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.

Four Benefits of Strength Training For Runners

Running has always been fairly popular among recreational athletes, but for those who have decided to get a little more serious let’s briefly look at four benefits that adding strength training will have on your running performance.  

• Decreased injury risk by improving both muscle and tendon health and strength.

• Increased endurance by improving neuromuscular pathways, thus improving running economy and lessening the amount of work done to maintain the same pace.

• Improved mobility by working in more than just one plane of motion and developing the less used muscles in running.

• Improved speed, by increasing the maximum force output of the muscles, you’ll be able to run faster throughout the race or at the end during your last sprint.

These are are just the beginning of the benefits that strength training will have for runners, and at this point the research overwhelmingly supports adding strength training to endurance training as a way to get better.  

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.

New Year's Resolutions

With the first month of the new year just about over, many health and fitness resolutions are going strong, but sadly even more have already failed or have been given up on. Why is it that so many of us fail to make our resolutions last any longer than a month? And if you are still holding strong you're more than likely on the brink of just saying quit and go destroy a large pepperoni. 

The reason that most resolutions, or any new habit for that matter, fails is that we tend to set too high of goals. We have to work out 5 days a week, eat super "clean" while also eating half of what we used to, all while more than likely trying to change some other non health related habits. While many see this as the road to a healthier life, it's nothing more than a recipe for disaster. These high goals we set leave us nothing but a long hard fall when we fail.

So next time, instead of shooting for the moon, aim a little lower. Make one small change that will be so easy there's no way you can fail. And once you've identified your goal, only make that one change for two to three weeks. After proving to yourself that you're able to do it consistently, make another small change. And continue like this until you look back and notice that you've made huge changes over a long time period but each step towards that goal was small and manageable. It is this way that we can make long lasting changes that will keep us from falling victim to quitting on our resolutions each year.

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Training Equipment, What’s Really Necessary?

In plenty of gyms and training centers there seems to be an emphasis on getting the latest and greatest training equipment. Whether that’s spending thousands on high speed treadmills, splurging on a vertimax, or getting the latest and greatest pulley system. While every piece of equipment has its pros and cons and is be best used for certain situations, in my opinion this is putting the cart before the horse.

Call me crazy, but I’d rather put emphasis on coaching and proper technical knowledge of exercise physiology and biomechanics instead of on equipment. By gaining a deeper understanding of exercise science, every piece of equipment is just a tool to use and can be manipulated in any way to get the adaptation your looking for. Treadmills are great, but running on ground is better most of the time. Pulley systems allows you to do a lot of different things, but a set of resistance bands a harness and some creativity can accomplish a lot of the same things at a fraction of the cost.

Classical strength training equipment (barbells, dumbbells, etc...) a little bit of space and knowledge of biomechanics is a great combination to get an extremely versatile strength training experience, that can accomplish just about any goal a person has at a fraction of the cost of other more expensive items. And while this may seem like a hate article on expensive equipment, it’s rather a questioning of why would you purchase it in the first place? Are you able to safely and effectively accomplish the same goal with other means? Could that money be used elsewhere on upgrading your current equipment and getting higher quality weights that will last years if maintained properly, or even on furthering your education to gain a deeper understanding of how to use what you currently have?

While I have no problem with expensive equipment, but outside of one on one training and very small groups, it effectively creates a back log of athletes during training because getting multiple pieces often isn’t feasible, and the time spent funneled at one piece of equipment could probably be better used elsewhere.

Ultimately, the means and methods used to get a certain adaptations are up to the coach, but in my opinion, I think we should try to keep it as simple as we can, and always keep the goal the goal. 

Are You Training What You Think You're Training?

Bigger, Faster, Stronger.

These three words are yelled from strength and sport coaches all over the country when talking about what they want they're strength and conditioning program to accomplish, but when the rubber meets the road and athletes begin training, are they actually training what the coaches think they're training? One thing that I've noticed a lot lately is that many coaches will claim to be training aspect of physical performance, but either because of how they set the session up, or by failing to make sure the athlete is recovered enough, they end up not doing what they think they're doing. Because anyone can get someone tired and make them feel like throwing up, or like they had a "good workout", this does not mean that the individual got faster, stronger, or any more powerful because of that session. Very rarely in a progressive training program will an athlete feel like they've just gotten their ass kicked, and rather it will feel like they're resting way more than they think they should. This is because to truly improve performance, you have to respect the rest that these qualities demand in training, and the execution of training has to be the highest priority, with a quality over quantity mindset, instead of always just trying to do more.

Sprinting Basics

Most sports have a few things in common, one of these commonalities is that you can never be too fast. In fact being faster than your competitors correlates well with getting more scoring opportunities in games. But before going on any further let’s define what speed is, for most sports it is how fast an athlete can sprint at maximal speed. 

Sprinting, is a highly technical skill that has been determined to be an outcome of stride length and stride frequency. The basic premise is that the longer your stride length, this will allow you to cover more distance and will help you be faster, and for stride frequency, the shorter time you take between each stride, the faster you will be able to sprint. Stride length is primarily determined by limb lengths and motor control and typically is optimized once the athlete begins to learn the skill that is sprinting. So while this is a determinant of speed, there is little to be done to improve it once the pattern has been set. Stride frequency is based on two factors, flight time and ground contact time, and commonly is trained by teaching athletes to quickly “turn over” and move their legs as fast as possible. While this may make sense at first glance, a deeper dive into the subject shows that flight time, no matter if it’s measured from Olympic level athletes or your average grandma remains relatively unchanged. In fact when studies on stride frequency are done, the one commonality among elite level sprinters is that they get on and off the ground the fastest which is the main factor that can be modified to improve maximal sprinting speed. So while it may be common practices to ask your athletes to swing their feet faster to be faster, this actually doesn’t determine sprint speed and instead the focus should be on shortening the ground contact times.

With emphasis being on shortening ground contact times, there are a few ways to do it. First and foremost, proper body positioning must be maintained. The pelvis should be slightly posteriorly rotated (butt tucked down) as this sets the body up for proper positioning at touch down, as well as not allowing the swing leg hip into hyperextension. By being in proper position at touch down, with the stance leg under the hips, the ground contact time is reduced because the leg effectively acts as a spring and gets up and off the ground without any extra time needed to get into position, but when an athlete reaches out in front of them, this may seem like it will increase stride length and will improve sprinting, but in reality it increases braking forces at the foot and increases the amount of time needed to get into proper position and then off the ground. 

A second important training factor for improving sprint performance is to get strong. There are clear correlations of an athletes squat one rep max and their sprint time being faster up to about a strength level of 2x body weight. Another reason this is important is because during sprinting, forces of up to 5x body weight are experienced at every ground contact, and that’s only on one leg, so increasing the amount of force you can put into the ground in a very short period of time is essential to sprinting faster. Strength training also increases the stiffness of your tendons, the ability to withstand deformation, which is essential to being able to withstand the forces associated with sprinting.

Ultimately while sprinting is a highly technical skill, the major determinant of success and running really really fast is how quickly you can get off the ground. Making sure that you are in proper position at touch down, getting strong are some of the best ways to aid the effort of getting fast, instead of spending time trying to move your legs faster or increase your stride length which may ultimately lead to decreases in performance.

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.