May 2023 - Athletic Performance Academy

Pacey Performance Podcast Review – Episode 443

Episode 443 – Nick Kane – Managing hip and groin injuries and developing a robust injury prevention strategy

Nick Kane

Background

This week on the Pacey Performance Podcast, Head Physio at Essendon Football Club, Nick Kane talks to Rob about how to rehabilitate groin injuries and how to set up an injury prevention system in team sports.

Not only is Nick the Head Physio at an AFL club but he runs his own practice and is founder of the Sports Map Network, a resource that educates physios through multiple mediums.

🔉 Listen to the full episode with Nick here

Discussion topics:

‘‘As a general global approach when it comes to returning an athlete who has suffered persistent groin injuries rather than the one off, what is your general approach when it comes to groin injuries?”

”I think it’s a well rounded question, and I think as you eluded to there, the context is probably being is those injuries that come in after a few months of having groin pain as opposed to someone who is saying my adductor is a little bit sore after a game at the weekend.

First and foremost is nailing down a diagnosis, so you know what you are dealing with and what stage of pathology and letting that guide where to start. Enda King would always say, ”it’s either for rehab, or it’s not,” so if it’s not for rehab there is a pathway you need to work through, but if it’s for rehab, this is what we are about and we need to start our process. Anything around the groin is usually for rehab.

When I look at my groin process, that starts with looking at the athlete as a whole and nailing down what I think is contributing to that pathology. So that starts with a thorough assessment and looking through some functional stuff:

Overhead squat
Single leg squat
Hopping
End range calf raises – ability to hold that position
General Range of Motion Assessments – pick out imbalances
Strength assessments – hip abduction/adduction, hip flexion/extension, abdominal loading

So with this you can build up a picture of what you think are your big rocks and what are the big rocks you are going to attack first? With groins you can pick everything, and go at everything, but if you can pick the big 3 that you are going to go after- such as hip abduction/extension weakness on the right side, if there is a clear imbalance there, then that’s probably going to be pretty high on your list of priorities. You’ll generally find hip strength is right up there on your big rocks.

In terms of the physio table assessments, I might be looking to see what can change your pain to guide where you are at, such as what actually improves your squeeze power? If I go hard on some hip and glute exercises does that improve your squeeze power? If I do some timing or work on lumbo-pelvic hip complex (LPHC) positional changes, does that influence our clinical tests? A bit of pelvic posterior tilt or embracing some abdominal work does that suggest that some of that LPHC work is guiding some of our symptoms? So we can start there.

‘‘Out of those exercises that might present pain, what kind of objective data are you getting off any of those assessments, where are collecting your objective data from?”

”It’s probably initially having a look at those aspects as a visual representation of where they are at, and picking out what you are seeing. So, before I move onto some really true objective bench marking, it’s more about, okay, their single leg squat doesn’t look too good on the right side. I go and test their hip abduction strength and that’s clearly showing a deficit, and then their hip extension strength might also show a bit of a deficit. So that’s clearly bringing that level of importance up higher for me. So, it’s more about stepping from there away, and then probably working our way through some of key objective testing to really see if that marries up.

Objective Testing

Isometric Hip Abduction test – 2-2.5 x bodyweight
Isometric Hip Extension – in a 45 degree position off the end of table with a force transducer – 9-10 x bodyweight
Isometric Hip Abduction/Adduction – often look for close to 1:1 ratio
Isometric Hip flexion (90 degrees and 0 degrees) squeeze test
Lumbo-pelvic hip complex (LPHC) test – double leg lower- lowering down and controlling that without falling into some anterior tilt. I would like them to be able to lower all the way to the floor without losing their lumbo pelvic control.

Initially I wouldn’t look at some of the trunk capacity tests like side plank and plank holds etc

It is a balance between both our clinical benchmark testing and also what we can produce in the gym to get a bit more of a level of capacity and function in our bench marking, so as physios we our extending our-self more from the physio room and into the gym to tease out some of these capacity and strength markers. If we are a physio and it’s not our skill set within the gym, then it is certainly about working with someone (S&C coach) who that is, so I’d encourage the physios to link up and work through what they are seeing and what the S&C coach is seeing to tease that out.

Gym Assessments

If we start with the end in mind, we want to have the highest level of capacity and tolerance so that they don’t break down again on the field. So need to think about where we want the athlete to be at that point, where are they now and how do we get there?

We know that the loads and the forces and the preventative effect of the long lever Copenhagen test is really important so getting them to that level is part of what we do, and it’s probably not the stating point if they have been coming out of some pain and function probably won’t be able to do that.

