Today’s blog comes from APA coach Patrick Waplington.  It is very relevant as I posted only a few weeks ago on the principles of training junior athletes in terms of hours.  This blog focuses on what to do during those hours of training.   I will start us of by giving an example of a programme for a typical 60 minute squad for our 12-16 years old athletes.  Then Paddy will give us some information about the work he has done with our slightly younger Junior Academy, 8-11 years old athletes.

Below is an example of what I call a complex session, because it basically covers a little bit of everything.  For a developmental level athlete you can still make great gains in all the biomotors even when they are trained at the same time.

Theme: Multi-Directional Speed & Agility & Strength Development

Foam Roll – Issue areas: Quads/Glutes/Calves/Hamstrings

Activation:

Lateral Mini-Band Walk x 10m
Monster Walk x 10m
Hip Flexor Activation x 10/leg
Shoulder Taps x 10/arm

Movement Prep:

x 10 reps per exercise

Glute Bridge / Cook Hip Lift
Overhead Squat
Full Spiderman + Press UP
Forward Lunge
Side Lunge
1 Leg SLDL
1 Leg Squat

Jumping:

Leap & Stick (In Place) 1 x 5/leg
Leap & Stick (Linear)  1 x 5/leg
Leap & Stick (Lateral)  1 x 5/leg

Hop & Stick (In Place) 1 x 5/leg
Hop & Stick (Linear) 1 x 5/leg
Hop & Stick (Lateral) 1 x 5/leg inside & outside

Multi-directional Speed & Agility:

Week 1: Cutting

Lateral Shuffle x 3
Rehearsed Cut x 3
Random Cut x 3
Spin Cut x 3
Speed Cut x 3

Strength & Power Development:

Clean from Thigh 2 x 6
Squat or Deadlift variation
DB Bench Press or DB Overhead Press
Split Squat or RFE Split Squat
Feet elevated TRX Row or Pull Up

Year 10 = 3 x 10 reps
Year 11 = 3 x 6-8 reps

Plank Combo – Left, Right & Front
Skydiver (Prone AW – Scap Retractions)

Recovery:

Full Chain Glute
Hip Flexor Lunge Sequence
Prayer Stretch
Pec Stretch
3D Calf Stretch

So how might we tweak things to work with the slightly younger athletes?  Well, over to Patrick to answer that!

APA Blog – The use of Games with Junior Athletes

Everyone loves a game! And this is something I have used to my advantage over the last year. A big part of my work with APA is working with the Junior Academy. This is a squad session that runs Monday – Friday and regularly has between 15 – 20 young athletes taking part. Whilst there is a ton of S&C literature, with plenty of advice for training programmes for youth athletes, it can be a completely different story when trying to implement this in the real world.

Check out the video below for an example of a ‘Game’ that could be used for Multi-directional Speed:

Ask under 12s to run a multi-directional speed drill whilst displaying the correct turning mechanics and they can lose interest before they’ve even started! Challenge them to compete against one another or in teams and suddenly they have a reason to perform well and want to. This is where the coach can use their creativity to put their own mark on the session. I use a lot of games to promote the athletic skills I am trying to develop. This immediately adds fun to the session and engages the participants. This “fun factor” is of huge significance and not often mentioned in the literature.

How about this challenge to work on ‘Strength’ in a fun competitive way?  Who can be the first pair to get up?

Manipulating the rules or scoring of the games to promote specific athletic skills is a fantastic way of keeping the fun element while still getting your coaching message across. I use various methods to do this, such as awarding bonus points or even all the points for displaying good technique, or changing the space or boundaries players have to work in. These methods start to create a level playing field for mixed ability groups, as you can raise the expectations or difficulty level for the more committed athletes while still challenging the others in the group.

I have a number of games I use to promote different athletic skills. I get the game started and observe, pull the group in and run some drills to work on a specific element relating it to the performance in the game, then get the game up and running again, hopefully with an improved performance.

