The above video is a demonstration of the Freelap Pro Coach timing system. The figures below explain each of the components shown in the video.

Figure 1: The athlete attaches the FxChip at the waist. The FxChip can time up to ten splits and then wireless transmit the data to a handheld display. Each FxChip has a unique ID and multiple athletes can be timed simultaneously.

Figure 2: The athlete prepares to time a block start by placing a thumb on the button in the center of the Tx Touch Pro transmitter. As the athlete begins their sprint and releases the button, the Tx Touch transmitter signals FxChip to start. It is also possible to time standing starts and fly-in starts using a Tx Junior Pro transmitter set to START mode.

Figure 3: The Tx Junior Pro transmitters are placed on the line between lanes. Athletes can run in the lanes on either side of the Tx Junior Pro transmitters. Additional lanes can be timed by using more transmitters. The Tx Junior Pro transmitters in this video are placed at 10 m splits, but splits of virtually any distance can be timed. The Tx Junior Pro transmitters emit a magnetic field that is detected by the FxChip to time the splits.

Figure 4: When the FxChip passes the last transmitter set to FINISH mode, the FxChip transmits the data to the Relay Coach (not shown in the video) and the Relay Coach transmits the data to the Pro Coach handheld display at a range of up to 200 m. Multiple FxChips can transmit data to the Relay Coach and Pro Coach simultaneously. The splits and total time for each chip can be reviewed on the Pro Coach handheld display.

Figure 5: The time can also be shown on the optional LED display. Note the unique chip ID 181 is shown on the display next to the time. The two-line LED display can show the most recent two times that crossed the finish line.

For more information on the Pro Coach timing system and the components see the Pro Coach product page. For pricing information and to place an order see our online store.

By Joel Smith

When it comes to validating one’s self as an athlete, jumping is the first request on many training priority lists. Think of the famous sporting feats that are etched in our memory:

• Vince Carter leaping over Frederic Weis in the 2000 Olympics for the thundering slam dunk finish.
• The famous front-flip touchdown by Jerome Simpson of the Bengals.
• Bo Jackson leaping and running up the outfield wall following a running catch against Baltimore.

Sure, it’s embarrassing to get beat down the court or on the open break by an opposing player, but it’s far more humiliating to get dunked on (Weis lost the opportunity to play in the NBA due to his notoriety as the 7 foot guy who got jumped over), your shot blocked, or a spike rammed down your nose. Nobody is “posterized” by simply getting beat by an offensive player downfield. It is as if Stan Lee decided that the superhero version of the modern athlete was one with unbelievable jumping ability. The marketing engine, as it exists, likes to cater towards those athletes with these superhero aspirations. Who wouldn’t want a program that will turn them into the Batman of athletes for only $67?

Speed wins games, but jumping seems to be the envy of those who want to impress. It also doesn’t hurt the cause of becoming a better athlete. Real vertical jump training with the goal of advanced performance can be muddy waters, particularly through the efforts of those who have seized up much of the available information with marketing based information, directed towards novice athletes.

The goal of this article is to provide some philosophies and guidelines for the rest of us, those who are interested in the long-term process of sport mastery, and the journey of taking athletes to their best possible performance. These points are often left up to debate in the various training forums and roundtables of the world on the subject of increasing vertical leap ability so I am sharing my thoughts on them, all in one place, right here. I derived these from my time as an athlete, a track coach, a strength coach, as well as in my work with online clientele of various backgrounds.

Let’s start with a common point that most coaches already know, but one that may need a bit extra clarification in regards to jumping.

Exercises are in your program for a season, and sometimes a lifetime, but are only a means to an end.

I hear it all the time:

“You need to be doing X exercise if you want to jump higher.”

In athletic performance training and particularly vertical jump training, there is a recurring theme of “exercises”. Often athletes swear by this or that exercise, or exercise sequence, in regards to their athletic ability. Track athletes often carry with them an exercise that “they need to be doing” because there was “this one time” in their athletic career when they were performing that particular exercise and competition went well for them.

The truth is that there is a window of time each exercise will be effective in providing a significant short-term boost to vertical jumping ability, largely due to the skill improvement that the particular exercise delivered to the athlete’s jump technique. Once the skill improvement is transferred, there isn’t as great of a need to keep introducing the exercise in such a volume during the rest of the athlete’s career.

For example, as far as speed training is concerned, I have found that the barbell hip thrust is a fantastic way to get an athlete’s glutes up to speed in terms of activation and pelvic posture, but once I have brought an athlete to the appropriate activation level, bringing their max from 500lbs to 550lbs by continual focus on that exercise is probably a waste of time. With the new level of activation gained from hip thrusts, many of the other exercises that they do will help to maintain that improved strength and size of their posterior. It is a similar story with jumping.

The following are some examples of traditional jump exercises, and the corresponding skill of the jump that they can bring up to speed.

• Jumping rope provides a rapid boost in ankle function and stiffness for an athlete who tends to live on their heels.
• Squatting provides a rapid boost in athletes who need to learn to apply forces for longer periods of time to the ground in two leg jumping. (Vertical jump height off of two legs is a stark contrast to one leg as the amount of time that an athlete can input force into the ground directly correlates with the final vertical velocity of the jump).
• Plyometrics provides a rapid boost in performance in athletes who lack stretch shortening cycle efficiency and general foot strength.
• Pistol squats provide a rapid boost in leg stability and linking of the feet and hips.
• Olympic lifting gives an immediate infusion of posture and coordination through triple extension of the hips, knees and ankles.
• And so on and so forth.

These exercises will provide a rapid boost for a period of time, as they but in order to attain long-term progress, many of them will need to take a back seat to what is truly important. Clearly they should be kept in the program in some form, or rotated to prevent a lack of accommodation. Also, we know that a rotation of exercises that are very close to velocity and mechanics to the primary exercise are vital in long-term athletic improvement for motor learning and accommodation reasons, so strategic use of exercises will also rotate based on these needs.

Although many exercises must be kept in a program for the purpose of maintenance in particular qualities, the primary areas that truly need to be addressed for continual jump improvement during all periods of specific and competitive preparation in order of importance are:

• Specific work capacity in the type of jumping that one wishes to improve (the ability to jump maximally and in enough volume to deliver repeated, specific training effects).
• Speed. Specifically, acceleration.
• Rate of force development in the specific motor pathway an athlete utilizes to jump. Quick jumpers prefer specific plyometric based movements, while power jumpers ofen prefer specific barbell oriented movements such as squats or barbell step ups).

Understand the squat to bodyweight debate. Lift for explosiveness and complimentary benefits, not to hit a magic number.

“To die as a warrior means to have crossed swords and either won or lost, with no consideration for winning or losing.” — Miyamoto Musashi

What in the world does the above quote have to do with lifting for athletic performance?

Well, aside from giving me an excuse to put a samurai reference in this article, it also represents a nice ideology for the purpose of strength training as far as increased athleticism is concerned.

Just like the warrior who enters battle for the ritual of combat, and not so much the determined outcome as a means of validation, the athlete who enters strength training does so for the transfer of skills to the field of play, and not the outcome goal of lifting itself.

Why would anyone validate their ability as an athlete based on a means used to train, and not the actual competition itself? This happens regularly with strength. Although barbells are a great and often indispensable training means, when the urge to utilize the barbell as a form of athletic (or personal) validation creeps in, the whole training system can be thrown out of balance.

This mentality can also cut athletes career progressions short as athletes thrown through the barbell grinder in high school or college can often scrape out nice performances for that particular time period, but struggle and regress in the next phase of their athletic journey.

Another thorn of this mentality, particularly with high school athletes, is that those high school athletes who responded well to year-round heavy lifting in high school will mentally rely on this type of work as a means to success in their college years. This often spurs a negative cycle of regression on their part, which the solution to is often, “more heavy lifting!”.

As far as improving athleticism, lifting weights serves the purposes of:

• Improved posture
• Body awareness
• Coordination
• Joint stability
• Potentiation of proximal speed and power training sessions
• Positive hormonal changes (testosterone and growth hormone)
• Increased cross-sectional area of relevant muscle fiber pool (when done correctly, and there is a limit to this based on an athlete’s genetics)
• Increased strength at key joint angles and torques

Looking at these benefits it is easy to see that strength training is an important tool to making the rest of training better; any of the benefits are those that can easily be “maxed out”, early in their use or an athlete’s career. For example, an athlete will reap immediate body awareness, explosive coordination and postural benefit from a well-designed lifting program, but those benefits will only take them so far. There isn’t an infinite improvement rate as far as posture and coordination are concerned.

As far as vertical jumping goes, athletes with a great squat to bodyweight ratio will jump higher than their weaker counterparts, all other factors being the same. There is an important chicken-or-the-egg consideration to make with these athletes, however. Athletes who are naturally strong and explosive will experience a rapid train of improvement in barbell exercises, along with lots of psychological momentum. Athletes on the weaker end will find rapid improvements via lifting, especially in the motor benefit realm, but their results will taper off far sooner than their stronger counterparts. Unfortunately, rather than playing to their more natural plyometric and elastic strengths, these weaker athletes will sometimes put their heads down and strive for a particular lift number that hamstrings (sometimes literally!) their long term athletic progress.

“I was pretty average until I decided to work hard to hit that 2.5x bodyweight squat, after which I won the Olympics,” said no athlete ever.

Athletes who tend to improve their vertical jump the most by focusing primarily on the lifting portion of their program are, more often than not, athletes with a lot of fast twitch muscle mass, who generally jump in a style resembling their lifting. Their lifting makes their jumping better (to a point), and their jumping makes their lifting better. Realize that many athletes are not built like this.

Lift maxes are a trick of sorts. Maximal strength often indicates the functional motor pool available in an associated movement, but intensely pursuing maximal strength doesn’t transfer well to speed based activities. The goal in lifting to bring maxes up that help athleticism is to do so in a way that doesn’t look like you are actually training for it; lots of powerful work in the 60-80% range, coupled with plenty of explosive plyometric, jump and sprint work. Believe it or not, many explosive wired athletes will find that their lift maxes will actually go up by following this methodology over a powerlifting style of training. Bottom line, speed builds useable strength more than strength builds speed.

Use Olympic lifts for skill development and speed, not to end up on AllThingsGym.

As long as we are on the topic of lifting, find me an NCAA strength program that doesn’t use any Olympic lifts. The Olympic lifts can be very effective in the right context for building vertical jump related qualities, but they can also be lousy when they are worked in the wrong direction with the wrong cues, especially in athletes seeking to break through to the higher end of their genetic abilities.

Let’s make this as simple as possible and talk about the benefits of an Olympic lift in regards to vertical jumping skill. Regarding vertical improvement, any lift is only as good as it can improve the skill of a jump in an explosive manner. Here are the positives of Olympic lifting:

• Teaching coordination in triple extension.
• Providing a new set of motor instructions in regards to explosive concentric triple extension.
• Teaching basic force absorption qualities in the catch.
• Teaching advanced force absorption qualities, in transfer to two leg jumping, in the full catch.
• Teaching posture in conjunction with explosive efforts.

An Olympic lift is a “jump”, but with one caveat: there is a bar that manipulates the athletes’ center of gravity (just like any barbell lift). Although a proper Olympic lift is done where the bar never passes more than a couple of inches away from the body, this is often done in-correctly more times than it is done correctly.

Getting into the 1RM race as far as cleans are concerned is also a battle that many athletes will eventually lose when it comes to building a better vertical jump. In order to bring a clean or snatch to its own highest level far past the initial complimentary benefits, the body must adapt itself to a different set of neural instructions that jumping requires, especially in regards to the feet (which we’ll get to in the next point).
Bryan Mann, in his great book, Velocity Based Training, recommends keeping a bar speed of at 1.2-1.4 m/s on cleans with perfect technique, the bar never straying far from the body. Doing heavy and relatively slow cleans with a bad bar path is one of the best ways to keep an athlete below the rest of the crowd, as this type of work has zero, or even a negative transfer to vertical jump height.

Teach the feet.

In nearly every athlete I train who has a lousy standing vertical jump, the primary deficiency isn’t one of power, but rather one of foot function and force transfer through the torso. I have female high jumpers clearing 5’10 who regularly vertical jump under 20” because of ankle function. For high jump, this isn’t hurting them (and I am not on a mission to improve these girls standing jumps), it just reflects itself in the way that they jump off of two feet, as their primary reaction in directing force though the ankle is based around negative shin angles to perpendicular shins, where standing jumps rely more on positive shin angles.

Many athletes who have a well-rounded athletic background have pretty good foot function in regards to jumping. It is often over-specialization, coupled with the over-use of standard barbell training performed on a regular basis that can cause dysfunction in this area. Wearing shoes all the time also tends to put a damper on fast, reactive feet, as the plate of the shoe causes foot neurons that usually fire individually, to all wire together in one brute reaction to the ground.

In athletic performance, the faster an athlete can direct pressure to the big toe, and the more powerful the extension of the plantar flexion, the higher an athlete will jump. When an athlete lowers their frequency of re-enforcing this quality, and starts to spend two or three days a week performing exercises where they focus on directing force away from the big toe, or delaying it until the very last second, such as the way that cleans and snatches are often taught, this can wreak havoc on vertical athletic qualities. I see this all the time when we test the jumps of strong collegiate athletes who have been on a regular lifting program through high school. The ones who display the best vertical jump mechanics in the lower leg are often those who haven’t lifted much in their past, and played a jumping sport in their earlier school years.

So what to do?

The solution here is to make sure that athletes are being cued correctly in lifting activities (not lifting through the heel, and keep plenty of lifts that allow for some extension through the toe at the top of the lift), and perform lifts in a low enough volume as to not interfere with the correct lower leg action. It is also good practice to mix and superset barbell work with exercises and drills that do encourage the correct foot function, such as low-level plyometrics, assisted jumps, and lower leg jump drills. If I have the space, I’ll always superset Olympic lifting sets with a few vertical throws, focusing on complete ankle extension, or low-amplitude speed bounding, depending on the vertical outcome goal.

I’ll also say that many of these exercise prescriptions may be a bit primitive in light of Chris Korfist’s ankle rocker drills, while are one of the best new areas of jump training I have read in a long time, and they can restore foot and ankle function in a hurry.

Know how to do a depth jump correctly and use energy efficiently.

If you look up “depth jump” on YouTube, be prepared for a cluster $%& of the highest magnitude. Depth jumps are rarely taught the way that they should be. I was fortunate to come across a vertical jump program (The Science of Jumping) when I was in high school that revolved almost entirely off of the correct performance of the depth jump exercise and its variations. Here are some common faults in typical YouTube videos on the topic:

• Improper posture during the drop and land phase (often looking down).
• Improper or minimal use of the arms (very small or non-existent arm swing).
• No emphasis on landing softness whatsoever. No emphasis on where the foot pressure should be (the balls of the feet, and possible initial mid-foot pressure for single leg jumpers).
• No emphasis on landing stiffness. Many athletes go into far too much knee flexion upon landing. Since the goal of depth jumps is rate of force development under increased load, knee flexion should be less to allow less ground reaction time.
• No emphasis on the need for maximal upwards explosion on each repetition (this is the number one offense). Depth jumps are maximal efforts. In order to maximize upwards explosion, an outcome goal, such as an overhead target (for force) or a collapsible hurdle (for rate of force development) should be implemented. Athletes should seek to improve these outcomes throughout training sessions.

Let me talk about one aspect of depth jumping, and plyometrics in general, that coaches and athletes need to know: smoothness.

Good jumpers… really good jumpers, have one main thing in common. They make their jumps look incredibly smooth and easy. Good jumpers are quiet. This is something that is easy to say, but rarely put into practice. Check out this force/time graph of a novice jumper vs. an accomplished jumper to see what I’m talking about from a force perspective.

Figure 1: The grey shaded line represents Ug the Ogre’s heel-heavy landing, followed by an attempt to reverse the movement to vertical. The black line would likely represent a well-trained ninja performing a silent depth jump, with no passive jump forces present, and an efficient energy conversion.

What is the best way to improve one’s ability to produce force efficiently? A plyometric progression, starting with correctly coached drop jumps. Drop jumps (dropping from a box of appropriate height with an emphasis on landing mechanics) is a great way to teach force absorption. Once an athlete knows how to do this right, then to make lasting changes, a somewhat high volume of work is needed to wire it in. This is where submaximal plyometrics, coached with the same cues as the drop jump can help to gear an athlete’s nervous system and muscle-tendon structure towards transferring force in a more efficient manner.

Understand the difference between body types in training.

Not every athlete is destined to squat twice their bodyweight. Not every athlete is born to master a depth jump from a 1 meter platform. Athletes need to eliminate weaknesses that are liabilities to their jump performance, but they shouldn’t pursue their weaknesses past this point to achieve their highest vertical potential.

Ultimately, athletes are built, and subsequently, developed for a particular jumping style. Through their adolescent development, their neurons that fired together to form a particular platform of movement, wired together to make that movement more powerful in their maturity.

Imagine taking a competitive swimmer at age 22, who had no real land based sport background and expecting them to be able to perform a technically perfect triple jump within a few months, or even years! Imagine taking a competitive triple jumper at age 22 and expecting them to perform a perfect butterfly stroke! Once the way our bodies tend to move are “wired in” those sequences generally represent the most powerful way that a person can move and apply force, and future specialization in the body’s current weakness is an impossibility.

When an athlete learns to produce force in a particular manner through adolescence (this is usually done in accordance with the athlete’s individual strengths) these patterns are wired in, and it becomes impossible to wire over it with another pattern that eclipses the old pattern in terms of power and efficiency. Athletes sprint and jump from just a few years old, so these patterns are very hard wired. Granted, there are technical refinements that can and should be made to anyone (otherwise, we might as well give up coaching!), but in general, wired movement patterns are hard to break.

What I am really talking about here is that some athletes will utilize little knee bend and elasticity in jumping (they often make good high jumpers and single leg jumpers), while others use considerable knee bend (they tend to make good 60m dash athletes and football players). You can’t take either of these athletes and expect them to jump like the other. In the same vein, you can’t take one athlete and expect that training like the other is going to bring them to their highest potential.

Don’t stop playing team sports and realize it’s power as a maximal jump incubator.

Within team sport play comes a wealth of explosive movement patterns. The highest levels of explosive power as exhibited in jumping are the product of other more basic movement patterns found in sport, such as the acceleration found in the jump approach, or the rapid decelerations that the lower limbs encounter during the absorption phase of the jump.

Team sport play also helps to maintain elasticity and build stronger lower legs, ankles, and feet. They deliver some of the strength that can be built only through repetition. The constant, rapid fire cuts, accelerations, quick hops and outcome based sport movements (such as jumping for a blocked shot) offer a unique training stimulus that can’t quite be attained via traditional training methods.

Remember, training in many cases is putting together very close variations of the primary movement you are trying to improve. In the scope of jumping, an athlete is getting plenty of jumps, no two of which are exactly the same which builds a bigger “bank” of motor patterns that the body can use to create a stronger movement. The variety also prevents injury, and perhaps of the greatest benefit, utilizes the important principles of fun and competition. Anytime you can make hard, effective work fun, it is generally a win-win.

Although experienced jump athletes who are specializing in something aside from basketball, volleyball or football need a base of team sport play in their younger years, they clearly shouldn’t be playing games constantly in their time of specialized performance. Despite all this, they should never completely lose touch with their team sport roots. Matt Hemingway re-vitalized his high jump career through his love of basketball in his later years of competition. A few 30 to 45 minute sessions of off-season, controlled team sport play for a few sessions a week goes a long, long way in keeping the movement bank of track and field jumpers full for their long competitive seasons. (Side note: hurdling is a great way to keep the movement bank full with slightly less risk of a rolled ankle)

Conclusion

My vertical jump journey, and the way that I coach athletes has been heavily influenced in some way, shape or form by the above principles. Most of them took around a decade for me to truly understand, but now that I do, I am a better coach and mentor for it. Each of these points on their own can be helpful. Together, they can make a great difference in producing the next great aerial touchdown or center-clearing dunk, or at least, the aspiring junior athlete who finally impresses his friends by shoving the round-ball through the rim.

“By changing the way you do routine things, you allow a new person to grow inside you.” — Paulo Coelho

For more information on the vertical jump see Joel Smith’s book “Vertical Foundations”, now available in both print and eBook.

Please share this article so others may benefit.

By Ken Jakalski

Taking the guesswork out of speed goals and reps for short and long sprint workouts.

If you coach sprints, you most certainly run sprints in training.

The following are the questions I have relative to speed workouts, and the answers I have received from coaches in previous years:

At what SPEEDS do you have your sprinters run workouts? Most coaches simply assign percentages to each athlete—like “95%” or “really fast.”

How are you determining those speeds for each athlete? Most coaches work back from the athlete’s top racing speed over a recorded distance. They translate that to a fly-in time for sprint segments. In other words, they are “guessing.”

What are the distances you have your athletes run? Coaches select the distances based on the event itself– shorter reps for the 100 and 200 and longer reps for the 400. Coaches believe the distance targets a specific system.

How many reps of these chosen distances do you run in a single workout? Coaches simply make up the number of reps based on their perception of fatigue in their athletes. The problem with this is that the number of reps does not reveal what is happening to changes in force applied to the ground. Runners will often “negotiate” the speed simply to complete the number of reps the coach has assigned. In other words, it is simply a case of one fool getting other fools tired, with runners believing the goal of the workout is to complete the assigned number of repeats.

We have all arbitrarily assigned the total number of reps in our particular workouts, and we base those numbers on what experience has shown to be what athletes should be able to complete. In the past, we were not able to determine what was happening with repeated reps relative to muscular force output. What we observed was athletes running slower with each rep. However, were those drops in times the result of a reduction in available energy, a sign of muscular force impairment or just athletes “pacing” to complete the number of assigned reps?

Most coaches still believe that if we 1) increase the energy supply, performance improves, and 2) if we decrease energy demand, performance improves. As a result, they believe sprint training should target both supply and demand. But is the supply limit conclusion correct for SPRINTING? Many coaches accept this without question. However, even as far back as 1925, there were some doubts. The great A.V. Hill noted this almost ninety years ago:

“It is obvious that we cannot pursue our (energy supply) argument to times below about 50 seconds. These performances are limited by factors mechanical and nervous.”

Bottom line:

What is valid for distance training is not valid for sprint training.

Simple point to keep in mind:

Musculoskeletal force is progressively impaired during sprinting. What we now know is that, if we change the energy input, there is no effect. However, if we change the mechanics, we change the performance. The evidence for the significance of mechanics can be found in the ways we’ve been able to prolong force application without incurring a serious drop in force. The Klapskate is one example. The Carbon fiber blade (Cheetah) for Paralympians is another.

Video 1: Oscar Pistorius at Rice University June 29, 2010

Think force, not fuel.

All this leads to what I refer to as the SPEED RESERVE approach to training…or ASR.

THREE KEY QUESTIONS:

What is ASR?

ASR or Anaerobic Speed Reserve is based on an algebraic procedure used to project speed-duration curves from 3 to up to 240 seconds and beyond.The algorithm can predict a final time/distance or distance/time run for almost any runner, with greater than 97% accuracy. And the ASR prediction range extends from a few meters up to five minutes of running. The algorithm’s basis is the rate of muscle fatigue (anaerobic fibers) for each runner.

Why was this important to me, and how does it apply to the speed training I am currently doing?

It clearly establishes that speeds decrease as the duration of sprinting increases because of force impairment and NOT because of an energy limitation. Prior to the Weyand/Bundle research papers, it was common belief (and still is among many coaches) that anaerobic fibers run out of fuel…similar to what occurs with aerobic fibers.

However, there is evidence that, up to sixty seconds, reducing the fuel supply does not change the performance.

Figure 1: Graph from JAP paper,”High Speed Running Performance is Largely Unaffected by Hypoxic Reductions in Aerobic Power”

And there is direct evidence that sprinting progressively impairs musculoskeletal force.

Figure 2: Peters Weyand’s ASR Presentation at Midwest Speed Summit 2014.

What we now understand is that the force approach can predict individual performance-duration relationships, and all athletes conform to the same curve.

Based on this focus on musculoskeletal force progressively impaired as the even duration increases, how do I train my sprinters at least relative to fast running on the track? I studied the first Weyand/Bundle paperback in 2003, looked at the algorithm and believed right away it could have a direct application to training.

Figure 3: Author’s version of the original ASR algorithm.

Since ‘03, I’ve used the formula to establish individualized speed goals for each athlete based on the speed regression algorithm found in their papers.

So, in simple terms, ASR is a way to provide individualized bouts of high speed running for each athlete on your team.

As a result, here are my answers to those first four questions:

What speeds do my sprinters train at and how do I determine those speeds? Those speeds are based on individual anaerobic reserve projection—no more guessing.

What distances do my sprinters run and how many reps of those distances do we do in a training session? I choose distances based upon my goal of extending higher meters per second over progressively longer periods of time. Some refer to this as a “short to long” approach.

There is NO SET NUMBER OF REPS in any ASR session. The workout ends for each athlete when he or she can no longer sustain the specific meters per second speed.

And there is no longer any guesswork as to what that speed should be.

Coaches can run ASR sessions once or twice a week depending on their own “cycling models,” which must take into account meet schedules, vacation days, weather conditions, and time of the season.

Think of sprinting in terms of attainable intensity and endurance in terms of sustainable intensity. As Dr. Weyand noted, “Sprinting is demand driven and not supply limited.” But this approach does not have to be limited to “short rep stuff.”

Research shows that anaerobic systems influence middle distance performance in runners of similar abilities, and anaerobic tests can predict endurance performance.

I also use ASR for repetition work with distance runners. Each athlete runs a prescribed number of meters in a set time. By staggering them around the track with a scoreboard clock counting down from that set time, runners will approach the finish line together.

As Dr. Owen Anderson notes in his latest book, Running Science:

“The primary factors that control anaerobic performance are the same primary factors that control aerobic performance. Those primary factors are found in muscle contractility.”

The “take home” message from Dr.Weyand’s seminars on sprint performance limitations clearly suggests that sprint training 1) should target musculoskeletal force output and 2) that targeting energy pathways for sprint training is not recommended

Is this something you can use to create effective, individualized workouts for your sprinters and middle distance runners? Yes. Is it easy to do? Yes.

Although years back we contracted with Rice for exclusive rights to the algorithm (it is patented), the formula itself is in the actual speed regression papers.

Coaches with a little work can figure it out on the own. Just two measured points can provide the entire curve.

Getting the test data from a T1 short sprint (10 meters) and a T2 long sprint (300 meters) is relatively easy, and the next step simply requires coaches to plug in the data.

The good news is that you don’t have to purchase any tables or make those up on your own based on the algorithm. The Speed Calculator appears right here at Freelap.

A Historical Perspective

Why this change away from what many see as the conventional form of long sprint training?

The original Bundle/Weyand research compelled me to reconsider the way I had previously been training both short and long sprinters. As a result, what were “tossed in the dustbin,” as Frans Bosch might say, were things that did not have much scientific support.

I had to re-think my approach to workout running speeds, workout distances, and reps per workout, all of which in the past had been just guesswork on my part.

The concept of employing a “speed template” for designing workouts took root early in my coaching career.

Back in the 70’s that required looking for some chart or table as a guideline for short duration sprint training reps. A small “sprint book” from Runner’s World was my only source at the time.

Figure 4: Cover of the Original Runner’s World Guide to Sprinting

What I found in that book was the closest thing to a speed template: the speed projections Valentin Petrovski used with Valeri Borzov. Petrovki was doing what I had hoped to be able to accomplish: finding out “how much the components of sprinting can be raised, and what signs to be weighed to measure that change.”

As Borzov noted about his speed training:

“Petrovski had for this task established a table of evaluation indicators, based on the performances recorded by Soviet, as well as foreign sprinters. The table, slightly changed according to practical experience, still serves a useful purpose today.”

Based on the sketchy material I had from Petrovski’s indicators, I created my own table.

Table 4: Author’s original table on a dot matrix printer circa 1989.

Using each sprinter’s current best race time, I would have them run either 30 or 60 meter block or fly sprints, trying to achieve times in line with the next faster race goal.

The problem:

Those projections were not based on any studies of speed regression over time.

It was not what Dr. Weyand would describe as an example of “scientific knowledge evolving via data.”

I was just guessing– based solely on Petrovski’s attempts to determine optimal running factors for the 100 meter dash

The potential for ending the guesswork began when I realized that the algorithm contained in the Bundle/Hoyt/Weyand Energetics of High-Speed Running paper could provide me with exactly what I wanted.

I then visited the authors at the Rice University lab in the summer of ’04 to discuss how I had begun applying their work.

Figure 5: Dr. Peter Weyand at the Rice University Lab 2004.

Since ‘03, I have used the formula to establish individualized speed goals based on each sprinter’s speed regression as determined from the algorithm.

In simple terms, ASR–in addition to its performance predictive potential–is a way I provide individualized bouts of high speed running for each athlete on my team. No more guessing or making stuff up!

Please share this article so others may benefit.

References

Anderson, Owen. Running Science. Champaign: Human Kinetics, 2013. Print.

Bundle, M., Hoyt, R.W. and P. Weyand. Energetics of high-speed running: a new approach to assessment and prediction. Journal of Applied Physiology, 95: 1955-1962, 2003.

Guide to Sprinting. Mountain View, CA: World Publications, 1973. Print.

Weyand, P. and M. Bundle. Energetics of high-speed running: integrating classical theory and contemporary observations. American Journal of Physiology: Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology, 288: R956-R965, 2005.

Weyand, P., Lee, C, Martinez-Ruiz, R., Bundle, M., Wright, S., and M. Bellizzi. High-speed running performance is largely unaffected by hypoxic reductions in aerobic power. Journal of Applied Physiology, 86: 2059-2064, 1999.

By Carl Valle

I have learned a lot from sport scientists while traveling internationally, but the best secrets come from the applied professionals and coaches who review information from research and create training programs from the studies. Two years ago Hakan Andersson sent me a research study on a Springbok, a fast deer in Africa that can run fast and run far. That made me think about the limits of the combination of speed and endurance for team sports. What I have done over the last few years is test cutting-edge programs no matter how demanding, and found out what works and what doesn’t work. Everyone wants to be fast in team sports, but the compromise of being deadly in the final minutes of regulation is the Holy Grail in sports. It is not complicated. Coaches and athletes want to know how to get faster on the field and keep up the pace that not only gives them an advantage, it rips the heart of the opponents. The article creates a roadmap to get there using the best coaches and tools available to run fast all day long.

