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Pacey Performance Podcast REVIEW- Episode 295 Jonas Dodoo

This blog is a review of the Pacey Performance Podcast Episode 295 – Jonas Dodoo

Jonas Dodoo

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Background: 

Jonas Dodoo

Jonas looks after a group of Elite Track and Field Sprinters who have attained success on the Olympic and World stage. He also oversees the Speedworks Charity Program for a fast-evolving Development Group which runs out of the Lee Valley Athletic Centre and is now the Head Coach for a new academy based in the East Midlands.

 

In addition to this, Jonas has consulted with many many Professional Sports Teams and individual players, including Derby County FC, West Bromwich Albion, Arsenal, Bath RFU, Northampton Saints, Wasps Academy, and Rugby 7’s.

 

Discussion topics:

 

Tell us a little bit more about your background and education

”I grew up playing sport, lots of different sport. Was always explosive and elastic, but couldn’t stay in one piece. I’ve got terrible feet, terrible ankles, no movement in my toes. But it sent me down a road to learn, to understand. I think originally it was to go and fix myself, which was my biggest driver. And then I got exposed to great coaches, great therapists. And I did my master’s thesis under Dan Pfaff or studied him as my thesis and had an opportunity to do a PhD in sprinting or to go and try and coach someone to at least be a bit faster. And I went down that route.

 

So I started in rugby, ended up in athletics and during my athletics coaching career I got exposed back into rugby. And then since that point, maybe over the past eight or nine years, I’ve worked with, you know, various individuals in rehab projects. I’ve worked with various teams in short and long-term projects and really the past three years for me, I’ve been based at Loughborough University with my elite squad of sprinters and then used essentially my down days, so 20% of my week, spent either with Derby County, at one point with West Brom and with England rugby in the build up to the World Cup. So those would be my major projects. And alongside that, I run workshops. I do a lot of coach education and a lot of mentoring.

 

So it’s been an up and down journey, always driven by my hunger and curiosity about how to make people faster.  I’ve also been very inquisitive for sports science, very inquisitive, probably because I’ve been surrounded in British Athletics by some great biomechanists and great strength and conditioning coaches. And it’s made me question, did my athletes do well because of me or despite? Did I just choose really good athletes who’ve chosen the right parents, who had good genetics?

 

I’ve got this constant need to reflect and ask myself, could that be better? And so it’s driven me down the road to developing for a labour of love, our binary video analysis app. And basically it’s a poor man and dumb man’s dart fish.

 

Binary Motion Analysis App

 

The first thing Dan Pfaff pushed us to learn as apprentices is observation skills.  He would say, leave the programming to me. Here’s a program, carry on with it. Don’t worry because that could rack your brains for hours and hours a day. Instead, watch movement, watch video, watch from upstairs, watch from downstairs, zoom in, zoom out. And when you’ve got this injury problem, understand what you can do from a movement perspective, from a coaching perspective, how you can create an environment that will distract the athlete from that injury or that pain and redirect their focus towards more effective movement and pain-free strategies.

 

And so coaching eye was something that was really hammered down very early for me. And by accident, I realized that coaching eye was something that everyone wanted to learn from me.

 

People come and said, okay, what are the cues, what do you see? And so I’m constantly trying to develop my coaching eye but what we’ve done here with binary is we’ve developed an app that allows you to say rather than have a debate about stride length versus stride frequency, what’s more important. What model, what shape is the priority? Is it this big, long shape? Is it a bit of a smaller shape with more frequency in deceleration mechanics? What’s the priority?

 

There’s so much debate and lack of consensus in sports science, that if you’re an inquisitive coach, you can easily get lost, easily buy into one side of the argument. I’m saying, take a step back. What’s our priority? Velocity, that’s our priority. And what do we want the shape of velocity to look like? We want it to keep getting faster. If we can find a way to make it get faster really steep and keep it continuing to get faster, we have high acceleration and we have high velocity. We have a good RF and we have a great DRF, right? That’s JB Morin’s language.

 

Daz comment: (definitions explained)

 

Ratio of Force (RF)– is a ratio of the step-averaged horizontal component of the Ground Reaction Force (GRF) to the corresponding resultant force.

 

Index of Force Application Technique (DFR)- expresses the athlete’s ability to maintain a net horizontal force production despite increasing velocity throughout accelerated sprinting.

 

In practical terms RF reflects the ability to project a large amount of your force in the direction you want to go

 

In practical terms DFR reflects the distance over which athletes are able to accelerate (i.e., distance to peak velocity).

 

The reality is what binary does for us is it helps us take a step back from our bias and go based on what we’re seeing, what’s happening with the data, what’s really happening. And in elite settings, people have Lasers and speed guns and video analysis, 3D analysis, Opto jump. People have got these tools, 1080, great tool. Dyno speed, very similar tool. They’ve all got these tools that give you some of the information or all of the information. And all I’ve been trying to do is go, okay, this is what I’ve experienced. This has helped me in my journey. How do I simplify it, distill it and make it available to anyone that has an Apple device? Yeah, at least to a more recent one, iPhone 5 not good. Yeah, but I have an iPhone 7, it records at 200 frames per second, it does the job.

 

My expectations are probably based on my bias. This is what I think good movement looks like and fast speed looks like. And I think over the past five years I’ve been able to take a step back from my bias or at least combine my bias with reality, with real data, with real numbers and actually maybe close the line between what I perceived them to be able to do and what they actually do. A long winded way of describing it.”

 

Can you tell us more about your reflection process

”So I guess during my degree and doing my masters in coaching science it really wasn’t about the science of sports science or anything like that, but really more about psychology. For me, my learning through my masters specifically, learning from great people I always noticed that no matter what they did, they look back and say, ”it could be better or where could it be better, at least?” They asked that question. So when I think about reflection, I think about reflection in action. You know, some people say I’m a great scrambler, no matter what the session plan is, I’m rarely scared or even intimidated about changing the plan on the go within the set, yeah, within the minute. If I see something and I think it can be better, I’ll make the change within reason. And so there’s this reflection in action and I think I can only do that because I’ve been coaching for so long and I’ve coached so many different types of people and I’ve made enough mistakes and I’ve had enough regret for making those mistakes that it really influences my decision making.

 

And there’s reflection on action, like reflection in hindsight. My wife was an Olympia, my wife was an elite coach, has coached to really high level and in multi events, in long jump and she was probably the biggest influencer on my coaching philosophy and specifically around training design, session design. And she is an important reflective, almost mirror for me. She knows what to say, when to say it. She really knows what not to say. That’s probably her gift.

 

That’s what I’ve learned from her, is that I give too much information. I’m too honest sometimes. And I’m not just too honest, I’m also a bit black and white. So like I’m a bit too direct sometimes. I’m a bit too frank and she’s almost the opposite.  Reflection for me is a big deal because the better we can reflect, the better we can accelerate our development. And I think maybe that’s always been my issue is that I’m in a rush and not a bad rush, but I don’t like wasting time. I like being efficient with time. So if to apply that to my own philosophy as a coach, it means that whatever I can learn in a year, the question is, can I learn that in six months.

 

Now, a great coach Mike Afilaka says ”you can’t microwave experience’‘. And it’s true, yeah. Even if you learn every single thing on speed in Wikipedia, everything to do with speed right now over this six weeks, seven weeks of COVID, does that make you a better coach? Actually, you might get worse because you’ve now got more information, you don’t know what to do with it, you know all these new rules, but you don’t know how to apply it into your environment. Some of them seem like they contradict what you’re already thinking. And you now have to practice and make sure that will balance up within like a training scheme.”

 

In terms of developing your business and having a business head on as well as a coaches head, how difficult has that been?

”That’s been really tough. I’ve always believed coaching should be selfless because athletes generally are selfish, and we need that balance. And so I’ve done that, but people see the website, people see the successes, the consultancies, the athletes’ performances, but they don’t see my bank account. And they don’t see the fact that I spend 80% of my time on the track, but track only brings in 20% of our household income. So I spend all my time chasing consultancies, doing extra work, work until midnight, just so I can coach. That’s the luxury of being an elite coach. Most of us are doing other work or just coaching track and field in general, most people do other work and the passion of the sport is driving them to the track on a daily basis.

 

That was fine when I was young and dumb and single and no kids. And then I had Logan, so that was five and a half years ago and actually that was all right. But even then that there was a sign. I was burning myself out.  From that point I noticed that the stress and pressure of being a dad and being the main source of income and also being a lead coach in an elite group, where I am their dad as well and trying to run a business or at least keep everything in balance was too difficult.

 

In my experience, the way I invest my energy into my coaching and to my athletes, I’ve realized that my family, my kids needed that energy as well. And so when I was giving that energy to both parties, I was burning the candle from both ends. So the small things that we’ve done, moving to Loughborough because I was working in Derby County and it was all close, it was real easy. My athletes, all of my consultants had been in one place at least for a year or two made sense.  It was very well balanced. Then I started working for England RFU. So I’m driving back down to London now and even further than London, I’m driving down to Berkshire.

 

The balance for me has been very difficult and I’m in debt as a result. And would I go back and change it? I really don’t know because also I got to be completely in the deep end, in the deepest ocean of coaching and I’ve been experienced and exposed to amazing opportunities, amazing players and athletes and systems and coaches. , Everyone says high performance sport is not healthy for the athletes, their bodies, for us and our emotional energy and all of those things.

 

I see many, many coaches who really shoot up to the top of, let’s say of whatever it is. Yeah, they’ve got really high status who follow managers around, maybe where managers are going from club to club or follow athletes around when they’re going from country to country, when they’re relocating who’ve had two marriages, who don’t have kids that really liked them, who have lots of money in their account. But when they go home and sit down and really look around, they, you know, they’ve maybe sacrificed their family for their career. And I was very happy to sacrifice myself for my own energy, my own social time for my career and that’s paid off, but I’m not happy to sacrifice my family for my career. And that’s been an important turning point for me.

 

If during the most stressful times you don’t feel you can carry on committing to what you’re doing, then you shouldn’t take it on because that’s what you need to be prepared for. When things go smoothly, that’s the easy time. The hardest, most challenging and sometimes the most exciting time is when everything’s going wrong, because that makes you have to adapt. You either adapt or you die. And if you don’t have that adaptive energy, because you’re spending it with your family, then the coaching dies. If you don’t have that energy for your family, because you’re spending it with your athletes, then your family dies essentially. And so the reality is finding that balance has been really important for me. Knowing my worth has been important for me. Showing my work in my unique way, I’m dyslexic. I like to read, but even just yesterday, I did a tweet, spelling mistakes everywhere. So I’m not going to be writing the most informative blogs. But I know my topic, I know my subject, I know coaching, I know people, I have emotional intelligence and I like to summarize and simplify things.

 

So finding my business side has been difficult because not many people do things the way I do it. And so I didn’t have a model or template to copy. But actually my business and mentoring and consultancy and stuff has happened by accident more than on purpose. People come to me and have come to me and asked me more and more questions, it’s made me go, oh, you’re an expert or you’re an elite person and you’re asking me this question that I think is fundamental. That’s my bias. It’s fundamental to me, but it might not be to you. Maybe there’s a product there. Maybe I can replicate that and share that with more people. Do you think more people be interested? So I’ve gone into business almost not by looking for a product and trying to sell it. I’ve almost been just people come in to take this product and I’ve gone, I should repackage that and make that available for other people.”

 

It’s what you’re doing already that you’re just modifying and tweaking to make a business out of it.  And that’s not a businessman talking, that’s a coach talking to make a business.  I think that’s really interesting to me.

 

”For me, it’s love, like I know that if I love something and I might love it because it’s interesting ‘cause it’s a puzzle. I like puzzles, because it’s challenging and forcing me to be outside my comfort zone. But if you love something generally when you’re tired or when you’re pissed off it, you don’t give up. Yeah, and maybe it makes you work harder. And you take a step back from it, maybe you sleep on it and actually you have some deep reflections and you’re better, right. So for me, it’s always been about the love. If I love a topic, if I love a subject, then I’m going to , generally, I’m going to be good at it and I’m going to understand it.

 

And through that understanding I’m going to pull it apart, like a video machine. I’m going to open it up and look at all the parts and I’m going to put it back together and I’m going to summarize it really simply. And that’s how I like to just live in my world. And it just happens that that’s how people enjoy learning on deep topics. They just want to know to heuristics. They just want to know the rules are and the KPI’s. You know, it’s one thing to know the rules, but if you need to apply those rules in your setting and break those rules, do you just need to know the rules before you break the rules or do you need to know these broken rules too?

 

So it’s one thing to know basic mechanics and another thing to know what can I do right now, next week to make my players better, to make me better as a coach.”

 

 

Let’s talk acceleration principles, what are the principles that you live by when it comes to acceleration?

”If we’re just talking about the basics of acceleration, the goal is to get from A to B. So if we took a hundred metres, the goal is to get from zero to a hundred as fast as possible. And obviously we can break that into phases. And when we’re speaking more specifically about initial acceleration, obviously we can in team sports and even in track and field, we can measure a 10 metre time, right? Five metre or a 10 metre time is traditionally used to get an understanding of someone’s ability to accelerate.

