school strength and conditioning coach, I was a sports performance coach and I had the opportunity to use the Freelap Timing System. I had heard of it from my frequent visits to SimpliFaster.com and from trying to win a Freelap Timing System on Twitter. As most coaches recognize, the handheld timer is the highest level of technology. Let’s be real, though. A stopwatch is the cream of the crop of timing systems only when it is the only option. It is the “old reliable” way that is not so reliable.

When my place of employment bought four Freelap Timing Systems to train athletes, I was excited to use such elite technology for better accuracy during sprint sessions. It is so simple to use that even someone who is not tech-savvy can learn to use it. It is accurate, and the athletes love it because it is not archaic.

There is something to be said about developing a skill to push a button to start the timer on a stopwatch the moment an athlete moves from a sprint position. I have been around more coaches who missed the button without noticing they were not timing the athlete until the sprint was over. Athletes’ time and energy are then wasted while possibly placing exasperation in their minds because they cannot trust the timing system.

Freelap allows coaches to observe and examine athletes instead of using a handheld stopwatch, says @__JoshuaCollins. Share on X

With the Freelap Timing System, I have never worried about that. There are multiple ways to time someone. Freelap allows coaches to observe and examine athletes instead of using a handheld stopwatch. Athletes can use a start button or sprint through a cone transmitter that connects the analysis of the movement to the free downloadable app. Its simplicity of use makes it a beneficial tool for all parties involved.

I recommend the Freelap Pro Coach BLE 112 to all high school and sports performance coaches. SimpliFaster provided me with the edge I am looking for at this point in my seven-year career. It is a one-stop shop. Whatever you need, the answers always seem to be there.

7. Positively Influencing My Daughter

My last reason for using SimpliFaster is that it has helped me introduce training to my daughter. I was blessed that my daughter developed an interest on her own by watching me train female athletes. There were times when she accompanied me to work, and from the corner of my eye, I watched her mimic movements on her own. Someone once said to me, “Copy the wise and become wise. Keep company with fools, and you will be ruined.” My daughter copied wise movement patterns, and I could not be happier.

I have seen training habits harm kids, especially young ladies who are more susceptible to injuries such as knee ruptures. I am not saying that I am this almighty trainer, but through reading article after article and via the experiences that I have had, I want to make sure that any person who trains with me can transfer force to their sport or wherever they need force to be applied contextually. There are no gimmicks this way. I teach fundamentals and build principles from there. Everything complex derives from basic principles.

As the father of this very active, little 4-year-old girl, it is difficult not to ponder how I would like my daughter to be coached and trained if she decides to participate in sports. Females tend to get the short end of the stick when it comes to sports and force development training. During my tenure in sports performance, I have seen that coaches tend to give up on or show partiality when it comes to women’s sports. In my experience with training female athletes, I may have seen the highest levels of improvement when it came to force development. I had the pleasure of seeing monster numbers in the weight room along with increased athleticism.

My daughter has learned fundamental motor skills like getting into an athletic position, jumping, landing, throwing, sprinting, and more. These motor skills will give her an advantage in functionality and build up her confidence. As parents, we should give youth better opportunities and pass down tools they can use. I view athletic training in that same way.

Being able to teach a 4-year-old has helped me teach those who are older. Once you can understand anything that is newly learned and try to explain its complexities in a simple manner to a child, you find out if you absolutely comprehend it yourself. With all that SimpliFaster has helped me to attain, one of the most important things to me personally is being able to train female athletes and being able to show my daughter that she can train like an athlete.

SimpliFaster Is One of My Guides

SimpliFaster is a comprehensive tool for any coach at any level. To sum up, the lessons SimpliFaster has taught me are that the weight room is a lab, and we as strength and conditioning coaches are the mad scientists. We calculate physical data and control velocity through programming. We are more than motivators; we are more than people making others sweat by doing random movements. We are passionate about the sweet science of force production that gives each and every individual a winning edge to compete at the highest applicable level.

