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Everyone has another side in performance that allows them to turn up the aggression, increase their intensity, and lock into the task at hand. Everyone has the ability to flip the switch and become “a beast” when they step into their performance environment. It’s called the alter ego—everyone has one, yet very few people tap into it. It’s a place that allows you to break free of any self-doubt and limitations and completely dominate the task at hand.

It’s simple: As a repercussion of not tapping into this mental skill, you leave results on the table. Think about how many athletes you have on your roster who you know can bring more, but don’t. How many athletes do you know who have this amazing side to themselves that they don’t utilize?

As a repercussion of not tapping into the mental skill known as the alter ego, you leave results on the table, says @mattcaldaroni. Share on X

If you’re a strength coach who’s not helping your athletes tap into this mental skill, then you’re doing them a disservice. In this article, I’m going to teach you about the alter ego and how you can help your athletes truly empty the tank, be fully locked in, and dominate the task at hand.

Kobe Bryant’s Alter Ego

If you’re involved in sports at any level, then you’ve seen the power of the alter ego fully activated and utilized by one of the world’s most iconic athletes: Kobe Bryant, aka, the Black Mamba. While the majority of people thought it was just a good marketing tool, the truth is—as Kobe stated in his documentary “Muse”—he utilized his alter ego as a mental skill in performance.

It gave him the ability to turn off his personal life and the biosocial behaviors that came with it and turn on his true competitive nature in his professional life. It allowed him to be an easygoing guy outside of performance and a dominant force within performance. It allowed him to raise his standards and comply with what he was given while raising the standards of others around him as well. It made him a pleasure to work with in the weight room and turned him into an iconic individual in the sport of basketball.

He was able to take control and not just “think different” or focus on his breathing, like the majority of the “mental gurus” suggest, but instead fully embody a different being on the court. He dropped the personal drama, blocked out the noise, locked into the task at hand, and turned up the aggression and intensity. From 2004 on, Kobe didn’t stop dominating: At home he was Kobe Bryant, the soft, easygoing father, but at basketball he was the aggressive and intense Black Mamba—the leader of L.A.

I know that you’ve had athletes similar to Kobe before; ones who deal with personal issues at home and have to be able to block out the noise. Or ones who are naturally softer as a person and don’t often push their limits. How about the ones on the opposite end of the spectrum—the ones who are too engaged and can’t turn it off, often burning out, or ones who are too aggressive and out of control?

When you utilize the alter ego, you’re able to have your athletes push buttons that they didn’t even realize they had, says @mattcaldaroni. Share on X

The brilliance of this coaching tool is that it allows you to eliminate both of these issues within the athletes you work with; when you utilize the alter ego, you’re able to have your athletes push buttons that they didn’t even realize they had. You’re able to get them to lock into what you’re coaching them on, bring the most effort possible, and retain it when they’re finished by keeping them hungry for the next session. If you’re not utilizing the alter ego in your coaching, then you’re not truly serving the athletes you work with.

What Is the Alter Ego?

An alter ego is more than just a “change/separation of thinking,” and it’s more than just a self-talk or deep breathing mechanism. Truth be told, these “block out the noise” techniques commonly referred to aren’t extremely effective. Everyone who works with elite-level athletes knows that there’s too much going on for the athlete to be consciously thinking about “blocking things out.” It has to be instinctive; there has to be a tool that allows the athlete to stay locked in on one thing and focus on the task at hand, bringing the most compliance and effort during the session, and allowing them to retain after the session.

An alter ego does just that. It’s about embodying another being that gets turned on during performance, allowing an individual to drop all the noise, self-doubt, and negativity in performance and dominate the task at hand. It allows them to become the person who their team or performance needs them to be and get the results consistently. There’s no need to “cancel out thinking”; when you fully commit to identifying as a different being, you take on the characteristics of that individual. There’s no more thinking. Instead, there’s just taking action, which is ultimately what we want our athletes to do.

An alter ego, in its literal term, is a person’s secondary or alternative personality; it’s who they are in their performance environment. It’s who they choose to be when they’re performing at their sport. It contains mental, physical, and social traits that are ignited internally as a reaction to their environment. It’s turned on during performance but turned off after it. Some athletes choose to be an animal like Kobe did, while others choose to be a superhero or heightened version of themselves like Brian Dawkins, or “the X-Factor.” In short, they identify as something more aggressive that allows them to fully comply with the task at hand, bringing a strong effort to whatever it is that they have to do.

An alter ego is when an athlete identifies as something more aggressive that allows them to fully comply with a task, bringing a strong effort to whatever it is that they have to do. Share on X

Now here’s the most important part: your job as a strength coach is not to help your players find their alter ego—that’s my job as a resilience coach. Instead, your job is to pull this alter ego out of them; to help your athlete find that extra gear by creating an environment that fosters the alter ego to come out and communicating in ways that allows the individual to internally trigger themselves. If you want to get the most out of your athletes, if you truly want to serve them and take them to the next level, then you must add the alter ego into your coaching toolbox.

Why Every Athlete Needs an Alter Ego

Plain and simple: If you’re a strength and conditioning coach who’s not helping your athlete build their alter ego, then you’re leaving a lot on the table and forgetting about some of your responsibilities. The motivational aspect of strength coaching is a true art that I’m frequently asked to consult on. It’s a sticky topic with a lot of grey areas, and I always suggest utilizing the alter ego for this exact reason.

When you have a framework with proven results that allows you to play to the needs of both the individual and the group, then you’re taking care of all of your responsibilities. If you’re not using the alter ego, then you’re not giving your athletes the best chance to succeed. And more importantly, you’re not seeing their true competitive nature.

To keep things simple, and to provide the framework, I will talk about two case studies where I actively worked with strength and skills coaches to bring out the alter ego in their athletes. I will cover specific aspects in the comply, effort, and retain model and provide solutions for how to activate each portion in many different ways. The main methodologies for carrying out the alter ego for a strength coach are focusing on the communication and words utilized and tampering with the performance environment.

Case 1: Turn It Up

This past year, I’ve been working with an elite-level hockey skills coach. The two of us were given the task of working together to help an upcoming prospect break through to his fullest potential. The athlete lacked compliance to what was being asked of him, and in turn he lacked both effort and retention of the team’s requests. Outside of performance this athlete is a “nice guy”—he’s extremely intellectual, lets very few people in, doesn’t say too much, and is very methodical in his thinking.

This type of athlete is common. We deal with them on a regular basis: loaded with lots of talent and potential but doesn’t turn it up enough to be their best. As a result, he’d overanalyze a lot of situations, question methodologies, rein in effort, and have extremely slow starts. He left a lot on the table; he wasn’t at his absolute best in the weight room or on the ice. As a result, his job was in jeopardy, and he had to be dealt with immediately.