Participants will feel like they’ve played games throughout, but the coach will see how they’ve improved athletic performance. By the end of the session the athletes will have had some of what they want and some of what they need. Getting this mix right is part of the art of coaching.

Paddy Waplington

BSc (Hons), ASCC

This week the athletes I spend the majority of my time coaching came back from half-term and were due to be progressing into the final phase of their peak performance training plan.  They were supposed to be realising the training effects of their strength and power phases by working under conditions of fatigue- what I refer to at APA as Power endurance.  For me this is really the goal of where I want to get to- at least in this population of Tennis players.  And my intention was to use Olympic lifts for timed reps to achieve this.

Disclaimer alert:  To quote Eric Cressey from his excellent book, The Ultimate Off-season Training Manual, ”There is a noteworthy difference between “conditioning” sessions and “speed” training.  The former serves only to enhance short-term metabolic preparedness, while the latter seeks to effect favourable changes in the powerful neuromuscular system that governs performance via long term adaptations.”

So this phase was really more focused on end stage conditioning to enhance short-term metabolic preparedness closer to the important tournament block.  In my mind we had already got some good neuromuscular adaptations and they had earnt the right to endure those qualities under fatigue. However, with Eric’s words of caution about just doing stuff to get children tired rather than getting them moving well, I had to stop right in my tracks and question whether Olympic lifts were a good fit for the athletes in front of me.  Were they moving well?

I decided they weren’t and here are my reasons for why they were going to stop doing Olympic weight lifting for power endurance for the current block.

I’m the biggest fan of Olympic lifts and I have written several blogs (here and here) about power development and why I thing the derivatives of the Clean and Snatch are the king of power development exercises.

Suffice it to say Olympic weightlifting is very popular as a tool to promote power.  Why is this so? Because Elite level Olympic weightlifters are capable of snatching over 150 kg and can clean and jerk over 200 kg. It is impossible to perform Olympic weightlifting movements at a slow speed.  So you get a great combination of strength and speed. You get the same amount of power generated as with a plyometric bodyweight jump, but you also get strong at the same time!

The most powerful of all movements is the Olympic weightlifting action of the second pull of a Clean, peaking at 55.8 Watts/kg (Garhammer, J. J. Strength and Cond.Res. 7(2): 76-89. 1993).

But………………. common sense tells me that if you can’t perform a movement pattern efficiently then you can’t load it and you certainly can’t perform it under fatigue.  The simple truth was my athletes were getting too tight around their thoracic spine and shoulder internal range of motion, and couldn’t pull with the proper movement mechanics.  This was a relatively recent development where we were probably putting too much responsibility on the athletes themselves to take care of their stretching and mobility needs.  This on top of the fact their tennis training volumes were pretty high putting a lot of stress on the anterior chain.  So while they were okay for a few reps in our power phase I felt I was pushing the envelope in this phase as they seemed to be getting tighter around their backs and shoulders.

Olympic Lifts – Considerations for Tennis Players

With respect to the Olympic lifts, I know Eric Cressey is not comfortable with the amount of forces the snatch puts on the ulnar collateral ligament, which takes a ton of stress during the valgus-extension overload cycle that dramatically changes the physical shape of most pitchers’ elbow joints.  I’m not so sure the tennis elbow is subjected to quite the same elbow stresses and I actually like dumbbell power snatches for tennis players as I think the freedom of movement afforded by the dumbbell automatically reduces the amount of load you can lift.

However all the research suggests that virtually all baseball players have some degree of labral fraying (and I’d imagine it’s similar for tennis players). The labrum deepens the shoulder “socket” to mechanically provide stability in a joint that is designed for mobility. Without optimal labral function, going to the extreme demands of stability – overhead movements – is not ideal, especially under load.  So I would still be cautious with how much Snatch work you do with tennis players.

The catch on the clean isn’t something to which I’m going to subject to valuable wrists and hands that go through some serious abuse with every ground stroke although I see no problem with high pull variations, though, unless the athlete is getting a bit tight around the traps.