To sum up, the lessons SimpliFaster has taught me are that the weight room is a lab, and we as strength and conditioning coaches are the mad scientists, says @__JoshuaCollins. Share on X

The untrained coach’s eye will miss those things and try to imitate without understanding. SimpliFaster is a staple to give reasoning and to guide coaches to better efficiency. Thus, SimpliFaster will always be my personal go-to for everything under the training sun.

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

In 2016, I finished my bachelor’s degree, knowing I wanted to become a collegiate S&C coach. While it was only an idea at that time, I made it a reality when I passed my CSCS in May 2018, and three months later I decided to leave my halfway-decent career to get my master’s degree in strength and conditioning studies.

Pursuing postgraduate studies has transformed my coaching style and afforded me a chance to participate in numerous additional learning opportunities. Through both online and in-person internships, I have learned firsthand from many great coaches and staff at institutions across the country. Based on my unique experience in the field of S&C, here are 10 useful tips for all young coaches trying to navigate their career trajectories.

1. Live Close to Your Internship

You’ll want to be less than a 15-minute drive from your internship. If you plan to be an intern where you did your undergrad, go ahead and jump to tip #2. If you decide to do an internship halfway across the country, pay attention.

During my graduate degree internship, I lived with a close friend of mine who was 45 minutes away from the university. For a standard 9-to-5 job, a 45-minute commute is not bad. For a full-time coach who is potentially on campus from 5 a.m. to 6 p.m., it can be brutal. Often, by the time I got home, I had just enough time to shower and pack my lunch before I went to sleep, all so I could wake back up by 4 a.m.

You will likely not have a fixed schedule. You will have breaks during the day, and sometimes you will need to get away. We all got into this field because we want to have a positive impact on young lives, but at the same time, you have to be able to take care of yourself. One thing I did to get out of the “office” was pick up all the orders for the nutrition center. I got to leave the facility, and it made me look good since I always volunteered to do it.

2. Show Up Ready to Work

Other articles might suggest that if you are not the first one there, then you are not hungry enough for this industry. On the first day of my graduate internship, my boss said, “Show up on time, and you will be good to go.” He also said, “Please don’t be that guy waiting at the door at 4:15 a.m.” If the coach says be there by 5:00, be there on time, at the minimum. Five to 10 minutes early is enough. Getting there 45 minutes early just means sitting in your car, since you don’t have a key to the facility.

The moment you walk through that door, be ready to move. This is not the office, where you can relax for a little bit, drink some coffee, and slowly ease into the day. Share on X

The moment you walk through that door, be ready to move. This is not the office, where you can relax for a little bit, drink some coffee, and slowly ease into the day. You are about to have 75 football players come in, and every second of prep time matters. It is far better to get everything set up first and then relax, rather than vice versa.

At one of my internships, coaches were supposed to be there by 5:15. Most of us rolled in by 5:10 at the latest. We started getting set up immediately, and most of the time we were done when athletes started rolling in for pre-workout nutrition.

3. Bring Your Own Pen, Clipboard, and Workouts

I picked this up while I was in grad school: Always have a writing implement, a writing surface, and the day’s workout and warm-up. Nothing makes you look more like a novice than not knowing where you are in the workout. You will always need a pen to write notes and observations from the workout.

For example, at one institution we had an EliteForm system, which measures bar velocity. If an athlete moved 75% of their max at an average velocity of .7 m/s, that showed their training max needed to be bumped in the system we were running. Write that down! You will not remember it at the end of the day. Writing down nuggets of information as they happen will almost certainly answer your questions down the line. Coaches I’ve worked with have all lauded the virtue of paying attention to details as a key to becoming a better coach.

4. Shut Up and Listen (aka Practice “Active Listening”)

At the beginning, go in with an open mind and do what you’re told. Whether this is your first internship or your fourth, I strongly suggest that, in your first week or two, you just sit back and observe the coach’s style with athletes. If you are interning at a D1 or under a Master Strength & Conditioning Coach (MSCC), just listen and learn.

Most places will probably tell you to be on the sidelines anyway. This coincides with the previous tip—by listening and watching, you are bound to pick up some useful information to write down. They are at that level or earned that specific title for a reason. Most important of all, use your observations to generate smart questions.