I carried out my work of finding out what made the athlete tick and worked with him to build an alter ego. It was now up to the skills coach to foster the right kind of communication and environment to pull the most out of the athlete and activate his alter ego. Within three weeks, cooperatively, we helped this athlete not only become a menace on the ice, but also a menace in the weight room. He was more social, intense, and compliant. The coach created an extremely strong environment to bring out the athlete’s alter ego, while I worked independently with the athlete to strengthen this mental skill behind the scenes. As a result, he brought a stronger effort into his on- and off-ice sessions. His compliance, effort, and retention all increased—here’s how.

Once I was able to understand the athlete and what made him tick (aka triggers), I relayed the information to the skills coach. He created an environment to turn these triggers on, or Step 1 to the alter ego, which I call “Turn On.” Before the session started, if time permitted, he focused on having an intense one-on-one conversation with the athlete about why he was here.

He focused on the pain (dark triggers) that the athlete would experience, like a missed opportunity to further his career, if he didn’t take action and be his best. He also focused on the pleasure (light triggers) that the athlete would experience if he did take action and comply fully; he spoke to him about how he’d take a step closer to helping his family financially. He’d also speak about the importance of making sure others were up to par; he’d mention to the athlete the importance of others in his environment being at their best as well, and why it was so important for the athlete to raise the level of others through his own personal work.

There were also days where the skills coach couldn’t catch the player before the training session started, so he’d just use the verbiage with the entire group during their warm-ups. He spoke aloud about connecting their current session to the rest of their careers; while the athletes warmed up, he spoke about them imagining how much pain would occur if they didn’t fully comply and take action during the session. He spoke about the importance of each rep and connected it to the rest of their lives.

The skills coach made it a point to force them to turn off the drama from their personal lives and turn on the intensity of their professional lives by speaking about it. He got them selfish and focused on themselves—he mentally warmed them up to be in a state of pain, or pleasure, lighting up their light or dark triggers and preparing the athletes, whether they consciously had one or not, to turn on their alter ego.

This is the mental warm-up you must put your athletes through, and it’s exactly what it sounds like: warming up the athlete mentally to turn on the alter ego. It works because it puts the athlete in a selfish state of mind; one of the best ways to get someone to comply is by helping them see how the current task helps them personally. Think: You’re dealing with the egos of elite individuals—they didn’t get to where they are by thinking only of others; they focused on themselves.

Mentally warm up an athlete to put them in a selfish state of mind. One of the best ways to get someone to comply is by helping them see how the current task helps them personally. Share on X

When you’re warming up an athlete mentally to turn on their alter ego and get them to comply, then you have to get the athlete selfish. It’s your job as a strength coach to light up the triggers of the individual and get them focused on seeing the connection of how the current task impacts their personal future. Like my friend from St. Louis, a strength and conditioning coach for elite level football, soccer, and hockey players, always says: “The guys who I’ve worked with who are the most locked in are the ones who are selfish.”

The importance of this is that there’s no “step back and breathe” portion to it. I often hear mental professionals speak about “taking the time to reflect before a performance with the group.” Let’s get real for a second: At the elite level, that should be something athletes do beforehand because they work with a professional like myself to build it into their day-to-day routine. When they get to their performance environment, it’s all business.

As a strength coach in elite environments, you often try to find ways to make the short amounts of time you’re given work. This is all about adapting on the fly to the fast-paced world of elite sports. Being able to pull someone aside for 60 seconds to mentally warm them up and turn on their alter ego is a rare bonus that this skills coach didn’t often come by. That’s why he had to learn the skill of being able to turn on the group versus just turn on the individual.

For the majority of this practice, you will have to be able to light up the triggers of the entire group you’re coaching to create a more competitive environment where every athlete will want to lock in and bring it. When you’re able to home in on the mental warm-up, you take that first step to alter ego: “turn on.” The amazing thing about this was that he not only got positive results out of the individual athlete he was trying to work with, he was able to get more results out of the group as a whole. Eventually, I worked with him to better understand each player that he was dealing with and consulted with him on how to pull the alter ego out of each and every one so that he could get the most out of them, creating a better compliance, effort, and retention rate out of all of them.

During the training session, the coach focused on Step 2: Maintain and Heighten. He actively shouted out directions and instructions to keep the performance environment in what I call “hunting mode.” He tailored his verbiage to become more about the team and less about the individual, and he got them to connect every single repetition to beating the upcoming opponent. This is where everything starts to change; Instead of making it “just another training session” for the team, he made it another day closer to winning against the opponent. Now he not only turned on the alter ego of the majority of his athletes, he was keeping it on.

He praised the positive repetitions of the athletes and spoke about how it was a “winning rep.” He talked about how the team was now “hunting together” instead of just going through the motions. He pulled out collaborative efforts and motivated the team in ways that they hadn’t been motivated before. More importantly, he pulled out the true competitive nature in each athlete without having to waste any time. He kept them locked in and focused, raising the standards of the environment and getting the majority to stay on the same page.

After the training session was done, the coach focused on Step 3: Turn Off. Whether during a cooldown or when he prepared them to go into the weight room after their on-ice session, the coach would speak with the team about how well they “hunted” during the session, and whether it truly resembled the results that the group was after collectively. He also asked the group to reflect on whether they sincerely gave an effort that was worthy of serving their dark and light triggers well. He used that time to speak to how good the group felt now that they’d taken care of business and what they had to do outside of the session. He got them to retain what they just did and focus on what they had to do next.

This is when that individual turned off their alter ego and prepared for what was next. This was a player who previously had been questioned whether he could perform at an elite level consistently, and now they’re speaking about him as the future of an organization. Imagine if this was untouched; imagine if this was left alone. The coach would’ve done a disservice to this high-potential talent, and there would’ve been a career left on the table.

Case 2: Get Relevant

In the second case study, I saw the same results with an elite-level strength coach who had to get more effort and retention out of an athlete who he and I had worked with. The organization had tried to get the most out of the elite-level goaltender for four years. They tried everything from turning it up, to backing off, to outright trying to scare the athlete into working harder and complying. We followed the exact same process with the athlete to help the strength coach pull the alter ego out of the individual.

I figured out the individual’s triggers and created an alter ego for him, and then the strength coach followed the same protocol. He took a bit of a different approach before each training session, however. He made it a point to show up early and speak with the athlete to get him selfish (Turn On and comply). During the training sessions, he made it a point to connect the repetitions and effort rate to the desired team results that the athlete was after (Maintain and Heighten and effort). After the training session, he helped the athlete understand if the effort matched his personal, and the team’s, desired results and helped him focus on what he had to do next (Turn Off and retain).

I was able to consult with the coach on the athlete because I was working with him individually to continue to find the triggers and make sure that he would turn off once the sessions were complete. We started working together on this athlete in September 2018, when the organization viewed him almost as a liability. To date, we have helped this athlete not only break performance barriers in the gym, but also on the ice—making the athlete one of the organization’s most valuable assets to date.

