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Pacey Performance Podcast Review – Episode 443

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

Nick Kane

Background

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

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

🔉 Listen to the full episode with Nick here

Discussion topics:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Objective Testing

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

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

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

Gym Assessments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Primary Prevention

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

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

Secondary Prevention

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

Fitness Testing

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

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

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

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

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

Top 5 Take Away Points:

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

Want more info on the stuff we have spoken about?

Pacey Performance Podcast Review – Episode 442

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

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

Damian, Mark & Ted

Background

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

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

Discussion topics:

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

Damian Harper:

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

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

Forces and Frequency

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mark Jamison:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Daz comment:

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

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

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

Now back to the Podcast review……

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

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

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

Damian Harper:

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

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

”Physical qualities needed to improve it?”

Ted Rath:

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

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

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

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

Mark Jamison:

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

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

Damian Harper:

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

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

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

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

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

Mark Jamison:

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

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

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

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

Top 5 Take Away Points:

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

Want more info on the stuff we have spoken about?

Pacey Performance Podcast Review – Episode 370

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

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

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

Molly Binetti

Background

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

🔉 Listen to the full episode with Molly here

Discussion topics:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Top 5 Take Away Points:

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

Want more info on the stuff we have spoken about?

Pacey Performance Podcast Review – Episode 444

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

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

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

Jermaine McCubbine

Background

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

🔉 Listen to the full episode with Jermaine here

Discussion topics:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Phase 1 – Protection Phase

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

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

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

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

Phase 2 – Load Introduction

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

Phase 3- Strength Development

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

📝 Read the full article with Jack here

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

Top 5 Take Away Points:

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

Want more info on the stuff we have spoken about?

How Do We Learn To Move – Part 2

February 6, 2023/in APA Blog /by dazdrake

This blog has been simmering for a few years now. I wanted to share my experiences as someone who has been coaching for 20 years, and has subscribed to one particular philosophy of coaching athletes how to move- only to move away from this way in recent years.

In Part 1 – I summarised an excellent presentation from Paul Venner – Frans Bosch System & Aquabags

Paul really connected a few dots for me in terms of the synergy between the ”Top down” (CNS dominant) approach and the ”Bottom Up” (Muscle dominant approach). It made me realise why strength & conditioning coaches (myself included) have got a bit lost when we try to ”teach” dynamic movement activities (that have a time constraint) using the same approach we use with the heavy strength compound lifts (that have a load constraint) but where you can take much longer – relatively speaking – to complete the action.

I personally prefer Gray Cook’s explanation of hardware vs software which I referred to in a recent blog – How Do You Decide on the Goals of an S&C programme? Gray Cooks asks:

”Is it a ”software issue”, meaning they just need to practice the movement more to gain competence and develop the software (the neural input- ability to time and coordinate a specific pattern)? Or is it that they lack the hardware (the muscles, the bones, and the tissues resulting from not having enough mobility & stability to get into the position in the first place).

It takes a lot of time for the tissue to remodel. And when you’re doing strength training for the first time you’re doing software re-organisation for the first 3-4 weeks before you ever get any change in tissues like increased bone density or hypertrophy of muscles.”

However, I get where Paul is coming from when he talks about CNS vs Muscle dominant control. He is talking about those motor control process where we have time (think Max Strength) vs those where we don’t (think evading an opponent in rugby).

Power Training Methods

The only word of caution I would give is do your own needs analysis of your sport. There has been an increasing focus on the concept of muscle slack and co-contractions and its importance in high-intensity high-speed actions such as sprinting, jump take-offs and high-speed change of directions.

In practice this will mean focus on maximum power methods which emphasise pre-tension – with little or no external load (in max strength training the load builds tension, but out on the field I don’t have external load so I have to build it myself). This is based on the concept of muscle slack, and getting rid of it! I want to be able to get up without going down first and the way to train that is with pre-tension and using no load or changing loads such as aqua bags to train this ”co-contraction” control.

In my sport of tennis I can find scenarios where this might be the case (running forehand) when they have to run the entire width of the baseline (8 metres) and reach speeds of 4 m/s or more. In this example, all the peak ground reaction forces (GRF) during landing occur within 0.05 seconds (approx 3 x body weight). So yes, some work on power methods that focus on co-contraction could make sense there.

But in a typical 180 degree cut the peak GRFs during the penultimate step take place around 0.35-0.44 seconds – Mechanical Determinants of Faster Change of Direction Speed Performance in Male Athletes (2017).

