Is more always better?

Whether it comes to health, fitness or nutrition, you or someone you know has probably thought that if X amount is good, then more is better. While this may make sense in theory, rarely is this true.

When training for performance, whether that’s speed, strength, or power…lots of emerging research is actually showing that by leaving a few reps in the tank, or not training to failure, that you’ll actually get better results then had you pushed yourself really hard.

So if you’re out on the field sprinting, training to get faster, every rep should be of high quality, and once your times start to drop that should end your speed session. Sure, you can push through and tough it out, but why? It’s not going to make you faster, or build “mental toughness”…you’re just going to add unnecessary training volume that could be better used improving in other areas. 

More isn’t better, better is better.

Go ahead and reread that for a moment and let it sink in. If you want to improve in any area of performance, don’t focus on lifting or running more, focus on doing it better. This means not just showing up and going through the motions during gym sessions. Instead, really pay attention to the details in how you’re moving and how every rep feels. Are you hitting depth in your squats? Are you moving the weight as fast as you can during the concentric (muscle shortening) portions? Are you giving full effort in your jumps/throws/sprints?

For continual performance improvements, first you have to do the work. Then you have to do it really really well. Doing a lot of bad, or mediocre work won’t help you. I continually tell my athletes that we may not do anything fancy, but we’re going to do the ordinary extraordinarily well.

So for your next training session, focus on the quality of your training first, and if you feel your form breaking down go ahead and rack the weights. Do this consistently and see how your strength and power improve over time.

Exercise stability, how much is necessary

Unilateral training is one of the best ways to improve limb strength and correct gross asymmetries. However, some of the exercises I see performed end up looking more like a circus act instead of a way to spur real physical adaptations. What ends up happening is overthinking on the coaches part, trying to concoct some magical exercise that will fix ankle issues, shoulder pain, take back the iron throne, and cure cancer. Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating a bit but really, some of these exercises just make me wonder what the actual goal of them is…

Half the time, instead of properly executing whatever they’re asked to do, they end up flailing around one leg just trying to stay upright while one arm does one thing and the other is doing something else. Or the athlete gets so close to a wall that any stability adaptations the coach was looking for has been negated because they're using so much external support to accomplish the exercise.

For me, stability isn’t so much about balance, and challenging it with different types of arm movements, but rather it’s about preventing unwanted motion through the ranges of motion that are important for the athlete. So in my eyes, one of the best ways to train stability, and in turn improve balance, isn’t by taking away support, but instead by adding strength to the athlete, and helping them feel connected to the ground by improving foot and ankle function. You see, by increasing muscle strength we are better able to control our moving limbs, as well as the stance leg which in turn increases balance. Coordination and spatial awareness obviously play a role here, but in healthy athletes these aren’t normally the limiting factors.

And just to be clear, yes there will a time when support has to be taken away to further improve stability, but this should be done progressively, and only to an extent that doesn’t force the athlete to be falling over every few seconds. When the primary demands are on trying to find balance and stay upright, you start to sacrifice any improvements you could make in strength or power, which are more important for success in my opinion.

Ultimately, it all comes down to what the goal is. If you want to improve unilateral strength, then don’t add excess fat to the basics such as single leg squatting/hinging. And if the goal is to increase stability, then you need to first find out how much is necessary, and how much do they currently have before you can select exercises that are appropriate and will lead you to the athletes goal. More often than not, they won’t need much “balance” work, but rather will need to improve the strength of the muscles used.

Exercise Progressions for Performance Training

Implementing exercise progressions is a key part of creating a good training plan, and how it's done can help set the athlete up for success or put them on a route to unnecessary frustrations. Below are a few ideas I keep in mind when planning and implementing progressions.

First, progressions should have a reason why they're being implemented, randomly deciding to do something different "just because" isn't a valid reason. Understanding what physical abilities you need to be successful in your sport, with a clear understanding of where you're currently at is the foundation for planning exercise progressions.

Second, and just as important as the first point, you should only progress once the athlete has shown that they are ready for it. This seems simple enough, but many times progressions are made because that's what the plan says to do, or the coach is itching to get to the good stuff. Yeah, getting to more complex exercises is fun, but unless the athlete has shown that they can do the very basic things well first, you'll only end up spending more time having to double back and correct issues that arise because they weren't ready in the first place. 

Lastly, progressions shouldn't add unnecessary complexity for the sake of novelty, this comes back to having a reason why. Training is to prepare you for your respective sport and that should be reflected with the exercise selection and progression plan. So instead of progressing to kneeling on a bosu ball while overhead pressing kettlebells (please don't do this), transition from a regular squat to pause squats where you hold the bottom position for a few seconds. This changes the force-velocity demands of the exercises and helps increase isometric and inertial strength (starting from a dead stop) which are beneficial for almost all athletes.