Start with the Lab to Make a Monster

Anytime I take a new athlete on I get them blood tested before I work with them. No matter how committed an athlete claims, aerobic fitness is dictated by the environment of your body, namely blood and the fuel that runs through the body. Oxygen transport and waste product transport is the name of the game, and good blood chemistry dictates how well athletes can sustain output. There is a reason “blood doping” exists, meaning the cheaters are looking for ways to artificially raise the effectiveness and efficiency of aerobic systems by artificially increasing the oxygen carrying ability of the body with drugs. I have worked with a lot of distance athletes, and my first goal is never let basic nutrition ruin a masterpiece training plan. If a coach wants to build a monster, the best way is to see a doc first, provided he is one of the good guys. Unfortunately good sport scientists and medical professionals are not always available, and we are at the age of open technology that can make this easy and simple for athletes get easy access to the benefits of blood testing. I am biased to InsideTracker for a good reason; they have a huge database of athletes and make blood testing and the analytics a simple as ordering Chinese food from Foodler. Now, an athlete anywhere in the US can get the same cutting-edge analysis and recommendations a world class athlete does, and the product is evolving every day. I have a progression of 4 phases, and they are the following.

• Phase 1- Rank Dietary Choices and Drive Athlete Compliance
• Phase 2- Focus on Adaptive Biomarkers and Focus on Milestones
• Phase 3- Monitor Hormones and Markers of Stress and create Interventions
• Phase 4- Master Tapering and Competition Timing by Adjustments

Most of my athletes use the Ultimate Panel and do this 3-6 times per year, depending on their experience with solid nutrition and lifestyle management. My rule of thumb is that nobody in 2015 making a million dollars is going to be malnourished. Seeing a professional basketball player deficient in minerals and vitamins is embarrassing, and before I talk about hormones and other fun subjects I hammer down the basics. It’s hard to monitor and measure nutrition, but getting leaner and fueling smarter requires the athlete to be accountable outside or practice. After an athlete proves to handle the basics of intake like nutrients and lipid ratios, I move to using blood testing to measure the effectiveness of my training by looking at the Oxygen Transport Group and seeing what is holding me back from “all systems go”. Any time a sport scientist uses blood to validate an experiment, I want my guys to break the mean. Mean is average, and average is mediocre. A reason people are talking about anti-fragile for years is because coaches babied people and were afraid to push the limit. I think people were training anti-freak, and now the pendulum is going back to something more aggressive.

Figure 1: InsideTracker makes measuring nutritional status a reality and combines a new recommendation engine for the more demanding biomarkers like hormones and overtraining data points. I don’t talk supplements or shakes until the basics are done and then we explore getting that last 1% if whole foods are not working.

Phase 3 and 4 are more about fine-tuning. I use the Free Testosterone to Cortisol done after each heavy training cycle to see if the recovery was enough before moving on. I carefully remove variables by purposely timing the test Monday after a full day of rest and see where we are. I combine HRV timelines and sleep data to rule out possible interference with lifestyle. Other biomarkers are great tools as well, such as muscle overload (CK) and precision metrics like Sex Hormone Binding Globulin (SHBG) for added interpretation. Finally, all the biomarkers can be optimized from diet, intelligent resting, and sweet spot loading.

Run Fast and Stay Fast

I am a believer that if you are not fast enough to make a play once, don’t worry how long the game is. Too many coaches think that athletes are not in shape because they are slow or look sluggish in practice and games. They are slow because not enough effort in speed training and weekly training design is being employed. I don’t talk about conditioning unless a coach does speed testing because endurance is about supporting maximal speed or preserving a fraction of it. Coaches need to understand speed reserve is not as simple as a percentage of someone’s best velocity or time over a specified distance. Before one overthinks speed reserve, one has to understand speed fully. I have posted many articles about speed training, but one quick read that is mandatory is the article about Split Times and Conversion. It is a way to convert splits from testing into a functional number for easy math. Coaches are always asking about Maximum Aerobic Speed or other velocity metrics but never seem to understand athlete profiling. How fast an athlete can accelerate, how fast they are maximally, and how they can sustain those scores are the heart of good endurance evaluation. Simply put coaches must time the 30 meters like the MLS combine (with 10 and 20m splits), get at maximum speed fly time, and profile their jumping scores. Endurance tests like the 30-15 and the Yo-Yo Intermittent Recovery Tests (Beep test to many) are very limited unless you know the linear speed qualities and how they are creating those speed metrics from jump testing. Being better at jump doesn’t mean you will be faster necessarily, but it will guide those wanting faster athletes to see how training is getting athletes faster or slower. I like monitoring jumps and training speed, but sometimes I add changes to programs if a jump test is poor and glaringly indicating a need for change.

After you test speed then add in endurance or fitness tests that mean something. I don’t like getting into debates about what fitness tests are the best, but picking the 30-15 and Yo-Yo IR2 tests are great for soccer, hockey, and rugby because these sports are continuous. Basketball is continuous as well, but the stoppage is high enough to make it less demanding. Also, basketball is notorious for playing too much without training, a classic case of under-preparation and over competing. Finally, American football seasons are so short they allow enough fitness during the off-season and have specialization with defense and offensive players.

Coaches should put a priority on getting players faster, keeping players fast, and slowing down the effects of aging and too much workload. I find it strange how so many people complain about overtraining yet are the same ones that want better conditioning test scores. The secret is about running faster from being fast and not overtraining first, then look at what is left to manage. The easiest thing to do is add more to an athlete’s plate, but it’s better to find ways to reduce fatigue from foolish planning than to mask the problem by driving for more aerobic volumes. Jump and hormone testing can monitor a player over a season and guide a career, so weekly vertical jumps can help manage power with team sports since very few can train speed in season. One popular method for me is to do a few sprints in the warm-up on days that are fresh but leave the maximal power work for testing midweek. Testing in the middle of the week allows for adjustments, so testing before games or matches may be more valid, but it’s also too late at times. Just testing once a week is sustainable, but use it as a warm-up as indicated in my 5 Tests in the Weightroom Article.

Breath like a Biathlete

Want to know a secret? I love the biathlon for many reasons, but my primary reason is that it’s a combination of war and sport. Cross country skiing is not my favorite sport, but the contrast of working hard and slowing down your heart rate to increase shooting accuracy is exactly what athletes want in their sport. Imagine playing hard defense in the NBA for a game and then getting fouled. Very few people understand that shooters sway while aiming from their hearts beating, and getting steady during free throws is very similar. Biathletes are experts in shooting and use biofeedback to take control of their ANS (Autonomic Nervous System) with controlled breathing. Everyone is talking about breathing, and we see way too many isolated exercises as quick fixes. A better approach is to integrate real breathing training under fire, as breathing is more about composure under stress than activating muscles of the torso. Smart coaches prevent problems, not look for exercises or therapies to mask symptoms. Most athletes simply have problems with breathing because they are out of shape and have poor lifestyles.

Figure 2: Researching the biathlon is a valuable investment for team coaches needing athletes to be skilled under fatigue. Countless studies exist on motor skills and energy systems with the sport of biathlon.

The natural question is what are the ways coaches can integrate better breathing into training because time is at a premium and coaches need to see things transfer. I have talked to world leading experts on breathing for years and second guess myself when trends become so popular you almost feel like you are missing out on the next best thing. Sure breathing performance is helpful for most endurance sports, but a lot of team sports will not get the type A personalities to do such side work, and teams have bigger fish to fry. The primary problem with adrenaline is that some athletes breathe too much (panic) or freeze up and not breathe. I like to do the following simple things with training, and they are the following.

Build a Sanctuary - My biggest problem with explosive athletes is they are adrenaline junkies and have problems relaxing and resting. Those that try to fix sleeping with hacks, tips, or tricks are missing the big picture. We need less stimulation, and I like athletes to have a part of a room (dorm) or an entire room (pro athlete) devoted to being devoted. Giant premium beanbags, cool fish tanks, and awesome sound systems are key. My Pandora suggestion is getting smooth jazz or the Jesse Cook station. Blank and Jones is also awesome on HRV and stress measurements. Also old books, not Kindles or iPads, add some good vibes. Escape!

Coach Power Breathing - The other extreme to breathing is making sure the weight room and the throws are integrating breathing. I do this every GPP, so guys see the connections. When we squat in the early part of the season, we do a lot of technique work and manipulate breathing to get lumbar control and breathing abilities. I thought the ability to breath and maintain lumbar stability was hype and “bro science” but when I saw EMG data live with needle-based information I was a believer. It’s not that athletes are dysfunctional; they just need to be coached right and just do what the body can do normally. Too much bracing doesn’t work in sport all the time, as even Usain Bolt was breathing in the 100m dash.

Breath under Duress - Athletes need to make breathing a mental solution when things become uncomfortable. Look at breathing rates with smart shirts and see how some athletes who are not in shape or chokers tend to freeze up when the pain of conditioning rises above average efforts. Conditioning to me is building up toughness to waste products, not just improving physiological output. Fear is the number one problem with guys that don’t like pain of acidosis, and I put a lot of energy progressive overload here.

Breathing works when it’s happening automatically, not by cueing or doing exercises 3 x 8 reps twice a week. The take home is that breathing is more about culture than being a correction to an athlete. Add in the three areas above, and you will see this training manifest in workouts and physiological monitoring.

Build from the Foot Up

The function of the foot and the lower leg stiffness is a huge contributor to performance in speed, but too many teams neglect this in the application when they buy cleats and athletic footwear. In addition to the right footwear, the body must have elastic qualities and mechanical technique to glide on the field. Countless times I have jumped in a tempo session with guys without having done any fitness work beyond walking a dog, and I loved them hating me. Running is a skill and should be treated that way, and I suggest coaches either do drills to warm-up or don’t use them at all. I think the strongest way to create change in running mechanics is not coaching, but a simple video of an athlete side by side next to beautiful runners in track and other sports. Today no excuses exist for getting quality footage. I remember buying VHS tapes and recording athletes in the early 1990s, but in 2015, the iPhone 5 with Dartfish and slow motion can make any coach better. Before talking about shin angles, posture during acceleration or even arms, show a video clip and check in with the athlete the next day. Athletes are the ones moving, and they must take ownership of how they move. Coaches are guides and supporters, not drivers of the sports car. It hurts and is humbling not to get results with changes in technique over weeks, but slow cooking is the best cooking. Nobody goes to a fine restaurant for microwaved hot pockets, so the quickest way to get faster is to be steady.

Figure 3: Dartfish mobile app is the entry point to video analysis. For the cup of coffee from your hipster barista you can do slow motion video with your iPhone quickly and get real information you can apply the next training session.

Efficient running requires more than just speed and endurance testing; it needs to see the connection between mechanics and the fatigue at given velocity. Two athletes with the same speed and physiologies may fatigue differently if one is elastic and one is strong. Plyometrics is a great way to measure how athletes are fast, and the goal is to be well rounded. I wrote the jump testing article for a reason, and it was less about raw speed and more about efficient speed. Being a good jumper doesn’t mean you will be elastic, but being good with single leg stiffness jumps is a good start. I am not a fan of paint by numbers, but coaches struggling on making a difference with stiffness work, and technique will find the following helpful. I am still learning, but when seeking out mentors look for detective skills and fewer recipes. Still, it’s good to have example protocols to play with and here are some options.

Remove Tension First - I like timing recovery runs with a heart rate monitor learn to run the same speed easier. It’s not EMG, but it’s a great way to start in teaching effort versus speed in a feedback style approach. The Athos smart fabric is a great idea, but the data is not research grade, and activation data from Noraxon is and is the ultimate biofeedback solution. If you are a college coach or a professional team and not using their lab tools, you are missing out. Teaching relaxation is not about telling athletes what to do; it’s giving them feedback that proves what you are requesting is being done.

Body Type Dictates Stiffness - Cows and Cats? Henk Kraaijenhof understands that the bigger the athlete, the less likely they are going to be good jumpers. I have found that athletes will be different based on their weight, but a good idea is to check body composition as well. A mere few kilos of body weight can kill elasticity if one isn’t making sure athletes are not staying lean.

Barefoot in Moderation - Running on the grass barefoot isn’t going to make a sloppy jogger into the next Carl Lewis, but some conscious running barefoot is a great idea. Nice soft and manicured grass is essential to teaching a light and bouncy stride. The goal is not to change running mechanics but enhance the running mechanics with small improvements in the step and treating each foot strike a way to get better versus putting in the mileage.

All of the tips above are good starting points, but it’s not an exhaustive list by any means. I recommend trying those three suggestions and move on to more comprehensive plans by learning the trade versus the tricks of the trade.

Target Slow Twitch Fibers Properly

Now comes the part most want to know, the actual workouts I like to help team sport athletes. Before making a training prescription, the evaluation of what type of athlete you are working with and the demands are needed. Too many times I see the sports demands placed first in priority, and athletes get lost in a meat grinder of conditioning sets. If you have a fast athlete, who is blessed with fast twitch fibers the worst thing you can do is force them to do more conditioning than their genetics are able to provide. The good news is that if you are smart, you can estimate fiber contribution by doing jump testing, blood testing, and TMG profiling. If you have limited budget you can’t get the degree of accuracy of the above but you can get a rough guideline of how explosive and athlete is by doing the Raptor Test found here.

After testing explosiveness, test the athlete in a repeated endurance test of 5 x 4 minutes of interval running to see if they are “aerobic challenged”. Each 4-minute interval is running at a speed that covers a specified distance while the 1 minute recovery run is also required to be at speed faster than a slow jog. Even the most explosive athlete in team sports can adapt to do great at this test/workout. Tempo running is always considered the gold standard and I like to incorporate intervals, but continuous running opens up new capillaries and makes the morphological changes. The trick is to challenge the slow twitch fibers and preserve the fast twitch. Research spooked some people from running too much, but fast continuous running for long periods versus small slower chunks of running can keep guys fast and prevent the fatigue from building up. Small sided games (SSG) are great for fitness and tactical needs, but they will not get players better. Basketball schedules in the NBA are so tight they are glorified walkthroughs at times and other sports can’t be done in such a manner. In the early preseason and late off-season, athletes need to get out of specific workouts and get better or preserve what got them there. 3-4,000 meters 2-3 times a week in various modalities is key. While an exact set of workouts is beyond this article, trial and error with HRV monitoring can help coaches find a good indication of how much and what composition works.

Bathe in Lactate and Adapt

My personal experience with lactate testing with sprinters and endurance athletes gives me the suspicion that coaches need to think about the distribution and progression of work rather than how the body physiologically responds to acidosis. Too many debates on mechanisms and not enough on why some workouts work and why some fail. I have studied marathoners, sprint cycling, rowing, and even medicine ball circuits with lactate testing and have seen world class athletes produce and reduce lactate with little to show for it. The reason I failed is not because I couldn’t see a connection, it was because testing random workouts or doing lab testing for team sport is a different beast. In fact, lactate testing is a moving target because all of the requirements needed to repeat the environment, resting conditions, and other factors makes it a very demanding chore. I believe in lactate testing so don’t get me wrong, but watching soccer players on a treadmill for V02 Max testing and lactate threshold is fruitless if one isn’t trying to improve those numbers in a practical manner. Just like some athletes using powerlifting sport techniques to get their numbers better in the weight room instead of getting stronger, endurance athletes tend to try to get their numbers better without performing faster. The solution is clear; make sure the change in numbers means something statistically. Most people like testing what they are good at so changes or improvements can be limited. If you squat 600 pounds, squatting 650 isn’t going to happen. If your VO2 Max is high, it’s not going to get much better.

Figure 4: This chart is not perfect, but lactate can be elevated by means other than shortening rest, since long bouts of high intensity effort can drop the PH of your blood.

Team sports need to see about hitting three primary velocities, near all out for short distances with volume, easy speed continuously, and something fast with short rest periods. Chasing lactate numbers is unlikely to work because the monotony of practice and games, so what may work is complementary work that is non-specific. Here are my three simple considerations I see as positive influencers to success in doing acidosis workouts that help with repeat speed in team sport.

Density is the Key - Never compromise speed, just decrease rest slowly over time. Density is a great way to increase the quality over time without compromising speed or doing more volume. Repeat sprint ability or training is popular, but never water down speed. Coaches tend to think volume or lack of rest that make athletes faster, but the reality is without enough speed, it becomes just a bad combination or loss of opportunity.

Progress Systematically – It is ok to puke as it is common when surges of metabolites enter the bloodstream but build up slowly. Many athletes have done well with being lazy in the offseason and just systematically did more work and caught up, and we can learn a lot from rebels who are successful. Digging a hole one can’t get themselves out of is common with overzealous athletes. A better idea is to take it slow and steady and just make sure athletes are adapting and not just getting tired. Athletes can handle volume and intensity, but many athletes get better with half the work as well. The best way to make progress is to keep a little fatigue in the system to taper off of, but not enough it acts like a ball and chain. Keeping an athlete fresh all the time will rot the reserves so be careful.

Be Fast and Powerful First - Slow guys don’t pull hamstrings, and slow guys don’t produce lactate. My assistant coach ten years ago said if you want more ketchup you need more tomatoes, not more tomato juice. He was right, for two reasons. First speed is necessary for sport, but a strength reserve allows for power endurance so fatigue can be reduced by training. I am not sure what the cellular mechanism is, but I am convinced from visiting first hand and experimentation that athletes who are the same speed, the athlete who goes there via training will be fitter and prepared for handling lactate. One catch though, athlete who increase their cross-section of muscle fiber on the explosive side are likely not going to be able to handle fatigue without aerobic stimulation of Type I or slow twitch fiber. Remember, cells in muscle only have so much space and compromises in adaption must meet the imposed demands. As you improve one quality, you must improve the others or one can’t tap into the changes as much. It’s a hard concept to understand, but improving is not about changing one piece of the system, it’s about raising the entire system, so it works in orchestration.

The moral of acidosis training is that more is more, only if athletes are recovering and getting faster, fitter, or in some combination. Expose the athlete to more poison, and they may be able to be immune to it later but build up slowly. Acidosis is not a foe, and it’s not a friend, it’s just a byproduct and a marker of PH change. Use the data wisely, and athletes will improve.

Go Build Your Own Springbok Now!

My purpose in this article is to have coaches be bold and aggressive when setting goals to athlete fitness. Too many times coaches think it’s one or the other with speed and endurance they give up before trying. What I have learned by watching elite athletes in the EPL and World Cup is that the games are faster and more furious. One can hope for talent or make talented athletes better, and I hope this article can improve outcomes of testing and competition.

Please share this article so others may benefit.

By Dominique Stasulli

Shin splints are the dreaded injury for any high school coach or athlete. Most commonly, cross country runners and track and field athletes develop this injury as a result of the high-impact nature of their sport. Potentially debilitating effects of the syndrome’s painful associated symptoms can hamper a progressive season. The need for rest becomes a priority; the periodization of training halts in place and must be completely reworked to accommodate the athlete’s rehabilitation process. Coaches should be able to recognize the key warning signs of this overuse injury, and reduce training loads accordingly, before the athlete suffers the full effect of the syndrome. Development of a smart training progression from day one and early recognition of overreaching are crucial for the athlete’s health and long-term success throughout the season and his or her career.

Biomechanics

Each foot strikes the ground approximately six hundred times every kilometer of running (Loudon & Reiman, 2012). This figure is multiplied by an impact of four to five times the athlete’s body weight transmitting sequentially, joint to joint, with each step. This impact is absorbed by every fiber in the musculoskeletal system, in succession, beginning with the point of contact in the foot, and reverberating all the way up the limbs and spine to the skull. If the runner possesses faulty biomechanics and stride efficiency, then the ground reactive forces directed irregularly up through the kinetic chain will place undue stress on specific joints, muscles, tendons, and fascia. This stress, if repetitive over time, will result in an overuse injury such as shin splints. Repetition is unavoidable in track and field athletes since the proper techniques require unidirectional propulsion, with considerable power generating from ground reactive forces through the lower body. The key is this: maximize stride economy and proper mechanics which aligns the athlete in the best possible position to absorb impact and return elastic energy all while generating the least amount of energy cost and bodily damage. More biomechanics will be introduced as we break down the injury and causation underlying the problem.

The Injury

Overuse injuries are defined by a repetitive application of submaximal stress to otherwise healthy tissues, in a manner that overwhelms the body’s natural repair process (Sando & McCambridge, 2013). Shin splints fall into the category of overuse injuries by virtue of these properties. Medial tibial stress syndrome (MTSS) is the clinical term for the colloquial slang, and it provides a description of where the primary symptoms present in the athlete. MTSS is characterized by pain in the middle to distal third of the tibia, on the posteromedial aspect of the bone (Reshef & Guelich, 2012). The area of diffuse pain measures greater than or equal to five centimeters (Sando & McCambridge, 2013). There will be pain upon palpation of that area, and mild swelling is common (Reshef & Guelich, 2012). Symptoms are present early during a workout, usually subside as exercise continues, but also can persist in some cases. Upon completion of the workout, the searing pain will return to the athlete’s shins, often exacerbated from the stress of impact. This pain should be distinguished from that of a stress fracture, which produces a focal pain, present at night, at rest, and while walking too (Sando & McCambridge, 2013).

Figure 1: The regions in red show the common stress syndromes related to shin splints.

As a function of natural stride mechanics, the foot rolls from slight supination to slight pronation in a neutral runner. This motion ends with propulsion off of [primarily] the first and second metatarsal to continue the forward running motion. The soleus muscle is the prime mover of this propulsive phase of running. Individual soleus muscle fibers originate as attachments to the tibia and fibula in the lower leg, predominantly on the anterior fascia, and insert on the large calcaneal (heel) bone, blending continuously with the Achilles tendon. The soleus is made of primarily slow-twitch fibers and works most efficiently with a slightly flexed knee. The medial aspect of the soleus muscle contracts eccentrically at the moment of transition from amortization to push-off. This creates stress at the adhesion site where the soleus attaches to the fascia (Yuksel et al., 2011). Long term stress in this area leads to MTSS.

Figure 2: The overlay of lines show the angles of over supination to neutral to over pronation.

The Causes

The causes of MTSS can be categorized into two main factor groups: extrinsic and intrinsic. Extrinsic factors include the athlete’s running surface, shoes, volume and intensity of the training plan, etc. More dense running surfaces have a greater impact on the joints and require more force absorption. Worn-out shoes can place unwarranted stress on the lower limbs and often allow for overpronation and/or fallen arches. The classic model for overtraining is “too much, too fast, too soon” which brings about the need for coaches who can safely progress athletes through a season without the early demand for performance outcomes.

Intrinsic factors are both genetically and environmentally influenced. Postural anatomy is sometimes inborn, but in many cases can be adjusted and/or corrected through training. Alignment, flexibility, and strength of the ankle joint are three modifiable factors that can drastically alter biomechanical efficiency in an athlete of any age or ability (Reshef & Guelich, 2012). Muscle imbalances in any part of the system and prior injuries must also be taken into account as potential risk factors (Sando & McCambridge, 2013).

Any deviation from proper running mechanics increases the amortization phase of the ankle, and consequently, the stress on the entire system. For example, if the foot is overpronated at push-off, force is applied to an unstable structure through a closed kinetic chain; this immediately results in dissipation of elastic energy and the joints must rely on ligaments and stabilization muscles for support (Neely, 1998). The most common cause of overpronation is an imbalance of strength between invertors and evertors of the foot, in which the evertors dominate (Yuksel et al., 2011). Overpronation directly overloads the soleus and places stress on its attachment site on the medial tibia.

Loudon & Reiman (2012) investigated the deficits in pelvic, hip, or knee motion as a contributing factor to medial shin pain. The study found that greater pelvic drop and hip internal rotation as well as decreased knee flexion in a runners gait place greater stress on the lower leg; the flow chart below outlines this concept (Loudon & Reiman, 2012).

Figure 3: Conceptual model for hip contributions to distal lower extremity pathology.

Increases in pelvic tilt in the frontal plane creates a valgus knee alignment causing the medial foot to compensate with subtalar joint pronation; consider the repositioned bony attachment sites and how this applies stress on the connected muscles and tendons (Loudon & Reiman, 2012). With a decrease in knee flexion, shock dissipation is directed to the tibia and/or soft tissue rather than up through the kinetic chain (Loudon & Reiman, 2012). Some studies report that medial arch deformation, commonly known as “fallen arches,” correlates to MTSS, since it structurally simulates overpronation (Reshef & Guelich, 2012). This is also why runners with flat feet are more prone to overuse injuries such as MTSS.

The bottom line: Compensation for faulty mechanics affects the entire kinematic chain so that loss of range of motion in one joint is adjusted for in a neighboring joint, and this adjustment is always accompanied by a sacrifice in economy (Loudon & Reiman, 2012).

The Risk Factors

Female athletes are notoriously susceptible to more exercise-induced health consequences in relation to their male counterparts, simply by virtue of their genetic anatomy and physiology; these consequences include overuse injuries such as MTSS and stress fractures. Increasing average weekly mileage in high school athletes is directly proportional to male overuse injuries and female stress fractures according to one study (Tenforde, Sayres, McCurdy, Collade, Sainani, & Fredericson, 2011). Other risk factors include: body weight, body mass index (BMI), and limited range of motion in the hip (Yagi, Muneta, & Sekiya, 2013). Higher BMI and body weight places significant stress on the joints, exacerbating any malalignments and compensatory patterns. Athletes suffering from MTSS often fall into the upper range of these two categories (Yagi et al., 2013). Reshef and Guelich (2012) found cross-country runners with a BMI greater than 20 to be at a significantly greater risk of developing MTSS.

The Consequences

Athletes who continue to train through shin splints are extremely vulnerable to developing a stress fracture in one or more areas of the lower limb. A stress fracture occurs when the body is unable to absorb the shock of impact on some surface, typically due to overuse and fatiguing muscles.

Extra precaution should be taken with female runners. Both iron-deficiency anemia and amenorrhea (lack of menstruation) in women have been linked to secondary decreased bone mineral density and thus stress fractures (Yanovich, Merkel, Israeli, Evans, Erlich, & Moran, 2011). IL-6 is an inflammatory mediator in the body that responds to intensive exercise stress (Yanovich et al., 2011). When IL-6 upregulates, it induces osteoclast activity, or the breakdown of bone minerals with the intent to rebuild. However, IL-6 also activates hepcidin, a small molecule that promotes iron deficiency (Yanovich et al., 2011). Iron-deficient bone cannot rebuild itself properly, leaving the athlete in a state of weakened bone mineral density and vulnerable to stress fractures if the deficiency is not overcome. Animal studies have also shown that iron deficiency impairs the bone resorption (rebuilding) process and the root of the issue may be nothing more than an insufficiently iron-supplemented diet (Yanovich et al., 2011). Other studies have found a correlation between menstrual irregularities and the incidence of stress fractures in female athletes (Yanovich et al., 2011). A large majority of stress fractures occur in the lower leg and take a minimum of six to eight weeks to heal, creating a major setback in a competitive athlete’s training regimen regardless of the sport.

For the Coach

It is the coach’s responsibility to adjust and take care in the rehabilitation process. Weekly mileage should never capitalize by more than 10% from week to week and specifically the long run should not comprise more than 30% of the athlete’s weekly mileage. Rest is the most important factor in healing the injury in a time efficient manner. Non-impact activity such as swimming can be introduced when the athlete’s pain subsides followed by low-impact stationary biking or elliptical after a minimum of 7-10 days have passed. Depending on the severity, the athlete may need one week of complete rest before attempting any degree of activity. Soleus stretching and soft tissue massage are two therapeutic modalities that can be easily introduced after the initial inflammatory state has diminished.

Strong foundations during base-building need to be established before undergoing a heavy training load in order to avoid this potentially debilitating disorder. When an athlete is suffering from MTSS, training volume and intensity may need to be modified to give the athlete’s body a chance to recuperate and strengthen naturally. Training shoes should be replaced every 300 to 500 miles, sooner for heavier runners and those who train at high intensity. It is advantageous for runners to alternate between multiple pairs of shoes to increase the longevity of each; this also ensures that the small muscles in the feet do not adapt to identical stresses each and every day. Overpronation can be corrected with the purchase of motion control shoes and/or insoles.

Biomechanical imbalances should be addressed early in the season, or preferably the offseason, and especially when the injury red flag is thrown. Strength training emphasis should be placed on developing the invertors of the foot and eccentric strength of the soleus muscle (Tenforde et al., 2011). The foot and ankle muscles and tendons should be trained with plyometrics for maximizing spring and flexibility. Hip range of motion can be incorporated into a season-long flexibility circuit, which is performed once or twice a week; this is most easily achieved with a hurdle mobility strength series. Changing the running surface is an easy alternative for lessening the impact of a traditional workout. Track athletes should run on grass, turf, or trail as much as possible to strengthen stabilizer muscles surrounding the joints in the lower limb; this also rests the larger muscle groups subject to the pounding of the track, day in and day out.

Longevity is key for an athlete’s long-term career success. A smart coach will sacrifice short-term success for long-term progression. Psychologically, an injury setback can wreak havoc on the motivation and self-confidence of the athlete; mental strength training and positive reinforcement should not be neglected on the coach’s end. Larger dividends will pay in the long run if the proper care is taken for the athlete’s health and well-being early on. Injury prevention strategies should always take priority in a well-developed training plan, and this is ever more important in a young athlete’s growth and development.

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References

Loudon, J. K. & Reiman, M. P. (2012). Lower extremity kinematics in running athletes with and without a history of medial shin pain. International Journal of Sports Physical Therapy, 7(4), 356-364.

Neely, F. G. (1998). Biomechanical risk factors for exercise-related lower limb injuries. Sports Medicine, 26(6), 395-413.

Reshef, N. & Guelich, D. R. (2012). Medial tibial stress syndrome. Clinical Sports Medicine, 31, 273-290.

Sando, J. P. & McCambridge, T. M. (2013). Nontraumatic sports injuries to the lower extremities. Sports Medicine Update: clinical Pediatric Emergency Medicine, 14(4), 332-339.

Tenforde, A. S., Sayres, L. C., McCurdy, M. L., Collade, H., Sainani, K. L. & Fredericson, M. (2011). Overuse injuries in high school runners: Lifetime prevalence and prevention strategies. Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, 3, 125-131.

Yagi, S., Muneta, T., & Sekiya, I. (2013). Incidence and risk factors for medial tibial stress syndrome and tibial stress fracture in high school runners. Knee Surgery, Sports Traumatology, Arthroscopy, 21, 556-563.