The 180◦ COD plant step in another study was found to be >0.25 s, the only COD manoeuvre where the plant step was not reliant on a fast stretch-shortening cycle – Effect of Approach Distance and Change of Direction Angles Upon Step and Joint Kinematics, Peak Muscle Activation, and Change of Direction Performance (2020)

So, I would argue that this is a movement where you will use the ”Slow SSC” to go down first in order to get back up, which I refer to as ”load and explode.”

But, any way, back to the topic at hand – How We Learn to Move.

Rob Gray – Software Re-Organisation

Going back to Gray Cook’s point that when you’re doing strength training (or any new skill for that matter) for the first time, you’re doing software re-organisation for the first 3-4 weeks before you ever get any change in tissues like increased bone density or hypertrophy of muscles.

I really like the term ”software re-organisation,” and I think most coaches will agree with the idea that we are trying to get the athlete to organise their movements better – that is to say the ability to time and coordinate a specific pattern, when we are teaching movement skills.

However, in his book Rob offers a compelling argument for why we need to completely review how we have traditionally gone about teaching athletes movement skills. I have highlighted so many passages that really the best thing to do is just go out and buy a copy yourself. In my blog I focus on the first six chapters which cover the theory – the ”Why.” If you want to learn more about the ”How” you’ll have to read the book for yourself.

For those of you who want the ”cliff notes” I’ll try my best to succinctly summarise the key take home points.

Ben Linder – ITF Academy (previously iCoach)

I have to mention first, long before I read this book, it was the work of the Swiss Tennis Federation Head of S&C Beni Linder, that opened my eyes to ”how” to do this practically. He did very little in the way of closed drills.

“Every-time you show a child how to do something, you take away their ability to learn it.”

Our coaching practice should be based on guided discovery, loose description, make the players work it out.” There was definitely an increase in complexity of the challenges throughout the session but even at the beginning when he was working on first step lateral speed to the left or right, he would make it random, and they had to respond to the information in the environment (in this case a command from the coach). There were very few times when there wasn’t some kind of ball (tennis ball or basket ball) that the athlete had to organise themselves with. Check out some of his work on the ITF Academy website if you want more insights on how to use a constraints led approach and differential learning. Any way, back to the book…

Preface

Soccer, football, baseball and tennis are incredibly exciting, dynamic activities. So, why then do we practice them in such a static, isolated, and choreographed way?
The dominant view has been that we become skillful by trying to repeat the one, ”correct” technique.
Repetition is not only not the key to becoming skillful – it is impossible.
When we acquire a new skill, we want to harness the natural inconsistency and variability in our bodies rather than treating it as noise and attempting to tame it through repetition.
There is a new role for the coach too. Coaches need to be innovative practice designers adopting approaches like the Constraints Led Approach and Differential Learning.

The Myth of One ”Correct” Repeatable Technique

Nikolai Bernstein blacksmith study – the experienced blacksmith hit the same spot on the chisel but not by repeating the same movement every time. We repeat an ACTION OUTCOME but not by repeating the movement that produced it – repetition without repetition.
We don’t repeat our movements, but they are not completely random and variable either. They are shaped by the constraints of our environment.
Most of the modern history of movement science has been the study of groups. The fact that we can put one number (an average) on an expert’s movements does not mean that there is one correct technique, and all experts do the same thing.
Variability, not repeatability or repetition, rules the day in skilled performance.
Having more than one solution to achieve the same outcome makes us robust and adaptable.

The Business of Producing Movements & Why We Don’t Need a Boss

If the variability in our body allows us to move in multiple different ways to achieve the same goal, how then do we chose which way to move?
This problem has been coined the ”degrees of freedom” problem. This is to say, in a movement of a joint, you are ”free” to chose the values they have in order to execute an action.
To understand how we solve this fundamental problem of coordination, let’s look at the ”business” of motor control
THEORY 1 – control of action is based on a company structure of top down, hierarchical, top-down control. Learning to move successfully primarily comes from having an effective boss (the brain of the company): one that can take in and process all the information and anticipate what needs to be done next. Richard Schmidt – Generalised Motor Programme (GMP).
We have smartly designed a business that can be broken into parts, trained and then put back together. Examples include: hitting a ball off a tee in baseball or dribbling a ball around cones in soccer. There are no decisions involved.
THEORY 2 – Self-Organisation. There is no boss! Consider a flock of birds. Individually, their reaction time was about 40 ms. Yet their time to start a turn in a flock was only about 15 ms. When flocking they were turning faster than they could react. In this business model, order and structure in the company arises from the interactions between the lower-level components of the system, not by some rules or a plan given by a higher level. The workers are organising themselves using only the information available to them, without the need for a boss. Instead of a hierarchical system we have perception-action coupling. That is, our actions are directly controlled by what we perceive (without any need for processing and analysis).