The Danger of Winging It and Doing It Alone

Here’s the thing: Being the “Samurai” in performance is cool, until you don’t know how to turn that Samurai off, and then it starts to disrupt your performance and personal and social lives. How many stories have we heard about athletes who go home and have abusive relationships because they can’t “turn it off”? Or the athletes who become extremely anxious or burnt out because they aren’t able to shut it down?

In both cases that I shared, the coaches had success because I was able to consult with them and teach them about when to shut it down and when to turn it up. Without proper guidance of this coaching tool, you’re playing with fire. I say this because I’m the individual who the athletes call to deal with the issues they face when they can’t turn it off.

It’s important to turn things up, but even more important to shut it down. If you don’t treat this tool (the alter ego) with seriousness and care, then you run the risk of burnout. Share on X

It’s important to turn things up, but it’s even more important to shut it down. What good does it do your athlete if they can only bring it for a day, but are then completely burnt out of the rest of the week? Forget about comply, effort, and retain—if you don’t treat this tool with seriousness and care, then you run the risk of burnout. The reason the first case I mentioned was successful was because the elite-level skills coach was able to receive intel from me on how the athlete was doing outside of performance. The reason that the second case I mentioned with the elite-level strength coach was successful was because he was able to understand how the athlete was feeling before he came into performance.

Both coaches were able to tame the beast that came out in performance, as well as pull it out of the individuals they worked with. In no way did they try to create the alter ego of the individual on their own. This is something that has to be handled with extreme caution and care, as you’re dealing with the identity of an individual both in and out of performance. As much as this can be one of your greatest coaching tools with guidance, it also can be one of your worst enemies without the proper understanding and guidance. Please don’t take chances with this tool.

Ensure Its Effective Use

Everyone has an alter ego. In order to effectively do your job as a strength coach and pull the most out of your athletes, you need to activate this alter ego. It’s your responsibility to motivate the athlete effectively, but most importantly, to do so in a way that doesn’t harm the well-being of the athlete.

The alter ego is an extremely strong coaching tool that’s replicable and viable across many different environments, but to properly utilize this tool you must have the right guidance and care to do so effectively. Again, you are doing your athletes a disservice if you know this coaching tool is here, but don’t take advantage of it. Don’t just wing it—empty the tank.

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

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Bray, C.D. and Whaley, D.E. “Team Cohesion, Effort, and Objective Individual Performance of High School Basketball Players.” The Sport Psychologist. 2001;15(3): 260-275.

Cusella, L. P. Feedback, motivation, and performance, Handbook of organizational communication: An interdisciplinary perspective. (p. 624-678). 1987: Sage Publications, Inc.

Fehr, E. and Fischbacher, U. “Why Social Preferences Matter – the Impact of non‐Selfish Motives on Competition, Cooperation and Incentives.” The Economic Journal. 2002;112(478):C1-C33.

Gillet, N., Valleranda, R.J., Amoura, S., and Baldes, B. “Influence of coaches’ autonomy support on athletes’ motivation and sport performance: A test of the hierarchical model of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.” Psychology of Sport and Exercise. 2010; 11(2):155-161.

Harwood, C., Hardy, L., and Swain A. “Achievement Goals in Sport: A Critique of Conceptual and Measurement Issues.” Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology. 2003;22(3):235-255.

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van der Werff, E., Steg, L., and Keizer, K. “The value of environmental self-identity: The relationship between biospheric values, environmental self-identity and environmental preferences, intentions and behaviour.”Journal of Environmental Psychology. 2013;34:55-63.

Van Knippenberg, D. “Work Motivation and Performance: A Social Identity Perspective.” Applied Psychology. 2001;49(3):401.

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Hopefully, the title of this article has already pissed off and confused many of you. Now that I have your attention, let me justify my thoughts and beliefs about the necessity of including running drills in your program.

As context matters, this is my world: coaching predominantly invasive team sport athletes (Aussie Rules Football, softball, rugby, and handball). I’ve more often than not experienced that neither the ability to execute any running drills (wall drills, A/B/C-marches/skips/bounds, dribbles, scissor runs) nor the qualitative improvement of those drills shares any relationship with sprint performance. So, I started to question how executing one skill has the potential to improve another skill.

I’ve more often than not experienced that neither the ability to execute any running drills, nor the qualitative improvement of those drills, shares any relationship with sprint performance. Share on X

We all agree that speed, or the ability to cover a given distance in as little time as possible, is an utmost crucial feature in many sports. Hence, many methods, traditions, and ideas prevail around this topic. With the increasing amount of information we share nowadays via a multitude of channels, it seems like we get to see a new running drill that “magically” unlocks the secrets of speed on a daily basis. This not only “muddies the water to make it seem deep” (Friedrich Nietzsche), it concomitantly increases our inability to see the forest for the trees when it comes to speed development. We urgently need a call for simplicity.

I think it is presumptuous to argue we need to break down a sprinting motion into its parts, learn or relearn the isolated patterns through part-practice, and put it back again into the whole motion. Despite the recent and increasing deterioration of humankind’s physical integrity, bipedal locomotion at a high velocity—aka sprinting—is the most fundamental movement pattern developed through a million years of evolutionary history, which not that long ago was essential to survive. So how can anyone not be able to sprint correctly?

The Emergence of Running Drills

The Polish sprint coach Gerard Mach initially designed running drills (A/B/C-marches/skips/bounds) to increase the work capacity of key sprint-specific muscle groups as regular speed work wasn’t possible due to adverse weather conditions in the winter and a lack of other resources. So, because actual sprinting wasn’t possible, athletes needed other methods to ensure (what we now call) adequate chronic workloads of sprint-specific capacities up until weather conditions allowed outside work again at meaningful volumes.

After several extrapolations and misinterpretation of this original idea, we now face a multitude of fancy-looking drills that some training professionals believe will manifest a certain sprinting technique and lead to better sprint performance in the team sport athlete. However, we subconsciously substitute the kinematic sequencing of the sprinting motion with actual sprinting performance. But what is good for track athletes must be good for any other athletes in an endeavor to improve their speed characteristics, so the drills are being blindly applied in team sports in the hope of a similar effect.

We all agree that the particular gains one individual gets from a distinct gym program won’t necessarily work for another person to the same degree. Yet we assume that a small—likely negligible—part of a holistic track program shares a causal relationship with the manifestation of track athletes’ superior sprint performance and therefore must be equally effective for an entirely different context and cohort of athletes, while ignoring all confounding variables.

Further, we must be aware and acknowledge the representative heuristic when evaluating the sprinting performance of our athletes. With that said, we tend to subconsciously compare our athlete against an archetype biomechanical model of sprinting (usually a sagittal plane view) and regard distinct kinematic features of high importance (think high knee position), which we then try to impose on our athletes. However, all we do is just drill them into a robotic and uniform sprint pattern derived from the same set of drills. It doesn’t seem like a step towards antifragility to me. Also, why do we feel obliged to enforce a change to what has been developed over long periods of time?