Copenhagen long lever – 30 sec hold isometric or 2×10 if it’s eccentric/concentric work
LPHC Capacity test – Side plank 90-sec and Front Plank 2 minutes
Single leg squat – really good SLS, 1 set of 10 pistol squats down to 90 degrees free standing in good form and fashion
Split squat – pain free under some decent load – at least 30kg in a split squat biasing that rear leg position for some rec fem load
High level Abdominal function– clean reverse ab curls or exercises such as Hanging leg raises
General Strength – not forgetting general bench marking such as leg press, squat, deadlift and hinge targets relative to bodyweight.”

‘‘What are the common mistakes when implementing groin rehab in a team setting?”

”Under-loading – to find the deficiencies and tease out those things, I think we are pretty good at that. If they still have some pain, how are we addressing that? Are we saying have some rest, or just do a couple of little band exercises and hope it goes away, and its still there weeks later. I think we can really get in early, and get really good loading to address what we need to do with weights etc. Go hard at it, and go hard at it early – unloading in that early and mid phase will just drag groin issues along as we are not addressing what is driving it.

Racing to the finish line – The other one is often a groin will commonly fail you if it’s a chronic groin issue, and they often won’t fail you early, they will fail late. You’ll put all this work in for 5-6 months and you’ll get them there, and there strength and capacity are let’s say 90%. Then they go and perform in games repeatedly, or high level training sessions and they break down. Essentially, they are just not taking that extra bit of time, or really nailing and having really clear benchmarks in your mind and not accepting anything less than that.

Not addressing anterior chain strength enough within rehab – hip flexion, abdominal or oblique strength. If we only hit the hip strength we may be missing out on something.

Clearly you can get yourself in a bit of a hole if you say he is going to play in 4 weeks time. It’s about buying your time setting expectations a little bit longer, and rather than setting a date in mind, it’s about working aggressively forward to make that change and putting it on the athlete early and saying this is where you are at, this is where I want you and then having making sure you are having some routine testing through the process.

Be really strong on achieving those things that you think are important and pushing to get there.

‘‘When it comes to building an Injury Prevention System, what does that look like for you in terms of an overall philosophy?’

Primary Prevention

”As a general framework and how I see myself working within this as a physio, I look at primary prevention and addressing the key risk factors that go across the sport, including:

Knowing the common injuries in your sport
Making sure training loads are really high
Making sure athletes are really strong
Making sure athletes are recovering well – eating and sleeping well
Making sure athletes are hitting their speeds – and having a good speed exposure

Secondary Prevention

Individualising things more in the injury prevention process – to stop an injury from becoming more sinister, or putting things in place and being more selective in our IP approach by stopping the energy leaks.
Physio benchmarks – hip, calf and hamstring, and hopping metrics. Most people do them, but it’s more about how well you to do and how much you pay attention to detail on the results but also the process following on from that.

Fitness Testing

With most players at the start of the season, we will look at:

hip strength (abduction/adduction)
hamstring strength (Nordic measure)
calf strength test– seated calf strength (on a force plate- 1.8 x bodyweight)
calf endurance test – calf raise to fatigue
5 hop test (force plate)

We will look at the pie chart with all our benchmark norms and test that at least 3 times a year for some of our younger guys to see that they are improving and addressing those key areas. For some of our main group or more senior athletes a lot of them might only have one or two things that are sitting at where we want them. So then in that case we plug in an intervention (here’s your exercise or entry point, this is our load and you need to progress it like so and here’s how many days a week you do it). We will re-assess in 4 weeks and get every athlete at that level and once they are that level then fantastic, and we can go again to target something further that they think or we think will further assist them.

It’s about not over-intervening with the information you get. You could jump at shadows and think, oh his groin squeeze is down, or his hamstring power is down. But I think it is really important to know that our screening measures (and numbers we are getting) are NOT a decision making tool.

They are purely there to maybe flag something, or at least start that conversation with the physio, to say let’s look at this, and do a bit of that, then re-test that squeeze and we are away. Or maybe we are seeing some range of motion down, some pain on his groin contractions, and some early signs of fatigue or under recovery of the adductor longus. Now we want players training but clearly using our clinical knowledge and the context of where that player is at, and where they have come from, and where we are in the season, we might need to make really clear decisions about what is best for them and the team moving forwards so we are not ending up with an athlete who is struggling with groin pain for a few months. We need to pick things up early and being really aggressive with what we are doing.