5. Do Not Be a Robot 

Athletes are people too. And I cannot stress this enough: Do not be so focused on S&C that you forget to talk to and get to know athletes. It is okay to be affable with athletes to an extent, but you should always remember that you are in a position of authority. For me personally, I have found that the more an athlete trusts you, the better their buy-in. Crack jokes with them, be there for them, and just be the voice of reason.

I cannot stress this enough: Do not be so focused on S&C that you forget to talk to and get to know athletes. Share on X

6. Remember, It Is Just Business

The head S&C at one institution said this in the first week of the football off-season: “It’s just business.” What goes on in the weight room is just business, and collectively we are in the business of making athletes better. Coach them hard and love them harder.

At the end of the day, if a student-athlete decides to transfer or quit, it is their decision. For instance, one of the players I got close to chose to transfer mid-semester. I was disappointed that he left, but at the end of the day he did what he thought was best for him. From a business perspective, you move on and focus on the athletes you have and try to make them better.

7. Don’t Forget About Nutrition

I was fortunate at one of my internships to have access to the nutrition center, where I had dinner four nights a week. Suffice to say, I stumbled on a good deal. If you are like me and have a singular focus on your career, you will be there 10-12 hours a day. You need to learn how to meal prep and meal prep for cheap. PB&J, rice & beef, broccoli & chicken—you get the idea. A coach I met during grad school had his weekly grocery plan dialed in at $36.28 a week. He kept it simple and cheap.

You can cook bulk amounts of beef and rice at the beginning of the week, and it will last you several days. Also, throw into your lunch bag more snacks than you think you will need. It is okay if you do not eat all your snacks that day, but at the end of the day you will always wish you had more food rather than not enough.

Try your best to have a balanced diet. The coaching life is grueling, so make sure you keep yourself healthy. Working with athletes will expose you to a lot of potential for illness. Keep your machine running right and you will (hopefully) avoid getting sick.

8. Balance Your Free Time

If this internship is during your final semester, I strongly suggest that you do not take any additional classes with it. I made that mistake while doing my graduate internship. Your weekends end up getting devoted to class, and boom! there goes your free time. If you have a significant other or major family obligations, you will want to communicate with them prior to the internship that you are going to be busy for the next 4-6 months.

On the other hand, if you need to get a part-time job to help with some bills, talk to your supervisor beforehand. They might be able to help you find a position in the university and, based on my past experience, help you balance the responsibilities of classes, internships, and work. You have to be extremely dialed-in to manage all of it, but communication with your coach supervisor is paramount.

9. Do Not Chase Logos

Just because you interned at X University does not mean you are an amazing coach. An internship at X University might look great on a résumé, but the experience you get may be a little different than what you expect. I’ve had friends intern at major universities (football and Olympic), only to end up cleaning for the semester. No coaching, no intern education, nothing. I am not saying all schools are like that, but you need to be cognizant of the type of internship program you are thinking about joining, especially if getting hands-on experience matters to you.

Be cognizant of the type of internship program you are thinking about joining, especially if getting hands-on experience matters to you. Share on X

Some questions to ask during your program interview are:

• What elements does the internship curriculum include?
• What are some of the duties assigned to interns?
• What is the path to working my way up to coaching athletes?
• What are some qualities of past interns that have made them excel?

You have to remember you are there to learn! If you only stand in the corner and clean after every session, and that’s the extent of your internship, you are not really getting much out of it (other than observation and taking notes, to which I would refer to point #4.) If you think chasing a specific logo is how you will become a better coach, you may need to rethink your priorities. Also, just as a side note—go in with the mindset that you will be doing a lot of cleaning, especially given the shifts in our standards during the COVID-19 era.

10. Enjoy the Process

Enjoy the process, learn to accept criticism and feedback, and take the opportunities where they come. If you get to run a warm-up or session or assist with programming, take the opportunity and do it well. The more responsibility you earn, the more likely you will enjoy the process. Above all, consider your internship a test of whether or not this is the career path for you. The barriers of entry into S&C are high, and an internship is absolutely vital if your goal is to become a strength and conditioning coach at any level.