Yanovich, R., Merkel, D., Israeli, E., Evans, R.K., Erlich, T., and Moran, D.S. (2011). Anemia, iron deficiency, and stress fractures in female combatants during 16 months. Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research, 25(12), 3412–3421.

Yuksel, O., Ozgurbuz, C., Ergun, M., Isleen, C., Taskiran, E., Denerel, N., & Ertat, A. (2011). Inversion/eversion strength dysbalance in patients with medial tibial stress syndrome. Journal of Sports Science and Medicine, 10, 737-742.

By Ken Jakalski

I often tell my athletes that track running is a lot like NASCAR—run fast, turn left, repeat as necessary. But why do we turn left on a track?

The question may well be related to why we turn left in a lot of activities. Ask people to think of activities that require a left rotation, and they will usually come up with things like Roller Derby, indoor bicycle racing, baseball running, speed skating, merry-go-rounds, revolving doors, and even Hula Hoops.

But is there something unique to track that suggests left is best? We call this movement counter-clockwise. The Brits call it anti-clockwise. What we know is that almost all joggers, if given a choice of direction, choose circular routes that run counter-clockwise. For my cross country team, we run a 1.5 mile crushed limestone loop in an area forest preserve. For twenty-five years, we always turned left.

Figure 1: Dr Hiroshi Watanabe

It was Professor Hiroshi Watanabe from SOKA University in California who came up with an answer while researching whether winding stairs should be designed clockwise or counter-clockwise. He noted a tendency in most of us when blindfolded to begin walking a little bit to the left. Track coaches working with developmental sprinters in Junior Olympics note this same drifting to the left, often to the consternation of LYNX timing operators who end up with two athletes in the same lane even though they didn’t start that way.

One theory is that the majority of people are right-handed, which means they are often right-footed. We also have a slightly longer right leg than left leg. These factors influence right leg dominance, which leads to a tendency to turn to the left. This left drifting may be basic to our human nature, and running counter-clockwise instinctual.

But does this theory make sense relative to what we know about movement choice in right or left dominant athletes?

All of us reveal what is often referred to as a veering tendency, or what I like to call a “rotational bias.” For multi-directional sports, determining an athlete’s rotational bias can give an opposing player an advantage. We see these kinds of biases at all levels of sport. For example, why is it so difficult for football coaches to move a player from the right side of the line to the left—or vice-versa? Why do some defensive backs break better inside or outside on the ball?

Figure 2: The cover of The Left-hander Syndrome by Stanley Coren

Stanley Coren notes that the vast majority of right-handers like to turn right while the majority of left-handers prefer to turn left. “Other more formal studies have confirmed that left and right handers have different turning tendencies. For example, when asked to turn around on the spot, right-handers have a natural tendency to rotate their bodies to the right, resulting in a clockwise pirouette, while left-handers rotate more naturally to the left, resulting in a counterclockwise turn.”

Coren offers the following analysis, which is important for those of us who coach athletes in multi-directional sports. “It is not surprising that left-handers, always forced in the direction away from natural counter-clockwise running tendencies, are more apt to make mistakes or to be slower or less graceful in their body movements.”

In other words, forcing an athlete to move in the opposite direction of his or her rotational tendency or bias puts that player at a disadvantage. How might a coach determine these kinds of rotational tendencies? We can’t always just assume right-handers will go right, and left-handers left. Some are what researchers refer to as cross dominant. Others can easily rotate right or left without betraying a bias or appearing awkward. These are usually the great defensive backs in football.

I have my athletes kneel on both knees facing away from me. I stand about ten meters back and tell them that when they hear the clap of my hands, they are to stand up, turn and run toward me as fast as they can. You will quickly see their rotational bias. And you will spot an inherent movement problem that these athletes aren’t even aware they are committing.

For example, an athlete might turn to his or her left, but lift the left leg first, effectively “blocking” the rotation to the left. If you see they are consistent in turning to the left or right, have them turn the other way on the clap command and watch how they respond.

I have another way of spotting an athlete’s rotational bias. It involves one of my favorite childhood chase games I call “Wolf, wolf, what time is it.” There are several variations of this game around the world, but the concept is the same. A wolf (the chaser) walks forward in front of a pack of sheep, who also walk forward with the wolf, but about five meters behind. As they are all walking forward, the sheep ask, “Wolf, wolf, what time is it?” The wolf then says any time of day. However, when he says “twelve o’clock,” he must turn and chase the sheep in order to capture one of them before they all get back to “glue” or the starting line. Monitoring these chases involves what I refer to as “spotting a neural tell.”

I watch the “wolf” and note his or her tendency to rotate either right or left. If a fairly accomplished athlete prefers to turn right, I know with certainty that he will only turn to the right when his left foot is forward. In other words, “twelve o’clock” will only be called out on a left-foot landing.

At this point, I enter the game. I become the sheep and walk with the wolf five meters behind. I tell my athletes that I will never be caught—even at my age. I say this with certainty because I pre-load and anticipate the wolf saying “twelve o’clock” whenever the left foot is forward.

Video 1: Dr. Ken Clark of SMU tries Wolf with the athletes he trains. Note the neural tell in video.

This game can be a fun and enjoyable form of training. Athletes will often learn to respond to the sound (when the wolf says “twelve”), but the best athletes might on their own figure out their opponents “neural tell.” When they can do this, we can say that they have truly learned to “Rock Around the Clock.”

One final note on left turning tracks…

The IAAF Rule 163.1 states that the “direction of running shall be left-hand inside.” However, this has not always been the case. The 1896 and 1906 Olympic Games in Athens and 1900 Olympics Games in Paris ran clockwise. However, from 1908 to the present the Games have been run “left-hand inside.”

Figure 3: 1896 Olympic Games in Athens

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References:

Coren, Stanley. The Left-hander Syndrome: The Causes and Consequences of Left-handedness. New York: Free, 1992. Print.

By Craig Pickering

I guess I had a pretty good career. I don’t want to blow my own trumpet, but going to 5 World Championships and being selected for 2 Olympic Games is all right. Added to that fact, I won medals at World Senior, u-18, and European Senior, u-23 and u-20, as well as a fair few national medals. I think it’s fair to say I did quite a lot right. But I also did plenty of stuff wrong. In times of reflection, I sometimes look back and wonder what I would have changed. Learning from mistakes is important (so important that I wrote the article Mistakes: Why They Happen; How We Can Avoid Them), but, unfortunately, to learn from a mistake means that you have to make it. There is another way – you can learn from the mistakes of others. Part of me being a coach is helping the next generation and passing on what I’ve learned. Here is your chance to learn from some of the things I did wrong.

Not Listening To My Coach

I’ve been lucky to work with some high-class coaches during my career. I’ve learnt so much from each of them, and they have all made an impression on my training and coaching philosophy. Mike Leonard, my first coach at my athletics club, took me from a reasonably good 13-year old−I ran 12.0 in my first race−to the best 14-year old in the country. Under him, I won all of my Youth and Junior medals. Malcolm Arnold coached me at a time when I moved from a promising junior athlete to a competing at the World Championships and Olympics Games. I had a lot of growing up to do, and Malcolm taught me how to conduct myself like a high-level athlete. Michael Khmel, my third and final coach, taught me so much about sprint technique. He also exposed me to a whole new set of coaching ideas and philosophies that he had gained through his upbringing in the USSR, coaching in Australia, shadowing top coaches from the USA and finally coaching some really talented British athletes.

Clearly, these coaches all had a wealth of knowledge and practical experience that I can only hope one day to possess. As an example, Malcolm had his first Olympic Champion and World Record holder at an age three years younger than I am now. And yet I still used to think I knew better than them. Whether it was doing extra training when I should have been resting or prioritising one race when I should have been doing another, there are plenty of times when I should have listened to them as opposed to going with what I thought was right.

Learn from me – Find a coach that has a vast amount of knowledge and experience. Let him or her coach you. Learn from them, and utilise their experience.

Listening To My Coach

Yes, this is a direct contradiction to my previous point. Stick with me here. Although I always had good coaches, no single coach is perfect. They all have flaws in their knowledge, approach, or people skills. Sometimes they want you to do something that you’re not sure about – you might have a different idea, but they won’t listen to it. They might think one exercise is useful, but you prefer another. They might not want you to do the rehab the physio gave you because they think it is unnecessary and increasing your training load, but you know that the exercises work and make you feel better. They might prescribe a load or training volume that you can’t manage, but they still push for you to do it. They might want you to go to a certain race because people tend to run really well there−it’s in Switzerland−, but you know that you run better at competitions with a big crowd as opposed to really small ones.

Yes, your coach in undoubtedly brilliant. But they are also human, and that means that they are wrong some of the time.

Learn from me – Communicate properly with your coach regarding how you feel (I’m terrible at this). Explain the reasoning behind your decision. And, sometimes, just ignore what the coach says and do your own thing – if you’re wrong suffer the consequences (see point #1 for more on this).

Testing Everything!

One rep max. Five rep max. Reaction time. 10m from blocks. 30m from blocks. Flying 30m. 60m from standing. 100m from standing. 200m from standing. 300m from standing. Peak bar velocity for power clean / snatch / squat. Peak power for power clean / snatch / squat / bench. Peak isometric power. Body weight. Skin folds. Girths. Medball throw. Standing long jump. Five bound distance. These are all the things that I can remember testing and measuring during my career. Now, there isn’t anything wrong per se with testing, so long as you put the test in its rightful place. The only real test that matters is how little time elapses between the gun going off and you crossing the finish line in an official competition. Hopefully, the time that elapses will be less than the other people in the race. Ideally, this elapsed time will be the shortest amount of time it has ever taken you to both react and cover the race distance. Your performance in every other test is largely irrelevant to this; if you improve in all your tests but get slower in a race, then monitoring those tests hasn’t been worthwhile (or at least hasn’t given the correct signal).

Instead, athletes and coaches use surrogate markers to measure improvement, in the hope that an improvement in these markers will lead to an improvement in race performance. Some of these markers make more sense than others; flying-30m time, for example, is strongly linked to sprint performance. I ran my fastest ever flying-30 within four weeks of running my fastest ever 100m. My standing 60m and standing 100m times are exactly the same as my fastest race times, which makes sense. There is no reaction times in these tests, which offsets the smaller amount of adrenaline that occur within the training environment. The rationale for other tests may be sound; improvements in one repetition maximum often means an improvement in strength, which could mean that you can produce more force when you run, and hence run quicker. But consider this. When I ran my 60m and 100m PBs, my weight room 1RMs were 127.5kg in the power clean, 200kg in the squat, and 110kg in the bench. In 2010, I ran 10.38 as my seasons bests; at this point my weight room 1RMs were 142.5kg in the power clean, 225kg in the squat, and 145kg in the bench. So getting stronger doesn’t necessarily mean getting quicker – it’s multifactorial.

Testing a lot of markers in training can be useful. When things are going well, it is a powerful motivation tool. Running a flying 30m personal best close to a big race will make you feel brilliant (believe me!). But what if it isn’t going well? What if you can’t get anywhere near your personal best in training? Should you just not bother racing? Clearly, this would be stupid – the whole point of training is to race, and the only test that matters is race performance. When testing is going poorly, it can be incredibly de-motivating. Added to the fact that monitoring a lot of markers during training is both mentally and physically fatiguing and that it focuses on the outcome and not the quality of performance, you can see why a constant and wide-ranging testing regime might not be a good idea.

Learn from me – It’s fine to test things. Make sure that you’re testing things with a large crossover to your event. Only test them at specific intervals, as opposed to a daily/weekly basis. Instead, focus more on the fact that training is a process to enable you to compete well, and training quality doesn’t have to be (and indeed can’t be) high every day.

Getting Injured

Getting injured is rubbish. You miss a period of training, which means that you miss out on a period of adaptation. If you get injured during the season, it means that you may well miss some races, and struggle to be at your best. Prior injury is a pretty good predictor of future injury – meaning that if you injure something once, you are at a slightly raised risk of injuring it again. This is especially true for hamstrings and back issues, as well as recurrent tendinopathy.

Look at me as an example. I suffered my first back injury aged 13 (I fell down the stairs quite badly, which I guess isn’t my fault); I first suffered from disc issues at age 17. By age 20, I had a recurrent back issue, which degenerated until I required surgery at the start of 2012. The surgery was successful, but because that area of my back didn’t move quite as well, extra force was placed on the discs both above and below. These discs then herniated, and left me in a position where I had no option but to retire.

Learn from me – Saying “don’t get injured” is stupid on my part, but I’m using it to illustrate a point. Anyone that does high-level training for a period will get injured. Your job as an athlete / coach is to work alongside support staff to reduce the chances of injury, and once an injury occurs reduce the chances of re-injury occurring. This means identifying risk factors, understanding the forces and movements required in the sport, and managing training load and progression correctly. If you get injured, don’t just sit back and accept it. Do everything in your power to come back quicker, and better, than before. I tore my hamstring very close to the Olympic trials in 2008, but instead of stressing about it, I focused all my energy on getting back to my best. After my back surgery, I was told I wouldn’t be able to start running until the end of August. Instead, I did rehab four times per day, and did my first running session in June.

False Starting

The whole purpose of athletics is to race. All the training you do is in order to race, and race well. So travelling to a competition to do a false start and getting disqualified makes no sense. Just don’t do it.

I was only disqualified once in my life for a false start. It was at the semi-finals if the 2009 National Indoor Championships. I’m not sure why I did it, and because it only happened once I treat it as an isolated event. But after that race, I made even more effort to ensure that I didn’t false start in training.

Learn from me – False starts are always unacceptable, no matter what the situation. Reacting to the gun is a skill, and as such you need to practice that skill by doing it correctly each time. Every time you false start in training, you’re ingraining poor practice and bad habits. Instead, learn to react quickly. Coaches – is it worth stopping a training session if your athlete false starts or punishing them in some way?

Making Training Specific

Training specificity is interesting. It makes sense that in order to be a good sprinter, you need to sprint. You also need a number of exercises that replicate the movements, forces and physiological dynamics of the event you’re doing, such as plyometrics. I’m not saying you shouldn’t do this. The danger comes when everything you do as an athlete is specific. Being highly specific is fatiguing – in the case of sprints it will cause a great deal of central nervous fatigue. It’s also boring, as the number of exercises you do is limited, and they have to fulfil specific criteria.

The best coaches that I’ve seen or read about often take a step back from specific work. Charlie Francis utilised tempo. Dan Pfaff has general strength circuits. Malcolm Arnold gave us some very general training sessions. Michael Khmel used to programme, in general, movement-based exercises too. The key here is that by doing these exercises and sessions, you are maximising your performance and work-rate in the highly specific sessions. Taking time to learn general movement skills is useful when it comes to highly specific exercises, and you will have the muscular conditioning to handle these exercises. Energy system development and body composition changes can also occur through these general training sessions, often to a greater extent than in those specific sessions.

Learn from me – Do specific sessions. Make sure you mix them up with plenty of general training sessions that promote movement skills and general physical literacy, as well as energy system development and rehabilitation exercises.

Gone Crazy Over Supplements

When you get drug tested, you’re provided a box on the piece of paper in which you can write what medications and supplements you are on. This is so that if you fail the test, you can go back and have recorded what you were taking, to see if they are cross-contaminated with a banned substance. This box is five lines in size. For a period of my career, I was taking so many supplements that I had to request and additional page in which to write them. Looking back, this was stupid. I think the problem I had was that nutrition was one area of my training that I could have complete control over. I was responsible for what was going to go into my body, and I was going to make sure that my nutrition was better than any of my competitors. So every time some evidence (no matter how thin) for a certain supplement came out, I had to make sure I was taking it. It helped that I was sponsored by a supplement company too!

Here’s the thing though – all these supplements can’t make you that much better as an athlete; certainly not as much as you hope. The evidence is really good for some supplements, such as protein, colostrum, caffeine and creatine, but seriously lacking for others. Instead, it is much better to focus on having a really good diet – you can’t “out-supplement” a poor diet, no matter how hard you try. To this effect, I have reformed myself somewhat. I make sure I eat as close to 10 servings of fruit and veg per day to cover most of the vitamins. I eat plenty of meat to cover other vitamins, minerals, and protein. And I supplement smartly – in the last year of my career I was taking whey protein (it’s very convenient), colostrum, omega-3, creatine, and vitamin D, and a probiotic. I performed as well as ever, and drug testing became much easier.

Learn from me – Focus on the simple things first: Diet, sleep, recovery, good training. Then layer in supplements that have a decent amount of evidence behind them. Don’t get sucked into the trap of thinking more is better; instead, make smarter decisions.

Not Learning The Correct Technique

At the start of my career, and throughout a large proportion of my senior level competitions, I though running quicker meant trying harder. The harder you tried, the closer you would get to your capabilities at that time. Running technically correctly didn’t fit in with this hypothesis, because it required sessions done at a lower intensity to ingrain the technique, making it natural. That not to say my initial technique was terrible – it was certainly very effective, and I was doing the basic things well. However, it wasn’t until I started working with my final coach, alongside a biomechanist, that I really began to understand the importance of sprint technique, and what I had been doing wrong. I had to spend a long time un-learning my old movement skills and habits, and then learning the new movement skills until they became natural. This was an incredibly frustrating and difficult process. It is much better to learn the correct technique at a younger age, as your brain is more malleable and able to pick up the new skills easier and quicker. I wish I had known what I know now at the start of my career, aged 14.

Learn from me – Always focus on technique. Make sure the correct movement patterns are ingrained in your running activities, and constantly seek to refine them. Remove bad movement habits as quick as possible. Coaches – make sure that technical proficiency is a priority, especially when coaching younger athletes.

Doing Something In Competition That You Have Not Practiced In Training

A few times in my life, I have had to pull out of a race at the last moment because of cramp. If you have read #5, you will be aware that I think not competing is criminal. Each time that this happened, it was because I had tried something for the first time in that competition – usually a different caffeine strategy. Instead of sticking to my tried and tested routine, I was trying something different. The first time I was experimenting with caffeine pills I took 8 and cramped up (I also didn’t sleep until 5am). What I learned from this is that not only is 400mg of caffeine in one go a lot, but taking caffeine in its salt form makes cramping more likely. Another time I was testing a caffeine regime to see what my tolerable upper intake limit was. I can tell you that at levels above 4.5mg/kg body weight, some pretty horrible things happen to me. On the plus side, I did learn valuable lessons from these mistakes – I now know to take less than 400mg caffeine and to do so in liquid form. BUT – I should have practiced this is training, where cramping up is an inconvenience as opposed to a nightmare.

Learn from me – Find a pre-competition routine and stick to it. Routine is good as it allows your mind to recognise that a competition is happening. If you have a checklist built into the routine it all becomes automatic, which saves your mental capacity to focus on the task at hand – namely competing. Once you have this routine, any major deviation from it should be practiced and evaluated in training first. This decreases the likelihood of something going wrong and increases the likelihood of you being able to compete to the best of your ability, which is why we do athletics.

Focusing On Trying To Beat Someone, As Opposed To The Race

People are motivated to succeed by different things. I always just wanted to get the most out of myself, and so for me going into a race I generally didn’t focus on whom I was racing, but instead on the process of racing well. A few times in my life, I forgot about this, and my performance suffered greatly.

Back in 2008, Dwain Chambers was making a comeback. As someone who had been both pretty successful the year before, and also a prominent anti-drugs athlete, there was a lot of media attention on my thoughts about this. My thoughts then are as they are now – people who systematically take drugs, that they know are banned, should in turn be banned for life. I have nothing against Dwain Chambers as a person, he is a nice guy, very helpful, and I think he sincerely regrets the mistakes he has made. However, because I think systematic, deliberate drug cheats should be banned for life, you can guess my opinion on whether or not he should be allowed to compete. The mistake I made here was to let my personal opinions become the main topic of races, and so the media began to hype up races between Dwain and myself as a “grudge match.” The smart thing for me to do here would have been to try and defuse the tension and not let my personal feelings cloud my professional duty, i.e. run quickly. Instead, I wanted to beat him. Not just beat him, but smash him. I can honestly say I’ve never wanted to beat anyone so badly (which in hindsight was unlikely as he is now European 60m record holder). The effect this had was that it increased the pressure on me (I had to beat him), reduced my concentration on the race itself, and potentially increased his motivation to beat me. The result was that Dwain won, I ran terribly, and I was demotivated for a period.

Learn from me – Don’t get emotionally involved in a race to the point where you have to be successful. Instead, focus on things you can control. You cannot control what your rivals do, and short of physically attacking them (generally frowned upon), you can’t really affect how well they will run. Control the controllables, and leave those things that are out of your control alone.

Equating Body Fat With Performance

I’ve always been a bit of a fatter athlete. When I won the European Juniors, I was roughly about 14% body fat, which statistically is average for an adult male. When I moved away to university, I was told to try and get this below 10%, which I did by changing my diet and being hungry a lot. Then, in preparation for 2007, I dropped down to 7.5% body fat, which is leanest I have ever been. I now believe that this is too lean for my body type, as I was getting ill a lot and felt run down. However, because I equated being lean with running quickly I tried to stay at this level of body fat for about 4 years, with the result being a massive underperformance (I’m not sure if this is the main reason for my spectacular under-performance in 2010, but I certainly think it was a factor).

In all cases, it is better to be healthy and fast than lean. The times I ran aged 18 at 14% body fat were better than the times I ran at 24 at 8% body fat. The truth is that carrying excess fat isn’t a good idea, but in practical terms how much difference does 0.5kg make and is it worth the effort to lose that? Instead, aim to have a good, healthy diet, try to maintain a decent level of leanness, but don’t strive to be ultra-lean; food intake is crucial for performance!

Please share this article so others may benefit.

References

Fulton et al. (2014). Injury risk is altered by previous injury: a systematic review of the literature and presentation of causative neuromuscular factors. Int J Sports Phys Ther 9(5) 583-595

By Carl Valle

I ran a 40 at the Combine and I haven’t run a 40 since. It’s not a great representation of what offensive linemen need to do. A five-yard burst, a 10-yard burst, lateral quickness. That’s what we do. — Geoff Schwartz, NFL Lineman

Every winter for one month, the combines for the National Football League and Major League Soccer draw a huge amount of attention in the media for what is simply a day of performance testing. Yet, after the combines players seem never to get tested again making me wonder if the numbers are so valuable shouldn’t teams test again to see if they are getting better, staying the same, or getting worse. This article will review two points that everyone should know: that testing is important, and you must be able to understand the relationships and limits of jumping and sprinting.

Why the Combine is Vital to Player Development

Some criticisms of the NFL and MLS combine have used poor arguments against testing players speed and power, and they are worth bringing up. The myth that the combine is useless when Tom Brady is shown on video or the fact that Jerry Rice ran a 4.6 is always brought up. True, the fastest guys are not always the best players, but if the players are performing at a specific speed shouldn’t we at least maintain their abilities? What is so strange is that the same people that value speed when selecting players seem to forget retesting or even development. Is the guy great in spite of his speed but can get better? Is the athlete untapped athletically because they compete year round? What are the cause and effect of the weight room and other influences to performance if one isn’t testing at least year to year? Testing every month at least shows some trend, but most stop testing after the player reaches a high level. For both the NFL and elite soccer to keep the best players healthy and develop more athletes, it’s a good idea to test from youth to retirement, provided a wise perspective is included. Retesting speed is the most effective way to gauge what is happening to a player besides fitness testing. However, few teams are doing it because they are scared of injuries or don’t have confidence in the training program.

How fast are Elite Soccer Players?

The NFL and Elite Soccer look at speed differently, and science and media report how fast athletes are based on different measurements. Speed is a very general measurement, and the distance an athlete is running determines how fast one can be, and how they are getting there. In the early article on Usain Bolt, the question many search on the internet is how fast the Jamaican can run the 40 yard dash, a test of acceleration. In the United States, the 40 yard dash being such an important indication to many, most Americans don’t know what the maximal speed an athlete reaches in sport. Basketball, baseball, American football, and hockey don’t have a long history of showing top speed in plays, and if they do they show times from past combines or how little time was taken to perform a play. For example look at the Super Bowl, the replay of the offensive attack of Tom Brady was shown as snap to pass in a chronometer in the top left of the screen. Since most sport is acceleration, very few times we can see plays that are long enough distance and time to hit maximal velocity. Regardless, elite soccer does capture maximal speed of plays, and you can see how they compare to the World’s Fastest Man, Usain Bolt.

Figure 1: Maximum speed of elite soccer athletes.

As you can see in the chart above, the speed of the players (taken from ESPN) is impressive, and for convenience we provided a table to help coaches understand splits and speed. When athletes are being tracked on video or with GPS tools, the data is estimating how fast they are running, but timing systems like the Freelap Pro Coach are the gold standard. Since most athletes hit top speed from the 30-40 sprint, and elite sprinters hit top speed typically between 50-60 meters and decelerate slowly after. New research is starting to emerge, and players are tested longer than 30m to get both acceleration and top speed conveniently.

How Fast can MLS players Accelerate?

Figure 2: Acceleration of elite soccer athletes.

I love the fact the MLS Combine tested the 30m sprint. The reason is that meters are universal. They measure the first 10m, showing they understand the value of early acceleration, the period from 0-5 or 0-10 meters. Based on the combine data one would ask the obvious question, are the times accurate? The answer is complicated. Like the NFL combine, each approach is unique in protocol and equipment. Having electronic timing (not hand-timed with a stopwatch) is a good start, but different equipment usually means different protocols of how an athlete is timed. First step, first movement, or the first sign of displacement? Different equipment will mean different times, so it’s hard to tell when combines report times. It doesn’t matter, since we know from research on the world’s best athletes in soccer none are outperforming the NFL athletes, but different sports are apples to oranges. The takeaway of the chart is that the majority of soccer players are unlikely breaking 4 seconds in the 30m dash, and most of them are not running much faster than 30 km/h at top speed.

Analyzing the MLS 30m and Vertical Jump

The most straightforward test in sport is a linear speed test. How fast are you from Point A to Point B? One problem with something as simple as a 30m sprint is that other factors can affect why some run faster times but are not faster athletes. A player standing or crouched makes a difference, and how a player is timed is an obvious factor. The 2015 MLS Combine was a very interesting testing event because of the equipment used. Remember that the MLS is a young league and is slowly creating an identity internationally and with their sport science. The MLS is starting to stabilize their testing, meaning they realize what information is important when drafting players out of college. Many college athletes are not use to being tested in meters since most colleges in the US place emphasis financially on American Football and some still test in yards. The 30m test is a great way to assess acceleration abilities, and if one stretches out the sprint to 40m, one can get a flying 10m sprint for maximum speed. How fast someone sprints and how they sprint is the ultimate evaluation tool for potential of injuries and how deadly they are in games that include longer plays. The highest probability of success in professional soccer are fast running plays, and those that are fast and can keep their speed with fitness are the ones wanted. Nobody wants to see a montage on conditioning tests; scouts and agents want fast players.

Figure 3: Vertical Jump.

The vertical jump testing was another surprising test option, likely done because athletes are not use to sport science analysis. When we use the term vertical jump, most young athletes will think about reaching up and touching something as high as possible. When specialization begins to pollute youth sports, athletes loose athletic capacity and being to become better players, not better athletes. Why do I bring this up? American athletes will always be developing great goalies because they are used to catching and reaching above their heads, but in soccer one can only touch the ball with one’s head if you are playing a different position. Most jumping plays that score are from corner kicks where the ball is purposely played to allow for heading, thus making most of the jumping ability a stepping up jump over a static one. Arms are used, but not to the effect of a traditional vertical. The ability to jump is important in sport because so many situations the ability to make plays in the air is essential, but the cardinal mistake is that jumping high means a direct correlation to running fast.

As you can see, the fastest athlete and the best jumper are not the same. Look at the data of the fastest NFL players and their jumping ability you will see the same conclusion. Just because you run fast doesn’t mean you are the best jumper, and the opposite is true as well. Just because an athlete jumps high doesn’t mean they are going to run faster than those who jumped lower. When looking at the top athletes a small trend exists, all the athletes are well rounded, but very few excel at jumping and sprinting. So what is the position here? The position of the value of the tests is that getting faster means one must focus on running faster, not resorting to lifting weights in hopes that you will jump high and far and run faster. The biggest leap of faith, pun intended, is that lifting weights will automatically make you run faster, and jump testing can predict how fast one is going to sprint. For years everyone has chased maximal strength or power and have seen inconsistent results for a reason, beginners get better from exposure, and elites are fast mainly because time and genetics let the cream rise.

Using Applied Sport Science to Support Speed

I like combine data because it’s a starting point for development discussions and the baseline to long term career sustainability. Combine data alone doesn’t do everything, and a good idea is to see what is needed to preserve speed and power. A lot of the game can sustain an athlete, but at some point more than practicing and competing is needed to get better or maintain. All of the recommendations below are not earth shattering, but if you put your energy into them athletes will be as fast or faster later.

Test Every Year - Testing speed is not a sin. A lot of coaches are scared of speed testing, and two common fears are injury and being exposed. Timing to me is the most humbling because it is so pure. At times it breaks your heart, but you have to test if you care about keeping athletes performing. If you are afraid to sprint all out, you don’t have confidence in your injury reduction program or your program, in general. What you are doing by not testing is playing roulette and playing hot potato. Hot potato is simply getting the problem moved to someone else instead of taking accountability. Speaking of accountability, if you are afraid to time, video analysis and sensor technology is evaluating games, and that means evaluating speed of athletes. Timing now before it becomes mainstream is a wise decision.

I test standing, crouched, and three-point in order to see if my athletes are getting speed that transfers. Most athletes that do well in three-point starts are skilled and trained, and I have found that athletes who are strong and fast simply do better in repeat sprinting because they don’t deplete themselves from not having a strength reserve. I have done 40 RSA (repeat sprint workouts) tests in eight years and those that have a better capacity than those that rely on good fitness. It’s not an either-or, it’s about a balance to include both strength-to-bodyweight and being honest about general aerobic work.

Quantify Lifting and Speed Training Monthly - The reason Velocity Based Training is popular is because one can quantify the metrics that matter beyond weight. Obviously body weight to power ratios matter, but other metrics like eccentric parameters and RFD, the ability to create force rapidly, all help see why speed increases or decreases when running. Several companies that make sensors or tools for the weight room are chasing bar velocity in average and peak form and that is OK, but below the surface is what coaches want and need. Lifting weights are for growth in muscle mass and ability to get the lifts to transfer in reducing injuries and making players more efficient and faster on the field. Transfer, not bar speed or just power indices from the 1990s is the name of the game. I have used every device on the market and believe that lifting is about supporting speed and repeat sprinting, not about getting guys faster unless an athlete has poor strength levels. When an athlete hits their genetic ceiling lifting is more about injury reduction and less about speed development. Lifting at advanced levels become more than just getting guys fast, it’s about getting guys to be fast year round.