Your Current Technique Is Your Best Technique…So Far

In simple terms, we know that movement is a function of the organism, the task, and the environment, as defined by Newell decades ago with his simplistic conceptual framework of human movement. There are other important constraints influencing the appearance and time course of the movement forms that occur at the psychosocial level, but our industry doesn’t highlight them. Action selection can be conceived as a result of the interaction of task, organismic, and environmental constraints in relation to the psychosocial attributes (figure 1).

Further, the “constraint optimization” concept states that the behavior of a biological system at any time will always be optimal for the specific confluence of constraints acting on the individual system, as evidence from theoretical and evolutionary biology suggests. So, we must assume that the current movement solution (sprint technique) is the individual’s ideal; however, this is not necessarily related to an optimal performance outcome (better sprint times). But as athletes mature and go through sophisticated training programs, we’ve all seen improvements in sprint performances that come in the presence or absence of kinematic changes. Just because the current movement solution is allegedly the individual’s optimum, doesn’t mean that it cannot be improved.

Just because the current movement solution is allegedly the individual’s optimum doesn’t mean that it cannot be improved, says @DanielKadlec. Share on X

Therefore, our job as coaches is to increase an underlying and possibly insufficient capacity and/or give them opportunities to practice not-yet-experienced motor patterns and thus unlock new possibilities in relation to time. Or, in other words, facilitate the magnitude and timing of each muscle’s force production. As learning often involves breaking out of initial stable states, we cannot expect this to be a linear process. Now, you could argue for the need to shift potentially suboptimal attractors in order to engrain new ones.

Further, we need to agree that any physical improvement can only manifest itself within the limits of the individual’s adaptative capacity. While everybody can get faster, not everybody will be fast due to the limits of their organismic constraints as we need to acknowledge the inherent variability in anthropometrics and arthrokinematics between individuals. As highlighted previously, not everyone can attain the performance or motor pattern that their subconscious mind tells them to aspire to, independent of how much time and energy they invest to do so. Just because some athletes do attain those shapes, it doesn’t mean everyone has the same potential to get there. Hence, let’s all stop trying to force individual athletes into the same robotic patterns.

For argument’s sake, let’s assume there is indeed a technical flaw and we have correctly identified it. We then need to ask ourselves: What potential do we have to change or hopefully improve the athlete’s movement pattern while optimizing performance? What amount of resources (time and energy) will it take to optimize it? What methods are the most efficient to do so? Despite the complexity and uncertainty of this question…the answer most likely can’t be running drills, as they simply cannot provide a meaningful overload, as we’ll see next.

Running Drills and the Principle of Overload

We all know one key element to elicit any desired adaptation is the principle of overload. Therefore, we must impose demands that are greater than in the skill that we want to improve. Overload can take the form of any characteristic of force production, such as the peak moment applied around the joint, peak external force applied, size of the external resistance moved, rate of force development, power output, or movement velocity achieved.

Before digging into some detailed biomechanical evidence, let me raise this question: How can an activity done at 2–3 ms^-1 (in some drills, maybe up to 5 ms^-1) come anywhere near the mechanical demands of another activity done at around 10 ms^-1? This inherent difference in resultant ground force production entirely refutes the notion that we can improve any physical capacities. Any claims that running drills have the potential to overload any physical capacities mainly responsible for lower limb stiffness and/or ground contact times are, thus, laughable.

Any claims that running drills have the potential to overload any physical capacities mainly responsible for lower limb stiffness and/or ground contact times are laughable. Share on X

Another argument for the implementation of running drills is their claimed potential to facilitate improvements in rhythm, fluidity, relaxation, smoothness, and/or co-contraction (have any of them been somehow quantified yet?); hence, provide a coordinative overload or an idea how the movement should look. Without going down the rabbit hole of motor learning and skill acquisition, there is more than enough evidence questioning the presence of not just general coordinative abilities but also a transferability between—what I’d like to emphasize—inherent different skills. While sprinting is dominantly a reflexive, innate, violent, and subconscious activity at 100% effort, the aim of all those running drills is to consciously hit and experience several artificial kinematic patterns at 20–50% of maximal velocity.

When we look at tables 1–3 (derived from @DebsSides’ PhD thesis—I recommend it highly!), which describe the kinematic characteristics between a sprint and three different running drills, we see there are more significant differences than similarities. Therefore, we must really question whether running drills have the potential to provide any overload. Finally, we also know how important fun and enjoyment are for skill acquisition and motor learning—never, ever, have I witnessed any athlete enjoying or at least not hating doing any of those drills…

Simplicity Is the Key to Brilliance

Ultimately, only sprinting itself has the greatest potential to improve sprint technique. When you are not moving at around maximal velocities, you are working on an entirely different skill set while inherently undershooting mechanical demands. So, if you want to get better at the skill of sprinting, you have to practice that particular skill. Specific adaptations to imposed demands 101.

The major part of my speed training approach is to rely on mainly maximal sprints to promote the desired adaptations in the skill and capacity needed to hit faster and faster velocities. Share on X

Hence, the major part of my speed training approach is to rely on predominantly maximal sprints to promote the desired adaptations in the skill and capacity needed to hit faster and faster velocities. In general, the sprint is the first exercise that goes into the training plan and the very last one that gets cut. As the rate of adaptations slows down over time for each method, and the law of diminishing returns manifests itself, athletes need exposure to other specific yet variable enough methods.

We know from motor learning and skill acquisition research that task variability (differential learning and constraints-led approach) and implicit communication strategies (instructions and feedback) are beneficial in order to maximize learning and retention. Therefore, we need to deliberately add different methods alongside appropriate cues to challenge the current abilities and ensure a continuous progression in sprinting performance (table 4).

Because “tolerance is a proof of distrust in one’s own ideals” (Friedrich Nietzsche), I have successfully cut every single running drill from my program independent of what sport I’ve worked with. After the most general warm-up to increase HR and muscle temperature in the key muscle groups, I usually jump straight into (max) speed work. My athletes haven’t yet experienced any adverse effects.

I have successfully cut every single running drill from my program independent of the sport I’ve worked with. My athletes haven’t yet experienced any adverse effects, says @DanielKadlec. Share on X

Most likely, there will never be an RCT to test my hypothesis, so we need to rely on evidence from other sources and common sense—both areas just don’t have any meaningful and logical arguments for the implementation of running drills in team sports. In addition to reason and evidence, “Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” (Antoine de Saint-Exupery).

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

Nine years ago, I attended a seminar by Ivan Abadjiev, the Bulgarian weightlifting coach who developed a high-intensity program that revolutionized the sport. During the Q&A section, one coach asked Abadjiev at what age athletes could start lifting maximum weights. His answer: 8.