Above all, consider your internship a test of whether or not this is the career path for you. Share on X

I hope these tips will help maximize your experience at any level and throughout your journey in this industry. Even for myself, as I search for my next opportunity, I try to keep all of these in my mind. Our lives were fundamentally altered this year, for better or worse, and our job is to adapt to the changes. Especially for a young coach, being able to adapt to any situation is extremely important. Please feel free to reach out to me—I am always excited to talk S&C with others and expand my network.

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

Explosive weight training movements have become a mainstay in training serious athletes, especially those at the high school and college level. Note that I said weight training and not weightlifting.

Let me be clear. When I say weightlifting, I’m referring to the snatch and the clean and jerk—lifts performed in the Olympic Games. Not power cleans, hang power cleans, snatch pulls, one-arm snatches, and so on. Yes, competitive weightlifters often include such auxiliary exercises in their workouts (well, except for one-arm snatches—those are pretty worthless). Still, the core exercises in their programs are the snatch and the clean and jerk.

A research study about how the power clean affects sprinting or jumping ability is not a study about weightlifting. Share on X

Next, consider that much of the North American research about weightlifting does not involve the full lifts but rather partial variations, primarily the power clean. A research study about how the power clean affects sprinting or jumping ability is not a study about weightlifting. It’s about an inferior variation of one of the two weightlifting exercises; in this case, the clean and jerk. These studies are certainly better than nothing, but not by much, for determining the true value of weightlifting for improving sports performance and preventing injuries.

Video 1. Christian Rivera, an athlete coached by the author, shows the explosive nature of weightlifting. During his third lift, note how Christian’s training and athleticism enabled him to save an out-of-position snatch that was 85 pounds above bodyweight. (Video by Lifting.Life)

Yes, many strength coaches and personal trainers take seminars that cover weightlifting, and among the most popular are those sponsored by USA Weightlifting. A good start, but few coaches take their weightlifting education to the next level by practicing the full lifts, even fewer compete in weightlifting meets, and most prefer to have their athletes perform partial variations.

Many myths about true weightlifting have come from limited hands-on experience coaching the snatch and the clean and jerk. Share on X

This limited hands-on experience and the lack of coaching the lifts are responsible for many myths circulating about real weightlifting. Here are eight of them.

Myth #1: Partial Weightlifting Movements Are Easier on the Knees

I started competitive weightlifting in 1972 after reading about the sport in Strength and Health magazine. It was a time when many health care professionals condemned squats. The most notable opponents were Professor Karl K. Klein and Dr. Fred L. Allman, authors of the controversial book published in 1969, The Knee in Sports.

If an athlete insisted on doing squats, these doctors said they should only perform them through a partial range of motion. Klein and Allman argued that squats—specifically full squats—could cause permanent lower body instability (by stretching the knee ligaments) and, as such, increase the risk of serious injury. They were wrong.

The highest amount of harmful knee stresses during squats occurs with the thighs at or above 90 degrees, not full squats (hamstrings to calves). Share on X

The highest amount of harmful stresses on the knee during squats occurs with the thighs at or above 90 degrees, not full squats, meaning hamstrings touching the calves. Wimpy exercises such as the hang power clean (which starts and finishes with the legs in a quarter-squat position) are not knee-friendly. What’s more, the finished position is horrific because the athlete jams their knees when they abruptly catch the loaded, rapidly moving barbell. Let me take this discussion a step further.

Surgeons have often found that during ACL surgery, the ligament(s) they repaired already showed signs of chronic damage. This means many ACL tears were not a result of a single “supramaximal force” but from cumulative trauma caused by “submaximal forces” that predisposed this ligament to debilitating injury. Like an old rubber band that is frayed and stiff, these ligaments were ready to snap. Incidentally, the recommendations by the authors of one paper on this subject were to limit the number of jumps young athletes performed during training, such as the Little League “pitch count” that limits how many pitches a young baseball player can throw in a game.

Although advances have been made in ACL reconstruction that let many athletes to return to their previous levels, why subject an athlete to such harmful stress in the first place with quarter-squat movements? This advice would be especially wise for female athletes because—depending on the sport—they can be up to 5x more likely to injure this important ligament.