 

But many of my clients and many teams will put down timing gates. You know, if they want to do speed training at their club, they believe that if they put down timing gates and they drive intent, this is an important thing, a lot of people talk about that sometimes the biggest priority in speed training is just getting the players to try hard and actually intent, high intensity in the effort and the speed and the timing gates can help that then they give them a time.

 

If your goal is your 10 metre time only, then you might be missing a trick because I can run to 10 and you can run to 10 in the same time but I might be at a higher velocity than you.

 

And all that means is we’ve got to 10 metres at the same time, maybe you’ve been a drag car and you’ve got there by really your first four steps going and then actually your rate of acceleration drops off. So you did most of your work in the front side of the race. And maybe I’m still a drag car, but I’ve got a tiny bit less horsepower, but maybe I’ve got less drag too. Like literally I’ve got less air resistance and so I might get to five metres in 1.0, let’s say you get there 0.90 but we still both get to 10 metres at 1.7. I’m accelerating still. You give me three more steps I’m in front of maybe even one more step I’m in front of you.

 

So when we talk about acceleration, we’ve got to be careful that we’re not setting a goal over a 10 metre time and encouraging a technique and a strategy that gets us there fast, but puts us in a bad position.

 

And then you think rugby, you think, okay why does it matter? If my aim is to get to the 10 metres, if my aim is to get to my defender or my attacker as quick as possible, and that 10 metres is in front of me, I just need to be there as quick as possible. But actually you look at, you know, you listen to someone like Frans Bosch or John Pryor or Dean Benson and Eddie Jones, they talk a lot about options positions, right? You need to be able to get to 10 fast, but be in a position where you can organize your body to make a decision. And that position is often in a position where you can remain reactive with your feet and you still have control of your center of mass. You’re not over rotating.  You’re in a position with your pelvis and your trunk where you can rotate and you can do other actions where you can scan if you need to, and then use your upper body if you need to, while still using your legs to push you to go faster.

 

And that position is an efficient position. The reality is by the time I get to 10 metres, I need to be in an efficient position to make a decision in team sports. And I also need to be an efficient position to keep getting faster in a linear sport. So for me, efficient acceleration, no matter where we’re at looks the same. You maintain a frequency and a stiffness that allows you to be energy efficient, but also be in a position to make choices and make decisions. So that would be my first start of acceleration. I haven’t talked about postures. I haven’t talked about shapes. I haven’t talked about what the fundamentals of athletics in 100 metres versus hurdles versus maybe long jump, that’s all a secondary discussion.

 

Can you produce the right forces and throw yourself where you need to go? That’s again, JB and RF, yeah. What ratio of your forces are you directing forwards? That’s how effective you are and you can be really effective without being efficient. We can both run a 1.70 and we could say 1.70 is the time that we need in our sport, but I might do it in a way that really allows me to one, save energy, two, be in a position to make a decision or three, be in a position to keep getting faster. That might take more stress off of my lower limb and that might just give me a bit of an energy reserve that I can use better to continue going for repetitive actions in the game.”

 

Coaches are often deciding which metrics such as stride length, stride frequency to focus on etc.  Do you think there is too much focus on that?

”So I think there’s too much focused on it, yes. I think or I know that the effective and efficient strategies are about the best combination of your spacial temporal characteristics. So your ground contact, air time, step length and if you’re going to look at a drive index or you’re going to look at some kind of way of combining those numbers, that is all about combinations. And neither is it about maximizing your stride length, neither it is about maximizing your stride frequency. It’s about finding this optimal because of the fact that our limbs don’t work in isolation, energy transfers through our pelvis to each limb. So it’s not about getting the most out of the pushing leg and getting a massive toe off distance and making a massive shape because if you do that, what you may end up doing is not having any pretension in your swing leg that’s in front.

 

So if you really think back to what are the biggest priorities in sprinting or in performance it is one to project yourself towards where you want to go from A to B. And it’s another thing to be prepared for the next step.

 

Those are the two priorities; project and be prepared. And if you over project you’re under-prepared, and if you’re over-prepared, you’re under projected or you under project.

 

So we’re always looking for this balance and the great thing about binary is that we’ve got all of the spatial temporal numbers. We’ve got all of the angles and orientation numbers. We’ve got everything, most things that you can get, everything that you can get from motion analysis, we can get, but if you’re only going to go for one thing, I’ll go for velocity or go for acceleration. I’ll go for the reality of the fact that we want to be fast, we want to spike our acceleration and maximize our speed, is those two things. So we care about speed and acceleration. Now, acceleration as a number or power as a number normalized, average, horizontal external power, but let’s just call it power, versus acceleration, they kind of give you a similar thing and the great thing about them is they take into context, the velocity you’re moving at and the rate of change as well.

 

So those would be metrics that I would hang my hat on because they don’t tell a lie. You can make a perfect shape and if your acceleration is less and your velocity is less, it’s not fast. It’s not what you really want. With that you need to take into account that people develop over time. Sometimes when they learn something new, it slows down and it gets faster. So there is a bit of art behind recognizing what you should hang on to and be patient with and what compliments that exercise.

 

If that’s a shape you want to do, are you complimenting it with some strategies around training it, creating what capacity, increasing the mechanical properties of that muscle group or that system. If you combine teaching and training, then that new movement pattern is more likely to be successful, but regardless, look at velocity, look at acceleration. Rarely is it something we can look at because we don’t have the tools. We don’t have a 3D Vicon system or a pitch or in your clinic and now we do.”

 

Is it only experience that can allow you to differentiate what you need to change?

”No. I think for me, pretension and preparation for the step are key things to understand (Daz comment: that perhaps doesn’t rely on extensive experience if you know what to look for). We definitely want to project ourselves where we need to go, and we definitely need to be prepared for the step. I’ve said this before. So no matter what change we make, we have to make sure that there’s an acceptable bandwidth of projection and preparation. So let’s say velocity goes down because we’re working on something and we’ve interrupted the habitual flow of the athlete.

 

We’ve maybe given a taboo internal cue, but it was necessary for them to make sense of it. That we’ve played with some drills to give them some context and for them to find a feeling so that internal cue is now poo-pooed because now they understand the feeling of it. And then they’re working on it. Sometimes when you understand a feeling of it, but you’re still working on it, you might decrease maybe your velocity. Your rate of force development might reduce a bit, because you want a bit more control.

 

So velocity it might go down, but you want to see the classic spatial, temporal variables, ground contact time, step length. You want to see rhythm. That’s what you want to see, even if they get a bit slower and even if you’re coaching something within a session, and you’re having undulations really in how well they’re applying the skill, you want to see flow. You want to see a gradual change. You want to see that if you looked at your step length, that every step is getting a bit longer.

 

If you looked at ground contact time, every ground contact time is reducing. If you’re looking at initial acceleration, you want to see that the ratio of air to ground is changing and that they’re spending less time in the air, more time in the ground in the first step and that this relationship remains at least for your first three to four steps. And then we start to see a break point, which is essentially where they start to spend a bit more time in the air and less time on the ground.

 

So there are some rhythms that we expect in running smooth flow, like a plane taking off. You want to see a smooth flow. And there are some rhythms that we want to see in velocity, velocity, gradually getting faster. And once you understand those rhythms and we want to stick to those rhythms, we understand that there are also rhythms in all of the other characteristics. Gradual change really is the name of the game and John Keily, and I think maybe Craig Pickering had a paper on smoothness, and it’s the best paper ever for me. I love John Keily’s work because it’s just a great summary of what we want in our data.

 

We talk about smoothness and we know what smooth, silky movement might look like or smell like or sound like, but we don’t know what smooth, silky data should look like, smell like or sound like. And actually it’s very similar. It’s very, very similar. You can look at someone’s data and see their step have gradually changing. And suddenly there’s a bad rhythm. You know, suddenly, you know, it was increasing by 10 centimetres each step and then suddenly it increases or decreases by 20 centimetres. There’s something going on. Or it stays the same when it should have been changing. There’s something going on.

 

So it’s not just experience. I think if you know what to see in good data and good movement, you can figure out and decipher what you see in your environment.”

Can you comment on team sports versus sprinters?  How can team sports go about trying to best utilise the 20 minutes warm-up time?

 

Athletic Performance Academy

 

”I think, this is where like I’ve always talked about projection, switching and reactivity. I’ve always said that these are really important umbrella terms that help me make sense of the world. And I think if I was going to focus on acceleration and I wanted to maximize the learning, as well as the mechanical load or development of specific muscle groups, I’d pull a pulley. I’d pull X-Genies, I’ll pull a sled, I’ll do something resisted, right? And a lot of our clients and teams, especially with this new preparation for preseason, have bought 20 X-Genies. And they’ve linked them all to the walls, players can’t share equipment. If they’ve bought 20 X-Genies, they put them all in a wall and they recognize that the resisted running does lots of the teaching for them.

 

Projection I really think has orientation. ‘Cause when you say projection, we’re not really saying where, which direction you want to project. I feel like if we’re talking about orientation, we’re talking about some of the summaries from one of the resistance running research, which is RF again, keep coming back to it. Are you able to project a large amount of your force in the direction you want to go? Is that large ratio of force going forward, going horizontal? So for me, that’s one of my first priorities, orientation, and I’m going to use resisted running for it. Another priority is range of motion. If you have a relatively large range of motion on the front and the back side of your running cycle, not just the front side, not just the back side, if you have a relatively large range of motion on both sides of the flexing leg and the extending leg, then that tells me two things:

 

One. It tells me that you’re extending the leg, you’ve pushed your center of mass outside and away from your center of support. So you’ve had a nice extension of your posterior chain. So great. You’ve got a large range of motion in the backside. Two. On the front side, if at the moment of toe off, when you finish extending your knee is relatively high, even in acceleration (so we’re saying your hip angle is maybe closer to 90 degrees than 110 degrees), then clearly during the step, your thigh has punched forwards. But if at the moment of toe off, when you finish extending your front thigh is actually down here, then clearly during the stride, your thigh didn’t come forward quick enough. So at the moment of toe off is a great time to see, okay, what’s happening with extended leg. What’s happening with a thigh in front?

 

So finding an effective range of motion in your legs during projection and orienting yourself forwards just describes a lot of things, but for a novice coach, if I just want to make sure all the forces go forward, I’ll use a sled. Are they utilizing their range of motion? If not, then why? Is it because they’re not pushing against the ground or is it because they’re not punching their knee forward? And the nice thing about punching your knee forward whilst pushing against the ground is it pushes your center of mass out in front. It makes it easier to orientate your forces forwards.

 

So this RF puzzle that’s the all our real goal is, and can be solved by orientating yourself forwards and separating your limbs really well. So once you’ve done that, that’s the projection part done. That’s the pushing part done. Then you got to be prepared for the next step. So then the question is, once they’ve done these actions, and then they swapped their limbs, does their shin land in a position where it’s stiff, the ankle is stiff, the heel doesn’t drop. (Daz comment: this is the reactivity part).  The shin is stiff, is stable and allows the hip to extend early. Or does the shin land vertical, the heel drops, the shin has to roll forwards before the hip can push again. And if you’re in that position, that’s less stiff, that’s less reactive. Do you want some compression, some load before you explode? Yes. As any performance that can have a bigger touchdown distance and during a tiny bit of deceleration on the step and tiny bit of breaking it, they almost use that time to multiply and potentiate extension, right? They’re getting that highest eccentric to then load the concentrate action.

 

So fine, but there’s a bandwidth. There’s landing too far behind and too stiff and not enough pressure to push and there’s landing too far out in front and almost decelerating too much. So that’s five or six minutes talking about what I would be summarizing for a coach. So I’ll go back to it. If you orientate yourself well and go forward with good range of motion in your legs and then switch your limb so you can be reactive and do it again, then I think nearly all performance can do that. Rugby, football, forwards, backs. There’s a bandwidth to it. Maybe you get a bit less out the back, a bit less out the front. Maybe you’re landing a bit further out in front, a bit further out behind, but I’m talking about centimetres. And, generally the summary is the same for everybody. And so when we look at our teams, well players, if I was in a setting and I had 20 athletes, I would just be getting them to pull heavy things, recognize how to orientate themselves well with a good range of motion. The heavier it is the more horizontal I have to be and actually the better I have to switch because I have no air time.

 

If more horizontal you are, you don’t have air time. No air time, less time to be prepared. I’ll pull medium things because I still have to orientate myself, but I have a bit more time. I’ll be pulling medium weight because it gives me a bit more velocity. It’s more challenging. I’d be running without any resistance. Same drill, same task and I think that differential loading allows them to explore different strategies to do the same task. So it’s just movement variability. It’s just giving them options.  Are we doing resisted running for the physical, mechanical loading, or are we doing it for the teaching and the differential learning and almost creating a constraint for these guys to make sense of the world and, to explore different strategies?