Perplexed, the coach clarified his question by explaining that he meant maximum weights—as in 100 percent. Abadjiev’s answer: 8.

The audience was stunned. After all, medical experts had warned us that heavy weights could permanently damage the growth plates of young athletes, stunting their growth and creating permanent disability. Although Abadjiev’s approach is designed to produce Olympic champions and is quite extreme (involving multiple training sessions per day), there are many benefits to getting young athletes to spend a little time in the weight room. For starters, consider the demands that many of our young athletes go through today—those that only play one sport.

Athlete Development in the Specialization Era

With the appeal of scholarships and pressure to win at all levels, parents are increasingly tempted to encourage their kids to specialize in one sport, year-round. I’ve worked with middle school soccer players who played not only on their school teams but also on at least one year-round club team. These athletes had practice 3-5 times a week and games on the other days—sometimes several games on a Saturday or Sunday. Where I live, rather than trying other sports, these athletes are also encouraged to participate in twice-a-week sport-specific training sessions, where they perform plyometric drills and energy system training. The pressure to specialize continues in high school with what is often called The Recruiting Wars.

Video 1. Athlete Sierra Cuthill shows good form in the clean and jerk. Cuthill has played soccer, lacrosse, track (high jump and hurdles), and is trained in ballet. She started lifting at the age of 12, and by age 13 increased her vertical jump by nearly 8 inches to a best of 23.3 inches. Cuthill could perform a full snatch and clean and jerk with sound technique the first day she tried! As for academics, she is a straight-A student who is in a magnet program for business.

I know high school track coaches who discourage their star athletes from competing in multiple sports. Instead, the coaches expect them to participate in indoor track and outdoor track while also performing in track camps and demanding summer track workouts.

Likewise, I know high school football coaches who discourage their players from competing in summer track leagues in favor of participating in their strength and conditioning program. The unwillingness to share athletes creates considerable tension among a school’s coaching staff, with the athletes stuck in the middle. Is it any wonder that an estimated 70 percent of young athletes quit organized sports by the age of 13?

Besides the risk of burnout, focusing on one sport makes young athletes more susceptible to injury. One 2017 study of sports specialization involved 1,544 athletes (one-half were female), with an average age of 16 years. Those with a high specialization classification (i.e., focusing on one sport) had an 85 percent higher incidence of lower extremity injury. Yes, 85 percent! The researchers concluded, “Sport specialization appears to be an independent risk factor for injury, as opposed to simply being a function of increased sport exposure.”

Athletes who focused on one sport had an 85% higher incidence of lower limb injury. Weight training helps lower this risk. Share on X

So, what can be done? One answer is to have these athletes participate in a weight training program to help correct muscle imbalances that can lead to injuries.

Why Weight Training? Surveying the Research

One meta-analysis covering 25 studies of sports intervention methods involved 26,610 participants who, as a group, experienced a total of 3,464 injuries. Although athletes are always told to stretch to prevent injury, the researchers found no benefit from stretching. “Our data do not support the use of stretching for injury prevention purposes, neither before or after exercise.” In contrast, the researchers also concluded, “Strength training reduced sports injuries to less than one-third and overuse injuries could be almost halved.” And let’s not forget about concussions.

Studies on American football players show that strengthening the neck can significantly reduce the number of concussions. But there is much more to be gained from weight training than just strength. My strength coaching colleague Paul Gagné presented this year at the “Brains and Brawn Symposium” in Toronto, which focused on the effects of head injuries in sports. His number one takeaway from the symposium was that the best ways to avoid concussions are to avoid contact and learn how to absorb, store, and redirect force.

The best ways to avoid concussions are to avoid contact and learn how to absorb, store, and redirect force. Weightlifting trains these abilities. Share on X

“Take Wayne Gretzky,” Gagné said. “He was not a big guy or exceptionally strong, but he rarely got hurt—he had the vision to see the game in slow motion and instinctively knew how to move to avoid getting hurt. Likewise, my colleague Ben Velasquez recently visited Cuba, and said the boxing coaches he worked with appear to be following the lead of Floyd Mayweather by placing more emphasis on defensive skills with young boxers, not on increasing punching power.”

The ability to take a punch, Gagné said, is one reason weightlifting is superior to bodybuilding and powerlifting for athletes. “Weightlifters learn how to use the elastic qualities of their tissues to minimize the stress on the body and redirect that stress to produce higher levels of power.” Gagné added that flywheel training, which teaches athletes how to deal with rapid eccentric forces, can also be valuable for injury prevention.

Many SimpliFaster readers are sprint coaches, and I realize that some don’t see much value in weight training. But consider one study that found 27 percent of girls and 29 percent of boys quit sports because of injury (or other health problems). How long do young athletes stay injured? Well, researchers who studied 17 high school track and field teams over one season (77 days), involving 174 males and 83 females, came to this conclusion: “A total of 41 injuries was observed over this period of time. One injury occurred for every 5.8 males and every 7.5 females. On the average, an injury resulted in 8.1 days of missed practice, 8.7 days for males and 6.6 days for females. Sprinting events were responsible for 46% of all injuries.”

When studying these numbers, consider that an injured athlete returning to practice may take at least a week to get back to where they were before the injury. Can you afford to have your athletes miss weeks of practice during the season, lose many more weeks of training getting back in shape, possibly miss several meets, and perform below your expectations? If you can’t, doesn’t it make sense to invest in a little “pre-hab” work in the weight room?

Risks vs. Rewards for Weight Training with Young Athletes

First, understand that 50 years ago, we would not be having this conversation. The only athletes lifting weights were male weightlifters and powerlifters, bodybuilders, and perhaps a few football linemen. (Although off-season training for many football players often was basketball for the “skill” players and wrestling for the linemen).

That was then.

This is now: volleyball players do cleans to improve their vertical jump; baseball players rep out bench presses to hit harder; swimmers perform weighted chin-ups for a more powerful stroke; and hockey players do biceps curls…well, for no apparent reason. Although there are a few holdouts, such as distance runners, many coaches do creative scheduling to accommodate all the athletes who want to pump iron to perform better and prevent injuries.

At this point, the question is not if weight training is an effective way for young people to achieve superior athletic fitness, along with improving self-esteem, but when it’s appropriate to start pumping iron.

Facts and Fallacies of Growth Plates

Perhaps because pretty much anyone can post on Twitter, there is this belief that a high level of stress will stunt an athlete’s growth. Two “real life” examples I hear are that weightlifters are shorter than other athletes of the same bodyweight, and women gymnasts today are much shorter than those in the past. Let’s start with weightlifters.

The perception is that heavy weights compress the spine, causing weightlifters to get shorter as they get stronger. Russian research apparently supports this belief, showing that more experienced weightlifters tend to be considerably shorter than inexperienced ones in the same bodyweight class. Nice try. The reason elite weightlifters are shorter than other athletes of the same bodyweight is that they carry more muscle mass!