Myth #2: During the Pull, the Feet Should Be Flat on the Floor Until the Knees Fully Extend

The common technique taught in many strength coaching courses is to stay flat-footed during cleans and snatches until the knees fully extend—the so-called “triple extension.” Such advice belongs in the Iron Game history books.

In Russian weightlifting textbooks from the 1970s, coaches promoted staying flat-footed before achieving full knee extension. That was then—this is now. If you study slow-motion video or sequence photos, you’ll see that many of today’s elite lifters perform plantar flexion (i.e., lifting the heels) well before their legs straighten. Doing the triple extension during a weightlifting exercise is equivalent to today’s high jumpers performing the scissor-type jump rather than the Fosbury Flop—it works, but it’s inefficient.

Elite athletes lift their heels before the knees are completely straight, using the Achilles tendon to increase force production dramatically. Share on X

Many strength coaches argue that sports involve triple extension, and therefore we should practice this method in weightlifting. Ah, no. Watch jumping movements by elite athletes in sports, and you’ll see their heels will rise before the knees are completely straight, enabling them to make better use of the Achilles tendon as a biological spring. In effect, they use this powerful tendon to dramatically increase force production, much more than the make-believe triple extension concept.

It follows that performing hang or block movements are also less effective for power production than performing lifts from the floor. I say this because, in every video, article, and book I’ve seen describing how to perform hang cleans and hang snatches, these lifts start with the entire foot on the floor. Further, you often see many non-weightlifting coaches teach these partial variations so the barbell doesn’t move directly upward. Instead, the bar’s initial movement is diagonal, looping back around before violently slamming back into the athlete’s shoulders. Ouch!

Myth #3: The Shoulders Should Move in Front of the Knees During the Pull

Many strength coaches incorrectly teach weightlifting as a jump. They tell their athletes to extend their shoulders far in front of the bar when it passes the knees and then move to a vertical posture and “jump.” Weightlifting scientist Bud Charniga has done extensive research on the training methods of successful Chinese women lifters and says they found a better way.

Chinese coaches have enjoyed tremendous success by having their female athletes start with the shoulders directly on top of the barbell and then pull their shoulders behind the bar after it reaches knee level. This technique reduces the stress on the lower back (a weak link in the Russian method) and positions the bar closer to the center of mass, where athletes can apply more force to the barbell. It also increases the torso’s range of motion, enabling the athletes to use their upper body more effectively to move under the bar faster. If an athlete can move under the bar more quickly, the bar doesn’t have to be pulled as high. And the lower you have to pull the bar, the more weight you can lift.

Some male athletes can reach an elite level using the shoulders-in-front technique, but those who do often need to spend additional time with special exercises to strengthen the lower back. If you study their weightlifting textbooks, you’ll see that Russian weightlifting coaches frequently prescribed exercises like back extensions and good mornings for their athletes in the ’60s and ’70s. These exercises were essential because their pulling technique put excessive and prolonged stress on the lower back.

Video 2. Elastic strength enables athletes to produce more powerful movements than muscle strength alone. Here Christian clean and jerks double bodyweight, a New England record. This is followed by a clip showing that his shoulders don’t extend over the bar at any point in the lift.

Myth #4: The Powerlifts Generate More Power than the Olympic Lifts

Athletic movements are characterized by fast eccentric (muscle lengthening) contractions. You would see such actions when a quarterback cocks their arm back to throw a pass or when a weightlifter dips for a jerk.

Strength coach and posturologist Paul Gagné and his colleagues have conducted considerable research on what he calls Velocity Eccentric Overload (VEO) training using flywheel devices that increase the eccentric load at high speeds. Gagné says fast, powerful eccentric movements enable athletes to use the elastic qualities of the connective tissues to produce higher levels of power. Take sprinting, for example.

Sprint speed is not only determined by stride length and stride frequency but also ground contact time. One of the qualities that set Usain Bolt apart from his competitors was that he spent so little time on the ground compared to his competitors. You’re not going to achieve these benefits by performing slow, partial-range powerlifting exercises.