Top 5 Take Away Points:

When I look at my groin process, that starts with looking at the athlete as a whole
Isometric testing for the hip is an important part of the objective assessment for groin pain
Gym assessments support the physio assessments such as Copenhagen long lever
Avoid some of the pitfalls of groin rehab by being really strong on achieving those things that you think are important and pushing to get there.
Avoid over-intervening – our screening measures (and numbers we are getting) are NOT a decision making tool.

Want more info on the stuff we have spoken about?

Pacey Performance Podcast Review – Episode 442

This blog is a return to my usual review format of the Pacey Performance Podcast.

Episode 442 – Damian, Mark & Ted – Integrating deceleration training and testing into a high performance programme

Damian, Mark & Ted

Background

This episode of the Pacey Performance Podcast sees Rob speaking to Damian Harper, Mark Jamison and Ted Rath. This episode was recorded in the summer of 2021 as a Live roundtable. But it was that good that we had to release it as a podcast.

🔉 Listen to the full episode with Damian, Mark and Ted here

Discussion topics:

‘‘From a research point of view, Damian, what do we know about deceleration and why is it important?”

Damian Harper:

”I think it’s a really important area, and one which has largely been overlooked. Over the last few years there has been a big impetus to drive some better understanding of this task. When we look at deceleration from a movement outcome, we are typically looking at trying to improve the athlete’s ability to reduce their speed with respect to time.

We want to increase the athlete’s ability to get high rates of deceleration from a movement outcome perspective, but it is also important to look at deceleration and braking as a movement skill. With deceleration it is a really complex movement skill and I think we have got to acknowledge that. That ability to be able to coordinate the limbs to apply a braking force, and once we have applied the forces, being able to safely attenuate the forces during deceleration.

Forces and Frequency

So when we look at those two components – the movement outcome and the movement skill we have recently proposed a definition based on those two factors, that deceleration should be considered as:

”the ability to reduce momentum in accordance with the objectives of the task and the constraints, whilst skillfully attenuating and distributing the forces associated with braking.”

So we have highlighted those two components – the braking force control – the ability to control braking forces. but then also the ability to be able to attenuate those braking forces.

It is important to start from the game perspective and look at the demands of the game. In some of my early research we looked at the game demands of accelerating and decelerating at high intensities in games and what we actually found was quite surprising, that in most team sports when we monitored it with GPS above a high-intensity threshold, most team sports had a greater frequency of high intensity decelerations than high intensity accelerations.

In addition to frequency, we also looked at the forces, and the mechanical demands. This is where deceleration becomes really distinct from other movement actions, and we could probably say that deceleration is the most mechanically demanding task from a force and loading perspective.

If we are backwards engineering in terms of demands, then we need to prepare athletes and in particular team sport athletes for these demands and high forces. We are looking at up to 6 x bodyweight in some of the braking forces and that’s in really really short periods of time less than 50 milliseconds, so really high loading rates and really high magnitudes of forces that have to be 1) produced and 2) tolerated and attenuated throughout the lower limbs.”

”Is deceleration training getting the time in the programme that it deserves?”

”It is going to be sport specific as if you look at football in the UK, small-sided games, medium-sized games, large-sided games are very popular training methods throughout the training week, and those type of training activities do expose athletes to a high frequency of decelerations. However, what I think we perhaps haven’t got a good as knowledge of is how we can actually improve the coordinative elements of the task, and how we can improve the athlete’s ability to perform those decelerations, outside of those game scenarios, like we have done for acceleration, with resisted acceleration work for example, and other exercise types for acceleration. We are still developing knowledge in this area.”

”Let’s bring in Mark to talk about testing for deceleration. What options have we got and is this an area that is developing?”

Mark Jamison:

”Probably when we have been trying to quantify the braking forces, it has traditionally been in the return to play process, as you are slowly trying to progress those demands over time, and not just the braking forces themselves but the directional pattern of it. I think we did a lot of that in the return to play setting but I don’t think it’s been as popular in the team setting, because I don’t think there has been as much access to good technology or a really efficient way to test in a full team setting.

The first thing we look at when we do any testing or assessments are what are the metrics that we are looking at that become actionable. What are our key performance indicators (KPIs) for this movement, that are actually going to help drive the decision making process when it comes to making interventions or the programme itself.