Freedom Through Constraints

Actions are not caused by constraints. Rather, constraints serve to exclude some actions
So the performer still comes up with their own movement solution through self-organisation – it’s just that their potential options for doing this have been reduced or constrained.

The Laws of Attraction – Part 1

Why do all elite athletes seem to use somewhat similar techniques for performing things? If skill really involved this highly variable process of self-organisation, shouldn’t we see more variety in the way we act?
As it turns out, the ”landscape” of perceptual-motor solutions is not flat. Instead it has a few valleys in it, and there are certain relationships that are more ”attractive” and stable than others.
Even though, in theory, there are an endless number of movement solutions we could use, we all have certain coordination tendencies.
Why do these attractors in coordination exist? They make us resistant to perturbations. They help prevent injuries. They allow us to deal with the extreme time pressures involved in many sporting actions.
In order to learn a new skill, in most cases, we need to get out there and explore the perceptual-motor landscape to find new coordination solutions.
Our attractors will resist our attempts to move into less stable regions of the landscape (even if long term it is a more efficient way of performing the action).

The Laws of Attraction – Part 2

The athletes we work with are not blank slates. A movement solution is built on top of the perceptual-motor landscape the athlete brings to the first day of practice.
Some attractors have already been built through early experience.
The movement solution we come up with is shaped by the constraints we face when practising a skill.
Effective coaching involves making sure that the constraints that the athlete faces in practice encourage them to climb out of attractor valleys and explore the perceptual-motor landscape.
How do you encourage a learner to get out of their attractor valleys and get into these unstable regions? By adding a constraint.
Learning is not a predictable process where we can just give the individual the ”correct technique” and expect success.
To best support skill acquisition, we need to change the concept of the coach from ”instructor” (I have the correct solution and I’m here to give it to you) to that of a designer and a guide.
An effective coach should attempt to design practice environments that foster and promote self-organisation rather than prescribing a solution to the athlete.
The second part of being an effective coach is about being an informed and knowledgeable guide through the search process.
A common misconception about this new approach to skill, is that it is just ”set it and forget it.’ That is, once the coach designs the practice, they just let it run without saying anything or stepping in. Just let me play games, and don’t coach them how to do it. That could not be further from the truth.
Coaches should be observing practice to look out for solutions the athlete uses that will not be effective or will have the potential to produce injury. They should also be looking to see if the athlete is not taking the opportunities for action (the ”affordances” they are trying to amplify) they have created.
In all these cases, the coach can and should step in and try to guide the search in a different direction.

Hope you have found this article useful.

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How Much Do You Train Your Serve?

January 31, 2023/in APA Blog /by dazdrake

This blog is an update on the Vision of APA and a run down of the findings of the first Pilot Study looking at shot frequency data for junior elite tennis players.

I’ve mentioned previously that APA has the goal of being the ”Best Tennis S&C Team in the World” by 2025. This will be achieved in two parts. Firstly, by carrying out the most thorough tennis research project ever undertaken by an S&C company, with the goal of determining the physical determinants of elite tennis performance. I have been referring to this as my ”unofficial PhD.”

Secondly, by using the findings of the research to identify the most impactful training methods (APA Method 2.0) and undertake them with our athletes so they can best prepare for the current and future demands of professional tennis.

We have identified four areas of research interest:

1. Workload profiles – of training, simulated match-play and competitive tournaments

2. Serve – assessment of IR/ER shoulder rotation strength ratios, response to fatigue and relationship with serve velocity

3. Groundstrokes – assessment of rotational strength and power metrics and relationship with groundstroke velocity

4. Movement – deceleration profiling, assessment of peak force and RFD of selected muscles (quadriceps and soleus) and relationship to movement velocities performed in match play.

Pilot Study #1 – Workload Profiling

As much as I would like to think that the strength & conditioning training in the gym plays a big part in helping players meet the physical demands of professional tennis, the bottom line is that the ”physical work” done on the court counts most. It’s the old adage of ”training tougher than a match.” So for me, the first priority was to gain some info on what is going on, on the tennis court.

