By Chris Chapman, Strength and Conditioning Coach, Canadian Sport Institute Ontario

The exponential rate of technological advancement has created new solutions to many everyday problems. Exercise professionals and strength coaches have benefited from this, with novel tools constantly hitting the market aimed at enhancing service delivery. However, using technology just because it exists isn’t always justified; it can involve countless hours of training and data mining, including the many headaches and frustrations when it doesn’t work properly or breaks down. In order for me to implement new technology is must allow me to do at least one, if not all, of the following:

1. Something I was unable to do before;
2. Be a more effective coach;
3. Be a more efficient coach;
4. Provide value added to the athlete;
5. Provide a return on investment (time and money).

Linear Position Transducers

The introduction of linear position transducers (LPTs) into the weight room opened the door to a new world of velocity-based training (VBT). Exercise is typically monitored using volume and intensity, with the latter being measured using a percentage of the maximum weight lifted for one repetition (%1RM). In the business of increasing human physical performance, however, strength is only part of the equation. How fast someone moves (velocity) and how much work they can do per unit time (power) are critical factors that can dictate who the better performer is. For athletes, this translates into wins and losses. For athletic occupations such as firefighters, police, and military, wins and losses can equate to life and death or safety versus injury.

While most strength coaches have known the value of adding a speed component to training for some time, it had typically been done without much guidance. Confidence had to be given to the verbal cue “move the load as fast as you can” for a prescribed number of repetitions. Adding in the use of a textbook load anywhere from 30-65% of 1RM (depending on the textbook of choice) was considered power training. With the implementation of LPTs came the ability to measure velocity and power during a strength training session without the need for advanced motion analysis techniques.

Weight Room Velocity and Power

The most common use of this technology is through an entry/exit testing battery. That is typically done between training phases or at designated times throughout the macrocycle. Using key indicator lifts with a speed component (e.g., jump squat or explosive bench press), velocity and power can be measured to assess the results of the preceding training block or intervention. Incremental loads can be used (e.g., 10%, 25%, 50%, 75%, of bodyweight or 1RM), and an individual velocity or power profile can be created. By using the load at which maximum power is generated, or the maximum velocity achieved for a given load, one is now able to periodize and prescribe using percentages of these values in a similar way to the classic measure of intensity (%1RM).

Intervention

Another use for this technology in the weight room is to ensure the target quality of choice is being trained. Once a maximum power or velocity value is determined, a threshold value can be set. Usually, this is set around 80-90% of the maximum achieved. When consecutive repetitions drop below this number the set or exercise is considered finished, as it would indicate, the athlete is no longer training in a range close to the desired quality. Instead of prescribing an arbitrary amount of repetitions, the individual athlete’s current performance state is dictating how many repetitions are performed. In one workout it might be five repetitions, and in the next workout with the same load it might be ten repetitions. Known as autoregulation, it allows for intra- and inter-individual variation within a session, microcycle or mesocycle. For highly technical movements such as Olympic lifts, this could provide insight into fatigue and quality of work. This is particularly useful because PUSH can detect a drop in velocity drop before the coach can detect a breakdown in technique. This data can help coaches make more informed decisions. In this case I might choose to increase the rest time, lower the load, or proceed to the next exercise.

Using LPTs to deliver VBT checked-off points 1, 2 and 4 on my list above, so adopting their use was a no-brainer for me. However, significant limitations still permeated with points 3 and 5. I still had to create and manage a database in a spreadsheet, manually inputting numbers and investing time into data analysis and presentation. While I have time allocated for this, not all strength coaches do, especially those operating in a fee-for-service model. On top of that, the largest barrier preventing mainstream usage was the price as most LPTs cost thousands of dollars for a single unit. That limited their use to resource-heavy organizations such as professional sport teams, collegiate institutions, and national training centers. It was hard for the everyday exercise professionals to justify the purchase of such equipment as the return on investment from time and cost standpoint clearly wasn’t there.

Wearable Technology

Enter PUSH, a new wearable technology consisting of an accelerometer and gyroscope packed into a small armband. While this technology has been around and used in the weight room before, PUSH is the first device I have come across that address all five of my above-listed requirements. The biggest draw to PUSH in my opinion is the price point. At less than $200 per unit, any athlete or coach can be outfitted with a device for the price of a good pair of training shoes. The cost to outfit the entire team is less than one LPT. Cost is no longer the barrier preventing widespread adoption of this technology, creating a return on investment through points 1-4.

Weight Room Data Management

Addressing point 3, PUSH’s front end interface and data management is easy to use and efficient. It is clear they have invested considerable resources into the software. The back end is doing quite a bit of work under the hood, while the interface feels clean, simple and user-friendly. For me, this was the breaking point on previous accelerometer based devices that have been on the market. They were either too cumbersome from a software standpoint or too limited in what they could do from a hardware standpoint. As a strength coach who feels like he lives in Microsoft excel, I am always searching for a software solution to programming and monitoring. PUSH’s portal and software are potentially the solutions I have been looking to collect weight room data.

Extensible Library

No technology is without its limitations. Right now, the limitation with PUSH is the volume of exercises in their library. However they have created a unique solution around this by adding a manual mode where you can track an exercise that isn’t in the library. Their engineers work their magic and can add it to the library if there is enough demand for it. That means the library will continue to grow as the users generate interest. A library of current supported exercises is available here.

Team Workflow

The part I like most about PUSH is that the hardware is attached to the athlete and not the equipment. That enhances the workflow and ease of use; it is set and go for the entire session. It doesn’t require adjusting the hardware setup for each exercise. For those in more of a personal training setting and working with clients one-on-one, a single unit would suffice as you could switch profiles in between sessions and track your metrics for the entire day. For team settings, their price point allows each athlete to have their own band, allowing me to collect metrics more efficiently without the need for swapping units or changing profiles mid-session. The reporting side is very user-friendly, and the graphics are easily understood by athletes and coaches alike.

Regardless of a strength coach’s level of engagement with the current state of technology, velocity based training is a must for anyone trying to increase human athletic performance. Having a tool such as PUSH can increase the effectiveness and add value to this method of training. Now that this technology has become accessible and affordable, I suggest that any exercise professional looking enhance their programming and monitoring consider adding it to their toolbox.

Please share this article so others may benefit.

By Chris Korfist

I thought I knew all of the butt exercises. I bought the books and tried the exercises. But, what I found interesting is that sometimes athletes wouldn’t feel it in the butt. I couldn’t figure that out for the life of me. It is a butt exercise, but they don’t feel it in the right place. In my quest for this Holy Grail in training for speed, I started to learn about compensation patterns or the body using alternative muscles because the one that is supposed to do the work is not. So, if the glute does not extend the hip when it is supposed to, the hamstring or the spinal erectors will do its job. Why does this happen? It could be lots of reasons, ranging from stress, injury, inflammation, lack of opposing muscle inhibiting the drive of the opposite muscle or even lack of neural drive. In reality, no one knows.

But being the questing knight that I am, I needed to learn all I could. Dan Fichter and I were on a similar path. We both realized that this scenario existed but needed to learn how to fix it. Dan found a Cape Town, South African “Physio” who seemed to have a solution to our problem. Dan decided to fly out London, England to see what Douglas Heel had to say about our situation. I get a phone call from Dan from London. He is blown away by Douglas’ presentation. Through some negotiations, we convince Douglas to come to Chicago to present on his work. On a warm June day in Prairie Medical offices, Douglas rocked our world. What Douglas says takes the glute question back a couple of steps. He is concerned with hip flexion. He wants to know what muscle causes hip flexion. It can be the psoas, quad, calf or opposite arm. Hence, he shows us a chain of compensation patterns. Ideally, the psoas is the hip flexor if it doesn’t do its job, the quad or calf or opposite arm will do the job. And, if the psoas is not doing its job, reciprocally, the glute usually won’t be doing its job in hip extension. Again, it could be a variety of muscles to extend the hip as well—hamstrings, calves, quads, erectors or arms. What Douglas shows is how to disrupt the current recruitment and reset it to the proper recruitment pattern.

What we learned was how to determine what was an athlete’s main driver. And what was interesting was that when someone had a compensation pattern in their movement you could see it. So an athlete who was an arm driver would have an over-exaggeration in their arm swing, in their sprint or their timing. They would be off in their vertical jump where the arms were moving before their legs, therefore losing power and height on their jump. So, when a coach is telling their athlete to lift their knees higher, it may be impossible. The psoas is responsible for bringing the knee above a right angle between torso and thigh, and their psoas may not be the main mover. If a quad is the main mover, the quad can only get the knee so high because the psoas is not there to finish the movement. If an athlete is an arm driver, the knee can only go so high because the arms are synchronized. The arm can only go so high before the other arm is going to come through (this is why I am not a big fan of bounding, the timing is very different from sprinting). From the extension viewpoint, an arched back at toe-off is an athlete who is extending through spinal erectors.

When we learned to break up the pattern, we had athletes who felt completely different when they got up to move around. The immediate impact was on flexibility. Some people improved by as much as 30 percent in their hamstring range of motion. The reason being for this is when the brain senses that the body is in line, and the proper muscles are doing their respective job, it will let the other muscles go. If the glute is doing its job as a hip extender, the hamstring can relax and will lengthen. It reminds me of a coach who saw other teams being very flexible and tried to make flexibility a priority on his team and spent a fair amount of time stretching daily. His athletes’ bodies may not have been recruiting their muscles optimally, and they were tightening neurologically. The extra stretching may have been causing more damage than helping.

When the athlete tries out the new recruitment pattern, they feel light and springy. It is always fun to watch older ex-athletes go out and run and feel like they are young again. It is even better when competing athletes go and run or jump. A completely different athlete emerges. Timing patterns are back to normal, and they feel fast. And in most cases they are. We have set up timers and had athletes run a few flies. Douglas activated them, and they ran PR’s. We even tried it at an Indoor conference meet and the runner ran one of the fastest 800m runs in the state. A PR by 3 seconds. When they jump, they feel like they are flying. In some cases, we have measured a 2 inch increase in their vertical, on a pad. Why does this work? It works because the brain recognizes the correct pattern and will give power to the proper muscles. Don’t agree with that statement? Drop a weight on your toe and see how much power your brain will give your leg of the smashed toe. Think it is carnival tricks. Most people think that until they feel the difference after they go through an “activation”. Some people will discount it but have never experienced it.

How does this carry over to best glute exercises? To get the most out of your biggest muscle, it needs to be firing on all cylinders. And this is the “trick” to get it to go. When your brain learns that it can use all of the muscle, it will. This brings me to my first two exercises. Both of these go along with the activation stuff. The first movement is what we call a butt bungee. There is an actual butt bungee for sale on Douglas’ site. I usually have some, but they seem to grow legs when we take them to track meets. So, we take a big jump stretch rubber band and anchor it to something, like a pole and put the band around your waist. This is the important part; when you walk away from the pole and the slack tightens, you should feel your glutes tighten slightly. If you feel it in a different muscle, quads, etc., slightly move the band to a position where you feel the butt tighten. The glutes are now the driver. With feet square, reach your butt back as far as you can. You can bend knees slightly, but don’t squat. From the side, you should look like you are in a piked position. From here, drive your hips forward. You have now completed a hip thrust. The glutes should have been the main driver. This is mostly what it does. Complete about 10 of them and step out of the band. The athlete should feel like he is walking effortlessly. The glutes are now the driver. For naysayers, we have tried to have people complete the exercise when their glutes are deactivated and have found they don’t have the same feeling when they walk out of the band and their body moves differently as well. The exercise is for feel not how much you can do. We will get to power later. This is just the beginning of this glute thrust. We mix in breathing, voice and vision to see how to get the most out of the thrust. We got Stanford Women’s basketball guard Toni Kokenis to learn to use her voice with her glutes, and it changed her game. She held the streak for free throw percentage in NCAA most of the season a couple of years ago.

Figure 1: Starting position of the butt bungee. Band is on the proper point on the waist. From there push your butt back and drive it forward.

Figure 2: Midway point for butt bungee. Drive hips forward from this point.

Figure 3: Standing psoas/glute exercise. Take deep diaphramatic breaths in this position.

Single Leg Stand

We also do a single leg stand. With the butt bungee on the waist, the athlete will stand on one leg and hold their knee above parallel and hold it for 10-15 seconds. Now we are working the glute of the leg on the ground, which is when you really need it and the psoas of the opposite leg. We are teaching them to work together. An advanced exercise is to do this on the exxentrix kbox. We use the smallest plate possible and work the swing leg thigh from parallel and up- pure psoas. The funny thing is that everyone complains about the burn in the glute of the leg on the ground. (I think this is one of the missing links in training sprinters, the timing of the exercises). There is some cool stuff about the psoas and sprinting. A TV show in Japan did a program comparing Asafa Powell and their national champ to see the difference between the two. Japanese sprinter was much stronger in his traditional lifts. They did a cross-sectional MRI to see muscle differences. The Japanese sprinter had bigger muscles except for the psoas. Powell’s was twice the size. Maybe that is why fast athletes look like they have tennis balls for abs. It is not the size of the rectus but the size of the psoas pushing out the rectus. By the way, Douglas will be in Chicago Feb 7-8 for a Level 1 seminar and a Level 2 the following weekend. To read about the experience, read Tony Holler’s article “You Only Know What You Know”.

You can contact me for info, korfist1@comcast.net.

Figure 4: Cross sectional MRI showing muscle differences.

Bungee Exercises

So, that is my basis for my glute development. From there, we go on to other exercises. We start with a bungee on all exercises until they can feel the glute kick, and we wean them off the bungee. I do usually start with the Bret Contreras hip extension. I think that is a great exercise for general development. But, I have not seen a correlation between sprinting and strength in that exercise for faster runners. I have seen a correlation for athletes who are not fast and are weak in the exercise. Their improvement in sprinting coincides with strengthening in the exercise, to a certain point. I try to get people to 500lbs on my contraption. It is not a pure bar push like Bret does. Mine is a home-made machine/rig using straps from Iron mind. I connect the strap between two bars on my Hammer-strength machine and wedge their body under the strap and Glute Bridge up. His books are worth buying. (I know I keep recommending them. I have no stake in the purchase of them. I emailed him once, and that is the extent of my connection.)

The one from his book that there is a connection between fast sprinters and strength in the movement is a 45-degree hyperextension. The trick to teaching the movement is to think that it is a hip thrust and push your hips into the pad to extend the torso. If you feel back, you have extended too far. My best cue is to think of moving your belly button off the pad, so the extension comes from a much lower point. This is the same for the regular parallel position which I also like. We have variations on this as well, straight legs, bent legs, single leg, toes out and toes in for some adductor Magnus. Once you get it, start adding weight. Frans Bosch thought that a powerful athlete should be able to do 2 ½ times his body weight with a single leg. All of my 10.5-10.8 guys could do a ton of weight on these exercises.

Figure 5: Anna Sloan is one of the top girl’s sprinters in the state of Illinois. Here she is executing the 45-degree extension with 185lbs. She weighs far less than that. She also sports 28.5 inch vertical.

Figure 6: Anna at the top of the extension.

Figure 7: Maddy Jamrozek is at the top portion of the back extension. We make sure we feel it in the glutes. She is one of the top returning middle distance runners in Illinois. 75lb kettlebell with one leg. She has a 27 in vertical.

Single Leg Squat

Another staple is the single leg squat. If you read my article, My Love Affair with the Single Leg Squat, you understand why it is in this list. Again, depth isn’t the issue; it is about where you feel it the most in the glute. I have found that the cue of someone pulling the shin forward and hips back tends to get the most out of the glute. I like to hang the weight rather than hold on, so we don’t teach the body to drive from hands but through the glute. We do isometrics, iso and explode, fast, heavy and concentrically from the floor. For block work, sink into a squat and then tilt the torso forward for some extreme stuff. Of course, the kbox is incredible when it comes to a single leg split squat.

Step Up

I am also a step up fan. But I like the version from the Scandinavian sprint coach which I saw floating around. It is a mix of a hip thrust and step up. I have a Jumper Plus from www.docssports.net. I have added height to the back end. I have a box under the harness. We push butt back and jack-knife into the step up. We do it with bands, weight and into jumps.

Figure 8: Starting point of a step up. Hips are back and foot is on the box.

Figure 9: Here is the finishing point with swing leg knee up and hips driven forward.

Figure 10: Finishing point for step up.

Kickbacks

Kickbacks are also a staple. I got this idea from the U of I coach’s poster that I mentioned in my previous article. He did it on an old Universal machine with the athlete’s shoulder against the dip bar. I use my Shuttle MVP. Kneel down on the sled and kick into the pad. The athlete will launch their body forward, and when they land again, they kick again. Want a great butt workout that will help your sprint, this is it. You can weight this down big time on the Shuttle MVP as well. Talk about developing vertical forces when sprinting. That is the answer. Want to work on ground reaction force and time; here it is in a completely controlled environment. For different force, we will also do this standing up and shoulder harnesses on with the hammer strength deadlift machine with light and heavy weight. Now, the athlete can add bringing the knee through and get up on their toe. And of course, my favorite, the kbox. As a side note, I do measure all of our lifts with my micromuscle lab. I have found, when you measure it, they go harder. Unfortunately, my encoder broke last week, and Ergotest has not responded to my emails for help. I am hoping Carl Valle can help me find a new machine.

Living in Chicago, we have to make the most of our time running outside. Some years, there are not many good days to perform great sprint workouts, which in my opinion, is why Southern/Texas schools have faster times. They get many more good training days. It may be May, but May can sometimes be 40 degrees with winter coats or 30 mile an hour winds that swirl. There is a reason they call it the Windy City and no to the people in New York; we don’t need to hold hands to cross the street (someone asked me that once). Even now, as I am typing in November, it is snowing and will be 14 degrees tonight. We need to make the most out of our indoor time. Instead of weighing your body down with huge weights and feeling beat up for the next three days, try these exercises and feel great, like you can fly.

Please share so others may benefit.

By Craig Pickering

Athletes can be notoriously fastidious regarding their nutrition around training. They can go to great lengths to ensure that they are consuming the right quantities of each macronutrient, micronutrients, fluid, and supplements. But all those excellent nutritional habits might be for nothing if nutritional practices on competition day are poor. In this article, I examine some common mistakes that athletes might be making regarding their nutrition on the day of their competition, and provide some practical tips to consider making.

Trying New Things

Race day is not the time to try something new. At competitions on the professional circuit, it is reasonably common to be provided with sports drinks or food to try. The problem here is that you have no idea how your body will react to something. The last thing you want is to eat a different type of food that might cause you stomach upset. You’re already going to be nervous, which can cause stomach problems by itself, without adding something that can further affect your stomach.

I’ve fallen foul of this myself. At the World Championships in 2011, the athlete’s village had an unlimited supply of Mountain Dew. We don’t have Mountain Dew here in the UK (we have a slightly different version that is marketed as a high caffeine sports drink), and so I had no idea that it contained caffeine. My caffeine strategy for race day was to attempt to abstain from caffeine for a few days prior – I now know this is not necessary – in an attempt to improve my caffeine sensitivity. By drinking as much of this novel and untested drink I could get my hands on, I was undermining my caffeine strategy.

Not Having A Well-Practiced Plan

Related to #1 is the fact that your nutrition in the days up to and of your competition should be well planned and practiced. You shouldn’t be taking anything that you haven’t practiced in training first. If you’re using caffeine, how much do you need? At what time should you be consuming this caffeine? How much caffeine can you tolerate before the negative effects start to show? How much fluid do you need? When should you eat? How much should you eat? What should you eat? In the case of multiple rounds, what are you doing for recovery? The answers to all of these questions should be planned and practiced well in advance.

When I competed at the 2008 Olympics, my race-day nutrition was the culmination of everything that I had learned up to that point. In 2007, I had been refining my nutrition plan all season. At the end of that year, I evaluated everything that I had done, made some changes, and then put into place my plan for the Olympics. At every competition that year, I practiced my plan, so that it would become second nature. Any problems that came up, I could solve them ahead of what would be the biggest race day of my life. On the actual day of my race, everything was in place to ensure that my nutrition was optimal for the first round, my recovery between rounds, and then my pre-race nutrition for my quarter final.

Poor Preparation

When getting your nutrition strategy in place for competition, it’s important not to leave anything to chance. Where reasonable, I used to take my pre-race supplements to competitions. That prevented me from having to rely on them being provided, and also ensured I was in complete control of the dosage. I used to pack my caffeine drinks in my hold luggage for plane journeys, so I knew they would get there safely. I also used to pack my own carbohydrate and protein bars and protein powder in case the protein sources at the hotel were not up to standard (sometimes they weren’t there at all!). Some athletes also pack their food, such as porridge that they can have in place of the hotels breakfast. All of this ensures you can stick to a plan that you know works, and can reduce the stress of having to find the “right” food at your competition venue.

It can be a good idea to pack some comfort foods too, to make you feel a bit more relaxed. I packed a tub of hot chocolate that I could have the night before (and sometimes during the day of) races, just to help remove some of the tension, and enable me to relax and feel a bit more at home.

As an additional point, if you find nerves make you go to the toilet a lot, it can be a good idea to make sure you’ve packed your own toilet paper. Never rely on the venue for this and pack alcohol hand gel, just in case.

Using The Wrong Amount Of Caffeine

Caffeine is one of the most studied ergogenic aids within sport. For endurance exercise, the evidence is pretty clear; it improves performance (Graham 2001). However, the results for high-intensity performance are slightly less clear. The main reason for this is that the caffeine appears to affect type I (slow twitch) fibers to a much larger degree than type II (fast twitch) fiber (Jacobson et al. 1992). There is some evidence that while caffeine may not directly improve one-off high-intensity performance, it might do so indirectly by decreasing feelings of fatigue, as well as increasing adrenaline secretion. Caffeine also acts as a pain blocker and can decrease rating of perceived exertion in maximal performance (Davis & Green 2009). Williams (1991) also found that caffeine ingestion improved reaction time, which is obviously of interest to sprinters.

The problem with caffeine is that different people have different levels of sensitivity to it. What works for one person might be too much, or too little, for another. From the literature, a dose of between 3-9mg/kg of caffeine appears to offer the most benefits. That is a wide range! Personally, I found that once I went higher than 3mg/kg of caffeine, I started to get shaky and feel ill. For an 85kg athlete like myself, this equates to just over 250mg of total caffeine. I split this caffeine dose across two caffeinated sports drinks, energy gel, and an energy bar.

Timing of caffeine intake is also important. Peak plasma concentrations are reached about 1 hour after taking caffeine (Graham 2001), and so most people take their caffeine about 60 minutes pre-race. I used to taper my caffeine intake in 50-80mg intervals, taking my first dose 80 minutes pre-race, and my last dose 45 minutes before.

Considering all the research on caffeine, provided your sport and governing body allow it, you should probably be taking it on race day – so long as you can tolerate it. You should practice the timing and dose of your intake in training, to see what works best for you.

Eating Too Much

This problem might be unique to me, but competition day makes me hungry! I assume it’s mostly down to the nerves (some people have the opposite problem), but I am always hungry. The problem here is that when you are competing at a reasonably decent level, you tend to stay in hotels before you compete. These hotels tend to be of good quality, and they tend to provide a buffet for the athletes. This buffet can increase the chances of overeating because it is packed with good food.

Overeating on competition day is potentially a problem for a number of reasons. The first is that by having a large volume of food in your stomach, you are likely to feel bloated and uncomfortable – not exactly how you want to be feeling come race day. In addition to this, having a full stomach can cause gastrointestinal distress (remember, you are already nervous and so likely to have a dodgy stomach anyway), and also increases the time for gastric emptying of important nutrients, as well as water. In weight dependent sports, a huge binge will make you heavier, and slow you down.

Instead, as per #2, have a well-practiced plan. If you know the types of things that you can eat without feeling bloated, go for that. I used to eat my last main meal at least 4 hours pre-race so that I wouldn’t feel bloated and heavy. If I were then hungry, I would then snack on carb/protein bars, which I knew didn’t cause GI distress, or make me feel uncomfortable. I also found that if I ate white bread, white rice, poultry, as opposed to whole grains and red meats, these would clear my stomach quicker, and so make me feel a bit more comfortable.

Eating Too Little

So, you don’t want to eat too much, but you also don’t want to eat too little. It’s well established that you need to ensure your energy stores are topped up, especially if you have multiple races in a day. Davis et al. (1999) found that carbohydrate intake was important in reducing fatigue. It’s also important to ensure that you consume sufficient protein around your competition. There is some evidence from both Meeusen et al. (2006) and Davis et al. (2000) that protein intake may have a role to play in limiting central nervous fatigue.

From my experiences, making sure that you are in a well-fed state before your competition helps your mood. Being tired and hungry doesn’t put you in a good state of mind to perform, whilst feeling content and happy can help.

I’m well aware that some people get so nervous that they feel like they can’t eat, and that’s fine. It might be an option to consume a drink that is quite high in calories, so at least you are getting something. Alternatively, experiment with foods that you feel you can manage, and then have those on race day instead.

Poor Fluid Balance

Everyone knows that being severely dehydrated can affect your performance. It can cause discomfort, overheating and a decrease in plasma volume. As I mentioned earlier, being uncomfortable on race day is not conducive to good performance, and so you want to avoid this as much as possible.

However, the opposite is also true; it’s possible to consume too much water. That can lead to a condition caused hyponatremia (too little sodium). Although it is mostly limited to endurance athletes (Murray & Eichner 2004), it can still have an effect in speed-power athletes. The main cause is drinking too much water. This is a real risk. Athletes, keen to ensure they aren’t too dehydrated, can over consume water. I’ve certainly done this myself – back in 2007 I would quite comfortably consume 2L in the 90 minutes before my race, as well as high levels of liquid in the days leading up to my race. Clear urine was an obsession, and I was paranoid about getting cramps. However, the result is that I was over hydrating myself, which can cause cramps, the very thing I was trying to avoid. After I learned the error of my ways, I instead chose a more conservative hydration strategy, comprised of about 1L of liquid in the 120 minutes pre-race. Other side effects of consuming large volumes of water include needing to pee a lot (which nerves increase) and also the addition of extra weight. The 2L of liquid I was consuming would have been adding about 2kg to my weight, as well as being slightly uncomfortable in my stomach.

The advice regarding hydration is to drink for thirst, not for a pre-determined target. For speed-power events, anecdotally I can tell you that many elite athletes try to compete in a slightly under-hydrated state as it makes them lighter, improving their power-to-weight ratio. If you’re going to try this, trial it in training first, and properly rehydrate afterwards.

Finally, a little tip for you: Just before your race, rinse your mouth out with a carbohydrate drink, and then spit it out. It has been shown to improve performance in one-hour time trials (Carter et al. 2004). Whilst most people reading this will be performing for a much shorter period, it may well have some carryover into speed events, potentially by increasing the feeling of having energy within the brain.

Demanding Perfection

Despite what I have said in the previous points, sometimes things can’t be perfect. On competition day, you are already going to be in a state of high stress. You want to run well, and you’re nervous, so it’s understandable. Striving to make things perfect can be an additional source of stress. Sometimes you just have to make do. Sometimes you have to make sub-optimal food choices, and that’s OK.

Take Usain Bolt for example. He chose to eat chicken nuggets from McDonald’s at the Olympic Games. On the surface, this looks like a poor food choice. However, in this situation, Bolt is picking something he knows he likes, and he knows is safe. It’s also something he likes, so is likely to make him happy. Instead of stressing out about what to eat, he has just made a simple choice that hasn’t required much mental capacity and deliberation.

Remember, it is (almost) always better to eat something than nothing, no matter how bad. When travelling before a race, I have been stuck in an airport waiting for a flight. Rather than looking for my usual pre-race meal, which would have been almost impossible in an airport, I just ate what was easiest to find, which happened to be two burgers. That was much better than the other option, which was to eat nothing, and I still raced well the next day.

It’s also important to be flexible within your nutrition strategy. You have to realistic and understand that the meal you have at home pre-race may well not be available at the hotel. You’re going to have to not eat your normal food, and so it is vital not get stressed out by this.

Even with all the best preparation in the world, sometimes things outside of your control can have an impact on your nutritional strategy. Competing in Stuttgart Indoor Grand Prix in 2011, I had taken all my caffeine at my pre-planned points, when my race was delayed by 45 minutes. When I heard this, I had just finished my warm up and was heading to the call room. Instead of panicking and thinking that everything was wasted, I just chilled out for 15 minutes, topped up my caffeine, did a few strides, and subsequently ended up with my fastest time of the year.

Overview

So, to conclude, my key tips to remember for a good competition day nutrition program would be:

1. Stick to what you know.
2. Continually practice and refine.
3. Take your supplements, and where appropriate, drinks and food.
4. Practice your caffeine strategy and utilize it on race day.
5. Eat the right amount of food.
6. Drink the right amount of liquid.
7. Be flexible – it doesn’t always have to be perfect!

Please share this article so others may benefit.

References

Carter, J., Jeukendrup, A. & Jones, D. (2004) The effect of carbohydrate mouth rinse on 1-h cycle time trial performance. Medicine and Science in Sport and Exercise 36(12) 2107-2111.

Davis, M., Alderson, N. & Welsh, R. (2000) Serotonin and central nervous system fatigue: nutritional considerations. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 72(2) 573-578

Davis, J. & Green, M. (2009) Caffeine and anaerobic performance. Sports Medicine 39(14) 813-832.

Davis, J., Welsh, R., De Volve, K. & Alderson, N. (1999) Effects of branch chain amino acids and carbohydrate on fatigue during intermittent, high-intensity running. International Journal of Sports Medicine 20(5) 309-314.

Graham, T. (2001) Caffeine and exercise – metabolism, endurance and performance. Sports Medicine 31(11) 785-807.

Jacobson, B., Weber, M., Claypool, L. & Hunt, E. (1992) Effect of caffeine on maximal strength and power in elite male athletes. British Journal Sports Medicine 26(4).