 

I think we’re doing both. I think on some days we do minimal amounts of runs and we’re really just using resistance running for teaching and potentiation and on other days do large amounts of resisted running done with variability and combined with plyometrics.  This would allow us to create a massive work capacity to do anything else when it came to speed work, because it meant that we had lots and lots of contacts, high velocity contacts into the ground conditioning the Achilles, conditioning soleus, conditioning foot position, conditioning knee to be stable, the hip to be the prime mover, really locking in lumbar and just making sure these guys push through their bums and stabilized through their feet. And so when we move to either more pre-planned or more rugby related stuff, the guys just seemed to be able to tolerate it more than usual. Lower limb injuries went away, hamstring stuff minimized, and actually we seemed to see that when we dropped some gym work on a specific day and replaced it more with resisted running, that they didn’t just run faster, run PBs and run fast times and GPS. Their next gym session, they also came in and they seem to be wired.

 

Yeah. So again, long-winded but I think for me the summary is if we clarify that our goal for all our performers is to orientate large forces forwards with a decent range of motion and to make sure we can be prepared for the next step, then our RF will be good, but our DRF will also be good. That’s easy to coach. That’s easy to do in large squad because you’ve really got two goals; if go forwards when you pull something heavy and you don’t orientate yourself forward, you don’t go anywhere. So it’s great for athletes to feel because when they pull something heavy it can suddenly change something about their synchronization of their limbs or sequence of their movement or spine discipline.   Because the priority is really, do you have good spine discipline? Do you have good shin discipline? And the shins would tell you a story about the whole run just by looking at the shins, right.

 

That’s really easy to teach because if you don’t, if you’re trying to pull something heavy with bad spine discipline and shin discipline, you won’t go anywhere. You just won’t go anywhere. You won’t move anywhere. So the athletes figure it out. And the athlete who don’t figure it out, that’s when you intervene. But if you have tools that teach what you want for you and you just have to provide some feedback, then you can get large changes in acceleration and velocity within large squads. You don’t have to be super coach to make those changes happen.”

 

Can you finish off by commenting on GAME SPEED, the teaching versus training, and how we ensure transfer from one thing to another?

”I think they’re two different things. Firstly, so ”teaching” and ”training” for me is really down to the fact that just because someone looks pretty doesn’t mean they’re going to actually run fast and then just because they can run fast, it doesn’t mean they’ll do it in a game. So if you want to make sure that technique turns into fast running and physical robustness to do those actions repeatedly, you almost have two tasks there. Can you run fast, great. Can you do that eight times within a eight minute period? Yeah, it’s a different discussion, right? Teaching and training for me is understanding what exercises, what mechanical properties are necessary to run fast.

 

What does that mean? It means that for me, that if I want to develop someone’s ability to run really, really fast in outright running, I’ve got to make sure they also have the physical tools based on things that I’ve done maybe in the gym with eccentric work, with flywheel work, with isolated versus inter-segmental work. But also I need to probably in team sports, more importantly design running conditioning sessions that develop the technical movements, but under some duress. And you know, everyone’s like if you’re doing speed work and you’re not giving people enough recoveries, then you’re a bad coach. But when you’re training for speed or you’re training speed is two different discussions. If I’m training for speed, I sometimes have incomplete recoveries. When I’m training for speed, I want the movement to look similar, but I also want to create the physical underpinnings, the energy system, the work capacity, the tolerance to essentially mitigate risk when I trained speed.

 

So that’s a really important concept. Everyone wants to sprint now in sports, but people are now getting more injuries again because they’re doing too much sprinting at the wrong time. They don’t understand phase potentiation. They don’t understand how to drip feed it over time. And when they drip feed it, what else they should be doing on the field with resisted running, with repetitive speed endurance or repeat speed endurance and with your gym work. You do that so that when you need to run really, really fast, you can do it. You can recover from it and it’s got less stress on the body. So movements and muscles or teaching and training, that’s where it comes to.

 

Game speed is more about once they’re confident and clear and they have repetitiveness, they have the ability to do it almost under fatigue and under some kind of distraction, game speed is more like, can you replicate these movements, high velocity actions whilst being super distracted when you don’t really care about the movement? Where you care only about the outcome. You don’t care as much about thinking about it. You know you need to be in the right position and be there fast but you’ve got a number of distractions. So game speed to me is a big deal. Eddie Jones loves speed work, loves speed training but if it doesn’t finish with some game speed, if it doesn’t look like what they need to know, and if we don’t put them in positions and scenarios and stress test those scenarios for them to be able to run fast and be efficient or and be effective in the skill work, then there is no transfer and he won’t be happy.

 

I’ve done most of my learning with the great team coaches. Mike Ford, originally at Bath, said it’s great that you do speed work, but firstly, do they stay healthy? Secondly, does it turn into the game? And if is a no to any of those, you failed your task. And so really for team sport coaches, if you do the first stage and you do the right teaching and you underpin it with physical qualities, the likelihood of transfer just increases without even game speed. Yeah, that’s the reality. If your guys have the physical capabilities to repetitively do what you want them to do, and that’s their path of least resistance, that’s probably the most important thing here. That when they’re under stress, that when their body decides I need to get from here to here as soon as possible, the body knows that the most efficient way for me to do is use this movement pattern. That doesn’t happen because they’ve done wickets or pulled the pulley once or twice. That happens because the strongest muscle groups in the most efficient chain for them to use are the ones they choose to use. It’s a chain that you’ve trained. And until it is, then you just have people running fast, running straight lines, running PBs and GPS, great. But then when there’s a break and I have to do a box to box, they completely regress to what is comfortable, what is normal. What is the path of least resistance.

 

So I think game speed is a complete separate topic. I think game speed, you have to learn and design your game speed from top down. You have to have good skill coaches, good head coaches who are clear about what they want, clear about what their players do or don’t do very well and can teach you. I’ve been taught by some great technical coaches about what they want and I’ve just regressed it, reverse engineered it and gone, oh, that’s just a skips for height. And I was talking about high balls on one of our mentorships the other day about going up for a high ball in rugby and the skill of doing that is just a skip for height. Is really just a skip for height, under lots of pressure on a, maybe an unstable surface because you’re running and jumping but it’s skips for height.

 

So if you can dissect the perception action from the physical, and you can be clear about the two, you can develop the physical and make sure that they’re clear about the technical as well as have the physical capabilities. And then you put them under more and more stress so that they can connect this new skill under the main skill, then it transfers. Some people, have the perception. So make sure they can perceive it, great. But if they don’t have the wheels or they don’t have the chassis or they don’t have the suspension to do the task, it is great that they make the right decisions, but they’re in a Ford Focus, not in a, I don’t know, Porsche Boxster. I don’t know. I’m not very good with cars. I don’t know why I use this analogy. But hopefully that kind of gives you a flavor of where I would go with things.”

Top 5 Take Away Points:

 

  1. Coaching eye- one of the most important skills to learn as an apprentice coach is observation skills.
  2. Step back and remember the goal- What’s our priority? Velocity, that’s our priority. And what do we want the shape of velocity to look like? We want it to keep getting faster.
  3. Coaching vs Business- they don’t see the fact that I spend 80% of my time on the track, but track only brings in 20% of our household income
  4. Outcome vs Process- If your goal is your 10 metre time only, then you might be missing a trick because I can run to 10 and you can run to 10 in the same time but I might be at a higher velocity than you.
  5. Projection and Preparation- biggest priorities in sprinting or in performance it is one to project yourself towards where you want to go from A to B. And it’s another thing to be prepared for the next step

 

Want more info on the stuff we have spoken about?  Be sure to visit:

 

Twitter:

@EatSleepTrain_

 

You may also like from PPP:

 

Episode 372 Jeremy Sheppard & Dana Agar Newman

Episode 367 Gareth Sandford

Episode 362 Matt Van Dyke

Episode 361 John Wagle

Episode 359 Damien Harper

Episode 348 Keith Barr

Episode 331 Danny Lum

Episode 298 PJ Vazel

Episode 297 Cam Jose

Episode 292 Loren Landow

Episode 286 Stu McMillan

Episode 272 Hakan Anderrson

Episode 227, 55 JB Morin

Episode 217, 51 Derek Evely

Episode 212 Boo Schexnayder

Episode 207, 3 Mike Young

Episode 204, 64 James Wild

Episode 192 Sprint Masterclass

Episode 183 Derek Hansen

Episode 175 Jason Hettler

Episode 87 Dan Pfaff

Episode 55 Jonas Dodoo

Episode 15 Carl Valle

 

Hope you have found this article useful.

 

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Pacey Performance Podcast REVIEW- Episode 272 Hakan Andersson

This blog is a review of the Pacey Performance Podcast Episode 272 – Hakan Andersson

Hakan Andersson

Website

Background: 

Hakan AnderssonSprint coach Sports Performance Consultant and Educator based at Sports Performance Center, Vaxjo, Sweden.  61 years old and 35 years coaching, with keen interest in Athletics and sprinting in particular.  Retired in 2018 after 36 years in Fire Brigade.

 

Discussion topics:

Where would you actually start jump training and plyometrics with young sprinters?

”A  local doctor really opened my eyes to sport science and he really introduced me to some great scientists.  The first scientist I met in the flesh was Carmelo Bosco, and everyone had heard about counter movement jumps, rebound jumps and squat jumps.  He was the Father of that and was doing a lot of pioneering work on the stretch shortening cycle in the mid 80s.

 

Sprinters have been doing jump training for hundreds of years but it was the Russians and Fins who took it to another level with more science and planning in an organised level.

 

When we talk about plyometrics what we probably mean is jumping (although there will be throwers that will object to that) so it’s some kind of ballistic movement and a wide spectrum of movement.  Jumping is great for developing general and specific coordination, so it has definite room in the programme for everyone and the earlier you start the better.  Everything you have to learn with coordination is easier if you start at an earlier age.  Plyometric ability jumping seems to be like a natural thing to do growing up.

 

In a more structured training environment with young sprinters you have to start with building resilience, you can’t start with intensive jump training when you weigh 90 kg and you’re 30 years old.  Before puberty you can start with rope skipping and hopscotch coordination.  Jump training can be very intense, and neuromuscular tension and forces can be very high so you have to be careful and it can easily be overdone.  It has to be individually monitored and progressed.”

 

Training load for plyometrics. How is that something that you moderate for your athletes? Ground contacts?

Ground contacts only say so much.  It is also the height you are jumping from and how much you attack the ground.  It is very easy to produce high ground reaction forces if you attack the ground or you are landing from high, so you can’t start in that way.”

 

Is there a way that you quantify how much plyometric training your individuals are doing?

”You can’t only talk about numbers and intensity.  There is no perfect scheme, you also have to use your gut and see how people are responding to the training.  You can’t say how many contacts you should be doing in a session, in a week in a month.  It only says so much about the load.”

 

What other considerations are there for coaches using plyometrics with team sport athletes?

”Henk Kraaijenhof says Plyometrics is for cats not cows! It all depends what athletes you have.  If you take sprinters you see a wide range of different body types.  You have the greyhound, very light frame elastic type who often respond well to jump training and often respond negatively to heavier resistance training.  Then you have the more muscular types that are usually more stiff, less elastic and usually respond better to heavier resistance.  So it’s the same in the team setting; you have different kinds of players, and you have to treat them as individuals.

 

 

It can be very easy to overdo it and lead to injuries because of the intensity that can occur in some of the exercises.  But I think that everyone can benefit from some type of plyometrics.  You also have to take into consideration that it has a diminishing returns.  If you talk about weight training, people may respond to the heavier resistance training and it may transfer to sport fairly well but there is usually a diminishing return where that last 20-30% of strength doesn’t really transfer, and it’s the same with plyometrics.  If jump training was the best solution then jumpers would be the best sprinters but they are not! So there is a diminishing return there too.

 

If you can jump 16m with standing five jumps and run 10.20 seconds for 100 m does it mean you will run 10.0 seconds because you jump 17m? Not necessarily, but I think that everyone will benefit from jumping to some extent.

 

Take for example an ice hockey player and their season is over end of May/beginning of June and you start training them and you start with hurdle jumps you are going to run into trouble in a couple of weeks.  You have to be very careful.  He can jump but he can’t land because his feet are fixed in skates for months of the year.  So it will be such a stress on the system, especially if you are on the heavy side.”

 

How would you modify the training for the sort of person you mentioned that may not respond as well to plyometrics?  And what would you put in the programme?

”First of all you have some kind of objective way of judging what kind of athlete you have.  An experienced track coach can see who is elastic and who is not.  You can also test people and use something like the reactive strength index, the relationship between jumping height or flight time and the ground contact.

 

People who display a high RSI usually are the elastic type, and most of the time you can expect them to respond well to jump training.  If you use subjective means to determine someone’s type you need to have a lot of experience.

 

We used to test a lot.  Nowadays we measure a lot in training to see how they respond, it doesn’t just have to be a testing session per se.

 

We used to use a counter movement jump and ask people to jump as high as possible but many times we saw no transfer to sprinting.  When it comes to the RSI it’s a better test in my opinion, and if they score well in the RSI they are usually in good condition to run well.  We have guys who score almost 4.0 with ground contact of 0.150 m/s.  A good RSI is also related to power output, with high RSI you have a high power output and you see numbers exceeding 80 Watts/kg.”

 

How do you incorporate horizontal and vertical emphasis jumping into your training?