For the first study I wanted to look at workload profiles of the players I work with, basically to see how the intensity of the tennis training compares to the [limited] data we have on workload profiles of pro players.

For those of you who are a bit more into the science, it’s worth noting that recently it has been shown that upper arm injuries and in-event treatment frequency increased by ≥2.4 times in both sexes at the Australian Open Grand Slam over a 5-year period (Gesheit et al., 2017). These kinds of injuries are a direct result of the mechanical loads imposed on the musculoskeletal system (especially the serve) and it is suggested that some measure of ball striking be considered to feature in an upper limb/body exposure (Reid et al., 2018).

The Game Insight Group (GIG) formed by Tennis Australia with Victoria University produce some cool stats on the Australian open using Hawkeye data – such as number of sprints (a sprint is a minimum of 5.5m travelling at least 4 m/s), Distance covered (km) and Hitting load (combines the number of shots a player has hit and how hard they hit them). Djokovic, for example will sprint on average 19 times a match, and in 2021 did 117 sprints across the 7 matches.

In all honesty, my ideal scenario would have been to look at workload profiles using intensity markers of the game such as Heart Rate and number of accelerations and decelerations if I had the technology (such as a GPS system and Heart Rate monitoring system). I think this kind of data would have best helped me to answer the question:

”How might our training and planning prepare players for match intensity & match volume experienced on the Tour?”

Given I didn’t have that technology, I opted instead to use Swing Vision (Player & Ball tracking app) to collect data from a selection of Junior National level players training at a full-time tennis Academy, for an entire week of training. I rationalised that this would enable me to carry out a qualitative analysis of shot frequency in training, and simulated match-play- which might give an indirect measure of training intensity & volume.

Furthermore, if I am going to follow up this pilot study with some research on training interventions to prepare the body for the serve and groundstroke demands, I figured it would make sense to first know how many times they perform these actions in training.

Therefore, the goal of this study was to quantify the number of strokes and the hitting intensities (rate of strokes per minute) performed by junior players during their on-court sessions over one week using Swing Vision.

What Did I Find Out?

Keeping in mind the old adage ”training tougher than a match,” what I would I say I found out is that ”training is different to a match.”

I’ve already presented some compelling data that the Tennis KPIs that count most (and therefore explain most of the variance in elite tennis performance between those in the Top 100 and those outside it) largely comes down to serve and return metrics. So some of the findings of my research did surprise me somewhat.

Figure 1 shows the average distribution of forehands, backhands and serves hit during each of the five tennis sessions for the group of Junior full-time players.

On average, the duration of a tennis session was 77.0 minutes in which players hit 190 forehands, 117 backhands, and 43 serves. The average weekly number of forehand shots was significantly higher than that of backhand shots. Both average weekly number of forehand and backhand shots were both significantly higher than that of serves.

On average, the peak stroke rate was 6.8 strokes/minute.

The Serve

In a typical match you can expect to hit around 120 serves, which accounts for 36% of all shots hit in a match.

The biggest finding was that in all juniors tracked, the serve accounted on average for:

8.7% of all shots hit per week, and an average of 43 per day (with a peak of 79).

Groundstrokes

In a typical match you might hit 210 groundstrokes which accounts for 64% of all shots hit in a match.

In my analysis of junior elite players the number of groundstrokes played per session was 278 on average.

Shots in the 0-4 range

In a match, 70% of points that pro male players play are in the 0-4 shot range. For pro female players that number is 66%.

In my analysis of junior elite players the number of rallies played in the 0-4 range averaged 62%.

Or in other words, the majority of points that pro players play, finish before the 5th shot. And that’s worth noting. If pro players’ rallies are ending in the first 4 shots, in practice that means that they are hitting a serve, a return, the server hits a second shot and the returner hits a second shot and that’s it – rally over.

In my research, I found out that the majority of the rallies were in the 0-4 shot range so one can conclude that the training is ”representative” of what goes on it a match. However, one significant conclusion we can make, is that due to the low number of serves hit, it is fair to assume most of these rally exchanges were initiated with some form of feed (either by the coach or one of the players, rather than a serve).

When we focus on what shots the players are actually hitting in matches, I think there’s probably some insight that needs to be taken into account. Like, for example, that the serve and return are pretty important. And I would say that they are really important no matter the level of play. And therefore there is something to be learned from looking at the stats of professional players in matches.