Meeusen, R., Watson, R. & Dvorak, J (2006) The brain and fatigue: new opportunities for nutritional interventions. Journal of Sports Sciences 24(7)

Murray, B. & Eichner, R. (2004) Hyponatremia of exercise. Current Sports Medicine Reports 3(3) 117-118

Williams, J. (1991) Caffeine, neuromuscular function and high-intensity exercise performance. Journal of Sports Medicine and Physical Fitness 31(3) 481-9

By Craig Pickering

The short answer to this question is an emphatic yes. But that wouldn’t be much of an article, so I probably should expand on that emphatic yes a little bit.

Recently I have been holding some workshops on sprint mechanics for a few groups of people, ranging from strength and conditioning professionals to decent level junior sprinters and Crossfit athletes. All of the seminars were enjoyable and led to some interesting questions and things for me to think about. The Crossfit athletes in particular had some good questions and points to make. Crossfit prides itself on developing an individual’s all round fitness, which includes both speed and endurance. As a result, people taking part in Crossfit need to be proficient in both sprinting and distance running. One of the questions athletes ask me is whether there is an efficient way to combine the two, i.e. do aspects from one area cross over into the other? This got me thinking, so I decided to approach the question of improving distance running as I approach the question of improving sprint performance, which includes:

1. Identifying the biomechanical demands, from both the scientific literature, and data
2. Identifying what has to happen physiologically to allow the correct biomechanics to occur
3. Identify what training can meet these demands.

For sprinting, this is a reasonably simple procedure for me; I look at the data of world-class sprint performance to see what elites are doing. I look at the literature that describes and explains what elite sprinters are doing biomechanically (Ralph Mann’s book The Mechanics of Sprinting and Hurdling is excellent for this). I also looked at what the training literature says I should be doing in my training to achieve these biomechanical values. As an example, negative foot velocity at ground contact is important, with the data indicating that elite sprinter have a higher negative foot velocity than non-elite sprinters. Elite sprinters achieve this by being able to get their thigh higher, which allows a greater range of movement through which they can accelerate the foot. They also tend to have faster angular velocities at both the upper and lower leg, and so strength training should focus on working on this element.

What happens in an endurance race?

In an endurance race, the runners start from a stationary position, accelerate to their running speed, attempt to maintain that running speed for as long as possible, and then, depending on the distance run, possibly have a sprint finish. As the acceleration is such a small part of even the shortest distance event, it’s perhaps not worth dedicating much time to in terms of a training intervention. The sprint finish, again, is such a small part of the race that on the surface it seems like it might not be worth much effort. However, on the home straight races might be won or lost, or places gained or relinquished, so in my opinion it’s certainly a good idea to work on this part of distance performance (although this is probably more of use in track distance races, as opposed to marathons and ultra-marathons).

Copyright Philip Date

Instead, the majority of a distance race is spent running at or close to a constant pace. The faster this constant pace, or the longer the athlete can sustain it, the better the performance. Therefore, it is in the athlete’s best interests to a) run at a quicker constant speed or b) be more economical at their race pace, and therefore more resistant to fatigue. Saunders et al. (2004) found that for two athletes of the same VO2 max, the athlete with a better running economy (RE) was a minute faster over a 10km time trial. They also found that in elite endurance athletes, RE is a better indicator of performance than VO2 max. These results have been replicated in a number of studies, so seem to be scientifically valid.

How can running economy be improved?

There are plenty of factors that have been identified to contribute to improving running economy, both physiological and biomechanical. Not all of them can be improved by sprint training, but some of them certainly can. One of the key kinematic variables related to RE is a low vertical oscillation of body center of mass (Saunders et al. 2004). One way to prevent this vertical oscillation is to ensure that the support leg does not buckle on ground contact, and instead can maintain center of mass height throughout the stance phase. Buckalew et al. (1985) found that, as fatigue increases, the support leg knee bends more during ground contact, decreasing body center of mass (COM) height. A higher COM in turn can decrease stride length (Buckalew et al., Hauswirth et al., 1997). Decreased stride length reduces RE by requiring a greater number of strides to be taken to cover the same distance.

In a review article by Kyrolainen et al. (2000), the authors stated that as well the requirement to maintain a good body center of mass height the neuromuscular system also had to be functioning well. This was shown to be important as it allows for an improved stretch shortening cycle, which in turn increases joint stiffness at both the hip and ankle. Joint stiffness is important as it can store and release energy, requiring less chemical energy while running. Using less energy per step will improve RE.

How can sprint-based training help?

Sprint training could potentially help distance runners in a number of ways. Firstly, it provides a modality through which an athlete can directly work on the sprint finish. As the sprint finish occurs under high fatigue, and is in and of itself very fatiguing, good sprint mechanics in this phase are important. Being able to practice these through sprint training would be helpful.

Copyright Diego Barbieri

Sprint training also increases muscle fiber recruitment. Increased muscle fiber recruitment can help in a few ways, one of which is that it provides more fibers that can be recruited when running at a lower velocity. This improves RE by allowing the athlete to be able to produce slightly more force per step. Being able to recruit more fibers may also help “spread the load” of running, which in turn may help fatigue resistance.

Spending time on sprint-based drills could also be useful. A lot of the sprint drills I do as part of my warm up, and pass on in my workshops, are designed to improve posture, coordination and localized strength and strength endurance. All of these aspects will have a part to play in improving running economy and resistance to fatigue. Sprinting under the watchful eye of an experienced and knowledgeable coach will also enable you to put the technical aspects you have learnt from the drills into practice. Sprint based drills can also teach the athlete to keep the body center of mass high. Drills can also provide some very specific strength work for the support leg, ensuring that the COM does not collapse during the gait. This can help offset or delay the loss of center of mass height that is associated with fatigue. This loss of center of mass is associated with the loss of stride length, which in turn is associated with a decrease in running performance.

Sprinters have long been aware of the benefits of plyometric training, but recently distance runners have been using this training modality to a greater degree. There are a number of studies on distance athletes undertaking plyometric training. Turner et. al. (2003) showed that six weeks of plyometric training improved running economy in distance runners compared to a control group. A study by Saunders et. al. (2006) mirrored this result. The study showed that just three weekly plyometric sessions, lasting thirty minutes each, over a nine-week training block improved running economy at 18km/h in highly trained distance runners. Another group of well-trained competitive distance runners took part in a study by Ramirez-Campillo et al. (2014). After six weeks of explosive strength training, the plyometric group performed better at both a 2.4km run and a 20m sprint when compared to a control group who didn’t take part in the explosive strength training. An important point to note is that none of these studies recorded an improvement in VO2 max from the plyometric training. The improvements in RE were most likely down to an improvement in the stretch shortening cycle. Plyometric training also improves tendon stiffness, allowing the body to both store and utilize elastic energy more effectively. Interestingly, this can mean that the muscles can produce more force without requiring more energy, which has a knock-on effect to RE.

In conclusion, it should be apparent that some form of sprint training can be useful for distance runners. Sprint training could enable an improvement in running mechanics, musculo-tendon stiffness, muscle fiber and motor unit recruitment, and reduce fatigue-related loss of center of mass height. All of these factors can improve running economy, allowing the athlete to improve their performance. Sprint training can also improve the sprint finish for athletes, which could be the difference between winning and losing in a close race.

Please share this article so others may benefit.

References

Buckalew, D., Barlow, D., Fischer, J., & Richards, J. (1985) Biomechanical profile of elite women marathoners. Journal of Applied Biomechanics 1 330-347

Hausswirth, C., Bigard, A., & Guezennec, C. (1997) Relationship between running mechanics and energy cost of running at the end of a triathlon and marathon. Int J Sports Med 18(5) 330-339

Kyrolainen, H., Bell, A., & Komi, P. (2000) Biomechanical factors affecting running economy. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise

Ramirez-Campillo, R., Alvarez, C., Henriquez-Olguin, C., Baez, E., Martinez, C., Andrade, D., & Izquierdo, M. (2014) Effects of plyometric training on endurance and explosive strength performance in competitive middle- and long-distance runners. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research 28(1) 97-104

Saunders, P., Pyne, D., Telford, R., & Hawley, J. (2004). Factors affecting running economy in trained distance runners. Sports Med 34(7) 465-485

Saunders, P., Telford, R., Pyne, D., Peltola, E., Cunningham, R., Gore, C., & Hawley, J. (2006) Short-term plyometric training improves running economy in highly trained middle and long distance runners. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research

Turner, A., Owings, M., & Schwane, J. (2003) Improvement in running economy after 6 weeks of plyometric training. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research

By Carl Valle

Now and then a coach will ask me about different ways to evaluate practice; most of the time I explain that coaches are trying to keep practices from resembling a low budget circus. Coaches are sometimes doing traffic control with athletes sprinting and are similar to lifeguards ensuring the safety is present during training. Coaches have the option of teaching and regulating efforts when practices are organized and planned efficiently. One of the areas I am interested in is the mental and physiological impact with scoring output on the track and in the weight room. Given recent internet discussions on how sharing and transparency about athlete training may help or harm egos, now is a good time to show some interesting research and methods that may fit anyone’s coaching style. In this article, I will touch on the five common ways of giving objective feedback from a temporal angle, meaning how quickly objective information is given to the athlete and in what form.

Honesty and Deception of the Truth

Objective feedback is when an unbiased measured summary of the task is shared to athletes directly, and this can sometimes be a great confidence boost or ego killer. As a former athlete myself, the reality of getting information from a coach is part of the interesting dynamics of the relationship. For one thing, an athlete should be thinking of what is the responsibility of a coach to give objective feedback when equipment such as wearable sensors are now going directly to the athlete. In the 1970s a stopwatch and a coach would benefit from both being present. Now the bar must be raised beyond “go faster” during each repetition. Coaches sometimes know when to massage a bruised ego when athletes do poorly during training sessions, and have enough experience to deflate the athlete when he or she is accidentally tapered from missing practice and is doing better than their compadres. Speaking of tapers, sometimes an athlete may not feel great or feel flat during peaking and may struggle a bit. The wise coach knows that this phenomenon is normal and throws a few white lies to keep the athlete confident. Athletes are now far more empowered with technology and they may have immediate access to the data. This where coaches must evolve beyond holding the data and sharing what they think others should know, since many athletes are getting video and speed/power directly received from the tools in training. Two important decisions coaches must consider when purchasing equipment that measures athletic training, how rapid the information is available and how to deliver it to athletes.

Measurement in a Moment — Feedback Rates in Training and Competition

I remember in high school when electronic timing in both swimming and track was only for facilities that had the budget or during meets that mattered, such as championship meets or Club competitions. Soon as one finished in swimming and hit the touch pad, the athlete could look up and see the placement and time one performed and immediately know if they won their heat or event. In track and field it took longer, since sprints required the “photo finish” to have a little manual intervention because athletes ran through the line and no sensor detected a completion. Electronic timing, while very fast in general, isn’t instantaneous for the most part because the output is usually splits or final times. Therefore, many coaches use words interchangeably such as real-time, instant results, and immediate feedback. So what are the categories? Hard to say but to keep things simple I divided objective feedback into four concrete categories based on criteria that are clear enough for coaches to understand. Feedback timing is not the same as feedback type. Verbal feedback (how the information is shared) versus what the feedback is (motivation versus technical for example), objective feedback can’t be considered just when the information is presented. To keep things simple I have created the five definitions for coaches with examples of the objective feedback modes in action with speed and power athletes.

1. Inferential Feedback - This is information or measurement given before the action or sport activity. Examples include a squat weight or a high jump height.
2. Real-time or Instantaneous Feedback - This is information or measurement given during the action or sport activity. An example is a speedometer on a race car.
3. Immediate Feedback - This is information or measurement given at the conclusion of the action or sport activity. An example is the electronic timing of a 30 meter acceleration.
4. Session Feedback - This is information or measurement given at the conclusion of the practice or event.
5. Seasonal Feedback - This is information or measurement given at the conclusion of the year or sporting season.

The above definitions are not too complicated, but the first can get fuzzy now that coaches are expecting a certain standard with Velocity-Based Training devices. The difference between instantaneous feedback or real time and immediate feedback is a matter of as little as a second, causing confusion when people are talking about weight room training. The distinction should help not only explain the differences but also guide teams with best practices. Feedback is a responsibility and a matter of preference, and each choice coaches decide on can make or break seasons.

Inferential Feedback – Before Activity

One could argue that unless the athlete makes a successful attempt, feedback is not possible. In reality feedback from a coach or training system starts with goals, not just results or measurements of outcomes. Rarely does a coach or athlete attempt something they know they can’t succeed doing so feedback before someone tries to so something is sometimes predictive. The best examples of this is when someone is going for a personal best; sports that are distance or weight-based clearly demonstrate the information first, before an attempt is made. A pole vaulter going for a record or weightlifter attempting a heavy load is given the measurement before the attempt. The only issue is whether success or failure happens. Sometimes sports based on the clock are less obvious, such as someone attempting a world record in Olympic sport. If the athlete is the current record holder and they are having a good set of rounds or races leading up, people are expecting a great performance, especially the athlete. Athletes visualize themselves winning and most of the time only one is a winner, but the entire process is a cycle. Previous feedback leads to predictive feedback, and while nothing is a guarantee, past success or failure is part of predicting the future.

Earlier I wrote about arousal of testing in general creating a positive boost to performance, but having something more tangible like a barbell loaded with a heavy weight, or doing another task with similar demands increases the arousal more than just measuring. The meaning behind the number elevates when an athlete is attempting to do something they have never done before. Personal best performances are major releases of adrenaline, and just having athletes aware of the gravity of the coming test is feedback.

Real-Time Feedback – During Activity

When someone asks me for technology that provides real-time feedback, they are often thinking about getting data after the task is over. Few speed and power coaches need real-time feedback because the activities are so short and so reflexive, getting the data would slow down performance. Think about it. When someone is sprinting or doing an explosive exercise, does any data in the middle of the action really help? Even a quick shout or bark from coaches isn’t helping when we are talking milliseconds. The brain can’t process information fast enough for feedback during explosive activities, so real-time feedback, the fastest reactive data, is paradoxically applicable for endurance sport. A cyclist getting RPMs (revolutions per minute) or BPM (beats per minute) are getting pace data, meaning rates of output based on activities that last minutes, not fraction of a second. Elite speed and power athletes simply don’t use anything real time because most activities in training are so quick and chaotic that feedback is usually between reps or between whistle blows.

New technology like accelerometers can potentially create a score before the activity is done because some actions or parts of activities are all that is necessary to provide a score. One example is the use of a power sensor to get the power during the early phase of the concentric portion of a lift. That information can be alerted in visual and audio form directly to the athlete, something that may be helpful if the pause rate between reps is low and one is trying to drive the output. All of this is milliseconds though, and with technology getting smaller, faster, and better, this may be a new area to look for benefit. Time will tell if this is overkill or something coaches can harness.

Immediate Feedback – Right after Activity

Repeated bursts of power gives athletes who are trying to increase speed and performance rest periods to get immediate feedback. Some actions like repetitions while squatting may give feedback in less than a second, valuable information if coaches want to stop the session because of fatigue. Some expressions of power have minutes, and athletes and coaches can exchange thoughts on the past repetition and if another one is wise or not. Immediate feedback is essential to the ballistic athlete, as Brooks Johnson stated a few years ago when discussing the use of electronic timing. Speed athletes went to get better just as fast as the data is coming, and immediate feedback is the essential part of training for speed and power for three reasons I will get into more detail.

1. Athlete Safety - Reducing injury is paramount to coaching and immediate feedback delivers a safe way to gauge fatigue. Every explosive activity is a playing a game of risk, and the return can be something injurious if not handled properly. Each bout is a way to compare to the previous rep and past reps to see if the athlete is just beating a dead horse, building a bigger battery of capacity, or getting faster. Even great workouts with blazing speed must be carefully monitored as near personal best performances are hitting outputs the body simply is comfortable with and can be very straining on the tissues or physiological systems.
2. Athlete Learning - Immediate feedback is also a way to get athletes to calibrate and connect sensations they are feeling to objective output. Sometimes an athlete will make an effort to relax and feel smooth, but run painfully slow. Other times athletes may feel strong and solid, but their times may be slow as molasses because they are rigid. Some athletes feel off or uncomfortable with a change, and their times or outputs are excellent. The individual must connect the great performance to the sensations and focus on what got them at that level of execution. Some coaches call this biofeedback, or ways to connect the actual objective result with the athlete’s perceptions.
3. Athlete Adaptation - Higher levels of precision and rapid response improves the results of the training. Dr. Gil from the All-Blacks collaborated with other researchers and found immediate feedback with power devices increased results of performance more than those that didn’t get objective feedback. Provided that athletes are not driven to the ground with fatigue, immediate feedback increases output and is a simple advantage. Higher outputs and workouts that don’t drain the body too much increases performance down the road. Coaches can motivate or have athletes tone down output to hit the sweet spot of training when repeating precise execution in training.

Session Feedback – Reviewing the Entire Workout

Overall ratings of a training session can be done more accurately when objective feedback is transparent to the athlete and coach. A review of all of the workouts is expected in a summary of training, not just one repetition or bout of effort. For example, athletes need to have a great average of training, not just a one hit wonder because most improvements come from consistency, not just a fluke or a single performance. Having the entire main session data athletes have a direct summary of what happened.

What I have learned using the Freelap Procoach timing system is that I must toss away previous lore from sprint coaches and look at the entire session quality instead of just chasing the perfect rep. Quality of the season training and consistency improves an athlete more than just one magic workout. I do still believe in breakthroughs in training, but that is more about the athlete learning what to do with their bodies rather than the one workout that triggers some genetic mutation or something. Longitudinal data is the strongest way to get athletes better, and simple statistical breakdown is enough to see the key areas of improvement.

Session review of the data requires sometimes just a table with no analysis at all. Just the raw data can sometimes tell a story, or force the athlete to think of why some bouts or efforts were better than others. The key takeaway with reviewing session data is that it allows both the coach and athlete to step back just a little and review the day, not just pick or celebrate one repetition. At times, it is convenient to get excited or get spooked when one repetition or bout looks amazing or disastrous, but the trend needs three or more data points to show a useful pattern.

Seasonal Feedback – Reflecting on the Year

I am now focusing on end-of-season reports for athletes so they can see the complete picture of training and competition. Henk Kraaijenhof blogged about simple ways to summarize performance and it was an excellent read. Now everyone should be able to at least reflect on seasonal data from training to get some sort of indication of what worked and what didn’t. Also, seasonal training should be compared and contrasted with monitoring and the actual performances as well to connect a direct cause and effect. Seasonal feedback is far less emotional and will not create “adrenaline spikes” but it’s very haunting and reinforcing to one’s spirit, because it values the entire year, not one workout. For years as an athlete it was humbling looking at my coach’s practice books in the coaching office; at times I expected improvement to happen because I “put in the time” but really I needed to put the effort in with my training.

Seasonal feedback is very powerful when compared to previous years when athletes reach elite status. I can recall a few athletes who came out of retirement and had a very strong year while missing an entire fall preparation period. While they did very well, they wanted to see more on the peaking side, and it was helpful to share months of training missing from the year when whiteboarding or talking about next year. Another excellent lesson is looking at the workouts and asking why is an athlete better than the previous year when a program changes instead of builds on what is working. I am all for variety, but don’t change anything in the program unless you can prove the training is stagnating the development.

To me season feedback is great to show how life helps and harms the growth of an athlete. Simple areas of training can examined, and the athlete can look to what was the underlying problem. I love showing college athletes how an end of season disappointment may not be an indication of the training or their efforts, it may be just mirroring their financial woes or holiday distractions. When people tell me that data is sterile, or people are more than just numbers I agree, and they usually are very humble to see the relationships and conversation depth one gets when presenting objective information. The goal of numbers is not to have a data discussion, but force a real conversation about what is going on between the ears and sometimes deeper.

Applying Feedback and Conclusion

You don’t need any objective feedback to get results, but clearly the above five options will enable coaches to get more if it is applied properly and efficiently. Coaches have to be accurate and specific when exchanging ideas and methods of feedback, since using a word as an instant feedback in the speed and power world is unlikely to be what he or she is wanting. Other types of feedback exist such as behavioral, mental focus, and technical information, but don’t underestimate objective feedback. A combination of feedback and knowing when not to say anything is extremely powerful. A coach should plan how and when they want to provide feedback when designing training, and much of it is based on philosophy and what equipment one has. I do find that being transparent is an honest and ethical way to work with athletes and pays off in the long run when things don’t go right. When things are going well, it reinforces what is working with something concrete instead of theoretical. I have used objective feedback for years, and now we have more and more ability to get it faster and more conveniently by removing the monkey work and allowing technology to work for us.

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Five Objective Feedback Methods to Enhance Performance appeared first on Freelap USA.

By Chris Korfist

I think part of the reason for my passion as a coach was my inability to find someone to help me on my path to my athletic goals in my younger years. As Tony Holler mentioned, usually the best coaches are the ones who felt they came up short on their athletic careers. Maybe, it is meant to be part of our journey. We came up short on purpose so we could help others achieve their goals. Of the many things that I enjoy about what I do, this is really my favorite. I like to be the bridge to help an athlete accomplish their athletic goals. What is cool about the process is the ability to look back and see where they started and where they finished. I have had the opportunity and luck to be able to do this on many occasions. This athlete is one of the examples.

Shane Molidor was a jumper at Downers Grove South High School in suburban Chicago. It is a school of 3000 students. It had a reputation as a football school and had the wins to back it up. It could have been a track powerhouse, but the football coach didn’t see the crossover. He wanted BFS. In that process, he let Shane slip through the cracks. As a sophomore, he qualified for state in the long jump with a 21’7 and was a decent 100m dash runner. His junior year should have been a big year, but he broke his ankle on the first meet of the year, and the rest of the season was lost. One week after the season was over I received a call from his dad to see if I could help him. A few days later, Shane showed up at my house for an assessment. I filmed Shane as I do all athletes when they start with me and then constructed an initial plan of how to get him to his goal that he stated firmly in the first minutes of our conversation, “to be state champion in the Long Jump.” By the end of our journey together, he jumped jumped 23’4 which won the meet and ran 10.73, second fastest of the day in prelims, second fastest time of weekend. But on Saturday after he accomplished his goal of state champion in Long Jump, I think he was done mentally and ended 7th in the 100.

I am going to show you what I saw Shane do on our first day, tell you what I see on the film and discuss the plan that we created. I will then show the after film to see what we accomplished. The film speed, software, camera were both the same for both shoots. Thanks to Sony DVX210 and iMovie.

Frame 1: Here is my starting point. I call this pre-contact. It gives me an idea of where the foot is about to hit. Shane’s foot is about to turn out, so his contact will be on the side of his foot. It may have an impact. We need to wait to see from the front. His head is leading a bit, which would make me wonder what his driver is for hip flexion. In the after, notice how the arm timing is different. I am guessing that he is driving more from his glute at this point because the arm is not more out in front. And with the strengthening of his glutes and hips, notice how his foot is about to hit more squarely on the ground. This will have an impact on ground contact time. The foot won’t have to reposition on the ground to get a good push off the ground. We did a healthy diet of four-way hip and mini hurdles with a weighted bar overhead. We also did a series of foot rotation twists on a rotating disc incorporating using lower oblique and glute medius, and a series of exercises to develop adductors.

Frame 2: I call this touchdown or contact phase. Ideally, it is one frame. I think this frame is slightly past the touchdown. Shane’s contact is in front of his center of mass. It is not bad, but it is there. In this scenario, a runner usually has to resort to pushing his run somewhat or what we call a push runner who uses his quads to push the body forward. We would like to be pull runners where the athlete pulls his body forward with his gluts and hamstrings. What concerns me at this point is the swing leg knee is lower than his plant leg knee. This may have an impact when we see him from the front. Again, this is not bad but could be much better. Here is the after. Foot strike slightly more underneath but look how square the foot looks under the body. Posture is more upright in this position as well. He is also carrying his swing leg much higher. I like how his hand in extension too, triggering the brain to give power to extend.

Frame 3: Center of mass has passed on this frame that is usually an important frame for me. It is a great shot to see how he lines up from head to toe and see how tall he is running. More importantly is the positioning of the swing leg knee. If the swing leg knee is even to or behind the plant leg knee, I know his timing is off. Based on Weyand’s research, we know that leg only have a certain amount of time to reposition themselves. If the knee is behind, it will never have time to get high enough for the center of mass to pass over and allow for a clean midfoot strike. I call this being late in the cycle. If an athlete is late in the cycle, he will never run fast, and it almost forces him to push his run. Or, he needs to use his quads and erectors to push himself down the track. To deal with, we did low hurdle (8-10 inches high placed 1.9-2.1 m apart for 20-30m) runs. This is a great way to train the timing of a sprint. If you are late, you fall. The body knows it. So, it forces perfect timing. The results speak for themselves in the second frame. He exhibits a high knee on the swing leg, a strong hip on the plant leg.

Frame 4: Shane is approaching toe-off. As his toe is coming off the ground, his knee is under his glute. This is a good take off position. Some bend and lack of full extension would be better. Lower leg of the swing leg could be tighter to the hamstring also. On the after position, it looks like he has more bend in the plant leg. Body looks like it is in more of a vertical push rather than a horizontal push, once again, thanks, Peter Weyand. Frans Bosch calls this positive running. It is the midpoint angle between his two legs. The more forward the angle, the better for the runner. This is where the drive comes to train front side mechanics.

Frame 5: Air time! I am looking to see how much spinal change he has. His pelvis seems to be tilting forward. You can also see a curve in his spine as well. Usually, a dead giveaway that he is pushing his run. The quad has pushed so hard in a forward fashion that the hip rotates forward. Whereas, a more vertical push will allow the hip to stay more neutral. This is an indicator of why you may have a good 55m runner who can’t run a good 100 or a 100m football guy who can’t convert it to a 200. It costs too much energy to reposition the hips constantly over the 200m range.

Where a powerful pusher can get a great start and maintain speed, hopefully, long enough to win. Funny enough, Shane had hip flexor problems to begin. Quads were doing the work of the psoas. This is a problem with fast push runners. In the after frame look at Shane’s new pelvic position. It is horizontal with little pelvic tilt. There is vertical impulse on a rigid body. It is no different than bouncing an iron rod compared to a sandbag. Iron rod will bounce. Quicker plant leg off the ground. See how the trail leg lacks extension. This is a great before and after of a push vs. pull runner or horizontal vs. vertical impulse or the aftermath on that type of contact.

Frame 6: I skipped a few frames to get to pre-contact on the other leg. This one is further out in front. Again, he is crashing on the outside of his foot as well. It almost looks like he is going to try extra hard to push here. It looks like his head and shoulder a bunching up for a big push. In the after frame, much like the precontact on the other foot, his foot looks like it will have a flatter, quicker strike on the ground.

Frame 7: Midstance phase + a tiny bit. Great timing but he is leaning to the right, and the bottom of his foot is visible. Not a good sign. We will check it from the front. Like Frame 2, knee is in a much better position, and he is coming to his big which will give him a forward push. Pushing off the side of your foot will send your body in that direction and the body needs to compensate for that vector through vision. That is why it is not always a great idea to fix someone’s arms. Most of the time they are compensating for a foot extension in a different direction.

Frame 8: Toe-off – a tiny bit. Plant knee is in a good position, and he carries his trail leg higher than his other leg. Swing knee is in a good position as well.

Frame 9: Toe-off. Better than his other side. Slight bend in the knee and some bend in the pelvis. Better than his other side. In the after frame, he is off the ground one whole frame faster than before. Again, knee is higher and just looks more powerful.

Overall, he is not in a horrible position from the side. He has some minor things that need work. From this we figured we would use a good, steady diet of prime time runs (stiff legged runs). This is a great drill to help teach and strengthen the body to get the foot under his hips on contact. The pelvic rock was a tougher issue. Did the rock come from a weakness in the obliques whose job it is to hold the pelvis in place while in the air? Or possibly the glute med that also holds the pelvis in place while foot is on the ground. Because his push is not terribly long, I didn’t think his push was causing the rock too much. But the prime times also tend to cure push runners.

To answer my question, I need t o look at the front.

He took his shirt off for the front. Shane switches to “suns out, guns out” mentality.

Frame 1: This is contact phase. He is landing on the outside of his foot initially. We need to see if he stays there. The natural progression is to roll on outside of foot to toes and the energy rolls to the big toe which launches the body. If he stays on the outside of his foot, he loses power from that leg. Contact time can be too quick because the body never has enough time to let the weight or energy push on the ground fully. In the after, his foot is going to hit solid and squarely on the ground that will eliminate the spin that needs to occur to go straight and get a good push. This is why he is faster off the ground.

Frame 2: Midstance phase. This is my measuring frame. I check shoulder point to shoulder point and hip point to the hip point to see how level both of those lines are. Shane has a dip in his right shoulder. Usually, that is an indicator that something in his upper lateral chain is off, and I would test his lat to see how it is holding. The big clue is his foot. I measure from the outside of his heel and draw a line straight up. I measure to see how much of his body is outside that line. With Shane, it is a fair amount. I would say that his foot lands slightly past center to his left. This creates a scenario of his body repositioning itself so it can push forward safely. This not only takes time but is inefficient. Again this is something that a good 100m guy can get away with, but bomb the 200. But, the difference would make a great 100m guy. After, he is straight up and down along the outside of his heel. His hips are straight across. This is almost perfect. Look at the difference in his foot position.

Frame 3: He is still staying on the outside of his foot. His hip has repositioned itself, so his foot is under his body. After. His drive is forward and not out to the side. His lateral aspect of the chain is holding strong, so the knee can come much higher. He is also making his way to a big toe departure as well.

Frame 4: Toe-off. Now we can see where his hip rotation is coming from. At toe-off his hip is dropping down. I would guess that he lacks strength in his posterior portion of his glute medius., which is responsible for strength as the foot is rotated and past underneath center of mass. To deal with this issue, we did a ton of four way hip machine with is foot turned out. And we built a little knee bend and extension into the movement, like a kip in a chin. Running the mini hurdles with a lightweight (10-35 lbs.) overhead was another exercise that helped. I would like more of his big toe than the middle of his foot coming off the ground for some more power. There is no after frame here because he has already left the ground. This is due to quicker feet off the ground. So much for the rate vs. length controversy. It will happen when the body is ready. You can’t force either issue. They have to be earned.