”Both horizontal and vertical places an important role in sprinting and I don’t really understand the debate between the vertical camp and the horizontal camp, they are so connected.  Just like contact times versus contact length, people forget about contact length.  We have to move the centre of gravity in stance phase in a certain time.  Remember contact time is the outcome of running velocity.  And the velocity at toe off is the result of the magnitude and direction of force, so they are connected.  So if you try to mimic the ground contact of an elite sprinter at say 80-90 milliseconds then remember they have to move their centre of mass horizontally.  If you try to mimic that by jumping vertically they are a totally different thing!  So both forces play a big role.

 

In initial acceleration of course you can produce a lot of horizontal force and you can use the knee extensors more, and in top speed of course the vertical force is more significant but if we want to keep accelerating we need to make sure the propulsive forces are exceeding the braking forces.

 

Unilaterally bounding is more tricky and the forces are high because of the speed so it’s important to do this beyond just vertical jumping which may be good for training stiffness.  The bounding is better for training hip extension.

 

In team sports I would probably do more horizontal jumping but it all depends on their experience.   You have to respect the landing and the impact forces especially if you are a little heavier or jumping on a hard surface.  You might start on grass or jumping up stairs, and the jumping height.

 

I would start with a skipping rope and see how they respond and progress it slowly.  If they are coordinated and can learn it they can benefit from it.”

 

In terms of resisted sprints where would you start someone?

”Resisted sprints are an excellent idea for developing horizontal force capability in a safe way.  We have being doing some form of resisted sprints for a long time such as hill sprints.  In the last couple of years there has been some interesting technology come to the market.  We use the Dynaspeed in Sweden and there is the 1080 motion, and there are lot of resistances that you can programme in and do it a lot more accurately.

 

 

Sprinting is all about producing rate of force in a short time in the right direction but it is also about rhythm, and coordination and relaxation.  I find sometimes, and sprinters say it too, that sleds can be very disturbing because you are working with friction and the resisted force oscillate a lot when you are working with sleds.

 

The new technique using constant pulling force (dynaspeed) can be programmed so you can work in all the different acceleration phases, different loads and so we use it a lot and I think this will be a big part of the future in sprinting when it comes to being more precise and working more specifically, and more important than plyometrics actually.

 

You want more information than speed, I think.  You want to see what happens to stride length and frequency when you load them with resisted sprints.  Especially with assisted sprinting it is crucial to know, as it is very easy to pull people too hard, and you damage their mechanics.

 

The way I see it, if we use pretty heavy resistance and I programme the system to use say 30% of body weight equivalent or 60% body weight with a sled, friction dependent, the maximum velocity that you will achieve with a sprinter is roughly around 4-5 m/s which is equivalent to his first or second stride.  So with a heavy sled it is like training their first few strides but for an extended period of time.

 

If you do lighter resistances you can work on different phases of the acceleration curve, so it’s a very good tool and you can work your way through the whole acceleration period starting your session.  You start with a heavy resistance and the initial acceleration and you end up with the training programme developing the later part of the acceleration.

 

We usually use assisted sprints in the later part of a preparation period.”


When you say heavy resistance sprints what kind of load are we talking about?

”If you refer to the literature they are always referring to sleds.  If you talk about motor resisted sprints like muscle lab or 1080 it’s usually about half the resistance.  So the heaviest resistance we go to is about 30% of body mass, and that slows them down extensively to the speed of the first step. (which is equivalent to 60% on a sled).

 

We start with heavy sprints for a couple of weeks and then we reduce the load through the training period, and usually mix it too with super heavy, medium heavy and light weight but we emphasis one side of it and always with a combination of unloaded.

 

Resisted sprinting alters mechanics at the heavy end if you try to run with an erect position! If you stay in the same position as you would in the first couple of strides of acceleration then it obviously doesn’t alter mechanics but if you try to run in an upright position with 30% of your body weight then it would. ”

 

How would that work when you are working with team sports?

”The heavy resisted sprinting would be more considered strength work.  In football, sprinters never start their sprints from the true low acceleration position, they start from a more upright position so they have to accelerate a lot more with hip extension than knee extension, like a sprinter would.

 

In a game scenario a footballer starts a sprint from a more upright position, or from a moving position, and never from a low stance.

 

So the heavy resisted work in a low position is beneficial if it is seen as strength training for them.  For people who can’t do a lot of jumping it is a safe way of working even if the resistance is high and the speed is low, it is still much faster than anything you can do in the gym.”

 

What are some of the testing options have we got to help coaches decide where to spend their time?

”I think timing sprints is important to ensure the intensity is where you want it to be.  Hand timing is fine but electronic timing can help further.  It is much easier to monitor.  Electronic timing is a good investment.

 

We are now using IMUs with Musclelab that can detect ground contacts at touch down and toe off so we can calculate stride frequency, contact time and flight time.  If you can measure speed every time we also have the contact and stride length.  So we can follow the stride kinematics and kinetics as the athlte

 

We use Ergotest company based in Norway.  Musclelab is the brand and we use 16G IMU can sample up to 1000Hz, wireless and put it on the laces of the shoe.

 

Force platforms are great for seeing how they produce force eccentrically and concentrically, as jump height is not enough so that is another useful metric to see how athletes produce force.  I’ll use the force plates when doing drop jumps  and counter movements I have replaced the contact mats with force plates as I feel I get more information from that.”

 

Top 5 Take Away Points:

 

  1. Start early- everything you have to learn with coordination is easier if you start at an earlier age.  Plyometric ability jumping seems to be like a natural thing to do growing up.
  2. Progress slowly- build resilience and it has to be individually monitored and progressed.
  3. Monitoring jump load- it has to be about more than just ground contacts.  How much you attack the ground and how high you jump must also be taken into account.
  4. Transfer to sprinting- If jump training was the best solution then jumpers would be the best sprinters but they are not! So there is a diminishing return there too.
  5. Direction of force- Both horizontal and vertical places an important role in sprinting

 

Want more info on the stuff we have spoken about?  Be sure to visit:

 

Twitter:

@sprintcoachSWE

 

You may also like from PPP:

 

Episode 372 Jeremy Sheppard & Dana Agar Newman

Episode 367 Gareth Sandford

Episode 362 Matt Van Dyke

Episode 361 John Wagle

Episode 359 Damien Harper

Episode 348 Keith Barr

Episode 331 Danny Lum

Episode 298 PJ Vazel

Episode 297 Cam Jose

Episode 295 Jonas Dodoo

Episode 292 Loren Landow

Episode 286 Stu McMillan

Episode 227, 55 JB Morin

Episode 217, 51 Derek Evely

Episode 212 Boo Schexnayder

Episode 207, 3 Mike Young

Episode 204, 64 James Wild

Episode 192 Sprint Masterclass

Episode 183 Derek Hansen

Episode 175 Jason Hettler

Episode 87 Dan Pfaff

Episode 55 Jonas Dodoo

Episode 15 Carl Valle

 

Hope you have found this article useful.

 

Remember:

  • If you’re not subscribed yet, click here to get free email updates, so we can stay in touch.
  • Share this post using the buttons on the top and bottom of the post. As one of this blog’s first readers, I’m not just hoping you’ll tell your friends about it. I’m counting on it.
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APA are Recruiting!!

I have a few important announcements today!!!

APA Are Recruiting!

If you would like to be considered for a role with APA then please send a covering letter and CV to APA Owner, Daz Drake at [email protected] with email title APA.01

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Full-Time strength & conditioning coach

We are looking for a full-time strength & conditioning coach who has a passion for working with youth athletes and would be available to lead on the Junior Academy (10-16yrs).

This a full-time self-employed role, with opportunity to work with National and International Junior Tennis players.

The successful candidate will play a key role in driving the culture of strength & conditioning forward, with the opportunity to design, deliver and review long term athlete development programmes that can be used throughout the APA network.  This is an opportunity for the right person to innovate in the sport of Tennis and integrate a physical programme within an experienced world class team of tennis coaches, sports medicine practitioners and s&c coaches

For Full Details Download the PDF by clicking HERE

 

Part-Time strength & conditioning coach

There are a number of part-time roles at Gosling Tennis Academy.

We are looking for part-time strength & conditioning coaches who have a passion for working with youth athletes and would be available to lead on the Mini Academy (5-10yrs) and Junior Academy (10-12yrs) programmes.

These squads run in the evenings from 4-6pm Monday to Friday and would be suitable for a coach who is looking to gain experience of a high performance training environment.

Gosling Tennis Academy is based at Gosling Sports Park, Welwyn Garden City and is operated by Better

Please send an email enquiry to [email protected] for further info

 

 

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Pacey Performance Podcast REVIEW- Episode 286 Stu McMillan

This blog is a review of the Pacey Performance Podcast Episode 286 – ALTIS

Altis

Website

Background: 

Stu McMillan– Coach and CEO at ALTIS. Formerly based in Calgary, Canada coaching winter sport athletes from 1998-2010.  Became sprint coach with GB Track & Field athletes in 2010 until end of London games 2012.  Moved to Phoenix, Arizona and started Altis 2013.

Kevin Tyler- Altis President (and former Head of Coaching at UK Athletics)

Dan Pfaff- sprint coach

Andreas Behm- hurdles coach

John Godina- throws coach

 

Discussion topics:

How did ALTIS come about?

”John Godina had set up the World Throws Center, with a vision of setting up a training centre but also he saw this big gap in the profession, especially in North America of coaching track & field events.  So he started his company World Throws Center as a vehicle to educate throws coaches but also as a training centre to coach elite throwers.

 

But his vision was always to expand that out into all of the other event groups within track & field.  Within an hour of their first meeting John had offered Stu a job to help him build what they were going to call the World Athletics Center, which was rebranded as ALTIS in 2015.

 

The vision was to offer a more professional track & field coaching service and second to that was to offer a professional coach education service to other track and field coaches.  So from the get go we have always believed in the co development of coaches and athletes.

 

In the first year we had 7 athletes on board, the second year we have 23 athletes, the following year we had 65 and the year after that we had 108 and by that time it was getting a little bit too chaotic.  So from an operations stand point so we reached out to Kevin Tyler who at that point was lead sprint coach for University of Oklama, to help us with the day to day operations.”

 

What is the vision for ALTIS over the next 5-10 years?

”We started off as a track & field company that wanted to do some education.  Now we are an education company that also does some track & field.  When we started off we had this in house coaching programme, the Apprentice coach programme, that we are probably best known for, where every month that we are coaching people we are visited by 10-15 professionals from all over the world.

 

Now when we started that programme in 2013 80% of the people than came to visit us were from track & field, and now every month we have 20-30 people come visit us and 80-85% of them are from other sports, so it is less and less track & field, and that has been part of our strategy moving forward.  The reality is that track & field is a difficult sport from which to try and operate and sustain a for-profit business within.  There just is not the money in these some of these smaller amateur sports.

 

I don’t know what the next 5-10 years will look like but we are trying to lead some of the change and doing a better job of helping educate the younger coaches coming through navigate their way through the chaos of the coaching profession.”

 

Where do you look for inspiration from the education side of the business to have more impact on the industry?

”With age, often, but not always, comes wisdom, so you are better able to synthesis your way through all the disparate and conflicting information so we see our role as trying to make sense of it all.  So first and foremost we see our role as taking these perhaps 100 conflicting ideas and synthesis it into what is truly important.

 

Where we get the inspiration for that I think is maybe two or threefold.  First and foremost is my primary mentor Dan Pfaff who can take really complex information and reduce it to a sentence or two that makes sense for a person who doesn’t have the wisdom that he has.

 

Second a great friend of mine Jon Beradi who build Precision Nutrition who saw the noise in the nutrition space and didn’t want to be a part of it, so he started an online digital nutrition education curriculum.  So I take a lot of inspiration from what he built and how he built it, communicating it in a way that made sense to everyone in the space whether they are just starting or whether they’ve been in the space for 10 years plus.

 

 

Third is EXOS, which is the building in which we house ourselves, and we are so lucky to have this relationship with Mark Vestegen, and how they have built their system.

 

Do the underpinning characteristics of speed differ between track & field and other sports?

”Backing up a little bit, the question to ask yourself is, is speed a primary limiting factor in the sport you coach? If the answer is yes, then where is it within the hierarchy of KPIs (key performance indicators) within that?

 

If it is one of the top ones, and you determine that it is an important factor in your sport then it is contingent upon you to understand that.  A decade ago it was all about the strength part of strength & conditioning, and very little about conditioning.  And within strength it was really only about what happened in the weight room, just around Olympic lifts or Power lifts, and it was very reduced and it didn’t have a great transfer over to what the sport is.

 

 

The role of an S&C coach was really about getting an athlete in front of me more stronger and more powerful, and if I do that then I’ve done my job.  But over the course of the last 5-10 years we have begun to think a lot more about ‘transference‘ and is the work I’m doing transferring over to the sport in which they are performing?  So then that becomes the objective.

 

It is pretty evident that most S&C coaches don’t know a tonne about speed development, or mechanics or any of those things around speed.  It is changing, and there is a greater respect for it and I think it stems from a better understanding of the role of the S&C coach and knowing it is more than getting them bigger, faster stronger in the gym.  The strength components are much easier to measure, and therefore much easier to justify our positions or roles within the performance team.

