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The 10 New Essentials of Training for Power Athletes By Joel Smith, Founder: Just Fly Sports Performance Cover by Jake Clark: designs at oddhorn.com In the world of athletic performance, training means for speed and power are most definitely the “spotlight” methods. Even though it could be argued (not even argued… it’s true) that injury prevention and athlete availability is the most important part of the sports performance field, it’s definitely more fun engaging in the process of jumping higher, running faster, changing directions on a dime, and making athletic, highlight plays. I see power training done well often times, but in many cases, I see athletes performing training they think will help improve their sprinting and jumping abilities, to find it leaves a lot to be desired in terms of results. I wrote the original “10 Essentials of Training for Power Athletes” nearly a decade ago, and in a decade, many of the core principles tend to remain the same, but there are also changes! I’ve updated and renovated my list of ideas for training power athletes to give you a better roadmap in training either yourself or those athletes in your care in terms of their highest power outputs and athletic performance.

Essential #1. If You Want to Improve a Skill, Train it Often (But be Aware of the Need for Change) Essential #2. Always Leave Something in the Tank after each Training Set and Session Essential #3. Use Clusters, Waves, Ladders While Keeping Reps High Quality in Resistance Training for Power Essential #4. Strength Training is Critical, but it is also Critical Not to Obsess Over it (And Understand the Limitations of How Specific the Weightroom can Ultimately be) Essential #5. Train in Shorter/Smaller Blocks and Regularly Assess Neural Response Essential #6. Put More “Money in the Training Bank” Than you Withdraw Essential #7. Forget “The Grind”. Learn to Relax and Be more Gentle with Yourself (and Your Athletes) Essential #8. Understand Range-Specific Effects of Exercises (and Limitations of the Weightroom) Essential #9. Things you Should be Doing Regularly Essential #10. Train According to your “Neural Strength” and Biological Specificity

Essentials 1-3 #1. If You Want to Improve a Skill, Train it Often! (Conversely, You Must Also be Aware of the Principle of “Neural Highways” and Stagnation) Training is really a simple process, at least it typically starts out that way (and we then complicate it). Many times we “train” and don’t even realize it. Perhaps the best example of this is playing your sport, such as basketball or football, where you get a myriad of uncoached, organic sprints and jumps where you are almost an “observer” in your own body performing the skills with relatively good technique in regards to what your body has to offer via its structure. Compare this to actual training where conscious awareness of technique or sensory aspects of the body can really change the movement dynamic (in a good or bad way… and it’s more often bad than good as soon as we try to “coach” movement) and we can also get poor training results by over-engaging the frontal cortex of the brain in search of better technique (i.e. overthinking). Practicing your sporting event is the most specific training you can do, and also one of the most neurologically powerful methods you can manage. If you want to get better at something, you need to do it a lot! If you want to get faster at sprinting, then sprint as fast as you can, as reasonably often as you can. If you want to jump higher, jump high in a variety of ways, and do so often. Making things a “game” can improve the rate of new synapses forming, versus traditional “training”, along with a lower capacity for self-judgment, allowing a greater volume of training to be undertaken. In my own experience, one of the most backward things that hampered my training for years was the suggestion of hitting a skill hard, and then backing off for 4-14 days to recharge before hitting that skill again. The specific skill I was dealing with in that philosophy was vertical jumping. I was convinced that you needed to hit a training session hard, rest a long time, and then when you feel good, train again. It seemed to make sense based on the “Westside Barbell” style anecdote, so I figured it should probably make sense for things like speed and jumping too! This philosophy, although it can offer some results for a period of time, will never be as quick or effective as performing basic and vital skills to athleticism often. John Broz put it well when he stated: “If you only had one month to improve your best squat 100lbs upon the threat of the well being of you and your family, would you do 4-6 good heavy squat sessions in hopes of gaining 20lbs each time, or would you be squatting every single day, hoping to gain a few pounds each day?”. Despite what some textbooks tell me, I would be squatting every day. It is the same with other movements, especially those that are less physiologically demanding and intense than squatting! As a “fascia driven”, or “elastic” athlete (I use my fascia and elastic nature for a lot of my body’s propulsion) I need to be training more regularly than an athlete who uses less fascia and more muscle tissue for propulsion, relatively speaking, especially when it comes to dynamic work (sprinting, jumping and throwing things). Training a movement often brings a phenomenon into play known as “synaptic facilitation”. What this means is that, the more you perform a movement, the more your nervous system will tune into that movement. On the neural level, this means more powerful connections between your brain, the nerves and the muscles they innervate. It also means thicker myelination on the motor neurons which mean faster nervous conduction. This process is best done when athletes are still maturing! It takes longer to form connections in adults, and if you don’t start young, you’ll likely not attain the ultimate levels you could have. Mastery of skill demands repetition. If you want to improve something, you need to be training it often. Maybe not every single day, but at least 3-4 times a week, and possibly 6-7 times. This doesn’t mean that you have to hit that skill maximally each day, but at least touch on it. If you are going for an increased