For this reason I thought about keeping the mid thigh clean pull in but even then I just thought it was working to amplify an over dominant front side posture and I wanted to give the upper traps and anterior deltoids a break.

Topped off by the fact that these teenagers were also in class every day and can never get off their phones and tablets, I just made the decision we needed to make some changes for this block.

Here was my solution:

My inspiration was to go back to the basics and look for other ways I could get some power endurance using patterns that wouldn’t require as much upper body mobility.   So my key aim was to get more mobility around the thoracic and hip on my recovery days and go after the posterior chain on the power endurance days using kettlebells.

1.  Focus on Hip mobility and thoracic mobility

I suggest you check out this article on how to improve rotation while protecting your lower back.  Also check out www.redefiningstrength.com for some excellent blog posts that I used to create my Supplementary myofascial release and mobility drills for foot and leg, knees, lower back and hips, and neck.

Also check out this nice hip flow series which is a bit more dynamic and can be used to warm-up for the kettbell workout.

2. Focus on posterior chain hip power using kettlebells

I suggest you pay attention to the cues here as otherwise you can end up doing something like this.  I am not a fan of doing what looks to me more like a squat swing with a lot of focus on the arms.  This would just be like throwing the baby out with the bath water and replacing one exercise (Olympic weight lifting) that aggrevates anterior shoulder region with another.

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If you read my post last week you will notice I am going to start measuring the Reactive Strength Index (RSI) during a 30cm drop jump as part of the weekly monitoring with APA athletes.  I believe it will be more sensitive than using a standing vertical jump for this specific purpose.

I have also been looking at the use of the Gym Aware linear transducer for monitoring bar speed and the different applications for training.  The inspiration for this blog is based on sections I have been reading in a round table discussion- Freelap USA Round table: Velocity based training: for the Full article click HERE

I have summarised some key points below which I hope will help you decide on whether measuring bar speed is for you:

BRYAN MANN:

Training: % 1RM vs Bar Velocity:

If you asked what % of 1RM should you be training at to develop strength-speed, people would tell you around 50-65% or maybe even 70%. But if you tell them a velocity range they look at you like you’re crazy.

If we know we want to develop strength speed, we are looking at 0.75-1.0m/s (40-65ish% of 1RM); for accelerative strength 0.5-0.75m/s (around 65 to 80ish% 1RM); for absolute strength, under 0.5m/s (85-100%). Simply using velocities that correspond to the % of 1RM desired allows you to be right on the load you are utilizing, rather than hoping to be lucky that it was correct on any given day.

MLADEN JOVANOVIĆ:

1-RM Squat Prediction 

Long story short, one needs to know each lifter’s MVT (or minimal velocity threshold, a fancier term than velocity at 1RM) for every lift (or use generalized velocities—they can be pretty stable across different lifting abilities). Bench press tends to be 0.15 m/s (mean velocity) and squat around 0.3 m/s (mean velocity). One can then proceed by performing at least 3 warm-up sets with increasing weights (hopefully covering a range of at least 0.5 m/s) performed with maximal effort. Using simple linear regression, one can estimate weight at MVT. This can be 40%, 60% and 80% or 1RM. This can give one a quick estimation of 1RM (i.e. daily 1RM) that could be tracked over the duration of the training block and used to make adjustments if needed, or to basically see how the athlete is reacting to the training (if the goal is to increase 1RM).

Having heard what Mladen had to say above I decided to do an experiment of my own having read a few of his articles on hiscomplimentary training website.

Example: Pro Tennis player

Here is the example of a predicted 1RM test for a pro Tennis player I work with.  It’s not the best example and I’ll explain why but it gives you an example of the protocol.