Frame 5: Pre-contact. Again, it looks like a lateral crash and out in front. Same as the other foot/Frame 1. Everything is much more square.

Frame 6: Mid-stance. The foot is in better placement, but the body seems to be rotated around the good placement. So that line straight up would be a good indicator that all is not well in Shane’s mid-stance. You can also see his swing leg knee is lower than his plant leg knee. This is usually an indicator that he lacks lateral strength. In this case, it ended up being his medial glute med and we did a ton of four way hip with the foot straight to help this. In the after side, as before, he is much straighter on the lateral aspect of his body. His foot is on the ground firmly. His knee is cycling through so fast that his swing leg knee is already out in front.

Frame 7: In this frame you can see his right hip sink, and his leg bow outward slightly. He is winding up to push himself down the track. If we watched at real time speed, I would guess that this stride is probably longer. But what is more interesting is his left heel. In the previous frame, the heel is to the outside more, and now it is more inward. He is spinning his heel. Or what I call a spinner. Something along the chain is causing his heel to spin which has a drastic impact on his form. The time it takes for his heel to get in a position to push increases contact time. When he does finally give impulse, the power is rotational and not straight. That can cause a bunch of muscular problems, especially in the hamstring. And it costs a lot of energy to have the weight of the body on a leg spin, straighten and push.. This is a common problem that can bedevil a coach. In the after frame, his ankle is different, and his foot is straighter. His hip line is level as well. This is where people could say that he runs taller. The glute medius is much stronger supporting the body. He has eliminated most of the twisting and sagging to the lateral part of his body as well.

Frame 8: It takes him two frames to toe-off. See the comparison and improvement in the next frame.

Frame 9: Shane gets a much bigger thrust in these two frames than he did with his right leg. Coincidentally, this is his take-off leg in the long jump. Also, he has a much better follow through to his big toe on this side. The after frame takes up the other two because he is already off the ground. What took him two frames before now takes him one.

That is quite a big difference in Shane over one year. Throughout the process. He increased his vertical from 28 to 40 inches. In future articles we look at his power output in a variety of lifts. And throughout the whole process, I eliminated all 2 legged exercise and most of his bodybuilding upper body workouts. We also changed his diet around as well. In another article, I will highlight the workouts that we went through, looking at the exercises and training. However, I will not get into long jump technique. The faster he ran, the further he jumped.

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By Carl Valle

After the clear popularity of earlier top five articles on Freelap and a million reads since 2003, I decided to look back see the biggest problem with athletes and injuries are number one. Instead of writing about various interventions and ways to monitor athletes I am going to go full throttle and pull no punches with this article. The number one problem of sports is that coaches are afraid to do the basics over and again as it looks like they are not evolving. Anytime I see a big competition I look at the warm-up and can tell who is likely to win by the facial expression and the attention on moving in an organized manner. In the last ten years I wrote about a dozen articles on warming-up but it seems to be fighting against the tide because the sacred time of getting ready for big efforts is polluted by pseudo-science. My solution is simple; instead of blaming everything and everyone for injuries or poor performance, follow a checklist of ten essential components to properly get ready for quality power work. The article is not sexy or going to share cool studies that you can post to get you more twitter followers, but it will make you appreciate that some concepts are timeless. I will not use thou shalt as it’s cheesy, but if you want use a deep voice from James Earl Jones or even Bane from Dark Knight Rises for full effect!

Be Prepared and Ready

When an athlete is walking in for a warm-up, they are ready to train mentally and physically. Nothing irritates me more than athletes who come to training and see warm-up as a transition to get ready instead of being ready to go. Currently, the trend is to get self-therapy during the time of training, and if you are doing something that is self-guided do it before and after workouts, not during the warm-up. If you need a quick fix to train, rethink the training program or finish rehab. Obviously heavy training is going to leave things tight and a little beat up, but if one needs constant therapies just to do normal training sessions, the training system is lacking. Training, good training, should improve functional abilities not create dysfunctional athletes. Elite athletes with a laundry list of problems from years of training is a different story, but anyone can do those therapy interventions at a different time. If athletes follow the Gary Winckler model and leave workouts the way they want to feel starting the next session, we are going to have better outcomes down the road. Finally, athletes should be prepared with all needed attire and have done the needed little things, so they don’t have to leave practice for excessive bathroom breaks and equipment.

It Takes Time

Athletes and coaches must see warm-up as the period before the hardest component of training, not a segregated period to do things before one trains. Training is a continuum and warming up is never ending, since each effort in maximal output will continue the loop of the training cycle. To think that 5-10 minutes is all it takes to be ready is foolish, and even weight room workouts with poor warm-up time periods can benefit with a little more time. When a plane is going to take off, the pilots do an extensive review of the equipment with a checklist. That is one reason air travel is safer than medical procedures according to the Checklist Manifesto. Coaches need to progress and do many things to encourage a great training session. That includes dynamic mobility with real exercise choices, drills and other teaching options, and a slow progression of intensity in order to reduce risk of injury during practice. Five minutes is barely enough time to do attendance or perform a full set of strides. If I have an hour, I am spending half warming up because you can do some great training during the warm-up, it’s not just jogging anymore.

Temperature is Underrated

For ten years, I have explained that body temperature is the simplest way to improve performance and reduce injury. So many research studies use telemetry of core temperature of elite athletes and that usually means they are swallowing a pill or inserting sensors in areas that are not exactly popular with everyone. Why does temperature matter? Science is 100% sure but when John Smith says “cook the bird to the bone” I listen. What we do know is that the output is higher with those that warm-up, and so many chemical reactions help prime the body. Injuries are hard to dissect with warm-up routines, but not moving isn’t getting ready for a fight for flight event like explosive exercise. I am all for breathing, tissue work, and stretching, but doing those activities usually are not the same as a real traditional movement program. Just because you reduce rest and place “new” things into a circuit doesn’t mean its warm-up. I have invested in Thermography for years to see what works and what is not helping, and warm-ups are nearly pass-fail. When it doubt, sweat it out!

Teach by Doing not by Explaining

Coaches love to lecture and do speeches like Any Given Sunday, but the truth of the matter save them for later and get to work. You can talk and do whiteboarding for hours and nothing beats hands-on doing. I spend more time talking about non-training things after observing some amazing coaches at work. I wondered where all magic cue words and instructional exchanges were when I visited. I quickly learned it’s about the learning of the athlete, not the teaching of the coach. Good workouts peel away errors and reinforce good habits, and that comes from minimalism not by cute analogies and shouting abracadabra to sound smart. Self-Organization requires tons of preparation in designing workouts, so don’t think rolling out medicine balls and hurdles one is going to create the next Dayron Robles. Teaching is about exposure to the right elements and guiding by doing just enough to create a tipping point in skill acquisition. Here are three simple concepts to integrate a little teaching in the warm-ups.

• Nudge - Sometimes a small suggestion or adjustment sometimes breaks the barrier or execution, and coaches should think about doing enough lightly to guide an athlete versus overkill of excessive talking and explaining. Less is usually more.
• Tug - Holding back an athlete by reducing complexity or other variables to stabilize the activity execution is enough to get something accomplished. Usually dialing down a little is better than giving up on something that may just come together and fall into place with a slight adjustment.
• Let Go - Sometimes athletes need to focus and just do it. Dealing with pressure and dealing with challenges are needed to grow. If a coach is excellent, the athlete will develop with and without them, so let the ego move to the side and trust that passionate athletes can problem solve.

Conditioning is not Dated or Passé

Athletes need to be fit. I hate the word fitness because it sounds like Jazzercise or similar, but fitness is before performance. Don’t come to me talking about insane training goals when you are gassed after a thorough warm-up. I see a lot of athletes fade at the end of the season because they spent more time doing wimpy exercises than they spent time on creating a deep and wide foundation. I don’t think one needs marathon workouts or endless training circuits for “Cardiac Output” but something is needed to get the physiological adaptations that encourage handling heavy work later on in the year. Recovery is not about ice baths or secret protein drinks, but starts with being in shape. One presentation I did on recovery was mostly about training and people were expecting supplements and massage, but those are the last 10% of a good program. We have a saying that our warm-ups are your workouts, meaning we are likely more fit compared to the average program. I have seen this slogan on t-shirts, but I got the idea from Mighty Subs in the 1990s when then boasted that “their small is their large.” The goal of the warm-up density and volume is to create a stimulus to improve capacity of quality work not become a cross country runner. Seeing warm-up as a light workout is a safe bet, but it’s preparing to sprint not doing a session too demanding. The workout should enhance speed, not dull it. Just having a solid warm-up and add 15-20 of general work can add to the 250-300 days a year people are training.

Embed the Screening

Screening athletes is a continual process, and Dan Pfaff said it best when he explained that screening is part of coaching. Screening should be both isolation and integration. Efforts to see the changes should include a cessation from normal schedules and add a medical evaluation by a good therapist and have a warm-up that includes a checklist of activities that can track issues that are probable causes of poor performance and etiological risk factors. Eventually, a warm-up will lead to the actual full maximal or near-maximal activity, so screening should systematically evaluate the process and flag problems before they become out of control. Managing is about minimizing and not elimination because the very nature of pushing the body past levels thought were unimaginable is a known risk. Good screening activities are simple exercises that reveal potential hazards, but don’t spook athletes thinking that something that is sore is an injury. Pain science is not perfect and even the experts fail. Unless training is causing structural damage that is career or season threatening, be conservative and work with sports medicine not be a pseudo therapists with false diagnosis. To me, pain is warning system if interpreting correctly, but sometimes inflammation and mental state can create false positives. Pain is subjective, and athletes have functioned with torn tendons and ligaments because of sheer will, so be warned. Elite sport is different. While many concepts are the same to regular Joes and share universal concepts of rehabilitation, preparing an elite athlete has experience and skills different than average patients. The opposite is true, as the weekend warrior who is older will not on average follow the same guidelines as the professional or college athlete. Give them expectations and methods different than what you would do with an elite. Here are some guidelines that matter.

• Biomaterial Remodeling - No screen is perfect, but the key to reducing injuries is to manage training load and recovery, as well as controlling forces to keep overload and tissue failure from happening. That is very complicated, individual, and highly genetic so don’t expect any screen, even the best options, to be perfect.
• Acute Pain versus Chronic Pain - When an injury has healed, the goal of a good therapy and coaching should focus on the mindset. When fatigue and fear seep into the environment, past experiences will create a haunting scenario. I use the term exorcising the demons to explain that pain is a spectrum of experiences and may be emotional and not physical. Good coaches and therapist give the right training to re-pattern the athlete’s mind to remove pathways that revert to pain experiences.
• Positive Environment - Highly educated coaches cause more pain syndromes than ignorant ones. Why? When you are looking for imbalances or injuries, the athlete will believe that something is wrong and may feel phantom pain. I wonder if some of the best therapists are just warm and friendly people who give confidence and positive energy.
• Focus on Function - A good warm-up is my screen for sprinting. If you can’t do it, feel free to do a secondary option and get evaluated. Waiting may remove an overreaction, but a well-rounded warm-up can drill down to the very problem by providing clear information. Not all problems stem from biomechanics, but cardinal issues that show up with the connection between motion and the physical structures of the body.

The warm-up is a time that most athletes and coaches will decide if further training is possible. Outline a policy before the gray area causes confusion and stagnation. Screening should be a seamless process, and the role should be directing to further evaluation or choices, not a diagnosis.

Value Social Interaction

The hardest area to balance is the amount of freedom and discipline during practice. Training can’t be silent but also allowing for distractions will ruin long term development. More important communication between athlete and coach and athlete to athlete is essential. Group training dynamics is a part of the game and at the end of the day, talking should be one part productive and one part expressive. The human to human social touch should be part of training just as much as teaching. Relationships matter and trust comes from things outside of expertise; it comes from the athlete knowing you are doing it for them, not using them to get ahead in a career. Most athlete and coaching relationships have the understanding that mutual collaboration is a win win for both parties, but when an athlete leaves the high school level and goes beyond the business side is a reality. Athletes can see through the fake smiles or half-hearted exchanges and know when a coach doesn’t care and when the information is sincere. I have coached high school, college, and post college, and each level my most important value was ensuring athlete health was paramount. No coach wants to be the person that the athlete remembers is the cause for injuries and burnout because the coach had “speed greed”, meaning the focus was results at any cost.

I could write an entire book or multiple chapters on mistakes and discoveries with athlete interaction, but each coach should create their own list of values and make sure they are known. If I had to do things again, I would have made some document for athletes to ensure that peer to peer communication was healthy and that athletes had more input into the process. My warm-up includes a walking period after each drill because it allows time to communicate and reduce the drilling environment from making practice feel like a nasty Broadway rehearsal.

Whatever is your philosophy of training, make sure factor in a healthy social and communication environment that welcomes healthy exchange and fosters encouragement of bonding of the team. Sometimes outside of warm-up is needed like team dinners, and other activities can get the tribal benefits, so training focus is not compromised. Not having a healthy social balance will create mutinies and backlash. Embracing the big picture with team dynamics and warm-ups will not resort to fiestas, I promise.

Build Mental and Physical Connection and Development

I have worked with some great talents and done a decent job getting people better, but sports psychology has beaten me many times. Some of the master coaches are not just technical geniuses, they are builders of championship minds. Many elite athletes have big egos and confidence, but to be world class you need both body and mind prepared for extreme pressures and razor sharp focus. I can’t say I have the answer, but do pose a problem and requirement with coaches thinking it’s just about the X’s and O’s. One warning though, it’s not one or the other it’s both and do know that confidence comes from learning objective improvement, not just positive feedback. All the motivation and positive energy to the athlete after getting smoked isn’t going to help, so it’s about providing the right feedback and the right time.

Any period of length a coach has the available time to talk to an athlete is an opportunity progressively to overload the mind and spirit of the athlete. Success and failure are normal and necessary, and the athletes need reality and objective input by coaches. Coach Hannula shared in his classic work Coaching Swimming Successfully the need for honesty, and breaking down an athlete to build them up is sometimes needed. I think it’s good to complement first before correcting, but times of deep accountability by removing the sugar coating keeps athletes hungry. I wish I had more, but coaches need to think about the eternal flame versus the quickspark. The days after the Olympics many athletes want to train, but the dark periods in December is when many athletes realize that it’s more a marathon than a sprint with training and improvement. Coaches should invest an additional amount of time focusing between the ears and in the heart to get athletes to achieve beyond their dreams. I welcome anyone in the comments section to list good reading or education.

Monitor what is Valuable

Just add the term or word monitoring to any job interview and soon you have a better chance of getting a gig with sports today. Monitoring is not new, and for years, over a hundred in modern sport, coaches have used methods and equipment to get objective data on athletes. Right now, monitoring is used as patchwork to problems monitoring can’t solve. The good news is that data is normal instead of heresy, and some very amazing people have done great things before number crunching became en vogue. Warming up or preparing for speed training allows coaches and athletes to do the needed data collection before, during, and after training.

The age old question is what to monitor with all of the available systems. The answer is deceptively simple, anything you can do over time that doesn’t hurt the daily grind of training. Monitoring warm-up is useful for many things because it’s the precise time one is training. If an athlete is training in the late afternoon and early evening and does a subjective report in the morning, it may mean something completely different right before training. So warming up for speed gives immediate feedback to the reality of what one is experiencing with data that is relevant. A few things coaches want include fatigue, readiness medically, athlete psyche, and of course, speed.

Monitoring doesn’t have to be complicated, and countless options for the physiological state and mental state exist now, but a good 20m sprint is popular with athletes. I frankly overthought CNS fatigue and power testing, but speed athletes want to cut the middleman and get right to warm-up sprints. The time and the sensations of training combine to a great perspective. If an athlete feels off and the times are not jiving, he or she can adjust the training or do what is expected. If the times are great and the athlete feels ready super. The main takeaway is that don’t overthink the obvious and be blinded to easy and straightforward thinking. Simple subjective questions and general wellness tracking can help address the obvious, but good timing and general weekly power tests are great indicators of change. Do what you believe and what you can administer over time. It’s better to under promise and over deliver than start off doing a lot and be unable to see the data over an entire year. Each year add something and see how much you can do as athletes become part of the process.

Remember to have Fun

Periodization of Fun is the most important biomotor skill period. Athletes after years of training will get bored and flat from even solid workouts with normal variety. How to fall in love with effective training without resorting to “EnterTrainment “ and random workouts to keep things interesting. Obviously a few Dodgeball games inside a basketball court with GatorSkin balls can substitute for tempo sessions and bring a coach out of retirement like Tigris of Gaul from the movie Gladiator. What I have learned from age-group coaching is that fun matters, and still use things like Casino Night and Disco Night to spice things up. Warming up becomes a chore only when it’s boring because effort in planning fun is not there. Be creative and put in the effort.

One key to think about is don’t worry about the perfect workout as enough YouTube videos of elites doing stupid training exist to remind us that sometimes people just improve over time rather than one magic workout. I like to save the gimmicks like special sessions with new equipment or different technologies only when things are slow. Also, sometimes changing the venue up or having another coach run the session gives the athlete a break from the monotony. Whatever you do plan fun like any biomotor option. Ask, did we have something interesting or different daily than last year at that time and did we do something once a week for people to look forward to as a reward? Behavior modification and motivation are important factors in training success and should be part of the process in getting athletes better.

Closing Thoughts on the Ten Commandments

The suggestions above are not rocket science, and choose what is important and don’t take anything from this article you feel you don’t agree with. I have confidence that this article has points to consider and even follow carefully, but no article can replace experience and expertise of one’s time at a coaching situation that may have unique challenges. Remember warming up is not junk time or labor, it’s one of the most important parts of training that should be respected.

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Freelap USA: After our recent articles about flywheel training with the kBox device, we were overwhelmed with your feedback. So we asked Exxentric Co-founder M.D. Fredrik Correa to tell us all about it — how it works, its history and the training methods that come with it. Here is his story.

An athlete doing a squat exercise on the kBox 2.0

By Fredrik Correa, M.D., B.Sc. Sports, founder of Exxentric

Have you heard or read about the strength training devices that work in zero-gravity? Or have you seen pictures of an elite soccer team with players standing on boxes with some kind of harness pulling and going up and down just before they disconnect and rush down the field? Maybe you have read the articles written by Chris Korfist “My Love Affair with the Bulgarian Split Squat” and “Epic Speed Training” about the kind of strength training device that they endorsed for sprint training?

If you recognize this, you have probably been exposed to the kBox from Exxentric. kBox is short for kinetic Box, which is a flywheel training device. You might think that flywheel training is new, but it’s quite the opposite. It has just lately become more widely used and recognized for its benefits like motion freedom, eccentric overload and variable resistance and unlimited load.

Our History of Flywheel Training

As far as I know, the first study related to flywheel resistance training was conducted at the Laboratory for the Physiology of Gymnastics, University of Copenhagen in 1924, by researchers Hansen and Lindhard (1). They used a flywheel made out of lead and steel to do what all decent muscle physiologists do while no one is watching: measuring force curves during biceps contraction. They do, however, refer to a stationary bike using a flywheel for resistance in a study conducted in 1913 by a colleague from the same institution, Prof. August Krogh. He is probably the father of using the flywheel in training (2). Krogh, by the way, received the Nobel Prize in 1920 for his work on the function of capillaries. This is, however, not the first documented flywheel device. The Gymnasticon, a flywheel device invented in 1796 by a Frenchman, Francis Lowndes, was way before that. I think we can agree that flywheel training has been around for quite some time now.

Gymnasticon. From Wikipedia.

Since those early days the flywheel has been used in many mechanical applications for the purpose of accumulating kinetic energy, just to re-surface in resistance training in 1994. Back then, many people within the scientific exercise physiology community were trying to solve the problem with atrophy and bone loss in microgravity, i.e. space travel. Steroids, electro stimulation, rubber bands and hydraulics had been tried, but all failed in one way or another. But then, in 1994, two Swedish scientists published a study (3) in which they had designed a flywheel leg extension. They conducted a number of studies in the years after and developed a couple of flywheel resistance training devices similar to traditional strength training devices, like leg curl, leg extension and so on, but with the weight stack replaced by a flywheel.

COACHING FRUSTRATION. This was when I first found out about flywheel training. I had just finished my studies at the Swedish School of Health and Sport Sciences in Stockholm where I also met my friend and co-founder of Exxentric, Marten Fredriksson. At that time, we were both working in the same ice hockey club, training elite junior players. I coached 16-17 year-olds and Marten 18-19 year-olds. We had a lot of discussions about the talented players from different local teams that got recruited into our club in the early junior years. The problem was that they didn’t have any schooling in training, especially regarding the use of free weights. We felt that we spent a lot of time during their four junior years teaching them how to lift instead of improving their physique and performance to the extent that had been possible if they had been better lifters. Since they were strong and able kids it was frustrating that we couldn’t put enough load on them, since their lack of technique didn’t allow it.

IN THE RESEARCH LAB. Shortly after I found out about the flywheel devices I started working on some projects in the lab with the researchers developing those. This was in the Muscle and Exercise Physiology Laboratory at the Karolinska Institute. When I was in the lab working on an electromyography (EMG) project related to the traditional flywheel devices, I saw a prototype device made by an engineer named Hakan Eriksson. He worked for the department of Biomedical Engineering at the Karolinska Hospital, just across the road. He was helping the researchers to build all prototypes, but he was also a dedicated ice skater. To solve his problem with off-ice training he had built a prototype device consisting of a shaft with a flywheel on a small plate. He used it for high rep, half squats with low inertia trying to mimic the metabolic work in skating.

First prototype of the kBox.

BUILDING A PROTOTYPE. I felt that Hakan’s prototype could provide the basis for a completely new product. So, Mårten and I got together in the lab and discussed the possibility of building a flywheel multi-exercise device based on the prototype, but with more motion freedom. We wanted it to work in a similar fashion as free weights, but use a flywheel for resistance instead. We pitched the idea with some sketches to the research leader, and he liked the idea and we started developing our baby.

We started by increasing the height of the box to get the shaft lower to increase the depth in the squat. We increased the area on top to allow more lateral movements and a longer shaft for fitting more flywheels, and so on. When the product was ready, we had put in a countless more hours into this than we had ever imagined.

The prototype was working but far from complete, and many improvements still had to be made. However, the lead researcher and his company took a shorter-term perspective and decided to release the prototype as a product into the market. After the release we received considerable feedback consistent with our own thoughts on how to improve the device further and also new ideas.

Exxentric kBox v1.0.

FOUNDING EXXENTRIC. After our time in the research lab, Marten and I went separate ways. I had my hands full with medical school and graduated from Karolinska Institute in 2006. But we knew that we had started the project to fill the gap for athletes and patients and realized it could be done so much better – it had to be.

Over the years, Marten and I discussed realizing our ideas and suddenly we bumped into Kjell Insulander, who was a producer and a subcontractor of metal parts to other companies. He had an interest in training and also to build a product of his own. So we decided to found Exxentric and started phase two. With our ideas and Kjell’s engineering skills, we could release our next-generation flywheel training device, the kBox 1.0 in 2011.

A small batch of the first kBox version sold out pretty fast to high profile customers, making us realize that we needed an experienced manager to handle future growth. We found one in Erik Lindberg who, prior to Exxentric, had held a wide range of management positions in multi-national companies like Apple and Lexmark. Erik is our CEO since a couple of years, overseeing all aspects of our business expansion around the world. After a period of fast growth, Exxentric is now releasing the third version of our main product, the kBox 3. We have come very far from where we started. The new device offers superior functionality, better looks, much lower weight and a better build quality. We are convinced that we are on the right path, and you should expect to see exciting product news coming from us in the future.

Exxentric kBox v2.0.

The Flywheel Principle and its Benefits

The principle is basically the same for all different kinds of flywheel training devices, but I will use the kBox as an example. One or more flywheels get attached to the end of the shaft. Some strap, rope or wire is attached to the shaft. By rotating the flywheel and shaft a few revolutions, you will get some strap rolled up on the shaft, which is needed before training can start.

When you pull the strap by applying a concentric muscle action, the shaft will be subjected to a force, which will accelerate the rotation of the flywheel. When the strap is fully pulled out, the continued rotation of the flywheel will instead lead to the retraction of the strap. You will, therefore, have to apply an eccentric muscle force to decelerate the rotation of the flywheel. When the flywheel stops, you apply concentric muscle action again, and the movement starts again. Concentric and eccentric. As easy as that.

kBox 3. Released December 2014.

UNLIMITED LOAD. The amount of force that will have to be applied to get a certain acceleration depends on the inertia of the flywheels. One of the fundamental laws of physics is that all bodies resist being rotated. In other words, in order to accelerate or decelerate a rotation you must apply force.

The beauty of flywheels is that they can always be accelerated a little more, which means the potential load is unlimited. The harder you pull, the harder it gets. All energy that you put into the flywheel during the concentric phase, you will have to brake in the eccentric phase. The kBox shows no mercy here; it will gladly try to pull you all the way through the machine and down to the floor (luckily, in reality it is equipped with a bumper to prevent that from happening).

FREEDOM OF MOTION. With a multi-exercise flywheel device like the Exxentric kBox, you also have a higher degree of motion freedom. Since the force is applied through the strap to the shaft, you can work out in lateral movements if you like, for example by doing lateral squats. Doing this type of exercise with loads in the neighborhood of your 1 RM squats is very hard, if not impossible, with other exercises or equipment. There is a Spanish study looking at this right now, so stay tuned for those results, expected later this winter.

I don’t yet know for sure, but I can bet you that flywheel squats improve jump height more and lateral squats improve speed in change of direction more than using traditional tools. So now you know where you heard it first! You can also use this unique motion freedom in other exercises, like for example rowing, shoulder and core exercises.

MAX LOAD IN EVERY REP. With flywheel training, the load is also variable so you will get max force output in every rep in a maximal set. A maximal set on the kBox can be compared with a drop set with coupled 1 RMs, every rep down until you quit (see graph). This is one key factor in the fast and significant hypertrophy seen early in a high-intensity flywheel training program (4).

The variable resistance also allows individuals with differences in strength to work out together, or for the same person to do warm-up and training using the same inertia. Less time spent shifting weights, in other words.

If you have you ever done a leg session with free weights together with someone of different strength and height, you know what I mean. You probably spent about ¾ of the session loading and unloading the bar. Shifting from the heavy barbell back squat to deadlift, unloading the bar just to put it down and then load it again is personally one of my best reasons to do this on the kBox instead.

ISOINERTIAL RESISTANCE. Another effect of the variable resistance is that the lever in the motion doesn’t matter anymore. Instead, you get the same resistance during the whole exercise. This effect gives high muscle tension all through the motion, isoinertia, which can also explain why in studies you can see strength gains in all angles during the motion compared to free weights where you get the highest gains in a certain angle (5).

ECCENTRIC OVERLOAD. By eccentric training people often refer to a longer time under tension with traditional weights and advocate a slower eccentric phase. This is good in one way, since the eccentric force will be a little higher if you go slowly with weights.

The difference with flywheel is that you can induce a lot of kinetic energy during the concentric phase, but choose to resist during only a part of the eccentric phase. Thereby the muscle must elicit a much higher eccentric force and trigger gains in strength and hypertrophy. This kind of eccentric workout is referred to as eccentric overload, i.e. loads > 1 RM concentric.

Eccentric forces of these magnitudes are unnecessarily complicated to obtain in traditional exercises since you need assistance, for example, in the form of forced negatives or supramaximal loads. Another way is by doing lateral overload using both legs up and one leg down, but then you are rather restricted to weight stack machines and probably pretty far away from how you want to perform in the field or on the track.

With a flywheel device like the kBox, you can easily overload with 100% if you like and still work out in an easy, efficient and safe way. Here is a flywheel introduction video with an earlier kBox version so you can see how this works.

More about the practical methods later, now it’s time for some science. The question is if scientific studies back this up? I’ll show you how.

Scientific Support of Flywheel Training

Several studies have shown flywheel devices to give an earlier and higher degree of hypertrophy and strength gains, both concentric and eccentric strength, compared to traditional weights (4-6). Also, in comparison to squats, exercises using flywheel devices have shown to produce a higher degree of muscle activation and effect of training (7).

As mentioned above, you can also see strength gains in all angles to a higher degree in flywheel training compared to traditional weight training (6). From this I would like to think that the kBox works both in the basic strength training program where you want to build mass and strength in all angles and also in more specific, performance training, where every percentage in effect counts.

Sometimes these percentages can make a huge difference, for example in a fresh Spanish study comparing PAP (post-activation potentiation) using barbell and flywheel lunges before swim starts (8). Flywheel PAP increased average speed after start with 35% compared to warm-up only and 18% compared to barbell lunges. This gave a significant time advantage even after a 15 m swim which, of course, is a huge advantage in a short swimming event.

Eccentric overload might be perceived as a bit unhealthy to some, but those who have studied strength training and muscle physiology know that the skeletal muscle is about 30% stronger in the eccentric phase. Hence, we are in a way built for this already.

Another interesting thing is that there is no force-velocity relationship like in the concentric phase; therefore, you can produce a maximal eccentric force even at high eccentric speeds and therefore mimic your performance in a much more similar way working in high angular velocity.

Eccentric training gives a higher effect on muscle mass and strength compared to strict concentric training. That has been known for quite some time and well accepted (9, 10). But eccentric overload gives even higher gains than traditional concentric-eccentric training, especially in trained subjects if you look at performance and not only gains in strength (11).

It is nice if your athletes are getting stronger, for sure, but if they don’t improve their performance, it is basically a waste of time. You’re not going to decide the winner in the next game with your 1 RM squat, unless you are a powerlifter. For all us doing sports including balls, pucks, rackets, running and jumping it is all about tackles, breakaways, change of direction, jump height and length that counts.

Eccentric training has also shown increased muscle length, both in fascicle length and range of motion (12), fiber transformation into a faster phenotype, type IXIA (13), and improved balance and stiffness in tendons, where the latter gives giving a higher efficacy in the stretch-shortening cycle (14).