vertical, try 20 maximal jumps two days out of the week, and go for 30 moderate jumps at 60-70% effort with maximal relaxation three other days out of the week. You will be amazed by the results! The same typically goes for something like sprinting. You can’t do heavy short sprint workouts every single day, as hamstring pull rates will rise and chronic overload will become a reality, but you can sprint hard every other day, and then fill in the gaps with relaxation and sensory oriented submaximal sprint work. At some point after enough work, however, volume and repetition alone won’t give you what you’re looking for, at this point, we need to understand how this principle “inverts” itself. The Inversion of the Repetition Principle Talking about more advanced athletes, it’s important to understand that once a skill is powerful and wellestablished, it delivers more of a “shock” to the body which takes longer to recover from, since one is getting closer to their absolute limit. In these cases, volume and distribution of that skill need to be more carefully addressed, which is why most “mail order” training programs fail to get results at this point in an athlete’s career. An athlete who has been performing a skill for a long period of time, but is failing to see improvements must often take a slightly different approach due to the principles of neural hardwiring, which ironically is often the same hardwiring that allowed them to get better at that skill in the first place (the principle of “what got you here won’t get you there”). The problem happens when either a lack of movement literacy and diversity, or injury, or sensory deprivation (e.g. wrong footwear) causes an athlete’s skill to hit a ceiling or plateau, and then that plateau starts to get hard-wired. Now the only way to break the plateau is to see where the technical or movement block is, and unlock it through the correct training. This training could involve fixing weak points, or infusing new sensory information by which to build a training platform that incorporates more movement options by which the brain can learn a better technique. Finally, there are cases where you can continue to keep going with a high-frequency, high-repetition approach, but the key factor is that you must change all components of your exercise. For example, if you’ve been practicing dunks on a 10 foot hoop frequently, and you are no longer gaining, switch to technically more difficult dunks on a 9 foot hoop for a while, and then go back to the 10 foot hoop after a few weeks or even a few months. In doing so, you should notice improved results. This is very similar to the “Bondarchuk” system of track and field throws training, where, when results stagnate, every exercise in the whole system is changed over. This whole point is in regards to motor learning and specific neurological training for things like sprinting and jumping (unless your sport is a strength sport); we’ll get to approaches on strength and barbell work in a bit.

#2. Always Leave Something in the Tank After Each Training Set and Session! Many athletes (if not the majority) head into the gym, and aren’t happy unless they feel that they pushed themselves to their limit that session. Unfortunately, this practice really taps into performance and power gains over time, as well as increasing the risk of injury. An important principle to consider is what some people know as “training drop-offs”. A “training dropoff” is a percentage of how much your performance degrades over the course of a training session. For example, if I can bench 300lbs max, and lift during a session to the point where I can only manage 270lbs (due to the fatigue of the workout), I have “dropped off” by 10% during my workout (note: this is a lot). If I can perform a standing vertical jump of 30” and by the end of a workout, can only go 29”,then I dropped off around 3% on that workout. Some sources have advocated dropping off between 4-10% per session and then resting by 3 to 7 days after each workout before repeating that movement. Although this

idea can be useful when an athlete has tapped out gains via a high frequency approach (see the previous point), it can make things difficult for athletes who need their nervous systems stimulated more often. Because you must have high quality reps with anything that represents the skill (or is close to it) of what you are trying to improve, it is my opinion that any drop off here should signal the end of the session when training speed, or any specific sport skill. For example, if you are running 30m dashes, and achieve a best of 3.20 seconds on your third sprint, if you run 3.26 on your fourth sprint, you should likely end the session. In some cases, you could run a fifth, but if you again failed to beat 3.20 seconds on that fifth sprint, then you must end the session! If you are practicing jumping and start to feel yourself struggling and jumping lower, then stop the session. Even when you feel coordination starting to degrade, where you have to really rally to maintain technique, it’s often time to stop the session. In higher repetition strength and barbell training, or endurance training, you can drop off a little more since the nervous system component is not as strong, say 2-5%, but anything more than this can take too long to recover from, and in my experience, is too risky of a venture in training. In low repetition strength (now we are getting into more specific skills), the same no drop off rule should again apply, and this is perhaps the greatest mistake commonly made in athletic performance. In this case, when training for either strength or power in the weightroom, think working with any weight above 75% of one’s 1RM, and repetitions below 5, you should always feel as good, if not better, walking out of the weightroom as you did walking in. This is the classic and timeless “Easy Strength” principle, made popular by Dan John and Pavel Tsatsouline from their book with the same name which I highly recommend. In other words, when training the nervous system (speed, skills, power) don’t drop off, and feel better walking away from the session than you did walking into it! If training the structure of the body (such as muscular size or energetics) or endurance (cardiovascular capacity or lactate tolerance) then we can “drop off” in each particular session. My advice here is to start with small drop-offs, and work upwards as athletes can handle and tolerate more training. Putting a big drop off on an athlete with a smaller work capacity and structural tolerance is never a good training situation. If you are using a capacity workout as a recovery day, I would advise not to drop off at all. Training the Nervous System (Sprints/Power/Skills/Heavier Lifting) Training the Structure and Endurance Capability of the Body

No drop-off in performance, quit the training session or est early! Can drop-off 2-5% in performance

You should attempt to walk out of the weight room or the track feeling invigorated when it comes to training strength or power, and not like you just got hit by a truck! The key to long term success is consistent training where you manage fatigue properly. Getting a lot of good, quality reps in over the course of time through a mixture of high-frequency training, novel training stimuli, and occasional lowered frequency training efforts will help to ensure success. Of course, different athletes have different preferences and responses here (see point 10), so knowing how this is the case will help you optimize your training even further.