Really, when I look at it from a deceleration standpoint and you are going to do some kind of assessment, what’s the deceleration distance, what’s the deceleration time, what is the rate of deceleration (that’s a difficult thing to test). We have been fortunate as we have a radar timing device that actually gives us the rate of deceleration, so we can actually see what the ”braking impulse” is. Then we can look at early vs. late, so is it a safer strategy, so more time spent in that early deceleration, or are they truly coming from a really high entry velocity and braking really quickly? So those are the things we look at from a deceleration standpoint.

But most of our movements are never a true dead stop so a lot of it is built within change of direction testing. We have always done a 5-10-5 and t-test and L drill and I don’t think we’ve ever really looked at it as deceleration, we look at what’s the total time and what’s the speed of how fast you can do those drills. We really need to look at the braking strategy- how well do they decelerate and what does their re-acceleration look like? We have our deceleration KPIs and our re-acceleration KPIs, so what’s the re-acceleration time and what’s the rate of that re-acceleration?

From a testing setting, from a team standpoint, it is a little more difficult but the Acceleration Deceleration Ability (ADA) test is probably the easiest one to do in a full team setting.

We will have our athlete’s sprint for 20 yards and they don’t brake until 20, and it’s really easy to track what was their deceleration distance. Time can be a little more difficult so obviously you’ll probably need some kind of video analysis to determine the time of the deceleration braking was, but you’re always going to have that deceleration distance. Then you can provide different training interventions and ensure that they are actually responding well to that stimulus and improving. so at least we can then work out are they shortening that deceleration distance over time?

That’s easy to do in a team setting, but what is more difficult to do is determine what was the entry velocity. In a pre-determined test they know they have to brake at a certain point, so they are probably not going to hit their highest entry velocity. What we have found with our testing devices, is that when we do the ADA test, typically we are looking at 85-90% of peak velocity coming in, so it’s not a true max test. I think it’s difficult to make it a max test when there is a predetermined braking spot.

A lot of what I really like to do from a deceleration standpoint is a 10-5 and a 15-5 change of direction test, so a 180 degree cut, start with a 10-5 (usually the entry velocity is around 70-75% of their maximum velocity) but we see from a safety point of view, there’s less braking forces with our testing devices (-5-10 feet/sec 2) as the rate of deceleration (1.5-3.0 m/sec 2) and then we get to a 15-5 change of direction test, now we are touching more closely to that ADA test, so around 85% max velocity, and now the rate of deceleration is much higher (-10-15 feet/sec 2) so pretty high (3.0-4.6 m/sec 2). We can dictate what is the re-acceleration pattern, what movement strategy are we going to provide and then take a look at what is the limb to limb symmetry on that, are there any movement limitations in terms of sprint to a backpedal, in terms of turn and sprint, crossover to sprint, and those different types of movement category selections they have. So then we can look at what are the buckets we need to fill and look at from a movement intervention standpoint.

Example of a 10-5 (known as a modified 5-0-5, as used by the Lawn Tennis Association)

Daz comment:

Based on Graham-Smith (2018) research, he mentions ‘’it is important to put the changing of direction movement into context. The maximum speed that an athlete can attain prior to changing direction dictates how much braking impulse needs to be imparted. In game scenarios there is no specified ‘approach’ distance, so in order to understand the loading demands we first need to evaluate the athletes’ ability to accelerate and decelerate within set distances. I refer to two of the distances he tested:

• 10m from stop line – 5.8 m/s –> (72.2% of 30m MSS) –> -4.94m to stop
• 15m from stop line – 6.7 m/s –> (83.0% of 30m MSS) –> -6.61m to stop

At the Lawn Tennis Association, they use a Modified 5-0-5 (so it’s more like a 10m approach) with a total distance of approximately 10m before performing a 180 COD to the finish.

Now back to the Podcast review……

A test that I really like to do, which we have just started doing, is add a chaotic change of direction with a predetermined deceleration test. So we go out to 80 feet (26 yards) and when the device cues them they sprint and go out and hit their max velocity. They don’t know exactly when they are going to have to decelerate and re-direct and go back to the device. We give them that cue whether it is auditory or visual, but what we have seen is closer to 95% of max velocity on that brake itself so those impulses are significantly higher and we get a pretty good indication of what their max potential of deceleration is from that and it’s usually somewhere between 15 and 26 yards and when they sprint back they actually try to decelerate exactly on where the start position would be.

On the chaotic version the distance is always going to be variable which is a huge limitation, but I know the entry velocity, so ideally if I can get as close to above 90% max velocity I think it’s a relatively valid test. So far, if it’s less than 90% I void it, and don’t count it.