Eccentric training also gives protection from future delayed onset of muscle soreness (DOMS) by triggering a higher degree of tissue damage and inflammatory response. But thanks to that you also get a preventive effect from future damage, beside the effects mentioned earlier in performance and strength (15, 16, 17). With repeated eccentric workouts, the effect with more DOMS is attenuated and you can even get this effect without getting DOMS at all is you start with a low dose eccentric training and increase gradually (13).

Older people get a higher training effect after recovery but also a higher degree of inflammation after eccentric workouts (13). A rather new Swedish study from the Karolinska Institute published in 2014 also showed that females had about the same degree of hypertrophy, strength and power gains as the male subjects when doing flywheel training (14).

The kBox is not all about eccentric training, but it makes it so much easier that you won’t understand how you managed to do your eccentrics before. Being able to do heavy eccentric workout by yourself without relying on assistance, and where you can change the eccentric load or overload from repetition to repetition is a great tool in your and your athletes’ training.

Further on, the harness that you use with the kBox in most leg exercises offers some advantages. It unloads the lower back and for taller athletes like for example basketball players, who even with a good technique get a long lever and high torque on the lower back. Users with previous back problems can usually work out harder without getting sore. Also, those with a poor technique that limits them with a barbell can work out safer and harder. By using the kBox in parallel to barbell training you can build strength and technique at the same time, not wasting any time like we did with our hockey juniors.

Flywheel Methods for Eccentric Overload

I could probably write a book about all the methods to overload the eccentric phase with the kBox, but here is a summary.

The easiest way to overload is what we call delayed eccentric action. This means that you pull all the way through the concentric phase but in the start of the eccentric action you don’t resist the flywheel but you let it pull you down. When you get a bit into the eccentric action you start resisting, and for the concentric and eccentric energy to add up – and for you to stop and turn the flywheel – you have to brake much harder since you do it in a shorter time.

There are heavier variations of this that we call the impulse overload where you quickly go down in the eccentric phase and position yourself where you want the flywheel to ”hit you”. When the flywheel has retracted the strap, the rotational energy will hit you in that position forcing you to go from unloaded to overloaded in fractions of a second demanding a high eccentric force and power output.

Further on you can do lateral overload where you go bilateral in the concentric phase and unilateral in the eccentric. This is useful if you want to go explosive with low inertia in the concentric phase but still get a nice eccentric load on the way down. Overloaded concentric action is another benefit of the variable resistance. By using lower limb to put in extra kinetic energy in the flywheel during the concentric phase but only using the primary muscle (upper body) in the eccentric phase you easily get a supramaximal load in the eccentric phase.

Combining some of these methods can give you a high degree of overload in the eccentric phase and a long time under tension at the same time. Our friend Andy Baxter, an American world class rower and an omnipotent idea guy in all aspects of training, invented one combination. He named it Concentric loaded acceleration cycles (CLAC), and we have stuck with that name. CLAC will probably be your worst or best training experience, depending on how you like it, but training will never be the same afterward.

With CLAC’s you start with a maximally overloaded concentric action followed by an overloaded eccentric phase. At the end of the eccentric phase, you turn the flywheel and go all out concentric again. In the last eccentric phase, you get a tiny rest on the way down to the position before the next overloaded concentric action. In this setting you will have maximal or supramaximal force output and tension during the first concentric-eccentric, and the subsequent concentric phase after that with a time under tension that will feel like an eternity in rep number 3, I promise you.

Exentric kBox 3

Encouraging User Feedback

The testimonials we get is that the users get really nice results both in terms of strength and performance, and this can be backed up with a decent volume of scientific studies.

The equipment weighs about 50 lbs. (23 kg) total. It is highly mobile and completely silent and opens up many opportunities for coaches working with their athletes in the field, on trips, games away or at home during rehab or time of from the team.

Users appreciate the motion freedom and the exercises they only can do with the kBox. The safety and less dependence on technique with the harness is for many the main factor. In the rehabilitation in many high-performance sports where, for example, a broken hand makes it impossible for a hockey player to work out with heavy barbells, but he or she can still do heavy lifting on the kBox.

In training of the elderly, the functionality of the kBox squat is quite a revolution since putting them under a barbell has been out of the question if they didn’t have any previous experience with this. Some might argue that they can’t do the Olympic lifts on the kBox, but that is not an issue for us. We don’t see it as working with the kBox or traditional weights or bars; it is up to the experienced coach to figure out what equipment to use for his purposes and I can’t really see how having a larger toolbox would compromise any athlete’s development and results. Do you?

Thanks for reading my story. I’d love to answer any questions or comments you have. You can reach me anytime via Twitter @FredrikCorrea or through our website exxentric.com. Also, please feel free to reach out to us on our Facebook page.

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About the Author

Fredrik Correa is a Swedish physiologist, entrepreneur, former ice hockey coach and a co-founder of Exxentric, developers of the kBox.

After a short journey at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Fredrik studied Sports Science at the Swedish School of Sports and Health Science in Stockholm (GIH) with the focus on ice hockey. He has worked as an ice hockey coach for 15 years in different clubs and for The Swedish Ice Hockey Federation.

Further studies in physiology and several projects in exercise physiology at The Karolinska Institute led him to medical studies at Karolinska and he graduated in 2006 and has worked as a physician since.

Fredrik is now a M.D, has BSc in Sports and is a resident physician at Danderyd Hospital Stockholm.

References

1. Hansen T.E, Lindhard, J. On the maximal work of human muscles especially the flexors of the elbow. 1924. Laboratory for the Physiology of Gymnastics, University of Copenhagen.

2. Krogh, A. Skand. A bicycle ergoemter and respiration apparatus for the experimental stuy of muscle work. Arch. Physiol. 1913; 33:375-395.

3. Berg, HE, Tesch A. A gravity-independent ergometer to be used for resistance training in space. Aviat Space Environ Med. 1994 aug;65(8):752-6.

4. Seynnes O.R., de Boer M., Narici, M.V. Early skeletal muscle hypertrophy and architectural changes in response to high-intensity resistance training. J Appl Physiol (2007)102;368-373.

5. Norrbrand L., Pozzo M., Tesch PA. Flywheel resistance training calls for greater eccentric muscle activation than weight training. Eur J Appl Physiol (2010) 110:997-1005.

6. Norrbrand et al. Resistance training using eccentric overload induces early adaption in skeletal muscle size. Eur J Appl Physiol 2008;102(3):271-281.

7. Norrbrand et al. Quadriceps muscle use in the flywheel and barbell squat. Aviat Space Environ Med. 2011 jan;82(1):13-9.

8. Cuence-Fernández, F. et al. Effect on swimming start performance of two types of activation protocols: Lunge and YoYo Squat. J Strength Cond Res. 2014 sep 15 [epub ahead of print].

9. Dudley et al. Importance of eccentric actions in performance adaptions to resistance training. Aviat Space Environ Med. 1991; 62: 543-50.

10. Roig et al. The effects of eccentric versus concentric resistance training on muscle strength and mass in healthy adults: a systematic review with meta-analysis. Br J sports Med 2009; 43:556-568.

11. English, KL et al. Early-phase musculoskeletal adaptations to different levels of eccentric resistance after 8 weeks of lower body training. Eur J Appl Physiol 2014 July 22. Epub ahead of print.

12. O’Sullivan, K. The effects of eccentric training on lower limb flexibility: a systematic review. Br J Sports Med 2012;46:838-845.

13. Friedmann-Bette, B. Effects of strength training with eccentric overload on muscle adaptation in male athletes. Eur J Appl Physiol (2010) 108:821-836.

14. Onambélé, G. et al. Neuromuscular and balance responses to flywheel inertial vs. weight training in older persons. J Biomech (2008)41:3133-3138.

15. Neme et al. Time course of muscle damage and inflammatory Reponses to resistance training with eccentric overload in trained individuals. Med Infl. Vol 2013.

16. Gault, ML, Willems, M.E.T. Aging, functional capacity and eccentric exercise training. Ag Disease 2013;4(6):351-363.

17. Fernandez-Gonzalo, R. et al. Muscle damage responses and adaptions to eccentric-overload resistance exercise in men and women. Eur J Appl Physiol (2014) 114:1075-1084.

By Craig Pickering

Christmas is great. You get presents, you see your family, you do fun stuff together, you eat nice food, and you get to relax. Everyone loves Christmas. But how can an athlete balance his or her training and diet over the festive period? It is a difficult question, but also a key issue – athletes and coaches are keen to maximize their adaptations from training and don’t want to miss a training session. Athletes who are competing indoors or in the cross-country season are likely to be both highly motivated to train and also anxious not to miss what are perceived to be important training sessions in the run up to their competitions. How can an athlete and coach balance the increased social demands and disruptions without wrecking all their hard work so far?

Do you actually need to train over Christmas?

The first question to consider is whether or not you need to train on Christmas Day? This year, Christmas falls on a Thursday, and for most people Thursday is a training day. Logic dictates that we should train on Christmas Day. There are many athletes who swear by the fact that they should train on Christmas. They see themselves as disciplined. Others think that it is a day where they can pull further ahead of their rivals who aren’t training on Christmas Day. Both arguments here are pretty illogical. Training on Christmas Day doesn’t make you more disciplined in general. There are 365 days in a year, and training discipline on the other 364 days is much more important than on the 25th December. Similarly, thinking that training on Christmas gets you ahead of your rivals is flawed thinking. One training session cannot make you into a World or Olympic Champion. Training is a process, with the sum greater than all of its constituent parts. The need for recovery is important, as is the need for mental down time. Training on Christmas Day can be stressful, as you have to find somewhere that is open and available to use, and also find time in the day. Finding time can be especially difficult if you are with the family, and they all have a plan or set routine. The increased stress of forcing a session on Christmas Day might not be worth it at all.

I’m not saying that athletes shouldn’t train on Christmas Day. By all means, if this is something you are used to doing, or enjoy doing, or even just really want to do, and then feel free to give it a go. What I am saying is that training on this day is not strictly necessary, and can be more hassle than it is worth. Added to the fact that Christmas falls at the end of three months of hard training, an additional few days off over this period might be beneficial.

If you do choose to train, please don’t post it all over social media as an illustration of how dedicated you are. It’s annoying, and other people are probably more dedicated than you on the other 364 days of the year.

Plan Ahead

The key to successful training over the Christmas period is planning. There will be multiple facility closures, so make sure you check the opening times of your usual training venue in advance. In the UK it is not that uncommon for training facilities to be closed for three days over Christmas, and also New Years Day. If you don’t want to have those four days off, then finding an alternative training venue is important. You might be able to get a guest pass for a different gym, or convince someone to come and open up the track for you and your training partners on a particular day.

The next thing to consider is travel. Many people travel to see relatives over the Christmas period, and so, should you wish, some level of organisation will be needed to ensure training is minimally disrupted. You will need to make sure that you pack any training kit you may need, as well as mobility stuff such as a foam roller and hockey ball. If you take supplements, it might be a good idea to take those too, unless you plan on having a few supplement clear days over the festive period (not necessarily a bad thing!).

Finally, once you know your travel plans and venue opening times, you and your coach should sit down together and come up with a Christmas schedule. Also remember to take into account your training partners travel and holiday arrangements, and try to come up with something that suits everyone; alternatively a few sessions training by yourself won’t hurt you. If you do want to train on Christmas Day, but are struggling to find a venue, anyone can do a tempo session in the park, or a bodyweight circuit at home. You just have to be prepared to compromise.

Build A Buffer

What with the venue and facility closures, travel and family arrangements, you might think it better to skip training on Christmas Day, and maybe even a few of the days over the whole festive period. I’m with you on that. One thing to consider here is building a buffer. It might be worthwhile doing some functional over-reaching in the lead up to your bonus few days off. This makes resting over Christmas positive and worthwhile and can make it easier for an athlete to accept the reduced training load / days off from a mental standpoint.

Similarly, athletes tend to worry (sometimes unnecessarily) over their diet. This can be especially tough over Christmas, with an abundance of cakes, chocolates and sweets available. A few days in the run up to Christmas where the athlete is strict with regards to their diet can make it easier psychologically to relax a bit on the big day. One of the worst things associated with being an athlete over the festive period are the immense feelings of guilt after eating a few too many chocolates or a second helping of Christmas pudding. Instead of having all these negative emotions, it is much better to build a diet buffer in the days leading up to Christmas, and then enjoy yourself on the day.

Diet

Ah, the Christmas diet issue. If you’re anything like me, you’ve spent a lot of your winter training period getting into reasonably good shape physically, and making sure your body composition is right. To achieve this, you have been eating a reasonably controlled diet, nothing too drastic, but obviously biscuits and copious amounts of chocolate are off the table. Then Christmas hits. What should you do? You know you have no will-power, and that massive family sized box of chocolates by the sofa looks so endearing. What about the big meals with your family, where grandparents push more and more food on your because you’re a “growing boy”? Or what about the higher number of Christmas parties you are invited to – how can you manage all of these without seeming like a social outcast?

The first thing is to remember my previous point; build a buffer. One day of a less than ideal diet is not going to ruin everything you’ve done so far. A week of chocolate and alcohol definitely will. By building into your schedule the fact that you’re going to eat a fair bit over Christmas, you can offset this eating by making sure your diet is how it should be before and after Christmas. Also, one day of high-calorie intake is potentially pretty good for you, depending on which nutritionists you listen to, as an influx of calories can up-regulate metabolism and make you feel much better. Having a day where you can just relax and eat what you like is also good from a psychological point of view so long as it doesn’t then spill over into Boxing Day and continue until New Year’s Day.

Food over Christmas also doesn’t have to be bad. There is an over-abundance of protein available in the form of turkey, or roast beef or pork. Eating protein increases satiety and could well stop you stuffing your face later in the day. By making sure that you consume protein with every meal, you are less likely to binge eat over the Christmas period. This includes breakfast – protein after a long overnight fast is a good idea. Most people struggle with getting protein in for breakfast, but eggs, or smoked salmon are great ideas.

There are also plenty of vegetables in a traditional Christmas dinner. Loading up your plate with these will make sure you get plenty of micronutrients (a good idea if you’ve forgotten your multivitamin), as well as a load of fiber. This fiber, like protein, will fill you up, making a trip to eat a whole cake from the door of the fridge much less likely (I’ve actually done this). Aim for a wide variety of vegetables, and pick low-sugar cranberry sauce for your condiment of choice – it’s likely to be higher in antioxidants than other sauces.

Christmas is also a good time to get plenty of healthy fats. Meat contains decent levels of fat, usually with a good amount of vitamins and minerals, so load up as much as you need. There also tends to be plenty of nuts lying around, and snacking on these can also be a good idea. Dark chocolate can also be useful – it’s hard to overeat because it is so bitter and contains plenty of antioxidants and polyphenols.

So what to avoid? Well, as an athlete you should moderate your alcohol intake if indeed you choose to consume any at all. Alcohol tends to be quite high in empty calories, and low in nutrients. It can also lead to poor decision-making, which further increases your chances of over-eating.

Hopefully, I have given you some good ideas for how to ensure that Christmas doesn’t have to ruin your training, diet and fitness goals. The main thing is to plan ahead and build a buffer, but always remember to enjoy yourself. Christmas is such a short period that missing training or cheating on your diet doesn’t matter. Instead, take the time to have fun and make the most of a few days off and seeing your family. Merry Christmas!

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By Craig Pickering

Recently I have been running a few seminars on “How To Run Faster”. My main client base for these have been Crossfit gyms. Initially, I didn’t think that being able to run quicker would be useful for Crossfit athletes. However, having spoken to the athletes and coaches it became apparent that it was indeed something that could improve their performance. The reasons for this are that sprint training facilitates positive training adaptations and are, therefore, a useful training modality. Many people doing Crossfit also take part in other sports, and so getting the knowledge to improve their speed could also be useful to them.

Why Sprint?

I guess the first place to start is to discuss why speed training may be useful for athletes involved in Crossfit. For those of you that don’t know, Crossfit is essentially the sport of exercising (and has come in for a lot of criticism because of this!). A Crossfit competition can last between one and four days, and consists of a number of different workouts aimed to stress different aspects of fitness. Good all round athletes tend to perform better than specialists. To illustrate this, the events at the most recent Crossfit Games included:

• The Beach – a workout involving swimming, kettlebell thrusters, and burpees
• 1 Rep Max Overhead Squat
• Triple 3 – 3000m Row, Skipping, and 3 mile run
• Sled push for time
• Squat Clean ladder up to 345Ibs (157kg)

So you can see that, to be successful, an athlete has to be strong, but also have good endurance capacity. Successful athletes also need to have good strength outputs over a prolonged 5-10 minute period because many workouts last this length of time.

Although having to sprint in Crossfit is pretty rare, doing so in training can be useful. One type of adaptation to sprint training involves the enzymes involved in energy production. Multiple bouts of sprint training allow us to increase the speed at which we replenish our ATP-PC stores. Some studies have shown that repeated bouts of sprint training increase muscular levels of CPK, which is an enzyme that catalyzes the breakdown of phosphocreatine. Other enzymes, such as phosphofructokinase, which are involved in anaerobic glycolysis, also increase as a response to sprint training. This leads to the ability to be slightly more efficient at a given velocity, and could well improve anaerobic metabolism in Crossfit athletes. Both long duration and short recovery sprints can cause adaptations to the aerobic system. A study by Dawson et. al. showed that maximal oxygen uptake (VO2 max) improved after short sprint training. As Crossfit is comprised of events requiring a decent aerobic capacity, these improvements would certainly be beneficial. An additional factor is that by improving VO2 max, athletes might be able to recover between events slightly quicker, which becomes very important in a prolonged competition such as the Crossfit Games.

A further adaptation to sprint training is that it improves the intramuscular buffering capacity, particularity if the sprints are of longer (roughly 30 second) duration. This improved buffering will enable a better resistance to fatigue in high-intensity events, such as the typical high intensity Crossfit WOD.

Perhaps of even more interest to Crossfitters are the muscle adaptations to sprint training. Long term sprint based training increases the proportion of type II (fast twitch) muscle fibers an individual will have. The evidence is less clear on whether these improvements are in type IIa, IIb, IIx, or any of the other proposed type II fiber types. Nevertheless, an improvement in type II fibers will enable the athlete to produce more force, which would be useful in the strength based exercises demanded by competitive Crossfit events. Long-term sprint training has also been shown to induce muscle hypertrophy, which again is a useful adaptation for a Crossfit athlete. Finally, sprint training improves the muscle conduction velocity, which means the motor units can fire quicker. Sprint training increases motor unit recruitment, which allows for a greater force production and may improve Olympic lifting performance.

As an additional point, sprint training also likely elicits an anabolic hormone response. An increase in circulating human growth hormone and free testosterone could lead to further improvements in lean body mass and body composition that would be favorable for competitive Crossfit athletes.

Finally, sprint training can improve both posture and (potentially) endurance running performance. My previous article on whether or not endurance athletes should do sprint training discusses this in a bit more detail.

From the above, we can see that by using regular sprint training in their programs, Crossfit athletes could improve their performance through a variety of mechanisms.

How to Program Sprint Training

Crossfit involves workouts that are very intense, and they can be highly fatiguing, especially if they involve Olympic lifting. As such, within a typical Crossfit program, planning sprint training at an appropriate time point can be challenging. With sprint training, it is important to remember that it is a very central nervous system (CNS) intense activity. Sprinting at near to maximum capacity, whilst not always fatiguing in the energy system sense, will fatigue the CNS. Generally, the body requires about 48 hours of recovery from a sprint session. Activities of similar intensity to sprinting, such as plyometrics or Olympic lifting, or indeed another sprint session, shouldn’t take place until then. The danger of attempting a sprint session in a fatigued state is that you increase the risk of injury. You also will not have as high-quality session as if you were reasonably fresh, and so the training process becomes less efficient and effective. Finally, doing a sprint session in a fatigued state will deepen your fatigue, reducing the quality of subsequent sessions and increasing the amount of recovery you will need.

All this information can cause a bit of an issue; when should a coach program a sprint session for a Crossfit athlete? This obviously depends on the goals of each athlete, but as a starting point, most Crossfitters will not require more than two sprint sessions per week, and in fact one could well be sufficient. In this case, programming the sprint session as the first training session in each week’s training block would be ideal. The athlete will be fresh, and subsequent sessions can be done under fatigue to mimic the demands of a Crossfit competition. If two sessions were to be programmed per week, things would become a little bit trickier. It would still be a good idea to keep a sprint session as the first session of the training block – the question is where to place the subsequent one? Again, this depends on your program. If you have two rest days per week, then simply have the sprint sessions follow them – you will be well recovered from your rest days and have a high-quality session. If you don’t have two rest days, a sprint session could follow an easier day. For example, if you have an easier day programmed in which you do a lot of zone 1 / low heart rate aerobic work, then sprint training could quite comfortably follow this. Even a slightly more intense workout, which doesn’t involve lifting high loads, would be fine to precede a sprint workout. The sessions to avoid the day prior to sprinting are those that include high volumes of plyometrics and Olympic lifting, which will fatigue the CNS significantly.

Sprint workouts are useful as they induce fatigue. Ask anyone who has run a session involving multiple 200m sprints how they feel a few hours later, and they will describe a high level of fatigue. After running 5x200m on a Thursday morning in my University training group, I used just to go home and sleep for a few hours! This level of fatigue that is induced by sprint training can be useful to Crossfit coaches as it allows them to replicate the demands of competition on their athletes. Crossfit requires exercises to be done correctly under fatigue, and so finding an efficient way to mimic this fatigue is useful. Coaches should take care to ensure that proceeding workouts don’t stress the CNS to a significantly high level, as injury may occur – however, energy system intense sessions should be fine.

Measuring Sprint Training

Like every training aspect, improvements in sprint ability should be monitored and measured. This allows the coach to evaluate whether or not the training program is working as desired, and make any required changes. The validity and reliability of certain testing methods is beyond the scope of this article; however, one particularly valid approach is to time athletes over a certain distance. Timing workouts can be useful as it can act as a motivation to athletes to perform well. Speaking from experience, the days that my coach got the timing gates out were the days that I knew I really had to up my game. Recording times is easy, and gives very quick feedback; an athlete is either faster or slower. It’s also very repeatable, so long as the timing system used is reliable. To this end, hand timing by an inexperienced coach is probably not reliable enough, and so an electronic timing system should be used. These systems are now cheap enough and sufficiently portable to have a place in any training program.

Overall, it should be apparent that sprint training can be useful to Crossfit athletes and coaches, through a variety of mechanisms. One of the main issues is the adequate programming of sprint sessions within a training program; care should be taken to ensure sufficient recovery. Finally, electronic timing can be a quick and reliable way to both monitor training improvements and motivate athletes to perform at a high level.

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References

Dawson, B.; Fitzsimmons, M.; Green, S. et al (1998). Changes in performance, muscle metabolites, enzymes and fibre types after short sprint training. Eur J Appl Physiol 78 163-169

Ross, A. & Leveritt, M. (2001). Long-term metabolic and skeletal muscle adaptations to short sprint training: Implications for training and tapering. Sports Med 31(15) 1063-1082

Wahl, P. (2013). Hormonal and metabolic responses to high intensity interval training. J Sports Med Doping Studies 3(1)

Figure 1: Single leg hops using the wireless EMG and motion capture is a powerful way to reduce injuries and identify areas that can be modified for performance.

By Carl Valle

Jump testing is commonly used to observe leg power, but every jump score is subject to interpretation. The goal for jump testing is to see how the training is affecting the jumping ability and seeing how training may influence running velocity at different parts of the acceleration curve. Often the wrong tests are used, or the right tests are administered poorly or incorrectly. In sport, improving jumping ability is important, but improving jumping ability doesn’t guarantee that one is going to run faster because they are jumping higher. Looking at the fastest athletes in the NFL combine, rarely do we see the highest jumpers have the fastest 40 times. On the other hand, no elite 40 performance at the combine has 18 inch jumpers, so global power matters, but running is much different than one countermovement jump with arms test. In this article, we will review great tests that have some influence in speed, and a good primer on this is the Al Vermeil article posted a few years ago. At the end of the day, speed predicts speed, and using jump tests to have confidence in what one is going to see on the clock is not the right thinking. A better option is to look at jump tests and see if the general power and elastic training is augmenting the scores, and how the scores might provide benefit to the running splits.

How I selected the Jump Tests

Some of you may be disappointed I didn’t include the common jump tests like vertical jumps or standing broad jump. It’s not that those tests are not valuable; it’s just that they didn’t crack the top five on my list for many reasons. First, the goal of the tests is to show strong value based on the data collected. Light jump squats in the weight room is where I placed the countermovement jumps and squat jumps because they fit nicely before power training. Jump tests to me are more about displacement horizontally and about getting more information besides height of the center of mass. Also, some tests are great for injury screening and efficiency since those areas tend to be valuable when one hits a genetic ceiling and coaches and athletes are forced to push to new levels. Some of the tests don’t require much equipment, and some do need a little investment. All tests should have some perspective and electronic timing is essential to see a potential cause and effect. Improving jumping for the most part directly improves jumping in general, but if you want to use plyometrics and various modalities to improve speed, you must time.

Modified Standing Triple

One of my problems with the triple jump test in track and field is that it’s great for jumpers, but not all athletes have access or skills of landing in a pit of sand. When times were rough and the winter required us to have alternate plans, we landed on high jump mats, but the landing is always a problem. To combat potential injury or variance from technique that can affect test data integrity, coaches should think about how they land and repeat the process with a reproducibility standardization. Remember, no rules exist in training, just good principles, science, and the art of applied coaching. Since no test will be that sensitive to equate to running speeds, legacy data of the conventional standing triple jump is only for comfort and not for transfer. The goal of the testing is to improve the numbers that mean something. Athletes should focus on improving their scores from training rather than just getting better from learning the test or artificially inflating scores from resting more than the baseline session.

The test evaluates a few power qualities, and that’s why I like the standing triple test provided it’s done consistently and the protocols are followed well. The main quality is global power of both legs and individual legs. Without much equipment besides a camera and a measuring tape, coaches can see how power is expressed bilaterally and how each leg is able to create power horizontally. Switching the legs so the first single leg explosion alternates between right and left can see more granularity of the previous explosive action and coaches can ensure improvement is coming from the right variables.

Landing is always a problem when athletes have poor training histories. I don’t do any horizontal testing until a year of athletic development because I constantly see a gap between power production and power reduction abilities. The aforementioned gap is increasing because physical education is now mimicking adult wellness programs and not movement competence development. I instruct a landing that is similar to a squat jump position to reduce athletes from reaching, meaning projecting their feet so far in front they are getting better scores from the kick-out rather than a change of their center of mass (true power increase). The key is making sure the test landing is safe and repeatable. I like the distance of the standing broad jump and the two leg explosions rather than just a raw total distance.

I see a strong relationship between this test and early acceleration because the takeoffs from both the dual leg jump and the bounds afterward include forefoot projections of the ankle complex and deep knee angles in general. Since the bounds will vary in technique, interpretation is more extensive but most will employ a full footed contact and not forefoot only, thus showing the hip involvement.

Repeated Elastic Jumping

Except for the first movement, all of the motions after departure are on one leg and are coming from the momentum of earlier actions. The elastic qualities are important, but double leg activities should be taken with a grain of salt. A good way to get global elastic ability is the use of repeated jumping for maximal output. Notice I never said for a set amount of repetitions or time. The reason? Athletes are not robots and tend to game the tests to get better scores, so one must be very careful in explaining the set-up of the test. An athlete knowing a certain duration (time component) or defined amount of reps may score better for average or poorer when trying too much each rep. The solution I have is to cue output and just let it go for as long as they can keep the effort up. What cueing does is remove earlier pacing on the jumps for duration and removes the paralysis by analysis with the set repetitions. My earlier post on weight room tests should have explained why I included a range of reps instead of defined reps for the Raptor test. Fatigue is very difficult to gauge unless baseline data is very solid and the measurements are very precise and the scores are fine. The problem with fatigue evaluation tests is that they will cause fatigue, and this ruins later workouts unless the test is a workout. I like elastic jumping because it overloads the entire leg, and it’s a great test that can be done year round. Sometimes specific stiffness below the knee is a rose with thorns; it is great to have at times but does cause a little pain if not handled right. By distributing the stress throughout the entire leg and including some hip activity, the test is more than just a stiffness test; it is a leg power with elastic utilization workout. Instead of the common 60 second test I like repeated sets of 20-30 seconds. What coaches can do with repeated outputs instead of one long death set is the ability to see the slope of power decay through the set and series of sets. Good data is not only valid but specific to the needs of the training program. Doing a death set is like shooting someone for autopsy data instead of doing a urine or blood test.

Interpreting the data is simple, and the key metrics are number of repetitions performed and the flight times compared to contact times in a given time. Unlike looking at stride length and stride frequency that requires kinematic analysis of posture and acceleration technique, repeated jumps are uniform in nature and are easier to evaluate. While the transfer and correlation are not a strong as obviously sprint timing splits and sprint training, the goal is to make significant improvement over years. The goal is not to reduce ground contact time. The goal is to improve elastic power that reduces ground contact time via more power, and the return should yield higher displacements (air time) and higher sustained averages. Just looking at decay of power without seeing absolute numbers is an error in how the athlete is pacing. Too long of ground contact times means the elastic energy is likely being compromised for higher flight times, so those numbers should be observed as well.

Bounding for Speed

Bounding for speed is not for everyone and sometimes plyometrics are not activities that are congruent with some orthopedic health problems of athletes. Plyometrics are demanding to tendons and joints, but while one can argue that so are sprints, the body is more likely tolerant to activities it was designed to do than to add exercises it can do artificially. Bounding for speed is something I rarely do with athletes because it requires that they are good jumpers, and this is likely to be solely a track and field test only. What I do like about it is that sprinters, jumpers, and hurdlers can see how reactive they are without using anything besides electronic timing. Doing a 20m fly with bounding can see if an athlete is able to handle their weight with specific power. The chart shared earlier can show velocity changes and this is a good resourceful for some lighter athletes who are skilled jumpers. Ground contact times and flight times with IR sensors are expensive when doing horizontal projection tests. Optojump is great but the OptoGait system is expensive. A pragmatic option is to look simply at horizontal velocity and the decay of it over two 10m splits. The goal is to see improvement over the second 10m after a 5-8m walk/trot/bound acceleration.