#3. Keep Training Novel and High-Quality by Using Cluster Sets, Waves, Ladders, and Generally Breaking up High-Rep Lift Sets At its core, training should be simple, but when it comes to barbell training, especially with heavier loads, some creative arrangement with loads and reps can help training to feel more effortless, be more fun, and allow athletes to walk out of the weightroom feeling near superhuman. In order to fulfill the second law, an athlete needs to keep a couple of things in mind in his or her training, the first being to keep the total sets and reps low. By low, I mean under 10 total reps for each exercise when using “straight sets”, and under 30 total reps for each exercise when using other methods such as clusters, waves, and ladders. In the past, I have advocated 20x1 for some lifts, such as the Olympic lifts. As I progressed with this type of training, I started to realize that the first 10-15 reps of this type of work was really just to “punch the clock” on that lift, and try to get in the groove of it a bit better. At this point, we need to ask what the extra reps are accomplishing, especially if your sport is not Olympic lifting. Many times, I would start around 20 single reps of that lift, and then work down to 15 and 10 lifts as the weeks went on. The weeks where I was only doing 10 reps, I was able to put in a lot more energy into my dynamic work such as sprinting and jumping. This is the key: Do only the work in the weight room that is necessary, and then save energy for your work out on the track, the basketball court, or whatever else it is you are trying to improve. I will say that if muscle size is your goal, you will need to do more than 10 reps per lift; but I would still favor keeping the total reps performed under 25 if you are planning on going heavy at all, this being if maintaining or improving power is the goal. A series of 5x5 on short rest with 60-80% of one’s 1RM, trying to keep rep quality high could blend the qualities of power and some size gain in this scenario. For any athlete where power is the ultimate goal, each set quality must be high, regardless of what the total volume of the workout is. This is where clusters, ladders and waves come into play. These are methods that harness the potentiation characteristics of the body, as well as the wave-form nature of reality (if you want to get deep into things) to produce an “easier” workout session in terms of how hard an athlete felt it was, while being able to often times lift heavier weights. Cluster sets are the simplest way to break up a larger lifting volume (think 20-30 total reps) by doing small sets (1-5 reps) on shorter rest, such as 30-60” rest periods. A typical “hypertrophy” or muscle size oriented training set would be something like 4 sets of 10 reps on 2 minutes of rest in the back squat. By breaking this up into 8x5, on 1 minute rest, athletes will get greater strength and power gains, while still improving muscle size. Another way of doing this, but even more in the power domain is 8x3 with 70% of your 1RM and 60” rest. This is a nice, athletic way to facilitate some fast twitch hypertrophy, but you will find it may hamper your dynamic sport practice a bit compared to something along the lines of 3x3. Sample Cluster Set for Strength: 12x2 on 20” rest with 80% 1RM Sample Cluster Set for Power: 3x(3+3+3) on 30” rest with 60% 1RM (5’ between sets) *Sample Cluster Set for Strength-Capacity: 3x(5+5+5+5) on 10” rest with 50%1RM (3’ between sets) *outlier set

Ladders are basically sequential cluster sets, great for acquiring technical lifting ability while also improving strength and power. For example, a “1-2-3” ladder I learned from Dan John (one of my favorites) has an athlete doing 1 rep with a weight, racking the bar for 20 seconds, then doing 2 reps, then racking the bar another 20 seconds, then finishing with 3 reps. After this they can increase the weight and perform another set (or two). Ladders have an advantage on traditional clusters, in my opinion, in their ability to improve an athlete’s technique since greater awareness is drawn to it on the singles and doubles with a relatively lighter weight, that filters into the triple, or even a set of 4 (if you do a 2-3-4 ladder). Sample Ladder for Strength: 3x(1-2-3 on 20” rest) with 65,73, 80% 1RM Sample Ladder for Strength-Capacity: 3x(2-3-4 on 10” rest) with 70-75%1RM Waves are my go-to for Olympic lifts and any power work in the weightroom, and I am far more likely to utilize waves for Olympic work than I am to use straight sets. Wave-loading (waves) allows athletes to use the potentiation ability of their nervous system to make each set “feel” easier, because of the alternation of heavier low rep sets, and faster lighter higher rep sets. An example of a wave for say, a power clean, may be 3-1-3-1-5, at percentages 60% - 75% - 70% -85%. In this manner, the triples potentiate the single, and the singles potentiate the triples, and the final set of 5. It is good to always finish with something fast, in my experience, as opposed to heavy, although for some athletes, it doesn’t really matter (those that do very well with intensity and muscle tension vs. speed). Sample Wave for Power: 3 @ 65% 1RM, 2 @ 75% 1RM, 3@ 70% 1RM, 2 @ 80% 1RM Sample Wave for Strength: 5@60%1RM, 1@80%1RM, 5@70%1RM, 1@87%1RM