Myth #5: Weightlifting Doesn’t Develop Rotational Strength

I see many workouts for baseball players and other athletes in throwing sports that involve performing horizontal twisting exercises with bands and cables. The idea is to focus on the obliques to develop rotational strength and power. Nice try.

Gagné says the problem with this approach is that few muscle fibers in these core muscles are transverse (aligned horizontally) to the trunk. Instead, most are arranged in a diagonal pattern more suited for producing positive torsion, which is rotation coupled with flexion, such as the downswing in golf.

“Consider the biceps, which has fibers arranged longitudinally,” says Gagné. “You would not work the biceps by pulling your arm across your body because the fibers are not arranged this way. Also, because rotating the spine on a single axis is not a natural movement pattern, and this type of activity, especially when performed seated, creates large shearing forces on the spine that can easily damage the disks.”

There is also the issue of counter-rotation.

“J. P. Roll, the founder of Posturology, found that what occurs to one side of the body will help neurologically ‘code’ what can happen on the other side,” says Gagné. “As such, the ability to rotate in one direction is influenced by how well that individual can create rotation in the opposite direction—this is called ‘counter-rotation.’ In other words, the body will only allow for a certain amount of disproportionate development of the muscles. In working with professional golfers, for example, we found we can increase the ability of a right-handed golfer to generate club speed by having them work with a left-handed club.”

What type of weight training exercises strengthen counter-rotation?

“The late Mel Siff told me about research showing that the snatch is the best way to work on rotation, because to perform it you need a lot of counter-rotation,” says Gagné. “An overhead squat, performed as weightlifters do them, involves a lot of counter-rotation to maintain proper alignment.”

Hmmm…maybe this explains why so many elite discus throwers and shot putters perform weightlifting exercises in their workouts.

Myth #6: Weightlifting Exercises Should Be Performed with Submaximal Weights

Apparently, it’s fine for strength coaches to overload all areas of the strength curve of squats and bench presses with chains and bands because, as they say, “All things being equal, the strongest athlete always wins!” But when it comes to weightlifting, many strength coaches seem to believe that light weights rule. This trend appears to be especially evident with many sprint coaches.

When sprint coaches recommend weightlifting exercises or their variations, I often see workouts focusing on weights that represent about 70 percent of an athlete’s one-repetition maximum. The exercises also are performed for relatively high reps, such as power cleans for sets of five. For example, Bolt can be seen on YouTube doing sloppy hang power cleans for a set of 10 reps with what appears to be between 115 to 135 pounds. His time would be better spent taking a Zumba class. Seriously, my point is that many other sprinters often run super fast despite their weight training workouts, not because of them. By the way, several Chinese female lifters have clean and jerked 2.5x their bodyweight, and a half dozen male lifters have done 3x their bodyweight.

Many sprinters often run super fast despite their weight training workouts, not because of them. Share on X

Light weights may not add muscle mass, which is important. Too much bodyweight, even if it’s muscle, will adversely affect speed because it’s more weight to move—wear a 20-pound weight vest and see what happens to your 40-time. That said, light weights for high reps will do little to develop power because they will not train the powerful, fast twitch muscle fibers. In fact, when I look at many of the published workouts of Russian sports scientists about training programs, often lifts of 70 percent and below are not listed, as these are considered warm-ups and don’t contribute to the training effect.

Light weights for high reps will do little to develop power because they will not train the powerful, fast twitch muscle fibers. Share on X

By focusing on heavier weights, such as 85-100 percent for sets of 1-3 reps, you can develop more powerful muscles with minimal increases in bodyweight (i.e., relative strength). Weightlifters often train for several years and become considerably stronger without adding any additional bodyweight. Further, bodybuilding methods can adversely affect a muscle’s ability to produce high levels of muscle tension quickly.

There also seems to be a prevailing idea among many sprint coaches that it’s possible to reach the highest levels in the sport without ever touching a barbell. Yes, it’s true—sprinters need to sprint. Likewise, baseball players need to throw and hit baseballs, basketball players need to dribble and shoot baskets, and golfers need to hit golf balls and wear ugly pants.