Video 1: Bounding for speed is about demonstrating the ability to maintain momentum and this video shows a lower speed bounding progression with a “trot” at medium run up velocity. The goal is to conserve speed from the horizontal approach and improve splits over time.

One question some people ask is it possible to switch to a one leg hop for speed instead of bounding. Yes, but be warned. Speed hopping is not evil, but it is very fatiguing because more hops or efforts are needed because the displacement is less, and the work is higher on the legs than bounding. A compromise is a 10m or similar distance instead of a flying 10, and only test athletes who are well developed and have superb technique. Remember that many team sports don’t do much training compared to Olympic sport, and wrongly porting “track and field” tests to team sport athletes is not wise. Even if one is a track and field athlete, a good foundation is needed as some track athletes are not developed but rather are just talented. On the other hand, if one lives in fear and compromises too much, athletes are in limbo and do things not to get hurt but never improve. Risk should be minimized but not preparing well is a risk for injuries.

Executing speed bounds or hops is about repeating a steady rhythm of great technique rather than a great performance time. By focusing on technique, scores will improve, but after mechanics stabilize look for changes in force capabilities. Again this test is not for everyone, but for talented athletes with great coaching backgrounds, the test is practical and a great training option. To help prevent poor landing technique, remind athletes that fast limbs don’t mean fast bodies. Using the Freelap Pro Coach is a good way to illustrate it is the rate of displacement of their center of mass (where the chip is) rather than how fast one feels.

Maximal RSI Tracking

I have learned a lot from working with athletes by just talking to sprinters and getting their opinions. When you are goal oriented, an athlete will constantly be thinking about getting better. One sprinter I have known for years added a small change to my thoughts on depth jumps and adding another box for better arousal. Targeting is a way increase output by having an object to reach, and that’s why I included backboard touches in my earlier article on Plyometric Workouts. Regardless of visual demand, sometimes output can be increased by tasks that are demanding, such as depth jumps onto a box of the same height. While I am not a fan of box jumps when the athlete is focusing on reaching with their feet rather than displacing their hips, adding a contact mat and video can help coaches with tracking training scores and comparing it to traditional RSI testing without horizontal displacement. Contact mats are good for binary information, meaning the equipment just really wants to know if contact is made on the ground and the data is limited. Flight time is not displacement; it’s just the duration between ground contacts and technique matters here. Athletes instinctively will try to stay in the air, even if they are honest and hardworking. A better way to use contact mats is to have goals and standards that reduce error and encouraging performance instead of getting “better numbers.”

The RSI or Reactive Strength Index was broken down in detail with the Depth Jump article, but one detail I needed to explain is height of the box and what the differences between maximal and readiness testing. Low box RSI testing is good to see freshness but not maximal potential. Remember the RSI is the ratio between contact time and flight time, sort of like the Testosterone to Cortisol ratio. Nothing wrong with ratios as they do help direct and summarize at times, but higher boxes are about the ability to express more power given the same contact time. Contact times are never going to reach foot contact times of sprinting, but the test isn’t about replicating; they are about maximizing. Provided the contact time stays the same, the ratio of the distance off the box and the landing of the center of mass on the next box is about equal. The goal is to ensure elastic energy is not lost or leaked from a height that is too high. What is the limit? I do have estimation of failure rates of Achilles tendons, but the goal is not to reach injury thresholds; the goal is to hit new adaptation levels. I hate putting a cap on anything, but 36-42 inches or about a meter is not evil. Some research shows an upper limit of 60 cm with ground contacts of .250 seconds, but like records, limits are made to be broken. Provided the contributions of elastic energy and force contributions are sanely enhanced, the overload is fine to use. Overload is tricky and while the athlete can use a penultimate step and create more efficient elastic contribution, the goal of depth jumps are not to maximally demonstrate elastic energy but maximally challenge it.

One question some coaches ask about depth jumps to another box is the recruitment of hip extensors being higher than just going up and down. The differences are there for longer ground contact times with horizontal displacements of about .80-1.20 meters from takeoff to landing, but I don’t know if this is something creating a unique benefit. I believe the option is doing rebound style depth jumps with some horizontal projection is better than just vertical landing because athletes are projecting forward from a box and our bodies are designed to redirect momentum. Research will validate this or prove it doesn’t matter, but for the meantime it’s a great way to challenge the body training wise and get good data. Focusing on keeping the ground contact under three-tenths a second and getting big air (displacement) is a good direction.

The Hop Drift Test

The last test is nothing new, as I mentioned it twice in earlier writings, with a specific highlight in the Top 5 Jumping Exercises for Speed Athletes article. The hop drift test is more of a screen than a performance test, but to me it’s worth doing because you can get a lot of information from it beyond just right and left power symmetry. The drift test does require near maximal effort with regards to hopping up and down, and using the Optojump can get four key data points. Jumping up and down with a contact mat or IR sensor (infrared sensors with Microgate equipment such as Optojump) give flight times and contact times easily. The added benefit with Optojump is that one can get left and right displacement of the foot landing as well as front to back changes as well. In summary, the Drift Test is getting how consistent the foot strike is and shows the spread of foot strikes over time. Comparing right and left, and you can see raw projection trends of each leg, and this can be very helpful in identifying dysfunctions and see patterns of foot kinetics and leg kinematics. The goal of the test is to screen quickly, not diagnose the issues the athlete is experiencing. In the future, wearable sensors will disrupt the Optojump system, and this is why I suggest going to a facility to outsource testing rather than invest into the equipment.

Figure 2: The Drift Test is a great way to look at both muscle/foot function and single leg power. Above is a view of the data coming from a soccer player in later stages of return to play rehabilitation.

Working around the lack of testing equipment can be done with the starting position and finishing position and the use of track markers and a good camera. The Drift Test is unique to Optojump, but a crude and valuable training and testing factor is using the painted lines of the track, specifically the marking of the lanes. When someone is testing without equipment, more manual effort is needed to get the same data, and the accuracy is usually compromised a bit. I like using video of 14 hops (two jumps to get started and two for ensuring the last are high efforts) to get ten solid in-place hops and see how much change is showing front-to-back and side-to-side. Don’t bother trying to measure because it will take hours of work with athletes and you are trying to look for gross problems on film for flagging who should get looked at deeper. If an athlete is feeling pain from old injuries or something is bothering him or her, don’t overreact and definitely don’t ignore, just refer to the right sports medicine person and let them deal with the issue. The takeaway is that the visual system can help make rapid adjustment to muscle recruitment and talented athletes hide dysfunctions and asymmetry problems. A weekend jogger can run pain and injury free because the resources needed to plod along the sidewalk is not the autobahn that requires maximal contraction subject to risks from fatigue and poor preparedness. Screening is about finding things that jump out and confirm if they are flukes, and nearly any test can show something that can help find potential problems before they become actual triggers to poor performance or injury.

Closing Thoughts on Transfer of Jumps to Speed

Few jumping exercises show anything unique or special, but a handful of the common jump tests done correctly do add value to coaches and athletes. The definition of performance is not a clear one, since an athlete is an agglomeration of different qualities such as medical health, stiffness, hip extension power, elastic abilities, and specific skill. Each test listed has a specific role in getting athletes faster. The transfer is not just about if the test correlates well with speed, but does the test serve as way to help athletes get faster and more efficient. By testing regularly the qualities needed in speed development, coaches and athletes can see how jump training is directly and indirectly helping one to be their best.

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By Tony Holler

You are the same today as you’ll be in five years except for two things: the books you read and the people you meet. — Charlie “Tremendous” Jones

Next month I will deliver a four-minute speech when I get inducted into the ITCCCA Hall of Fame.  I will have to condense 34 years of coaching into 4 minutes.

“And you may ask yourself, well … how did I get here?” … The Talking Heads from the song, “Once in a Lifetime” (1980).

The most powerful influences in my life were coaches.  From the day I was born, a coach shaped my world.  Coaches continue to impact my modus operandi at age 55.  I won’t be able to fit these 4500 words into a four-minute acceptance speech.  The twelve coaches introduced in this article answer the question, “How did I get here?”.  Every coach on my list is a member of some Hall of Fame, and if not, they will be inducted soon.  Many of the coaches on my list belong to multiple Hall of Fames.

Most coaches work in relative anonymity.  We aren’t known outside of our circles of influence.  Do you remember your coaches?  Sometimes I forget my dog’s name but I will always remember my 7th-grade basketball coach.

If you haven’t heard of some of these guys, keep reading.  We can learn from people we have never met.

You Don’t Form Habits By Talking About Them

I might as well lead with my ace.  Bob Knight does not know me, but I know him.  At one time, I was the youngest head high school basketball coach in Illinois (Harrisburg, 1982).  Everything was stacked against us.  Harrisburg achieved only one winning season in the previous 20 seasons, and the team had gone 0-25 the year before I got the job.  I wanted to win so bad it kept me up at night.  Bob Knight coached 180 miles from Harrisburg.  I attended some of his practices.  I paid a small fortune to attend “The Bob Knight Coaches Academy” (20-some hours of instruction).  Indiana was not my favorite team, but Bob Knight was my basketball guru.

Everything you do in practice must be evaluated.  Does it win games?  I still quote Knight, “You don’t form habits by talking about them.”  Indiana’s practices were amazing.  Nothing lasted more than ten minutes.  Quality over quantity.  Everything was intense and full of focus.  I never heard Bob Knight raise his voice or show the personality flaws which later defined him.  All I saw was a teacher at his best.  He was especially good at teaching coaches.  I hung on every word.  I filled a notebook.  Once I spoke with him after a practice.  He was gracious and attentive.

Many football coaches today run practice in 10-minute segments.  Anything lasting more than 10 minutes becomes redundant and counter-productive.  Bob Knight revolutionized coaching, and I was one of his students.

Middle School Coaches Are Just as Important as College Coaches

Ok, you know Coach Knight but you probably don’t know Coach Kaiser.  That’s the beauty of coaching.  You don’t have to have to be famous to be a great coach.  Bill Kaiser of Princeton, Illinois, was just as important to me as Bob Knight of Bloomington, Indiana.  Bill Kaiser was my basketball coach when I was a 5’8″ 120-pound 7th grader.  He also coached me when I was a 6’0″ 140-pound 8th grader.  Bill Kaiser was also my 7th grade English teacher.  We read Huck Finn.  He shocked the class when he told us to read everything, even Playboy.

Bill Kaiser was a man’s man with bronze skin and a shaved head.  He was a former football star who had played for the New Mexico Lobos in the early 50’s.  He spent his entire adult life working with kids.  His record as a basketball coach was 346-120.  He lived a stone’s throw from the little league ballpark.  If my memory serves me right, he was the little league commissioner.  In the winter, he spent his Saturday mornings supervising “Biddy Basketball”, a 10-team league of 5th & 6th graders.

Coach Kaiser was kind but tough.  It was over 40 years ago, but I can still hear him saying, “I will knock you down twice, and pick you up once.”  He was only half-kidding.  I was so lucky to have such a strong adult role model in my life.  I look around today and don’t see many career coaches at our middle schools.  They are all getting their administrative degrees.

Coach Kaiser was way ahead of his time.  Our practices always began with stations.  Our strength training involved homemade weights, bars fused with concrete formed inside of coffee cans.  Can you picture it?  We wore ties on the day of a game.  He dressed up, too.  Anyone who shot over 60% from the free throw line for the year got a Dairy Queen milkshake.  Anyone who could touch the rim won a milk shake.  We also won milk shakes for leading the team in assists, rebounds, steals, etc.  Never underestimate the motivation that comes from winning a prize.  I won seven milk shakes in 1973.

Everyone Should Run Track

The first guy who gave me a job was Gene Haile, the Athletic Director at Harrisburg in 1981.  Gene Haile was somewhat famous in Southern Illinois.  He had been the basketball coach at tiny McLeansboro when they went 132-33 from 1959-1964.  McLeansboro’s star player was Jerry Sloan of NBA fame.  Jerry Sloan said at his Hall of Fame induction, “My freshman year of high school I played for Coach Gene Haile. He was the head football coach and freshman basketball coach. He went on to become the head coach for basketball, football, and track. Under Coach Haile in order to play either one of those sports, basketball or football, you had to run track, and there is nothing I hated any worse than having to run two miles. But, I soon realized that what he was trying to do for me by making me run the hurdles and run long distance.”

I also knew Gene Haile through my mom’s brother (my uncle) Kevin Kane.  Kevin was an All-State football player for Coach Haile at Carmi High School in 1970.  Carmi went undefeated with Gene Haile as coach and Kevin Kane as his quarterback.

When I joined forces with Gene Haile in 1981, he was at retirement age.  He ran two miles every day and wrote his weight on a calendar.  He was an ex-military guy and still wore his hair like a Marine.  Haile had been hired to make Harrisburg competitive in the South 7 Conference.  He cleaned house and hired several coaches from outside of Harrisburg.  Schools in Southern Illinois typically suffer from inbreeding.  Gene brought in new blood.

Harrisburg became one of the few schools in Illinois to put all of their athletes into 7th-hour P.E.  The class was called “Athletics” and it wasn’t taught, it was coached.  Athletes were either in a sport, or they were running and strength-training every day.  No dodgeball for athletes.  In addition, all athletes were forced to run track.  Baseball players had to go to track practice before going to baseball.  This rule only lasted few years.  It’s hard force anyone to do anything.

Gene Haile was the ultimate multi-sport warrior and Harrisburg was forever changed.  Many people disagreed with Gene Haile, but he didn’t care.  Gene Haile made Harrisburg, per capita, the best high school athletic program in the state of Illinois.

You Don’t Have to Be Trendy

The football coach at Harrisburg in 1981 was a guy named Al Way.  Al Way was in his 30’s, but he seemed old to me.  Soon we became good friends.  Al Way loved every sport.  If we could quantify someone’s thoughts, Al Way probably devoted 75% of his consciousness to high school sports.  He coached football but also assisted in wrestling.  Al spent a couple of years as my throws coach in track.  In addition, he assisted in baseball.  When his daughter, Chrissy, was one of the best softball pitchers in Illinois, who was the head softball coach?  You guessed it.  Al Way’s favorite sport was basketball.  I’ve played lots of basketball in Harrisburg, all of it with Al Way.  Al Way’s multi-sport theme is so strong that his son, Scott, played basketball AND wrestled during the winter of his freshman year.  I’ve never heard of such a thing.

Coach Way after winning the 2000 Class 3A football championship. Harrisburg dominated the IHSA playoffs winning 53-8, 48-10, 53-21, 49-17, and 41-13.

Al Way hated summer football.  He was haunted by stories of other teams practicing every day in full pads during the off-season.  To Al, summer was baseball season, with some 3 on 3 basketball mixed in.

There was too much standing around at Al Way’s football practices but maybe that’s what happens when a varsity football team has only two coaches.  His teams went 186-68 and won the 3A State Championship in 2000.  He doesn’t know it, but I’ve won 30 consecutive freshmen football games running a version of his 1950’s offense, the Boz Adams’ T-formation.  Way retired in 2002, came back for one season in 2006, and was recently named head football coach, again, at Harrisburg High School.  Harrisburg fans have watched misdirection out of the T-formation for five decades.

Winning Does Not Define a Coach

I graduated from Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois.  Knox was a free-thinking liberal arts school with an average ACT of 27.  Almost all of Knox’s 1200 students lived on campus.  I went to Knox for one reason, Harley Knosher.

Harley Knosher looked you in the eye when he spoke to you.  He remembered everyone’s name.  Parents would drop off their kids for a basketball camp and Harley would remember the parent’s names six days later.  I’ve never known a better public speaker.  He looked like a generic white guy, but his charisma was almost scary.  Harley Knosher was a central figure at Knox College from 1960 to 2000.  Knox is running out of things to be renamed Knosher.  When he dies, Knox College may become Knosher College.  I am not exaggerating his impact.

Here’s an odd twist to my story.  As a freshman, I played on the Knox JV team in 1977-78, so technically, Harley was not my coach.  My sophomore year, I was one of the best ten players, but Coach Knosher shocked me when he read off the 15-man varsity squad.  I was exiled back to the JV team.  I was devastated.  In later conversations, Harley intimated that he agreed that I may have been one of the top-10 players at Knox.  However, Harley wanted his bench to be “team guys” … players who cared more about the “team” than their own playing time.  Some players from the Knox 15-man roster were bench-warmers in high school.  They understood their role and were satisfied with little or no playing time.  The guys on the bench at Knox wore a big smile and a fresh haircut.  Looking back, I just didn’t fit in.

I never played organized basketball again, and I’ve never gotten over the disappointment.  However, Harley Knosher remains one of the most influential men in my life.  I disagreed with some of Harley’s ideas but his honesty and sincerity won me back.  I’ve never known a smarter coach.  I took two of his half-credit courses, “Coaching Basketball” and “Athletic Administration”.  Harley Knosher was the best teacher I had at Knox College.

It’s strange that Coach Knosher became a legend at Knox despite his 254-270 record as a coach.  We all need to learn that wins and losses do not define us.  I wrote Harley Knosher recently, and he responded with a multi-page letter.

Quality Over Quantity

I’ve been in the same room with Paul Souza for less than an hour.  Coaches have the power of changing lives an in instant.  I saw Paul Souza in St. Louis back in 1998.  He introduced me to the word “epiphany” and that’s exactly what I got from his presentation.  Souza performed the best clinic presentation I’ve ever witnessed … and I’ve been going to clinics since I was ten years old.  Souza owned the room.

Paul Souza was not famous.  When I saw him speak, I had never heard of him.  He served as the head track coach at Division-3 Wheaton College in Norton, MA.  His teams won 8 National Championships, and he coached 284 All-Americans.  Souza was highly involved in USATF and founded the Elite Track and Field Series.  Souza high jumped 7’4 1/2″ indoors in high school.

Paul Souza explained how you could run sub-48 in the 400 without ever running further than 200 meters in practice.  Epiphany.  My coaching life was forever changed.  In addition, I was inspired to become a Souza-like clinician someday.  I have now spoken at 20 track & field clinics.

I maintained Paul Souza as a resource.  If I emailed him 100 words, he would respond with 1000 words.  Here is an excerpt from an email from April 22, 1998.  I had emailed Souza looking for advice on how to get my 4×4 under 3:20.

“It is time to do Critical Zone work.  I suggest, early in the training week, that you do workouts like fast 150’s or 200’s with 15 seconds recovery.  This will flood the system with lactic acid and teach runners how to deal with it.  If you do four, you’ll be lucky.  If you want to, do a couple, give them 10 minutes recovery and do another set.  They will hate you for it, but it will produce results.  Only do these workouts once a week and make it early in the week.  Then do fly 30’s or 40’s for turnover two days a week.  And give them plenty of rest.  You might even warm them up and send them home for two days.”

The paragraph above has become my core training philosophy for the past 16 years.

By the way, we broke the 3:20 barrier two weeks after this email.

Paul Souza is the only coach on my list who left coaching for a second career.  He is now the lead singer of the Velveteen Playboys.

Teacher, Coach, Father, Husband

Kelly Kane was a head football coach for 40 years.  His teams won 196 games.  Kelly is my mom’s little brother, my uncle, and my best man when I got married in 1983.

When I was a freshman quarterback on Princeton’s sophomore football team, Kelly Kane was the young head coach at Spring Valley Hall.  I was 14, he was 24.  When our teams played each other, my team won the sophomore game, his team won the varsity game.  Kelly’s team did not lose that year.

When I was a student at Knox College, Kelly Kane was the football coach in the same town, Galesburg.  Since we had different last names, no one at Knox knew Kelly was my uncle.  With an incredible stroke of luck, Kelly was my supervising teacher when I did my student teaching in 1981.  My apprenticeship took on additional meaning when I moved in with my aunt and uncle, and their three very young children.  I slept in their basement for ten weeks, saving money and removing myself from the Knox College “Animal House” also known as Beta Theta Pi.  Those ten weeks taught me more than any ten weeks in my life.

I learned to teach science.  Kelly was a top-notch teacher.  I learned how educators balanced teaching with coaching.  Kelly Kane was a heroic figure to me.  He was a list-making, dedicated, disciplined, intelligent, physically fit, father of three.  I was 21 years old, Kelly was 31. The most important thing Kelly Kane taught me was how to be a good husband and a good father after a long day at school.  After the ten weeks of sleeping in the Kane basement, the vision of my future was complete.

Train Smarter, Not Harder

I saw Chris Korfist speak at a clinic in or around 2008.  It was immediately apparent to me I was in the presence of greatness.  First of all, his training techniques were very similar to mine.  Wink.  No, seriously, Chris opened a door to an entire world of training sprinters that I never knew existed.

Chris Korfist was the highly successful sprint coach at Elmhusrt York H.S.  York won the state championship last year.  Chris does most of his work in his basement, his driveway, and the street in front of his house.  From month to month his training ideas evolve so fast it’s hard to keep up.  I usually just stand and watch.  When I’m with Chris, I understand the importance hanging out with people smarter than me.  I learn things from my athletes, but I’m blown away when I visit the mad scientist from Burr Ridge.

I’ve learned about gait analysis because Chris has a close relationship with Dr. Shawn Allen.  I’ve learned about superfoods.  I see weight training equipment in the Korfist basement that I’ve never seen anywhere else.  I once inquired about the cost of one of his machines and Chris answered, “Napoleon said, ‘If you have asked about the cost, you’ve already lost the war.'”

Chris Korfist has connected me with Douglas Heel of South Africa.  In the coming years, you will hear more and more about “manual therapy” and “performance therapy”.  ART and MAT are both gaining a foothold in sports performance.  The most exciting thing I’ve found in recent years is “Be-Activated” by Douglas Heel.  Two of my sons are coaches and will attend the “Be-Activated” seminar in February.  I’m also sending my jumps coach, Dr. Brian Damhoff.

Chris Korfist and I are in the planning stages to co-host a two-day “speed academy” for coaches this summer.

Connect With Athletes

I met Jay Thompson the first day I moved to Harrisburg.  He picked me up at my trailer (yes, I lived in a trailer but not in a trailer park), and we went to a party where I talked to a girl who I married two years later.  Like all coaches hired by Gene Haile, Jay Thompson was  a three-sport coach.  His passion was baseball.

34 years later, Jay Thompson is one of the winningest baseball coaches in Illinois history.  His teams have a record of 670-187.  From 2003-2009, Jay stepped down and assisted his brother, Joe, as Harrisburg went 159-44 and won the 2004 state championship.  In 1989, Harrisburg’s baseball team was nationally-ranked in USA Today and beat Schaumburg for the Class AA (big-school) state championship.

Jay was a coach.  Jay had incredible relationships with kids.  I was jealous of how his players loved him.  Jay spoke with a quiet voice that made players work to hear his words.  In addition, he only spoke when necessary.  I knew ten-times more basketball than Jay, but he was the greatest freshmen basketball coach I’ve ever seen.  You see, it’s not what you know, it’s what you emphasize.  The education world is full of experts that can’t make connections with kids.  I learned how to connect with kids by watching Jay Thompson.

Jay and I coached freshmen football together in the 80’s.  In the 90’s, we worked together as head baseball coach and head track coach to produce two of the best programs in the state of Illinois.  My 7’2″ high jumper played center field for him.  Jay’s star 2nd baseman was an all-state discus thrower for me.  We put kids first for the benefit of baseball and track, and most important, for the benefit of kids.

Winners Compete

When I moved to Oswego in 1974, I did not play football because we didn’t move to town until late August.  Plus, I hated football practice and only liked playing in games.  My P.E. teacher, Roger Wilcox, was a gruff-sounding man who was also the head football and track coach.  Every time he saw me he would growl, “Holler, if you are the best quarterback in the school, you need to be playing football.”  As our relationship grew, he convinced me to run track in the spring.

I was 6’2″ and weighed less than 160 pounds, but I had a long stride and was willing to race.  In the conference track meet, Roger Wilcox ran me anchor in the 4×4 despite the fact that I was only a sophomore.  When I took the baton, I passed both teams who were in front of us.  I may have bumped the guy from Kaneland.  Well, we won the race, and I ran a personal-record split, but we were disqualified.  I will never forget walking onto the bus afterward.  No one spoke to me.  When Coach Wilcox got on the bus he barked, “If all of you competed like Holler, we would have won this meet.”  That’s all he said.  I was his quarterback the following year.

Roger would always joke that I got him fired as a football coach.  My career ended in game four of my junior year, when I sustained a severe shoulder injury.  Our team was 2-2 at the time.  We finished 2-7, and Roger Wilcox got fired.

Roger Wilcox was a competitor, not a quitter.  Most fired football coaches never coach again.  Roger returned to coach lower-level football at Oswego.  He continued to serve as head track coach until 2004.  Two of his eleven conference titles happened in my junior and senior seasons.  This was especially significant due to the excellence of our conference.  Sycamore had a 7’5″ high jumper named Gail Olson.  Mark Claypool of Kaneland ran the 400 in 46.9.

Roger Wilcox always treated me like I was his favorite athlete, ever.  Whether I was or not, I will never forget the feeling.

Your Purpose In Life is to Find a Purpose

My dad was a coach when I was born in 1959.  He continued as a head basketball coach until 2004.  His career record was 644-439.  Don Holler coached at five high schools and one college, Aurora University (1978-1996).  For 44 of his 47 years, he was a head coach.

My childhood consisted of gymnasiums, locker rooms, school buses, games, and concession stands.  In many ways, 90% of my life has been spent in high school.

Don Holler addressing his team at the East Aurora Tournament 1975.

Don Holler was and is an incredibly gifted public speaker.  His deliveries always seemed perfect whether it was pre-game, half-time or post-game.  I’ve heard thousands of them.  At banquets, he was a pro.  My dad probably should have been a preacher.  My father’s congregation was his team.  You see, Don Holler grew up as a poor kid in government housing back in the 1940’s.   He grew up relatively unsupervised, and sports became his salvation.  His high school basketball coach, the legendary Gay Kintner of Stephen Decatur High School, became his surrogate father.  Gay Kintner won 649 games, my father won 644.

My dad always related best to players who had come from the wrong side of the tracks.  Don Holler loved all his players, but he especially loved the kids that needed him most.  Since retiring in 2004, my dad has worked as a Dean’s Assistant at Waubonsie Valley High School.

My father’s college dream was to have a family and to be a coach like Gay Kintner.  I am a continuation of that dream.

+++

And that was where my article was going to end.

I woke up in the middle of the night last week, and my thoughts about Gay Kintner raced.  Am I the continuation of the work done by a man who died three days before my first birthday?  It kept me awake.

My father told me this numerous times, “I want to die on the bench, just like Coach Kintner.”  That wish almost came true.  Three year’s after my dad’s retirement from coaching, doctors found a 98% blockage in his proximal left anterior descending coronary artery, “the widowmaker”.  A quintuple bypass surgery saved Don Holler from the same fate as his high school coach.

Old Coaches Never Die

Yesterday, I went to my parents’ house and asked my dad if he had any pictures of Coach Kintner.  It’s a powerful thing for a 55-year-old man to watch his 79-year-old father cover his bed with pictures and news clippings of his 119-year-old former coach.  Those keepsakes were not found hidden in the basement or the attic.  Those sacred artifacts are kept in my dad’s bedroom, always near.

It’s amazing how much you learn when you ask questions.  I did not know my dad was coached in the 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th grades by Gay Kintner’s son, Galen Kintner.  From 1949-1954, it was always “Coach Kintner”.

Everyone remembers the incredible movie “Hoosiers” which was loosely (very loosely) based on a team from a small school in Indiana winning the state championship against all odds.  The movie was almost entirely fictional.  However, it’s an absolute fact that Milan High School, with 161 students, won the Indiana State Tournament in 1954.  Milan’s coach, Marvin Wood, was 26 years old and never coached his team wearing a tie like Gene Hackman did in the movie.  He often suited up and practiced with the team.

Don Holler was a senior at Decatur in 1954.  His coach was 59 years old and wore a suit and tie at every practice and every game.  Gay Kintner never wore a whistle.  Kintner hired two registered officials to officiate every practice.

I’ve seen pictures of the 1954 Milan team, and they would have had trouble with this team.   My dad, Don Holler, is the middle player in the back row. This team was integrated 17 years before Gay Kintner’s famous friend, Adolf Rupp, finally integrated his team, the University of Kentucky (1970-71).

The Decatur “Running Reds” traveled everywhere, even to Indiana.  Kintner did not believe in holiday tournaments and his teams did not practice over the holidays.  Practices were typically two hours but players would sometimes stay until 9:00 PM playing on their own, unsupervised.  Can you imagine unsupervised play in today’s lawyer-driven schools?

The team traveled first-class in charter buses.  Once, upon learning a player had stolen silverware from a restaurant in Mattoon, Kintner made the entire team return to Mattoon in order to return the silverware and apologize to the restaurant manager.  The “Running Reds” made the 90-mile round-trip twice that day.

Coach Kintner was aware of my father’s lack of supervision and would often bring him along on scouting trips.  He also provided food and encouragement.  One black player worked nights at the foundry across town.  Coach Kintner routinely drove him to work.  Kintner once gave my dad a basketball and told him, “Wear it out.  You are going to be one of my great ones.”  Words like that are never forgotten.

Gay Kintner died three days before my first birthday.  My dad had just turned 23.  I recently found an article reporting Coach Kintner’s death back in 1960.  Gay Kintner changed many lives.  I have no doubt that Don Holler coached for 47 years because of the example set by his high school coach.  Gay Kintner influenced me through Don Holler.  Maybe there’s some quantum entanglement going on here.

When I think of the hundreds of kids I have coached, I wonder what they remember.  Two of my sons have chosen to be coaches.  I wonder if Alec and Quinn have been influenced, unknowingly, by coaches they have never met.  Three of my former athletes are terrific coaches at Triad, Edwardsville, and Belleville West.  What impact will they have?  Will their coaching echo in future generations?