Perform Jump Testing Weekly - Jump testing correlates to speed slightly, but if one compares athlete scores to themselves, don’t worry about research that fails to take account of all the variables. The ability to jump far doesn’t mean one will run fast, but if an athlete runs fast with good jumping and their jumps decrease and speed follows, make sure you monitor jumps as it’s easier in team sports than testing speed. Great news though now that the new Pro Coach is now available. With the Pro Coach teams can test jumps and sprints weekly by doing warm-ups that include submaximal sprints. Smooth sprints are in my opinion the most underrated diagnostic tool. It allows athletes to autoregulate their efforts, measures their short sprints, and protects them by encouraging relaxed repetitions. Just doing a few bursts, even just six in the middle of the training week, keeps athletes sharper than not sprinting at all. Jump testing connects the dots in power and fatigue and can embed into warm-ups before the main lifts like cleans and squats. Add in flat screen TVs and music, workouts add a little feedback and energy instead of going through the motions. Athlete UX or user experience is more important that looking for perfect periodization. Fight for results and make science fun.

Watch Body Composition Changes - The simple need of being lean and preserving muscle mass is obvious, but because it’s not exciting and requires discipline people are not engaged. I have my athletes weigh themselves every day and do DEXA scans when they can. Weight is the easiest metric yet it’s a little boring. The solution is easy, making the boring fun and spice it up. Next to a plunger, the most common bathroom item is likely to be a scale; make sure athletes have access to a WiFi scale as 90% of pro athletes are not 300 pound monsters with size 18 shoes. NBA and some NFL athletes require more, but NHL, pro soccer, MLB and other athletes just need to weigh themselves daily. It sets the tone and gives meaning to why some are slowing down and why some are being driven to the ground. The pattern I see with athletes is that many who are a little out of shape (not lean) before the season starts become too light from not being durable at the start. Athletes who are trying to shed fat end up losing muscle too quickly later, and the opposite problem beings to slow them down. Athletes that lose muscle will in all probability lose power unless it’s a slow and steady progress. Most coaches know this, but the margin for error hormonally is greater than we think. This is why the relationship between hormones and body composition is not a simple as being lean equates to anabolic, since many athletes who get lean the wrong way will impair their recovery ability down the road.

Range of Motion Tests are Still Valuable - Many fast athletes are not flexible, but changes in flexibility to me means the tissues are overloaded. I have seen countless measurements of tissue diagnostics ranging from Myoton scores, TMG analysis, and elastography that those that toss out flexibility are those that don’t work with athletes in speed and power. On the other hand, many therapists think they are making changes in tissue. The truth of the matter is soft tissue therapy is expensive, very slow to make changes and simply isn’t a good investment for the layperson. For an athlete, it’s everything. Each person has norms that matter for them. I like reverse screening, meaning getting data on athletes when they PR (Personal Record) and seeing the tone (activity of tissue) and the range (extensibility) of each athlete before the race. Why try to be a smarty pants with prediction when one can be a genius with confirmation data? What you will see is crystal clear, great supple and even tone rules. Range of motion only matters when it is reduced significantly. Range of motion still matters because training drives performance and squatting at 100 degrees will not help those trying to get glutes and hamstrings better. So to develop athletes, think about what you need them to do to get better. The need for sane understanding of the range of motion testing is a difficult one, but having below average flexibility has never shown to be ergogenic. Having a reserve gives one a better chance of success provided one is strong than being restricted.

Getting Started with Testing and Long Term Development

The first step is easy, test and see what the supporting data tells you. Coaches, including me rationalize poor times and get too excited about testing all the time. A conservative and patient approach is to test frequently and see all of the contextual information behind why athletes get faster and slower. Jumping power is important, but the data shows one can be fast and not blessed with the equal ability to produce force in a vertical jump. In closing, the shrewdest approach to long-term development is test and training consistently and let the recipe emerge from the mix of ingredients and measurements.

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By Craig Pickering

Earlier this week I came across an article from 2014, entitled “You can’t teach speed: Sprinters falsify the deliberate practice model of expertise” by Lombardo & Deaner. The article explores the concept of deliberate practice during training, with specific reference to sprinting. The deliberate practice model holds that sporting success is a function of time doing specific practice; the more specific practice you do, the better you will perform. This is commonly known as the “10,000-Hour Rule”, popularized by Malcolm Gladwell’s 2008 book “Outliers”. This book built on the work of Anders Ericsson who studied violinists at the Berlin Academy of Music. He found that their ability increased with the amount of time they had been practicing with world-class soloists having notched up 10,000 hours of practice. Other books such as Geoff Colvin’s “Talent Is Overrated” built on this idea, and suddenly everyone was trying to get to 10,000 hours of deliberate practice because that was all that was required to become world-class, no matter what your sport, background or history.

Can early success predict future success?

I’m going to start my explanation with a small bit of autobiographical information: I never lost a race at school. My first ever sports day, I technically didn’t win the race. We had a finishing line and for some reason I was under the impression that I had to stop directly on the finishing line, so I did. I was so far ahead that my teachers gave me the victory regardless. Fortunately, my parents caught all this on video, and it made an appearance in a documentary I was part of for the BBC. Interestingly, the first race I ever lost happened when I was 11. Having won my school sports day, I was selected to represent my school against other middle schools in my area, for competition at the local secondary school. I lined up against my competitors, having no idea who they were, and the gun went. I finished third, and a redheaded kid won. That was in 1997, and 15 years later that red headed kid would win the Olympic Games in the long jump; his name is Greg Rutherford. Note how, without any training or deliberate practice, two future Olympians were already better than the majority of their peers within the local area.

When I went to secondary school, I broke my school record on my first sports day there. Every year, I set another record. I first went to an athletics club in April 2000, and in July 2000 I did my first ever official 100m and 200m race, winning both in 12.0 and 24.7. A year later, aged 14, I became national under-15 champion in a time of 11.00, making me the second fastest under-15 in UK history. I achieved this on one athletics training session a week, lasting 90 minutes. My total athletics training time for this success was 72 hours, alongside general football and rugby training sessions. Two years after this, I ran 10.53 seconds for 100m (aged 16), coming third at the World under-18 Championships. The winner of the 200m at that competition was Usain Bolt, who the year prior had won the World Junior Championships aged 15. Bolt’s performance at those World Juniors is again important to consider – despite giving away up to four years in age (which is presumably linked to training hours), he was still successful. Seven years after my first ever race, I ran my 100m personal best, which still stands today at 10.14 seconds. In total, my journey from complete novice to becoming one of the top-15 fastest people my country has ever produced took seven years of training. I’d estimate that my total training time in those seven years was less than 5000 hours. Added to that fact, I was also initially successful, at least relative to my peers.

Compare my story to that of my friend. My friend is four years older than me, and I first met him at an athletics track at the end of 2000. He had been taking part in athletics for four years, and his personal best was 12.8 seconds. Remember, at this point my 100m personal best was 12.0 seconds, despite the fact that I only had about 50 hours of real structured practice, compared to his four years. In 2006, my friend ran his current personal best of 11.6 seconds, alongside a wind-aided 11.3 seconds. The year before this, I had run 10.22 seconds as an 18-year-old. At that point, my friend had roughly double the amount of years in the sport that I had, with about double the amount of training hours.

From the above, I’m sure you can guess what my viewpoint regarding deliberate practice is. Regular readers of my articles might also have read my piece “The Genetics of High-Performance Exercise”. The deliberate practice model has been touted as one of the key driving forces behind high-level sporting performance. Except that, when it comes to sprinting (as well as other events and sports), the real-world data tends to indicate that it isn’t true. My story is a good example. I was always comparatively better than people who had put in double the amount of hours that I had, and I didn’t run any quicker over 100m in the last 5 years of my career despite putting in roughly an additional 4,000 hours training. My lifetime training hours will be close to 10,000, and yet in 2012 Adam Gemili ran 10.05 with just a few years of serious training behind him. In 2008, at age 21, Usain Bolt became the fastest 100m runner in the history of the World, some seven years after his first serious race. It seems unlikely that his total training volume was 1,400 hours per year, or 4 hours per day, every day, in the run up to this achievement.

Does more training mean more success?

In their article, Lombardo & Deaner float some other ideas for why the deliberate practice model might not hold true, especially for sprinting. The first point they offer is that the deliberate practice model doesn’t take into account genetics. For example, this paper by Timmons et. al. (2010) illustrates that VO2 max responses to endurance training can be predicted by measuring as little as 30 genetic markers. Looking specifically at the 100m, it seems unlikely that someone who doesn’t possess a high degree of fast-twitch muscle fibers would ever reach world-class status in the 100m. Muscle fiber composition and percentage is trainable to an extent, but not enough to take someone from an also-ran to world champion.

Another point that the authors offer is that the model of deliberate practice states that as the amount of practice hours increases, so too does performance level. But what if this correlation were the other way round? In other words, as performance level increases, so do practice hours. Think about it – to be able to reach a high number of training and practice hours, an individual must dedicate a lot of time to their training. It is much easier to do this if you are a high performing professional athlete, who has few external responsibilities. It is much harder to do if you are working full-time and training in the evenings as an amateur athlete. Perhaps amateur athletes aren’t competing at a high level because they don’t have the talent, as opposed to the required number of training hours? Following this change in correlation, people practice more because they are good at their sport; they enjoy winning and want to do it more. As they get older and excel in sport, they do it full time, thus accumulating more practice hours.

The key here is that the main driver in accumulating practice hours is initial talent and success, as opposed to practice hours driving success. In his brilliant book of sporting genetics “The Sports Gene”, David Epstein has a chapter called “A Tale of Two High Jumpers (Or: 10,000 Hours Plus or Minus 10,000 Hours).” In this chapter, Epstein discusses the 2007 World Athletics Championships high jump event, in which Donald Thomas defeated Stefan Holm. Holm is the example of the 10,000 hours athlete, who has dedicated his life to the pursuit of excellence in the high jump. Epstein notes that Holm had trained himself to such a high level that his Achilles tendon was four times stiffer than a standard human; an adaptation that improved his jumping ability. Compare this to Donald Thomas, who first cleared a high jump bar in January 2006, some 18 months after Holm had won the Olympic Games. So whom would you expect to win the 2007 World Championships? Reigning Olympic Champion Stefan Holm who first competed internationally in 1993 (when Thomas was nine years old), or Donald Thomas who had first cleared a high jump bar barely a year and a half prior? According to the deliberate practice model, it should be Holm every time – but in this instance Thomas won. The final flaw that Lombardo & Deaner put forward in the deliberate practice model is that the empirical data shows that deliberate practice time only accounts for a small amount of differences in performance between individuals. This study by Gobert & Campitelli (2007) found that some chess players didn’t reach master level despite having accumulated 25,000 hours of practice. As a contrast, some players reached the master level within 3,000 hours of practice.

Lombardo & Deaner then explored the deliberate practice model in relation to sprinting. They did this by two different means:

1. Looked at the histories of elite sprinters throughout the ages to see if early performance and best performance were linked. If they were, then the deliberate practice model would not hold up in sprinting.
2. Looked at the elite sprinters histories to see if it took them about ten years (or 10,000 hours) to reach this elite level.

What they found

The authors found that in almost every case, the elite athletes had been good athletes at a young age. Most of the athletes were “discovered” by teachers at school, and then nurtured by an athletics coach. This mirrors my development – my secondary school PE teacher saw me sprint and encouraged me to join an athletics club. The fact that most of these elite athletes were identified as better than their peers before any deliberate practice began shows a flaw in the deliberate practice model.

The authors also found that the average (mean) time from onset of athletic training to achieving world-class status was consistently less than 10 years (4.6 years for a sample of male Olympic Champions, 3.1 years for a sample of female Olympic Champions, and 8.7 years for a the top-20 US male sprinters of all time). In a sample of collegiate athletes, the authors found that 90% reported that they were faster than their peers at 6-10 years old – again before any deliberate practice could have taken place.

Perhaps the single biggest piece of information against the deliberate practice model and sprinting was that for a large sample of the collegiate sprint athletes, they had no prior organized sprint training before attending university. Most of the subjects had about one year of sprint training, and yet produced performances that were better than 99% of their peers. Put another way – race performance was not linked to training time.

A final point is offered by the authors to counteract the deliberate practice model and sprinting – sprint specific training occurs at a very high intensity and cannot occur on every training day. Most sprint programs alternate high and low-intensity training days, with low-intensity days consisting of tempo running or ancillary weight training. During my higher volume training days, I estimate that I spent around 15 hours per week on track or sprint based weight-training sessions. Over a 44-week period (allowing for off season and tapering), this equates to less than 700 hours per year. This means that achieving 10,000 hours of deliberate practice would take closer to 15 years, not 10. And yet the real-world data doesn’t support this. Instead, we see that real world-class performers achieve world-class performance in much less time than this.

Conclusion

So, what have we discovered from the article? The first is that world class sprinters tend to be better than their peers at baseline, or at least with lesser amounts of training. The second is that it takes less than ten years or 10,000 hours to achieve world-class performance.

What this doesn’t mean is that sprinters do not need deliberate practice. Nor does it mean that being better than your peers at a younger age is a pre-requisite for elite senior performance. Instead, we are discussing trends. The UK all-time list for under-15 100m performances makes interesting reading. The top-50 contains names of some well-known athletes, but also many names of athletes who seem to have disappeared off the face of the earth. Remember that early sporting success can be a result of early development. At this age, coaching should be focused on developing the correct technique and reducing injury. Indeed, one potential reason why a lot of these youngsters have disappeared is injury or burnout – no matter how talented the athlete, both these factors will destroy potential and future performance. However, at the same time the kid that comes last in his race at sports day is unlikely to one day develop into a world-class sprinter.

Why is this? Well, the first thing to discuss is that sprinting is a relatively low-skill sport, in as much as it occurs in a closed environment with the same objective each time. Compare this with an American Football Quarterback, who has to learn to pick a pass – experience and decision-making skills play a large role here, and a longer period training these is likely to be advantageous. Instead, sprinting is highly physical. It requires the athlete to produce a large amount of force for a short period. If the athlete cannot produce this large amount of force, they aren’t likely to be successful. And, as the amount of force that can be produced has a pretty large genetic component, it follows that no amount of training can overcome this.

The result, therefore, is that the fastest athletes are always usually the fastest athletes, at least relative to their peers. Even the poster boy of delayed development Linford Christie was an English Schools medalist in his youth. However, talent is not enough, and the best athletes have to exist within a good, sensible training set up. All the talent in the world counts for nothing if the athlete is injured and cannot compete. I also believe that everyone can get faster – they just might not be able to be the fastest.

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By Carl Valle

Eccentric exercise is making a comeback in the trends, but in reality it never left those that stay true to principles of performance. I include some eccentric exercises as a way to help reduce injuries, increase power, and build muscle fast. I don’t do much in-season eccentric work, but during the General Preparation Phase (GPP) eccentric training is a great investment to athletes. I am always cautious when adding or changing things, but after observing changes physically with some athletes in Europe I decided to add more eccentric work this off-season for two reasons. I wanted to know how effective a realistic inclusion of eccentric work was with the sport of soccer and sports with small preparation times and see the exact biological changes to my program. What I have learned was the precision of eccentric work is a very fine line, and it’s essential to measure and monitor.

Eccentric exercises are movements that lengthen muscle under tension, usually creating an adaptation that improves performance. Great interest in this type of training is making a comeback thanks to the work of Cal Dietz, but earlier work of Ian King who promoted a structured tempo of training really accelerated the popularity of manipulating contractile dynamics of training. What we do know is that research is currently pointing to signaling of the organelles and biochemistry of the body to turn on genes, thus creating morphological and biochemical changes. Be warned though, not all speed athletes will benefit from eccentric work and some athletes don’t handle extreme eccentrics. Resilience is a buzzword right now, and it’s professional to understand that durability is about a lifestyle, not an exercise or HRV monitoring. For athletes to be taking advantage of eccentrics, some prerequisite requirements are needed, or you will trash athletes. I have pushed the limits with athletes and have some humbling experiences with training. Here are some lessons I have learned the hard way and suggest you don’t make my mistakes.

Foundations First - Just because a coach is smart or has access to advanced methods, it’s likely the athlete is underdeveloped. I see this all the time, a coach is bored teaching basics and wants to play with the big boys and retards the long term growth of the athlete. I have been tempted and seduced to try new or cool stuff after visiting coaches, but it’s better to polish the basics then to progress too fast. I don’t recommend any eccentric work for performance until year two or three of a program.

Nutrition and Organized Recovery - I spend 90% of my time as a life coach because my training program never let me down, just the ability to recovery held the athlete back. Amazing how we see intricate periodization schemes, dashboards fusing HRV and GPS data, and million dollar facilities with athletes who are malnourished and fueled on Burger King. I do monthly blood tests to audit athletes, and if they score poorly, I take away the toys or in this case, the “cool training” and make them know we only train as hard as their recovery system. I use Organized Recovery with athletes because rest is a continuum ranging from a light workout to deep sleep. Too many athletes are adrenaline junkies and burn out the candles on both ends, and are constantly stimulated. My current focus is on deactivating athletes from electronics and social overload.

Measure and Monitor - Eccentric work does create DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness), and this is a controversial subject because of pain science. Subjective indicators are nice, but they are a starting place and highly variable with athletes. When so many elite athletes are taking pain drugs, I wonder if we are too smart and need to be wiser about how the body is communicating. Pain, while a perception, is part of the human defense system to keep homeostasis optimized. HRV, Thermography, TMG, Myoton readings, and elastography are all part of a way to track tendon and muscle over time and should be used as much as possible.

Understand Repair - Repair to the body is a normal and essential part of adaptation. The fine line between stimulation and injury becomes murky at high levels, but what we do know is that we want as much as needed, not as much as possible. Henk Kraaijenhof is a wise man, and when he suggests to be careful, I listen. The optimal dose of eccentric training is to not disturb a program’s structure, meaning one needs to add eccentric training and not build a program around it. Anytime I hear about an “eccentric block” or “shock phase” I throw up twice. The first reason I get sick is the obsession that magic happens when someone does one modality for four weeks. Granted a lot can get done in 30 days, but realistic expectations are key. The second reason I get upset is that any extreme program is built on the graveyard of injured athletes. For every star made from extreme training, ten are left on the sidelines getting rehabbed or out of the sport. Remodeling tissue is about dose, timing of the next session, and long term planning.

After the athlete has a solid foundation of training. Add eccentrics carefully with exercises to reduce injury first, and then progress to more ballistic or extensive options. Think years of development, not micro-cycles. Just including a few months of an exercise sprinkled in may show an ugly head later, so go slow. Now to the exercises and routines.

Hip Extension Eccentrics

Hamstring pulls happen. I have only experienced three first hand since 1997, and most of the reasons I think people got hurt was too much work or not enough rest. I have taken a few broken racehorses in over the years, and the first part of the rehab is prone assisted hip extension with ankle weights. This means an athlete needs a partner to lift up the leg concentrically and let the load gently pull on the injured hamstring muscle. Since the hamstring group is composed of three muscles, the movement must be done with great control and the reps need to be slow, about 5 seconds per rep or longer. For a year, I thought the exercise was great for Jane Fonda but was not beastie for athletes, until I witnessed the work of my soft tissue therapist fix dozens of medalists and NFL athletes. I believe we need to get athletes walking and running naturally, but local work is fine at any time. I do think RDLs (Romanian Deadlifts) are sometimes effective for facial lengthening, but I believe isolated work and eccentric only is just as effective. I have seen elastography and MRI changes first hand and was humbled as I thought scar tissue was a myth. The purpose of manual massage is not to break down scar, but to remove guarding so the contractions can remodel old tissue. In the past, a scar was there for life, but in reality, a good program can decrease the extent of the program from intense weight training. The starting point is getting the athlete to trust his or her body and get internal myokines and immune responses triggered by surgical strikes to the area. Immobilizing is appropriate after surgery, but even the experts suggest getting moving. Having the athlete rot in bed and rest for weeks is why an athlete never gets better. Start moving and start targeting the area with the right amount of stress. How much and how frequent the sessions are largely based on the athlete’s repair ability.

Figure 1. The simple high rep protocol during early hamstring recovery is a perfect complement to a conventional rehabilitation program. I suggest this every other day after cleared by sports medicine.

There are many theoretical ideas of how scar tissue is formed after muscle tears, but I am interested in the long term repair evidence with function and imaging. Much of the re-injury patterns we see with hamstrings are due to program design and emotional guarding. Once an athlete is hurt, they are changed physically and emotionally. I have learned over the years that pain-free motions give confidence but eventually facing the demons will exorcise them. EMG-based biofeedback is a great way to see when an athlete is still haunted, and much of coaching is getting athletes to believe.

The Classic Calf Raise

I have favored the suggestions of Dan Pfaff for a long time because he often takes in athletes for rehabilitation. One coach suggested that some great athletes never did specific work and used a big name sprinter to provide evidence to the claim. When I explained the use of cortisone to manage an Achilles problem the athlete had, they realized that each school of thought is often based on the perspective of what medical support means. Athletes are often human pincushions and can do amazing things while injured, and I think we can do better. For some reason, the calf raise is seen as bodybuilding, and we need to see it as a way to help with plantar strength, and that includes the fascia and Achilles tendon. Eccentrics are not a magic bullet, but part of a holistic program to build and stimulate the matrix of substances that remodel the area. It’s true that some of the problems with local structures are predisposed to injury because of genetics, but athletes need to see what the body can do to get better.

Figure 2. We all know eccentric calf raises are not new, but they work. Remember the lifts are to support the connection above and below the ankle joint, so connective tissue systemically is stimulated by plantar exercises.

Right now I am looking at the triple attack of Shock Therapy, Topaz Treatments, and PRP Injections because many programs want to roll the dice and hope for the best, and then I have to clean up the mess. Just 2-3 times a week doing 5 minutes of eccentric work can reduce the injury rates of athletes. Obviously everyone has a rep and exercise scheme they feel works, and that is not my purpose here. I feel it’s good to rotate the exercises and loading to keep athletes from rushing and skipping the routine because it’s boring. Most coaches can get bored as well and walk away when the high risk and technical work is done, and let the accessory work go to the interns or assistants. I suggest staying until all the work is done.

You can do eccentric calf work nearly anywhere, but I like them as group sessions and in pairs with athletes so they are treated as any exercise. If you want the exercise respected, treat them like the main lifts and do them in small groups, so everyone is accountable. You would never tell athletes to find their own squat station and get a few sets done, but asking an athlete to do this with accessory lifts results in halfhearted junk reps.

Neutral Grip Lowering

Pull-ups and chin-ups are great exercises, and some coaches have put too much emphasis to horizontal rows and blame vertical pulling for imbalances. While it’s good to have some ratio between pulling patterns, scapular exercises can be coached too much, leaving athletes very robotic and stiff when sprinting. Also, a good program of pulling will directly improve the middle of the back, and Olympic lifts do a great job of developing the region ballistically. Even moderate loads that may not transfer to leg development are better than nonsense.
Eccentric work is great for heavy athletes and weak athletes alike. An elite NFL lineman who has a poor strength to weight ratio or a young athlete who is starting from zero can see rapid improvements in pulling ability. A lot of online information about is promoting the value of chins and pull-ups as ways to improve stiffness of the body by connecting the glute to lat, and this is a little bro science. Sure the entire body is working during sprinting, but being great a chins is not going to help college guys break 10 in the 100 or create the next combine freak in the NFL. On the other hand, not doing upper body is a big mistake, since you can help with tapering and peaking by manipulating the work done above the pelvis. The body likes to reduce work during a taper, but beware of creating fatigue for “work capacity” sake. Sometimes too much work capacity is overthinking things and just getting athletes tired.

Figure 3. Eccentric pull-ups are great for everyone, not just advanced athletes. Pulling strength is important, but it will not make a plow horse into a Derby winner athlete.

Many tempo options exist for vertical pulling, but I like 3-5 second lowering times and round up when athletes don’t have a good perception of time and are stubborn about slow lowering. I don’t like doing the jump and lower too much because concentric abilities act as a good safety mechanism to prevent the path of “too much too soon” and overdosing. If an athlete is stuck in developing pulling, I add 3-4 sets of 5-8 reps with a long tempo at the end of their first set. Athletes must be exhausted, or they will not reap as much benefit from eccentric work with vertical pulling.

Abdominal Rollouts

In 2006, a coach visited me and warned me about abdominal rollouts being a risk to athletes. During this time I was using the AkroWheels religiously because I was training swimmers at the Longfellow Club, including the state record holders in the sprints. The thought process is that many athletes who have sports hernia problems are prone (pun intended) to injury and rolling out was foolish. I did my homework and checked my notes, we never had a single abdominal injury ever and I believe aggressive core reduced injuries. I find that the triad of heavy, full range pull-ups, snatching, and medicine ball throws above the head lead to the ability to handle deceleration to the core.

Figure 4. Ian Graham is releasing a guide on using the conventional ab wheel progressions and doing more. The exercise is not magic, but simple movement patterns like the roll out is a great option for core strength.

The EMG research is often misleading and we have done enough of it to see the nuances between muscle and connective tissue when one looks at elastography readings the day after heavy overhead patterns. Eccentric lengthening and EMG data is no easy task to decipher. Abdominal rollouts are a total body exercise, and it’s hard to imagine any motion without involvement of the shoulders and hip joints. I believe building up the ability to roll and hinge is a great way to make the tissues rugged and durable. I am not aware of the research to confirm that it reduces injury, but exposure to stress is the only way to be able to tolerate stress. I know anti-fragile is popular now, but Friedrich Nietzche first explained the value of what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. If something poses a risk to injury, that mechanism is likely the antidote and a submaximal dose may be a cure for the injury. So many coaches avoid sprinting upright and maximal so when the athlete is in a game environment that requires it, they get hurt.

Developing durability is similar to building an immunity to a poison or virus, and this means time and constant exposure to a variety of options and similar patterns. Mimicking the exact mechanism of injury is a fool’s errand, but a general capacity to handle similar stressors is a fine idea.

Precision Depth Jumps

Many of the eccentric adaptations are structural, but neurological changes are possible by increasing the coordination of muscle groups that contribute to the deceleration of the body. I am not a purist, but depth jumps of sane heights are a mixed bag and are not for everyone. Eccentrics are often thought as slowing down the tempo of the exercise or creating an overload weight wise, but the core of eccentrics is mechanical tension with an active effort. Depth Jumps are rapid and forceful contractions, and overload more than just a few muscle groups. Depth Jumps should never be done in large groups since an array of body types and abilities make it very hard to individualize the height and sequence of the training. If a small group can share equipment and can follow a similar training program, they shouldn’t pose a problem.

Figure 5. Depth Jumps require precise technique and only for athletes who have advanced to levels appropriate for them. I prefer using video because contact time and flight time are not enough when mechanical motion is important.

If an athlete has a nice background of eccentric calf work done, the Achilles should be strong enough to adapt to the strain. Remember the full-footed landings are not to be blamed for Achilles tendon injuries unless excessive motion is seen on the video. Like mentioned earlier, a GoPro camera with remote flush to the ground at 120 frames per second is enough to see peak motion to the area, but it’s an estimation. The foot strike will average about two tenths on the ground and how much motion and what direction is a contribution to injury. Pronation is normal, and it’s important to know what is not efficient, and this is up to the medical biomechanics experts.

Research on neuromuscular adaptations are a little fuzzy, but plyometrics do help improve elastic energy provided the overload doesn’t dampen the utilization of energy. Good jumps redirect the body and are reactive, meaning very spinal in response to the ground forces. Jumps should be bouncy and not muscled out, but some muscular overload is expected. Each jump should be using two legs unless the jumps are very shallow and are not maximal effort.

A simple progression to me is jumping in place, jumping out and up, stepping off and landing, and then depth jumping. This may take years, so go based on achievement versus an artificial timeline. I prefer a lower box or platform with more horizontal projection, so the ground contacts are the same, and the muscle recruitment includes greater hip projection. Experiment to see what works with your program as I am not an expert in-depth jumps like many of the elite coaches in field events.

Eccentric kBox Squatting

Last but not least is what the muse to this article is. The use of flywheel training is decades old, but now a surge of interest is back because of the Kinetic Box or kBox for short. I have observed the use of the option for years and seen amazing things and foolishness with the device. Again, like any modality it’s part of a program, not a system. The flywheel uses momentum and not weight since it was designed for NASA years ago to help preserve muscle and bone mineral content with astronauts. Like anything military grade, it will eventually find itself in elite sport in time. The kBox is versatile so if you only have a small amount of space (pun intended with astronaut quarters) you want to use something that can train the entire body effectively. But, we are on earth, so the question is how the kBox fits in the big picture.

Video 1. The kBox is great for more than just squatting; you can do other movement patterns, but the primary focus should be on lower body motions. Coaches can use the kBox 3 on the road as it’s portable, something very important to me as we train at multiple locations.

The Danish and Swedish experts are aggressive in the support of flywheel training for injury reduction in professional soccer and have written about eccentric training in the European conferences over the years. At first I was skeptical because I saw major stars getting injured more than those who were not using it. Then I dug deeper and visited and spoke to an expert while in Copenhagen during a layover last summer and needed to see video and data to see if I should include it in my program.

What I saw was a video of a customized kBox embedded into a platform and it was beautiful. Since I love christening products or systems with names, I called it the “Black Hydra” and for good reason. If you survive the protocol, you are likely leaving the training program prepared for war on the pitch. The problem is that most elite players don’t have time to prepare because of long seasons, so what to do when you have four weeks to get ready? With the soreness from extreme eccentrics and recovery rates longer than conventional training, was the kBox a good option for me?

Like anyone I needed to see the results and added it to the program but didn’t replace conventional squatting and did 37 days of careful analysis during the intervention. The results were very impressive, and the lean mass increase locally to the legs and hips were the fastest drug-free changes I have seen on paper. We hit personal bests in medicine ball throw output and maximal squat tests, but this is again empirical evidence. What is interesting is the EMG studies paired with the research on IGF-1, Free Testosterone: Cortisol ratio and Creatine Kinase markers. We did more work than usual. The ANS system was disturbed but we rebounded, and the hormones were not depressed but elevated. My guess is that inflammation may be higher than normal, but the gene activation was showing positive protein synthesis. I asked a few coaches and sport scientists, and the mystery was still present, so we will continue to experiment and track changes.