Essentials 4-6 #4. Strength Training is Important, but it is also Important Not to Obsess and Split Hairs Over it Strength training is a wonderful tool in athletic enhancement. It is a lifeblood of training athletes in collision based sports, and is an essential tool in injury prevention. Resistance training also “bridges the gap” in helping the average athlete reach levels of force production that comes more naturally to the gifted (although the elusive gap in rate of force production can’t be closed nearly as much as total force production). Although strength training is huge in terms of becoming a better athlete, it can also be counterproductive if it takes over your training regimen, becomes a source of excessive complexity, and digs into either actual sport practice execution or time an athlete could better spend taking a nap or doing other relaxing modalities. For many athletes, especially young athletes, getting stronger in a general sense (think improved ability in full-range of motion resistance training activities such as a back squat, Bulgarian split squat, pushup, pullup, ab wheel, hamstring curl, etc.) will yield an improved tensile ability of muscle, as well as improved “strength in length”, which is an important qualitative concept in regards to muscle-tendon length and function. The majority of scholastic athletes who are in the age where starting a resistance training program is a good idea (ages 13-15 give or take a few years) will generally see good corresponding gains in things like jumping, throwing, acceleration and change of direction abilities with strength work. As athletes move to more advanced levels of performance, basic strength training doesn’t mean as much any more compared to sport specific skill training, as well as exercises that very specifically enhance those skills (for example the Neider press as a specific exercise for developing the shot put throw). In other words, when athletes have been lifting for several years and are starting to reach a higher level of performance in their sport (think collegiate athletes and beyond), the amount that basic strength work will help them improve their sport skills, or even their jumping and sprinting ability (rate of force development) starts to drop off substantially. It is at this point that coaches need to be wise with how long they are spending in the weightroom, when that time and energy could be easily devoted elsewhere in the sport, or to recovery. Dan John has a good idea, or ratio, in “Easy Strength”, where he talks about 80% of an athlete’s time being devoted to sport skill, 10% to strength training and 10% to recovery modalities. A problem that happens when we swing the ratio over to say, 70% sports training, 25-30% strength training and 0-5% recovery modalities (a common theme in training these days, especially in Western society), is that 1. excess energy and (mal)adaptation is now sent to something that is not the athlete’s sport, and 2. Strength training workouts generally get too expansive and complex, with all forms of powerlifting derived training means often utilized when it is unnecessary, or excessive coaching and quantitative analysis of barbell based movements, when barbell movements are not the athlete’s sport. I’ll be the first one to say that awesome athletes will typically carry with them big squats and deadlifts, but the truth is that the majority of those athletes didn’t reach those lifts by obsessing over them and putting those lifts as the number one priority in their training. For powerful, gifted athletes, getting strong comes easily! I believe that it was powerlifting legend Ed Coan who squatted 500lbs within his first few times ever lifting weights. I’ve seen track sprinters with little to no lifting experience deep squat double bodyweight within a few months of being exposed to squats. Athletes with big outputs can harness that output into whatever they do, while athletes with smaller outputs will not find an advantage by straining and straining to lift what the gifted athletes can achieve with relative ease. It is important to understand, as with anything in life, that “correlation does not equal causation”.

For example: Obesity is linked to the size of debt bubbles, or stranger yet, ice cream consumption is linked to homicide rates. That’s not to say that lifting heavy weights and getting better dynamic outputs in sport isn’t more closely correlated, but in many cases, there is little to no transfer between getting stronger in say, the squat or deadlift, and jumping higher or running faster. An athlete’s lifting 1RM in relation to their sprint and jump abilities demands more detail than saying “these athletes produce a lot of force”, or “force is force”. The answer is a little more complex than that. Some athletes need to do more “complex” training, or training where weights and plyometrics or sprints are intermixed to really get a transfer. Some athletes need to change the manner by which they are actually lifting the weight, and how their body moves in general. We do know that speed increases will often bring with it force and 1RM increases, but it often doesn’t work the other way around with force increasing speed (sometimes it does, however, but it’s not something to count on). Track athletes will often be able to attain their highest power clean max during the competitive season because the intensity of the sprinting is higher than in the offseason, even though they may very well be doing more volume of the lifting in the off-season. Anything explosive will help a developing athlete drive their lifts up when both modalities exist in the program. I often tell my swim athletes that I want them getting faster in the pool to make their lifts better, and not think of things the other way around (or in other words, put more weight on the bar because you are a fast and explosive athlete and it’s a weight you are now capable of doing easily, rather than straining on the weights because you think it’ll make you faster in the water). There is a harmony between explosive training and weight room numbers. What is more important than things such as lifting heavy is lifting right.

Acceleration  

Plyometrics  

Olympic   Lifting  

Top-­‐ End   Speed  

Heavy   Lifting  

The above chart shows the relationships of various speed and strength training means, and how improving one skill can transfer over into improving another. Chart was taken from page 107 of my book, “Speed Strength” which is an extensive encyclopedia on all things sprint mechanics, strength, special strength, plyometrics and overall training integration for improving athletic speed.

Acceleration  

Plyometrics  

Olympic   Lifting  

Top-­‐ End   Speed  

Heavy   Lifting  

As mentioned in the first chart, there may be more connections between means that exist. For example, for some athletes, heavy lifting may correlated directly to improved acceleration ability (to a particular point). Along with not obsessing over strength training, I find it wise to avoid getting too far down the powerlifting (or even Olympic lifting) rabbit hole for training athletes. These lifts are only tools, and taking them too far leads to adaptations that start to become more specific to the strength sports, powerlifting being the sport that can have more negative drawbacks when taken too far. Examples of taking things too far down the lines of powerlifting sport would include getting too far into the “bands and chains” mentality, which is really designed to help suited powerlifters. Research would lend to the idea that using bands and chains, or similar accommodating resistance can be good for improving the 1RM of an athlete, but it is not helpful for improved sprinting and jumping. In sports, you want to move faster as you start to gain momentum, not slower. This can even be taken to things like jumping with banded resistance. When you use a band to resist a vertical jump, you are signaling the body to be “muscular” and slow when it should be more fast and “elastic”. I think that measuring the speed of barbells can be a valuable practice, but constantly obsessing over multiple categorizations of bar speed, instead of simply using a measurement tool as an occasional means by which to coach and observe maximal intent, can over-intensify the skill of moving a barbell, and make it less of a tool and more of a means to itself over time.