The strategy changes quite drastically according to entry velocity. In a 10-5 you really don’t lower your centre of mass much. Your total range of motion on the braking strategy isn’t really that great. When you look at when they are hitting closer to 90-95% of their maximum velocity, they really have to drop their centre of mass to receive and brake those forces and re-direct them so you see a huge level change. Especially on the chaotic version, you start to see more poor kinematics because they don’t know when they are going to brake so they are not preparing for it. You see a lot more excessive forward trunk lean, they are throwing their torso way out in front of their centre of mass, which is obviously going to lead to a high risk of injury. But that’s good to know, because hopefully we can address it a little bit better in the kind of drills or interventions we use to try and train that.”

Damian Harper:

”The entry velocity completely changes the deceleration strategies and it’s a much harder task than acceleration, to be able to get a reliable deceleration assessment of the athlete. The importance of being able to get the peak velocity the moment when the athlete starts the deceleration is critical for any reliable assessment of deceleration capable – the ability to know when the athlete is starting to decelerate.

We can start to look at the ratios between their acceleration ability and their deceleration ability to get some kind of understanding of where there may be training deficiencies and whether they can slow down what they can speed up. Research on cheetahs showed that they had a 60% buffering capacity, meaning that their deceleration capacity was 60% greater than their acceleration capabilities. I think that is very interesting and it is going to vary with different sports and different positional groups.”

”Physical qualities needed to improve it?”

Ted Rath:

”When you look at deceleration, what is the ultimate factor that accounts for a lot of it? It’s motor control, what is your ability to control your centre of mass. You could have limitations because of joint structures, strength deficits, so for me it’s the opportunity and the ability to decelerate your centre of mass and properly put it in the correct position for your next movement. Once again, what’s the goal, the deceleration goal, to get you into position for your next movement so you can re-accelerate and apply force into the ground and whatever direction you are attempting to go. It could be through an opponent or into a direction in air.

With that comes eccentric strength variables, obviously you have to be strong enough and have ability to exert force into the ground at the proper angles at the proper time. There is a sequencing component, so now a neuromuscular component. What is your efficiency patterning, do you understand how to control your body weight in multiple angles?

We are looking at your ability to control loads eccentrically. there is tempo training you can do, but also at the opposite end of the Force-Velocity curve you have to be able to control weight and load (using your own bodyweight or an implement such as the Keiser power squat – and rapid eccentric braking.

In our off-season we start very, very basic. We start very simple with controlling your own bodyweight so we’re going back to wall drills so we can start statically (load you isometrically), then we progress it to plyometric progressions where we are jumping but we’re also locking in and efficiently loading (eccentric movements) and then recovering force (progressing to ballistics) so for us it’s sticking landings with multi-directional force, unilateral landings, how do you land on 1 limb, how do you land on 2 limbs etc? So that’s a lot of the ballistic eccentrics we do.”

Mark Jamison:

“From a plyometric standpoint we will work through lower level elasticity, reactive strength and then higher shock type work. You have to get into what those change of direction angles look like, and more unilateral plyometric type exercises and progress the eccentric load, whether that’s jumping off higher boxes onto a single leg and having to re-direct or add load to those things and those patterns.

What we really utilize quite a bit is our K-box iso-inertial training, we found really high success with that and again you can really mimic with the squat pattern on the K-box the unweighting and braking rate of force development (RFD) on a countermovement jump. We are hitting 120% eccentric peak power on the iso-inertial training compared to the concentric outputs.”

Damian Harper:

”There are certainly some specific eccentric qualities that are needed for deceleration. We highlighted eccentric peak force, eccentric velocity and eccentric braking RFD, so training qualities in the gym that can target those qualities I think are really important. I’m also a big fan of flywheel training as a way to get that eccentric overload and that should be part of the training strategies to increase the ability of the athlete to resist and control the (downwards) movement. The flywheel also has the advantage of being able to load horizontally, if you’ve got the pulley devices you can do some fantastic exercises in the horizontal plane which is really important from a gym perspective, of the combination of horizontal and vertical loading.

Another training intervention that has some nice training applications for deceleration is isometric loading strategies, so I think the isometric yielding or quasi-isometric loading movements can be really powerful for deceleration, particularly for targeting the tendon structures. For deceleration the tendons are really, really important and the connective tissues are that first line of defence so they are really important from a buffering point of view. So you get a similar kind of eccentric loading with some of the isometric yielding exercises if you go for longer duration holds as well, where we can increase an athlete’s yielding capacity to resist that deformation.