Please share this article so others may benefit.

By Carl Valle

I rarely share workouts because so much is lost online. Without details, the reader is left scratching their heads wondering what to do on Monday. Conversely, articles that show workouts that are popular often discourage thinking and list recipes rather than teaching how to cook. As a compromise, I have listed what I think are universally great and added contextual details that enable athletes and coaches to benefit immediately and over time. My top workouts are the most useful for my situation, and some coaches may feel they have better options. The goal of this article is to make people think about why they are implementing plyometrics in their program and provide a wide variety of options outside the typical box jumps and hurdle jumps.

How I Evaluated the Routines and Exercises

As discussed in a previous article, plyometrics can do more than just increase elastic energy utilization; they can also help with teaching skills and reducing injuries. I chose the routines because I have used them for years or used concepts from the workouts and found them to work at each level of athlete development. I also removed popular options that are well known because rehashing what is widely available is not worth revisiting. Overall I had several considerations that I weighed before adding into my top six, and they are:

• Can a wide variety of athletes use the routines outside of elite track and field jumpers? I still work with athletes outside of sprinters, so I am very much aware of the needs of a professional soccer player and a long jumper getting ready for world championships.
• Does the routine have a unique benefit that may not be easily replicated with different options?
• Is the exercise safe and worth the risk-to-return benefit? Some exercises are very effective but come with too many prerequisites that most athletes will not benefit. Those exercises like hurdle hops and depth jumps for most purposes can’t be the foundation when most athletes need rudimentary exposure today.
• Finally, I included exercises that are a balance between vertical and horizontal displacement, and included exercises that incorporated single and double leg actions. Also, most of the routines don’t include equipment beyond boxes and hurdles, common tools for jump training.

As for sets and reps I left that vague enough to be tailored to the needs of the program. Some training situations will have fewer recovery options, such as programs that are affected by cold climates and have little soft surfaces from which to recover. Also, I don’t like exact recipes since most coaches and athletes will plug routines to programs that may be completely different than my own or the original influence. We all are likely using workouts from someone else as a mentor, but the differences in the other parts of training should influence how we administer the training of specific routines. Just plugging in a workout without blending the nuances is risky, and rejection to the stimulus can increase injuries and have poor transfer.

Traditional GPP Jump Series

When most coaches hear GPP they see a license to include mega volumes, and that leads to junk repetitions. Sure, work capacity is important, but with power activities technique and precise loading is important. A popular and effective series is jumps in place, meaning the athlete is doing a lot of jumping up and down without equipment. The reason I use a series instead of a circuit is because most equate the term circuit with fatigue or conditioning, and that leads to tendon pathologies from which some athletes never recover. I love to include split jumps (scissors), tuck jumps, and rocket/star jumps. All three movements are bilateral, and this is an important lesson on long-term development. First, the use of two legs reduce the wear and tear because stabilization of hopping quickly fatigue stabilizers early in the season. Volume is not everything, but capacity during GPP is still important. Second, running is usually part of conditioning and specificity is overrated when most athletes are prone to overuse syndromes from long competition schedules. Single-leg options must be done sparingly, and when appropriate, done with care.

• Split Jumps 10-16 reps (8 per leg)
• Star Jumps 8-10 reps
• Tuck Jumps 10-16 reps
• Backboard Taps 10-12 reps

At first glance, this looks typical, especially if your coach is coming from the USATF School. The devil is in the details, and the key is the subtle micro adjustments the coach places in the rest periods, volumes, and teaching. Split jumps are about switching legs and getting into the right positions, and the focus is not maximal but coordination. Second, star jumps or rocket jumps are about starting in a ball or collapsed position and expanding into a large amplitude with outstretched arms while in the air before returning to the original position. This is a great exercise to get a real range of motion work for injury reduction needs. Tuck jumps are great for hip flexor strength and reinforcing rapid contraction times. None of this will create the next Vince Carter, but doing 2-3 rounds will create a durable athlete with a solid positional background with joint loading strategies.

Video 1: Two Time Olympian and National record holder Hector Cotto from Sprint Hurdles is doing two common variations of scissor jumps, the first version double swing, and the second more split arm style.

Power Toss Progression

Medicine ball throws are included because elastic energy doesn’t need to be purely jump based to have value. The use of medicine ball throws in different forms is common internationally, but most of the time it’s done because of history instead of a clear rationale. I have a vanilla series that I have done for years that simply is a great general tool to emphasize “contraction clarity” with athletes. The series is three types of throws behind the back or above the head and is a great transition for those that have no experience with Olympic style lifts. The progression of body (jumping) to throwing (with implement) to pulling (snatch and clean) is my bag of tricks to train the athlete while secretly teaching fundamentals of advanced lifting. Save the broomstick teaching for Harry Potter fans and train hard while sneaking in the skills for down the road.

Static Throws – Like a squat jump, throws from a squatting position are great to teach concentric explosions without elastic energy. This is a great way to teach discipline in the blocks without doing starts and is a great way to see who has solid lifting backgrounds and who is getting away with being a good athlete.

Dynamic Throws – Similar to a countermovement jump, going from a standing position down and up with a toss is a great way to see output with some elastic contribution. The elastic energy is not a huge difference, say 5-20% tops, but it’s a great way to get some work in when joints are beat up. Doing power tosses on recovery days are not for everyone, but some athletes find it a great way to wake up the body without creating a lot of eccentric stress.

Reactive Throws – This is the most elastic of throws, when a pre-jump is included to increase the eccentric demand, so more elastic energy is used. Coaches should see the best outputs of power with this option, and if not, they need to look at the eccentric demands of their program and make sure they are providing a clear path to reactive power.

One can do a lot of volume with the throws, but reps of 6-12 are enough to ensure adequate volume if enough sets are included. You can do groups of the same exercise or repeat the above progression over and over depending on one’s training philosophy.

Video 2: Hector Cotto is doing reactive throws and showing great form in this clip. If I had the Ballistic Ball from A2P, I would have been able to see the outputs in clear detail and could have seen precisely how development was going.

Stiffness Hopping and Side Hopping

A mainstay with any jumping athlete is likely to be lateral and medial hops for injury reduction. I find it to be one of my top exercises and spoke about it earlier, but only surveyed the training routine briefly. One of the primary reasons I like stiffness work is injury prevention and development of the muscles and neuromuscular coordination below the knee. The limits to proprioception are not so much balance, but how fast and how strong muscles can be activated. Hopping in one place without the use of the Optojump system (Screening) can be done with athletes doing single leg hops for maximal effort up and down on the track using hurdle markings. I love technology, but budgeting and time constraints make it hard for me to justify a unit outside of a private facility or large college. Athletes will drift (move away) front/back and left/right based on muscle recruitment patterns and joint dysfunctions, and the use of Optojump here is very helpful if you have the budget. Also, power between left and right legs can be tested with a contact mat if one has the budget. The goal is to train and test concurrently and hopping in place is a great starting point.

After an athlete is competent and has symmetry, I like adding up and down hopping from a lifting platform or similar for slightly more demand. After a few weeks of sprinkled vertical hops with slight lateral displacement, I then add hopping to the side (medial and lateral) for 3-4 sets of 8-12 contacts. Some rotational jumps I have added with team sport athletes, but solid ability to handle hops is essential before adding complex landing scenarios.

Video 3: The clip above shows the stiffness hops being done as a way to strengthen the lower leg after training sessions as part of the “cool down”. I prefer to do training units instead of an unstructured warm-down as athletes seem to do lazy stretches and socialize, thus ruining training time. Light stiffness work is a great way to transition from very high intensity work to something lighter and easier.

Low Box Hops and Bounds

I was not a believer in low box work and never got the purpose of why so many coaches swore by the inclusion of the exercise. Clearly one can jump or bound off low boxes but I prefer to hop before progressing to something far more complicated and difficult to calibrate in set-ups. One of the common requests I get in email is what my conjecture is on the mechanism that creates improvement in performance, and I have one guess and that is pre-tension. Pretension is a combination of muscle recruitment before landing and rapid switching from relaxation to stiffening right before foot contact. The reason I believe in this exercise is that I have done fine wire EMG studies with athletes, and for those not knowing what this means is we stuck needles in their muscles to find the truth. I honestly thought pretension was automatic reflexive, and it is for the most part with elites, but some athletes relax too much and have delayed contraction times or stay too rigid to muscles that need to accept the eccentric response. When an athlete can disassociate contractions and joints locally, more high-threshold motor units can get recruited. I have scoured the research and see very little research with increasing pretension and we are talking milliseconds here. What we do know is some muscle recruitment changes are from adaptations, some are from coordination and skill, and some are from surprises by an artificial apparatus such as low boxes.

To summarize the theory, the low box may increase specific RFD (rate force development) to the altered temporal (timing) of the recovery period of the hop or bound and demands a higher recruitment from the athlete. Years ago I felt that this was a parlor trick and was just a way to increase arousal or demand on the athlete but from the video and testing it was accelerating the abilities to create pretension through cognitive and passive neuromuscular adaptations. Do improvements come from adding variety? Maybe. The contractions are different and could yield changes beyond just doing straight hops without the box. The science of pre-tension or muscle activity anticipating an early contraction is scant, to say the least, but this is a good option for challenging athletes. Repetitions of 8-15 contacts per leg and sets of 3-5 are realistic here.

Video 4: Hops onto low boxes can be done with different spacing and sequences, along with different rationales. I like using the low box to help with striking and increasing the relaxation to pre-tension rates and this can be tested with Myotest and Darfish. Randy Huntington was the first to show some great fusion, and Scott Damman pioneered a lot of the use of wearable technology for jumping.

Zigzags, Heidens, or Diagonal Bounding

Lateral bounding is one of the best ways to reduce injuries, build change of direction ability, and target muscles of the hip. Naming conventions can create confusion, but understanding the history and terminology helps coaches appreciate the exercise. Bounding as explained in my earlier articles is alternating between legs. Heidens is named after the great skating hero Eric Heiden. Knowing a little history is important for technique mastery. “Why,” you ask? Most of the lateral skating jumps include a free leg that fishtails behind the athlete, inviting poor recruitment of the support leg. Good technique is essential in general, but when you are doing anything that has great value with injury reduction, don’t reinforce a pattern that increases rotational motion and a slow recovering free leg.

A good rule of thought is keeping the recovery foot hovering over the ground and ready to step on the grass or training surface. If you see the bottom surface of the foot behind the athlete when viewing posteriorly stop and think how this is helping them prepare for the next step. Instead of having the knee bent and foot behind the athlete, have the foot in front of the body as much as possible and the foot ready to land.

My suggestion is starting from a stork stance to deprogram the common technique error to get the non-support hip into front flexion and the foot surface parallel to the ground. Athletes should practice side to side leaping (bounding) and keeping the recovery or free leg in front before moving on to forward progressing bounds. Also, it’s a good idea to modulate sticking of the landings and depths to help prepare for greater efforts. In addition to continuous bounding, some shuffling back and forth creates more lateral speed to overload the deceleration a bit, but one still needs to leap laterally to challenge the body.

Video 5: The forward progressing lateral bounds create a diagonal effect, and this is one of the rare videos I see a good example of a free leg. If one was to search on YouTube, most of the videos are poorly instructed, and you would be surprised how even some popular experts are not teaching the movement optimally.

The Cometti Complex

I first saw the Werner Gunthor video in 1997 while attending the Building and Rebuilding the Complete Athlete in Tampa. I was tired after lunch from a big meal, and the VHS tape woke me up. Seeing a 285 pound freak of nature was awesome, but it made me realize that training was more than just barbells for development of power. Now there is a renaissance of interest with attention on the work of Cometti and Piasenta but with no understanding of the history and context of the coaches and their science. French Contrast work is an option and not a destination. In my articles on potentiation and other concepts of training, the emphasis is always on what is necessary and not what is possible thanks to Henk Kraaijenhof. Only when one has exhausted the basics and direct options does a coach need to get a little “exotic” with their program.

In the video below (starts at 8:00) Werner does ricochet jumps, followed by hurdle jumps, then immediately into stair jumps. Other examples can be seen on YouTube of combination exercises but this is my absolute favorite. Obviously one can argue that this not necessary as some athletes have done with very simple programs, but it didn’t stop Gunthor from winning three world championships in the shot put. While some people will chant the Bondarchuk tables as gospel, Americans have dominated the shot put, and other countries have succeeded as well.

The takeaway for the videos is the need to keep progressing without adding more load or volume. Creativity is about being resourceful without resorting to risk, and coaches should optimize training with efforts in the pairings that complement and contrast contractions and movement patterns. Other resources for training include Gary Winckler’s work from the USATF Level III school in 2006.

Video 6: The entire Werner Gunthor series is worth watching but forward to the 8-minute mark to see what is possible with larger athletes. I don’t recommend anyone do his routine, but observe the contraction dynamics and flight patterns. The rhythm is rather interesting, and one can say with confidence that training was a big part of his success in being a world champion.

Wrapping Up the Routines

Perhaps none of these routines match your needs or maybe all of them are great additions. The examples are what I have found to work for me, and the final option was used to be provocative and evoke ideas beyond simple groupings. If the list does nothing but stir up a little debate or exchange, the article did its job. Some of the exercises and workout routines are not 100% safe so I strongly recommend taking things slow and seek out a coach or expert if you are an athlete and training on your own. In summary, the routines are what I find useful, and I hope other coaches investigate what they think are their best workouts and explore why.

Please share this article so others may benefit?

By Craig Pickering

It is often said that elite athletes are born and not made. This indicates that there is a large genetic component to sporting performance, which anecdotally can be seen in many examples. Both my parents were reasonably good sprinters, for example, and it turns out I wasn’t too bad either. Many studies have looked at the inheritability of athletic traits, and estimates for how much sporting ability is inherited ranges from 20% up to 70%, depending on the sporting skill required. It appears that for physiology-based sports, such as athletics, the genetic aspect is higher than in skill-based sports where different roles can be fulfilled by different people. For example, a sprinter will always need to be fast, while an elite soccer player can be quick, have good endurance or a mix of the two. Understanding the genetic component to sporting success can lead to better training programs, more efficient training and potentially increased success.

What are genes?

First we need to understand what genes are. Genes are where we store our DNA, and this DNA allows us to create proteins that have certain functions, or create certain traits. For example, a set of genes create the protein for eye colour, and the difference in these genes between individuals leads to differences in eye colour. The long strands of DNA that make up our genes are comprised of four different bases; A, C, G and T. Sometimes, in the process of DNA replication, one of these bases is accidentally substituted for another. The substitution creates a single nucleotide polymorphism or SNP. The SNP can either have no effect on which amino acid sequence is created (making it a synonymous SNP) or change the amino acid sequence, which is called a non-synonymous SNP. There are two types of non-synonymous SNPs, nonsense and missense. Nonsense SNP is one that causes a stop codon to be created, and the result of this is that an incomplete protein is transcribed. This incomplete protein tends to be non-functional and ineffective. A missense SNP is where a different amino acid is coded, which changes the function of the protein. As an example, sickle cell disease usually results in a change from GAG to GTG where the A is substituted to a T. This single change results in valine being created instead of glutamic acid, and the end result is that the individual develops sickle cell disease. Studying these SNPs in relation to sporting performance is an emerging field with encouraging results.

One thing to remember is the effect of the environment on our genes. Having the best genes is not enough for sporting performance; an ideal environment is also critical. As an example let’s imagine that somewhere in rural China lives a young boy. This boy has incredible sprint genes, much better than Usain Bolt. However, he doesn’t know athletics exists, let alone take part. His day is spent farming in the fields in order to make money to survive. Despite his perfect genes, he will never be a rival to Usain Bolt. Now let’s consider a 12-year-old boy growing up in Jamaica. He shows some promise in sprint races at school, and so goes along to an athletics club. Here, he receives training from an expert coach who has plenty of experience in taking sprinters from decent school athletes to Olympic champions. He joins a training group that has a number of high-level sprinters, and every day is pushed to have good training sessions by these partners. He is exposed to sensible competitions, and as such learns to compete well controlling his nerves and raising his performance when it matters. This athlete develops within an exceptional environmental system that places him at an advantage regardless of what his genes are. In fact, compared to his Chinese counterpart, this Jamaican might only need to have better than average sprint genes to succeed.

We also need to consider the role that other heritable traits play in sporting success. Consider another sprint example. An individual with perfect sprint genes who is only 4 foot tall would never be Olympic Champion because they would lack the stride length required to be a great sprinter. Remembering this interplay is important when considering which genes allow elite sporting performance.

What do the studies show?

The next thing to consider is how the science is done. At the moment, most of the gene studies are association studies. This means that scientists get a group of elite athletes, and a group of control athletes/non-athletes, and see what difference there is genetically between the groups. From this, scientists can then come up with a hypothesis regarding the genes that occur more or less frequently in the elite athlete group, and then test this hypothesis.

Let’s look at a particular gene to illustrate this example. The gene we are going to look at is alpha-actinin-3 or ACTN3 for short. ACTN3 is a good example because it is very well studied. There are three different types of ACTN3 genotype; RR, RX, and XX. I’ll discuss what this means later on, but it’s important to note that the difference between an R and an X allele is a substitution of one base, from C to T – this is the SNP that causes the differences. In a study by Yang et al. (2003), the scientists looked at 429 elite Australian athletes, and 436 Australian controls. They further split the elite athletes in two groups; athletes involved in speed-power sports, or athletes involved in endurance sports. They then looked at the difference in the ACTN3 genotype between the groups. What they found is that elite speed-power athletes were more likely to have the RR genotype than both the controls and endurance group. Conversely, the endurance group were more likely to have the XX genotype than either the controls or the speed power group. The XX genotype was present in 24% of endurance athletes, 18% of controls, and only 6% of elite speed-power athletes. Interestingly, this study included sprinters that had been to the Olympic Games; none of them had the XX genotype. The conclusion from this study was that the RR genotype is linked to elite performance in speed-power events, and the XX genotype was linked to elite performance in endurance events.

These results are similar to that of other studies. A study by Massidda et al. (2012) found that the RR genotype was linked to elite gymnastics status. Moran et al. (2006) found that the R allele was associated with improved sprint performance in Greek adolescents. Scott et al. (2010) reported that in elite US and Jamaican sprinters, the XX genotype only occurred in about 3% of athletes.

From these interesting results, scientists could then propose a model for why ACTN3 genotype creates these effects. In a review article in 2013 by Eynon et al. (2013), the authors describe how ACTN3 codes for a protein found only in type-IIx muscle fibres. Individuals with the XX genotype cannot create this protein, which shifts muscle fibres towards the slower twitch end of the spectrum. Individuals with the RX genotype (i.e. one allele of each) can produce some type IIx fibres, and individuals with the RR genotype can produce the most. Eynon describes a mouse knockout model, in which mice were bred to have the XX ACTN3 genotype. These mice had less muscle mass (due to a decreased diameter of type IIx fibres), less grip strength (however you may test grip strength in a mouse) and an increased endurance capacity compared to RR and RX genotyped mice. These results mirror that of Vincent et al. (2007), which show that individuals that are RR for ACTN3 have around 5% more type-IIx fibres than those with the XX genotype.

Once an understanding of ACTN3 and how it affects performance was formulated, it was time for scientists to put this to the test. Delmonico et al. (2007) found that when a group of individuals were given the same training programme, those that had the RR genotype saw greater improvements in peak power and absolute power relative to both RX and XX genotypes. In turn, the RX genotypes saw greater improvements than the XX group. Similarly, Turky et al. (2014) found that in a group of youth weightlifters doing the same twelve week training programme, individuals with the RR genotype showed the greatest improvement in peak strength, whereas individuals with XX showed the greatest improvements in strength endurance. Interestingly, Ahmetov et al. (2014) found that ACTN3 genotype was also linked to resting testosterone levels in elite Russian athletes; individuals with RR genotype had greater free testosterone than those with the RX genotype who in turn had greater levels than those with the XX genotype. Norman et al. (2014) also found that mTOR activity was lower in individuals of XX genotype following sprint training; mTOR is an enzyme that plays a role in muscle hypertrophy.

So, from all the data, we can conclude that individuals with the RR genotype should respond to power based training to a greater extent than those with the RX genotype who in turn will respond better to power based training than those with the XX genotype. The mechanism for this is likely to be down to adaptations in the type-IIx fibres, of which the XX genotype doesn’t have as much. Additional mechanisms are likely to be related to testosterone levels, as well as mTOR signalling.

There are plenty of other genes linked to exercise performance and response to exercise. Along with the ACTN3 gene already discussed, the ACE gene is strongly linked to both power and endurance exercise. Individuals with the DD version of this gene tend to respond best to power training, whilst those with the II version respond best to endurance training. In a study on 91 British Olympic standard runners, the I allele increased in frequency as the distance ran increased. This indicates that the II genotype was much more prevalent in elite endurance athletes and much less prevalent in elite sprint athletes (Myerson et al. 1999). These results are mirrored in groups of Australian Olympic rowers, Russian endurance athletes, and elite South African Ironman triathletes (Puthucheary et al., 2011). The BK2BR gene is also linked to response to exercise, with the DD genotype occurring with a greater frequency in endurance athletes. Other potential sporting genes include AGT (C allele over-represented in elite power athletes), AMPD1 (CT allele present in a higher frequency of power compared to endurance athletes), Il-6 (G allele more frequent in power athletes compared to endurance athletes), and genes linked to mitochondrial response to exercise including PPARA, PPARD, PPARG, and PPARGC1A (Lucia et al., 2005; Eynon et al., 2013).

There are also a growing number of genes linked to injury risk. Up to 50% of sporting injuries involve tendons (Collins & Raleigh, 2009), and collagen is a major structural component of these tendons. Genes that code for Type I collagen (COL5A1) and Type V collagen (COL5A1) have been shown to influence injury risk. For example, individuals with the TT genotype of COL1A1 are at a decreased risk of Achilles tendon or anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury. Indeed, in a study on South Africans, Collins et al. (2010) found that the TT genotype was present in only 0.3% of ACL injury despite the fact that almost 5% of the tested population had this genotype.

So what does this all mean for the athlete?

All this information is interesting, but is it useful for the athlete and coach? This field is a new and emerging science, and so it is important to consider this when interpreting genetic information. Grimaldi et al. (2012) discuss some issues in their paper, including the fact that genetic studies often cannot limit or determine the environmental influence. However, evidence is starting to emerge that allows guidance to be given to athletes who have had their genome tested. For example, going back to ACTN3, we now know from the studies that individuals with the RR genotype will respond to power training to a greater extent than those with the XX genotype. Therefore, if we get an RR individual, we would recommend that their training biases power work a bit more. If we get an XX individual, we will recommend that an individual bias a higher rep range in the gym, including repetitions to failure (in exercises where that is safe to do so). Similarly, RR individuals are likely to benefit from high-intensity sprint training over short distances, whilst RX (the mix genotype) might respond better to speed endurance work. These differences in muscle architecture and fibre type are created by the differences in this gene.

Similarly, individuals whose genes show that they are more efficient at creating new blood vessels within the muscle and who are more likely to have efficient mitochondrial biogenesis will respond well to endurance based running training. Note that if this individual were a sprinter, they shouldn’t be told that they should become a 5000m runner – clearly this would be absurd. Instead, they should consider the fact that they might get more out of shorter recovery training than other individuals.

With regards to injury risk, individuals that score highly on this would be placed on an effective pre-habilitation programme, involving eccentric loading of at risk tendons. Over the course of a training or competition block, these athletes will be closely monitored for injury symptoms and might spend more time undergoing recovery modalities. FC Barcelona now screen their players for genetic risk factors thought to be associated with hamstring injuries and use it as a part of their pre-habilitation techniques (Til et al., 2013).

Having had my genetics tested, I can tell you that the results didn’t surprise me. It showed that I had a slight endurance bias, which made sense to me – as a sprinter I didn’t tolerate high-speed work particularly well, and responded really well to slightly longer distance reps. My favourite session used to be 5x200m, and I was much better at 300/150m repetitions that my training partners. In the gym, my one repetition maximums are not all that impressive, but my 5 repetition maximums are relatively much better. In terms of injury, I received the highest injury risk score that the company testing me had seen. Again, this isn’t all that surprising; intervertebral discs are comprised of collagen, and I have suffered numerous disc injuries throughout my career. However, since I was 17 I have had a really good rehab and pre-hab training programme in place, which has allowed me to minimize the disruption these injuries caused me as much as possible. This illustrates the utility of these tests; knowing that you are at an increased risk of injury allows the athlete and coach to modify their environment to reduce this risk. It could also improve adherence to an injury prevention programme.

So what does all this mean? Genetic testing isn’t a magic bullet. Instead, it is a useful tool that enables you to base your decisions based on evidence. It can also remove trial and error that can cost an athlete time and success. Had I tested my genes when I was 18, it could have prevented years of trying the wrong training and diet, and instead put me on the right track earlier. As more and more studies are completed, personalised training and nutrition programmes for high-level athletes will become much more common. We already know that one-size doesn’t fit all; now we can say which training type suits which individual.

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References

Ahmetov et al. (2014). ACTN3 genotype is associated with testosterone levels of athletes. Biol Sport 31(2) 105-108

Collins et al. (2010). The COL1A1 gene and acute soft tissue ruptures. Br J Sports Med 44(14) 1063-1064

Collins & Raleigh (2009). Genetic risk factors for musculoskeletal soft tissue injuries. Med Sport Sci 54 136-149

Delmonico et al. (2007). Alpha-actinin-3 (ACTN3) R577X polymorphism influences knee extensor peak power response to strength training in older men and women. J Gerontiol A Biol Sci Med Sci 62(2) 206-12

Eynon et al. (2013). Genes for elite power and sprint performance: ACTN3 leads the way. Sports Med 43(9) 803-17

Grimaldi et al. (2012). Personal genetics – Sports utility vehicle? Recent Pat DNA Gene Seq 6(3) 209-215

Lucia et al. (2005). PPARGC1A genotype (Gly482Ser) predicts exceptional endurance capacity in European men. J Appl Physiol 99(1) 344-348

Massidda et al. (2012). ACTN3 and ACE genotypes in elite male Italian athletes. Anthropoligcal Review 75(1) 51-59

Moran et al. (2006). Association of the ACTN3 R577X polymorphism and complex quantitative body composition and performance phenotypes in adolescent Greeks. Eur J Hum Genet 15(1) 88-93

Myerson et al. (1999). Human angiotensin I-converting enzyme gene and endurance performance. J Appl Physiol 87(4) 1313-1316

Norman et al. (2014). ACTN3 genotype and modulation of skeletal muscle response to exercise in human subjects. J Appl Physiol 116(9) 1197-1203

Puthucheary et al. (2011). The ACE gene and human performance: 12 years on. Sports Medicine 41(6) 433-448.

Scott et al. (2010). ACTN3 and ACE genotypes in elite Jamaican and US sprinters. Med Sci Sport Exercise 42(1) 107-112

Til et al. (2013). Hamstring injuries in football: Applying scientific knowledge to daily on-field practice. Aspetar Sports Medicine Journal 2

Turky et al. (2014). Effect of training programme in terms of ACTN3 gene alleles on strength achievement, endurance and snatch for young weightlifters. International Journal of Advanced Sport Science Research 2(3) 280-288

Vincent et al. (2007). ACTN3 (R577X) genotype is associated with fibre type distribution. Physiol Genomics 32(1) 58-63

Yang et al. (2003). ACTN3 genotype is associated with human elite athletic performance. Am J Hum Genet 73(3) 627-631.

By Chris Korfist

Every basketball junkie has dreams of dunking over their opponent on the court. It seems that is part of the right to athletic manhood. Every little kid always asks the older high school athlete if they can “slam”. Sometimes the response is I can get rim or can dunk a tennis ball. Once an athlete has broken “the dunk barrier”, they get creative, one-hand, two-hand, tomahawk, one step, two legs, reverse. Dreams of entering the NBA dunk contest are always in the back of player’s mind, and the 5’7 Spud Webb only encouraged everyone’s dreams.

The internet world of athletic training is built on these dreams. If you want to sell, you have to have a vertical jump program. There are thousands you can buy. Kelly Baggett had the first one that I thought was good. It had a good mix of exercises and a sound progression. There were many in between and many more that were just plain bad. Michael Jordan’s coach put a book out that was just plain bad. The program would work great for Jordan but no one else. A good recent one is Joel Smith’s Vertical Foundations.

Eventually, it became fun to see some crazy ideas. As I learned more, I realized how some of these books or even tools could become detrimental. I’m thinking of Strength Shoes. I had them back in high school. They do work. You do add inches and increase your speed, but it becomes a law of diminishing returns. Think about it. Your calves can only get so big and strong. From a recruitment pattern, your calves become the driver, and you lose out on glutes and hamstrings. I will never forget the first couple days I had them, and I was young, I jogged a couple of miles in them. I didn’t walk for days. In hindsight, they were not a good idea for me. I digress. Anyway, in the internet world of jumping, I did a Google search. A Google search has 44 million listings to improve your vertical jump. Ankle rocker has 44,000, most of which deal with rocking chairs and other things that have nothing to do with the function. And ankle rocker is where I have athletes that are picking up inches quickly.

The first athlete was more of a long play. He started at a younger age and would come and go with his extensive basketball schedule. His biggest issue was his tibial torsion. With his shins twisting, it was difficult to get lateral stability that created the issue of getting a stable base from which to jump. With an extensive amount of work to his hips, we finally got to the point where he could get his body lined up to jump in a vertical fashion. As a 6’1 guard, he needed to turn heads to get the attention he needed to move on to the next level. This is where the big drive came from to get a big jump. He needed an explosion. He started at 24 inches, and his last jump before leaving for college was 36.5”.

This is a progression of the first athlete. He started at 24 and progressed to 36 as shown in the videos below.

And this is where you end up when you put it all together.

Another athlete was a quick fix. A good athlete and a better hurdler came in for an assessment. We found that his ankle rocker was off. And he jumped with his back and used very little legs. But, being an explosive athlete he still jumped 25”. Three weeks later and some ankle work, he hit 31”. Since then, he has hit 32.4.