My protocol is boring, but I like the simplicity of adding bilateral squatting with six sets of 5-6 at the end of a program and not decrease the volume or intensity of the program. I will be honest and will admit this was done with an athlete who was doing everything in his nature to recover, but I needed to see what the limit was. I don’t know if a neurological protective mechanism exists by having the athlete pretense before the “Graveyard Death Grip” pulls you into Hades, but this is up to the sport scientists to figure out. This period is the only time I cheered during training to push the limit, so perhaps arousal was part of the changes. Other coaches are experimenting with lunge patterns and lateral squats more, but I kept it simple. I do like lateral squats but don’t know if RDLs are for me. I have tried the squat to eccentric calf pattern, but this is too advanced for team sport athletes.

Parting Thoughts on Eccentrics

Clearly playing around with eccentric training has risks, so start slowly and do just enough to make progress. I am a fan of organized eccentric work mainly in the middle part of the off-season and do some injury reduction work when needed. Every program is unique, and I suggest looking at the entire season instead of adding a few exercises in randomly. Some programs are what I call concentric biased, and those are usually programs that depend on the trap bar deadlift, box jumps only, overdose in step-ups, and are shallow in squatting. Most concentric based programs show up in the Raptor Test with a lousy eccentric utilization profile and tend to have poor max velocity abilities and pull hamstrings early. I encourage anyone wanting to start with eccentrics read the research and classic work from Komi and other legends in strength and power development.

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By Dominique Stasulli

Introduction

Qualitative and quantitative feedback are two ways in which a coach can assess an athlete in both a learning and performance environment. Qualitative feedback is purely sensory and is often subjective in character. A coach observes his or her athlete for movement deviations, listens for inconsistent stride/stroke rhythms, etc. It can also come in the form of how the athlete “feels” during a movement. The information generated from this type of observation is qualitative because it focuses on and describes a particular quality of the task or the athlete. Quantitative feedback, on the contrary, is a numerical form of measurement that extrapolates specific quantifiable data such as speed, time, pace, jump height, force, etc. Quantitative data is inarguably a very objective form of feedback for the athlete, making it a reliable method for performance comparisons.

In this age of technology, we as coaches find ourselves overwhelmed with the surplus of electronic tools available to use with our athletes. This includes everything from multisport GPS watches and heart rate monitors, to accelerometers and power meters. It is difficult to imagine what training was like ten, twenty, or even forty years ago, when none of these functionalities existed. As a coach, there will be crossroads in an athlete’s career where his or her progression either plateaus or keeps rising due to the incorporation of some variability. This variation could be the simple addition of an electronic device to the athlete’s regimen, which could provide immediate, real-time performance feedback during and between trials or repeats.

The body’s sensory system is equipped with an inherent feedback scheme that provides internal evaluation of a performance (Eriksson, Halvorsen, & Gullstrand, 2011). When the athlete receives feedback from an external source, it is termed augmented feedback. This article will cover two types of augmented feedback: knowledge of performance and knowledge of results (Eriksson et al., 2011). Knowledge of results feedback focuses on the final numbers of a trial or competition, such as race time or jump height (Eriksson et al., 2011). Knowledge of performance feedback focuses on how the result was achieved (the athlete’s movement from start to finish). An example of this type of feedback measure would include ground contact times and horizontal/vertical displacement in a sprint start (Eriksson et al., 2011).

The human body naturally possesses a central governing protective system that controls motor output at a homeostatic level to prevent physiological catastrophe (Mauger, Jones, & Williams, 2011). In simple terms, an athlete is under a subconscious influence of training effort until external or internal motivation suffices to overcome that inherent regulation. Mauger et al. (2011) examined the effect of feedback on time-trial track cycling performance, based on the principle of motivational initiative. Positive feedback was given when the athlete was comparatively ahead of the previous trial, and negative feedback was given for when he or she was behind in performance (Mauger et al., 2011). The former caused a positive boost in motivation and performance, whereas the latter caused a demotivation effect (Mauger et al., 2011). Whenever possible, it is important for a coach to reinforce positive adaptations through appropriate feedback, in order to maximize athlete motivation and confidence. This will be important to keep in mind as the following electronic feedback tools are introduced.

Kinematics

Many sports utilize electronic feedback in training to gain an immediate vantage point through quantitative data. A study by Anderson, Harrison, and Lyons (2005) examined the use of immediate kinematic feedback in thirteen experienced rowers. Rowers were evaluated with accelerometry-based data and were placed in one of three categories: detailed feedback, summary feedback, and no feedback (Anderson et al., 2005). Although performance was not enhanced as a product of immediate feedback, consistency was significantly improved in the detailed feedback group as compared to the summary and no feedback participants (Anderson et al., 2005). Even summary feedback effectively improved upon the rower’s consistency in comparison to the no-feedback group (Anderson et al., 2005). Kinematic analysis is especially useful in a sport such as rowing since two athletes of equal physical fitness can perform very differently due to proficiency in the technical parameters of the sport. It is inherently more efficient to row at a constant speed rather than varying the power output throughout the race (Anderson et al., 2005). Early deviations from this constant movement pattern can be detected early through the use of feedback technology in situ (Anderson et al., 2005).

Another training tool used in the winter Olympic sport of luge is specific to arm stroke feedback (Lembert, Schachner, & Raschner, 2011). Arm stroke is a crucial component to the sliding start of the luge event. The arm stroke can result in up to 55% variance in final performance time if not optimized (Lembert et al., 2011). The kinematic and kinetic information from the Speedpaddler device generates corrective feedback regarding arm stroke cycle and velocity of the pull phase with the complimentary use of an accelerometer (Lembert et al., 2011). Determining coordination and power imbalances between arms is another useful function of this device (Lembert et al., 2011).

Consider the benefit of using electronic feedback to assess real-time weightlifting performance. The 1-rep max has always been the gold standard for assessing performance gains in strength athletes across numerous sports. However, this type of checkpoint assessment is not practical to test frequently and especially not to assess daily gains in performance and strength. Electronic accelerometry can be useful for the day-to-day monitoring of training sessions. Linear position transducers (LPTs) are an example of an accelerometry tool that measure the velocity of a lifted load in real-time (Jovanovic & Flanagan, 2014). In order to drive the highest neuromuscular adaptation to strength training, moving the load with the highest effort and maximum velocity is necessary (Jovanovic & Flanagan, 2014). This is especially important for speed-power athletes who are not necessary looking for absolute strength gains, but rather speed-strength and explosiveness, which are velocity-specific adaptations. LPTs can also be used to predict the 1-rep max at submaximal loads based on the load-velocity relationship, without having the athlete max out during a session (Jovanovic & Flanagan, 2014). These results support the use of accelerometry in the weight room in both an assessment and training tool capacity (Sato et al., 2012).

Sato, Sands, and Stone (2012) compared the peak barbell acceleration at different training intensities with the use of an accelerometer. There was no apparent change in barbell acceleration from 50-80% of the 1-rep max loads.However, from 80% and upwards, there was a decline in barbell acceleration as load increased (Sato et al., 2012). This would indicate both a fatigue component and a nearing of the 1-rep max threshold. From a training standpoint, the coach can determine the athlete’s 80% threshold velocity, after which performance declines and neuromuscular impairment occurs (Jovanovic & Flanagan, 2014). This numerical velocity can then be used to mark the end of a set in order to minimize athlete fatigue and recovery time.

Kinetics

Power meters are a popular tool for the advanced cycling and triathlon communities. One study compared the use of heart-rate technology to power meter technology and their effect on performance, power at lactate threshold, and VO2 max after interval training (Robinson, Plasschaert, & Kisaalita, 2011). Interval training had a positive effect on 20K time-trial performance in both groups and power at lactate threshold improved nearly 10%, but there was no significant advantage to using heart-rate over power meter technology or vice versa (Robinson et al., 2011). Heart rate monitors are cheaper but at the expense of precision. Which power meters compensate for with a higher price tag? It simply comes down to a matter of athlete preference.

Eriksson et al. (2011) investigated kinematic visual and auditory feedback on trained runners as they were used to improve running economy. Steady-state distance running is performed at a submaximal intensity determined by the runner’s fitness level. The amount of oxygen required to sustain a given pace at submaximal intensity is termed running economy (Eriksson et al., 2011). The less oxygen consumed at a given pace, the more economical the runner, and the greater the submaximal intensity threshold. Form and gait mechanics play a direct role in the amount of oxygen consumed per stride, so optimizing these kinematic influences will positively influence running economy.

The study placed a video monitor in front of the athlete running on a treadmill. The monitor showed three bars aligned side-by-side to depict vertical displacement, stride length, and power-consumption (Eriksson et al., 2011). The goal was to minimize (optimize) all three into the ideal kinematic ranges to maximize running economy (Eriksson et al., 2011). Auditory feedback complemented the visual component, creating awareness for the athlete to know when he or she was outside of the correct ranges (Eriksson et al., 2011). The benefit of this system is that the runner can minutely alter stride mechanics and directly visualize the effect it has on power output and energy expenditure over the course of a workout (Eriksson et al., 2011).

Auditory

Since the primary form of motor skill acquisition and production relies on visual stimuli, there is a degree of sensory overload when the feedback modality is also visual (Sigrist, Rauter, Riener, & Wolf, 2013). This can be prevented with the utilization of auditory feedback (Sigrist et al., 2013). Auditory alarms are commonly used for when a movement pattern surpasses a predefined threshold (Sigrist et al., 2013). For example, a GPS watch can be set to beep when a certain pace or target heart rate zone is not being achieved or is being overshot. The positive effects of altering the mode of feedback include a reduction in cognitive workload and dual-component learning (i.e. spatial and temporal stimuli, simultaneously) (Sigrist et al., 2013). By using more than one possible sensory input, the athlete receives the maximum quality of feedback stimulus without burdening one sensory process in the brain.

A novel method of real-time auditory feedback in speed skating is sonic synchronization (Godbout & Boyd, 2012). The sensor system tracks speed skating movements and aligns them with the movements of a model skater to detect anomalies in his or her stride (Godbout & Boyd, 2012). Corrective feedback can be immediately given to the athlete to help amend the issue (Godbout & Boyd, 2012). This is particularly helpful in optimizing the cross-over movement around the track’s curve since cross-overs are critical to top level performances (Godbout & Boyd, 2012). The specific ankle angle during this motion is critical to producing peak pressure on the ice and, thus, developing maximal speed (Godbout & Boyd, 2012). The sonification component comes into play when the apparatus is attached to the athlete’s skate in a manner which will emit a sawtooth tone when the ankle angle surpasses a threshold of prime alignment (Godbout & Boyd, 2012).

The Delivery

Many of today’s sports utilize electronic feedback in training to gain an immediate vantage point of athletes’ performance through quantitative data. The technological possibilities today have allowed coaches and athletes alike to constantly expand their horizons. The data produced from these innovative tools grants immediate, novel feedback to the athlete, regarding movement or performance outcomes (Phillips et al., 2013). Despite the unique advantage these tools offer, there is a lack of research on how to best implement them in training sessions. Phillips, Farrow, Ball, and Helmer (2013) discuss that feedback technology must satisfy these three criteria in order to be successful: accuracy and relevancy, appropriately timed, and decipherable to the athlete. As long as these three components are satisfied, the coach will have much success with helping an athlete learn with maximal retention.

There are two instances where feedback can be applied in the course of motor skill production. The first is concurrently, or in real-time, while the athlete is in action. Concurrent, as well as frequent, feedback has been found to be unfavorable in simple task execution, but beneficial for complex skills (Sigrist et al., 2013). This is thought to be due to cognitive overload in the early stages of learning a simple task (Sigrist et al., 2013). The second option is terminal feedback, which is given after the athlete has completed the movement. In the early learning phase, frequent terminal feedback has been found to be beneficial. As the fundamental base of the skill is acquired, the learner benefits from less frequent feedback of any modality (Sigrist et al., 2013). Self-controlled feedback has been found to empower performance greater than feedback controlled by the coach (Sigrist et al., 2013). In this case, the athlete decides when he or she wants to receive the feedback, promoting autonomy and self-efficacy in the process (Sigrist et al., 2013). This directly plays into the motivational component mentioned previously.

Coaching feedback may seem like it would always create a positive adaptation in the athlete receiving the information. However, this is not always the case. There are several variables that affect the athlete’s ability to process and retain the feedback information. Januario and Rosado (2013) found three main affective variables to be most influential on the athlete’s retention: practice level, attention, and volume of the feedback. If these three variables are individualized per athlete, the coach can deliver maximally effective feedback during training. Athletes have selective perception, retention, and memory. (Januario & Rosado, 2013). Attaching meaning to select feedback messages will help the athletes to understand the value of the tools at work (Januario & Rosado, 2013). Ultimately, athletes need to recreate dynamically a movement exercise based on the feedback information received in the environment, regardless of the electronic equipment chosen for use (Januario & Rosado, 2013). It is the coach’s responsibility to respect the sensory system, not subjecting athletes to information overload. Coaches who tailor their conveyance based on the criteria of athlete skill level, attention, and volume will be ever more successful in their delivery of feedback.

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References

Anderson, R., Harrison, A. & Lyons, G. M. (2005). Accelerometry-based feedback: Can it improve movement consistency and performance in rowing? Sports Biomechanics, 4(2), 179-195.

Eriksson, M., Halvorsen, K. A., & Gullstrand, L. (2011). Immediate effect of visual and auditory feedback to control the running mechanics of well-trained athletes. Journal of Sports Science, 29(3), 253–262.

Godbout, A. & Boyd, J. E. (2012). Rhythmic sonic feedback for speed skating by real-time movement synchronization. International Journal of Computer Science in Sport, 11(3), 37-51.

Januario, N. M. S. & Rosado, A. F. (2013). Variables affecting athletes’ retention of coaches’ feedback. Perceptual and Motor Skills: Learning & Memory, 117(2), 389-401.

Jovanovic, M. & Flanagan, E. P. (2014). Researched applications of velocity-based strength training. Journal of Australian Strength and Conditioning, 22(2), 58-69.

Lembert, S., Schachner, O., & Raschner, C. (2011). Development of a measurement and feedback training tool for the arm strokes of high-performance luge athletes. Journal of Sports Sciences, 29(15), 1593-1601.

Mauger, A. R., Jones, A. M., & Williams, C. A. (2011). The effect of non-contingent and accurate performance feedback on pacing and time trial performance in 4-km track cycling. British Journal of Sports Medicine, 45, 225-229.

Phillips, E., Farrow, D., Ball, K., & Helmer, R. (2013). Harnessing and understanding feedback technology in applied settings. Sports Medicine, 43, 919-925.

Robinson, M. E., Plasschaert J., & Kisaalita, N. R. (2011). Effects of high intensity by heart rate or power in recreational cyclists. Journal of Sports Science and Medicine, 10, 498-501.

Sato, K., Sands, W. A., & Stone, M. H. (2012). The reliability of accelerometry to measure weightlifting performance. Sports Biomechanics, 11(4), 524-531.

Sigrist, R., Rauter, G., Riener, R., & Wolf, P. (2013). Augmented visual, auditory, haptic, and multimodal feedback in motor learning: A review. Psychon Bull Rev, 20, 21-53.

By Dan Baker

Introduction

Field sports are sports such as soccer, rugby union and rugby league, Australian Rules football (AFL), Gaelic football and field hockey. They are characterized by a somewhat stop-start nature, varying movement speeds, multiple changes of direction and the execution of decisions and individual skills under conditions of game pressure and/or fatigue and in the case of some of those sports, the threat of imminent collisions. The nature of the movements in these sports requires the utilization, and therefore training, of all three energy systems (ATP-PC, Glycolitic/Lactic acid and Aerobic systems). However despite the often stop-start nature of these sports, which heralds an increase in anaerobic energy contributions (10), high-intensity aerobic power and conditioning can be critical for success in field sports (4).

The purpose of this article is to detail a number of methods to develop high intensity aerobic conditioning and describe the practical implementation and integration of these methods into the Preparation Period training for field sport athletes.

Recent applied research in aerobic training for field sports

Much research is now focused on Maximal Aerobic Speed (MAS). Research shows that the amount of time spent at or above the 100% Maximal Aerobic Speed (MAS) appears to be the critical factor for improving aerobic power (5-15).

It has been determined that performing a number of short intervals at > 100% MAS was a more effective method of building aerobic power than the more traditional Long Slow Distance (LSD) training (14) (i.e. going for long road runs etc) or than attempting to train only one interval continuously at 100% MAS (13).

Specifically, an intensity of 120% MAS was determined to be the best single speed for short intervals that are followed by a short respite (passive rest) interval, based upon the fact that this intensity allowed the greatest supra-maximal training impulse (intensity x volume), in comparison to 90, 100, and 140% MAS (13). Especially intervals of 120% MAS for 15-30 seconds followed by an equal respite interval of passive rest and continuing on for 5-10 minutes.

A Japanese researcher called Tabata (14) also found that athletes working at 170% VO2 Max (the % MAS was not reported) for 20 seconds followed by 10 seconds passive rest and continuing on this manner for 4-minutes produced excellent changes in aerobic and anaerobic power, better than performing LSD training sessions of 60-minutes at 70% MAS. However, the high intensity group also improved 28% in anaerobic performance while the low intensity group was unchanged. Accordingly, given the greater results and less time investment, it was considered that the high intensity training was much more efficacious than LSD training. This type of training is typically now known as the Tabata method.

The basis of all this recent research is that high intensity intervals of 15-30+ seconds, interspersed with 10-30 seconds of either low intensity active recovery (eg. < 40-70% MAS) or passive rest, continued in this manner for total set times of 4-10 minutes and repeated for 2 or more sets greatly enhances aerobic power and capacity.

It didn’t matter much if it was 20 seconds work, 10 seconds recovery, 30:15, 15:15, the research has kept pointing to the fact that training at or above 100% MAS was the key intensity parameter and how long you spent there was the driving volume parameter under-pinning improvements in aerobic power.

Consequently high-intensity interval training using intensities of 100% MAS to develop the ability to sustain high intensity efforts or intervals at 120%+ MAS to develop higher levels of MAS or enhance the ability to repeat high intensity efforts appear to be increasingly used in the training of field sport athletes (e.g. 1-15). The practical implementation of a number of these methods will be detailed below.

But what about the polarity of aerobic training? Isn’t that how the endurance athletes are training?

While true aerobic endurance athletes (e.g. distance runners, cyclists, triathletes etc) talk about the effectiveness of the polarity of training (using predominantly LSD < 85% MAS, with a portion, say 20%, of very high intensity training >92% MAS), it must be remembered that for field sport athletes, practical observation has shown that most of the skill and tactical training undertaken are at LSD type of speeds and heart rates. Thus, given that skill and tactical training with the sports coach is the major form of training performed by field sport athletes for most of the season and this training involves cardio-vascular stimulation at the lower end of the “polarity spectrum”, the role of the strength and conditioning coach is to provide a high-intensity stimulus to improve aerobic fitness.

I will give you an example. When I worked in professional rugby league, over the last few years all the players wore GPS for every field training session and for games. We know that in games the players, depending upon their position and role, cover about 100-110 m/minute. This is similar in soccer but AFL football average about 125-145+ m/min because they are allowed over 100 substitutions per game, so they go hard and then get subbed off for a short respite before doing it again.

But what distances do field sport athletes cover in skill/tactical sessions? Typically from my sport of NRL rugby league it is about 55-65 m/min (this is lower than soccer and AFL training sessions but in NRL the nature of the games are collisions etc). Typically performed skill and tactical training does not improve fitness but in its way it provides the polar opposite to the high intensity aerobic training I am about to discuss and it constitutes the vast majority of the training week for field sport athletes. Therefore when a strength & conditioning coach has access to the players for conditioning, they must utilize high-intensity methods, with relative velocities of 140-160+m/min (this is inclusive of the rest periods, so for example 15-sec at 5 m/s followed by 15/sec rest x 2 = 150 m/min). This then is the polarity of their training for field sport athletes – mostly the skill and tactical work is done at low intensity, so the specific conditioning must be done at high intensity.

Field testing of MAS – Measuring Maximal Aerobic Speed (MAS)

There is some controversy about how to measure MAS for field sports (4). The MAS is physiologically defined as the lowest speed at which VO2 maximum (VO2 max) has occurred. In a laboratory this is measured with gas analysis while running on a treadmill, according to a number of accepted routines. However, some athletes can still run slightly faster than the first speed at which VO2 maximum has occurred without any change in VO2max ~ so there can be a slight difference in speeds at which VO2 max is occurring (but physiologically, the lowest speed at which VO2max occurred is the definition of MAS). This fact is one of the many confounding factors that sometimes cloud the issue of measuring MAS in athletes for the purpose of diagnosis and training prescription. Other simple ones include differences between treadmill running and running on a sports field!

Nonetheless for field sports, MAS should be assessed during running based tests. Over the years a number of simple running-based field based tests have been developed that correlate with MAS measured via the treadmill/gas analysis method(s). Some field tests are continuous, some are intermittent, some are linear running, some are shuttle-based running, some are incremental and some are steady-paced.

The most common field tests of MAS include the Montreal Beep test, the Multistage Shuttle Beep test, the YoYo IR1 test, time trials with set times (eg. 5-minutes or 6-minutes) or set distances that take the athletes between 5- to 7-minutes to complete (eg. 1200-m, 1500m, 2000-m). Some of these tests have been further modified, such as the Montreal test being altered to include 1-minute stages, rather than 2-minute stages and so on.

The choice of tests and their merits sometimes cloud the issue of measuring MAS in athletes and the pro’s and cons of each method is not the scope of this article.

In certain tests, the MAS is simply the speed attained in the final leg of the test eg. Montreal Beep test or YoYo IR1 test. However if the Multistage Shuttle Beep test is used, then this equation:

must be used to correct for the fact that the constant decelerations involved with shuttling/change of directions reduces the true MAS (8).

These tests give results expressed as km/hr, which will then need to be converted to m/s so that training distances can be easily calculated. For example, Level 12 Multistage Beep, = 14 km/hr * 1.34 = 18.86, minus 2.86 then equals 15.9 km/hr or 4.4m/s.

For a set-time trial MAS test, for example, a 5-min time running trial, determining the average speed is a simple process (eg. 1320 meters divided by 300 s = 4.4 m/s). The simple 5-minute time trial has been shown to correlate very highly (r = 0.94) with MAS (7).

If using set distances, the time taken to complete the distance should be between 5- to 7-minutes. For example, if an athlete ran 1400-m in 318-seconds, then the MAS would be 4.4 m/s.

So once MAS is determined, it is very easy then to prescribe training. An example of a simple 5-minute field test for a theoretical soccer team with disparate MAS scores is outlined in Table 1. Training prescription for the following methods will then be illustrated using these theoretical scores.

Different Methods of High-Intensity Training

Outlined below are a number of different methods that may be applicable to the training of high-intensity aerobic training for field sport athletes. They are presented in the order that they should be presented to the athletes.

Long Intervals

Long intervals (LI) of 60-seconds up to 5-minutes can provide a training impulse (volume x intensity) base before progressing to training of higher intensity. They are best used in the early Preparation period, because the underlying objective is to increase the volume of work performed at high intensity (> 92 % MAS) and as such may not integrate well with other training such as skill and tactical units. The lower the MAS score the athlete possesses, the more beneficial LI are as a training stimulus. Consequently, elite field sport athletes may spend less time (or even no time) performing LI as compared to developing or teenage athletes.

Typically these intervals would be completed at an intensity above critical speed (aka “anaerobic threshold” or about 85% MAS). The longer the interval, the lower the intensity, so 3-minutes @ 90-100% MAS may be a better upper limit of interval length. When performing multiple repetitions, it is very difficult to maintain a time limit of 66% of the interval best (ie. If an athlete can hold 100% MAS for 5-minutes in a one-off maximum effort test, they find it very difficult to perform multiple repetitions of 3-minute intervals at 100% MAS).

For LI the work:recovery ratios are typically above 1:1 (eg. 3:2) or, at 1:1. If the ratios go much more than 3:1, then typically for LI, the % MAS is reduced, to say <90%. As most LI are already just below the desirable 100% MAS, this is not a preferred prescription.

So 4-6 repetitions of 3-minutes at 95% MAS with a 2-minute recovery (1.5:1) or 90-s at 100% MAS with a 90-s recovery (1:1) are quite challenging prescriptions in the initial General Preparation Phase.

There may need to be variation in the length of LI’s and the scope for reducing LI length and slightly increasing % MAS clearly exists. For example, if LI were performed 3/wk, then one day may be:

• Day 1. (6 x 3-minute intervals at 92% MAS with 2-minute recoveries) x 2-sets,
• Day 2. (5 x 2-minute intervals at 96% MAS with 2-minute recoveries) x 2-sets, and
• Day 3. (4 x 90-seconds at 100% MAS with 90-second recoveries) x 2-sets, with 3-minute rests between sets on all days.

Thus the total training time for these three LI sessions (excluding warm-up etc) would be 63-minutes, 43-minutes and 27-minutes. In this scenario, the Day 1 session is of such magnitude and effort that realistically no other meaningful training in other units (eg. skill and team tactics) may be possible. However the Day 2 and 3 sessions, with reduced training impulse and duration, could involve other units such as skills or tactics as well as speed technique drilling before the start of the conditioning block. This is why this of type of training is really only recommended in the initial weeks General Preparation phase (unless the volume is severely curtailed).

Maximal Aerobic “Grids” Method

The Maximum Aerobic Grids Method is also termed the 100% MAS:70% MAS Method. Based upon French research, coaches have developed a system called (among other names) the Maximal Aerobic Grids (aka “boxes” or “rectangles” method). This entailed training initially with short intervals of 15-30 seconds at 100-110% MAS interspersed with 15-30 seconds of active recovery at 50-70% MAS, continuing on for 5-10 or more minutes.

For running training, implementing this method basically entails devising rectangular concentric grids of various dimensions that equal ~15-s at 100% MAS along the long side of the rectangle and 15-s at 70% MAS along the short side (see Figure 1). The fastest group are on the outside grid or running channel, with the slowest group along the inside grid. The coach can stand in the middle of the rectangle, but if two staff are available, one would monitor the finish point of each long side of the rectangle.

Figure 1. A schematic example of the Maximal Aerobic Grids method consisting of concentric rectangular grids, with the long side at 100% MAS and the short side at 70% MAS for each running group. Each side takes 15 seconds to complete, with the full rectangle taking 1-minute. The distances (Long, horizontal sides: Short vertical sides) for four theoretical groups of footballers are Group 1 = 72m:50m, Group 2 = 69m:48m, Group 3 = 66m:46m, Group 4 = 63m:44m. Groups can start at different corners to allow for better spacing and less congestion. Nonetheless all athletes hit a corner at the same time, every 15 seconds. A single conditioning coach can stand in the middle to ensure that the athletes make it to their corners at the same time or with multiple coaches, a coach can be stationed on each corner.

It can be seen from Figure 1 that a theoretical Group 1 runs 72 m in 15-s along the long side of the rectangle followed by 50 m along the short side and so forth. It takes 1 minute to complete one lap of the rectangular grid and this is completed without pause for 5-minutes initially and can be done for 2-4 sets with a 2-3 minute rest in between sets. The key point here is that each group has their grid based upon their own MAS capabilities ~ however, despite differences in MAS capabilities among large groups, each group should be at their respective corner of the rectangular grid each 15-s, which makes training compliance easy to monitor. The athletes are not allowed to speed up during the 70% sides to get a head-start on the harder sides – this just makes the grid an anaerobic threshold grid, something to avoid! This is enforced by making the athletes momentarily stop and hold the start position on the start of each long side of the grid.

When performing this drill, it is more practical to build up to 6, then 8-minutes and repeating for 2-4 sets (or build up to 10 minutes and performing 1-2 sets) rather than increasing the length of each 100% repetition to 30 s or more. It is difficult to do the running grids for 30s each side because you can physically run out of room to make a rectangle (eg. 30 s x 4.6 m/s means the long, 100% MAS side would have to be 138 m long, a distance which is hard to find on typical sporting fields).

Every 3-4 weeks it may be necessary to retest MAS or more simply to advance each group up to the next grid (which would be about 102-105% of their original or previous MAS). For example, the group that were running 63 m on their long 100% MAS side are sent up to the 66 m grid and so forth. This method is now used by many professional footballers in Australia with excellent results.

120% 15:15 Eurofit Method

This method was developed by French researchers and has been validated with professional soccer players during the pre-season (15), during the in-season (12), with younger school children (5) and teenagers (6). It is very simple to use. Again, in its simplest form, every athletes 100% MAS is determined and then increased by 20% (ie. 120% MAS). The athletes are lined up along a line and then run to the marker cone that represents their 120% MAS distance in 15 seconds. They rest there for 15 seconds and then run back to the start line. This process is repeated for 5-minutes initially, building up to 8- or 10-minutes, with only 1-2 sets being performed. Intensity can be increased up to 125 or 130% MAS after 3-4 weeks. Figure 2 provides a depiction of the simple set-up. Again, this is easily coached ~ all athletes must get to their cone on the 15 second mark, wait 15 seconds and on the return, they all hit the start line at the same time, despite different distances being covered.

Figure 2. A schematic example of the Supra-maximal aerobic Eurofit method. Each group runs to their respective marker cones in 15 s, rests for 15 s, runs back to the line in 15 s, rests 15 s and repeats till the end of the set, typically 6-10 minutes.

Tabata Method

The original Tabata method is quite exhausting (at 170% VO2 max, % MAS unknown) and is typically only performed for one 4-minute set (14). As field athletes typically must compete for longer time durations, the Tabata protocol has been modified by coaches to be performed at an intensity of ~120% MAS. This allows the set duration to be increased up to 5-, 6- or even 8-minutes and be performed for 2-5 sets, allowing for more time to be spent above the critical 100% MAS intensity.

Figures 3 and 4 detail how this modified Tabata method can be implemented in a smaller area by implementing turns. In this example, the Tabata method is performed as 20 seconds at 120% MAS, done as 10 seconds out, 10 seconds to return, rest 10 seconds and repeat till 5- or more minutes are completed (Figure 3). The turn that occurs in the run makes this speed quite difficult to maintain and more sport specific for field sports. However it may be necessary to use a total distance that is 19-seconds at 120% MAS ~ reduce the distance by the equivalent of 1-s to allow for the deceleration and loss of running velocity involved in the turn. A further variation is to perform the 20-s drill as 5-s out and back, repeated (Figure 4). Turns are thought to increase the anaerobic energy contribution (10).