As you start to move up in intensity to some of the more neural based interventions you can look at braking isometrics where we can target some of the braking specific positions and we can start to work with fast or explosive isometric actions targeting inter-limb braking positions using overcoming isometrics. I’ve certainly been inspired by some of Alex Natera’s work on running isometrics and trying to flip that and think about how that can apply to braking isometrics.

Eccentric landing control, and some basic landing exercises as well as reactive strength being really important for deceleration because of that pre-tension and that ability to pre-activate the muscles prior to contact with the ground.”

‘‘When it comes to making technical improvements are there any go to exercises that you would recommend that coaches use with their athletes when it comes to developing those technical aspects of deceleration?”

Mark Jamison:

”High frequency, high exposure to it. We keep the high days high and the low days low, but on a low day it is really easy to do a lot of sub-maximal change of direction work. As we are teaching that we will put heart rate monitors on them and make sure we are in that zone that we want to be in from a training and conditioning standpoint, but we will expoae them to all the different cutting patterns, all the different change of direction patterns and every time they only go out about 4 yards and they have to stick every single plant and hold that position.

Then we can coach that position and you are also getting some kind of isometric exposure to that so you can work on some force at zero velocity when you re-accelerate out of that angle and position from a change of direction standpoint.

We have what we call the 4-8-12; where you sprint to 4 yards on to your right leg, backpedal back to zero; sprint to 8 yards plant and stick on your right leg, backpedal to 4, then you go out to 12, plant and stick on your right leg backpedal to eight and then sprint through. We can work through sprint backpedal, shuffle, crossover and sprint.

If you do it really fast and you ask them, “how did that feel? they have no idea.” If you slow it down they are more aware of it. I see it as a motor skill continuum, there is always that subconscious dysfunction, can you make that a conscious dysfunction, can you at least be aware that you are probably not in the best position. Here is what the correct position looks and feels like, and then continually expose them to it.”

Top 5 Take Away Points:

Deceleration actions are high force and high frequency actions
Acceleration Deceleration Ability (ADA) test is probably the easiest deceleration test to do in a full team setting.
Motor control and eccentric strength are key components of deceleration ability
Quasi-isometric yielding isometrics and overcoming isometrics are also good interventions to improve deceleration
High frequency, high exposure of sub-maximal change of direction work will be beneficial to help improve deceleration.

Want more info on the stuff we have spoken about?

Pacey Performance Podcast Review – Episode 370

May 3, 2023/in APA Blog, Pacey Performance Podcast Review /by dazdrake

This blog is a bit of a change up in my review of the Pacey Performance Podcast as I’ll be doing a ”shorter” form review of three Episodes in the next few blogs.

Episode 370 – Molly Binetti – “Enhancing change of direction speed and agility in the real world”

Molly Binetti

Background

Molly Binetti is an experienced name in college sport, and is currently the Director of Women’s Basketball Performance at the University of South Carolina following various roles as a coach at the University of Louisville, Purdue University, and the University of Minnesota. Although she’s currently specialising in basketball, Molly’s previous experience includes S&C in volleyball, softball, tennis, diving, cheerleading, and baseball.

🔉 Listen to the full episode with Molly here

Discussion topics:

‘‘Testing options for change of direction performance. The fact that you don’t test a lot when it comes to change of direction, so I’d just love to get your thoughts on change of direction performance and test options that we do have, and your thoughts on this area”

“That’s definitely something that has changed for me over the course of my career in terms of shying away from truly testing COD or using a COD test, and I think when we look at key determinants of a good COD performance – you’ve got your physical capacities – how strong they are, how explosive they are, how powerful they are – and you can measure that and test that a multitude of ways in the weight room through strength testing, jump profiling, ground contact times, reactive strength rate of force development. Even looking at those physical capacities alone can give you a pretty good idea of this athlete’s capabilities and what they might look like in terms of COD, because if you look at that those metrics are shit, chance are they are probably not a good mover either.

Then you look at the technical aspects of it, what does their centre of mass look like, what does their foot placement look like, what is their trunk doing, what is their pelvis doing, what kind of angles are they creating – and those are things that I have learned to assess every single day in what we do, just by throwing them in to an environment where they have got to move, and throwing a lot of open drills at them honestly, because that gives me a lot of valuable information about what they look like before I even break things down and teach technique, and I want to see what they look like in an organic environment first.

The third component is that Agility and task specific aspect of it, and added the cognitive effects of that too.

So I break it down and figure out how you can evaluate each of those pieces and I have found that my best assessment of their ability to move is through the basic strength and jump profiling that we do in the weight room as well as I’m watching them move in practice every single day, and seeing what their movement looks like and I’m talking to their coaches about how they move and how they see them move.