Discussion

The main finding is that there is a large disparity between the average numbers of serves, forehands and backhands hit in each session. The average forehand/backhand ratio in my pilot study was 1.62 which is higher than 1.24 ± 0.37 found for professional male players in competition (Reid et al, 2016). If the overemphasis on forehand shots seems to be a feature of the modern game, it should not be to the detriment of the improvement of backhand shots. Indeed, a study revealed that forehands are associated with a greater number of points won, while more points are lost with backhands played as the final shot (Cam et al., 2013).

It could be argued that these results are unsurprising if one shot is played (or practiced) more than the other. Moreover, the average external load of training seems not to match the demands of competition which may be the goal in the pre-season. The hitting intensities (strokes/min) of groundstroke shots peaked at 6.8 and are lower than those observed by Murphy et al. (2016) for training session (7 ± 1.0), simulated match play (10 ± 5.1) and tournament (14 ± 3.6). This difference could be due to longer rest time and/or a more technical/tactical focus.

Regarding the average number of serves reported in my pilot study of 43, this number was lower than the 120 serves proposed by Myers et al. (2016). My results are similar to those of Perry et al. (2018) who observed that the number of serves during training session was significantly lower than that of competition for U15 male players (38.6 ± 24.2 vs 82.0 ± 24.8). Because tournament schedules for junior players are often condensed, the players may be required to play several matches in few days with a number of total serves that exceeds that of their current training week. This difference in volume of serves in competition compared to training suggests that coaches should better plan training serve loads (volume and intensity) to match competition to ensure a reduction in injury risk from inadequate exposure.

Coach Perspective

When you are a coach of either one player or perhaps a group of players, you only have 60-90 minutes to develop their game. Speaking to a Head coach recently he shared with me ”When you think how much time it takes to hit let’s say 10 purposeful serves, and 10 purposeful forehands it’s like worlds apart. If you do one serve every 30 seconds that’s 5 minutes, but you could hit those same purposeful forehands in 15 seconds. So that might skew your numbers slightly, and if we were to look it in more detail, we’d have to look at it and say, right, what are we saying a serve is worth versus a groundstroke? I think that’s where I’m at with it.

So player education would be key and one way to improve serving across the week is to say to the kids, you can serve on your own and you need to serve at full power. Some kids will do it, some kids won’t. Also, some re-education of the parents. Unfortunately if I did an hour of serving with a player and a parent was watching, it can look like a slow paced low intensity session, which is a tricky one.”

Training Recommendations

Different recommendations may be implemented during training sessions to both improve serving efficiency and decrease the risk of overload shoulder injury. Firstly, the volume and the intensity of serves should be variable from session to session to allow tissue regeneration and should be planned with intervals simulating the real game (Myers et al, 2016).

I’d like to see some days where the emphasis is on volume and hitting over 100 serves in a practice, and other days where the emphasis is on intensity, and aiming to hit your fastest serve possible with only 10-20 serves total.

I’d also like to see realistic practice conditions where more of the serving performed is to a returner who returns the ball and then the server has to hit the next shot (serve +1). So many serves I saw were hit into the service box without an opponent, and even if there was an opponent and they did return it, often times the server would not recover their position and attempt to hit it back.

Finally, bear in mind that in a match you may hit over 100 serves and ALL of these are hit with maximum effort. Of the 43 serves on average that were hit in practice, I can bear witness that less than half of those were anywhere close to maximum effort.

Insights from Spellman Performance

Les Spellman, owner of Spellman Performance recently spoke on the Pacey Performance Podcast on the topic of year round sprint speed development. Although the topic was different, if you replace [sprint] with the word [serve] I think the advice is still equally relevant. See below what Les had to say:

”In-season our approach was to maintain the resisted sprints and you surf the curve (so you go from heavy, to medium and light at different time periods) and then you allow practice to be fast. You allow practice to have the high velocities and you make sure guys hit top speed in games. What we realised was that we are getting the peak outputs in games, which is what you want – you want to play fast.

We are creating an environment where players are allowed to play fast where they’re not coming into the game where they are cooked. Most coaches may think, you don’t want to do those resisted sprints in season as it might pull back from their velocity qualities, but we’re micro-dosing it, we are only doing 2-4 reps in a session. But just that minimal dosage was allowing that athlete to maintain that ability to be very aggressive with their acceleration and have a lot of power, and then practices started to be performed faster, and hit new PBs in speed. It became a culture where guys wanted to run fast in practice.