The issue we had with my experiment was that we were ‘in-season’ and doing this between two important tournaments.  We hadn’t done a 1-RM recently and given he hadn’t been in a training block for a while we conservatively estimated his current 1-RM at 160kg.  This was because his previous pre-season 1-RM was 180kg.  Therefore we calculated his 3 warm-up sets with increasing weights (as suggested by Mladen) as 55, 65, 75 and 85% of 160kg.  The better solution is to have a more recent 1-RM to base your warm-up sets on. But as we only had a few days training I didn’t want to risk overloading him so I just guessed he would be around 160kg.

For those of you like me who are not mathematically minded I have rearranged the linear regression equation you can get in excel.  If you know the value of Y (0.3 m/s) which is the bar speed at 1-RM you can insert this value into the equation:

0.3- 1.2847 / -0.0055 = 179kg

As you can see I was able to predict that the athlete’s 1-RM was 179kg.  I was therefore able to track his 1-RM without actually having to get him to do it!!!!

One thing I would say is to make this assessment valid and reliable Mladen recommended doing 3 reps at each of the warm-up set loads.  He also recommended holding the position at the bottom of the squat for 1-second before lifting back up.  This may need some practice to orientate the athletes with this especially at the lower loads where the temptation is to move the bar much faster.

1-RM Power Clean Prediction Example

I have also wrote a blog previously about the application of using the clean pull to predict the 1-RM for a Power Clean.  J Strength Cond Res 26(5): 1208–1214, 2012.  For the full blog post click HERE

Findings:

• peak power occurred in mid thigh clean pull at a load of 40% 1RM of Power clean
• this corresponds to a bar velocity of 1.65 m/s

What I found interesting was that the bar velocity which corresponded to 1RM for the power clean was 1.25 m/s so you could load up the clean pull until you get to 1/25m/s and this would give you an idea of their power clean load.

The final section below discusses some further considerations when selecting exercises that are appropriate for training and testing power.

DAN BAKER:

Difference between a Strength exercise and a Power exercise:

Despite the same sort of % 1RM (sets working from about 70 to 80% 1RM), the mean velocities are much different. For the snatch push press, the velocities are around 0.8 to over 1 m/s. For the heavy squats, 0.3 to 0 .5 m/s. For the snatch push presses, the velocities remain fairly stable, despite the increase in resistance for each set. For the squat there is a decrease in velocity with increased resistance.

Strength exercises have a deceleration phase at the end of range when resistances are low (< 50% 1RM)= to avoid stressing the tendons and joints. On major strength exercises like squats, bench presses, and deadlifts, with resistances below 50% 1RM, more than half the ROM is spent in deceleration, making them less than ideal for power training even though at this low level of resistance the velocity may be high. The length of the deceleration phase decreases as resistances go above 65% 1RM. By 85-90%, there is no real deceleration phase, but the velocities are so low at this level of resistance that they cannot be classified as power exercises. So using light resistances below 50% 1RM in traditional strength exercises to develop power is often counterproductive as it is training the body to decelerate for much of the ROM, rather than continuing to accelerate.

So we do strength exercises with heavy resistances to develop force/strength, and power exercises with the appropriate resistance to train the body to use force with high velocity until the end of range. If you want to use “strength exercises” to develop power, you need to use resistances of 50-70% 1RM. Something to dampen the ferocity of a rapid lockout (such as bands and chains) also helps.

In addition, there are two measures of velocity and power—the mean or average of the entire range of (concentric) movement, and the peak, which represents the highest velocity in the shortest measuring time (say 5 millisecs). So there will be a difference between the two measures. When someone is doing a lot of end-range deceleration (because they may be trying to lift 30-40% 1RM in a bench press explosively), there will be a marked difference between the two figures as the body has to severely decelerate the lock-out to protect the joints. In Olympic lifts, which are virtually full ROM power exercises, there should not be a huge difference. If there is a more marked difference for one athlete compared to others, it suggests that they are decelerating near the end of ROM.