I think we take a little bit different approach to it, because typically in the strength & conditioning field, and especially in the college sector when we talk about teaching movement it is done in a very controlled manner, with very few fluctuations. That used to be too when I teach COD, but I have shied away from that and I really like to incorporate a lot of game play and problem solving activities within the warm-ups and then I can regress if I need to, to teach technique and using the warm-up period to incorporate some of those more closed drills, lateral movements, acceleration-deceleration, hip turns, rotational movements and just incorporating them every single day to get small exposures to it.

Exposure athletes to open drills right off the bat and see what they do naturally.

But I have really just found that doing a COD test like a Pro Agility doesn’t really give me any information, and I’ve found that just because they get better at that test, doesn’t mean that their actual movement performance is getting better in the place where it matters most, which is on the basketball court. We know that sport is chaos and it involves so many different components and so if I can get a pretty accurate idea through the testing that we are doing in the weight room, talking with the sport coaches, and watching them in practice I can really figure out where their deficiency is – is it a physical capacity, is it technical/tactical or is it cognitive? From there I can figure out where we need to spend time on from a movement side of things.”

‘”Can we dive a little bit into the testing itself, and then link what you do in the jump testing with the intricacies of what you want to achieve in the COD ability?”

“So we are pretty fancy here, and we use the just jump mat, but I will say you don’t need a lot, you don’t need a force plate to measure some of the qualities, so I will go through a pretty thorough jump profile with them. We will do:

Drop jump – double leg and single leg
Counter movement jump (CMJ) – double leg and single leg (both off one leg and land on one leg, and off one leg and land on two legs, so they are not worried about landing on one)
Repeat 4 jump test – average of the four jump height and the average GCT – both double leg and single leg- look at right and left leg to see the reactivity right to left and see what those differences are.

What I have found to be honest, is that, especially for the first couple of years that I get an athlete here, most of the time they just need to train consistently and then all those qualities are going to improve. And then it’s really once we have an athlete who has been in our programme for 2-3 years and that’s when some of those individual specific differences come into play and how is that information being used to individualise training

Is this an athlete that jumps slow but jumps high – okay I know I need to train a little bit more of my time on creating a little bit faster SSC?
Is this athlete have a really significant right to left deficiency– okay let’s try and close the gap there – and is that showing up on what we are seeing on the court as well?

We have 16 athletes and that’s my only programme. We are taking that information and break down player by player and focus on what the player needs, as opposed to being in a big team setting where everyone has got a pretty similar programme and we have small tweaks here and there.”

Top 5 Take Away Points:

Understand the components of Agility – Physical, Technique and Cognitive.
Best assessment of their ability to move is through the basic strength and jump profiling and watching them move on the court.
COD test like a Pro Agility doesn’t really give me any information.
Go through a thorough jump profile including double leg and single leg
Exposure athletes to open drills right off the bat and see what they do naturally.

Want more info on the stuff we have spoken about?

Pacey Performance Podcast Review – Episode 444

May 2, 2023/in APA Blog, Pacey Performance Podcast Review /by dazdrake

This blog is a bit of a change up in my review of the Pacey Performance Podcast as I’ll be doing a ”shorter” form review of three Episodes in the next few blogs.

Episode 444 – Jermaine McCubbine – The ”hybrid” S&C coach: Physical Preparation, Rehabilitation & Data Management

Jermaine McCubbine

Background

Jermaine is First Team Strength and Conditioning Coach at PSV Eindhoven. Jermaine has worked at PSV for a number of years, progressing from an academy position into a role within the first team. He actually started out as a sports therapist and personal trainer before transitioning strength & conditioning.

🔉 Listen to the full episode with Jermaine here

Discussion topics:

‘‘Can you give people an insight into your process of rehabilitating a hamstring and your philosophy of dealing with hamstrings?”

”Of course, it firstly depends on the injury itself. Is it:

Grade 1, 2 or 3
Proximal or distal
Within muscle belly or within tendon
Re-injury or same site
Estimated return to play timelines

You are always going to split your rehab up into phases. For me, I will always ”programme the satnav” first, so starting from the end and then working back, so we have a loose framework. I do use the Matt Tabener control-chaos continuum and it’s a process that even within the club everyone knows the CCC continuum and what it means.

