Random Resources

INTERNETThere is a site that I was told about a while back that basically has me listening, watching, and reading everything it has to offer. The Canadian Athletics Coaching Centre. This has some great articles from many of the greatest minds in the industry like Verkhoshansky, Viru, Zatsiorsky, and Pfaff just to name a few. Much of it is free articles and podcast as well as some amazing videos well worth the money. I urge anyone to check it out for some serious research and programming from every realm of performance enhancement!!

LITERATUREA book that has been around for a bit that I continuously find myself looking back at is Running by Frans Bosch. Bosch has great insight on many aspects in developing, cueing, and training anyone who runs. He is of course a track coach but much of what he has to say can easily be related to any athlete who makes a living on their feet. Especially his work with plyometrics and observation are priceless.

NUTRITIONThe latest from Michael Pollan, Food Rules, is a great gift idea for the health conscious or someone you know that is trying to eat more clean. It is split up into simple sections and does great job at taking simple concepts that often are confused into complexity by the media. Even for those of you who consider themselves having a strong grasp on their stomach my find some of his outlooks as a reminder of some obvious things you are neglecting.

Max Strength and Aerobic Capacity

Over the last several months and through talking with many colleuges in the field, I found that one of the most misunderstood concepts with development of athletes in many field sports (football, soccer) aerobic energy system development and its key to strength development is often overlooked. Lets look at some of the several adaptations one can benefit from having a optimal aerobic capacity.
At the heart: Increased Left ventricle hypertrophy (eccentric) leading to higher strove volume, increased vagal tone, higher end diastolic volume all creating a larger cardiac output= Increased oxygen supply. Basically, these adaptaions will improve your bodies ability to move more oxygenated blood to the working muscles with less effort. This allows you to accomplish power aerobically before having to rely heavily on the lactic system which fatigues quickly.

At the muscle: Type I fiber hypertrophy, oxidative ability of type II fibers, Increased localized capillarization, Increased mitochondria. These adaptations will increase your muscles abilities to draw oxygen from blood, increased mitochondria will help your muscle regenerate ATP aerobically. Mitochindrial density has also been linked to improvement of muscle contraction/relaxation speed!

Simply, when lifting for maximal strength your body is utilizing the alactic/ATP-PC enrgy system at its highest capacity by quickly breaking down ATP to supply the amount of power needed to execute a maximal lift. The typical rest is 3-5 minutes between sets. What happens during this rest is where the aerobic system is the star. This relaxation is when ATP resythesis occurs in the ATP-PC system. After an intense bout, ATP is reduced to 70% of pre exercising levels and PCr to 20 % PEL. 70% of this is re-sythesized in about 30 seconds and fully in around 5 minutes. The full recovery can be delayed when muscles are occluded from blood flow. Without getting exteremly technical, this fact shows that the adaptations discussed earlier will greatly increase you bodies ability to resythesize the much needed ATP as quickly as possible within the resting parameters.

Don't get me wrong. This isn't saying that you need to be able to run marathons to be able to do maximal strength work. There is however a great benefit of having "optimal" capacity of the aerobic system to set yourself up for success down the road in maximal strength work. Some of hese methods have been discussed previously in my blog (see alactic capacity, Tempo method/oxidative squats). This doesn't stop at max strength but the benefits carry into repeated sprint ability, sustaing power over time, and the ability to produce ATP rapidly aerobically.

Off-Season Part 1

Right now is an exciting time with the team and off-season training. For the first couple weeks it was a lot of regeneration work and getting everyone rested up and healed from the season. Now, we have began our Accumulation phase. They really need a lot of work capacity in order to set them up for the Winter program. Some of the things that I have taken into consideration with this block of the program:

Time under Tension (TUT):

This, for hypertrophy reasons, as well as hypertrophy of certain muscle fiber types is very important. The goal is to increase cross section size of slow/oxidative fibers which will increase speeds at AT. This is extremely important to build this capacity in a sport where there are many repeated bouts.

Corrective Work:

In no way is this inclusive to only focus on corrective exercises for specific areas, though we do hammer those, it also includes making sure we correct many imbalances that occur from the sport itself. We focus a lot on the quality of our horizontal pulls as well and getting our main hip stabilizers up to par as well.

Team Building:

One of the main ways I have instilled some quality team building within our workouts is simply how I grouped the athletes. In previous years we had set times and lifting partners. This was alright but not effective if both partners weren't very intrinsically motivated. Now, we have three larger groups (skill, semi-skill, Bigs) and since we have enough equipment they all are performing the same lift at the same time. The results have been great and the decibel level has risen significantly. When your athletes are being held accountable by the team they usually start to make sure they don't embarrass themselves and most of the time lifting with great effort will be the cure or that.

We are rapidly approaching Christmas break and when we get back we have testing. I am exited to see the results and seeing where we have to build off of. But as of now, the most important aspect of the whole program so far has been the team building or the emotional readiness of the team. Psychology can do wonders for the human body in terms of readiness, stimulation, and personal accountability. I will get some videos up soon with some example exercises/template and how we are utilizing them. Besides that GO HAWKS...BCS victory awaits!

Tape an Asprin to it!!

With any sport you will see your fair share of injuries. So far in football we have had a handful on some unfortunate contact injuries ranging from a back problem, ACL, and a couple hyper extensions. Currently the Athletic Trainers have turned over most all of these athletes to me for assessment/workouts. In doing do I have noticed one very pronounced commonality. Thinking in terms of the mobility/stability continuum, they are somewhat in reverse order. I have only had a few weeks to work on this in terms of reinforcing mobility and stability in the right areas with the team but after looking at these athletes whom are sidelined, it is telling me that there will be a strong emphasis on developing these qualities this off season and now. A couple things I have also gotten done is getting the AT's to stop doing repeated flexion for rehab to strengthen "core" and we have been really working the stability component. Also working on movement patterns especially the squat. Just yesterday, after getting an injured athlete with a knee injury to squat properly, he was bewildered at the fact that all the activation was burning in his hips and he didn't feel that strain one his knees and quads to bring himself up anymore. Improving these qualities and movements hopefully will get a reduction in the amount of athletes standing on the sidelines and keeping them on the field.

People to know so that you can know more

Someone once told me if you want to learn more and make better progress as a strength coach make friends with you athletic trainers. In the words of Billy Madison, "I'm glad I called THAT guy." It just so happens that one of the athletic trainers at my school is as passionate about strength and conditioning as I. It just so happens that he has access to slide boards, resistance bikes, has 10 foam rollers, a couple sets of bands, strong man implements, mini bands, and much more. All this I have been given full access to which it otherwise is off limits too everyone else unless they are an athlete in need of rehab. This will pay off big when writing programs for the football team and of course for personal use ;) SO if you are planning on being involved with any sort of exercise career get a hold of these guys. Make sure they are the ones working with teams though. there are a handful that work the desk and spend there time primarily in the training room. The ones that are working various sports throughout the year see and are confronted with a wide array of things.

To sum it up. Keeping your ideas and thoughts to yourself in regards to training is never a good thing. Often times there are people who know different ways to approach things, they can give you another perspective, and they might just be plain smarter than you. So get advice form everyone. Learn what to do and what NOT to do as well.