The Value of Testing

Testing is one of those topics that generally has some confusion around it, from who should be doing it, to how, or even if you should test at all. Now I’ll go through my personal thoughts and try to explain why I believe it to be important, not just for athletes but for anyone with health and fitness related goals.

When it comes to testing and measurements, one of the most important steps is to decide what exactly should be measured. Now for most people with general health or fitness goals this most likely looks like body measurements and progress pictures. For my general population clients I always suggest this tape measure because it’s easy for a single person to use without needing anyone else there, but for athletes or those with more performance related goals then determining what is most important to measure may not be the easiest thing to determine.

Based on your sport or individual goals, what these tests are will differ. This will range from sprint times, to max strength or upper body power tests, but the important thing is that the test is relevant to you and your goals. In addition, no one test should be taken alone, but instead should be used in conjunction with others to get a better view of the whole picture. This will ensure that you can understand what is actually happening when that number on the scale doesn’t move.

So why the hell would you measure? The most common responses things I hear in opposition of testing is that “they can see the athlete adding more weight, they must be stronger” or “they don’t run in a straight line during a game, why should we test it?”. And while these arguments may come from a good place and may have some logic to them, quite frankly it’s flawed thinking and isn’t in the best interest of the athletes we serve. Now yes, they may be using more weight, but this isn’t the best indicator that they’ve actually gotten stronger. We have to consider the athletes effort and motivation in each workout if this is this measurement tool. If at the very beginning of a training program it’s unlikely that an athlete will be going all out or working at near maximal efforts, so just by increasing their motivation and effort, they’ve added more weight to the bar without actually getting any stronger. The purpose of the test isn’t necessarily just to measure how strong or powerful someone is, but to assess where they’re at, and determine what the best course of action will be to get them to their goals. It’s commonly said that what gets measured gets managed, this is something I wholeheartedly believe in and I have seen the differences in programs where stats are measured and progress is usually better compared to those that don’t routinely measure stats.

Now I mentioned above that test results should be used to determine what the athlete needs to reach their goals. As a results-driven coach, I use testing results to determine how to structure the next training block. For example, say someone takes body measurement and found that they only lost two inches instead of more, this would lead me to look at the current program and see what could have done better to increase this persons fat loss, or understand that maybe they added muscle in this time frame while also losing fat which led to the lower results.

So now you’re convinced that testing is important, but when should you do it? Well, it depends. Based on what exactly you’re testing and you’re current level of fitness, the tests can be weekly in the case of weight measurements, or only come every other month if you’re looking to evaluate certain physical attributes. The most important part here is that each test is carried out in the exact same way. You should weigh yourself at the same time, or have the same warmup protocol for a strength or power test. This will ensure that the results can be correctly compared to one another and that there isn’t a large difference because one day you weighed yourself after a big meal, but the next time was first thing in the morning. This will obviously lead to “bad” data and the results really can’t be compared to each other.

If you’re interested in more info regarding testing or what specific tests I use then let me know in the comments below.

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.

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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.