 

But to answer your original question, I don’t really see much of a difference.  The underpinning things that are important to getting athletes fast are important whether you are getting them prepared to run a 100m or whether you are preparing them to play rugby, basketball, or American football.

 

It’s just where in that hierarchy of KPIs do those speed qualities exist? So in track & field for example, the mechanics of how an athlete moves down the track is really important.  It’s a primary factor and it is one of the most important factors in determining whether that athlete succeeds. Is it as important for let’s say as important for an offensive lineman in American football, no! But it is more important for a wide receiver to move mechanically sound, then yes!  For an offensive lineman I wouldn’t spend a tonne of time teaching him how to upright sprint but I’d coach them enough so that he doesn’t hurt himself when he has to do these stupid NFL combine tests!

At what point do you move away from isolated sprinting to a more contextual environment for a team sport player?

Well that’s the big question obviously, and it just goes back to that question about transference.  It’s no different from what we are doing in the weight room.  What are we doing in the weight room by doing a power clean, or a squat or a reverse hyper?  Do we do any of those things out on the field, no we don’t do any of them, so they are so many generations away from from the athlete actually does on the field.

 

It’s very funny to me and curious to me the argument from technical coaches who tell me, ‘well my athlete doesn’t get upright, he only accelerates so why are you teaching them to upright sprint?’  So I say, ‘well does your athlete clean 60kg on the bar and put it on their shoulders on the field? So why are you getting them to do that as well?’

 

That being said, it’s still a very valid question.  Working back from the sport we need to be able to justify every piece of the preparation programme whether it is sprinting, lifting weights, jumping or throwing.  We need to be able to justify it.  Going back to the previous example, if you are a premier league footballer or a wider receiver in American football then the need to teach someone how to sprint properly becomes more important.

 

Then the question becomes content versus context.  You’re probably not going to be thinking about your technique while you are actually moving around the field.  You might be subconsciously aware of it, but you’re definitely not consciously thinking about driving your knees up or using your arms etc.  But that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be working on that from a less contextualized standpoint away from the confines of the game.

 

What I say, and what my argument is, probably the more experienced you are the longer you’ve been in a sport, the longer you’ve been moving a certain way, the less time that we as professionals should spend trying to change that way of moving or improve/perfect that way of moving.  But if you’re a 12 yr old soccer player and you can barely move your limbs with any efficiency or force then it is part of our role to try to teach you how to move properly.

 

Are you thinking about sprinting when you are playing a team sport?

”I always share the story of me playing soccer and I remember vividly having a one on one with the defender.  Now this was my second stint playing soccer as a 30 yr old having retired from the game at 24 yr.  I hadn’t changed anything else in those six years apart from spending a lot of time learning how to run faster and more efficiently.  As I push the ball past him, my brain just goes somewhere else for a split second and I lock into my sprint technique thinking about leaning forward, head down, pump my arms, then as soon as I get by him, my brain locks back into the sport and off I go again.

 

Now the ecological dynamics people say it is always an interaction between the task and the environment.  Well, it’s not always.  Sometimes we use these fundamental skills that we develop in other areas of the physical preparation, whether that’s jumping, or running or squatting.  Sometimes we use them as metaphors within the confines of the game, and you refer back to all the training you have done and for a split second your brain goes back into a fundamental skill before you lock back into the game.

 

When, where and how do you incorporate speed sessions into Youth athlete programmes?

”Firstly, it depends on what you mean by youth? Are you talking about an 8 yr old or perhaps a 15-16 yr old?  Have they started to specialise in their sport? Generally what you will see if you look at a playground with a group of 8-10 yr olds running around, most of them run a lot, sprint a lot and they are pretty efficient in how they move.  It is probably getting a little bit worse as they play less but generally it’s pretty good.  If you look again at that same group 5-6 years later, most of them are no longer moving well.

 

If they are 8-12 yr old you are probably doing enough sprinting within their play already, now you may have a few that are not great movers who you might want to say okay, twice a week for 10 minutes we are going to work on making you a little more efficient in the way in which you move.  But the training may be enough if they are running around and sprinting.

 

Now when they are 15-16 yrs the technical demands are playing a much greater importance than the relevance of some of these other things like sprinting, such as doing small sided games and having less and less opportunities to open up and run.  So I would encourage coaches, for whom this is your case, to provide your athletes with opportunities to open up and running and sprinting.  It doesn’t have to be a lot, just work it into your warm ups and do 5-10 mins sprinting, say three times a week.

 

 

Sprinting in warm-ups

On a related issue of warm-ups I find it totally baffling having watched some Premier league soccer warm-ups that the players will not do any sprinting during the warm-up.  Sure they’ll do 4-5 step bursts or some really sloppy strides but not once do they do any actual sprinting!!

 

And as far as planning it into training days, look at what the technical plan is for the training session.  If the plan is going to do a lot of sprinting, we’re not doing any small sided games (SSG), okay well then I’ll just put 3-4 x 20-30m sprints at the end of the warm-up.  Or if we are doing mostly SSG today then we won’t open up a lot so I’ll have to work more sprinting into the warm-up and do 5-6 x 20-30m.  The take home is not so much how we do it, but that we do it! We’ve gone too deep into the specialisation of the sport and the technical demands of the sport, and started to ignore the capacity demands and the strength, power and speed and how people move!

 

At Altis we look at three different speeds, slow, medium and fast velocity.  We have three planes of movement- forwards, sideways and backwards.  And we look at three arcs- short- medium and long arc (with a long arc being the entire body is working fully).  When we get together as a group we will do something to hit all nine components over the course of a session.

 

What is your philosophy of what goes on in the weight room (both for track athletes and then secondly as team sports)?

First and foremost, we always start with the sport and the athlete as individuals. So understanding the athlete is primary.

 

So the first question I ask is, why is this athlete in front of me good at what they do?

 

I then design my programme towards whatever is it that makes them good at what they do (strengthen strengths).  So if they are good at what they do because they have got really good force producing capabilities, then I’m going to spend more time doing, relative to other things closer to when they need to compete well, on force producing abilities.  So I will train them towards that kind of work.  Now that’s for elite sprinters.

 

But if I’m working with a 14-15yr old I’ll still ask the same question, why is this athlete in front of me really good at what they do, but I’ll spend more relative time filling in the gaps at what they are not good at.

 

They are super strong- so I’ll do stuff in the weight room to make them super stronger.  And when they are competing I want them feeling good about themselves- doing things they are confident in and comfortable with.

 

Philosophically as a coach, we tend to see a weakness in an athlete and they say, ‘if only I could improve this weakness, this athlete would be so much better.’  I worked with a speed skater in Canada who for almost four years leading into the Winter Games 2010 was one of the best sprint skaters at the time, he had the World record, he had won a number of world cups.

 

In the year leading up to the 2006 Winter Olympics the coaches and physiologists decided there was a gap here, I think we can make this athlete better if we spend more time on building his strength endurance. Now he was really pretty dominant on the first lap, and he was even pretty dominant on the second lap but tended to drop off a little in the second lap.  So in the Olympic season, you can guess what happened? he lost his mojo, he lost his top end speed because we only have finite amount of stuff we can fit into the envelope, so by working on more strength endurance stuff around the second lap, that took away from what actually made him, him, what made him good! And because you took away stuff that made him feel really good about himself he started losing his confidence and started competing less well.

 

Now I think he went into the games and didn’t even medal, maybe 5th or 6th where he went into the games and the previous quadrennial period as the dominant skater!  So this is a little lesson to think about when to work on strengths and when to work on weaknesses.  We need to be really careful on where we spend time working on things where athletes aren’t very good at.  How does that make you feel psychologically if you just go into every training session doing things that are hard and you feel you suck at?  You can just become a totally different person.

 

What is your process in determining the exercises in the weight room that have the biggest transference into sprinting?

Part of that is just experience, having access to literally hundreds of athletes in Calgary and put them into little boxes and try stuff out and over the course of that time we figured out so much of what can transfer and what can’t.  But now that I’m working with 10 athletes who are all hoping to go to the Olympic games it doesn’t give me much opportunity to trial and error.

 

We know that for example, there isn’t a high degree of transference between say a heavy back squat and running fast.  That may be surprising to some of your listeners.  If you look at the eight finalists in the 100 m sprint and you ask yourself how much these guys can back squat.   Now some strength coaches will look at the story of Ben Johnson who apparently did a 600 lb back squat the day before the 1988 Final and that’s kind of become the bedrock of their understanding of the relationship between strength and speed.  Where he was an anomaly.  If you look at the the eight sprinters at the final in Rio (2016) there wasn’t one of them who could of full back squatted over 150 kg.  I had one of them (the Bronze medalist) and he couldn’t back squat 60 kg!!

 

So strength as we typically define it in the weight room as ‘load’ is not transferable to speed.  Now some governing strength abilities within that do, so eccentric RFD is very important, so can you find some exercises within the weight room to develop that ability within strength that transfers a lot better!

 

Werner Gunther was in the Swiss bob sled teams and I got the chance to watch this guy train over the course of a winter.  Around the same time in 2001 I watched a guy called Adam Archuleta who lit up the NFL combine that year, and his metrics tested out of the roof!  Now his trainer at the time Jay Shrayder did a lot of drop catch work with a really overloaded fast eccentric component as a part of his strength.   I also listened to D Schmidtbleicher who found within his research it was that the stretch was the most important part not the shortening, it was the first ‘s’ in the SSC (stretch-shortening cycle).  What I took from that was that we have a finite amount of energy available to us so we can choose to say do hurdle hops or depth landings.  We can probably do more depth landings if we don’t have to worry about the concentric component (the second ‘s’), than we can full hurdle hops so it is a little bit more efficient.

 

So taking what I learnt from these three athletes around 20 years ago I started working with my athletes what I eventually called reflexive eccentrics (Reflexive Eccentrics. Term used to describe low-load, high-velocity eccentric (yielding) exercises)

which is taking a weight 40-70% 1RM and then dropping explosively into a catch position. So for a squat, if you’ve got an athlete that does 200 kg for 3 reps then we put a 100kg on them at drop into a half squat explosively for 3-5 reps.  Be as quick through that eccentric portion as you can.  This is the part of the work that we do in the weight room that has the most transference and then what we do is try to identify the specific exercise that that type of work transfers over the most for each individual athlete.  So we category athletes upon the way in which they move, are they double leg or single leg dominant, or are they push dominant or pull dominant?  So if we have an athlete that is a double leg push athlete we will do a lot more double leg squat movements.  Whereas if you have an athlete who is a single leg puller then the exercise we would be doing more in the weight room would be say for example, a single leg RDL.

 

How do you categorize the athletes into the full buckets (double, single, push or puller)?

Observe and ask questions

I watch them!  Now that is not a good answer for a young coach because a young coach doesn’t have the experience or the eye to see that this is how the athlete moves, but I actually challenge coaches to do this.

 

The easier one to observe is if they are anterior chain or posterior chain dominant.  If the sprinter has big glutes, big hamstrings, big calves, long Achilles, he/she is almost certainly going to be a puller.  They pull themselves down the track.  On the other side of the equation, if you have someone who has big quads, chest, shoulders, triceps, and a little bent over the waist chances are they are a pusher.

 

Also, ask an athlete which athlete they prefer. If they prefer a squat they are probably a pusher, and if they say Dead lift chances are they are a puller.  Also then ask them if they would prefer to do it on leg or two legs? They are always going to choose the one they are best at, because that’s their bias.  If they are not sure, you can get them to try and see what movement they are more comfortable with, and use our philosophy of moving towards their strengths.

 

Arcs and fascial chains

 

This goes back to what I said about asking the question about why are they good at what they do?

 

  • Are they super stable in performing BIG OPEN SHAPES? Big arc person vs. small arc person? Big arc is perhaps more fascially dominant and small arc is perhaps more muscularly dominant
  • Snatch is full chain arc (foot to overhead), clean is medium chain arc (foot to shoulder)
  • Super tall really skinny fascial dominant athlete might be good at overhead back MB heaves but not so much at underhand forward heaves

Top 5 Take Away Points:

 

  1. Identify limiting factors – is speed a primary limiting factor in the sport you coach? If the answer is yes, then where is it within the hierarchy of KPIs
  2. Content vs. Context-  how much impact can you make on sprint technique out of context from the game?
  3. Opportunities– give athletes opportunities to open up and sprint as part of their weekly training
  4. Importance of eccentric strength- this is the type of strength that has higher transfer to sprinting
  5. Observation skills- watch them move and ask questions.  What they like is what they are good at!

 

Want more info on the stuff we have spoken about?  Be sure to visit:

 

Twitter:

@StuartMcMillan1

 

You may also like from PPP:

 

Episode 372 Jeremy Sheppard & Dana Agar Newman

Episode 367 Gareth Sandford

Episode 362 Matt Van Dyke

Episode 361 John Wagle

Episode 359 Damien Harper

Episode 348 Keith Barr

Episode 331 Danny Lum

Episode 298 PJ Vazel

Episode 297 Cam Jose

Episode 295 Jonas Dodoo

Episode 292 Loren Landow

Episode 272 Hakan Anderrson

Episode 227, 55 JB Morin

Episode 217, 51 Derek Evely

Episode 212 Boo Schexnayder

Episode 207, 3 Mike Young

Episode 204, 64 James Wild

Episode 192 Sprint Masterclass

Episode 183 Derek Hansen

Episode 175 Jason Hettler

Episode 87 Dan Pfaff

Episode 55 Jonas Dodoo

Episode 15 Carl Valle

 

Hope you have found this article useful.