There may appear to be little difference between the Eurofit and Tabata methods, but the critical difference is the Eurofit is based upon a 1:1 (15-s:15-s) work ratio, whereas the Tabata method utilizes a 2:1 ratio (20s:10s). This apparently minor differential has a pronounced effect upon the accumulation of fatigue when multiple repetitions or sets are performed.

Figure 3. The out & back Tabata, consisting of 10-s out and back at 120% MAS.

Figure 4. A schematic example of the Modified Out & Back x 2 Tabata protocol with more turns. The athletes must run 5-s out and back twice to their respective marker cones in each repetition (20 seconds), rest 10-seconds and then repeat till four or more minutes have elapsed. This method also stresses anaerobic energy contributions.

Unpredictable Tabata (or 2:1)

Another variation of the Tabata method is to maintain the 2:1 work/rest ratio and > 120 MAS but alter the length of the intervals to 8:4, 12:6, 16:8 etc.

One of the limitations of all the above conditioning methods is that there are predictable work periods. Athletes quickly adapt to some sort of pacing strategy or know when they are about to start their next effort.

With this second Tabata method the coach can set different coloured cones for each time/distance interval for each group. Upon the “Go” command, the athletes start their effort but not till about 2-seconds after the start are they given the command which will designate which cone they run to and return from. They do not know until that point will they be running to the cone designating 6s out and back, 8s out and back, 16s out and back and so on (see Figure 5). This strategy disrupts running rhythm and recovery strategies, entails reaction to situational commands and causes repeat high-intensity efforts to occur at less predictable times more than any of the other above high-intensity methods.

Figure 5. A schematic example of the Modified Tabata protocol with variable interval lengths using only GROUP 4 in this schematic demonstration (Group 4’s 120% MAS equals 5m/s). Any interval length can be used, but a 2:1 ratio should be maintained. The athletes do not know which cone (Y= yellow cone, G = green cone, R = red cone etc) to run to until after each repetition has started. Set lengths are typically 4-minutes.

Periodization and progression of training across the Preparation Period

The training methods above have an inbuilt intensity progression as athletes work from < 100% MAS in LI, to 100% MAS in the Grids method to 120 and 130% MAS in the EuroFit and Tabata methods. The other variable for difficulty progression is the choice between the active recovery (at < 40% in LI, to 60-70% MAS in the Grids method) versus the passive rest inherent in the EuroFit and Tabata methods. Furthermore the Tabata method’s work:rest ratio of 2:1 may prove even more difficult as compared to the 1:1 EuroFit method. The second Tabata method with variable interval lengths may prove more even difficult for athletes but this may be due to reasons other than just physiological reasons. Introducing turns in the Tabata, or any method, will also cause an increase in difficulty as this increases the anaerobic contribution (10).

Training can be progressed via the systematic use of all of these different methods, starting with the 3-minute LI’s and reducing LI length to 60-s, then the 100%:70% grids method, moving to the EuroFit 120% MAS method and finishing with the Japanese Tabata methods within a training cycle. Each method can be implemented for 1-3 weeks before progressing to the next method or a weekly cycle can involve a number of methods (see Tables 1 and 2).

Within each 2-3 week mini-cycle, the typical volume progressions would also occur (5-minute sets building up to 8- or even 10-minute sets and/or 2 sets building up to 3 or 4 sets). Consequently when a progression to the new method occurs there is a marked decrease in volume, but an increase in intensity ~ this week serves as a “volume un-load” week (see weeks 4 & 7 in Table 2). Therefore as intensity initially increases with the introduction of the new method, volume is lowest, but builds up over time before implementing the next intensity progression, again with a lower volume.

Once an athlete has attained some training experience with these methods, weekly undulating periodization is also possible with one aerobic training day emphasizing increasing the time spent at ~100% MAS (and possibly also the time of each repetition spent at 100% MAS) via the grids method and the other training day spent emphasizing the time spent well above 100% MAS (ie. The Eurofit or Tabata methods) (See Table 2, Day 1 versus Day 3). This methodology is based around the Supramax methods DEVELOPING new aerobic power and improving the ability to repeat high-intensity efforts and the Maximal method, conditioning the body to SUSTAIN the current 100% MAS for longer periods. This within-week alternation of methods allows the athlete to toggle between milder active recovery (eg. 15 s @ 70% MAS or 90-s @ 40% MAS) and passive recovery (15-s rest).

An example of these progressions appropriate to the General Preparation phase is depicted in Table 2. If the GP phase is only 4-weeks long, then this might be modified such that LI, Grids, EuroFit and then Tabata methods are the predominant (but not only) drill for each week.

Integrating high-intensity aerobic training with sports training and small-sided games (SSG)

The limitation of the above methods is that there is still some ‘predictability” about them. Field sports often require intense efforts at unpredictable times and hence some researchers and coaches have advocated small sided games as a better alternative to traditional conditioning due to the “unpredictability” of games and the fact that games also develop sports skills and game sense. However the overload delivered by games by themselves is also unpredictable and depends upon the structure and rules of the games etc. I have data from that shows the athletes with the highest MAS covered the most meters in each SSG and had the most winning outcomes, so how would SSG improve those athletes with lower MAS scores?

My recommendation is that almost all athletes below the elite or professional level are better suited to using traditional conditioning methods as described above to develop greater MAS and fitness levels in the General Preparation phase, rather than relying on small sided games to develop aerobic fitness.

So what role do SSG play? For the elite performer, with GPS technology to monitor running workloads in real-time, plenty of assistant coaches watching, high motivation levels etc, SSG are great. But athletes below that elite level?

My experience has shown that conditioning-oriented SSG become more effective after the GP phase, once fitness levels have been established. Once a field sport athlete has attained an adequate MAS and is in the Specific Preparation phase or Competitive Periods of the sport season, then skill and tactical training must takes precedence. It is during the Specific Preparation phase that the alternating of 4-8 minute sets of the above conditioning drills with 3-8 mins of small-sided games is an effective conditioning/maintenance and sports skill development tool for field sport athletes.

As mentioned earlier typically skills are coached in relatively low stress situations (low heart rate, minimal fatigue, less than full speed or full-force opposition) which are fine for the initial skill development and tactical learning situations – the polarity of training readily suitable for GP training. But does this type of training enhance the skill or tactical sports performance of advanced athletes or mimic the game situations?

I find it akin to a fighter only hitting the heavy bag or the trainer’s pads and expecting to fight well in competition. Everyone looks good hitting the pads, but in real life competitive fighting situations, getting punched in the face alters everything, so sparring must be done in training! And must be done in a fatigued state on occasions.

So my recommendation is to utilize the above conditioning drills, conditioning-oriented SSG or game-scenario simulation SSG and lower intensity skills together in the SP phase and In-season periods. The authors’ experience is that the fatigue resulting from the performance of the above conditioning drills allows the head skill/sports coach to see fatigue related breakdowns in 1) individual skill technique, 2) decision-making or 3) inability to match the game speed, resulting in the effective dismantling of the teams’ defensive or offensive structure/patterns/formation the during ensuing skill- and small-sided games.

Typically these three types of “breakdown” occur in the most fatiguing parts of real competition games but are not so well illuminated to the athlete or coach during “normal” lower intensity skill or tactical training sessions which are practiced in less fatiguing or stressful situations. Thus the head skill/sports coach can develop and implement intense small-sided games that challenge or illustrate which of these types of breakdowns occur (and to which athletes) for different critical game scenario situations.

So the S & C coach pre-fatigues the athletes so the coach can implement game situation simulation drills or SSG’s to see if there are any of the three “break-downs” and to whom.

It has been the author’s experience that the following combination of a 6-minute supra-maximal 120% MAS drill (e.g. Tabta or EuroFit), followed by a 6-minute SSG and a 3-minute semi-passive recovery (eg. stationary passing and catching of balls) without rest is very challenging to the athlete’s fitness and individual skill levels. When this is again followed by another 5 to 8-minute conditioning set and another SSG not only is the athlete’s aerobic and anaerobic conditioning and skill levels challenged but it may also display the athlete’s ability to maintain appropriate decision making and team structure during the second small sided game. An example of the Specific Preparation phase integration of conditioning sets, SSG, skill and tactical training is displayed in Table 3. In this training session, the goal would be for 30% of the total distance covered (excluding warm-up) to be performed at a speed above 4 m/s.

General Preparation versus Specific Preparation and high-intensity conditioning

By analysing Tables 2, it can clearly seen that the early General Preparation phase has more time devoted to basic training of energy system fitness. In comparison, Table 3, which outlines a Specific Preparation phase training session has only 1 x 5-minute set and 1 x 7-minute set specifically devoted to the above conditioning drills out of a total of 90-minutes.

So the basic summary is, in the GP spend more time improving MAS and allied energy system fitness with the above mentioned drills while the skill and tactical training is done at low intensity to ensure good learning. As fitness improves across the weeks, the amount of time spent performing conditioning decreases but the intensity of the conditioning drills and the skill/tactical training increases. By the time of SP, only a short amount of time needs to be spent performing specific high-intensity drills and they should be integrated with SSG and skill/tactical training.

Accordingly, in the SP or In-season, high-intensity aerobic conditioning drills can be seen as part of an integrated and coherent sports performance enhancement program that aids in the development or display of skills under challenging game simulation situations.

Conclusions

Experienced field sport athletes gain little in terms of enhancing their aerobic power from LSD training such as road runs at < 80% MAS etc. Training at or above 100% MAS has been shown to be more effective. The methods presented can be implemented in a progressive manner across a General Preparation Period.

The LI’s and Grids maximal methods outlined are thought to best condition athletes to be able to sustain high-intensity aerobic power for longer periods, which can occur with many field sports. The two supra-maximal methods are believed to be best for developing new levels of high-intensity aerobic power or to be able to repeat their high-intensity efforts.

Once an athlete is in the Specific Preparation Phase or In-season Period, total training duration devoted to high-intensity conditioning can be quite short ~ (eg. 1-3 sets of 4-10-minutes duration) and combined and integrated with small-sided games or skill and tactical training. This integration of training is highly recommended for field sport athletes to develop skill and tactical nous under fatigue and stressful situations akin to the real competitive environment.

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References

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By Craig Pickering, DANFit

The field of sporting genetics is becoming increasingly mainstream. Researchers and coaches have long known that individuals respond to a differing extent when on the same training program. Anyone who has been in a training squad will have seen team-mates who improved greatly with training and others who didn’t improve anywhere near as much. As an increasing amount of research is carried out into performance genetics, the reasons for these differences are becoming clearer. There are now a number of genes that can partially explain the response to different types of training.

Knowing and understanding your individual genotype is useful in ensuring that the training you do will elicit the best response. The key point here is that every individual has a training type that is best suited to them, and that providing the correct training stimulus in this way allows improvements across the board. A simple, non-invasive test done at home can give you the information required to get the most out of your training and improve your performance. It also helps to cut out the trial and error associated with trying different training methods and seeing what works.

What We Test For

DNAFit offer two testing categories; fitness and diet. With our fitness testing, we provide information on:

• Power/Endurance bias
• Genetic VO2 max potential
• Recovery Rate
• Injury Risk

Our diet service looks at genes related to:

• Carbohydrate and fat tolerance
• Micronutrient needs (specifically omega-3, antioxidants, and vitamins B and D)
• Detoxification ability
• Salt and caffeine sensitivity
• Lactose intolerance and coeliac risk

Depending on your needs, you can opt for separate fitness or diet tests, or purchase a combined test for a reduced price.

All the genes that we test for have at least three peer-reviewed scientific studies behind them. Studies are important, as it ensures the results are replicable within a population. All the studies are also done on humans, not mice or other animals, making them much more valid when interpreting the results. By using strict scientific protocols in the selection of genes that are tested, we ensure that our results are both valid and reliable.

Fitness Genetics

Power & Endurance

After testing your DNA, we then put your results through our proprietary algorithm to tell you what your ideal mix of power and endurance training is. We test for a total of 15 genes in this section, all with plenty of evidence behind them. We know, for example, that ACTN3 genotype is linked to how well you respond to power and endurance training. ACTN3 codes for a protein found in type IIx muscle fibres. There are three possible genotypes; RR (meaning you have both copies that produce this protein), RX (one protein producing copy, one null copy), and XX (cannot produce this protein). We know that elite sprinters are more likely to have the RR genotype (Scott et al. 2010) and that endurance athletes are more likely to have the XX genotype (Yang et al. 2003). From this, we can hypothesise that RR genotypes will respond to power-based training much better than XX genotypes, and these hypotheses are backed up by a number of studies. One such study in Olympic weightlifters showed that individuals with the RR genotype improved the most in peak strength, whereas individuals with XX showed the greatest improvements in strength endurance (Turky et al. 2014). We also know from a 2014 study by Ahmetov et al. that ACTN3 genotype affects testosterone levels, which will also alter the response to a resistance-training programme. Taking all this information into account, we know that RR genotypes have much more type IIx muscle fibres, greater testosterone levels, and also greater mTOR activity following exercise. RR genotypes can, therefore, respond much better to heavy weight training, with fewer exercises per set. They also respond well to sprint training. If an RR genotype was targeting an endurance event, we would recommend that their training included multiple shorter intervals with short recovery.

We look at a whole host of other genes that affect power and endurance response, including:

• ACE (linked to response to both power and endurance exercise, depending on the version of the gene and individual has)
• VEGF (associated with growth of new blood vessels in response to exercise)
• ADRB2 (associated with the main type of fuel substrate utilised during exercise)
• PPARGC1A (linked to the production of new mitochondria)

Recovery

When giving advice regarding recovery, we look at seven different genes. These genes are linked to the ability of the body to control inflammation, oxidative damage, and the immune response to exercise. Overall, we look at the specific versions of these genes you have and place you on a scale of slow to fast recovery. In our experience with professional sports teams, we have seen that some individuals can recover quickly from high-intensity competitions and training sessions, while others take longer to reach a fully recovered state. Knowing this information allows for a much better management of training load, improving performance across the training or competition period.

Injury Risk

The final set of genes we look at on the physical side relate to injury risk. Within this set of genes, two specific genes we look at are COL1A1 and COL5A1. These genes code for different types of collagen and are linked to a predisposition to certain types of injury. For example, people with the TT genotype of COL5A1 are at an increased risk of tendinopathy, as well as having a generally decreased range of motion. Another gene we look at, GDF5, is also linked to recurrent tendinopathies, as well as bone health, which plays a role in fracture risk. Finally, we report on some genes linked to inflammation during exercise. We use all this information to let you know your genetic injury risk, and based on this provide information to allow you to modify your environment in order to mitigate this risk. For example, if you are at an increased risk of tendinopathy, we would recommend that you follow a programme of eccentric loading, in order to decrease the injury risk to these tendons.

Nutrigenetics

The other side of DNAFit’s service is nutrigenetics – the effect our genes have on our nutrition. Just as individuals respond to a training programme with differing amounts, people can also respond to a specific diet differently.

Macronutrient Sensitivity

The first set of genes we look at correspond to how well individuals can tolerate both carbohydrate and fat. As a specific example, the FTO gene has been linked to differing responses to dietary fat intake. On a high-fat diet, individuals with the AA genotype are significantly more likely to have an increased body fat, regardless of their levels of physical activity. (Sonestedt et al. 2011). Similarly, individuals with CC genotype of the APOA2 gene were likely to have a higher BMI if saturated fat intake was above 22grams per day (Corella et al. 2009). From these two genes, we can then make recommendations on the fat intake of an individual’s diet.

Regarding carbohydrate sensitivity, we can draw similar conclusions. Individuals with a T allele of the TCF7L2 genotype are at an increased risk of developing type II diabetes if carbohydrate intake is high. This is just one gene linked to carbohydrate tolerance that we report on to give you information on the recommended carbohydrate composition of your diet.

Finally, consuming a diet matched to your genotype has been shown to increase adherence to that diet. Arkadianos et al. (2007) showed that after 300 days, individuals on a genetically matched diet were likely to have reduced their BMI, and to a greater extent, than a control group. They were also over twice as likely to have maintained this weight loss over the study period than the control group. This has important implications for nutritionists who can increase the chances of success of a diet for their clients.

Micronutrient Needs

Within our reports, we also provide information to clients regarding their need for vitamins B and D, omega-3, and antioxidants. These results are linked to specific genes known to increase the need for these nutrients in certain people, including the MTHFR gene and Vitamin D Receptor gene. Individuals with an increased need for specific nutrients can purchase vitamin supplements formulated to meet their raised needs. Vitamin D, in particular, has been shown recently to play a role in bone health, as well as fast-twitch muscle strength. Ensuring you have the correct amounts can improve your sporting performance and reduce injury risk.

Other Findings

We also provide information regarding how sensitive an individual is to both salt and caffeine. Slow caffeine metabolizers have caffeine in their bloodstream for longer periods of time, meaning that they are more likely to have disturbed sleep. Studies are currently underway regarding caffeine dose, and speed of metabolism for sports people, with the hypothesis being that fast metabolizers can handle a higher caffeine dose than slow metabolizers. This allows individualised pre-competition caffeine strategies to be formularised. Genes showing lactose tolerance and coeliac risk are also reported on, showing how well an individual can tolerate certain foods.

Putting it all together

Our tests are useful for both individual sports people, and professional teams. Understanding your genotype is the first step towards creating personally tailored training and nutrition programmes. As a company, we have worked with Olympic champions and high-level professional sports teams, and have experience in providing interventions to these sports people based on their genotype. The test itself is very easy to do and non-invasive – it’s a simple cheek swab that you can do at home. Once we receive your sample, we will have your report ready within two weeks. If you already have a DNA report from 23andMe, we can convert your results into our report for a reduced price. For more information on our products, services, and pricing, please check out the website at DNAFit.

Please share this article so others may benefit.

References

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

Arkadianos et al. (2007). Improved weight management using genetic information to personalise a calorie controlled diet. Nutrition Journal 6 (29)

Corella et al. (2009). APOA2, dietary fat and body mass index: Replication of a gene-diet interaction in three independent populations. Arch Intern Med 169(20) 1897 – 1906

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

Sonestedt et al. (2011). Association between fat intake, physical activity and mortality depending on genetic variation in FTO. International Journal of Obesity 35 1041-1049

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

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

By Tony Holler

Truth is a funny thing.  As Oscar Wilde said, “The truth is rarely pure and never simple.”  Was Oscar speaking of speed training?  Maybe.

The science of speed training is a murky business.  What works for one may injure another.  Strength can improve speed or destroy it.  Plyometrics may result in broken records or broken athletes.  Periodization is sacred to some, scoffed at by others.  Should speed coaches adopt the training concepts of bodybuilders, endurance athletes, or swimmers?  Maybe we should copy the Jamaicans and eat more mountain yams.  Or maybe we should cling to that old-time religion and coach like our forefathers.

Fast kids sometimes remain fast in spite of questionable coaching.   In my opinion, many coaches should be charged with malpractice.  Does running 10 x 300-meters in soft shoes improve speed?  What’s the aim of torturous “conditioning” at the end of football practice?  Can athletes gain 20 pounds this summer and be faster next fall?  I have grown intolerant of bad ideas.

And what if you are a football coach?  Do you recruit speed then ignore it?  Should team speed be a consideration in your weekly plans?    Is your team faster or slower at the end of a week of practice?  Are your athletes fast at the end of the season?  Doesn’t conditioning and toughness win games?  You must make a choice … are you a quantity guy or quality guy?  Are you a fan of happy, healthy, and fast or a slave to the grind?   What is your priority?

Chris Korfist once asked a football coach what he wanted from an off-season program.  The coach answered, “I want my kids to get bigger, faster, and stronger.”  Chris replied in his gentle tone, “In what order?”

“The word priority came into the English language in the 1400s.  It was singular.  It meant the very first or prior thing.  It stayed singular for the next 500 years.  Only in the 1900s did we pluralize the term and start talking about priorities.  Illogically, we reasoned that by bending the word we could bend reality.” -Greg McKeown from his terrific book “Essentialism“.

In 1999, I made speed my priority.  My Harrisburg teams won the IHSA Class A 4×1 in 1999, 2000, 2001, and 2003.  My teams have been relatively fast every year since 1999.  Last year, Plainfield North was the 10th fastest team at the Illinois State Track Meet with no seniors.  The 4×1 team coached by Chris Korfist ran 41.48 and placed 2nd.  Edwardsville, coached by Chad Lakatos, who ran for me in 1992, won the 4×1 with a time of 41.46.  My son, Alec, is the assistant coach at Edwardsville where speed is the priority.  Priority is singular.

Chris Korfist began his velocity-quest as a high school and college football player.  Chris can talk for days about his research.  I know of no coach, anywhere, who has done more experimentation.  Chris has been on a life-long mission to unlock the secrets of speed.

I attended a Chris Korfist clinic presentation in 2008.  I was 49 years old.  From 1991 to 2004 my teams had won eight state trophies including three state championships.  From 2004 to 2006, I coached the track team at Franklin High School (TN) into a Nashville-area powerhouse.  In 2007, I took a job at a newly-opened school in Illinois, Plainfield North.  In 2008, we graduated our first senior class and celebrated our first conference championship.

I was confident in my coaching.

Then I heard Chris Korfist speak.  I was mesmerized by his creative content.  I had always prided myself as being the “alternative” track coach.  Compared to Chris Korfist, I felt uncomfortably mainstream.

Don’t get me wrong, I had some things figured out.  I have not thrown the baby out with the bathwater.  However, I’ve spent the last seven years trying to keep up with Korfist.  One coach told me, “You and Korfist are like brothers from another mother.”  To me, Chris Korfist is the most intriguing coach I’ve ever met.

So now it’s 2015.  Chris and I still find ourselves searching for ways to improve speed.  We present at clinics.  We write articles.  We network with the best sprint coaches.  We read everything and try our best to separate the wheat from the chaff.  And there’s lots of chaff out there.

The most exciting development in our evolution has been “Be-Activated,” a program taught by a Cape Town physiologist named Douglas Heel.  I have written five articles about activation.  My most recent was “Don’t Implode, Explode.”

Activation is a type of hands-on performance therapy.  Activation prevents injury and improves performance.

Activation is not for everyone.  You only know what you know.

Most adults inherit political affiliation, religion, and social-economic status from their parents.  In a similar way, most coaches are a reflection of how they were coached.  The cycle of “old school” is hard to break.  Coaches are stubborn.  Paraphrasing a quote attributed to German physicist Max Planck, “Truth triumphs because the opponents of truth eventually die, and a new generation replaces them.”

I shouldn’t be so fixated on the know-it-all coaches who won’t attend our Speed Activation Consortium this summer.  Someday they will retire, and a new generation will replace them.

We live in exciting times.  A new generation is emerging.  In Illinois, three state champions in the past year have been subscribers of “Be-Activated”:

• 3A Track Champs, York H.S., coached by Chris Korfist
• 3A Cross Country Champs, Hinsdale Central
• 6A Football Champs, Nazareth Academy

Chris Korfist and I are looking forward to sharing cutting-edge ideas on speed development.  We are offering a two-day clinic, June 19th and 20th.  We decided to call it the “Speed Activation Consortium.”

This clinic will not take the place of a Douglas Heel, “Be-Activated Seminar.”  I have attended two Level-1 Seminars and one Level-2.  I will attend another Level-1 in Chicago, July 18-19.

The Holler-Korfist Speed Activation Consortium will feature 11 one-hour presentations.  This is NOT a track & field clinic.  We have an eclectic collection of speakers, unlike any clinic I’ve ever attended.

Joel Smith

I met Joel Smith at a Douglas Heel “Be-Activated” Seminar.  Smith is an assistant strength and conditioning coach at the University of California where he works with track and field, swimming, and tennis.  He is the founder of Just Fly Sports and the author of Vertical Foundations, the first book to take a  holistic, biomechanical approach to jump training.

Joel Smith will discuss biomechanics and muscle kinematics of various jumping styles in team sports and track and field.  Smith will explore common weak points and critical points that are important to maximal jump height.

Joel Smith will be hosting a “Be-Activated” Seminar this summer.  Californians can see Doug Heel July 25-26 at the University of California, Berkeley (Cronk Room, Memorial Stadium).

Dan Fichter

I’ve never met Dan Fichter, but I feel like I know him well.  A long-time partner of Chris Korfist, Dan Fichter has made a name for himself as a speed trainer, track coach, and football coach.  Fichter is presently the head football coach at Irondequoit High School in New York and the owner of Wannagetfast Power Speed Training in New York and Tampa.

Dan Fichter sums up his training as “a combination of Eastern European methodology and new-aged research from biomechanists from around the globe.”

“We do not train in a sport-specific, core-dominated, or general fad mantra.  We utilize proven research on speed and strength training that has produced world-class results.”

Fichter’s presentation will focus on in-season training to keep the nervous system fresh, muscles strong, and speed maintained.

Cal Dietz

Cal Dietz from the University of Minnesota will speak on Triphasic Training.  I met Cal last February at a Douglas Heel Seminar.  The bio that follows comes from the trailer for his first book, Triphasic Training:  A systematic approach to elite speed and explosive strength performance.

Triphasic Training is the pinnacle of sports performance training. That’s not hype. Cal Dietz, strength coach at the University of Minnesota, has the results to back up this claim – a Hobey Baker Award winner, two Big Ten Athletes of the Year, over 400 All-Americans, 28 Big Ten/WCHA championship teams, 7 NCAA National Team Champions, and 13 teams that finished in the top four in the nation.

Over the past decade, Coach Dietz has worked with thousands of collegiate and professional athletes, incorporating the latest scientific research into developing his Triphasic Training method. His approach breaks down athletic movements into their three components — eccentric, isometric, and concentric — allowing for the continuous development of athletes, maximizing their strength, speed, and power.

Cal Dietz is the founder the one of the comprehensive strength training websites you will ever see, xlathlete.com.

Dr. Tom Nelson

Dr. Tom Nelson is activating 6’6″, 275-pound Nazareth offensive tackle, Jack Shutack. Shutack will play for Rutgers next year.

Dr. Tom Nelson, D.O. (doctor of osteopathic medicine), installed “Be-Activated” at Nazareth Academy in LaGrange, Illinois, three years ago.  According to head coach Tim Racki, activation has been a game changer.  See the Freelap article I wrote about Nazareth as they entered the 6A IHSA State Championship game.

Dr. Nelson will deliver an exciting presentation on BREATHING and its fundamental relationship to activation, injury prevention, and performance.

Dr. Eric Janota will make a presentation on Activation Level-1 to show how to get the psoas and glutes to drive your body into proper, efficient, and powerful hip flexion and hip extension.  Like Nelson, Eric Janota is a doctor of osteopathic medicine.  When I asked Eric what percentage of his practice was activation, he said, “About 20%, but it occupies 80% of my thoughts.”  Exciting.

Dr. Kerry Egan will speak on the impact of an athlete’s visual field on activation, movement, and performance.

Dr. Kerry Heitkotter of “Your Healthy Foundations” will discuss fueling athletic performance.  Heitkotter is presently working with 15 professional teams using targeted micro and macro nutrients to prevent injury, promote proper development, improve recovery.

And I almost forgot; Chris Korfist plans to speak on his two specialties, the ankle and the hip.  I challenge anyone to find a speed coach who knows more about training the ankle and the hip to measurably improve speed.

Thomas Harris and DeVaughn Hrobowski are very talented sprinters. In addition, they have measurably improved their speed, consistently, since they started training with me as freshmen.

Speaking of measurably improving speed, I will present “Inertia and Data-Driven Speed Training.”  It was an article I wrote a couple of years ago by the same name that caught the attention of Freelap’s Christopher Glaeser.  Today my data comes from Freelap Pro Coach 424, and I proudly write for Freelap USA.  In my second presentation, I plan to provide a speed workout demonstration using athletes from my track team.  Sometimes, you need to abandon the PowerPoint and show how the work is done.

Several training technologies will be showcased, including kBox by Exxentric and Freelap Pro Coach 424.

The clinic will be held in Lombard, IL, at Montini High School.  Montini is close to the Yorktown Mall.  There is no shortage hotels and excellent restaurants in the area.

Updates for the Speed Activation Consortium will be available on Twitter @pntrack.

For more information and how to sign up and how to pay your entry fee, go to

• Speed Activation Consortium
• Payment

By Derek M. Hansen, CSCS, StrengthPowerSpeed

All training programs should integrate Electrical Muscle Stimulation (EMS) to contract muscle forcefully. The best minds in sports performance all agree that EMS is a valuable tool, particularly at the highest levels of performance. However, professionals in all sports, particularly at upper levels, do not fully understand the applications and benefits of EMS technology. Many have purchased devices but have not integrated the technology into their regular day-to-day routine. With just a little knowledge, you can make a big improvement in your athletes.

You may face two obstacles to making the best use of EMS for athlete performance and health. First, you cannot learn about EMS without holding a device in your own hands. Like any technology, you must fiddle with it and, through trial and error, find out what works and what doesn’t. With some of the stimulation units, consumers often complain that user manuals do not teach how to best use the technology. Rather than reading a book how to use barbells, massage tables, or treadmills, often, your own determined practice can find the best application for any tool in question.

The second obstacle to using EMS regularly to aid athlete development, recovery, and rehabilitation is that many individuals feel that only certified physical therapists can use it. Your initial caution is commendable, but I can see no good reason only physical therapists are best qualified to use EMS on athletes. EMS contracts muscles forcefully. Is this not what training athletes themselves do on a daily basis in the weight room, on the track and the field? Coaches and strength professionals understand the principles of progressive loading, recovery, work-to-rest ratios, and the careful integration of multiple training elements in a complementary fashion. These are the same principles required to master EMS technology with an athlete.

Any coach that is comfortable with implementing effective conventional training programs should have no problem understanding the value and applications of EMS for their athletes. We must not take the attitude that coaches are children, not to be trusted with such sophisticated technology. People are using smartphones on a daily basis with technology that is a thousand times more sophisticated than a simple EMS circuit board.

But before everyone rushes out and purchases a new EMS unit, we should talk more about how it can optimize the preparation of your athletes. There are infinite reasons to use the technology on a daily basis, particularly in professional sport where the schedules are ambitious and the wear-and-tear on the athletes is significant. Remember, we are all breathing, walking, and talking because of our brain’s ability to send electrical impulses throughout all areas of our body in an exceptionally coordinated fashion. Without electricity, we would cease to be thriving organisms. Although electricity can be considered a hazard, in the right amounts and forms, it can be used effectively to further our health and well-being. In some instances, innovative medical researchers, like Dr. Bjorn Nordenstrom, have done truly amazing things. Dr. Nordenstrom successfully used electricity in the treatment of cancerous tumors. While we do not expect all EMS users to solve the world’s health problems, we can expect to find simple and effective ways to improve muscle function with some straightforward guidelines.