The game and the actual system should allow players to run fast in practice. It shouldn’t just be a volume base. There should be adequate rest periods. There should be spacing to make the field big enough, wide enough, whatever, reduce the number of players, to allow the players to hit top speed. So you start to get those outputs in game and you don’t always have to artificially expose players to top speed. Now you can if they don’t in practice, okay go and do it. But if you get 95% of top speed reached in practice, okay cool, box checked. And when you have coaches that buy in, and say yes, let’s practice fast, it makes it easy.”

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How Do We Learn To Move? – Part 1

January 22, 2023/in APA Blog /by dazdrake

This blog has been simmering for a few years now. I wanted to share my experiences as someone who has been coaching for 20 years, and has subscribed to one particular philosophy of coaching athletes how to move- only to move away from this way in recent years.

The traditional information processing approach to skill – using internal models and knowledge to predict the outcome of our actions, is one I have followed for many years. Over the last few years I have been adopting an approach that is more consistent with the ideas of exploration, self-organisation, and connecting with your environment.

Like any journey (in this case my professional development) there are various people and concepts that influence you along the way. Some of these concepts have been in my consciousness for as long as I can remember – but there has been a shift in recent years to apply them.

I learnt about Motor Learning Principles first in University in the late 1990s, looking at the concept of Differential Learning – blocked versus random practice. This was a topic I also referred to in a few blogs and linked to a talk Dr Mike Young did several years ago – Motor Learning Concepts all Coaches Should Know‘ I had read some of James Gibson’s work on Ecological Dynamics Approach and ”Affordances” around 10 years ago, and was aware of the growing buzz around ”Constraints Lead Approach (CLA).” But I largely kept it in the background.

In 2012 I heard Frans Bosch speak for the first time, at the UKSCA Conference – Transfer of Strength Training – Implications from How the Central Nervous System works. He was the Keynote speaker on the first Saturday morning. It’s probably unfair to generalise for the whole audience, but I did feel that at that point in time the predominantly Newtonian biased audience of coaches were quick to reject the ideas of Fran and defaulted to the idea that Force = Mass x acceleration, and the more the better, is more important than the control of Force during sporting tasks.

I bought Frans Bosch’s second book in 2017 (first published 2015) but left it on the book shelf for the first year, waiting for the right time to be drawn back to it.

Fast forward to June 2018 and Chris McLeod – who just started as the Lawn Tennis Asociation (LTA) Lead S&C coach. Chris is someone that clearly had a refreshing outlook on how to address skill acquisition and it wasn’t long before he was inviting interesting and innovative coaches to speak to some of us involved in British Tennis. In August 2019 he invited Danny Newcombe to present on ‘Movement Puzzles,’ and specifically diving into CLA.

Around this period I went to visit Steffan Jones to learn about some of his training methods in fast bowling and cricket and it seemed the World was sending me a message that this topic was one I needed to pay attention to. He was instrumental in giving me the nudge to invest more time in understanding the principles of Frans Bosch.

The presentation of Danny Newcombe coincided with the first year of one of my junior coaches Gabe Fishlock working at APA in April 2019 – Gabe would go on to stay with us for almost two years until January 2021. I often use Gabe as an example of a ”positive disruptor,” a coach who challenges the status quo and helps evolve the programme.

Time for a Change

Gabe had been following the syllabus we had in place at APA which was largely based on the the traditional approach of learning a number of discrete motor skills in isolation through rote repetition – and the concept of developing mastery through drills. I could tell he never felt at ease coaching within this framework and thankfully he had the courage to challenge the status quo- and ask if he could re-write the syllabus over the summer break for the next term.

I’ll come back to this story in Part 2 of this blog, but for now it is enough to say that this was certainly the catalyst for change – and a new era of coaching. We had the pandemic from March 2020 – August 2020 so I guess it’s only really the last 2 years that the syllabus has been in full flow.

It would be easy to stop there and be content that APA has made it’s own positive dent in the coaching landscape but I’m always trying to develop what we do – and as I write this I still feel that while we say we adopt an approach to coaching that fosters self-organisation, and we use methods such as CLA, if I’m honest I think we still have a long way to go- myself included.

Present Day

In the last few months I’ve been further inspired to dig deeper after hearing Paul Venner – Frans Bosch System & Aquabag, who was someone I heard about having read about Randy Sullivan’s Savage Method in Baseball.

Two weeks ago I finally read Rob Gray’s ‘How We Learn to Move” book and found it really helped to consolidate all the various bits of research and sound bites into a coherent explanation that helped to solidify my understanding of the scientific research.