 

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Eight Practical Thoughts on Youth Athletic Development

Today, I wanted to share with you some personal thoughts regarding youth athletic development. Youth athletic development fundamentals. I was inspired by a podcast on Upside Strength and it nudged me to think about the things I feel are pertinent to youth athletic development. There is a myriad of insightful and educative content online but today, I wanted to convey what is important to me, at this present moment, and share this with you. So, before I dive into this I want to remind you of a fable.

‘There was once a speedy hare who bragged about how fast he could run, tired of hearing him boast, slow and steady, the tortoise, challenged him to a race. All the animals in the forest gathered to watch.

Hare ran down the road for a while and then paused to rest. He looked back at the tortoise and cried out, “How do you expect to win this race when you are walking along your slow, slow pace?”

The Hare stretched himself out alongside the road and fell asleep, thinking “There is plenty of time to relax”.

Next thing you know, the crowd roared and cheered the tortoise, which woke up the Hare. Alarmed at this, the Hare made a desperate attempt to run toward the finish line, but it was too late, he had lost. Slow and steady wins the race.’ Take this story as you will but it will flow nicely into my first point.”

Long term athletic development – A process not a sprint to the finish line.

What is our overarching goal? What is our endpoint and how do we assess the success of our program?

Start with the end in mind. For me, a number one overarching goal is making sure youth athletes are enjoying the training process. There is probably not going to be any sort of Long term development if the kids are dropping out due to burnout or lack of interest in furthering their training. This does not mean you have to come into training dressed like a clown, nor does it mean that we go so far along this spectrum that it turns into a holiday camp. But the idea of ‘slow cooking’ your youngsters reducing the risk of burnout and increasing engagement, could be down to the environment you create and how you are delivering sessions.

Those who work in the field of athletic development will have heard the terms “repetition without repetition” or “design the task, not the solution” once youngsters learn the skill, the subsequent intent through a game or challenge can facilitate the key adaptations we seek.

Education- ‘give a man a fish you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime’

If you have ever witnessed athletes executing their sessions with autonomy and minimal input from the coach, you will realise how rewarding it is. Additionally, it also gratifying when you see youngsters assisting each other by correcting technique or by encouraging each other through a tougher workout. This generally comes from a young athlete learning the training process and taking ownership. I have seen great success with this through guided discovery and questioning, for example asking young athletes ‘why are we doing this particular drill?’ and ‘What benefits will we derive from it?’. Ideally, I would love to reach a point where an athlete can start to design their own programs for themselves, and ask us what we think!

Give them what they are not getting- ‘more of the same isn’t necessarily a good thing’

I am quite passionate about this particular point. Give them what they are not getting. I have witnessed youth sports in a variety of environments. I have noticed a trend. They will typically spend the majority of their day in a classroom, then be expected to play highly dynamic and chaotic sports without any real physical preparation, sometimes, not even an adequate warm up. Now your argument may be “this is what schools and sporting organisations have been doing for years!” This doesn’t mean that it is the right thing and it can accompany unnecessary injuries. As a former school strength and conditioning coach, a goal was to give the kids missing parts of the development puzzle. “Where can I have the most impact?” Typically, this was in the form of quality strength, speed and corrective work, due to my limited contact time. I regarded these as a high priority with respect to physical preparation.

Bouncy athletes- Restoring the bounce’

Playing football in the street or running around in asymmetric environments, is no longer a commonality. A time where kids used to jump fences, climb walls and crawl under objects is now being replaced by Xbox live. Now, no need to be overly dramatic. But, we need to recognise this and think about ways which we can replicate that in some form, within our own training environments. All the aforementioned activities enhanced the kids physiologic springs in the musculotendinous units that enabled children to clear the fences or leap from one rock to the other. If we think of sports performance, tendon and muscle stiffness are hugely important for force transfer. Therefore, I love low amplitude, extensive plyometric exercises, such as pogo jumps or hops in a variety of planes to allow them to express this potential.

Get them strong- Injury occurs when the load exceeds the capacity at that particular time’- Keir Wenham Flatt

A rather obvious maxim but this doesn’t always mean just adding more plates to the barbell in the sagittal plane. I also mean exposure to a mix of strength exercises in a variety of ranges and planes of motion that they may need to utilise in their sport, in the case of tennis strength in the frontal plane is vital. Moreover, I think it’s prudent to expose kids to a wide variation of movement skills to add to their movement toolbox.

Peak height velocity- ‘A period of accelerated growth’

Peak height provides a unique challenge to young athletes with a good proportion of them experiencing adolescent awkwardness, symptoms can include aches and pains, and a big one is a loss of coordination. This can be very frustrating for a young athlete. Personally, I find it important to measure growth and adapt the program where a rapid increase in height and subsequent symptoms are evident. Adaptations to the program could be more variation, reduced loading and increased complexity to the exercise selection.

Nutrition and recovery principles‘you wouldn’t put diesel in a Ferrari and expect to go anywhere’

I’m going to split this section into two parts and distinctly talk about each;

Nutrition:

I usually start small with this, as you will be surprised at how many do not know how good quality nutrition is helpful to their performance (and life!). In order to avoid paralysis by analysis try to reinforce small daily habits. A quote from the 5am club “small daily habits, lead to long lasting change”. Many do not eat breakfast or drink enough water, that’s a good start point. I have had great success through ‘snap and send’. They will take pictures of their breakfast, then they are given feedback. Create a sense of community around this, encourage the youngsters to share their breakfasts with each other and collaborate some ideas!

Recovery:

Many struggle with the concept of recovery, I think this is a societal issue after all the “Grind never stops” right?  But, when we are concerned with peak performance this type of mind-set is unsustainable and quickly ends in a train wreck. The stimulus- fatigue- recovery- adaptation model, in short, states that training stimuli produced is influenced by the magnitude of the training stressor. The more fatigue accumulated the longer delay before complete recovery and adaptation can occur. As the athlete recovers from and adapts to the training stimulus, fatigue will dissipate and preparedness and performance increases. Now, we take models with a pinch of salt but many nuances to stress-response theory have a similar message, recovery is hugely important! Pulling athletes back can be one of the most difficult things but this links to my point about education.

Make them better for their sport- ‘How is this helping me?’

Finally, I want to finish by making this point. I believe, that as a strength and conditioners we are offering a service and supporting the athlete. We are employed by parents and sporting organisations to provide holistic physical development so athletes are healthy, robust and can express their peak performance in their relevant sport. I find that the language and communication that we use, to describe what we do, creates a better buy in from athletes and stakeholders when we link it to the sport in question. How is this helping me? You may find two athletes, who play different sports, completing a similar exercise however, this exercise may carry benefits which are relevant for both narratives. The language you use is key!

Thanks for reading Guys!

Konrad McKenzie

Strength and conditioning coach

 

Follow me on instagram @konrad_mcken

Follow Daz on instagram @apacoachdaz

 

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How Isometrics Can Enhance Physical Potential

Hi guys,

Welcome back to the APA blog. We took a short break last week and today we are going to immerse ourselves in a topic which I have recently found interesting over the past few months. Training using isometrics. What is it and how can it be programmed. I will talk about:

What is an isometric contraction?

Why may you use isometrics?

Training transfer

How may this look like in a program?

What is an isometric contraction?


As we know muscles have three primary actions eccentric, isometric and concentric contractions. Physiologically, an isometric contraction occurs when there is no movement or change in length of the muscle itself, for example pushing against pins in a quarter squat position. Check out the video below to view this in action! Here we see the muscles working maximally but notice how there is no change in movement.

Alex Natara also mentions “Quasi-isometric contractions” which is defined as a short isometric burst in order to perform a sports specific task. A quasi-isometric or dynamic isometric occurs when rapid ‘stiffness’ is needed to produce a sports specific action, for example planting the leg during an outside cut. This differs to traditional methods of isometrics for example holding a wall sit for a set period of time.

Interesting point: Whilst the old adage suggests an isometric contraction is characterised by no change in muscle length, Jay Schoder indicates that the muscle is actually slowly shortening and the tendons lengthen resulting in no net movement.

“In this scenario where the joint of the athlete is not moving, the muscle is actually slowly shortening, while the tendon is slowly lengthening, and the total net movement is zero since the joint doesn’t go anywhere.  This is the reason that in the Jay Schoeder system, isometric exercises are often referred to as “extreme slows” (although there is another form of extreme slow exercise here, but I won’t expand on it now for the sake of simplicity).”

 

What are the various Isometric themes?

To my knowledge, there are four types of isometric themes or exercise types, I will briefly explain each.

  • Overcoming isometrics are attempting to move an immovable object by pushing or pulling on it.

  • Yielding isometrics can be defined as the attempt to hold a weight or position without succumbing to the forces of gravity.

  • Extreme isometrics are characterized by very long duration holds (up to 5 minutes), at large joint angles. Importantly, there is not only a large demand placed on an athlete’s physiology but also mental and emotional integrity!
  • Oscillatory isometrics have received meteoric popularity. They are characterized by a contract-relax cycle. The ability to rapidly relax and contract a muscle. Practically, this requires the athlete to tense the prime mover responsible for concentric movement and then release it as fast as possible. This will look like a bouncing motion.

“Faster athletes are fast, not only because of fast-twitch muscle, but because of the relaxation ability of muscle.  Slower athletes cannot “turn off” muscles fast enough!”  Joel smith

 

 

Why you may consider using isometrics?

 

There are a number of reported benefits of using isometric exercises, you may even use them already without realising the specific rationales, but I have learnt that it takes skill; to purposefully apply a particular training method with an understanding of its intention.

The benefits are well reported in literature but I would like to outline a few in this blog:

  • Improved tendon and joint health
  • Minimal muscle soreness
  • Increased neural drive and efficiency
  • Increased work capacity
  • Can aid in training recovery
  • Strength through sticking points
  • Strength in ranges of motion particular to your sport

Now, what I particularly like about isometrics is the diversity of benefits from increased neural drive to enhancing training recovery. If we work in a team sport setting and we have tight game day turnarounds we want to limit soreness where we can whilst reaching similar weekly training volumes. The beauty of isometrics is also their strategic implementation in a training year. We can also use sensory isometrics as an ‘activation’ part of the warm up to enhance neural drive to key muscle groups, I personally have seen a lot of benefit in this. Arguably, we can reach new heights in sport specificity, with isometric training, for example intramuscular and intermuscular coordination through oscillatory isometrics, in similar joint angles seen in the context of the sport.

Training transfer?

 

We can all agree that we are interested in the training that make our athletes better in their sport. ‘No fluff’. There are a few blogs that have been written about training transfer but I think isometrics, if used intelligently, can transfer to the sport. I will suggest only a few reasons, as this will warrant a blog of its own. Firstly, specificity is subjective to many coaches, I believe that it operates on a continuum and you have to figure out what is appropriate for the athlete at that particular time. Check out my blog on ‘training the youth athlete, how specific to the sport do we have to be’.

If we look at the physiology of many sports, particularly team and court based sports, it requires short isometric bursts at various joint angles, in sprinting, jumping and change of direction. We see this through quasi-isometric contractions (stiffness) mentioned above. Additionally, athletes need to maintain their shapes, whilst overcoming the forces such as gravity. In sprinting if the athlete does not possess enough stiffness at the ankle joint then they will be unable to transfer and absorb force to and from the ground, another example may be in Rugby Union where a prop forward needs to maintain their shape in a scrum.

How may this look in a training program?

 

This is the question that I have always asked myself, so I researched it. Many roads lead to Rome, but I would like to give you a few scenarios where you may use this sort of training. A concise blog I have based this article on gives a few examples of how to incorporate isometrics into a program. I will outline some of their ideas and perhaps, you can get creative in your own environment and sports which will require a needs analysis.

 

Extreme isometrics

A good start point seems to incorporating some extreme isometrics using bodyweight variations. Some coaches call these “burners” but these particular type of isometrics increase the work capacity of the muscle, some coaches like to work up to five minutes but this will depend on the individual. The article advises two to three minutes broken up into smaller chunks of time.

e.g.

  1. 10 seconds on, 10 seconds break
  2. 20 seconds on, 10 seconds break
  3. 30 seconds on, 10 seconds break
  4. 40 seconds on, done

Due to the reported reduced muscle soreness with this type of training it is possible to increase training frequency!

 

Overcoming isometrics

True overcoming isometrics require maximal voluntary contraction, as a result a participant will experience high levels of motor unit recruitment, making this a perfect modality for contrast training. Additionally, coaches have used it in programs alone in specific joint angles for the sports they’re working with for example, ankle and hip extension in the top end of sprint performance.  Some elite coaches have suggested that they have seen immediate improvements in their flying 10m sprint speed as a result of using specific isometric work.