Elite female gymnasts—athletes who certainly place a high level of stress on their body—tend to be short compared to other female athletes, but for a different reason. Thirty years ago, the average elite female gymnast was 5-foot-3; now the average is 4-foot-9. Simone Biles, one of the greatest (if not the greatest) gymnasts in the history of the sport, is just 4-foot-8. The current level of competition is so high and the movements are so difficult that shorter athletes have an advantage because:

• Their stability is better
• They can rotate faster
• They have greater relative strength

The point here is that if you’re going to go with the idea that gymnastics training makes athletes shorter, it follows that playing basketball will make athletes taller because there are so many tall players in the NBA! With that nonsense dismissed, let’s look at some research addressing the fear that weight training stunts a young athlete’s growth by closing their growth (epiphyseal) plates.

First, premature closing of the growth plates is usually caused by hormonal influences, not injury. In the rare incident that a child injures a growth plate, the bone could certainly become deformed, but it will still grow.

One champion of young athletes pumping iron was the late Mel Siff, Ph.D., an outspoken exercise scientist whose doctorate thesis looked at the biomechanics of soft tissues. In his book, Facts and Fallacies of Fitness, Siff said this about growth plates: “Epidemiological studies using bone scans by orthopedists have not shown any greater incidence of epiphyseal damage among children who lift weights. On the contrary, bone scans of children who have done regular competitive lifting reveal a significantly larger bone density than those who do not lift weights. In other words, controlled progressive competitive lifting may be useful in improving the ability of youngsters to cope with the rigors of other sports and normal daily life.” Siff went on to explain what he meant by the “rigors of other sports.”

“Considerable biomechanical research has shown that the stresses imposed on the body by common sporting activities such as running, jumping and hitting generally are far larger (by as much as 300%) than those imposed by Powerlifting or Olympic Lifting,” Siff said. “In other words, the stresses imposed on the growth centres of the growing child’s body are markedly greater than those occurring in competitive lifting [sic]. If we well-meaningly think that potential growth plate damage is to be minimized, then we need to pay even greater attention to any sports which involve running, jumping, or hitting.”

What do today’s experts believe about the safety of weight training? Well, the results of a survey published in 2013 asked 500 experts in sports medicine if they agreed with the statement that weight training should be avoided until epiphyseal closure. “Overall, respondents answered that ‘this statement is very likely false,'” noted the researchers. “In sum, the expert consensus from our survey that strength training is safe for individuals with immature skeletons is consistent with data from medical literature.”

Why Serious Athletes Must Lift

Running and jumping are two basic components of athletic fitness, which is why many coaches supplement their athlete’s training with plyometrics. With sprinters, I found that if there’s a choice between plyos and lifting, their coaches will often choose plyos. In fact, in 1984 I asked Carl Lewis if he lifted, and he said that his coach often gave him a choice between plyos and lifting, and he chose plyos.

Can plyometrics help an athlete run faster and jump higher? Certainly, but the research shows that weight training can also do this and may do it faster—especially in the early stages of an athlete’s career.

In one eight-week study that compared weight training to plyometrics for improving the vertical jump, the weight training group did better—even though vertical jumping was part of the plyometric group’s training. Refining this idea, researchers have also looked at which is better for developing explosiveness: powerlifting or weightlifting.

In another study comparing weightlifting exercises to powerlifting, the weightlifters had superior improvements in the vertical jump. The researchers also tested the athletes’ power by having them perform vertical jumps with an additional 20 kilos/44 pounds and 40 kilos/88 pounds. Again, the weightlifters produced superior results, perhaps because the weightlifting stressed the elastic qualities of the tissues more effectively than powerlifting.

Young athletes who weightlifted jumped higher and sprinted faster. Share on X

As for sprinting ability, a 15-week study of 20 collegiate football players found that, compared to the powerlifting group, those players using weightlifting saw a “twofold greater improvement in 40-yard sprint time.” Yes, sprinters need to sprint, but if the goal is to fulfill an athlete’s physical potential, then shouldn’t a coach consider all available resources to make an athlete faster? And if strength didn’t matter for sprinting, why were so many elite sprinters caught for steroids? Just sayin’.

I often hear the statement, “A child is not a small adult, so don’t train them like one.” A better statement is, “You can’t have a specific program for a single age group because young people mature at different rates.” In a class of 12-year-old boys, some boys may have the physical maturity of an 11-year-old boy, and some a 12-, 13-, or even 14-year-old boy. Take the case of 2020 Olympic hopeful CJ Cummings.

Cummings began lifting at the age of 10. At age 11, he clean and jerked double bodyweight. Three years later, he clean and jerked an American record of 337 pounds to break the senior American record in the 136-pound bodyweight class, and last year he clean and jerked a junior world record of 425 pounds in the 160-pound bodyweight class. Certainly, CJ is an outlier in terms of physical maturity.

Unfortunately, many of the weight training workouts I’ve seen for kids are rather lame, doing little to develop strength, and few even consider teaching weightlifting (i.e., the snatch and the clean and jerk). Why am I a champion for weightlifting movements?

Weightlifting develops strength through a large range of motion, thus improving flexibility and stability. In fact, the overhead squat, which at the bottom is the catch position of a snatch, is one so-called functional screen used to determine flexibility and muscular imbalances. As for addressing the matter of risk versus reward, here are several proven benefits of performing the full lifts:

• Strength (relative, absolute, speed/explosive)
• Jumping ability (vertical, horizontal)
• Short sprint speed
• Muscle mass
• Reduced body fat
• Muscular endurance
• Core strength
• Cardiovascular health
• Postural alignment
• Body awareness
• Reduced risk of injuries

That’s a lot of bang for your buck, such that the rewards they offer are certainly worth the risks associated with practicing them. Short on time? Do some clean and jerks and back squats, and you’ll address many of the goals of a strength and conditioning training program. But even a more complete lifting program doesn’t take as much time as you might think.

My weightlifting coach was Jim Schmitz, a 3x USA Team Coach for the Olympic Games. Schmitz’s Sports Palace Team won nine straight team titles at the Senior Nationals, and he coached athletes in seven Olympic Games. His athletes trained just 3x a week, about 90-120 minutes per session, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday—that’s it!

Why are so many coaches reluctant to perform the full Olympic lifts, preferring (if anything) the inferior partial-range variations, such as hang cleans? One reason so many coaches dislike weightlifting is because they believe the Olympic lifts performed from the floor are too difficult to teach. I agree that the full weightlifting movements are too hard to teach—if you don’t know how to teach them!

I’ve been involved in weightlifting for over four decades, and it’s rare when I cannot teach a decent male athlete how to perform a respectable power clean from the floor in about 15 minutes. And with females, it takes about that long to teach most of them a squat clean. Many of my weightlifting colleagues can do the same.