Below are six reasons why the sporting community, both competitive and recreational, should embrace EMS technology on a broad scale.

Research has proved that EMS works. Positive results support the use of EMS for strength enhancement and performance gains. Like any training tool, you will achieve optimal results when using the technology appropriately in terms of specific settings, timings, frequency, and overall volume of work. In cases where EMS did not produce performance gains in trained athletes, the researchers did not use the technology appropriately in conjunction with a well-organized training program. This is the key. Simply slapping on the pads and turning up the current is not enough. You must have clear goals and objectives for EMS, as well as a plan for how and when to use the technology.

Coaches maximize EMS benefits when they integrate the units with well-planned conventional training. Many research studies say the use of EMS alone, at best, provides the same benefit as voluntary training, that EMS is no better than regular training methods. Because EMS requires no central nervous system input, it will not fatigue the brain of an already over-taxed athlete. The combination of conventional training and EMS provides a significant advantage over either method alone because the cumulative effect of both methods provides a boosted training scenario with less energy cost to the athlete. This is a win-win proposition, especially if the stresses of life and training over-stimulate our athletes’ nervous systems.

EMS delivers a clean, complete muscle contraction. Our athletes are over-inundated with excessive “noise,” but not from iPods or fashionable headphones. Accumulated stress, both physical and psychological, can create not only excessive fatigue, but also interfere with athletes’ thought processes and autonomic signals within their brains and bodies. If we rely solely on voluntary strength training to prepare athletes, we are selling them short. Using an EMS, an athlete can contract a muscle group more completely and cleanly than by lifting weights. EMS bypasses the “noise” and works directly on the muscle to get a complete contraction. This is particularly important when targeting fast-twitch muscle fiber, which you can preferentially target with the correct stimulation frequency.

If you plan to use EMS as a sole means of eliciting strength gains in muscle, you can be certain you will get a more effective muscle contraction—albeit using an appropriate amount of current—than when training three times per week. However, I do not recommend that you rely exclusively on EMS for your strength training unless you are using it for rehabilitation purposes, or you are trying to reduce wear-and-tear on a specific joint structure. EMS works best when integrated with a conventional training program that requires a coordination component for more efficient transfer of the training adaptation. You will achieve the best results by supplementing conventional voluntary training with EMS sessions in proper proportions, supported by general conditioning and recovery.

Using EMS makes us more intelligent coaches and rehabilitation professionals. Not only does the use of EMS make us think more about the recruitment characteristics of skeletal muscle, but it also helps us to diagnose problems related to fatigue and injury in both the peripheral and central nervous systems. When an Olympic weightlifter had suffered a significant knee injury, voluntary strength training was not restoring the atrophied quadriceps muscle. In essence, the lifter’s brain was not allowing the muscles to contribute fully to the movement of the knee joint in basic squatting and pulling motions. The message from brain to muscle was not getting through, and inhibition was dominating the program. Even when my team started using EMS, the amount of current required to contract the quadriceps muscles on the injured leg was two to three times that of the healthy leg. As a diagnostic tool, the EMS unit also indicated when the inhibitory response was dissipating, and larger volumes of conventional exercise could be successfully reintegrated into the athlete’s training program without re-injuring the knee.

The reconditioning specialist, Bill Knowles, brought up a good point that all peripheral injuries are also “brain” injuries. A muscle injury damages the connections between mind and body and thus disrupts the brain. EMS helps to repair those connections and work through the inhibitions created by the brain’s self-imposed protective mechanisms. In the case of the Olympic weightlifter, the use of EMS was essential in moving past the obstacles and inhibitions to providing maximal recruitment of that muscle group on the injured leg, particularly since we could strengthen the quads without stressing the knee joint. Once recruitment patterns were re-established and, through both isolated EMS use and superimposed EMS training, the quadriceps muscle was fully restored, the knee did not present any further problems for the athlete.

In cases of both fatigue and injury, the signals between the brain and the body are easily disrupted. EMS can not only restore, but also enhance those connections. Additionally, EMS can help assess the neuromuscular system by monitoring the amount of current required to contract the muscles in question. As the neuromuscular system improved through the rehabilitation process, less and less current was required to attain a full contraction. Monitoring the levels of intensity on the EMS unit can show the progress of muscle-rehab (and the central nervous system) in injured states.

EMS facilitates recovery. In tight schedules, when athletes might not have the time or energy to implement recovery and regeneration protocols, EMS is an extremely useful tool. Active recovery protocols that encourage circulatory mechanisms within the body help facilitate a more complete and expedient recovery. Optimally, athletes can implement tempo running, but sometimes stationary bike intervals or swimming-pool exercises can hasten recovery. Because not all situations are optimal, other tools can aid recovery. Athletes take the EMS units home after training and apply them riding home (not while they are the driver, of course), or when sitting down and reading or surfing the Web. Typically, an athlete places the EMS pads on larger muscle groups and employs a pulsing program not only to promote circulation, but also to loosen muscle and reset tone.

EMS is effective in situations where athletes must travel. Long trips and waits in airports can be not only exhausting, but also can lead to the stiffening of muscles and joints. If athletes perform periodic recovery protocols with an EMS unit, they can keep their bodies supple and well maintained, in terms of oxygen circulation and removal of waste products. Athletes report feeling significantly better after using the EMS unit for their trip, and some sleep better when they arrive at their destination.

It is also important to note that athletes using maximal strength, power, and speed protocols with EMS have reported feeling more recovered the next day in terms of muscle looseness and joint mobility. EMS has the ability to essentially reset muscle tone and provide athletes with not only the means to contract muscle more efficiently, but also relax and de-contract muscle more effectively. This benefit is critical in explosive cyclical movements, such as sprinting, where the nervous system is required to contract and de-contract muscle in a very short amount of time, at very high speeds. EMS can help these athletes minimize muscle stiffness, cramping, and general peripheral fatigue.

Current portable EMS devices are exceptionally convenient. My first EMS was a large device that fit in a medium-sized suitcase. Now, EMS devices are slightly bigger than a smart phone and can pack a pretty good punch. The portability of the devices, combined with easy-to-use adhesive electrodes, make them a strength training and recovery device that you can carry in your pocket. As mentioned previously, the travel benefits of EMS are obvious. Having one in every athlete’s gym bag is an obvious solution for getting that extra edge, particularly if you don’t have an entourage of support staff to help you with recovery and massage. If Bill Gates wanted a personal computer on every person’s desk, why can’t every athlete have a personal EMS unit in their equipment bag? The portability, power, and efficacy of these devices are indisputable.

My recent conversations with a number of professional sports teams (NFL, NBA and NHL) confirm that athletes who rely on their bodies for their income realize the benefits of EMS. The schedules and demands of the regular season are so stressful that every athlete needs help with their recovery and the maintenance of strength. EMS provides a simple, convenient solution to this problem.

It is important to note that not all EMS devices are created equal. Less expensive EMS devices are available online in the $100-$300 range. While it may seem that it is a cheap way to get into the market and still get the benefits of electrical stimulation, there are some significant shortcomings of the cheaper units in terms of power, flexibility and build quality.

I chose to work with Globus Sport and Health technologies on their SpeedCoach series of muscle stimulators because they have very robust and powerful units. Their lead sport technology engineer, Giovanni Ciriani, created programs and protocols that work with athletes. We work iteratively to determine which programs yield the best results with athletes in different sports, and we make changes to accommodate their needs. In the last few years, we have developed programs and protocols that no other company has in their units. Because we work with athletes on a daily basis, we have the ability to monitor progress and make changes where necessary. This information is funneled back to Giovanni at Globus, and he makes the necessary adjustments to waveforms, frequencies, pulse widths, and timings.

My hope is that more and more coaches and athletes recognize the benefit of EMS technology in the next few years. The technology has not changed much since the 1970s, but we have made great inroads into the development of the protocols surrounding the technology. This is where the big advances will be made: Optimization of protocols and the most efficient integration with conventional methods. Such advances can only be accomplished by working with EMS and athletes on a daily basis. So don’t wait any longer and get yourself a high-quality EMS unit to advance your knowledge and improve the development of your athletes.

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By Mark Branstad, Founder Tracking Football

“TrackingFootball.com is at the forefront of extrapolating data that could begin to quantify the benefits of playing secondary sports — namely track — as they relate to football.”
– Dallas Jackson, Creator of NationalHSFootball.com

Track and Football Connection

More than 1.1 million high school athletes play high school football each year and over 600,000 male athletes participate in high school track and field. These numbers indicate only a portion of what is a truly a complimentary connection between football and track. Each year almost 60% of football players drafted by the NFL participated in high school track and field; more than half of all Division I-FBS football recruits participate in track and field. A terrific article on this subject, published by FreelapUSA.com, was written by track and football coach Tony Holler.

TrackingFootball.com was created to research this connection and take a much closer look at the multi-sport connection that exists between football and other sports. Approximately ten years ago, Mark Branstad (founder of TrackingFootball.com) began researching the athletic backgrounds of tens of thousands of college and NFL players. Specifically he began gathering track and field stats and data on individual sport participation by players.

Over time, Mark’s database grew to over 25,000 players spanning from the 1970s to current college and pro players. Eventually, the high school track data began to show solid correlations between individual track performance and the likelihood of player advancement from one level of football to the next. Certainly the high school track data provided hints of overall athleticism, but it also provided some intangible information. Data indicates that competition in other sports and exposure to other athletic disciplines might play a role in football development. Dallas Jackson, a former Rivals.com editor, recently wrote an article about TrackingFootball’s use of track data for football athletic rating purposes. Jackson writes that despite pressures on today’s highly rated football recruits to focus exclusively on football, the vast majority continue to participate in high school track and other sports.

The Player Athletic Index

The observations led Mark and the other members of TrackingFootball to develop a football athletic rating system, the Player Athletic Index, or PAI. The Player Athletic Index is specifically designed to rate the overall athleticism of high school football players based on a variety of factors or metrics. The PAI give each player a score between 0 and 5.0 based on height, weight, football position, track and field performance data, and other high school multi-sport participation.

The PAI gives an easy-to-understand general athletic rating that allows high school athletes to compare themselves to each other and to former players. The PAI is based on objective measures such as track and field data, height and weight data while being position specific. Because track and field data is based on standardized distances, measures, methods, and weights, much of the subjectivity around the discussion of “football speed” and “football explosiveness” is eliminated. The PAI was not designed to determine football skill, but rather what level of overall athleticism, speed, and explosiveness a position player has, relative to another player.

The Strength Coefficient Score

TrackingFootball recently developed a strength coefficient scoring system for high school athletes in the weight room. The strength coefficient score is derived from weight room numbers of over 15,000 high school varsity players over the last decade. The data and scoring system was compiled and organized by high school coach Brian Spilbeler. The score is comprised of bench press, parallel squat and power clean lifting data, along with player bodyweight and a few additional proprietary calculations. Like the PAI, the strength coefficient is a score between 0 and 5.0. High school players can use the strength score to compare themselves against other current and local players, or to get a general sense of their relative strength in each lift.

TrackingFootball’s High School Profile System

How do high school players access TrackingFootball’s database of players and get PAI and strength coefficient scores? It’s easy! All high school players, freshmen to seniors, can create their own profiles on TrackingFootball.com, for FREE. Each player that creates a profile has access to every player profile in the system, including new profiles of current high school players. Every player that submits accurate track and field data will receive a PAI score. Additionally, every player that submits accurate lifting data will receive a strength coefficient score. The profile system is a great way for high school players to highlight their multi-sport athleticism and specific track and field data. All profiles and profile data are accessible by college coaches and recruiters. The system is completely FREE to high school players and athletes. High school players create your own profile today!

Below is a sample TrackingFootball.com high school profile.

How do football fans and track and field fans access this data?

Fans of track and field or football can go to TrackingFootball.com and sign-up for a FREE fan membership. (Requires active e-mail address.) This membership gives access to athletic and track data from TrackingFootball’s massive database of current and former college and NFL players. This data is not available anywhere else! The site is updated with new player profiles and athletic data every month.

For more site information and access to TrackingFootball’s social media pages:

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Recently there was an informal discussion on Facebook about VBT (Velocity Based Training). Carl Valle asked several of the participants in that discussion if they would formally respond to a series of questions related to VBT. Here are the answers from Dr. Bryan Mann. The answers from the other participants will be posted when they are made available. You may submit questions to Dr. Mann in the comments section below.

FREELAP USA: Olympic-style lifts are very specific to body types and technique, making them more than just a simple summary of peak or average output. Besides using feedback for motivation and accountability, what else can be done to use the data beyond estimating work?

BRYAN MANN: Well, for one, the bar path can be tracked with the GymAware. For those who are big in Olympic lifts, it is good to see what happened and where it happened. From a longitudinal standpoint, I don’t think that is it. A quick turnover of force is one of the main reasons (besides speed-strength development) why Olympic lifts are great for sports. With certain devices, you have the ability to measure the descent of the bar as well as the speed of the descent. I will say that this really only matters for Olympic lifts done from the hang, and this is the only type of Olympic lift that most teams do consistently here at Mizzou.

We have had great successes with it. Engaging the stretch/shortening cycle requires fast and violent movements. Some devices let you see the length of time for the eccentric, the dip that occurs, and the speed that it occurs at. If fast and violent is what you are wanting, are you getting it? I don’t think this is something that you use as feedback necessarily (unless it’s just as a teaching tool for a day or two). It is more of a way for coaches to evaluate their athletes. If the eccentric portion of the initial movement is looking good, and their concentric is looking good, the transfer will be higher. Sometimes we get too caught up on the concentric portion. We must realize that there are two portions to this movement.

It reminds me of vertical jumping. Ben Peterson said that vertical jumping is a skill, and he is right. People learn how to jump higher because that is what we as practitioners care about. The athletes will rely on their strengths to give you the best number. Those who are more strength-dominant and don’t really have that neural “twitch” will go for longer slow dips to allow the longer acceleration time to reach a higher speed of the center of mass upon takeoff. Others who are more “twitchy” go for a rapid shallow descent and rely on neurophysiological mechanisms like the stretch reflex to develop more power.

I think it is much the same on the clean. One athlete may go with a long slow eccentric to hit the concentric velocities and move greater loads. Another athlete may have much shallower, rapid descent, yet moves with the same velocity and the same load. Which one is right? If we look at the force signatures that Cal Dietz published in Triphasic Training, we would say that you want the second athlete’s signature. The ability to quickly absorb and reproduce force may in fact lead to the quicker changes of direction necessary in team sports. I will say, though, this is something I have just started looking at. So I can’t really say, “You should be looking at this dip, for this time, at this velocity.” I do think that this is something valuable to evaluate your program. In the future will we have enough data to say something definitively? I think so. I’m just not sure right now.

FREELAP USA: Jump testing sensitivity is not perfect from the sensitivity being limited, but more reactive options that utilize the stretch shortening cycle add more validity. Is jump training worth doing regularly, a waste of time, or perhaps valuable enough to explore?

BRYAN MANN: If we are talking about monitoring training loads, it’s good to explore. Recent research tells us that tracking peak velocity is going to be king. It is far more sensitive than jump height or flight time, and does a better job of picking up differences than force or power.

There are several other things that would be good to monitor if we are looking at countermovement jumps, depth jumps, or anything of that nature. For depth jumps, there is of course ground contact time to factor in as well, and I think that is a crucial measure. For the jump height, it is so multifactorial. When doing more than one repetition (which I believe you should), if the athletes are given feedback, they will change their technique to get the highest possible jump. They may increase their descent distance to increase the time spent in acceleration before takeoff. Having other things to monitor such as dip and eccentric velocity allows you to delve even more deeply into the jump and get more information.

I’m all for parsimony. Let’s get the most amount of information from the least amount of testing. While the vertical jump used to be the gold standard for monitoring, it really isn’t any longer as it isn’t sensitive enough. Many things can confound the results. Using technology, we can look at multiple factors that go into the jump. These different factors—such as flight time, dip, eccentric velocity, concentric velocity, and height—provide nuggets of valuable info. Is one piece of information more critical than the others? Well, some people say peak concentric velocity is the best predictor, but maybe it’s only because no one has found the Holy Grail yet?

A podcast with Carl Valle—who is also on this roundtable—mentioned using 40kg as the load for the jumps. You are getting weekly longitudinal data and a small training effect. Squat jumps are ballistic in nature and thus have a very minor deceleration phase—if one exists at all. But what’s wrong with getting some ballistics in every week? Nothing. It is going to help improve the athlete’s RFD.

Whatever type of jump you do (countermovement or non-countermovement), be consistent. Do it on the same day or same phase of the week. For instance, if a baseball player on a 5-day rotation always lifts 2 days after pitching, always do it on that day (instead of a typical 7-day rotation). That way you can tell when/if something is changing/happening. This is crucial to help determine what/when changes occur.

This is something else that I have just started playing with in the past couple of weeks so I can’t give any definitive info. I feel bad saying this over and over, but I’m just really delving into GymAware and all of its capabilities. We (okay, I) have been using the concentric everything as a gold standard for so long, but I have noticed a lot of unaccounted-for variance in things. I think a lot of this can be covered with things like eccentrics. I reserve the right to be wrong on this, but what I’m looking at right now seems promising.

FREELAP USA: Submaximal loads are great for estimating repetition maximal abilities, and research is showing evidence that general exercises and lift velocity can predict what one can do if the load is heavier. One worry coaches have is that submaximal loads with maximal effort for velocity is fatiguing. What is the best way to implement one-repetition estimation with submaximal loads?

BRYAN MANN: This one is purely theoretical for me. I think Mladen has done more with this question, so I’d read his answer. If you don’t have time I’ll give something that’s theoretical from my standpoint. If I remember correctly, at over 60% of 1RM the mean propulsive velocity and mean velocity become closer and closer. If you hit the first set or two at 60% plus at max velocity, you could predict the 1RM for the day. Utilizing that 1RM, you could choose loads based on that and do them at an entirely volitional velocity. For instance, if my first set at 60% showed that today my max was at 135kg instead of 125kg, then I could use that 135kg to base the rest of my sets for whatever % of 1RM I had intended for that day and perform the exercises using volitional rather than maximal intended velocity.

On the other hand, I’m not sure why coaches are worried about velocity being fatiguing. ALL training is fatiguing. If the goal is just simply maintenance of strength, okay. However, I am most concerned with performance. All of my volumes are done in a manner which will keep performance high and total volume relatively low. I am not concerned about the velocity being fatiguing, because I’m looking at like 10 total reps of squats, etc. My in-season training is all based on strength-speed or speed-strength utilizing high velocities. This is what is most important for most team sports in-season. During the off-season, isn’t stressing the athlete and causing the adaptation the point? If we want to cause an adaptation to occur, we have to impose an overload of a specific demand upon the body.

FREELAP USA: Most holistic programs in the weight room and on the field use different strength training modalities, not just one type of lift. Besides alternating intensities and volumes, does bar velocity-type tracking help with better adaptations biologically to the body? Many coaches are looking into hormonal and gene activation as part of the training process. Is this a wrong path or a good idea?

BRYAN MANN: I truly believe it is, and it goes back to specificity. I know people disagree with me on this right now, but I’m not sure why other than the fact that it’s new. If you asked what % of 1RM should you be training at to develop strength-speed, people would tell you around 50-65% or maybe even 70%. But if you tell them a velocity range they look at you like you’re crazy.

We all know that strength is extremely variable, as was alluded to before. Mladen in his paper showed what he later let me know was his own training and its variations. He saw an 18% swing on any given day, so some days the %s would be way off and others he would be lucky and be right on. We know that velocity and % of 1RM are so consistent. Something like 98% of the population when utilizing maximal intended velocity is within ±.04m/s for each of the %s (I think some of this variation is by height. This is something I’m looking in to for the future. I think we may find some interesting stuff, such as when you’re dealing with major height variations, some things may change). So if we use the corresponding velocity to the % of 1RM, we will be using the right weight on any given day.

I go through all of this to relate everything back to the SAID principle. We have to impose the proper demand on the body to get the specific adaptation we are hoping for. If we know we want to develop strength speed, we are looking at .75-1.0m/s (40-65ish% of 1RM); for accelerative strength .5-.75m/s (around 65 to 80ish% 1RM); for absolute strength, under .5m/s (85-100%). Simply using velocities that correspond to the % of 1RM desired allows you to be right on the load you are utilizing, rather than hoping to be lucky that it was correct on any given day.

I think it’s a good idea to use hormonal and gene activation as part of the training process. We can take evidence and research that has already been done and try and figure out how to manipulate it for the best results. I think any changes that come as a part of training would be great, but I am not so sure about any gene activation done through exogenous substances.

However, how many coaches are going to be looking at actual changes in DNA? How many strength and conditioning coaches have the money to be doing western blots and the like to be examining DNA? Also—does it actually matter? I think it is great to examine what the actual outcomes of training are, and what things are influenced. What really does happen to mTOR during times of low, moderate, and high aerobic activity? What really does happen on the cellular level to signal greater hormonal responses? How do we alter these signaling pathways?

While these are great things to know and understand, I don’t see coaches looking to do genetic testing on their athletes. It’s cost-prohibitive. We know about C-reactive protein, test:cortisol ratios, VO2 Max testing from Bruce protocols, Wingates for power, etc., and most people don’t utilize them because of time and cost. Do we take what we know from science and apply it to training? ABSOLUTELY! But I don’t think it’s necessarily the best utilization of resources to spend money on genetic testing. I think results could be better seen with cheaper means. Are they running faster and jumping higher and changing direction more quickly? If they are, I think this is what really matters.

FREELAP USA: Following up on genes and hormones, muscle-fiber profiles of athletes are gaining interest. Could coaches do a better job of individualizing training based on one genetic trait—specifically the amount of fast and slow fiber distribution?

BRYAN MANN: Interesting that you pose this question. I think that to some point, yes we could. Recently we examined all our football players and some different things that make them who and what they are. One thing that has long been talked about is somatotype through the Heath Carter equation (I’ve got a poster presentation on this at the NSCA National Conference for anyone who is interested). We found that—except for ectomorphs—the athletes did not respond to training any differently. They responded best to decreased volumes, especially at higher intensities.

This is not to say that differences among other sports don’t exist, as this was very much a homogenous group. While the positions vary in their makeup, all rely on strength and power for optimal performance. It would be interesting to see the results from a more heterogeneous group such as an entire track team. How do individuals respond to training, such as long distance vs. throwers? I’m going to guess it would be different, but can’t say for sure.

I really feel like this individualization of training is like the Wild West. There is so much going on and so many buzzwords associated with it, but does it make much of a difference? Well, for 85% of our team it really didn’t make a difference with how they responded, but for 15% it did. Is that sampling error and population bias? Perhaps. Might it be different for the general population? To me, the frustrating and invigorating parts of this profession are the unknowns, solving those and then finding out what else we don’t know. It’s a never-ending cycle, and the great thing is that you never know what you’re going to run into next.

I think that fiber typing could play a critical role in training. I’ve noticed over the years that the guys who are your Ferraris—with the highest type-2 fiber makeup—seem to benefit most from small volumes of high-intensity, high-velocity work. They need longer and/or more frequent rests. If they don’t get them, they start to break down.

These are the guys who are often the freaks you work with only a handful of times in your career. In the 16 years I’ve been in this field, I have come across maybe a dozen. They are the stuff that legends are made of with their athletic abilities. But not every guy who jumps 40 inches is a Ferarri, I might add.

At the opposite end are the Diesel Duallys, the guys who are high type-1 fiber (or at least I’d assume they are). They just get better with every attempt, and it seems like they don’t start to even get warmed up until the 3rd or 4th quarter. We had an athlete who didn’t start improving his 40 time until about his 6th or 7th attempt, and not PR until his 10th. With 40s, I’ve always maintained that when they drop below 97% of their best run of the day, they are done. For most of our athletes, that was 2-4 repetitions.

But this guy would run a 40, do a jump test, then an agility test, and come back to run another 40 and keep going for over an hour. Then he’d do his best performances. Now, don’t go saying that “Well, obviously he wasn’t warmed up yet.” I have never been one who trained individual athletes, and this guy did everything and he did it right. We didn’t have to watch for him skipping out on stuff like warmup exercises and what have you. He just took a long time to warm up.

I’ve recently been reading Winning, a book by Jack Welch, the former CEO of GE. A former CEO recommended it to me for leadership and how to run a department. (By the way, if you want to know how to lead and provide direction, I’d say CEOs of multimillion-dollar corporations would be a good start). Welch talks about the typical breakdown of employees. You have your top 20% who are your stars, your middle 70% who are your workhorses, and your lowest 10% who are just your bottom feeders.

Most people would think that you need to spend the majority of your time on your stars, to make sure they shine. Well, that’s really not the case. You need to spend a great amount of time on your middle 70% and provide them with all of the resources you can and keep them moving in the right direction. This is where your future stars will come from, and presently are the source of most of your profits.

I think the same principles apply to training large teams (football, swimming, etc.). You spend most of your time determining the best training for the middle 70%, then use whatever time is left over trying to make sure your stars and Ferraris get what they need. If you have either a small team or a large coaching staff, allow one or two of the staff do what’s best for the Ferraris.

One of the great things about VBT is you’ll also quickly be able to tell who your Ferraris are and make sure that they’re using the right loads. We had one football player who was really in the wrong sport. He was extremely fast and explosive, and would have done a helluva a job in the indoor 60 and the outdoor 100. When we first started utilizing VBT with him, he was able to move much higher velocities at the intended loads, and did well with heavier loads at the appropriate velocities when we backed down the volume. VBT allowed us to have the red flag to catch that Ferrari who we might not have noticed until much later. Regardless though, from day 1 he was using the right load for himself.

Now, back to the question as I got off track—could coaches do a better job of individualization? Most likely yes, though I do think that first off they need to get that middle 70% correct before they worry about spending time doing individualization. If they don’t, they’ll be looking for another job very quickly.

FREELAP USA: The final need of coaches is to make training work better in reducing injuries, improving speed and size of players, and transferring to sporting actions like deceleration and jumping. How does Velocity Based Training do this with athletes?

BRYAN MANN: I think autoregulation and specificity address all of these points. I will point out that first the athlete should get strong. This takes care of all of those points. Research on Division 1 football players by Jacobson (and I believe Krause was the other researcher) showed that increasing strength improved speed, explosive ability, and change of direction for about the first year. After that, increasing strength did not increase those qualities. At the point when power and speed are no longer improved by getting stronger, we need to look to increase RFD or other things.

I’m currently working on utilizing our longitudinal data to examine the effects of utilizing velocity on improvement of power, speed, and agility over the course of a career as compared to a long-term program that did not use this implementation. I feel that I often say “I’m working on something for this” all of the time. Maybe I could get something done if it weren’t for this pesky teaching and coaching I’ve got to do on top of the stuff that I WANT to do.

Using VBT can help with the speed and other sporting actions to increase the quality of work by giving feedback. A study by Randell et al showed that by giving feedback of the velocity of the lifts (with all loads and volumes the same) to one group resulted in significant improvements in speed, jumping ability, and change of direction over a second group that did everything else the same but received no feedback. I also think that combined with the feedback, the specificity of load with maximal intent helps with the improvements. When you know the trait that needs to be developed, having nearly every rep of every set at the appropriate load with maximal intent seems to bring about great changes in the athlete in terms of the transfer to performance.

As far as reducing injuries, using VBT helps adjust the load in congruence with the other stressors on an athlete. I’m sure most of us have read Selye’s The Stress of Life or Sapulsky’s Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers, and we have seen that stress in one area of life affects the body in the same manner, albeit not with same intensity.

When I was working at a smaller school, we had a fantastic off-season program. Guys were just throwing up their loads like they were nothing. One of the last sessions got us really excited about testing. Our football guys were across the board just smoking their sets with 92% for doubles. We were scheduled to test shortly after, and we happened to do it during midterm exams. We had several guys getting stapled with 85%, and most only getting their 92% for their max.

What happened? The accumulation of stress affected them physically through what is called psychoneuroimmunology (say that 3 times fast!). I’m not going to lie and tell you that I knew what had happened right off of the bat—I didn’t know for about 10 years. I just knew what happened and it was so drastic that it stuck in my mind. I finally figured it out in 2012 after talking with health psychologist Dr. Brick Johnstone. When I talked about it as well as the injury rash during the previous year, he mentioned, “Oh, you’re talking about psychoneuroimmunology. This is what it is, how it happens, etc.”

We did statistical analysis and found that we had basically three types of weeks: high-stress weeks (pre-season camp), high academic-stress weeks (a lot of tests), and low academic-stress weeks (no major tests). What was interesting was that during the pre-season, the guys in the two deep were something like 2.8 times more likely to get hurt as during a low academic-stress week. Even more interesting—almost mind-blowing—was that during the academic-stress weeks, they were 3.2 times as likely to get hurt as during a low-academic stress week. In other words, someone in the two-deep was more likely to get hurt during a test week than during training camp. Talk about shocking!

During the in-season, all the lifts at the core of our program are done off of velocity. We have found that this helps normalize things for our athletes. The ones playing a lot are often a bit more beat-up from additional reps in practices and games. Their current 1Rm might be lower due to the stress they are undergoing. The backups or those who don’t play at all might actually increase in load from week to week and gain strength. The main source of their energy expenditure and stress is in actuality the strength training.

I bring all of that up to make this point: Strength is variable, and it is very variable due to all of the other stressors that occur in your life. While some talk about the fatiguing effect of maximal intended velocity, I think that it’s a good thing, especially when you stay at the higher velocities. It greatly regulates the loads that can be utilized. If athletes are fatigued, they reduce the load they are lifting because their 1RM isn’t what was tested months before; it was much less that day. With the utilization of velocity and its near-perfect relationship with 1RM, the proper load is always utilized. By tracking these loads longitudinally, we can see what long-term adaptations or issues are occurring.

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Related Articles

Mladen Jovanović Responds to Velocity Based Training Round Table

Mike Tuchscherer Responds to Velocity Based Training Round Table

Dr. Mann’s eBook Developing Explosive Athletes: Velocity Based Training is available at EliteFTS.