“An example of how you might incorporate this type of work into a weekly session if having 2 intense training days in a week would be:

  • Day 1: 30m acceleration starts, standing triple jump, hex bar deadlift
  • Day 2: Flying 10m sprints superset/coupled with overcoming plantar flexion ISO or overcoming hip extension ISO, hurdle hops.”

 

Oscillatory isometrics

The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble Harrington Emerson

You can implement this type of method for any exercise, the skill is knowing how and when. In well adapted athletes there seems to be debate as to the transfer of traditional barbell exercises to athletic performance. These are probably best reserved for the “specific” phase of the training year. Also known as “reflexive power” these exercises can be used on dynamic effort days or again, contrasted with more traditional barbell lifts.

Unlock your athletes potential and thanks for reading guys!

Konrad Mckenzie

Strength and conditioning coach

 

Follow me on instagram @konrad_mcken

 

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Long term speed progressions for the youth athlete

Hi Guys,

I hope we are all doing well and wishing everybody a safe return back into sport. Today’s blog is about a topic which I think over frequently, speed training! How do we get our young athletes faster? So they can dominate their opponents and what are the different ways we can achieve this? Speed kills and today I wanted to share a few insights into the long term speed progressions for the youth athlete. The way speed is expressed will vary in different sports a needs analysis will determine this. Today I will cover long term speed progressions in more general sense. Topics today will include:

 

What do we mean by the term ‘speed’?

Factors affecting speed?

Trainability of Speed?

Strength and its relation to speed in youth

Practical implications for training speed in the youth athlete

 

What do we mean by the term speed?

 

In physics Speed is a scalar quantity of time between two points. Speed can be further broken down into the three components that place varying demands on central nervous and muscular system.

 

  • Reaction time, which is the speed that the athlete responds to an external stimulus
  • Ground contact time, amount of time foot spends in contact with the floor
  • Cyclic movement frequency, the number of repetitions in a given time frame

 

Noticeably, Reaction time is an expression of the nervous system, whilst ground contact time and cyclic movement frequency is expressed through the muscular system. Often, young athletes will try to express their speed through cyclic movement frequency i.e. moving their feet faster, to them it feels faster due to more frequent leg turnover. However, this does not mean they are covering more distance.

Trainability of speed?

 

Nurture or nature? An archaic argument amongst people. Is Speed a trainable quality? Or are certain individuals just gifted? Speed is considered the least trainable in relation to endurance or strength qualities however, this does not mean it is untrainable. In addition ingraining the foundations and optimal speed mechanics, will enable young athletes to realise their speed potential into their adulthood. Top athletes seem to utilise their speed potential better as they become experts in qualities such as coordination, strength and endurance. Now I am not saying everyone has the ability to become elite level sprinters! But, we can certainly unveil individual speed potential by teaching relevant speed mechanics and consistently running fast!

Factors influencing speed

 

Developing speed solely through physical means is debatable. Whilst the physical development of speed has huge importance, the question can remain whether it is a speed, movement issue or technical issue.  For example reading the game well, anticipating the opponent’s shot or accelerating efficiently in awkward positions.  Although, what I am about to set out next is mainly in relation to footwork patterns in tennis, I quite like the four performance factors, in developing speed by APA. I think we can apply some of the subcomponents when describing factors influencing speed, I have written these in the forms of questions I ask myself:

 

  • Technical– Do they possess the intermuscular coordination to move efficiently, and the ability to position themselves on the pitch/court optimally to execute their action?
  • Tactical– Are they in the right position? In team sports this could be the right position on the pitch or court?
  • Physical– Do they have enough explosive strength to produce high levels of force quickly? Do they have sufficient fitness levels to reproduce this?
  • Mental– Are they mentally focussed? Reading the game well?

 

Although this may seem like a puzzle to solve it allows us, as a team, to figure out what the issue is and provide potential solutions. It takes skill to really understand the problem, before implementing an intervention.

Strength and its relationship to speed in youth

 

 

How strong is strong enough? Whilst a lot of coaches have their own ideas on what the numbers dictate, I would argue that this number is very individual and depends on the athlete’s level. With regard to developing athletes, strength training can have a large, positive influence on speed due to factors such as increased stiffness and force output.  Here is an interesting quote from the guys at ALTIS:

 

Strength improvements occur naturally in the general population at a high rate up to their late teens to early 20s. Hence, from a long-term development perspective it is wise to start strength training (maximum strength development) when the rate of natural strength improvement begins to slow down and stagnate. Using this strategy offers the opportunity to continue to improve the sprint performance through new training means, and beat the natural stagnation of speed that occurs in late teen”.

 

Interesting insight, however it is acknowledged that lighter loads at a younger age is beneficial for technique development and working on the speed end of the force-velocity curve. Importantly, teaching the developing athlete to produce force quickly (explosive strength) and intent, carries significance when considering a long term progression. Moreover, the word intent is key, if an individual is simply not trying hard enough, we may not get the physical and psychomotor adaptations we desire.

Practical implications for training speed in the youth athlete

 

 

I want to finish this short blog by suggesting six of my practical ideas when considering long-term speed progressions for the youth athlete.

  • I would suggest that in the early stages, a large proportion of time is spent on acceleration.
  • Keep coaching cues simple, try not to overload the youngster with too much information, I like to use the power of three, no more than three work-ons at a time.
  • Using a game based model is great for that particular theme, creating competition and the subsequent intent. Using games/activity scenarios also develops optical and acoustic reaction ability.
  • Sprinting in multi-directions from a variety of start positions to give the young athlete variety and the tools to react and execute to their sports varying demands.
  • Use a variety of drills to reduce repetitive strain injuries particularly with athletes reaching peak height velocity
  • In developing athletes strength training can develop characteristics including technique development, intent and intramuscular coordination.

 

Thanks for reading!

Konrad McKenzie

Strength and Conditioning Coach

P.s. We are taking a short break next week. We will be back the week after and look forward to supplying you with more useful content! Thank you, for your continued support of this blog.

 

Follow Konrad: @konrad_mcken

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Fundamentals underpinning a physical development strength program for the youth athlete

Hi everyone!

Firstly, a big thank you to those who continue to support this blog. I have received messages from people around the UK and overseas and it is truly rewarding. Today I wanted to give my take on the fundamentals on creating a strength program for the youth athlete. Program writing is a process which I really enjoy, especially when you see it unfold and see your athletes engaging in it and getting positive results. One of my best memories was in a high school gym witnessing 15 young athletes executing their programs with intent and energy! The topics in this blog will include:

The audit

Principles of effective programming

Exercise selection

Good quality movement

Earning the right to Progress!

The audit

Before we get to the nuts and bolts of programming principles, a good start point is understanding the sport we are working in. The audit is our ‘needs analysis’ and essentially it is where we figure out the demands of the game. If you would like an example see my blog on the physical attributes of a youth tennis player.

The game itself is the only true test of player and team performance, and it’s also a measuring stick for the game plan. So centre everything on the game, then work backward from it when planning preparation.” – Fergus Connolly, 2016

In developing athletes first and foremost we have to consider fundamental movements, can they emulate the basic shapes and postures? Do they move efficiently without any outstanding compensations? And do they possess the basic level of strength to produce what you ask them too? But, I do like this quote because it’s zooming us out and highlighting another big picture, helping them to prepare for their sport.

What goes into an audit or needs analysis?

Personally, I look at the sport specific demands then I will look at what is appropriate for the individual. Here are some things for you to consider when developing your needs analysis.

Sport Specific demands

Individual needs

Energy system requirements Training age
Muscle strength/power requirements Biological/chronological age
Movement demands Peak Height Velocity 
Injury prevalence Injury/illness
Technical/tactical demands Anatomy

 

FITT Principles of effective programming   

I discovered that the art of programming does not necessarily come from the individual training units, rather how you sequence these together in a week, month or year given the constraints of your environment. I will briefly explain some of the FITT principles.

Frequency- the Frequency of strength training sessions depends on the interaction of strength training stimulus with the other training modalities, competition schedule and recovery status of the young athlete, recovery being key in youth athletes due to biological and environmental factors.

Intensity- Campos et al, 2002 suggests that the primary driver of strength training intensity is the repetition scheme and the corresponding load. Traditionally, in the gym when prescribing intensity we frequently use the terms repetition maximum or the maximum number of repetitions that can be performed at a given load with good technique. Heavier loads e.g. 5RM would be considered more intense than a 12RM. interestingly, a consideration worth mentioning is that reaching muscular failure, with a relatively light load may be perceived as more demanding and intense than a heavier 3RM load therefore it’s useful to account for the interaction by using RPE alongside the prescribed intensity. Personally, I think with youth athletes a sensible and appropriate method to measure intensity, when they are ready to start loading, is prescribing off a percentage of their bodyweight, using this as a start point. Additionally, using a repetition in reserve system can be used to prescribe intensity and can serve as a learning tool in regard to quality and fatigue management.

Time- Time could be further separated into two areas. Time could be the duration of the workout, the time of each set and the time under tension (TUT). Time under tension is determined by the duration of each repetition (eccentric, isometric, concentric phases) and then multiplying that by the total number of repetitions per set. If you seek more research on this you should check out Nicholas Burd’s work.

Type- The exercise type is selected based on the desired adaptation you are seeking, good examples of this include selecting whole body multi-joint movements for developing strength, power & size and single joint isolatory exercises for developing structural tolerance and integrity. I am not only an advocate for multi-joint movements for developing youth athletes, I think a healthy amount of structural and corrective exercises are also important to facilitate efficient movement and injury prevention.

 

Exercise selection

Photo credit: ALTIS & Dr Bondarchuk’s exercise classification

Recently, I have discovered Dr Bondarchuks exercise classification, this classification system is prominent as it allows us to organize our exercises more efficiently, into what we as a team deem a specific and general exercises. As we know, not all exercises are created equally therefore it is great to create a categories of movements which are based on transfer, intensity and specificity. If you want to read more about specificity in relation to youth training take a read of my previous article ‘Training the youth athlete: How specific do we need to be?’

Good quality movement

We could argue about methods of specificity all day long but at the end of the day, if young athletes cannot produce the basic shapes or movements (Squat, hinge, push, pull etc) asked for, this would be our logical start point ‘A house is not built on shaky foundations’. When I started an S&C program at a high school, I completely changed my goals for the year when I realised very few people could walk correctly let alone perform coordinated multi-joint movements. I am sure we have all heard the number one rule of youth physical preparation, ‘Do not load dysfunction!’ This brings me on to my other point.

Earning the right to progress!

The motto a lot of coaches are familiar with! In my experiences, athletes will display varying physical competencies. The questions are; how do we progress individuals safely to more complex exercises? How do we keep them engaged when they see their friends progressing faster than they are? What do we want them to be able to do at each stage of their S&C journey? There are many roads that lead to Rome but, I wanted to share an example of a plyometric progression that I use with my youngsters.

LEVEL

LEVEL 1

LEVEL 3

LEVEL 6

 

Landing

Drop Squat 18 inch Landing 30 inch landing
Jumping (Concentric) CMJ to 18 inch box CMJ to 24 inch Box CMJ to 30 inch box
Hopping (Concentric: eccentric) Hurdle hop & Stick Hurdle rebound & Stick Single leg variations (increase distance/rebounds)
Depth-Jump (isometric: eccentric) N/A Depth jump to 18 inch box High hurdle rebounds

Here we are working through a continuum of complexity and intensity. The levels detail what I would like to see at each stage of a young athlete’s development. Although it is not heavily prescriptive it gives us a signpost and a direction of travel.

Hopefully, we have a few more things to think about when developing a strength program for the youth athlete. I think some of the aforementioned principles can be used for working with people outside of the sporting realm, by establishing our end goal and figuring out how we get there in our own environments.

Thanks for reading guys!

Konrad McKenzie

Strength and Conditioning Coach.

 

References

Campos, G., Luecke, T., Wendeln, H., Toma, K., Hagerman, F., Murray, T., Ragg, K., Ratamess, N., Kraemer, W. and Staron, R., 2002. Muscular Adaptations In Response To Three Different Resistance-Training Regimens: Specificity Of Repetition Maximum Training Zones.

 

Follow Konrad: @konrad_mcken

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How To Manage the Individual in a Group

Hey Everyone!

Today I want to talk about an area which I am always trying to optimise, management; both on an individual and a group scale. Today’s blog will stem from another great course from the guys at ALTIS and some of my own personal thoughts, and I am excited to share this with you and I hope you benefit from it! Recently, my blog posts haven’t been so centred on the hard science, as there are tons of information out there on this, but rather the art of delivery, my interest has been around the art of coaching as I not only want to improve these areas myself, I believe that these are the fundamental skills to a successful program. Today’s topics are;

The importance of the right environment

Group dynamics

Managing conflict 

Practical thoughts around creating an environment our young athletes can thrive in

 

What is an environment and how can it affect culture?