I often see good athletes learn to do technically sound clean and jerks, and sometimes snatches, during their first training session. Share on X

Yes, full lifts take longer to master, but often I see good athletes doing technically sound clean and jerks, and sometimes snatches, during their first training session. For example, below is a video of a female multi-sport athlete learning how to snatch for the first time—she did a dozen sets, and the entire session took about 25 minutes. Rather than badmouthing these lifts, coaches should meet with an experienced weightlifting coach and ask them to show how to teach these valuable lifts.

Video 2. For those who believe the Olympic lifts are too difficult to learn, here is multi-sport athlete Samantha Dwyer performing the full snatch for the first time. This workout took about 25 minutes.

Can athletes reach a high level of athletic performance without lifting weights? Certainly. It’s the nature of sport that, all things being equal, talent prevails. Usain Bolt lifted weights, but the workout I saw him doing on YouTube leads me to believe that Bolt is fast despite his lifting program rather than because of it. Likewise, the success of many college sports programs is strongly influenced by recruiting. In contrast, at the high school level where recruiting is not an option (except for some private schools), you have to make the best of what you’ve got.

Final Thoughts

I agree that some young athletes don’t have the emotional maturity to train in a weight room safely—these athletes don’t belong in a weight room. It’s also true that some coaches don’t have the skills to teach weight training properly—these coaches don’t belong there either. As Spiderman would say, “With the great power that can be developed in the weight room comes great responsibility!”

It’s true that a sound weight training program may not transform a mediocre athlete into a superior athlete, but it can help all young athletes perform better and be less susceptible to injury. As General George S. Patton said, “You can never be too strong!”

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

Brenner, JS. and Council on Sports Medicine and Fitness. “Sports Specialization and Intensive Training in Young Athletes.” Pediatrics, Vol. 138:3, September 2016.

American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine. “Sports specialization may lead to more lower extremity injuries.” ScienceDaily, July 23, 2017.

Hislop, MD, et al. “Reducing musculoskeletal injury and concussion risk in schoolboy rugby players with a pre-activity movement control exercise programme: a cluster randomised controlled trial.” British Journal of Sports Medicine, Vol. 51:1140–1146, 2017.

Milone, MT, et al. “There is no need to avoid resistance training (weight lifting) until physeal closure.” Physician and Sports Medicine, Vol. 41(4): 101-5, November 2013.

Lauersen, JB., et al. “The effectiveness of exercise interventions to prevent sports injuries: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials.” British Journal of Sports Medicine, Vol. 48(11):871-7, June 2014.

Kelley, B., and Carchia, C. “Hey, data data—swing!” ESPN.com, July 11, 2013.

Watson, MD, and DiMartino, PP. “Incidence of injuries in high school track and field athletes and its relation to performance ability.” American Journal of Sports Medicine, Vol. 15(3):251-4, May-Jun 1987.

Siff, M. Facts and Fallacies of Fitness, (4^th edition, 2000), 154-156.

McBride JM, et al. “A comparison of strength and power characteristics between power lifter, olympic lifters, and sprinters.” Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, Vol. 13(1):58–66, 1999.

Hoffman, JR, et al. “Comparison of olympic vs. traditional power lifting training program in football players.” Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, Vol. 18(1):129-135, February 2004.

Landing-to-takeoff (L-T) mechanics are critical skills for athletes to learn in speed and power sports. The discomfort for some coaches when it comes to coaching L-T mechanics for plyometrics (plyos) is due to unfamiliarity. As mentioned previously, it is obvious that, when performing plyos, athletes are often pushed to focus on a stimulus rather than on landing mechanics. As coaches and educators, we must understand the importance of what’s happening on the ground and how it influences movement, rather than just focusing on how a stimulus and response equation influences athletic development.

Landing Mechanics

Landing mechanics: the ability to deal with a landing and produce a takeoff.

I see landing drills or drop landings all over social media and in sport, and while they’re great for stabilization and dealing with forces, I don’t think they’re adequate enough on their own for takeoffs. L-Ts are considerably different from just landings. A stick landing may look similar to the kinematic sequence of an L-T, but there are clear physical differences.

Most of the time, landings in sport are the subsequent result of a takeoff or maneuver in the air. The popular stick landing techniques that are coached are for these sporting encounters—to find stability and to reduce fatigue and/or injury risks. Many common injuries or overuse issues are a result of faulty landing mechanics, in which an athlete is unable to stop the momentum of the incoming velocities when landing. L-Ts are vastly different in their aim to utilize energy. For us to really understand L-T mechanics, we have to delve into what happens in this sequence.

Although it may not be seen as a plyometric, the Eurostep move in basketball is a prime example of an L-T sequence that occurs regularly within the game. It may not be lightning fast like a long jump takeoff, but this L-T is of huge importance in basketball and similar sports for an attacking option to beat opponents in space. In the video here, you can see a prime example in which Manu Ginobili loads his left leg as he lands, and then unloads force to enable a change of direction to beat his defender.

Using a mirror drill to beat an opponent to a goal or objective is a simple way to introduce a Landing-to-Takeoff stimulus in training without deeming it an expert-level plyometric. Share on X

These simple but effective movements for beating opponents are a case of outmaneuvering the other player. Your athlete has to utilize force and express it at a faster rate than the opponent, and you can break this kind of movement down into drills with a partner. Using a mirror drill to beat an opponent to a goal or objective is a simple method for introducing an L-T stimulus in training without deeming it an expert-level plyometric. A fast-loading lunge step (bound) and change of direction loads a single leg with multiple times body weight at a rapid rate. This, along with a competitive situation, takes away the clinical drill setting that we may observe in a gym and creates a more specific L-T pattern.

Video 1. Landing mechanics

What to look for: You will notice as the foot comes into frame that the toes are up, which suggests a pre-activation of the lower leg in preparation for the landing. As the foot then comes into contact with the ground, it takes a split second to stabilize and settle, transitioning from the eccentric loading phase to the isometric force transfer phase.

Note: The mechanics of this landing might not be perfect, and ideally we want a full-foot landing to minimize stabilization time. Keeping extra time in GCT to a minimum is paramount for smooth L-Ts.  

You will now see that the foot is in mid-stance while the free leg swings through, as the isometric force transfer phase transitions into the concentric force unloading phase for takeoff. There isn’t much here to focus on, apart from making sure that the athlete finishes the movement right off the toe.

Keys: Use footwork tiers to teach landing mechanics. Using a softer surface at first (like grass) enables more of a feel. Use multiple landings to build a cyclical pattern of movements to build sensations.

What to Consider for Different L-Ts

Bilateral L-T: The synchronized coordination of both limbs allows for better control. Due to most of the load being distributed through the hips, the athlete can then trust the wide landing base. Incoming velocities for bilateral landings are unlikely to be fast, so prompt a full-foot landing that rolls through the foot and off the toes, which can support the maintenance of speed. 

