Defending the Trap Bar

The topic that probably found itself ranking at the forefront of discussion in the industry over the last year was the debate over lower body bilateral movements. This includes primarily variations of the squat and deadlift. Its my feeling that if you want to take something away it should be for a couple reasons. One, there are other tools that could be better benefiting you in progress to your goals. Two, it is causing harm to your athletes in the form of injury due to poor pattern or poor risk reward. When I look at the trap bar deadlift I can not find a way to justify these questions. Let look at just a few reasons why it can be such a useful tool...

Using the trap bar to teach movement:
It is all too common to find people who are unstable on the deep squat. Stabilization is timing. A key component in the TBDL is the isometric loading you obtain in the start position. This allows the athlete to consciously gauge the feeling of firing the stabilizers first before going into the squat pattern from the bottom up. Also when put into proper position, the only way to overcome the isometric load is them to activate the global muscles through hip extension. This action of isometric loading to active hip extension will allow you to gain the stability so many athletes lack in the deep squatting pattern.

It is easy to modify:
Not every athlete has the warranted hip mobility that will allow them to pick a heavy load from the ground and maybe they are just to tall to safely pick up the standard sized bar. The best part about bar is that the weight is close to the base of support (your feet) and can be safely elevated. This can allow you to make sure that no matter the athlete, proper spine alignment can be achieved in most cases.
Without a lift many athletes with poor mobility/stability lock the back into extension and also will extend the neck as they attempt to bring shoulder back.









With a couple plates or aerobic boxes, you can easily find a range in which the athlete will not have to compromise mobility to achieve the pattern.








Also a great way to reinforce this movement pattern is to do a toe touch progression within a super-set to compliment this lift.






Scapular Stability:
Lets not forget that this wonderful exercise requires strength, stability, and mobility from all areas. A key area of this stability is one that is often missing in many programs. The scap/thoracic region can be stabilized in two ways. One of them, compression, is commonly seen with things like planks and push ups. The second, distraction, is greatly developed in the TBDL. This is when the scapula has to resist a load from protraction. One can identify this when an athlete lifts too heavy of a load and the shoulder drift anterior.

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.

Update!!

Hey everyone!! It has been a LONG time since I have posted. Let me fill you in on what I have been up too and what you can expect for future post.

Summer was extremely busy with lots of hours spent at AP learning from some amazing coaches. College Football season at my school has concluded with a finish of 8-2. There were zero non-contact injuries this year which is what I really am aiming for when developing programs followed by increased performance. The volleyball team is poised to take nationals and also without injuries effecting anything. These were two teams that were plagued with ACL tears and Hamstring strains, both were non existent. One of the high school football teams I was in charge of won the district and made a great run at the state playoffs. Looking back I am extremely proud of these teams and the people in other individual sports that are looking for some great progress in the future. I can't wait to get started in the off season which start today!!

With that being said, I have some great things that I will be implementing with the teams this winter that I am excited to share with everyone. I am also going to be taking a handful of more advance guys and putting them on some different program with more advanced preparations methods more familiar to those who have read up on block periodization. I plan on following these results here showing you everything I am doing with these athletes.

You can also read up on an interview I did early in the Summer HERE!

Hope everyone is doing well and good luck to all those in and out of season.

Summer of Learning

If there is one thing that I would suggest to any young student or aspiring trainer, strength coach, or performance specialist it would be to take advantage of your free time. The best time for any student to get the most education and experience doing something they truly have a passion for is during the Summer months. There are so many great coaches and trainers offering internships and mentorships that it would only make sense to jump at any opportunity you can get to learn from those in the position you some day want to be in.
I recently have accepted to take part in the Summer internship program at Athletes Performance in Arizona where I am more than excited to get started. I look forward to add to my continuing education and sharing some of the great methods to get athletes and clients performing to the highest potential possible. I look forward to keeping everyone updated on my experience and finding ways to integrate the systems and methods at AP for smaller colleges and facilities like mine. So look forward to some great insight from my internship at AP in the near future and hopefully everyone in my position and age are taking advantage of all the incredible coaches out there putting forth these great educational opportunities.

Means of Sport Form

In today, the strength and conditioning scene is overwhelmed with such variety of tools, methods, and programs. On the outside some look very "advanced" and often involve a multitude of different training methods and tools (strongman, speed cord, and unstable training). These often look attractive to athletes but will often lead to poor development of sport form due to lack of specificity at the given time.

There is typically 3 different means of sports development. General, General-Specific, and Specific. When looking at your annual cycle or training stage, it is appropriate to correlate the specific mean of training for the certain time.