So, first comes the question what is our environment? This can be defined as the surroundings or conditions we live and operate in and this can include schools, gym, field & stadiums.  A great deal of power lies in the environment, whilst a negative environment could ruin culture a positive environment can greatly enhance culture, individual behaviours & performance. People are highly adaptable and, over time, will acclimatize to their environment. In her book ‘thinking in systems’ Donella Meadows states “The behaviour of a system cannot be known just by knowing the elements of which the system is made.” Also you probably could not blame individual poor behaviours and performances without first assessing the current environment.

Dealing with external influences on environment

The reality is that youth athletes will spend a larger proportion of time away from you, so this means that they will experience a number of external environments and influences. This could be school, family, friends, social media you name it! For example, I think coaches who are working with developing athletes can agree that social media is becoming an increasing external influence on them. Not only this, but Social media has impact on their psyche, state and behaviours whether they realize it or not. Moreover, in some scenarios, we may be battling with their mental and attentional focus having previously worked in a school, I can tell you that this was not a rarity! The picture below shows us different factors influencing consumer behaviour however, there are some factors we can take from it when discussing the causes of certain individual behaviours.

Photo credit: https://bbamantra.com/determinants-factors-influencing-consumer-behaviour/

 

Group dynamics

What can we learn from the corporate world?

I think when it comes to management, we can learn a lot from the corporate world. Management consultants are increasingly popular, these consultants help organizations improve their performance by objectively analysing the current state of the organization and solving problems such as communication and the synergy between different departments. After all, are we not all; striving for the same goals?

“For coaches working in team sports, the impact of positive group dynamics and culture is one of the most overlooked performance enhancers in existence” ALTIS

Managing conflict and the different personality types

Working in team sports in a range of environments you will experience some sort of conflicts, this could be between parents, staff, athletes, stakeholders etc. It is important to have the tough conversations to carry on steering the ship in the right direction but conflict is never really progressive. The book ‘how to win friends and influence people’ by Dale Carnegie does an excellent job, in how to effectively communicate, lead and influence people without treading down the path of conflict. Managing conflict leads us nicely to knowing your team or the young athletes you are working with. What are the different type of personalities within this group? How do you connect with them? If any of you know who Brett Bartholomew is you would know that he specialises in the art of coaching. In his book ‘Conscious coaching’ he mentions the various fluid archetypes in team sports, I have mentioned fluid archetypes as we know human personalities are rarely set in stone. Some of the archetypes you may have met, taken from the book and the course, in developing athletes include;

The self-sabotager

This athlete will tend to possess the physical gifts to play the sport but ruminating destructive thoughts tends to throw them off the cliff. These destructive thoughts could be things like overthinking, self-doubt especially during competitions or moments of rapid successes.

The joker

Altis suggests this is the ‘Bart Simpson of the group’ the class clown (I know because I used to be one) this particular archetype may not have malicious intentions but they want to be the centre of attention therefore, will make out of turn jokes and is never really a serious candidate.

The novice

This is the wide-eyed, over eager athlete who is still fairly raw with regards to their physical development.  This could be due to the fact that they got into sports late, had a late growth spurt or not had proper coaching.

The non-responder

Typically a quiet member of the group, puts in half-hearted effort and seek minimal engagement. This archetype is where you have to figure out ‘why’ they are the way they are, gain their trust and look for ways to engage them.

This blog would be a dissertation if I wrote out all the different archetypes and how you connect with them using Brett’s book or the course I undertook however examples could include placing kids such as the non-responder in a position of leadership or creating a competition. Other ways to connect are to demonstrate patience in the case of the novice or firmly, and politely, challenge the joker when all their peers have left.

Managing conflict

A little bit of healthy friction, is important in a group training setting, it gives a certain edge and gets the best out of all the athletes involved but the balance has to be right. But, another question then arises what drives these human behaviours?

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, a scalable vector illustration on white background

Photo credit: https://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html

This picture depicts Maslow’s Hierarchy, and represents the five levels of human needs. The idea here, is that needs lower down on the hierarchy need to be fulfilled from the bottom up. Without going to deep into human psychology, human behaviour arises from an array of needs. When these needs are challenged it could spur individuals to protect these. A person normally finds it difficult when their needs are challenged.   In fact contesting other people’s bias is not an unusual catalyst of conflict. From the book thinking fast and thinking slow;

“One of the best studies of availability suggests that awareness of your own biases can contribute to peace in marriages and probably in other joint projects”

 

Transference

This is something that was quite new to me in fact, I never heard of it until recently.

“In psychological literature transference describes the tendency of a group not to see others for who they are but rather distort them into who they represent, or who we expect them to be based on our past experiences”- ALTIS

This resonates with me. This means that team members/leaders often do not relate to people in reality but rather internal ideas and fantasies of what that person represents. Understanding the background of the individual is crucial to understanding them and the potential reasons for their behaviours.

Practical thoughts around creating an environment our young athletes can thrive in

 

Finally, I wanted to give some insight and my ideas in creating an environment where our athletes can thrive in:

  • Creating clear expectations from the start, detailing the direction you want to go with your program
  • Goal setting, setting agreed goals with each individual athlete, finding out a start and endpoint, which will also create the athletes accountability.
  • Training progress reports, I have seen that great programs have training progress reports or personal best sections, which the athlete can visibly see every time they look at their program cards. I think this is a powerful tool.
  • Instilling good habits, with your players and rewarding them for doing so this could be making sure the kids tidy their weights away to taking ownership of their corrective exercise plans.
  • Creating leaders within the group or ‘group captains’ these captains are responsible for making sure their groups program cards are filled accurately to ensuring their group remains focussed on the task.
  • Grouping or pairing individuals who will get the most out of each other, this could be pairing athletes who have a healthy competitive edge to pairing older athletes with younger athletes as part of a ‘buddy’ scheme.
  • Competition, what are the things that are measurable in your program? How can use this to create competition amongst the players you are working with? What challenges can be put into place?
  • Feedback, I wrote two previous blogs on this but timing and type of feedback is something to consider when getting an athlete from A to B.
  • Creating self-organizing athletes, this has always been a big goal for me. I want all my athletes, by the time they finish with me, to self-sufficient. This could be from taking their own warm-ups to developing their own programs and discussing what they think is appropriate to them.

Thanks for reading guys,

Konrad McKenzie,

Strength and Conditioning Coach.

 

Follow Konrad: @konrad_mcken

Follow Daz: @apacoachdaz

 

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Coaching Feedback: Are We Talking Too Much?

A word from APA owner, Daz Drake.

This week’s blog comes from APA coach Konrad McKenzie.

Konrad has done a terrific job of summarising his thoughts on feedback and also leaves a few of his own thoughts on how this could relate to youth athletes.  This is a two part blog.  In case you missed his Part 1 you can read it HERE

Part 2- Coaching Feedback: Are We Talking Too Much?

Hi guys,

In part 1 I mentioned the different types of feedback and mentioned some methods to get the most out of our athletes. A few weeks back I took an informative course by ALTIS and one of the topics they discussed was feedback and how we can maximise our efficiency when providing it, I want to share this with you. This week, I want to talk about the different types of feedback, what type of feedback do we give? When do we give our feedback and how do we do it? This week’s blog will look into the following topics:

  • The different forms of feedback
  • Feedback timing and scheduling
  • A constraints based approach
  • Feedback and learning

 

The what: A brief overview of the Different forms of feedback

 

Positive feedback

This is used to reinforce a positive outcome and behaviour. Additionally, it can be used as a motivational tool; as mentioned in the previous blog, building self-efficacy in youth athletes. For example, instead of ‘great squat’ try ‘Great squat! You achieved the appropriate depth with a neutral spine’.

Negative feedback

Although it may be tempted to lump this in with punishment, it is not the same. Negative feedback raises the awareness to the athlete that movement/behaviours do not coincide with goals or key performance indicators. Similar to Positive feedback, prescriptive feedback is more beneficial to the athlete. For example instead of “that was a bad squat” try “next time, let’s work on hitting the agreed depth, with your chest up & out”. ALTIS explains that “this is useful for the cognitive and associative stages of learning where formative programs are being developed and refined”.

Extrinsic feedback

Extrinsic feedback also known as augmented feedback is emerging as one of the most powerful forms of feedback.

It forms into two groups ‘Knowledge of results’ and ‘Knowledge of performance’. Knowledge of results refers to feedback related to performance outcome for example, time and height. Interestingly, Winstein & Schmidt (1990) found that learning a new skill and providing feedback 50% of the time was more effective than providing feedback 100% of the time, the maxim ‘less is more comes to mind here’ also, I am starting to notice that elite level coaches do not waste their words or talk too much.

Knowledge of performance (KOP): This is the one that I find really interesting. KOP refers to feedback toward the quality of the movement/technique or process. This could take many forms such as video review, physical gestures or tapping a part of the body to create awareness. Guided questioning can also support guided discovery, this involves asking the athlete a series of questions to achieve a solution, for example; where should my head be gazing in the squat? Or where does the bar sit when performing a back squat?” Now, the guys at ALTIS do a very good job in explaining guided questioning is useful when trying to develop analytical abilities and independence, by thinking about their response.

Intrinsic feedback

Intrinsic feedback refers to a person’s own sensory-perceptual information as a result of the movement being performed. Intrinsic feedback occurs during the movement itself. Sensory processes include proprioception, touch pressure, and audition. Coaches who have been in the game a long time note the effectiveness of auditory cueing for example clapping, tapping, creating a rhythm to solidify the connection between desired rhythm and execution especially when it is tougher to describe it verbally.

The when: Feedback timing and scheduling

Timing be split into two groups concurrent and terminal. Timing is very important to prevent paralysis by analysis and a repetitive white noise. Timing can also be relevant to the complexity of the task, with more complex tasks benefiting a more terminal approach, to prevent a worsening of the movement.

  • Concurrent feedback occurs during the movement/task itself
  • Terminal feedback is often delivered after the attempt and used with more complex movement puzzles for example in the clean or Squat exercise.

 

When would you use concurrent or terminal feedback?

Some coaches do not agree with using concurrent feedback as they feel it’s a distraction. On the other hand coaches like Nick Winkelmann, suggest that the continuous movement lends itself to repetitive external feedback such as “push, push, push!!” if we are looking at the rhythm and frequency aspect of sprinting. I agree with ALTIS’s view that modes of feedback lie on a spectrum and is dependent on the athlete you are working with. Some athletes work well with concurrent feedback others find this inhibiting.  I also feel that we have to consider the session or exercise type as previously alluded to.

 

A constraints based approach

I used to head the strength and conditioning at a high school and I found that the P.E teachers did this very well. A Constraint places a limit or a restriction on a task this includes spatial or a time constraints. A gym based example would be placing a mini-band around a knee if the athlete is displaying knee valgus.  A sport based Rugby example would include awarding extra points for scoring a try through getting the ball to the wide channel, using the width. The first example will encourage the athlete to push out against the mini-band for optimal knee alignment, whilst the second example will encourage a team to utilise their faster wingers whilst spreading the opposing defence thin.

 

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Feedback and learning

The course at ALTIS did a good job in suggesting that the effectiveness of feedback we provide as coaches can be optimised by matching the stage of learning a performer is in’. They break the stages of learning into 3 stages, the cognitive, associative and finally the autonomous phases of learning. An in depth description of these different stages of learning will fall outside the scope of this blog but I still want to provide you with some information around this, in relation to feedback.

  • Cognitive phase: at this stage mistakes will be frequent. It is important to keep up the positivity but also, to correct the outstanding errors on your KPI hierarchy. This is to limit the information overload and frustration.
  • Associative stage: This level sees an athlete developing their internal feedback loops, cognitive understanding and kinaesthetic control to name a few. At this stage verbal feedback can be used, along with other methods. This stage sees a more prescriptive feedback to facilitate an understanding.
  • Autonomous Stage: This is the final stage of our continuum, here the feedback is minimal and the focus is shifted to refinement of the movement skill. In this part something as subtle as pulling an odd face as a feedback loop may be all that’s warranted to create a behavioural change. By the time an athlete gets into the autonomous stage they will tend to feedback how they are feeling back to you.

My opinion: Are we talking too much?

This is something I am becoming increasingly conscious of, in my coaching. It’s very easy to get wrapped into giving feedback in an essay format, perhaps it is to appear smarter than we are or it’s simply a case of trying to correct too much at once. Or, we have someone overlooking our session and we want to appear as though we are doing our job. But, let’s try and look at it through the eyes of the athlete, we all have a cognitive bandwidth which is essentially a limited mental space, if we provide too much information at once, all the time, it can lead to frustration, low self-esteem and a potential strained relationship between the coach and athlete. In my humble opinion we should look to keep the feedback constructive and effective, using cues that are appropriate to the athlete and their stages of learning. Finally, a question that we could all ask ourselves is “What types of feedback can we use that has maximum impact and subsequent behaviour change?”

Thanks for reading guys,

Konrad McKenzie

Strength and Conditioning coach.

 

Follow Konrad: @konrad_mcken

Follow Daz: @apacoachdaz

 

References

  • Sparrow, W., 1995. Acquisition and retention effects of reduced relative frequency of knowledge of results. Australian Journal of Psychology, 47(2), pp.97-104.
  • Winstein CJ, Schmidt RA. Reduced frequency of knowledge of results enhances motor skill learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition. 1990;16:677–691.
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