Split-stance L-T: The front leg will receive a high percentage of the loading upon landing, while the back leg provides a stability anchor to facilitate better posture. The front leg should land with a full foot to deal with the load, with the back leg supported on the ball of the foot.

Note: Do not get these mixed with unilateral movements—there is often confusion with the classification of split-stance movements such as Bulgarian Split Squats as unilateral. They are not truly unilateral, and the posterior leg can offer support that single-leg movements have to create themselves.

Unilateral L-T: Unilateral landings require a much faster stabilization due to the reduction in the size of the contact base point for landings and incoming velocities. So, with bigger movements such as Ping hops, there is a required aggressive ground strike with the landing limb. If the athlete lacks the confidence to whip the foot into the ground, the likelihood is a passive landing and an insufficient kinetic energy production through the SEC.

Keys: Bilateral—if movements look unnatural, keep the focus on hip extension. Split stance—posture-driven, balance between the front and back, land simultaneously. Unilateral—keep things moving cyclically with the landing leg, focus on maintaining a set velocity. Unilateral L-T may be considered harder, but you should introduce both together. 

Video 2. Landing mechanics: bilateral and unilateral comparison

“What comes before will predict the future of the movement.”

A major factor for a strong L-T is the preceding action, and what’s happening on a neuromuscular level moments before landing. There are some valuable discoveries in studies (Mcbride, 2008) that have found athletes who produce greater performance outcomes in plyometrics activate soft tissue and pre-anticipate the ground long before less-experienced athletes. This shows us that more experienced performers prime themselves to actively strike the ground, and this is more apparent in highly dynamic movements such as depth jumps and hops. Worryingly, other studies are also finding that highly dynamic movements aren’t as intense as other movements like CMJs for some athletes.

If research provides us with evidence to show that athletes without a developmental background can’t utilize these bigger movements, then why are we using them, asks @McInnesWatson. Share on X

When you dig deeper, the athletes used in the studies have little-to-no real experience with dynamic training. This may suggest that in order for us to use certain movements to our advantage, we must teach athletes neuromuscular and proprioceptive control before progressing to more dynamic movements. If research provides us with evidence to show that athletes without a developmental background cannot utilize these bigger movements, then why are we using them?

Our question, as coaches, is how to progress an inexperienced athlete who is tentative in dealing with the high GRFs and lightning-quick GCTs to an athlete who strikes the ground with intent? And one who sequences this all in less than the blink of an eye?

Intent Means Well but Doesn’t Always Deliver

In recent years, many other coaches and I have seen the degradation of bounding (defined as a stride variation where R-L pattern emphasizes air time, vertical or horizontal, often in continuous rhythm). The S&C community seems to have changed the movement’s grace and natural beauty derived from the horizontal jumps. On a daily basis, I spot the stamping motion of concentrically focused bounds. This immediately confirms to me that an athlete has avoided many developmental stages of learning locomotive plyos and has gone straight to force-expressive bounds. This is just a small part of a whole array of plyos that are being forced onto athletes at the wrong stage of development and/or coached incorrectly.

We must recognize that the lower extremities (below knee) are the drivers of our first contact with the ground. Now, whether you want to see this as a ground-up or hip-down approach is up for discussion, but pre-anticipation of the ground cannot be solely driven from the hip in a stamping motion. Many coaches teach movements like bounding as a piston action from hip flexion to extension. They are not considering the finer details of how precise the foot and ankle need to be to deal with multiple times bodyweight in <0.25 secs.

Video 3. Concentric-focused bounds (Note: This video was created for learning purposes and is not the way I typically bound!)

Keys: Tough to create air time if the movement is cyclical, hard to recover foot = no time to prepare for landings. L-T won’t sound crisp and will feel flat and heavy-footed.

Note: You will find that athletes with a developmental background in plyos will perceive effort for even the most intense plyo as easier than beginners do. The unloading phase of a locomotive plyo gives a brief moment for the body to reset, rather than a continuation of held tension.

Resolutions to Building Better L-T Patterns

A large part of learning locomotive plyos on a developmental spectrum is the load-unload cycles we run through as we land and then become airborne. When we can recognize that the unload and airborne phase is equally as important as the loading and grounded phase, then locomotive plyos will become much easier to understand.

When we can recognize that the unload and airborne phase is equally as important as the loading and grounding phase, then locomotive plyos will become much easier to understand. Share on X

The lighter tiers, Footwork and Medium, feed into our ability to unload effectively and then prepare better for the next landing. We can all spot a tense sprinter or player, and we are quick to remedy these issues, but there are only a few who can spot an athlete unable to unload during a plyometric sequence. So the footwork and medium tiers teach timing and rhythm of force expression and preparation. Without this, an athlete cannot utilize the SEC effectively to express force through the L-T.

Locomotive plyos have the ability to feed the learning process of landings and takeoffs with their multiple variations, magnitudes, amplitudes, speeds, planes of movement, and forces.

Keys: All bounding L-T mechanics will be very similar. All bounds are about creating a form of air time. This regulates landing forces, and getting the landing right under the hip will initiate a stretch-reflex which gives a great pop to the movement.

Video 4. Variations to bounding

The learning that comes from a variation of locomotive plyometrics can provide proprioceptive and neuromuscular control responses. They help drive better pre-anticipative activation methods for muscles moments before landing. This runs in parallel with the adaptations that come at a tendinomuscular level, for dealing with eccentric loading and creating greater landing stiffness, etc. The CNS and proprioceptive feedback receptors begin to reprogram their anticipative skills for judging incoming velocities, falling heights, displacement of the CoM, the direction of incoming momentum, and the subsequent direction the athlete then needs to travel.

With all of this reprogramming and greater adapted tissues, the athlete then has the ability to produce a specific outcome need, like height, velocity, and direction of motion. This can prove to be important with in-game variable needs that may arise. The individual must be prepared well enough to produce what their body requires at moments of competitiveness. And who knows what our bodies will do to win!

Improve, Don’t Ignore, Your Athlete’s L-T Mechanics

The takeaway from this article should not drive you to neglect some of your plyometric practices, but inspire you to focus your coaching practices toward improving your athlete’s L-T mechanics. Our common denominator should always be how the L-T influences, and is influenced by, movement. If your athlete does struggle with L-T mechanics, then reduce your volume of ping work and bring them back to more footwork and medium tiers.

Our common denominator should always be how the Landing to Takeoff influences, and is influenced by, movement, says @McInnesWatson. Share on X

Keep an eye on how they move when they’re airborne, as this, too, could influence their L-T. Also, adding a small footwork and medium tier of plyos to your warm-up or activation series can drive proprioceptive and neuromuscular learning at a small price, but great effect, for your athlete’s programs.

Just remember that locomotive plyometrics should be dynamic and graceful!

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

McBride, J. M., McCaulley, G. O., and Cormie, P. “Influence of pre-activity and eccentric muscle activity on concentric performance during vertical jumping.” The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research. 2008; 22(3):750–757.