#5. Train in Shorter/Smaller Blocks and Regularly Assess Response to Fine-Tune Programming Linear periodization is the concept of starting the year out with low intensity work, typically done in longer blocks and then whittling down to more high intensity work over the course of the year performed in shorter blocks. The honest truth is that most athletes spend too long building a “base” that won’t even be present in their athletic condition later on during the competitive season. Athletes need to spend only as long in the GPP (“base building”) as is completely necessary. This means that, for some athletes, after a period of active recovery, only perhaps a month of training should be spent focusing on the “general” aspects of training (non-specific work designed to raise work-capacity, improve the ability to adapt to later work and provide a mental break from the intensive training performed the prior season by using alternative, or “same but different” methods). A problem is that many coaches don’t manage the nervous system and central fatigue well once the athlete gets into a module of intensive and specific work. (Sometimes with coaches who don’t know how to manage fatigue well during specific phases, a longer GPP can actually be a good thing.) They tend to make their training blocks too long (or don’t have “blocks” at all), and this can easily lead the athlete into a downward spiral of chronic overloading the same movement repeatedly without and waving or undulation of the training load, or a washout period and selective change of the training means such as that existing in the Bondarchuk training system. The remedy to this is: After a shortened period of GPP, Special Physical Preparation (specific speed/power training that is similar to the competitive exercise) should be implemented for the sake of understanding the individual training response. These early SPP cycles can be thought of as “test cycles” to see how an athlete adapts and responds to the workload, and when they stop adapting to the load and start regressing. Based on the adaptation rate of the athletes, these blocks can be 2-4 weeks long, and I’ve found for explosive athletes in power sports, 2 weeks of load and 1 week of unloading is a common sweet spot. You can’t and shouldn’t maintain this block format forever, but it works well for a large bandwidth of athletes in the power training sector. I’ve seen many successful track and field sprint and jump training models built around this ideal.

The above chart was taken from “Training Principles for Jumpers, Implications for Special Strength Development” by Nelio Moura. Moura is one of the world’s top jumps coaches, and you can see how when training power development in elite athletes, going hard for more than 2 weeks can start to cause decreases in power, so deloads are regular in this system to maintain a high output.

After each 2-4 week block, a week of backing off should be present. During the “back off” weeks, either the intensity or volume of training may be reduced, depending on the wiring of the athlete, and possibly both in some cases.

When creating “deload” or “back off” weeks, realize that many athletes will respond poorly from a CNS perspective if there is insufficiency intensity present. With the ideas of shorter blocks, comes the need to constantly be improving an athletes speed, power and potentially maximal strength abilities (although strength often comes up as speed does when strength training is maintained in terms of training volume). It is important to know that when it comes to speed based athletes, “tapering” isn’t nearly as much of a thing as it is for endurance athletes, or those athletes who train under a endurance or muscle-endurance paradigm. You don’t “taper the nervous system” so for the case of planning training out for power athletes, knowing what training effects particular exercises have on athletes, and how to save the right special exercises and training constructs for the right time in the season is of the essence. Want  to  train  online  with  me?  I’ve  coached  a  multitude  of  athletes  successfully  online,  with  an  extremely   high  percentage  of  PR  performances  and  even  to  master’s  track  and  field  world  records.    If  you  want   another  layer  of  individualization  in  finding  the  program  that’s  right  for  you,  check  out  the  testimonials   and  apply  for  our  online  training  today: https://www.just-fly-sports.com/online-training-application/

#6. Put More Money in the Training Bank Than you Withdraw Training can be related to “putting money in the bank”. You can think of your “balance” in the bank as your physical state of preparedness, i.e., how good of competition shape you are in. Athletes with higher balances are going to be in a lot better shape to set personal bests than athletes with “low” balances. Things that put money in your training bank are controlled and relatively un-emotional (not getting too amped up psychologically) near-maximal efforts (in dynamic activity such as sprinting and jumping) and submaximal strength training efforts that gradually increase in volume and intensity over time (again, not getting overly amped up emotionally for these efforts). Submaximal exercises that can improve motor patterns, and the strength behind these motor patterns (such as 3x150m squatty run, see “Speed Strength” for more information on the squatty run, it’s rationale and integration) also put money in the bank when they are used in context of the weekly workload. For elastic athletes, even repeated submaximal jumping and tempo sprints can put money in the bank by building up the fascial system. Things that take money away from your training bank are competition efforts and PR training efforts that have significant emotional amplitude. Emotionally and physically straining against a heavy weight takes money out of the training bank. Any time an athlete “peaks” and sets a serious competition PR, or strings a couple of decent PR’s back to back in the same event or movement, you can absolutely expect a decline in performance ability for the next couple of weeks. It is just going to happen; I have seen it countless times. Note: Although it is quite easy to find a reason or rationalization why not to 1RM test your athletes according to this logic, there are cultural and psychological elements specific to 1RM testing in a team environment that make this a practice that I see as very important in particular team situations, even if there is a short fall-back period of recovery to work with afterward. If strength is an important part of the team culture, and the risks are minimal, this can be a valuable and almost ceremonial portion of training.