One example of a way to plan the means of your training would be in the Conjugate Sequencing with a distributed load. (Note: This is not the conjugate system familiar with West Side Barbell) This would involve General during your preparatory or accumulation phase, General Specific during the transmutation phase, and Specific during realization/competitive. During the development of a specific means of training the others are developed at low volumes. In other words, if it is the off season in football your General means (basic lifts, first plyo progressions, non competitive drill) will be of main focus while the other two will still be developed but in small volumes.
The reason it is so important to distribute the means of your sport development is because it avoids injury. This is where the general part plays such a big role. In your General development skills and lifts should involve basic movement patterns, and development of skill should look very basic and focus on improving your local muscle capacity for your sport aside from performing your sport tasks. The General part of General Specific would indicate that the skill should be just different enough to Specific drills to avoid accumulative stress on the muscles if the specific drills were used all year. Specific should mirror the sport as much as possible and within reasonable methods. These would be some appropriate Means of exercise for various sports:

Football

• General- Olympic lifts, power lifts, any other lift performed with barbells, dumbbells, kettlebells , etc
• General Specific- pushing a weighted implement (e.g. sled, tire, special training apparatus, etc), game simulation wearing a weighted vest, etc for 4-10 second repetitions
• Specific- one on one contests against an opponent for 4-10 second repetitions

Powerlifting

• General- rows with barbells, dumbbells, kettlebells, presses/swings with dumbbells, kettlebells, GHR, pull ups, back raises, step ups, lunges, jumps onto a box.
  
• General Specific- bench presses with different grips, board presses, floor presses, box squats, front squats, SS Bar squats, GM’s, deadlift off of boxes, pins, accommodating resistance with bands and/or chains.
• Specific- competition squat, bench press, deadlift with competition gear and varied intensities

The appropriate Means of development is essential to insure that the athlete has developed a functional capacity or potential early on in training to assure that the body can fully develop and adapt to the demands placed on it in the subsequent weeks of development.

For more info see James Smith, Issurin, Bondarchuk

Prep for Competition Phase

With almost every college sport anymore there are pretty much 2 seasons. The actual season (Regular season, playoffs, tournaments), and an off season competition (Spring practice, Fall Baseball, Spring soccer season). These, although shorter than the normal season in terms of duration, the intensity and frequency of practice can seem very similar. Your athletes must physically and mentally be prepared for both of these "seasons." With the football and soccer teams in the beginning phases of the Spring season here are some considerations in your preparation that you should consider:

3 Keys to Preparation for Competition

1. As a competitive phase approaches it is the time to realize the training abilities developed in a sport specific setting physically and mentally. With the football athletes, we did this physically by progressing them from self regulated fall starts to vocal/visual cues into competitive speed and agility. These drills use the same localized muscles and potential body positions an athlete will face on the field. The competition component forces them to focus on the competition aspect and not other biomechanical things relying on previously learned movement qualities e.g. P.A.L. Mechanics. There are a variety of TAG, Chase, CHAOS drills that in some way or another can serve to fill this component.

2. You also want to avoid any acute trauma via equipment. This is obvious for football...PADS. The best piece of equipment to try and acclimate athletes to weighted equipment is a vest. By utilizing a weight vest in training/ESD/and movement prep, you can gradually get the athlete accustomed to a point that you can avoid too much soreness from that first week of pads. This can make a huge difference in fatigue related injuries. Often the second practice can be seen to have several athletes complain about soreness in the shoulders/traps due to helmet, shoulder pads which can be significantly reduced if properly prepared.

3. With any sport, there is unavoidable trauma that comes along with it so why would you add to that with certain exercises. Take volleyball who is in their spring season right now. They are doing so many repetitive jumps, bounds, and landings that the volume of stretch-shortening in there training needs to be reduced to keep the power output at optimal levels. Also with the football guys who face an abundance of trauma to body parts like the wrist and shoulders. Exercises that require extreme wrist extension or provocative shoulder positions should be reduced or avoided. An example would be replacing hang cleans with high pulls, weighted jumps, or any other triple extension exercise for the time being.

It is amazing how such small aspects of training can help you translate your physical skills that much more while making sure you consider the trauma of sport itself can assure that the developed abilities will be maintained without compromising safety. There are many other things which you may want to consider when approaching these sort of phases in your annual cycle but these three things as seen with preparation, observation, and acclimation can help your athletes perform to the highest potential.

High School Football Results

I have spoken a few times and written an article about the physical preparation of high school football players. Also I have posted a video of one of the high school football teams following this program here. Recently that team has done a great job and as the article said progressively adding small weight to ensure consistent gains with consistent form and execution. Here are some words from the coach and some great results:

"Of the 18 guys I had comparable information from the last time we maxed out in the fall we gained 385 pounds in bench...that is an average of 21 pounds per. Seniors averaged a gain of around 12.5 per man. 9th and 10th graders exploded...... Corey went from benching 115 to 150, Justin from 130 to 165 (he weighs 115 pounds at most). Shane (soph) jumped from 200 to 230, and Chris went from 225 to 265...awesome.. Squats and cleans showed the same types of gains..."

These athletes have been very consistent with attendance and are a very dedicated team in which most of them are multi-sport athletes too. Along with this there have been ZERO non contact injuries which is of course the most important stat when determining effectiveness of a program. You can't play if your hurt.