Both athletes and many more lack the ability to jump with their legs. As mentioned in my Ankle Rocker article, if an athlete cannot bend at the ankle, their body needs to rotate around the hips to gain velocity to throw the body vertically. And now the lift comes from the arm throw and the straightening of the spine. Legs just finish the movement. There is no drive. It is all throw. To get the drive from the legs, the ankles need to bend forward to create space for the hips to drop. So, the drive becomes vertical and from the hips, thighs and calves. To develop this, I created a circuit that we warm up with every workout. Some of the results have been incredible. I had two athletes put 5 inches on their vertical in 2-3 weeks.
After the athletes have the basic ankle rocker down and single leg squats, we move into the following workout.

The first exercise is what we call an ankle rocker pop. The athlete stands on the jump pad and goes into an ankle rocker position. Keeping the torso vertical, allow the ankles to bend forward, hold for a count and jump from that position. We want to make sure hands stay on hips, so we get a true reading on the just jump pad. We will do 4-6 repitions. More if the numbers continue to go up. In the second set, the athletes get into the same position but when they can’t go down any further, they will allow their hips to push back to the point where their shins and torso are parallel. Once in this position, with their hands on their hips, they will jump up. Once again, we measure the height. It is usually higher. On the third set, we will do the movement in a counter jump fashion. The movement should be short and quick. You can also drill this movement by pulling down hard, holding for a count, and extending up quickly, never leaving the ground.

The second exercise is a stair climb. Standing at the base of the stairs, the athlete will step onto the first step and push their shin forward trying to touch the edge of the next step without changing their body position. From that point, they will push down on the foot and extend the shin vertically from the ankle and drive up to the big toe. And continue to do so up the flight of the stair. Have them think about squeezing their glute at the top of the movement.

The third exercise is on my MVP Shuttle. The athlete will lie on their side with their foot underneath their hip. They will squat into a position where the shin comes forward and hip bends slightly and will do a single leg jump from that point. And upon landing, try to get back immediately into that same position. We start with a weight less than bodyweight so the movement can slow down to get a feel for it. Once the ankle works properly, we start adding weight.

Here is a great jump with great technique.

This vertical is 38.7”. Watch the shadow in the back.

Here is a 40 inch jump with feet turned out with a lot of glute recruitment. This is a 40 incher.

Another 40. Watch the ankles and short approach.

This has carried over into their sprints as well. I have seen big changes in an athlete’s sprint as well. They seem to have more pop and have increased their stride. Sometimes it is the little things that make the biggest impact.

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By Matthew Buckley, TMG North America

The field of muscle diagnostics has a long history of providing valuable, objective information for use in risk management, injury diagnosis and muscle composition data. Ultrasound Imaging, MRI, and EMG have laid the foundation for the modern use of these diagnostic devices in sport performance. In the analytics era, data is more important than ever. Sports professionals are now searching for new and more valuable technologies for use diagnosing and monitoring athletes. After all, information is knowledge and knowledge is power.

When athletes get injured, they, the team, the coach, and the organization all suffer. Currently, diagnostic technologies can assess either reliably or with applicable results, not both. This lack of both reliable AND applicable information leads to a weakness in current athlete assessment strategies. To bridge this information gap, many professional clubs and athletes around the world are using a technical procedure called Tensiomyography, providing immediate and diagnosis of specific muscle performance.

During conversations about Tensiomyography with elite athletes and sports therapy professionals from Europe and North America the consensus is clear that Europe is currently making great advances in sport technology and its use. Having an already established European foundation of development, research, and application, Tensiomyography is able to help athletes immediately in North America.

For athletes, performance determines success. Objective information is of utmost importance when assessing an athlete. With the implementation of Tensiomyography into athlete testing, we can successfully monitor muscle responses during different training and competition conditions. The data obtained can be immediately assessed for imbalances, deficiencies, and recommendations as well as compared over time to assess trends in training and performance.

Data obtained describes five unique muscle contraction parameters.

Figure 1: Contraction Time vs Stiffness.

These unique parameters provide important information about muscle performance and composition.

Benefits of Tensiomyography

• Sports Medicine Therapists and Practitioners
• Testing is simple, fast and non-invasive.
• Portable system – use in clinic or remote location.
• Real time TMG reports – acquire valuable muscle performance information based on the athlete’s unique muscle characteristics and contractile properties.
• Obtain objective, quantitative data to validate and compliment in-clinic assessments and training to better serve athletes.
• Competitive differentiator.
• New ongoing revenue stream.
• Athletes
• Improve athletic performance.
• Understand specific muscle performance strengths, weaknesses and deficiencies.
• Obtain information on muscle activation patterns, symmetry and synchronization.
• Optimize training based on specific muscle characteristics.
• Decrease injury risk.
• Rehab faster from sport injuries.
• Gain competitive edge.

System Components

The TMG system has four main components, which can be charged during non-use enabling complete portability!

1. Electrical Stimulator
2. Digital Sensor
3. Tripod and Manipulating Hand
4. Electrodes

Figure 2: System components include electrical stimulator, digital sensor, tripod and manipulating hand, and electrodes.

Testing is completely non-invasive and takes between 5 and 45 minutes depending on the number of muscles tested. To begin, an athlete positions themselves sitting or lying on one side, on the back or the front, depending on the muscle being tested. The athlete’s joints are put in natural physiognomic position so they are not activated. Electrodes are placed to stimulate the desired skeletal muscle and are symmetric to sensor 50 – 60 mm from measuring point. The sensor is placed perpendicular to the muscle action and depressed into the skin on the muscle belly. Positioning of the sensor is performed in voluntary contracted or electrically stimulated muscle by palpation. The muscle is stimulated and as the contraction occurs the sensor takes in the data.

Development of Tensiomyography

Tensiomyography™ was developed in the 1990s in order to perform non-invasive muscle evaluation on deficient muscle. With coordinated efforts from Universities across Europe, the technology was able to garner use and notoriety among musculoskeletal science researchers. Tensiomyography was now firmly rooted in the scientific field and after independent research was published further exploration into the sporting realm began. In scientific studies that investigated Tensiomyography’s use in sport application, professionals noted the following as the main strengths: simplicity, flexibility and compatibility with other methods and applications, on or off the field.

Modern Innovations

After experiencing success in the sport application field, TMG began developing sport-specific assessment software in order to provide this much-needed technology the field of athlete optimization. The software immediately provides report creation (4 different types) as well as muscle by muscle interpretations based on the data obtained. Athletes are now informed if a muscle is tight, weak or slow by comparing their TMG results to reliable reference measurement data. This reference comparison can be individual and sport-specific. Currently over 20,000 athletes have been tested using Tensiomyography, allowing the establishment of “TMG Comparison Databases”. These databases allow athletes to compare their results to those of elite professional athletes by sport and position. These comparisons help to take the guessing game out of athletic training and performance allowing you to act on the quantifiable data.

Product Demonstration

The video below presents the product components and demonstrates how the system is used to evaluate the muscles of an athlete.

Training Story: The Kid Who Lifted Too Much, Too Soon

An elite youth basketball player is assessed before beginning a sport-specific workout program. The player then progresses through muscle development and sport-specific training, receiving assessments every 8-weeks. Prior to baseline testing, the athlete has no injury history leading to very symmetrical results.

After creating an appropriate base of strength, the athlete is instructed to use little or no weight during the exercises and to maintain focus on proper execution. Testing is then performed after the next 8-weeks, results show greatly diminished muscle symmetries. The athlete is asked about the program and routine including the progress of weight additions for each exercise. It is determined the athlete has added too much load to quickly to their body, creating compensations and muscle imbalance.

The athlete is advised to use a gradual loading program, staying with lower weights for longer in order to keep the exercise execution at a high level. The gradual loading program is performed for 8-weeks and again the athlete was re-tested. After changing the load and focus the athlete was able to train more optimally, and muscle symmetries improved. The athlete is still performing the adapted program with great success.

Rehab Story: The Million Dollar Return-to-play Decision

A top-ranking elite football player was injured during the season in one of the top European leagues. Re-injury occurred during the national championship 2 weeks after the initial injury. The player was immediately pulled from the game and a diagnosis was made: Grade I muscle injury on the myotendinous junction of the long head of the left biceps femoris associated with an interfascial hematoma between the long a short heads of the biceps femoris. The situation was even more critical as the re-injury happened in April, at the end of National and European league and before National Championships.

The TMG measurement was applied three times during the therapy to monitor therapy effectiveness as well as to provide the feedback information to optimize it.

Day 4 - After the injury Tensiomyography™ measurements confirmed the clinical evaluation and ultrasound diagnostics. The Tensiomyography™ measurements showed that the time the muscle needed to contract from a relaxed state was twice as long for the injured muscle when compared to the healthy muscle.

Figure 3: Day 4 right/left bicep femoris comparison.

Day 10 – The player was pain free and ultrasound was negative, however Tensiomyography™ showed a 27% asymmetry. Based on Tensiomyography™ findings the club kept the player off the field and prescribed targeted activation exercises for the injured muscle.

Figure 4: Day 10 right/left bicep femoris comparison.

Day 16 - TMG™ Athlete Muscle Performance measurements showed that the asymmetry was reduced and the player was activated. Approximately 10% is a generally acceptable level of asymmetry for a player to return to the field with minimal risk of re-injury.

Figure 5: Day 16 right/left biceps femoris comparison.

The athlete was able to return to competition more efficiently and effectively with the addition of Tensiomyography and to this day has not experienced re-injury to the muscle.

Muscle Fatigue Story: Sprint Training Performance and Muscle Breakdown

The fastest growing use of Tensiomyography in the sporting field is testing local muscle fatigue. Using the portable and non-invasive nature of the testing to its potential allows individualized data to be obtained from fatigue testing. This data can inform coaches and trainers about specific muscle breakdown in an athlete, allowing individual program improvements to be made and diminishing injury risk from overtraining.

Figure 6: TMG response after 60 m sprints.

Having a base in the medical field means that Tensiomyography has a foundation in research articles exploring its use. Current areas of interest for the research include the effect of training on muscle composition, muscle fiber testing, monitoring athlete development and muscle fatigue testing.

TMG Summary Report

The newly developed report is able to provide an immediate reflection of the results obtained during the test. This colour-coordinated report designates optimal, average, and poor muscle responses and muscle symmetries.

Figure 7: TMG Summary Report.

TMG Personal Comprehensive Report

Provides raw data and interpretations presented using graphs and comparison charts. This report is used in order to assess muscle responses and most importantly to provide individualized recommendations based on the data.

Figure 8: Sample Athlete Data.

TMG Trend Report

Provides analysis during longitudinal analysis of athlete muscle data. The report breaks down the progress for each specific muscle, and is used most often in the rehabilitation and player development setting.

Figure 9: TMG Trend Report.

TMG Group Report

Provides direct team comparisons in order to assess current training and trends during the season. Popularly used to assess athlete periodization, more specifically how an athlete’s muscle performance changes during different parts of the year (e.g. pre-season vs. end of the season)

Figure 10: Team Contraction Times

I’m Interested, How Can I Get Involved?

Knowledge is power, bridging the gap between application and reliability makes Tensiomyography a powerful tool for coaches and trainers in North America. If you are interested in using Tensiomyography with your team or organization and exploring a business relationship as an affiliate or if you are interested in exploring a business relationship including promotion, sales and marketing of TMG North America, contact info@tmgna.com

To keep updated on the progress of the technology, TMG North America can be followed at any of the following Social Media accounts: Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

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By Dominique Stasulli

Most runners are creatures of habit by nature, running the same go-to routes, at the same pace, in the same shoes, at the same time of day. Running the trusty four-mile loop around town also means the surface never changes. The creatures of habit can tell you where every pothole, overgrown bush, dip in the road, and crack in the sidewalk lie, right down to the tenth of a mile. If this sounds familiar, then take this opportunity to learn how breaking new ground can be a beneficial tool in turning any runner into a biomechanically stronger one.

Before comparing terrain, it’s important to consider a few factors regarding how the body reacts with the ground. It is common knowledge that running has an impact on the musculoskeletal system; any non-runner will use this fact relentlessly in protest of the sport. Body mass, form, and running surface all play a role in just how much impact actually results. In the most literal sense, the body ‘collides’ with the ground with a force that is four to five times the runner’s body weight with each step and roughly 180 times each minute (McMahon & Greene, 1979).

The amount of energy needed to oscillate the legs through one stride is optimized by keeping the support phase short (when one foot is in contact with the ground) and by pushing off ‘reactively’ (Bosch & Klomp, 2005). Reactive muscles essentially recycle energy between phases as a function of muscle elasticity and ultimately save the athlete energy costs over the long haul. Long ground-contact results in greater energy expenditure and less recycling. The body is required to absorb the shock of the ground, which reverberates through the tendons and muscles with elastic recoil, allowing the desired upward-forward propulsion to initiate, as if on spring-containing legs.

Not only do the legs act as natural, built-in springs, but the ground surface itself can also. The degree of compliance, or ‘give,’ that a surface has, will determine the speed of energy transfer between the foot and the ground. Harder surfaces return the energy more quickly, allowing the athlete to cover ground with greater speed. More malleable surfaces result in longer ground contact time, as a result of their supple properties, which is directly correlated to slower turnover, and thus, diminished ground coverage and speed. The runner’s legs, which remember, are also springs, must adjust stiffness according to the compliance of the terrain; this is necessary to yield the optimal footstrike duration for speed production and likewise, the lowest cost of oxygen demand. In other words, the body needs a happy medium in flexibility to be most economically efficient.

Think of the hard ground as a stiff spring and the soft ground as a loose spring; this should help with visualization as we break down the individual surfaces:

Road

It may appear that the hardest surface would provide the most stable platform for push-off, and thus, allow for the greatest speed. However, road asphalt is actually so dense it dampens the ability of the legs to gain vertical force from its return (Feehery, 1986). In effect, the impact of the road overpowers the elastic energy return to the legs, resulting in a neutralization of positive return. While the muscles are busy absorbing the shock of impact, the road quickly returns the elastic energy back to the leg, but, the shocked muscles are ill-prepared to receive it. The body attempts to ‘cushion the blow’ by slowing the landing phase; this ‘braking’ motion results in longer ground contact time, and slower speeds. Interestingly enough, concrete was found to have the most impact and least return of any surface, due to its density (Feehery, 1986). Moreover, a bone and joint analysis study of sheep walking on concrete over two years found thickened subchondral bone plates and bone cortex, resulting in less elastic bone and poor shock absorption (Feehery, 1986). In clinical terms, this is classic, premature osteoarthritis, or “wear and tear” arthritis. For the sake of your joints, when possible, it is better to hit the pavement rather than the sidewalk in order to reduce impact.

Grass

Grass surfaces were found to be comparable to asphalt with returning elastic energy in the form of vertical propulsion (Feehery, 1986). The slight ‘give’ of the surface and its texture alone requires the legs to work harder to achieve the same effort as on the road, though without the impact. This makes grass a great training tool for athletes looking to build leg strength and turnover while keeping the risk of injury low. Provided that the grass is well-kept and the ground fairly level, some adventurous athletes choose to run barefoot for the added bonus of foot and ankle strengthening. A runner with weak ankles should use caution when training on grass, only gradually incorporating it into his or her weekly mileage.

Sand and Snow

Both ground contact time and step length have been found to increase with very compliant surfaces, such as sand or snow, which consequently decreases a runner’s speed (McMahon & Greene, 1979). Snow can be slick and often accompanies icy roads, making it ill-suited for the novice runner. Deep sand running provides a solid resistance workout for the leg muscles, especially the calves, with very minimal impact on the joints. If prone to Achilles’ tendon injuries, avoid going barefoot and preferably run on the more compact sand at the water’s edge. The slope of beach dunes, especially near the water is something to consider also; run in both directions equally to avoid developing muscle imbalances, or simply find a flatter beach. Sand running definitely provides a workout-burn and quick fatigue, but is best left for shorter distance runs.

Trail

Trail running is a great challenge, offering both terrain variety and scenery to break the monotony of miles. The demand of the surface depends on the technicality of the trail. Wide cinder-packed bridle trails are typically flat and clean of obstacles, whilst narrow, single-track trails are typically for the more advanced runners craving a natural agility course. The sheer nature of an ordinary trail requires the runner to adapt quickly to rocks, roots, water hazards, sharp turns, unexpected creatures, and fallen trees/branches. The earth surface itself is low-impact. However, adverse weather can make for dangerous running conditions; caution should be used in late autumn or after a winter storm, where leaves and snow may conceal hidden holes and rocks/roots.

The act of trail running uses a variety of horizontal and oblique movements to achieve ideal foot placement which means more stabilizer muscles are recruited than with straight-line running, delaying the onset of fatigue in the large muscle groups of the legs (Farango, 2009). The recruitment of additional muscles means the demand for oxygen also increases, which is why trail running feels tougher on the cardiovascular system than other surfaces. Leg turnover increases as quick reactivity and calculated adjustments must be made to maintain the same pace and effort level over the course of a run; this helps with speed development and stride efficiency both on and off the road.

Treadmill

The treadmill is most always the beginner’s first choice for safe, controlled running. One study found that the plantar forces on the foot, a measure of injury-risk, were lowest with treadmill running (Hong, Wang, Li, & Zhou, 2012). Due to the in-motion belt’s assistance during the ground contact (stance) phase of a runner’s stride, a particular speed can be achieved with less propulsive force and impact as compared to running on any other surface (Hong et al., 2012). The compliance of treadmill belts can vary greatly between company models, but all in all, provide a great surface for lower-impact running and injury rehabilitation.

Track

Popular in the college and professional indoor track-and-field world, ‘tuned’ tracks are said to contain the optimal amount of stiffness to produce peak energy return, and thereby, peak speeds. It has been found that a surface that is two to four times more rigid than a runner’s leg stiffness can produce the greatest return in elastic energy (Feehery, 1986). These tracks, such as those at Harvard and Yale University, are typically of wooden construction with rubber, banked surface for centrifugal effect, advertently producing some of the fastest times in the world.

All things considered, the variety of surface alternatives available provide a function and benefit for whatever improvement strategy a runner may be seeking. Even if speed isn’t a specific focus of the training plan, the manner in which these surfaces tax the body differently adds a unique challenge for the body to tackle and also serves as a form of recovery for overused muscles. The bottom line is simple: new surfaces provide an opportunity for bored muscles to experience a different feel (termed ‘overload’). Where there is muscle overload, there is muscle confusion, which leads to adaptation accompanied by strength building. For all the creatures of habit out there, do the body a favor; get off the beaten path and find fresh inspiration by treading over new ground.

Please share this article so others may benefit.

References

Bosch, F. & Klomp, R. (2005). Running: Biomechanics and exercise physiology applied in practice (pp.181-188). Maarssen, Netherlands: Elsevier.

Farango, S. V. (2009). Women are naturals for trail running. Triathlon Life, 12(4), 54-55.

Feehery, R. V. (1986). The Biomechanics of running on different surfaces. Clinics in Podiatric Medicine and Surgery, 3(4), 649-659.

Hong, Y., Wang, L., Li, J. X., & Zhou, J. H. (2012). Comparison of plantar loads during treadmill and overground running. Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport, 15(6), 554-560.

McMahon, T. A. & Greene, P. R. (1979). The influence of track compliance on running. Journal of Biomechanics, 12, 893-904.

By Craig Pickering

If you’re an athlete reading this and have been involved in a serious training programme for a length of time, it is likely that you have suffered a hamstring injury. Similarly, if you’re a coach involved in a speed-power sport, it is likely that you have had many athletes suffer a hamstring injury. Hamstrings are a sprinters “bogey” muscle – the one that seems to get injured the most. During my career as a sprinter, I suffered some bad hamstring injuries. In 2008, I tore it quite badly in February, and didn’t run again until April, missing a total of 7 weeks of running, which isn’t ideal in an Olympic year. The injury only settled down following a corticosteroid injection into the area, which made running tolerable, if not pain-free. I managed seven weeks of sprint training before my season opener, in which I promptly re-tore the same hamstring. This was problematic, as it was only five weeks until the National Olympic trials, and I still had to run the qualifying time of 10.21 seconds. Fortunately, I had a world-class physiotherapist who worked with me twice a day, along with a brilliant team of support staff. I made the team – just. I remember standing on the start line for my comeback race, knowing that I had to run to try and get the qualifying time but also being aware that my hamstring was really, really sore!

What are hamstrings?

We should probably begin by taking a look at what the hamstrings are. The hamstrings are the muscle group that runs down the back of your thigh. The hamstring muscle group is comprised of three actual muscles; biceps femoris (that has a long head and a short head), semimembranosus, and semitendinosus. The muscles group is bi-articular, which means that it works on two different joints; the hip and the knee. Specifically, the hamstrings work to extend the hip, and also flex the knee. This makes them important in sprinting because they control the lower leg movement throughout most of the stride cycle, and also assist the gluteal muscles in creating a powerful hip extension. The hamstring muscles also have a few other functions. They act as a secondary knee stabiliser and also play a role in controlling rotation of the whole leg (Koulouris et al. 2007). There is some evidence to show that the hamstrings also act as a shock absorber during foot contact in sprinting (Malliaropoulas et al 2012).

Like all muscles, the hamstrings can work both eccentrically and concentrically. Concentric muscle action is where the muscle shortens whilst it contracts, and an eccentric action is where the muscle lengthens whilst increasing tension. Eccentric actions occur with both a larger force and higher velocity than concentric actions, and so are more likely to cause injury.

During the sprint cycle, as the thigh reaches its maximum flexion angle in front of the body, the lower leg begins to escape forwards. This is crucial, as it allows the athlete to cover greater distance per stride, increasing their stride length. Whilst this lower leg is moving forwards, however, the hamstrings are working hard to control the movement. The hamstrings first slow the lower leg as it moves forward, bringing it to a stop. They do this eccentrically, because the hamstrings are lengthening throughout this movement. Once the lower leg has stopped moving forwards, it is then rapidly accelerated towards the ground. This is achieved mostly through hip extension, which requires the hamstrings to concentrically contract. The more powerful this movement, the shorter the ground contact time, which plays a role in improving stride frequency. Once the foot makes contact with the floor, the hamstrings continue to work in combination with the gluteal muscles, actively pulling the body over the foot (Mann 2011). These actions demonstrate the major contributions of the hamstring muscles during the sprint cycle.

Why do we injure our hamstrings?

Recalling what I have just mentioned, we can explore why hamstring injuries occur. Firstly, the muscles are bi-articular, and so work on two different joints. This increases the amount of movement that the muscles undergo, increasing the injury risk. Secondly, they undergo an eccentric action, which in sprinting occurs at high force. Muscles tear when they cannot handle the force that is being placed upon them. If there is an underlying issue within the hamstring, it is more likely to get injured at this point – and this is what the studies show. In a review article by Petersen & Holmich (2005), they found that most hamstring injuries occur during either eccentric contraction (particularly during the later part of this contraction) or just before foot contact. Malliaropoulas et al. (2012) add that the largest musclo-tendonous stretch occurs in the hamstrings just before ground contact time and identify this as the most likely point of injury.

As I alluded to earlier, hamstring injuries are very common in sports that require running and kicking. In professional soccer, hamstring injuries account for roughly one in five of all injuries (Petersen & Holmich 2005). In high-level sprinters, this rate is higher; in a group of national level sprinters from Hong Kong, hamstring injuries accounted for 50% of all injuries (Yeung et al. 2009). The IAAF reports that 48% of all injuries within the 2011 World Athletics Championships were hamstring injuries (Alonso et al. 2012). Even more concerning is the re-injury rate for hamstrings, which in professional soccer is up to 30%, and in sprinters is 38%. What this essentially means is that if you injure your hamstring once, you are at an increased risk of injuring it again. We all know someone who has persistent hamstring injuries – hopefully that is not you! In terms of hamstring injury rate, Yeung et al. (2009) found in their sprinter subjects that hamstring injuries occurred roughly 0.87 times per 1000 training and competition hours. This means that a sprinter training two hours a day, five times per week, will likely have a hamstring injury once every two years. The rate in sprinters is much higher than that in other sports. Black et al. (2006) reported that in professional rugby union in the UK, the injury rate was 0.27 injuries per 1000 training hours, and in professional American Footballers, the rate is 0.77 per 1000 training hours (Elliot et al. 2011). For professional soccer players, the average training and game time missed per injury is 18 days (Woods et al. 2004) and 17 days for professional rugby players (Black et al. 2006). This is likely to be higher for sprinters because the loads placed on the hamstring are greater, and so longer rehabilitation time is likely to be required, although I can’t find any data to support this.

Most hamstring injuries occur in the biceps femoris, which is the most lateral of the hamstrings, situated towards the outside of the thigh. One of the mechanisms proposed for this increased injury rate is that the bicep femoris has a shorter moment arm in knee extension and so the musclo-tendonous stretch is significantly greater within that muscle (Malliaropoulas et al. 2005).

With hamstring injuries, there are different severities that can occur. A grade I tear is one where only a few fibres are torn or injured, accompanied with minor swelling and discomfort (Petersen & Holmich 2005). Range of motion will normally return within 24 hours although there may still be some pain on contraction (Pollock et al. 2014). These injuries are the most common, and see a quick return to sport, often in around 18 days (Lee et al. 2011).

Slightly more severe is a grade II hamstring injury, in which there is greater damage to the muscle and/or tendon (usually between 10-50% of muscle fibres). There tends to be a significant loss of strength associated with this type of injury, and range of motion will be impaired for longer than 24 hours. Return to sport with these injuries is often greater than 30 days. Grade III injuries are those in which greater than 50% of fibres are torn, and a grade 4 injury is one in which the muscle is completely torn – this tear can often be felt by hand and may need surgical repair.

Risk factors associated with a hamstring injury

There are many risk factors associated with a hamstring injury, including:

1. Imbalance of Muscular Strength - Orchard et al. (1997) found that if the quadriceps were much stronger than the hamstrings, this increased the risk of a hamstring injury. They found that a ratio of below 0.6 for hamstring:quadracep strength increased the risk of injury. This ratio was mirrored in the Yeung et al. (2009) study on sprinters; the researchers found that if the ratio was below 0.6, then hamstring injury was seventeen times more likely to occur.
2. Muscle Fatigue - Woods et al. (2004) found that significantly more hamstring injuries occur towards the end of a game, indicating that muscle fatigue plays a role in hamstring injury. Pinniger at al. (2000) demonstrated that repeated sprint bouts reduced hamstring function, meaning that the fatigued hamstring muscles could absorb less energy before reaching the level of stretch that caused injury.
3. Hamstring tightness - Harting et al. (1996) found that hamstring flexibility reduced the risk of injury in a group of military recruits. This finding is a little controversial, as there are also a some studies that illustrate that lack of hamstring flexibility does not increase the risk of injury.
4. Insufficient warm-up
5. Previous Injury - Previous injury both within the hamstring muscles and surrounding muscles and structures increases the chance of injury. Koulouris et al. (2007) found that following anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) reconstruction surgery, the risk of a hamstring injury was significantly elevated. This is because the hamstrings play a role in stabilising the knee alongside the ACL – and if the ACL cannot perform this function, the hamstrings are placed under additional strain and load.
6. Insufficient Recovery Period - Return from the previous injury before complete recovery
7. Inadequate strength in hamstrings - Yeung et al. (2009) found that hamstring injuries were more likely to occur early in the season, when hamstring conditioning was not as high. In their study, 60% of hamstring injuries occurred within the first 100 hours of a training program.

Hamstring Injury Recovery

If we know that we are likely to injure our hamstrings once every two years (or even more if we are training with increased frequency or placing our hamstrings under increased load) then it is a good idea to know what to do when injury strikes. In their 2005 review article, Petersen & Holmich mention that they are very few randomised control studies (RCTs) in the area of hamstring injury rehabilitation. This is problematic, as RCTs are the gold standard of trials. Nevertheless, there are some studies examining hamstring rehabilitation best practice, and Petersen & Holmich proposed some ideas within their article.

In the acute phase of injury (depending on the severity, this can last up to seven days), they recommended utilising Rest, Ice, Compression and Elevation (RICE). This follows the typical recommendations that I came across in my career. The use of ice in soft tissue injury management has come under close scrutiny as of late. Reviews by Collins (2008) and Hubbard & Denegar (2004) indicate that there is insufficient evidence to suggest that the use of ice improves clinical outcome in soft tissue injury management – although it may reduce pain. Absence of evidence is not evidence of no effect, however, and many of the best soft tissue injury management programmes in the world do utilise ice during acute injury management. Similarly, the authors recommend the use of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) during this phrase, but again they acknowledge the controversy regarding this: Recent research has indicated that delaying the use of NSAIDs until two to four days post injury may be better, as it doesn’t interfere with the early repair processes (Paoloni et al. 2009). Finally, the authors recommend early movement within pain-free range of motion, in order to decrease adhesions within the connective tissue.

During the sub-acute phase of injury (3-13 days, depending on the severity; this phase begins when inflammation has stopped), it is recommended to start pain free concentric strength exercises. Again, it is key to stay within an achievable range of motion and to ensure that the exercises are pain-free. These exercises will both prevent muscle atrophy, and also promote healing. During this phase, non-hamstring loaded training can begin, such as stationary bike sessions, swimming, and upper body circuits (provided they are pain-free!).

Physiotherapist stretching patient with shortened hamstring muscles.

The next phase of rehabilitation is focused on muscle remodelling. In this phase, the injured hamstring should start to be stretched, which will reduce any loss of flexibility that may have occurred. It will also reduce muscle adhesion and scar tissue formation. In a 2004 study, Malliaropoulas et al. divided subjects with hamstring injuries into two groups. Group one conducted one stretching session per day, which consisted of four sets of 30-second hamstring stretches. Group two conducted four stretching sessions per day. The outcome was that the second group regained their range of motion in the injured leg much faster and also had a shorter overall rehabilitation period. During this phase, eccentric hamstring strengthening can also begin. Following this phase, the next goal is to return to full training. This should be comprised of a progressive increase in hamstring strength and flexibility exercises. Following a successful return to training, the athlete should maintain some rehabilitation exercises in the runup to return to competition. Competition is the final big test, as it represents an increase in intensity above that which occurs in training. Re-injury is a large risk in the return to the competition phase, so measures should be put in place to ensure that the hamstring is fully healed, and able to handle the increased demands placed upon it. During my time with British Athletes, I would be assessed by our doctor every 3 days, with an ultrasound scan to monitor how well the muscle was recovering. Following my early competitions, a followup with the doctor would take place, to ensure that no further injury had occurred.