It is for this reason that you need to keep a gauge of your withdrawals vs. your deposits in the training world. The following I would consider to be “training deposits” for speed/power athletes: • Relaxed/Controlled practice efforts in dynamic activity (sprinting/jumping/throws) up to 97% effort. • Sprints and jumps performed in practice performed before a drop-off in power occurs; also performed in a reasonable volume that is consistent with prior training loads. Even the first sprint or jump done at a drop-off has the potential to take away from the training bank, so keep in mind the advantages of walking away from a speed or jump training workout early. • Strength training in a relaxed (no banging head into wall or death metal music) state, under 90% of your training 1RM. • General/Bodyweight strength training/elastic work performed in reasonable volumes • Feeling gratitude throughout the course of the workout The following are things that I would consider withdrawals: Personal best efforts in competition Repetitive personal best efforts in a practice environment (dynamic, sprints and jumping) Strength training over 95% in practice Strength training to failure (reps) in big compound lifts (no problem with single joint lifts, such as arm curls), especially in sets with less than 8 reps • Feeling like you failed at something in the course of the workout • • • •

To reach the highest levels of performance, withdrawals do have to be made from time to time, but they must always be followed up with a period of deposits. What does your training and competing tend to look more like? If you are making withdrawals week after week and are wondering why your progress has stagnated, start making a few more deposits into your training!

Training is an ever-present balancing act between spending the majority of one’s time building up and “adding to the training bank”, but doing so in terms of specificity and not an “aerobic base”, or an excessive work capacity oriented base with no transfer to power performance.

Essentials 7-10 #7. Don’t Press. Relax, and be More Gentle with Yourself (and Your Athletes if You are a Coach) In sport, relaxation is absolutely a key principle. The best athletes in the world are able to achieve their feats by turning on the proper muscles at the proper time, and are able to virtually turn off every un-needed muscle in the movement. Turning on the wrong or extra muscles to complete a movement will cause inefficiency, loss of performance, and increased risk of injury. It is also more draining to your Central Nervous System to be constantly bringing more muscle fibers into the mix than necessary. For this reason, an element of relaxation should be woven into your training arsenal. If you are a coach, you see it all the time; athletes who are not performing to the level they wish, so they try and force the issue, which inevitably results in a compensation pattern. This is observable occurrence with some of the following symptoms/compensations: Tightened shoulders, strained neck muscles, strained facial expressions, excessive arm movements, excessively long pushes into the ground, excessive use of the back and spinal erectors, loud ground contacts, etc. This isn’t to say that there isn’t a particular amount of tension and compression in some muscle chains throughout the body (such as the anterior fascial line in sprinting), but the result of human emotion and conscious beta-brainwaves makes us different in the animals in the way we move versus the way that they do. Unfortunately, none of these compensation efforts on the athlete’s part will help them in reaching their highest potential, in fact it tends to get them the opposite! What tends to happen in the training of many athletes is the negative cycle that follows: The athlete will train too hard and too often, and then becoming tight and rigid in their technique. To “remedy” this, they will start trying to press and push their way past the athletic valley that they are in, only to create more problems down the road, which will typically include injury. Often times an athlete will hit the weightroom harder, or push heavier weights to bridge a technical or a speed gap, leading them again down the road to injury and compromised performance. Athletes need to make sure that being in a gentle (but focused) state is a trademark of your training sessions. A gentle state means that an athlete has a confident vision in their own path and abilities, and emotionally connects with the final athletic destination they wish to achieve with feelings of confidence and gratitude. They also need to focus on the present, connected with this positive emotional state, and not judge their training day against past training days or expectations based on a training goal (goals are important, but when they are used as a source of judgment and potential frustration that takes an athlete out of the present, they become dangerous). Athletes need to take the personal judgment element out of each training day and enjoy the process of training for what it is: a chance to use the incredible machine of the human body to feel fulfillment and connectedness (a little philosophical and esoteric for the sake of this book, but I feel it’s important, since the emotional state of the athlete has a lot of bearing into the results and enjoyment they get from the total process). If you feel a bit rigid or overtrained, take a break or work on an easier facet of your training that won’t compromise a relaxed movement. A great example with this is that of short approach jumping in the horizontal jumps of track and field. Many times, coaches won’t let their athletes know how far they jump on the short approach jumps so that they don’t think of “how far”. Rather, the aim is for the athletes to think: “how technically precise”, which can keep them from bringing compensation patterns in that come with maximal distance attempts.

The same principle can be noted when it comes to Sam Portland’s “Speed Gate Golf”, which yields absolutely tremendous results in improving athletes sprint times. In speed gate golf, the goal is not a maximal best time, but rather, to get as close as possible to an easily achieved submaximal time. In the goal for accuracy, an athlete is not judging themselves, is taking a gentler approach on themselves, and is not bringing compensation patterns into the mix. In taking the gentle path, athletes will achieve better results and find more fulfillment in the process. This same approach can fit for life in general for those experienced in the personal development sector.