Ultimately the goal of a good training plan is to give you the physical capacities to be better at your sport. This is accomplished through the use of proper exercise progressions that emphasize different physical characteristics of the core lifts instead of moving to something else entirely. We're not trying to reinvent the wheel, just refine it.

If you're interested in personalized coaching services to help prepare you for your next sport season, click here for more details regarding online training.

Basic Principles For In-Season Training

When it comes to in-season training there are a few important principles to keep in mind to ensure that you're creating the best program that will allow your athletes to be successful in competition. While traditionally periodization models have been built around single competition sports such as weightlifting or track and field, team sports are unique due to there long seasons and having competitions each week and possibly multiple times a week. So how do we reconcile this with physical training? The answer may not be to use a traditional periodization approach, but rather one that looks at the schedule and adapts to the needs of the athletes. 

First it's important to point out that the overall goal is to manage stress and keep and athlete healthy. At no point should adding unnecessary volume or chasing numbers be the goal or the direction taken when planning out an in-season program. Important in this is that it's not just training stress, it's stress from competition, classes if they're in school still, from their spouses, and also just general life stress. All of this must taken into account and be managed to ensure the athlete is in the best place for competition.

Piggybacking off of this, you'll want to limit exercise variation and not put anything new in the plan here. New movements and exercises tend to cause soreness and that's the last thing you want during the season.

It's important to realize that while commonly done, there is no "maintenance" phase, you are either getting better or worse, so when putting together your plan be sure to not fall into the trap of wanting to be conservative with intensity for fear of injury, as this may actually increase their injury risk because they will lose strength throughout the season. And with many team sports having relatively short off seasons and preseasons, utilizing the in-season to get better should be at the top of the list because this will be the longest uninterrupted block of time throughout the year. The key point is to find windows of opportunity to train hard, so obviously don't plan a max strength session right before competition, but rather by knowing how much time is necessary for supercompensation, this will allow you plan when is most effective to get your training in. This also means that you should have a working knowledge of how long your athletes can maintain their biomotor abilities (strength, speed, flexibility, endurance, technique) to ensure that you train each quality within this timeframe to maintain and improve it's capacity.

When it comes to exercise selection, you want to keep variation to a minimum, always changing exercises or doing unfamiliar work will cause soreness and this is the last thing that you want to happen during the season. Generally you should only pick exercises that are specific to the demands of the game and allow for large ranges of motion to maintain mobility throughout the season.

A final point, is to acknowledge the demands of their sport. Practices and games provide a good stimulus for biomotor abilities based on the sport, so it should be noted to only add in what is necessary on top of this. But on the other side of this is realizing that sport is not the best stimulus for fitness, so realizing where the sport adds fitness and where it falls short is the important point here. 

Putting this altogether is a good starting point to plan an in-season training program, however all of this assumes that capacities have been built in the offseason and preseason and the in-season is the time to continue to progress to ensure that athlete is at their best for the entire length of their season.

Sports Specific Training

Sports specific training has been around for a while now and promises to get an athlete better at their sport by training the positions and actions that they will use in games. While this sounds like a great idea at first, the extent to which it has been taken has reasons to cause concern, as many gyms and fancy equipment merely mimic the sport action, but just add some form of weight or resistance to it. This is all based on the SAID (specific adaptations to imposed demands) principle, or more commonly called the principle of specificity, which shows that we only adapt to the things that we are exposed to. 

However, many of the people pushing sports specific training are there to develop physical capacities, not sports skills and tactical training. Because of this, what is taught during these training sessions may contradict what the athletes sport coach may want. Also, if too much resistance is added, then this can alter the biomechanics of the movement and can ultimately interfere with the learning process and prove to set the athlete back instead of making them better.

To add to this, many of the methods used in sports specific training are primarily focused on moving fast and developing power. While power development should be part of every athlete's strength program, without a sufficient base of strength the athlete will not adapt as well to the power training and will be leaving some chips on the table. In fact, general strength training can raise an athlete's power to a greater extent than just power training, until the athlete has reached sufficient maximal strength levels.

This shows that general preparation is the foundation for specific adaptations. Without this foundation of sound movement skills and strength, the athlete may be at an increased risk of injury. And on the flip side of that, by only training "sports specifically", you put the athlete at risk of overuse injuries by only working through the same motor patterns that they use all the time in competition.

Ultimately, a trainer or performance coach is there to develop the physical capacities so the athlete can be more successful in their sport, not just add weights while blindly thinking that it will transfer better to competition. At the present, the best form of sports specific training is a holistic program that gets an athlete stronger, faster, and more powerful, while minimizing the risk of injuries that could possibly occur from overuse. Outside of this, skill development should be left to the sport coaches to build on top of the general prep that has been done in the gym.