Hamstring Injury Prevention

Now that we have looked at the best way to rehabilitate ourselves from a hamstring injury it is probably a good idea to look at how we can attempt to reduce the risk of hamstring injuries occurring in both our training and competition.

As I mentioned earlier, the role that hamstring flexibility plays within hamstring injuries is controversial. Harting et al. (1996) split military recruits into two groups. Group one conducted hamstring stretches three times per day for a period of 13 weeks. Group two didn’t do any hamstring stretching. Group one significantly increased their hamstring flexibility during the 13-week training period, and also had less hamstring injuries than the group that didn’t do any hamstring stretching.

The next thing to consider is strength training for the hamstrings. Askling et al. (2002) conducted a study in Swedish soccer players during their pre-season training. One group took part in a hamstring-strengthening programme, and one group didn’t. The hamstring-strengthening group had significant improvements compared to the group that didn’t do the exercises in both hamstring strength (unsurprisingly) and maximum running speed. The hamstring-strengthening group were also significantly less likely to suffer a hamstring injury. These hamstring strengthening exercises should also utilise eccentric movements. Mjolsnes et al. (2004) found that the addition of these types of exercise significantly increased the eccentric torque in the hamstring muscles. Whilst they didn’t directly measure injury prevalence post-training, they proposed that this would reduce the hamstring injury risk as athletes could tolerate the eccentric loading much better. Malliaropoulas et al. (2012) stated that eccentric hamstring exercises were useful as an injury prevention tool as they increased the load that the hamstring could tolerate before it failed as well as increasing the flexibility of the hamstring muscles. When designing a hamstring-strengthening programme, the authors recommended that exercises work both hip extension and knee extension, thus targeting both aspects of hamstring movement. They also recommended using both uni- and bilateral exercises in order to prevent muscle strength asymmetry. Finally, it was proposed that these strengthening exercises should occur at the end of a training session, in order to limit hamstring fatigue, which could increase injury risk if sprinting, were to follow. A final point regarding specific hamstring strengthening exercises is that they should provide a more favourable hamstring:quadricep strength ratio, further reducing the injury risk. Examples of hamstring specific exercise included single leg deadlifts, sliding leg curls, and Nordic hamstrings.

Finally, care should be taken to ensure that hamstring fatigue is well managed in the athlete. As mentioned earlier, a significant risk factor for hamstring injury is fatigue. Steps should be taken to reduce this fatigue; adequate training loads and recovery, soft tissue therapy, and placement of hamstring dominant exercises toward the end of the training session and training week to name a few.

Please share this article so others may benefit.

References

Alonso et al. (2012) Determination of future prevention strategies in elite track and field: analysis of Daegu 2011 IAAF Championships illness and injury surveillance. Br J Sports Med 46 505 – 514

Askling et al. (2002) Self reported hamstring injuries in student dancers. Scand J Med Sci Sports 12 230 – 235

Brooks et al. (2006) Incidence, risk, and prevention of hamstring muscle injuries in professional rugby union. Am J Sports Med 34 1297 – 1306

Collins (2008) Is ice right? Does cryotherapy improve outcome for acute soft tissue injury? Emerg Med J 25 65 – 68

Elliot et al. (2011) Hamstring muscle strains in professional football players: a 10-year review. Am J Sports Med 39 843 – 850

Harting et al. (1996) Increasing hamstring flexibility decreases lower extremity overuse in military basic trainees. Am J Sports Med 24 137 – 143

Hubbard & Denegar (2004) Does cryotherapy improve outcomes with soft tissue injury? J Athl Train 39(3) 278 – 279

Koulouris et al. (2007) Magnetic resonance imaging parameters for assessing risk of recurrent hamstring injuries in elite athletes. Am J Sports Med 35 1500 – 1506

Lee et al. (2011) Our experiences with actovegin: is it cutting edge? Int J Sports Med 32 237 – 241

Malliaropoulas et al. (2004) The role of stretching in rehabilitation of hamstring injuries: 80 athletes follow up. Med Sci Sports Exerc 36 756 – 759

Malliaropoulas et al. (2012) Hamstring exercises for track and field athletes: injury and exercise biomechanics, and possible implications for exercise selection and primary prevention. Br J Sports Med 46 846 – 851

Mann (2011) The mechanics of sprinting and hurdling. Self-published.

Mjolsnes et al. (2004) a 10-week randomised trial comparing eccentric vs. concentric hamstring strength training in well-trained soccer players. Scand J Med Sci Sports 14 311 – 317

Paoloni et al. (2009) Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs in sports medicine: guidelines for practical but sensible use. Br J Sports Med 43 863 – 865

Petersen & Holmich (2005) Evidence based prevention of hamstring injuries in sport. Br J Sports Med 39 319 – 323

Pinniger et al. (2000) Does fatigue induced by repeated dynamic efforts affect hamstring muscle function? Med & Sci in Sports Exerc 32(3) 647 – 653

Pollock et al. (2014) British athletics muscle injury classification: a new grading system. Br J Sports Med 48 1347 – 1351

Woods et al. (2004) The football association medical research programme: an audit of injuries in professional football: analysis of hamstring injuries. Br J Sports Med 38 36 – 41

Yeung et al. (2009) A prospective cohort study of hamstring injuries in competitive sprinters: pre-season muscle imbalance as a possible factor. Br J Sports Med 43 589 – 594

By Carl Valle

In the fantastic book The Science of Running, Steve Magness outlines a wonderful primer for endurance running, but it should just be seen as a manifesto on training in general. I have read the book six times already as every chapter is well written and practical. No one has found a way to take the science and make it applied in the endurance world more than Steve, and if I was on an island and had only a backpack of books this would be in it. As a sprint coach and someone who does a lot of monitoring reports for team sports, a few nuggets and gems can be lost as the pace he wrote makes the hundreds of pages a quick read. After reading it a few times, I wanted to share something I found underrated, meaning at first they are interesting and helpful, but they are perhaps instrumental. This book review is just the tip of the iceberg, and my interview earlier can’t replace getting the text. I suggest anyone training athletes buy it if you don’t have it now, and this is one of the few endurance books that can help sports teams.

What are the lessons? I picked five because of the Olympic rings, but one can get a hundred or more different nuggets of wisdom from his book. I found five I thought are hard concepts to understand and expanded on them as best I could. Very few people know that I spent a few years coaching endurance because the athlete was a monster talent that seemed to be slipping through the fingers of other coaches. I still remember and have all the data from his workouts and found my gut instincts ten years ago had the science to back up my heresy of training. Without getting on more tangents, here are the five lessons outlined.

Genes and Fiber Type

Hacking someone’s DNA is not cracking into some genome testing database but knowing how to target training beyond the cellular level to the molecular level. Steve illustrated his map of how to create a stimulus that leads to a functional change to the body and it was very well researched. In addition to genes, Steve talked about fiber continuum, and this is very important. Many athletes see themselves as some binary classification, such as fast twitch and slow twitch. In reality, an athlete falls in a continuum. One must realize that adaptation is not about conversion, but more remodeling from tissues being traumatized. Over time, bad training and aging simply decreases one’s Type IIX fiber and father time wins at the end with all athletes. So it’s not about defying one’s age or magic training programs, it’s who manages the decay better.

Figure 1: Above is a fiber type report from Haloview, showing not only the athlete’s explosive fiber potential, but also how they rank for comparison. Remember every rose has its thorn, meaning that someone who is explosive needs to be in great shape or they will fatigue faster. With less slow fibers available, conditioning is limited because only so much mitochondria can increase to the intermediate types. Don’t expect much from combined strength and endurance type workouts.

Gene translation and transcription are wrongly explained with many coaching analogies because one is not changing their who they are, just improving what one can be in time. Targeting genes is complicated, but it can be distilled to a simple choice of what is important and what training sends a clear message to the body. When people start getting fancy in training, it tends to be a mixed message of sorts. An example of this can be priorities in the weight room. When someone is lifting weights what is the adaptation we are looking for? Some coaches are trying to do endurance training to muscle fibers while they are in a weight room. True, secondary adaptations happen from spending an hour in a training hall, but when you go to a weight room it’s to lift heavier weights than last year, not mimic marathons.

So when one can get a good estimation of fiber type in the body, one can start thinking of what can be augmented and what is fighting Mother Nature. One is trying to maximize one’s abilities, not expect a sloth to be a cheetah. The compromise is to be the fastest sloth and hope the other qualities make the athlete competitive. A solution I agree with is to appreciate how one is and design a training program based on getting them better, rather than trying to change them or have them fit your training model. The takeaway is to maximize what one has by having a clearer message to the body, rather than making things too complicated by overthinking. One example is tempo running with very talented sprinters. If they are 80 percent fast twitch jump for joy as you won the lottery, but don’t expect their capillaries to branch out like weeds. Remember you can win the battle and lose the war with fast athletes, meaning you want sprinters to have the capacity for speed, not endurance like biopsies by ruining their mega volumes. So in essence you want to target the endurance or slower fiber types with just enough to get a benefit to show up somewhere else, not get too carried away and turn a promising athlete into a slower athlete.

Running Economy

In the past, speed and endurance seemed like polar opposites, meaning opposing qualities. In truth, they are actually beneficial to each other if done right, but could spell disaster if mixed together poorly. I have focused on running mechanics with every athlete at every speed, including different locomotion strategies. Most endurance coaches are wrongly stereotyped as conditioning experts, but many of the best focus on running mechanics or improving an athlete’s “stride”. As one of my mentors said recently, Running Economy should be replaced by running efficiently, and we don’t mean physiologically. Running mechanics are often thought of as a sprinter need or even a “ running thing “ to team coaches, yet most sports run more than some track athletes. For example, soccer players are on their feet 90 minutes a game and most of them just do dynamic warm-ups and look at film for strategy instead of a fusion between performance and sport technical factors. For soccer to evolve, every athlete needs to run efficiently and transition in and out of play demands (technical motions) and sport requirements (output needs). Everyone should walk, jog, trot, run, accelerate, sprint, and fatigue properly. Steve spent a lot of time and focused on foot strike and other important factors of running with an efficient stride.

Figure 2: Running efficiently starts with good shoes and even better foot function. Running barefoot once in a while helps, but each foot is different, and not everyone runs the same way. We are at the age that we can use powerful software to evaluate the risk profile of athletes and use 3-D printing to customize athletic footwear. If you are not working with a great medical professional, especially a conservative but progressive Podiatrist, you are losing speed every step.

At the time of this writing, RunScribe is releasing their product to help monitor basic foot strike parameters, and that should be part of everyone’s scrimmaging process. The ideal setup for teams should be the connection between the use of Catapult and RunScribe to see how a both volume and distribution of effort interacts with how efficient the athlete is on his or her feet. Anatomical factors are primarily responsible for how elastic one is, but nobody should run ugly and slog through the field like it’s a swamp. Everyone can learn to run better and get better, so each coach has to invest into running better. Being efficient is not just more economical (mileage) but it’s often just faster. Remember all races are about speed. It’s not the person with the highest VO2 max or Lactate Threshold who wins the race; it’s who has the fastest time. Put two twins together with equal physiological profiles and one is a bit leaner and better at running properly, that one wins period. Unfortunately, getting an athlete leaner by helping with nutrition and training loads while juggling running mechanics is hard work and boring. I have helped many soccer players who are not blessed with endurance play stronger from running better, and they are less injured from good running mechanics and not being tired. When an athlete is breathing through their nose and seeing their competition bent over gasping, they appreciate the years of reminders on technique, not just the tempo running volumes in the winter or summer. Endurance is about supporting speed, and endurance is not about volume or distance but being physiologically and biomechanically efficient.

Blood Analysis and Field Testing

Everyone in their 20s or older can tell you where they were on 9/11, and that fateful day was very symbolic to me. That morning our training group was scheduled to go to Sun City Florida, a retirement community that had a great clinic to do a blood test with a few athletes. Instead, we all know what happened that morning, and we canceled our plans and were glued to the TV most of the day. That week the radio was requesting blood donations, and since I am Type O negative, I gave blood often. I am the universal donor, meaning any blood type can receive my blood donation, and this is something I believe to be an easy way to help others. It’s amazing, how such a simple gift can save lives. While it’s not the ultimate sacrifice like donating a kidney or a powerful last gift like a heart, it’s something that most of us can do. The next week we got our blood analyzed, and it was extremely useful because it opened a microscopic world to me and got the root of problems that were hindering training and performance.

Figure 3: Above are a few of the parameters I look at when working with endurance athletes or team sports. Blood analysis is the foundation to my program because when used correctly, the information is crystal clear. I have been using InsideTrackerPro for years, and now any athlete, not just Olympic levels, are getting the same type of support that a professional is receiving.

In the book, Steve Magness reviews how he monitors and performs running tests, and I was very interested to see what he monitored biochemically. On page 56 Steve explained the needed interpretation of Hemoglobin levels (oxygen-carrying protein in red blood cells). He points out that hemoglobin without plasma volume is difficult to gage. Steve also shared that hematocrit (percentage or red blood cells in the blood) also may fall from a rise in blood volume. So the question to me was how do most coaches and sport scientists adjust for blood volume in a practical manner? I have calculated hemoglobin mass for years (the amount of total hemoglobin in the system rather than per part in milliliters of blood) but felt that the gas exchange lab testing wasn’t practical and wanted to see how good the algorithm I was using with different athletes in team sports. The solution was clear; each sport had a profile, but Olympic sports and team sports are not the same. Olympic sports like running, cycling, and swimming did most of the training in the environment at which they compete. What was interesting to see was triathlon and skiing, as they had a profile of blood volume based on the weight of the body as well. The lesson learned was that many tests lead to endless tests if one didn’t know the true information for which one was looking. So when I profile an athlete, I look at how the athlete prepares for their sport just as much as what sport they play when looking at hemoglobin levels. One has to do the same with the other dozens of key biomarkers of the body to make real connections. Looking at total testosterone in isolation, even with cortisol ratios requires added information.

The same day I blood testing I do field testing. Why not see how all the dots connect in blood with a taxonomy and currency of scoring with field tests such as speed and fitness tests? Testing doesn’t need to be a treadmill V02 max test; it can be a workout with clear measurement and carryover to sport performance. Everyone reads the research, so why not bring the research in the lab to the field by just testing everything that matters? Here is what some of the variables I look at:

Speed Testing - Maximum Speed and Acceleration with Total and Free Testosterone to Cortisol Ratio is essential here. Warning, a high testosterone level with a young athlete is not an indication of speed or explosiveness (talent), just a status of the strain. A healthy young person can have the same hormonal profile of a drug free national class athlete, so workloads must be factored. Hormones are usually an indication of how precise the training is.

Power Testing - Test lifts and Jumps. Does the athlete maximize their talents or get by on genetics? Many athletes can jump well because they are gifted, but training numbers are great ways to see how they get their results. Athletes need a strength reserve to support their speed as most lifting programs support speed rather than build it. Only weak athletes or neophytes get faster (usually early acceleration) from weight training, and at high levels lifting is usually benefiting training capacity and injury reduction. Add in SHBG and other carriers such as albumin for added refinement in algorithm development. Make sure all your calculations are from quality research since many small journals publish junk studies, and the formulas are often bogus or good for “active kinesiology student volunteers”. I remember doing a study at a university and cringed to see how shoddy the data capture was.

Yo-Yo IR2 test or similar (30-15) - Add Hemoglobin and Hemoglobin Mass scores and screen out folate and ferritin. Other iron scores are needed as well. Many questions can be found when an athlete has speed and power data combined with fitness testing. Is an athlete running well because he or she is maximizing a speed reserve or are they aerobically fit? Remember to use a heart rate monitor and lactate test to see if they are stopping because they can’t continue rather than quitting because they are soft.

Finally, make sure you test the basics as well. While body fat testing, weight, resting HR, and vitamin and mineral status isn’t excited, don’t let easy and simple things derail performance. Even a lipid profile and glucose test can tell how someone is eating and recovering properly.

Adaptation and Personalization of Training

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, or adapt or die like the late and great Tony Wells coined. Developing athletes is not a perfect formula and the success rate and average improvement of athletes in performance ranges from 0-5 percent indicating that no magic bullet exists, just a firestorm of effort in a shooting spree of trial and error. When talking to athletes, I explain that training is submaximal death and a short term poison to the body, meaning heavy training is not something the body is designed to sustain over a day. Rarely are workouts a killer, but that’s what we are trying to do, attack the body and let it adapt. Rehabilitation is very similar to working out, and is submaximal training in a way.

Currently, we are at the age of sport science we know enough biology to have a good indication of adaptation and how the body works. So in essence we know the laws of cooking, but the right recipe needs both a top chef and the best ingredients. As of today it’s likely coaches are looking for the precise dose and proper timing for the right meal because a cold steak and undercooked cake ruin the best ingredients shopping. The goal now is to push athletes safely, and not letting current trends in data to ruin the outcomes of training. Three attitudes exist to records or numbers, those wanting to break them, those that are ignorant, and those that are frightened and see them as barriers. Knowing the sport psychology, we can start individualizing the workouts and the needed personalization of coach to athlete interaction to get the right effect later.

Figure 4: Adaptation is when the body changes. Most assume that adaptation is a good thing, but it’s a process and not a prize. Too much of the wrong thing will show up as unfavorable adaptations, and the results will be less than ideal. A good goal is to see what simple change is needed, and look at the most straightforward way to get there and appreciate minimalism. Confusion is when a workout does everything and genes don’t get the stimulus they need.

Part of the Individualizing Training chapter Steve focused on was testing, something that we already covered, but doing something with the information workout wise is much harder. Steve did a great job outlining this for running athletes, but it’s a great topic to get into more detail. Personalized training in a group or team is much different than when working with an athlete one on one. The constraints of team sports usually limits the individualization, but all sports are constrained. For example, like it or not, the Olympics are every four years, so if you fail to make a team at age 28, four years later isn’t going to be convenient. If a quarterback and receiver need a little chemistry together and one is not available as much because of injuries, sorry, but factors restrict rest and loading parameters. In team practice, usually minutes of healthy starters are the real primary load variable, because everyone must gel together at the same time. If one athlete is a morning person and likes to take two days easy, and one is young and fresh but an evening type, the compromises have to be made for everyone on the team. Many teams’ endurance programs run together and do similar event workouts, but rarely do you see the same event do completely individual workouts by themselves. Sometimes the compromises are needed for practical situations (one coach can’t be in three places) and sometimes the training vibe is so positive it’s worth more than the ideal biological prescription. No program will be able to do everything custom, but it’s a good checklist to create so down the road no stone is left unturned.

Fatigue in the Mind, Body, and Soul

Placebo, Nocebo, and Facebo? It is no secret that the mind is a powerful instrument to getting better. Science for years reminds us that the results of a study are highly influenced by belief, and that is the reason studies use double-blind experiments. Simply eliminating the knowledge of who is getting the variable reduces that chance that psychological factors can skew the data of a study. Bias from a researcher wanting a result can manifest when he or she is aware that the subject (individual being studied) getting the intervention can influence the outcomes. Of course, the subjects themselves are prone to bias when they are informed of the reality of what they are getting. Placebo treatments are basically pretend pills or interventions that create a positive belief so that the real treatment is not getting results because of personal belief. On the other side of the coin are nocebos, or phantom pain from therapists or anyone informing a patient that pain may occur if something happens or do an activity. Pain being part of the nervous system and linked to the brain perceiving a threat, is still not 100% understood in the research regarding the functional purpose of the sensory experience. One argument is that pain is a communication vehicle for self-preservation and gives feedback to the brain. Why is all of this important? Fatigue is highly related to willpower or the volitional motivation of the athlete. An enormous amount of research is pouring in right now on the brain and how the body handles fatigue, and plenty of people are trying to hack the mind for better workouts. If fatigue is less physiologically limited and is more part of what is going on between the ears, can coaches tap into the sports psychology more. The current school of thought is that we can fool the brain by manipulating the mind’s perception, and this is the current rage right now.

Figure 5: HRV (Heart Rate Variability) is a great part of any program and above is the chart I use when an athlete chooses to use iThlete. I am agnostic to HRV companies as the best ones are freely available to consumers and let the athlete decide. Each one has pros and cons beyond price and how the data is calculated, but simple, reliable, and fast is popular with athletes if they do it every day. The chart is like a road map, and the goal is to ensure one is getting the response for which they are training.

This continuum is important, because when athletes give feedback coaches we must understand our responsibility of giving them the right feedback from exchanges and recording objective training. Objective feedback with subjective ratings is important, as it creates a perspective of what the athlete is feeling. The best example of this is likely to be heavy acidosis in training, and showing how an athlete tolerates discomfort. I am trying to use the term “capacity” instead of acidosis or talk about lactic acid because athletes get spooked and become soft as butter when training is hard. If you are expecting pain just light conditioning session can feel worse than it is. Pain science is about emotional and experiences, not just about the anatomy or even brain. Severe discomfort from acidosis is not a problem, but severe pain to tendon becoming damaged is another story. Teaching athletes about “tasting death” and sensing something is wrong is hard one, but this is why a good medical team is useful to help decipher the differences between training pain and possible injury patterns.

Now that the sport psychology and biology is out of the way, let’s talk about application. Most coaches including myself have always seen training as a product of both personalities and sport science, and it’s really not that simple. I do believe that results are what you get your athletes to do, but it’s also about making sure that the science has an ethical element to it. Fatigue and perceived discomfort is a huge trust factor with coach and athletes. Knowing something can hurt and breaking through personal barriers is repeated process that conditions both ways. Some athletes simply burn out from the mental exhaustion of suffering, and some athletes are not properly for battle when competition arrives.

So far in the history of running, no athlete has maintained top velocity for more than a few seconds, even in the sprint events. What is concluded that something happens in the cells and or in the brain of the human body that doesn’t allow for athletes to run all out forever, so most run at a submaximal speed based on their speed talents (maximal speed) and their fitness (current endurance levels. What track coaches are trying to do is either maximize speed absolutely (sprint coaches) or work on conserving and extending speed (middle and long distance coaches). Team sport performance coaches care about conditioning that allows for the best composite of speed and endurance and want to work on both to a point. Overall, every event from 100m dash to team sports to the Marathon care about the balance of speed and endurance that gives the athlete the best winning combination. None of the aforementioned information is new or earth-shattering, but when workouts are prescribed it seems that the big picture is lost with a limbo style of training. Limbo is some sort of workout that has no clue or purposeful approach, just throwing in a lot of stuff that fatigue athletes, but never sends a clear target to the genes to improve.

For simplicity, we must always juggle the idea that speed is always the prime factor in endurance since the fastest guy always wins. Endurance is about training that supports speed, not being the mirror opposite of speed and just a result of volume or heart rate zones. One way to prepare for events or sport is to compete more to get the specific adaptations to imposed demands (SAID principle of training) or simulate the demands in different degrees of volume and intensity.

One of the changes when one moves beyond the 200m is the need of careful pacing strategies based on one’s abilities. This is a tricky subject because fatigue and current fitness are hard to juggle along with mental toughness. An athlete may not be aggressive, but can run faster, making coaches more a motivator and sport psychologist than a trainer. Steve Magness points out that sometimes a point in training athletes need to move from feedback and just move. So how does this work in events like the 400m hurdles and up to the marathon? What about team sports?

The cornerstone to blind feedback is to focus on internal elements such as finding a rhythm and establishing some mental toughness. I use this during taper conditioning as a guide, but still time to see how athletes perceive speed and workout prescriptions. Sometimes athletes surprise me, but sometimes it’s like clockwork and they do the same thing as they normally do, so blind timing with no quantified feedback is helpful to see how athletes respond to coaching support. Many athletes autoregulate their workouts, meaning they adjust their efforts and output based on how they feel, not just on their prescribed session or the output of their training. Taking advantage of subjective readiness is not easy, since many athletes are more talented than their work ethic, thus creating a problem of leaving the output of training to the athlete. Group training is also challenging since some athletes will give effort on different times they feel good, and some athletes are slaves to pain and equate harder being better. Coaching is not just writing good sessions and collecting data; it’s more getting the most out of different personalities in different cultures and environments. The takeaway here is that Blind Feedback is not something you can just “Try on Monday’s workout” and requires some planning and careful attention to detail. The application of Blind Feedback is simply allowing the athlete to run at the pace they feel either comfortable with and keep things very open or remove the mental barriers and let athletes push things. Both ways, going on one’s rhythm and pushing one’s mental limits is about knowing when to let the athletes remove the sterile and calculated world and let things become more spiritual and emotional.

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By Dominique Stasulli

In the world of track and field, reaction time is known to be a pivotal aspect of a top-level athlete’s technical arsenal, separating the gifted from the elite. Reaction time is defined as the interval of time between the onset of a stimulus, and the initiation of a response (Magill & Anderson, 2014). Neuromuscular and psychomotor connections are the fundamental basis of the body’s reaction pathway to the brain. Gender, age, mental state, and learning experience also play a role in the athlete’s ability to react to a given stimulus (Iulian, 2012). The slower the stimulus recognition information is passed to the brain, the slower the reaction movement. In professional track and field sprint events, a delay of even one-hundredth of a second can cost the athlete a podium position.

Reaction time is followed by movement time, which in the case of a sprinter, is from the initiation of rear foot motion from the starting block to the moment the same foot touches ground; therefore, total response time is a cumulative measure of both reaction and movement time from initial stimulus to initial footstrike (Majumdar & Robergs, 2011). There is much debate in the field over whether reaction time or movement time is more crucial for sprint performances. Some experts believe that reaction time is a more inherently genetic factor, thus less trainable and of minimal importance.

Brain electrophysiological studies have confirmed that cerebral potential amplitude increases during the acquisition of a new skill, specifically premotor potential, which is the “decision-to-act” portion of reaction time; this potential was predictably higher in the expert sprinters (Collet, 1999). This revelation in neuroscience provides proof that reaction time does have an environmental basis, in other words, it is both learned and trainable.

Each limb of the body is controlled by its counterpart hemisphere in the opposite side of the brain. The left hemisphere of the brain specializes in muscle force execution while the right side for spatial and attention processing (Majumdar & Robergs, 2011). One study found that a left rear-foot start in the blocks gave a 26ms advantage in reaction time, while a right rear-foot start gave a 104ms advantage, for an overall response time advantage of 80ms (Eikenberry et al., 2008). In a 100m sprint, 80ms can be the difference between first and second place on the elite level, favoring the theory that movement time is the more important motor skill. For the purposes of this article, the focus will remain on reaction time rather than movement time and the benefits of training muscle reactivity for peak performance.

When comparing novice sprinters to their adult counterparts, reaction time shortens markedly in the trained, experienced runners (Collet, 1999). World-class sprinters’ reaction times typically fall around 145ms, making for incredibly quick explosion from the blocks (Collet, 1999). The International Amateur Athletics Federation (IAAF) enforces the 100ms-false start rule based on the notion that below this threshold, the athlete must have anticipated the shot and initiated early; the reaction times at major world competitions are scrutinized with live motion capture cameras on the starting line for this reason (Collet, 1999).

Reaction time out of the starting blocks is not the only instance where swift reactivity would be beneficial. Every footstrike produces ground reactive forces, and the goal of the athlete is to quickly touchdown and immediately take off with the return of energy from the ground. The greatest determinant of speed has been documented as the runner’s ability to generate greater ground reactive forces and shorten his or her ground-contact time. This requires exemplary reactivity, every step of the way.

A study from the Journal of Sports Sciences, investigated lower-limb joint kinetics and stiffness in relation to performance time and velocity (Charalambous, Irwin, Bezodis, & Kerwin, 2012). Musculoskeletal stiffness effectively loads the body for optimal utilization of elastic energy and increases the ground reactive forces and velocities as the athlete seemingly explodes off the ground. Specifically, the ankle joint stores elastic energy in the plantar flexor muscles, which absorb impact and prevent limb collapse, and releases the energy as power at push-off (Charalambous et al., 2012). Joint and tendon stiffness is trained with a variety of methods, some of which include plyometrics, depth jumps, and one- or two-legged jumping circuits. The emphasis should be on full-footed contacts, stiff landings, and explosive initiations.

From a coaching perspective, there are a few key take-home points for building a stronger, more reactive speed athlete. First, emphasize the right rear-foot stance for boosting movement time advantage. Second, incorporate resistance training at high velocities for explosive neuromuscular development, such as with dynamic, power-based plyometrics. Third and last, train for joint and tendon stiffness with directional jumping drills, and a drop in reaction time will soon follow. Taking these components of neuromuscular development and efficiency into play will yield the greatest adaptations in muscular and kinematic control over the athlete’s reaction to a given race stimulus, and performance will be enhanced as a result.

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References

Charalambous, L., Irwin, G, Bezodis, I. N., & Kerwin, D. (2012). Lower limb joint kinetics and ankle joint stiffness in the sprint start push-off. Journal of Sport Sciences, 30(1), 1-9.

Collet, C. (1999). Strategic aspects of reaction time in world-class sprinters. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 88(1), 65-75.

Eikenberry, A., McAuliffe, J., Welsh, T. N., Zerpa, C., McPherson, M., Newhouse, I. (2008). Starting with the “right” foot minimizes sprint start time. Acta Psychologica, 127(2), 495-500.

Iulian, A. D. (2012). Study regarding the relation between the accumulation of psycho-motor experience in the practice of sprint events, and the value of start reaction time. Scientific Journal of Education, Sports, and Health, 13(2), 62-69.

Magill, R., & Anderson, D. (2014). Motor learning and control: Concepts and applications (10th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Majumdar, A. S. & Robergs, R. A. (2011). The science of speed: Determinants of performance in the 100m sprint. International Journal of Sports Science and Coaching, 6(3), 479-493.