By Mladen Jovanović

Recently there was an informal discussion on Facebook about VBT (Velocity Based Training). Carl Valle asked several of the participants in that discussion if they would formally respond to a series of questions related to VBT. Here are the answers from Mladen Jovanović. The answers from the other participants will be posted when they are made available. You may submit questions to Mladen in the comments section below.

I want to thank Carl and Chris for including me in this roundtable discussion, but I also feel a moral obligation to state my current lack of “skin in the game” (to use author Nassim Taleb’s expression) when it comes to coaching in general and using VBT in particular. Most of my thoughts come from previous observations and current tinkering; hence they need to be taken with grain of salt. I am hoping to get back to coaching and VBT, and I also plan on pursuing a PhD on this very topic.

FREELAP USA: Olympic-style lifts are very specific to body types and technique, making them more than just a simple summary of peak or average output. Besides using feedback for motivation and accountability, what else can be done to use the data beyond estimating work?

MLADEN JOVANOVIĆ: There are some “fractal dimensions” to this question, since the answer would depend on the level/scale of the implementation. In other words, it depends on who we are talking about: team-sport athletes using Olympic lifts to develop power, or Olympic lifters trying to get better at their discipline. The amount of details and their “ruggedness” at different levels makes this a “fractal problem.”

To be upfront immediately, I am by no means an expert in Olympic lifting. Kinetic and kinematic bar path traces, combined and synced with high-speed camera and even force plate—along with the experienced eye of the coach and subjective feel of the lifter—might be helpful at this level of implementation to help identify “performance limiters” and hence direct training. This way data can be used to help prescribe training, rather than just describe it.

One needs to be cautious with feedback, since not all feedback is useful and could even be harmful. For example, take average team-sport athletes performing Olympic lifting. Feedback such as peak or mean velocity might be motivational and create competitiveness in the gym, but could also be harmful for lifting technique. Assume I can clean 100kg, but now I am doing sets of three with 80kg with full clean from the ground. Now, someone attaches LPT to the bar and tells me to increase the velocity of the lift. What do I do? I probably pull more powerfully and as a result the bar ends up flying to a higher position. This eventually results in a power clean (or even muscle clean for lighter weights) version of the lift.

The “problem” with Olympic lifting and LPTs compared to, for example, jump squats or hex bar jump squats, is that it is NOT “open-ended”—the bar needs to end up at a certain height with a certain “rhythm” regardless of the weight used. Some Olympic lifting coaches might even say that the lift should look the same regardless of whether you use 90% or 60% of your best lift.

Hence the velocity variability between different loads should be minimized. This is, in my opinion, completely different than “open- ended” lifts such as the jump squat where one tries to jump as high and/or fast as possible. In this case, feedback such as height and or velocity of the lift is motivational and will increase the power/effort and the technique will not be affected as with Olympic lifting, where the goal is to perform skillful movements at a specific rhythm rather than maximally.

As I have said earlier, I am by no means an expert in Olympic lifting and someone please correct me if I have said something stupid and wrong here.

FREELAP USA: Jump testing sensitivity is not perfect from the sensitivity being limited, but more reactive options that utilize the stretch shortening cycle add more validity. Is jump training worth doing regularly, a waste of time, or perhaps valuable enough to explore?

MLADEN JOVANOVIĆ: To use jump training for estimating “readiness” or NMF (neuromuscular fatigue), one needs more sensitive tools and methods. Simple jump height will not do it because one can have high NMF and still perform countermovement jumps (CMJ) to the same height. What changes is the way that height is achieved, or the “process” behind the jump. Height is just an outcome. Please note that I am talking about estimating readiness and NMF is not a performance indicator.

I would also tend to agree that the more “reactive” the jump, the more it might tell you about NMF. Using 20kg CMJ might not be sensitive enough to estimate NMF since athletes can “grind” it through.

I direct interested readers to the work done by Rob Gathercole (see my interview with Rob HERE) and Kristie-Lee Taylor (see her thesis on the topic HERE).

Speaking of using jump testing—or any other “readiness” estimate to individualize training—it shouldn’t happen acutely. In other words, we are looking for trends and creating a longer-term “prescriptive model” for an athlete based on reaction trends, rather than jumping on “red flags” to adjust daily workouts. So what if your HRV is lower by 10 than yesterday, or your jump power is lower by 5%? We need to rule out normal biological/measurement variability. Even if the real effect is the case, we want to check what caused it and what will keep causing it and will it stay for long. The goal is to modify the long-term approach rather than jumping to every twitch in the data. We also need to develop “robust” (or should I use Taleb’s term antifragile?) athletes who perform even better despite having a bad night sleep episode (new fathers will know what I am talking about!).

FREELAP USA: Submaximal loads are great for estimating repetition maximal abilities, and research is showing evidence that general exercises and lift velocity can predict what one can do if the load is heavier. One worry coaches have is that submaximal loads with maximal effort for velocity is fatiguing. What is the best way to implement one-repetition estimation with submaximal loads?

MLADEN JOVANOVIĆ: Eamonn Flanagan and I have expanded on this question in a recent Journal of Australian Strength and Conditioning article, which I believe is currently the most applied VBT article for coaches available. I suggest reading that article for further details.

Long story short, one needs to know each lifter’s MVT (or minimal velocity threshold, a fancier term than velocity at 1RM) for every lift (or use generalized velocities—they can be pretty stable across different lifting abilities). Bench press tends to be 0.15 m/s (mean velocity) and squat around 0.3 m/s (mean velocity). One can then proceed by performing at least 3 warm-up sets with increasing weights (hopefully covering a range of at least 0.5 m/s) performed with maximal effort. Using simple linear regression, one can estimate weight at MVT. This can be 40%, 60% and 80% or 1RM. This can give one a quick estimation of 1RM (i.e. daily 1RM) that could be tracked over the duration of the training block and used to make adjustments if needed, or to basically see how the athlete is reacting to the training (if the goal is to increase 1RM).

FREELAP USA: Most holistic programs in the weight room and on the field use different strength training modalities, not just one type of lift. Besides alternating intensities and volumes, does bar velocity-type tracking help with better adaptations biologically to the body? Many coaches are looking into hormonal and gene activation as part of the training process. Is this a wrong path or a good idea?

MLADEN JOVANOVIĆ: Two studies have shown that providing feedback via LPT when athletes did CMJ improves both acute power and reliability and chronic increase in power compared to a non-feedback group (PubMed Link1, PubMed Link2). Does this mean using VBT in other movements, such as squat and bench press, will yield more dividends compared to traditional percent-based approach? To be honest, I don’t know. I can only speculate that using VBT might help in more individualized prescription of the loads (especially taking into account day-to-day variability in readiness) which might allow a lifter to lift more when ready and lifting less when not, along with providing more effort in the lift by the sheer existence of real-time feedback.

But training individualization does not only mean providing “relative” load (e.g. using 85% 1RM) or using velocity (i.e. do I get more training effect if I lift in 0.5-0.3 zone or 0.4-0.2?). It also helps to select the right method to yield the highest transfer and adaptation. An interesting study by Beaven, Cook and Gill (PubMed) showed that athletes achieved the highest increase in 1RM when they performed a training protocol that yielded the highest increase in salivary testosterone. This might be sets of 10, or sets of 5. In this case, salivary testosterone serves as a “proxy” in finding the right training protocol.

In my opinion this comes back to figuring out the best prescriptive approach for an athlete based on the data (impulse vs. response modelling) instead of jumping to “science fiction” ad-hoc training modifications based on some daily measurements. I believe that we might find out different proxies to such a relationship, such as hormonal profiling or even genetic profiling. Time will tell, but I do believe that VBT might also be the step to the right direction.

FREELAP USA: Following up on genes and hormones, muscle-fiber profiles of athletes are gaining interest. Could coaches do a better job of individualizing training based on one genetic trait—specifically the amount of fast and slow fiber distribution?

MLADEN JOVANOVIĆ: I am a sceptical empiricist: if it is backed up by research and practice I don’t see why not. One thing to consider is that this ratio might be already expressed in load-velocity and velocity-exertion curves (or any other performance profiling) and might be implemented “implicitly” with some ideas from VBT. Again, individualizing what athletes can do utilizing their relative performance (i.e. %1RM, %MAS, etc.) and current readiness (i.e. velocity zones since they take that into account, HRV, and so forth) might be a step forward. But it might not represent what athletes should do to improve. Hence, even if the FT:ST ratio might be expressed in athlete performance levels (and hence implicitly expressed in relative workloads), it might also necessitate different training protocols, similar to the above scenario with salivary testosterone.

I hope one day we can plug a lot of features into predictive models and generate some inferences regarding different optimal approaches to training depending on the athlete’s qualities. But a lot of confounders might affect predictive power of this model (e.g. sleep, nutrition, and so forth). Until then, we should try to find some proxies that could be used and helpful. And as Bryan Mann said, we need to figure out the middle 70% correctly before worrying about individualization, at least in team sports.

FREELAP USA: The final need of coaches is to make training work better in reducing injuries, improving speed and size of players, and transferring to sporting actions like deceleration and jumping. How does Velocity Based Training do this with athletes?

MLADEN JOVANOVIĆ: You can still break an athlete even if you use the latest technology and gadgets. We are always looking for the magic bullet—but if you allow me to use Taleb as a source again, the best predictor of something sticking around is how long that thing has already been around. Take, for example, cooking devices and cutlery—they have been here since, well, forever, and probably will continue to stick around even if we invent Star Trek’s food replicator. Hence we need to stick to the proven basics—I see VBT only as a tool of doing basics better.

Please share this article so others may benefit.

Related

Bryan Mann Responds to Velocity Based Training Round Table

Mike Tuchscherer Responds to Velocity Based Training Round Table

Velocity Based Training articles available on Complementary Training.

By Chris Korfist

My introduction to Dr. Peter Weyand came late last century on a snowy day at Benedictine University in Lisle, Illinois. Respected Illinois high school coach Ken Jakalski led a seminar featuring Weyand and his new research on sprinting speeds.

At the time, Kevin O’Donnell and Loren Seagraves were the rage with their Speed Dynamics VHS tapes. Every coach had their own copy. They could recite all of the drills from “A” skips to whatever the last alphabet letter they used. You weren’t a good sprint coach unless you had all of your athletes lined up doing the drills in unison.

I can still hear the sound of a good practice because everyone’s feet were hitting in unison. And in the back of all the coaches’ minds was the stride rate vs. stride length controversy. This was such a powerful, overriding factor that we even had sticks set out to work length or shorten the distance-to-do rate. And on acceleration days, we threw out the slats with rope to measure the lengths of acceleration. Those were the days.

Jakalski’s entertaining introduction reminded us of our journey with speed development, touching on such cool toys as the Kolka Thigh Trainer, Russian parachutes, and other well-marketed devices that caught the attention of desperate sprint coaches who had a spare Benjamin or two in their budgets. He ended with the statement that Dr. Weyand was going to change all of that. And he did.

Dr. Weyand is not a sprint coach. At that time, he was a Harvard University researcher, working at a nearby one-time Nike anti-aircraft missile control center. He had a force plate and high-speed cameras that recorded animals and people running. If my memory serves, he started working for the US Army to look into calorie expenditure and running. From there, he looked into birds running, like ostriches. That led him to limb repositioning.

In his paper “Faster top running speeds are achieved with greater ground forces not more rapid leg movements” (Journal of Applied Physiology, 89: 1991-2000, 2000), he determined that repositioning of legs was just about the same in everything he tested. (Everything except the common house cat. He had every kind of animal and human run on the plate but couldn’t get a cat to do it). He even inherited a lion that had started living at the facility.

What was cooler than the roaming lion was Weyand’s conclusion that what determines speed is the amount of force an athlete applies to the ground. This not only applies to humans but also to animals as well. The really fast ones—cheetahs, ostriches, greyhounds—hit the ground much harder than sheep, lions, and other slower animals. I have Boerboels. They are very fast for big dogs, just for about 50 yards. When they go by, you can hear the thud of their feet on the ground. When my really fast sprinters go by, it is like a drum. Weyand concluded that the harder you hit the ground, the faster you are. He compared the world’s top sprinters to other runners and found the same thing.

That is my dog MBumba. He wins all short races. He can generate some force.

The seminar was a game changer. But, it was only a game changer in theory because no one gave any tips on how to develop the ability to put force to the ground. It was a brand-new game. Is it strength or stiffness that needs the work? Do we do a ton of plyometric work? Do we start lifting large amounts of weight?

Both create problems. Plyometrics are often supported by two legs and lack the challenge to the lateral chain that is so important for a stiff contact. The strength portion is too slow and sometimes not in the proper range of motion. I have seen many athletes who can lift the house but can’t run. Others can’t deadlift much but run like a deer. So where does that leave us?

Before I get to the weight room stuff that I found to be very effective, training the test is very effective. Sprinting itself can have a huge impact on vertical force. Like Tony Holler preaches, electronically timed short sprints are the best way to develop sprint speed. There is no way around it. Start with fly 10s and gradually spread out to 30s by the peak of the season. In The Rise of Superman, Steven Kotler writes about the importance of Flow. Flow is the neurological state necessary for optimal performance. Immediate feedback is one of the keys for Flow.

So at our practices, people scream out numbers so athletes immediately know exactly how they did. That creates a reaction in the brain to do better, or ride the wave and do even better yet. Every night after practice, I post times which show improvement (or lack thereof) from the previous workout. All this creates a positive environment. Most times, our practices become more competitive than our meets. So even if all you have is a short hallway, that’s enough for an effective workout. I have had the luxury of a 200m track for the last 9 years. All we need is a straight and that is enough for most of our workouts.

But, if you are short of space or want to change things up, you can try this workout I created several years ago. It has proven very effective for my athletes.

The first exercise is a psoas and glute exercise. If you read my previous post, “5 Effective Glute Exercises,” you know about the relationship between the glute and psoas. I want to establish this relationship in most of these exercises. I also want to establish the scissoring action of the knees.

In his book Strength Speed: Technology and Training for Sprinter Speed and Long Jump, Swedish coach Jan Melén shows the differences between athletes of varying levels and their knee lift. I think we all agree that faster sprinters get their knees high. Part of that knee height is a reaction to the drive onto the ground.

But there is also an element of psoas activity. If the psoas is not firing, the knee lift will come from the hip flexors in the thigh and will not have the power to lift the leg all of the way to a position with the torso past 90 degrees. This exercise drills the knee lift. The athlete has a strap around the thigh and standing straight brings the knee past parallel.

When I tried it on my kBox, it lit my glutes and psoas. Initially, I used a weight that was too heavy. It went to my quads and was ineffective. I called the guys at Exxentric and asked them to build me a very small plate so my body would not cheat. Two weeks later, I received a package from Sweden with a tiny kBox plate. (Thanks Erik and Andreas! Great customer service! Something lacking from some other companies mentioned in my other posts.) The tiny plate rocked it. My glutes were burning after a set and the psoas was jacking my knee up. When I stepped off the machine, I felt like I could fly. Awesome! I tried it with some rubber bands. Not as good. It doesn’t have the eccentric pull that the kBox has, which seems to really fire the psoas.

What does this have to do with ground force? If the psoas and glute are reciprocal functioning mechanisms, the glute will work better if the psoas is firing. And, since the glute is in its peak contraction at the midstance phase, we are strengthening this pattern where we need to. Timing is half of sprinting. But in the weight room we never work on that. Now we are.

The two best. Do they have huge rectus 6-packs or huge psoas underneath that push the 6-packs out?

The second exercise is a reactive single leg squat. We challenged the push of the swing leg knee with our kBox psoas lift. Now we will weigh down the stance leg. I use my Hammer Strength deadlift, but dumbbells work well as do rubber bands—or any combination of the three. The athlete picks up the weight and does reactive quarter squats up to his big toe. To work on timing, the swing leg will come high. And the top of extension, the athlete will rapidly drop back down and repeat.

The keys are an ankle bend into a rocker position and a slight hip bend so the glutes and hamstring will need to extend. I usually hook my micro-muscle lab to the bar to monitor force output but it died on me. The Gymaware people don’t respond to emails so I am waiting to hear back from them so I can get back to measuring. I have been measuring this output for years and my fastest runners are the ones who put out the watts. It never fails. I usually vary between 45-135 lbs. After that the power output drops.

The third exercise is kickbacks on the Shuttle MVP. Now we are leaving the ground. I adjust the weight to less than body weight for weaker athletes so their contact time is quicker. I weigh down stronger athletes and really force them to hit the plate hard. Some athletes like to be face-down and others on their side. I don’t put them on their back because foot placement is too far in front. No Shuttle? No problem. Hang some rubber bands from the ceiling or the top of a squat rack and do French Contrast jumps, a la Cal Dietz. Again, the body weight can be controlled by the strength of the band.

The fourth exercise ties everything together. We call it Boom Booms because I want to hear the foot punch the ground. The second boom comes if we want to do two contacts to the ground. I stole it from Frans Bosch’s Running DVD (I stole a lot from that DVD). Athletes start with a butt bungee around their waist and walk out to tighten the band. This gets more glute function, though I have no proof other than feel. They lift their swing leg and arms to a perfect position. Quickly they step down with the swing leg, scissoring their legs. The swing leg hits the ground and punches back up to the starting position.

In his book, Melén shows the positions of where knees pass each other in a variety of sprinters. The faster the athlete, the further away from the ground the knees pass. From the picture, you can see that there are different surfaces on the floor. I want them always changing the surface. Sometimes I put 5-pound plates under them to make them uneven. There are lots of variations to this exercise that we use but I will cover those on my forthcoming warm-up and lateral chain articles.

The last exercise is a fly 10. We do 2-3 to warm up and get a top time and then start to cycle through the exercises. The kBox is great because I can take it out to the track and do kickbacks and single leg squats with it to try to replicate the full indoor workout. The athletes usually feel great when they run and the neural drive for the exercises sometime coaxes some really good times, even after they are fatigued. When their times slow more than 5-6%, I stop them. It is usually 2 cycles.

This is a great workout because it kills two birds with one stone. The athletes get a “weight room” workout and sprint together. I think one of the biggest barriers for high school athletes today is doing too much. Dawn patrol workouts, breakfast club, Animal farm, etc. before school and sprinting after creates a horrible recovery situation. It is just way too much. And it is not just their coaches. It is them too. They will sneak off to Lifetime Fitness to get more in and the body, both neurally and muscularly, never gets a chance to recover. I see it every year. The ones who don’t get better do too much. I see when I muscle test as well. I am sure the Omegawave and Bioforce people are tracking that also. Rest is a workout and drugs are not an option for the people I train.

When I used this workout extensively, my athletes had their best fly 100 times and ran some of the fastest times in Illinois history. Why did I get away from it? I get bored like you do. I constantly look for new stuff when I already have all that I need in front of me.

Here are some ideas I play with. Maybe something to them, I don’t know. The second to last one has John Fox pulling over my 4-way hip machine. That is some power.

We all have groups of student/athletes who we hope we can change their lives. Sometimes you have a group that changes a coach’s. This group ran 41.84 and 1:26.06, two of the fastest times in state history. (From left) Tarrance Williams, who graduated from Eastern Illinois. You all recognize him as the Eastbay catalogue model. Jimmy Sullivan threw the javelin for University of Illinois, spent a semester in Patagonia in National Outdoor Leadership School, and then walked across South America. John Fox ran at Illinois, but his career was curtailed with a recurring hamstring injury. He is enrolled in law school. Khara Williams is currently breaking into a career in theater.

Jimmy Sullican on the far right.

Tarrance on the cover of Eastbay and a book cover. Look at his ankle rocker.

This is a 40-inch jump by Khara. Watch the shadow in the background.

This is another group of athletes. The first one is a long jump state champion and all-state 100m. The second is a girls all-state 400m runner. And last is a good high school sprinter who ran 11.4 FAT.

Speed Activation Consortium

Chris Korfist will be teaching these and other speed training techniques at the Speed Activation Consotium in Lombard, Illinois on June 19 and 20. Other presenters at the consortium include Tony Holler, Cal Dietz, Jeol Smith, Dr. Kerry Egan, Dr. Tom Nelson, Dr. Kerry Heitkotter, Dr. Eric Janota, and Dan Fichter. Make your reservations today here.

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By Craig Pickering

Learning a new skill is hard. It becomes even harder as you get older. Skill learning is much easier at a young age as our brains are significantly more “plastic,” better able to make new connections and retain those connections longer. This creates added difficulty for coaches, as their athletes are almost always at least in their teens and often even older.

Sprinting is a highly technical skill. When I was 24, I changed coaches. My new coach demanded a much larger technical base than my previous two, and therefore wanted to make sweeping changes to my sprint technique.

Two years later, I made an ever bigger change. I transferred to bobsleigh. This transfer required me to make huge technical changes, as well as learning new skills.

Fortunately, some practices can make transitions such as these easier, both for athletes and coaches. I used some of those practices in the aforementioned situations, when I had to learn or re-learn a skill in a relatively short period of time.

I began by trying to form an understanding of the skill. I would practice the new movement pattern at my own pace. Getting the muscle-firing sequence correct is really important. With sprinting, this took the form of walking drills. I had to make sure I was putting my body parts in the right place by using the right muscles at the right time.

I find walking drills really useful because they allow the development of specific strength in a particular area. As an example, let’s say an athlete is having trouble maintaining ankle dorsiflexion during the maximum velocity stage. Focusing on this particular aspect during actual sprint training might be counter-productive, as it could take a lot of brainpower. Poor technique may also be due to fatigue, so trying to correct it during a fatigued state will be ineffective. Building up the strength capacity of a skill during low-speed movements such as walking is a great way to overcome this situation.

After mastering the basic movement patterns, I begin to layer in greater skill learning challenges—perhaps doing them at high speed, performing movements requiring more coordination, or chaining two drills together. This is aimed at further challenging the learner. These challenges are useful as they lead to greater stress within the brain, which adapts by forming new connections. The linear trend then continues, with the athlete attempting to use the new technical skills in real time, seeing if they can continue to put the skills they have practiced at low velocity in place. This in turn leads to still further coordination challenges.

As a real world example, transitioning to bobsleigh was a serious challenge for me. I was used to starting from a 4-point position in blocks, then accelerating to maximum velocity on a straight track. Now I had to learn how to start from a standing double-footed stance, execute a complex technical skill to overcome the bobsleigh’s inertia (“The hit”), undergo resisted acceleration as I was overcoming force from an external object, and get into that external object. Whilst running downhill. On ice. This tough new skill was further compounded by the need of getting into the bobsleigh at a specific time and a specific order, relative to my teammates doing the same thing (“The load”). Mistakes at any point could be very costly, so clearly learning the correct skills was incredibly important.

How did I do this? First off, I watched video of the world’s best bobsleighers performing this skill, to form a mental picture of the technique. I then practiced on the push track by myself, slowly building up my confidence regarding pushing the bobsleigh and getting into it. I did all of this at low speed at first, challenging myself each session to get quicker and quicker.

The next step was learning to push from the side of the bobsleigh so I could be a part of a four-man squad. I went back to basics, taking two steps with the bobsleigh, then getting in. Then four steps, then eight, then twelve, gradually going further as I grew more able and more confident. Then I increased the speed and learned how to push on both the left and right handles. After that, I learned how to push with another person. Then with two other people, and finally as a full squad.

All the time I was pushing myself further by layering in extra challenges. But I never neglected the basics. In every session I warmed up with single-man pushing, making sure I was mastering the basics. On 4-man push days, I would do a 2-man push with a partner beforehand, making sure my timing was right.

It is important for a coach to consider an individual’s preferred style of learning. Some people are visual learners, some are auditory, and some learn kinaesthetically. Certainly, I learn in a different way than my peers. I have found that to learn a skill properly, I need a mental image of someone doing the correct technique—a perfect model. I then compare myself to that model.

The problem I always faced was that it was hard to know how I was performing relative to that perfect model because I lacked the internal “feel” of the skill. Although I was carrying it out, I couldn’t picture myself doing it, so I couldn’t reference it to my perfect model.

Fortunately, I found a way round this obstacle: video review. I quickly discovered that videotaping sessions was incredibly helpful because it gave immediate feedback. I could make my attempt at the skill, then have a visual picture of how I performed the skill. I could use this visual feedback and compare it to how the movement felt, which allowed me to build up my kinaesthetic awareness of what the correctly executed skill should feel like.

My attempt to become much more of a front-side dominant athlete provides another real-world example. To achieve this goal, I had to run taller, limit my hip extension, and improve my hip flexion. The problem was that I had an ingrained movement pattern. It felt normal for me, but was not what my coach wanted.

The first step was watching film of me running “normally,” then comparing it to the technical model. I could see how I compared to that model, and see (and understand) what I was doing wrong. If needed, I could then try something else, and build up an internal feeling of this skill. After each running repetition, I could watch the video and see if it was correct or not.

If I had executed the correct technique, I would search for that internal feeling. If not, I’d look for a new feeling. Over a period of time, I erased my old habits, and my new technique became natural. This “natural” feeling is especially important in sprinting, because the action must be unconscious. If the technique doesn’t occur without conscious effort, then the athlete will either revert to their old technique under pressure, or make a conscious effort to carry out the correct technique. The outcome is the same in both cases: running slower.

Now, as a coach, I often use video review. I find it really helpful in pointing out flaws in technique. This is especially true with a high-speed camera, which can reveal errors that may not be visible to the naked eye. Many athletes aren’t even aware of the errors they are making, so the first step is understanding. Being able to watch themselves on video increases this understanding.

The next step is for the athlete to build a new kinaesthetic model of where their body parts are in space and time, and again video allows this to happen. As the video feedback occurs very quickly after the skill attempt, this review happens while the feeling is still fresh in the athlete’s brain, allowing for much more actionable feedback.

In bobsleigh competitions, we would use video review between runs to make sure we were loading at the correct places and not making any mistakes. If we were we could make small changes. When I was a member of my national squad, we used video review between heats and finals to ensure that the changeovers were happening at the right place, and make small changes to optimize our performance.

Overall, then, video review can be incredibly useful, at all levels of the performance ladder. It’s also very cheap and accessible. I do most of my video review using a free app (Ubersense) on my iPad. You can use other apps (either free or low-cost), on a variety of devices. I can send my recorded video to the athletes I coach, allowing them to watch and review on their own time. This enables them to build up a video bank of successful and unsuccessful skill attempts, and compare and contrast them.

Video review is a good way for athletes to increase their understanding of a skill. In group-based video review sessions, the athletes can analyze and critique their peers’ techniques, offering helpful tips on how they overcame similar problems. This groupthink allows individual athletes to hack their own problems, increasing ownership of their training. It also works well as a team-building exercise, providing that the athletes are mature enough to handle the feedback.

Finally, it allows athletes to become their own coach. With athletes I have worked with on numerous occasions, I will ask them what they think of the video. What are they seeing? What went well? How did the feeling match up to what they are seeing? All these questions further improve the athlete’s understanding of the specific skill, and sprinting in general, leading to better-prepared sprinters.

This is also an example of using delayed feedback. One potential drawback with immediate feedback like video review is that the athlete may come to rely on its presence. However, when you turn the interaction around and ask athletes to critique themselves, the feedback is often more thought-driven and effective—as long as they have the technical knowledge to self-analyze.

I recently read Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning, an exceptional book by Peter Brown, Henry Roediger, and Mark McDaniel. The book focuses on educational science and common mistakes made within the learning process. It focuses mostly on school-based education, but there are definite lessons that can be applied to sports.

One is that reflection is a form of practice. After training, reviewing your performance through video allows you to build your technical model, as well as revisiting the kinaesthetic feeling. This strengthens the connections within your brain and leads to more effective learning.

Other ideas put forward in the book echo what I have picked up throughout my career. The authors posit that repeated skill retrieval embeds knowledge and skills so that they become reflexive. Going back to my bobsleigh example, I was always going back to basics in warmup. This constant retrieval was incredibly helpful, as it made the whole process run smoothly. As I continued to carry out the skill, it became automatic. Running downhill beside a bobsleigh no longer took mental capacity. Instead, I could watch my teammates and be aware of their loading pattern.

Once I had practiced the loading pattern sufficiently, it became automatic and reflexive, allowing the whole movement to be smoother and quicker. The resulting free mental capacity becomes very important when dealing with mistakes within a competition. For example, if your teammate has left early in a sprint relay because the running side of the skill is automatic, your brain can focus on how best to overcome this problem. The more experience you have in this area, the easier overcoming a problem becomes.

Timing of feedback is also really important when it comes to skill learning. A mistake coaches make quite often is over-feedback, which can confuse the athlete. When teaching an athlete a new drill or exercise, I limit the feedback I give in the first few sessions. I need them to figure out the basics for themselves, and construct their own kinaesthetic feeling. If they are making large technical errors or putting themselves or their peers in danger, then obviously I would step in. However, allowing time for the athletes to figure it out for themselves can be really helpful.

Another important aspect is variable practice. In a closed skill like sprinting, mixing up the environment isn’t that useful. However, for skills requiring teamwork or occurring in a multitude of environments, practicing across these variables can improve the skill-learning process.

For example, practicing changeovers with a large number of different people within a relay team allows athletes to build up a larger library of situations and outcomes within their brain. Similarly, in bobsleigh the coaching staff would often mix up the teams in push training so we wouldn’t get too comfortable with just one combination. This further improved our problem-solving capacity should a mistake happen in competition.

Going back to my earlier example of learning how to push on the side handles of the bobsleigh, I made a huge effort to practice on each side. This improved my learning as it made me practice the skill in different positions, further challenging my brain and nervous system to make new connections. It also improved the quality of practice by keeping things fresh. Too much repetition of the same things can get boring after a while, even in highly motivated athletes.

The way feedback is given is also a really important part of developing an athlete. As coaches, it is important for us to teach athletes that learning is a struggle and that mistakes occur. The key is learning from these mistakes. This enables athletes to develop the desire to attempt new challenges, as opposed to fearing failure. Fear of failure stifles performance, and generally leads to poor outcomes such as increased stress. Ensuring that athletes don’t fear failure is therefore important. How we frame our feedback can have a big impact on the way in which athletes view the process as a whole.

To conclude, skill learning is a process that can be affected by a number of variables. Although everyone is different, and should be treated according to their strengths, a number of approaches help coaches improve the skill-learning process.

Video review is a useful tool, which, if used in a targeted manner at the right times, enables athletes to build a mental model of the correct skill, thereby enhancing the skill-learning process. Video review apps and devices are becoming increasingly more affordable (and many are free!), so the time has come for coaches to experiment and see what works for their athletes and for themselves.

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