Today I’d like to share a few insights from Paul Venner’s presentation (Part 1) and I’ll follow up with a summary of some of the main findings I took away from Rob’s book (Part 2). This will certainly be just the highlight reel, the tip of the iceberg and I encourage you to seek out the original information for yourself.

Paul Venner – Frans Bosch System

The following sections are based on a presentation I listened to with Paul Venner in 2020 prior to the Pandemic.

Sometimes we have a situation where we have an athlete with a very stable pattern, but it is not optimal. Think of a runner who has a hip drop as they are running, so it’s stable but it’s passive stability as they move into the end range of the (hip) joint. This way they lose performance and they increase injury risk.

So what we need to do is first show them that it is not optimal, and put them in a position where they are going to get feedback about this passive movement (solution) that they are using. So for example, using a perturbation of the pattern so they are going to feel it and notice that it is actually not a good pattern.

Basically, this is what Motor Learning is – moving through this landscape of Stability

This landscape of stable points is moving throughout our development – firstly as a baby, then moving through to adolescence with growth spurts and later even as an adult whenever we learn a new skill- finding the optimal stable points to help control movement.

If someone has a stable but sub-optimal pattern, it is not enough to ‘teach” a better pattern because it’s so deep/engrained in the system (deep attractor well) that they will always fall back to the original pattern- and their old way of doing it. SO we have to get rid of that old pattern and make it unstable.

The model that we use for this coaching is the ”Constraints Lead Approach (CLA).” The movement emerges through the interaction of the TASK, ENVIRONMENT and ORGANISM. So the better we know the constraints of the organism, the task and the environment, the better we can manipulate those constraints in order to get a different movement outcome emerging.

If I have a goal orientated approach I can eventually increase the total solution-space – which is the space in which I can be successful.

Broadly speaking, instead of doing the same repetition 20 times in a row, I do one or two repetitions in a certain way, and then do something else. This may also include doing things that are not optimal, because by doing it someone will get a feel that it is not optimal so it is much more about having variation in the task.

Bottom Up Vs Top Down

There are two predominant theories that coaches use to explain how we learn skills – one based on a ”top down” computational model (CNS dominant) and the other based on a ”bottom up” dynamic systems model (muscle dominant).

Actually of course, it’s a bit of both! Yes we have a lot of stuff going on from top down, and yes we have a lot of stuff going on from bottom up, and it’s about how we can put them together.

What I have aimed to do with my baseball training is seeing where the anchor points are where both meet each other. I think of it like a road map of the country, and I identify all the places where all the traffic comes together [Daz comment- such as when cars are converging on London from the North and South around the M25 – for a UK based analogy].

CNS dominant – anything with very High Intensity –> building maximum strength in optimal range.
Focus on maximum power with pre-tension – with little or no external load (in max strength training the load builds tension, but out on the field I don’t have external load so I have to build it myself). This is based on the concept of muscle slack, and getting rid of it! I want to be able to get up without going down first and the way to train that is with pre-tension and using no load or changing loads such as aqua bags to train this ”co-contraction” control.
Focus on rhythm in jumps, bounds & plyometrics
Focus on reflex patterns development – cross extensor flexion reflex etc
Focus on joint-coupling & synergies –> variable loads
Focus on neuromuscular development –> time pressure & complexity (it’s too much information for the brain to cope with and there is a limitation on this transition from CNS to the muscular). You get very quick fatigue but you get very quick recovery, so you can do this even on game days.
Focus on preflex development –> co-contractions & pertubations

Finding the Anchor Points in Our Coaching

In our coaching we can also find those anchor points so if we coach in a more brain dominant way – and talking a lot – I like to focus on keeping my talking only to the level of using analogies, metaphors & motivation – I try to do as little talking as possible, create the environment, and let the movement do the talking.

On the deeper level I can have knowledge of result information so that I get feedback from the exercise because I hit my target, I used a certain rhythm, I made a certain sound.

On the lowest level I can have intrinsic knowledge of results which is information that I get from within the body, this implicit learning through a feeling. It takes longer to establish but it is way more robust if we learn that way!

Exploration Versus Exploitation

Exploration

Exploration is always done at moderate intensities, with many degrees of freedom –> mobility & variability = flexible system.

Exploitation

Exploitation is always done at high intensity –> hitting attractor sites (high specificity) = stable system.