#8. Understand Athlete Movement Specificity vs. Traditional Weightlifting Specificity When it comes to training for power athletes, we tend to get stuck in a rut of confirming to powerlifting directed ranges of motion, such as needing to perform a squat to parallel for it to be worth doing. Anything short of a parallel squat is deemed worthless and egotistical by many coaches and gym-bro’s alike. In squatting, we have coached athletes to push their knees out and push through the heels. In bench pressing, athletes are taught to arch their back and squeeze their butt to achieve more power in the press. When doing movement preparation, athletes do a myriad of band ab-duction exercises, but yet the adductors are left ignored. At the end of the day, the weightroom, as traditionally coached is very spinal extension and hip external rotation oriented. It is very heel oriented in terms of where pressure should go. Historically, the weightroom wants athletes to keep their shins fairly vertical and really build up their “hip strength”. Here is an interesting bit of information, however: Athletic movement is very reliant on internal rotation, adduction, the inside edge of the foot (pronation), the forefoot, and the ability to get the knees forward over the toes. I’ve learned a lot of what it actually means like to move as an athlete form coach Adarian Barr. This is the virtual opposite of what is commonly taught in the primary strength lifts. Is there any wonder why there are so many arguments between sport coaches and strength coaches on heavy barbell lifting and movement quality witnessed by coached? Granted, strength training is an awesome stimulus. It’s great at preventing injuries, improving force characteristics of the athlete, putting “armor” on, as well as offering a more joint friendly training opportunity (in its low intensity form). It’s far from perfect though, as it’s traditionally taught, it teaches athletes to pretty much do the opposite of sprinting and jumping from a biomechanical standpoint. I’ve heard forward-thinking coaches such as Chris Korfist talk about (and show video) of how 1 year of a traditional strength and conditioning program robbed an athlete of stride length in a sprint start. Even if there was more “power” in the system, where was that power going?

Weightlifting and barbell training is important, but it’s not perfect! Athletes will increase maximal force production, tendon health and associated injury reduction, better muscle coordination and other benefits, but there are some motor patterns athletes can pick up through the course of barbell training (as commonly taught) that can produce athletic mal-adaptations over time.

To ensure optimal success, we need to look at all training movements, weightlifting and otherwise on the levels of: • • • • •

Pelvic posture, position and sacral nutation (essentially the posterior/anterior tilt of the sacrum) Supination and pronation sequencing of the exercise (i.e. is the exercise shorting the athlete on their ability to pronate the foot, or flatten the three arches?) Internal and external rotation of the femurs What the exercise is doing to the shin angles of the athlete Specificity of range of motion of the exercise, especially after an athlete has achieved an adequate amount of general strength

In other words: Common lifting cues: • • • • • •

“Butt back” “Chest out” “Through the heels” “Knees out” “Sit your hips back” “Get triple extension”

Some common athletic movement factors (Adarian Barr was a huge help to me in learning many of these): • • • •

Finding the inside edge of the foot and pronating properly Shin angles that put the knees well forward over the toes Internally rotation range in the hips Activating adductors as hip extensors

This isn’t to say at all that athletes will never externally rotate, sit their butt back, or triple extend when playing sport, or that there aren’t any athletes that may need help with things like better external rotation of the hips and the associated pelvic positioning, but when it comes to the common denominators that make athletes fast, mobile and powerful, great athletes can do most of the things in the “athlete movement factor list” very well. Finally, understand that range specific factors are crucial when it comes to resistance training and special strength. Once an athlete has adequate base strength levels (and even if they do not, if they present with excessive anterior pelvic tilt) following the typical powerlifting (or bro-science) rules of squatting to parallel or beyond generally stop becoming as important. The closer you get to athletic excellence in whatever sport you are in, the more things like joint range of motion and velocity specificity come into play. The fact of the matter also is that, although barbell full squats vs. half squats are the easiest things to look at here, a lot of sport-specific actions really can’t be replicated well, or at all with common tools in the weightroom, and athletes are better served by those subtle manipulations of their sport skill outside of the weightroom, such as throwing balls of various weights in baseball, or doing assisted/resisted sprinting for speed development, or sensory based sprint drills to improve various lagging actions of running.

#9. There are Some Things You Should be Doing Every Day and Week Some wise trainers have mentioned that, if something is important, you will want to do it every day. Dan John is a prominent figure in this training statement. Each day, an athlete should work on two main things: 1. Movements for general well being, movement efficiency and recovery, and 2. Movements pertaining to their specific sport. #1, on movement efficiency and well-being: For almost every athlete, the things I would recommend doing every day (or almost every day) would be: • • • • • • •

Play based work (if you play a sport, this is pretty easy) Some form of movement exploration (fits with play but can also work with your sport) Isometric holds Coiling work Foot and pronation training Crawling and/or rolling Breath work

Play based work is important from a perspective of both motor learning as well as restoration of the athlete’s mental state and the nervous system. Believe it or not “gamifying” sport skills can result in faster (sometimes dramatically faster) acquisition of the skill. Movement exploration could land somewhere between playing and the standard drilling of skills present in a typical training system. Exploration is essentially a series of movements with emphasized positions and outcomes, but done for the sake of feeling and sensing one’s joint actions. An athlete’s optimal technique in anything is directly related to their own structure and physiology, so it’s important that athletes learn to sense and feel what they have, rather than forcing themselves into something predetermined. Isometric holds are a crucial aspect of tendon and joint health, as well as neurological efficiency. I like these at the end of most workouts. They can also be a nice workout in a team environment for group cohesion in the midst of a team challenge. Coiling work would involve anything that causes an intentional hip-shoulder twist and separation. This type of work is essential to optimize the way an athlete utilizes their “pressure canister”, or in other words their lungs and lower abdomen. When athletes move, the way that this canister loads and unloads pressure is a critical and under-stated portion of human movement. By twisting and coiling, and bringing intentionality into the nature of the hip/shoulder coil and separation, athletes can often get more torque and efficiency in their movement. Foot and pronation training is an absolute necessity, especially in modern society where cushioned footwear and a general lack of movement has disconnected us from our feet. Crawling and/or rolling helps athletes to restore or maintain their reflexive strength, and can also assist with the aforementioned coiling strength. I’ve had athletes make tremendous gains in performance, simply by taking barbell work out of a program for a period of time, and working heavily on the crawl portion of the movement space. Breath work can be used in any stage of the workout, and in many different areas of emphasis. It can be used to optimize the position of the pelvis and diaphragm, or to help an athlete calm themselves down after (or even during) the workout. It also can be used as a means of timing sets (i.e. get three nose breaths in while performing this isometric hold. One area of human physiology that tends to really be under-utilized is the breath.