So, if the end criteria is Return to Play then if we are looking from a testing standpoint, we are looking for:

all the markers to be at minimum of baseline in comparison to contra-lateral limb.
exposure to maximum velocity
multi-directional chaos and high end magnitude and density of accelerations and decelerations through the full range of the clock – whether that’s 45 degrees, 90, 135 or 180 degrees
curvilinear running with various start and end positions.

To map that, and start at the beginning, you enter into your PROTECTION Phase.

Phase 1 – Protection Phase

predominantly physio lead – isometric type work
looking at tissue healing strategies
importance of relationships between physio and S&C coach
Address possibilities – what can they do?
Readdress nutritional intake and off feet conditioning programme to ensure there is no decrements in performance
Can we train the other limb?

From an S&C point of view, as soon as you are at the point where you can start doing some isometric strength I’m going to start to assess that muscle.

How much force you can produce in comparison to the other limb
It might not be you go 100% of course. But if you’re only delivering 20% and that’s what you feel comfortable delivering that’s okay, and then we will track that throughout rehab, looking at net PEAK FORCE and time to contraction and some other variables so we can see when it starts to stabilise and if the phase and the exit criteria we are setting is in line with what we want.

The ultimate goal is to get you back in the fastest and safest possible way with minimal chance of reoccurence.

Phase 2 – Load Introduction

Introduced to key movement patterns – squat, hinge patterns etc
Extensive type strength endurance work
Still continue with some isometric type work
Possible changing of lever lengths, time under tension
Possible bilateral to unilateral

Phase 3- Strength Development

Increase the variables so more load or more complexity – including some eccentrics
More and more unilateral training
Measuring strength throughout this
Eventually going into training integration and return to play – reactive strength, maximum speed exposure

Everything must progress so you are not missing out on any blocks. So for example, running continuum, I like to go long to short approach. So on the field, you might do field lengths at a speed of 40% of maximum speed. If that goes well, can we progress it to 50%, then 60% etc before we start to get into the more speed endurance type work and eventually bringing you into a phase where speed goes up, intensity goes up and volume comes down. Once you are at the end stage, volume can go up as well.

”So how are you measuring strength. Can you tell me more about that?”

That’s how I initiate my isometric type work looking at 90 degrees and also 30 degrees from full extension.

Once you have done this test and you have your baseline, and using the other limb as a reference point, track that throughout the rehab to ensure that:

You are looking at the asymmetry value
The relationship between high speed running and your raw scores – so are you adequately prepared to go out and run. I wouldn’t expose you to max speed sprinting until your peak force was within 10-15% and it’s more that early rate of force development (RFD), so net peak force at 100 milliseconds. Those contraction time intervals are linked to top speed running ground foot contacts.

So if we have large asymmetries in peak force across limbs in let’s say at bicep femoris, and you have huge asymmetries in contraction time in early RFD there is no way that I am going to let you sprint. I have seen from testing and screening players that you can get that down to an acceptable limit of less than 10%, so I’m going to push that. And it’s not just numbers on a force plate, as well as seeing how you are moving out on the pitch, do you have good lumbar-pelvic-hip (LBP) control, do you have good front side and back side mechanics, and do I feel confident enough to expose you to what is the highest risk which is asking you to sprint maximally?

If all those things are good, then that’s a green light for me.

”When would you introduce the high intensity eccentric training means, as I know jack Hickey did some work in this area?”

Jack Hickey – When and how to introduce high intensity eccentric exercises during hamstring rehabilitation

📝 Read the full article with Jack here

”After you isometric work in the Protection phase, once you start to introduce them to load you might do for example, an eccentric slider. So if that’s okay, I can increase volume on that and also complexity as well. But ultimately our end goal is to start doing some higher intensity work that is more game specific. So if we look at the isometric continuum level we might be doing a long lever bridge on the floor (bilateral) as an entry point, but at the other end of the spectrum I want you to be doing some quasi-isometrics in single leg such as Bosch isometric switches, some medicine ball throws in these extended positions, as well as doing some Swiss ball hamstring tantrums, prone kickers, those high velocity eccentric-contentric type work. So if I know that’s my end point in a gym point of view, then my start point is just following a continuum and making sure it’s a seamless transition.

Top 5 Take Away Points:

Split your rehab up into phases starting with the end in mind.
Know your Return to Play End Criteria
Assess peak force at 100ms throughout rehab to track performance
Have a progression approach to running volume, load and complexity
Look for asymmetries in peak force at 100ms of less than 10% as a guide to return to Max Velocity.

Want more info on the stuff we have spoken about?

Pacey Performance Podcast Review – Episode 443

Nick Kane

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