Why would they? Because they have mobility or technique problems and the body inherently knows not to continue accelerating (or at least, lifting with high velocity) until catch or lock-out. It may be dangerous to the involved joints, tendons, etc. So there may be a high peak velocity, but the body will slow down the speed to avoid dealing with high force and high velocity at a vulnerable end of ROM in athletes with mobility/injury concerns.

This may suggest that you don’t perform the full versions of the Olympic lifts (or power versions) with athletes who have mobility problems. You may be better off performing a variation (for example, clean power shrug jump instead of power/hang clean).

More than 20 years ago, Greg Wilson called this point—where mean power is highest—the “optimal power load.” It is different for every exercise and there is also individual variation. Some of my published research looks at bench press throws in a Smith machine by professional rugby league players. That “optimal power” (mean power of the entire concentric range) was 55% 1RM for weaker blokes (about 125 kg 1RM), 50% 1RM for the across- the-board normal blokes (about 140 kg 1RM), and 45% 1RM for the strongest blokes (about 150 kg+ 1RM).

APA is a company that has built it’s reputation on being the Industry Leader in S&C training for Tennis, which is why we get to work with pro players like Alijaz Bedene, Ed Corrie and Dan Cox, as well as a whole host of pro players hungry to follow in their footsteps!

You might have seen that Alijaz Bedene was in the news recently after he recently became a British citizen.  Congratulations Alijaz!  You can see the full article HERE

So now that we have a Top 100 tennis player on our books and many more pros fast on his heels, it makes me ask the question………………….

What makes us unique?

Well for a start……………..

All of our coaches are Tennis specialists.  It is what we do.

We have a proven Training system for getting results that is specifically designed for Tennis

All our coaches understand that coaching is about more than our knowledge.  Yes all our coaches are highly qualified, know about correct exercise technique, nutrition and writing programmes etc. but we also believe in coaching the person as well as the athlete – we go the extra mile to really get to know our clients beyond the hour-long training session so you stay committed.

Now, if you read the last post on Andy Murray you’ll know I promised to follow it up with some insights on working with Alijaz Bedene.  I’m delighted to say that Alijaz’s S&C coach Martin Skinner has agreed to write a guest blog.  In this blog he will share some insights on how he gets the best out of not just Alijaz but any client for that matter.  It links really well to the point above on coaching the person as well as the athlete.

Life on the Road with a Top 100 Pro Tennis Player: By Martin Skinner

About me

My name is Martin Skinner and I’m a Strength and Conditioning (S&C) coach currently working within tennis. I’ve been lucky enough to work with one of the best teams in British tennis at Gosling International High Performance Centre, which is in my opinion cultivating some of the best young coaches in the country. Tennis director Matt Willcocks, who gave me my break in tennis in 2008, spotted my potential and gave me the opportunity to start my career within tennis for which I’m forever grateful. I started off learning my trade as the apprentice of Daz Drake whom has been very knowledgeable and a great mentor over the years. The guidance of both Matt and Daz has shaped my coaching philosophy to what it is today. That’s not to say it isn’t still evolving, however the values these two people have given me never change. I started my S&C career just like most people having only a few hours of S&C work a week with predominately U12’s and some juniors whom were as keen as I was to improve and learn. From these few hours a week I began to work with some full time players, that is where I got my break in S&C. As soon as you get an athlete whom you can work with more than once a week the rate of improvement will rocket if you seize the opportunity. These are the small gems that get you noticed by other coaches and parents and to cut a long story short this is how I have ended up coaching where I do today.

That’s a little snap shot of how I was given the opportunity to become a full time S&C coach. I had never envisaged that today I would be writing a blog to other aspiring S&C coaches, so for this opportunity I’m very humbled and grateful and I hope you find this useful. Many people are excited by what happens in professional sport and what goes on behind the scenes with elite athletes and teams. I will attempt to give you an insight into what I’ve found makes the difference to a tennis player’s performance.