#2: Things to do perhaps not every day, but on a weekly basis would be: • • • • •

Some sort of sagittal plane vertical displacement movement (like a squat or hex deadlift) Some sort of pressing movement (vertical or horizontal) Hamstring training Pullups or unilateral pulls Single leg work

Going into all these movements in detail would be beyond the scope of this book, but the human and sports performance field is very familiar with them. Many of them (such as hamstring training and single leg) are things that need to be done to keep the balance of the human body in check compared to the effects of doing a lot of sagittal plane, bilateral training. We typically cool down with a barefoot jog. It can be useful to make yourself a checklist of these things for each workout so that you don’t forget! For #2, movements pertaining to one’s specific sport, this was touched on in the first law of this Report Law

#10. Train According to Your Neural Strength and Biological Specificity The final aspect of training power optimally is to understand tolerance to intensive neural loads. Some athletes who have “strong” nervous systems (science is still working to determine exactly what this means but we can surmise these athletes have better dopamine sensitivity and faster signaling rate from the brain to the muscles) can handle a larger volume of things like heavy weightlifting, fast sprinting, explosive plyometrics, and maximally performed overcoming isometrics. Athletes who have a “weaker” nervous system will have lower tolerance to these types of training methods, and will generally do better with lighter weights, relatively less intense plyometrics, and longer sprints that are a bit slower overall. They may also want to swap out some of the intense overcoming isometrics with some lighter yielding isometrics done for a longer period of time. You can also think of it from a cross-country coach’s perspective. Some athletes are low-mileage runners, and some are high-mileage runners, or in other words, some athletes will do better when a larger proportion of their training comes from shorter, faster work, and some do better with more longer, lower intensity work. Some of this comes from the fact that particular biomechanical aspects of an athlete’s running technique will predispose them to injury once they reach a particular mileage, but a lot of it comes from athletes being more “fast” or “slow” twitch in nature, with corresponding similarities in nervous system gearing. In one of my recent podcasts with track and field coach Ross Jeffs (Just Fly Performance Podcast #145), we discussed how Ross was altering track and field workouts to fit the needs of athletes who weren’t able to recovery well from a larger volume of intensive and maximal short sprints. For example, an athlete who had a hard time recovering from 4x40m sprints from blocks done at maximal intensity and maximal rest, may have done better using a workout such as 4x80m done at 90% efforts and a submaximal rest, such as 5’. This may not seem like a big change, but it made a big difference to the athlete! I’ve had clients who responded amazingly to high intensity neural work, such as Triphasic Training or French Contrast style work, but I’ve also had athletes with “weaker” nervous systems who had a hard time gaining using these training constructs and actually got their best results in the past using a low-CNS intensity method such as the “Air Alert” training program, which only increases difficulty on the level of increased repetitions (this is not the majority of my athletes by any case).

Biological specificity can include other facets of an athlete’s physiology that predispose them to a particular type of training, such as being “muscle” vs. “fascia” driven (see my book Speed Strength for more detail on this), or having better tolerance for lactic work and muscle endurance than other athletes. An athlete’s Acetylcholine levels may predispose them to better results from stretch-shortening oriented training than other athletes. Brain chemistry certainly plays a role in all of these, but we are gradually learning more about the how and why.

About Speed Strength To learn much more about this topic in concern to sprinting and athletic speed, check out my new book, “Speed Strength”, which has been positively endorsed by many of the top coaches and researchers in the world. https://www.just-fly-sports.com/speedstrength-a-comprehensive-guide-to-the-biomechanics-and-trainingmethodology-of-linear-speed/

About Joel Smith Joel Smith, MS, CSCS is a NCAA Division I Strength Coach working in the PAC12 conference. He has been a track and field jumper and javelin thrower, track coach, strength coach, personal trainer, researcher, writer and lecturer in his 8 years in the professional field. His degrees in exercise science have been earned from Cedarville University in 2006 (BA) and Wisconsin LaCrosse (MS) in 2008. Prior to his current NCAA DI strength coaching chapter, Joel was a track coach, strength coach and lecturer at Wilmington College of Ohio. During Joel’s coaching tenure at Wilmington, he guided 8 athletes to NCAA All-American performances including a national champion in the women’s 55m dash. In 2011, Joel started Just Fly Sports with Jake Clark in an effort to bring relevant training information to the everyday coach and athlete. Aside from the NSCA, Joel is certified through USA Track and Field and his hope is to bridge the gap between understandable theory and current coaching practices.