The reason so many athletes don't get much benefit from explosive exercises is that their workouts are designed poorly. Share on X

On this subject, I highly recommend Dr. Harold Klawans’ book, Why Michael Couldn’t Hit. My point is that the reason so many athletes don’t get much benefit from explosive exercises is that their workouts are poorly designed.

Myth #7: Weightlifting Workouts Should Be the Same for Men and Women

Although this is the subject of a more extensive article, the physiology of women is such that they need more warm-up sets to reach maximum results in weightlifting, and they can handle more sets at higher intensities than men. Yes, it’s much easier for a strength coach to have everyone follow the same workouts, but it’s not the most effective way to train female athletes.

Myth #8: Weightlifting Exercises Are Too Difficult to Teach

Many coaches believe the Olympic lifts performed from the floor are too difficult to teach. I guess if we can’t teach a weightlifting exercise in five minutes or less, it’s not worth learning? If this is the case, why practice any sport? Hitting a 90-mile fastball seems like a pretty hard skill to teach, as is sinking a three-point shot and performing a triple axel.

If an athlete does not have the flexibility to do a squat clean, consider that you just identified a mobility problem that may affect athletic performance and increase the risk of injury. Rather than working around the issue with inferior exercises, consider that practicing the lifts, even with light weights, often quickly fixes the problem. And consider that lack of mobility to perform weightlifting exercises is mainly a problem with male athletes—it’s rare to find a woman who can’t achieve the full squat clean position the first time they try.

Certainly, performing a full squat snatch can be difficult for many athletes, and the jerk is even more difficult. However, it’s not that hard to teach a full clean or a push jerk. For those with extreme mobility issues caused by chronic injuries (or just because that’s the way they are), there is the option of the split-style of snatching and cleaning. I would also caution that if a coach is going to teach full lifts, they must have the athlete practice missing the lifts to avoid becoming a highlight for a “Weight Training Fail” video on YouTube.

If a coach is new to lifting, rather than just taking a course, they should try to recruit a weightlifting coach to help them with their teaching. At the very least, call a local weightlifting coach (USA Weightlifting has a directory of clubs nearest you) and ask to sit in on a few training sessions and ask questions. I’ve been in this sport since the ’70s, and I’ve never heard of a weightlifting coach turning down a strength coach or sports coach’s request to stop by and watch their athletes train and ask questions.

Weightlifting and Athletic Fitness

As a weightlifting coach and a former weightlifter, I certainly have a vested interest in dispelling myths about the sport and promoting the snatch and the clean and jerk for athletic fitness. After all, weightlifting is the greatest sport in the world! That doesn’t change the fact that the snatch and the clean and jerk are valuable exercises that can help athletes achieve physical superiority and reduce their risk of injury.

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

Terry, T. “Historical Opinion: Karl Klein and the Squat.” Strength & Conditioning Journal, 1984; 6(3): 26-31.

Hartmann H, Wirth K, Klusemann M. “Analysis of the Load On the Knee Joint and Vertebral Column With Changes in Squatting Depth and Weight Load.” Sports Med, 2013; 43(10): 993-1008.

Junjie Chen, et al. “An Anterior Cruciate Ligament Failure Mechanism.” The American Journal of Sports Medicine, 2019; 47 (9): 2067-2076.

Charniga, A. “Can There Be Such a Thing as an Asian Pull?” EWF Scientific Magazine, 2016; 2(4): 24-32.

Goss, K. What Sprinters Must Know About Elastic Strength.

Meijer, J.P., et al. “Single Muscle Fibre Contractile Properties Differ Between Body‐Builders, Power Athletes and Control Subjects.” Experimental Physiology, 2015; 100(11): 1331-1341.

Klawans, H. Why Michael Couldn’t Hit: And Other Tales of the Neurology of Sports, pp 10-53, W.H. Freeman & Company, 1996.

Charniga, A. “Comparison of Warm Up Protocols of High Class Male and Female Weightlifters.” EWF Scientific Magazine, 2015; 1(1): 56-71.