Aside from having a very effective and consistent physical pre-season, there has been an ongoing underlying factor that cannot be tested during any fitness test. This was the coaching of the person, not the player and instilling belief. These are probably things you have heard before? If not! Then in my opinion these two factors are single handedly, the most important when coaching an athlete. They are not only the metaphorical “icing on the cake” but are key ingredients to the whole cake. I will now attempt to explain how I utilize these two ingredients with my players.

Coaching athletes vs People

Firstly what I mean by coach the person and not the player is you must start to understand how the “Beast” operates throughout their daily life. This will allow you to be able to change their performances on the practice court, gym and most importantly be more effective during matches. For example if your player is always late or just on time to practice, you will find they are the same off the court. This may seem like a trivial matter and simple to rectify, however you may find this tougher than you might think to effectively change the actual person’s habitual behaviors. Many coaches might use punishments in the gym, on the court or a fines system to change an athlete’s time keeping during practices and it may work! But this will probably only change their attitude towards their sport not how they operate in daily life, which is the most important change as they will start to be more professional and demand a higher level of their entire lives. These perceived to be small changes will have massive impact on a player’s every day life, which will serve as a platform to perform further changes in building belief. For example once a matter such as time keeping is under wraps you give your self the opportunity to use phrases such as “no body is working as effective and professional as you right now”. This will massage their ego but will actually start to get them to change what they value and essentially how they operate. Never underestimate the small changes and the platforms they open up for you to improve the person, which supports the development of the player.

Do you have the belief in your players?

Now I would like to discuss the second ingredient to a successful player “Belief”. Belief in your ability and physical attributes is much stronger than that of any 1RM squat or PB in a Yoyo test. Instilling the belief that the player is the fittest and most powerful player on the court and almost superhuman, can give the player that mental strength they require to apply all that hard work from the gym and on the track to the match court. Some players who don’t have that belief can find themselves powerless to putting their physical abilities onto the court. This can be the margin between winning and losing. People may be reading this thinking ok great but where do I start instilling belief? Firstly you get to know the person as discussed earlier then you need to make sure that as a team you are all singing from the same hymn sheet. Not just the coaching team, but the player’s whole support network: parents, siblings, girlfriend/wife, tennis coach, psychologist, physiotherapist. The list may be even longer for your player or team. You need to immerse yourself in the athletes whole life this is the only way to build trust with your athlete. If you’re the coach who is only there when you’re being paid then high performance sport is probably not for you. To enable you to know the “Beast” you are trying to mold you must understand how they tick. So if you can get the support team around the player to believe in them whole-heartedly then the athlete will begin to believe. If you are managing a player and a member of your team doesn’t whole-heartedly believe that this player is capable of amazing things then they can start to be a part of the problem. Therefore everyone needs to tow the line, know the goals, core values of the team and live them if they don’t its probably best you limit this person’s involvement in the team.

A few helpful tips that I got from a fellow coach were to start altering the language you use around a player. For example; if you say “morning bud how are you?” this may give the player an opportunity to think too much about maybe a slightly disturbed sleep etc. We as a team changed this to “Morning champ looking strong today!” or Beautiful morning for winning isn’t it?”.  This may seem extreme to some coaches but these small boosts in positive language start to rub off on the player and the whole team. Never underestimate the power of positivity!! However please don’t think for a second that you can instill belief in a player’s ability without them actually having some substance. So you have to make sure that the attributes of their game that you are trying to build belief or confidence in is actually there. So if your using language like “no one can outlast you on the court, you never miss a ball!!” but your player can’t last 3 sets playing 3 hours in 28 degrees heat, then your words will stop instilling belief and start to instill questions in your ability to see their strengths and weaknesses.

Conclusions

In summary you must firstly coach the player not the athlete: players are complex and to get the best out of them you must know how they operate. Secondly build confidence and belief by taking your player’s best physical attribute and reinforce how good that attribute is!! Then finally immerse yourself in their life on and off the court, give them the opportunity to feel part of a family that values and believes in them. These are the two gems I found over my ten years of coaching that are not taught on any course or in any manual, but are what can separate a good coach from a great one.