Individualisation

On what level, to what extent, and on which difficulty and degree = Individuality

Strengthen attractor sites = STABLE
Increase Solution-Space = FLEXIBLE
Find and prioritise bottlenecks in both = INDIVIDUALISE

If you have got this far then well done and Thanks for sticking with me! There is a good chance you are curious about this topic so stand by for Part 2 – How Do We Learn To Move?

Want More Information?

By the way – Frans Bosch Systems (FBS) are coming to the UK to deliver a 7 week International Course (26 May- 9 July 2023). It will focus on the theory outlined in Frans Bosch’s latest books. I personally won’t be going as it falls in the summer period, I feel I have a pretty good grasp of the principles and I need to focus on applying them now.

It will be delivered through a combination of the interactive online learning platform, live webinar sessions and a 2-day onsite practical session at Queen’s University Belfast (8-9 July 2023).

Objectives

Understand the Constraint Led Approach and transfer this knowledge into exercises and training settings.
Understand the mechanisms of specificity and transfer of training.
Understand how feedback works and can organise training and rehabilitation in such a way that representative design in exercises and the learning process is guaranteed.
Understand self-organisation and its effects from intramuscular processes to muscle cooperation to bigger components of movement to total contextual patterns.
Understand deep rules of motor control and know how to determine these in movement.
Understand the search rules for attractors and how to apply these in movement analysis.
Gain knowledge of all the systems involved in motor control, feedback and intrinsic learning, and how to apply these in rehabilitation and training.
Be able to use phase transitions in rehabilitation and training in order to accelerate the learning process.
Demonstrate each topic of content in training or rehabilitation.

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Periodisation for Tennis – Part 4

January 19, 2023/in APA Blog /by dazdrake

One of the benefits of running a strength & conditioning coaching company is that each year I get to mentor a new set of coaches. In the last few weeks two questions have been raised by some of the interns which I thought would make a good blog topic for discussion.

How do you decide on the goals of the S&C programme?
How do you periodise the goals into an Annual Training plan?

I covered the first question in my last blog – Click here and now I will turn my attention to the second question of Periodisation.

I’ve probably written about this topic as much as any on my blog and usually it’s when I have been trying to figure things out and make myself accountable to commit my thoughts to paper. So certainly there has been some good stuff, and some not so good stuff, some things I still agree with and some things I have changed my mind on.

But for what it is worth – take a look at some previous blog articles – Periodisation for Tennis – Part 1; Periodisation for Tennis – Part 2; Periodisation for Tennis – Part 3; Periodisation for Teenagers; Periodisation – Hybrid Models for team Sports; Periodisation – Does it Even Work?

I also wrote a review of the Triphasic Method – click here and here, which are the probably the two most recent blogs I have written about on the topic of Periodisation.

All of the above blogs talk about frameworks and models but having gone back through them all it was actually the Periodisation for Tennis – Part 1 that I want to talk a little bit more about. In the team meetings with my staff we have been discussing how you go about solving the problem of working in Tennis where the athletes rarely complete several cycles of 4 consecutive weeks.

Junior Elite Tennis Players

Let’s take the example I gave of a female player in the 14-unders (double periodisation) and moving into 16-unders at aged 15 (triple periodisation). For boys the equivalent could be moving out of 16-under and into 18-under.

The STATS

At 15 yrs they might play 35-75 matches per year
They may play up to 9 international tournament
They may play up to 3 consecutive tournaments in a row
They might have 3 training blocks a year (triple periodisation) up to 8 weeks each

Almost 50% of the top 100 ITF ranked junior
girls fail to plan 1 block of 8 weeks and 1
block of 4 weeks (Raabe & Verbeek, 2004)

More STATS

McCraw, P. Making the ATP Top 100. Transition from Top 10 ITF Junior to Top 10 ATP Tour (1996-2005).

As you can see, different researchers report slightly different stats, but you can gather from the research that children can be playing tournaments from anywhere from 11 to 30 weeks of the year, with 12-16 weeks of training (development weeks) and 8-10 weeks of rest.

In reality, the best outcome is one longer training block of 8 weeks and probably two shorter ones of 4 weeks each, and a lot of 2 weeks in training followed by 2 weeks in competition.

When you have 8 weeks

This is what I would do with a less advanced athlete. I’d do a 4-week build up phase, what I call the ‘GET FIT’ PHASE, and I’d follow it with a GET STRONG / GET EXPLOSIVE phase.

Phase 1 – GET FIT (Foundation) – Early Preparation – Hypertrophy

Phase 2 – GET STRONG / GET EXPLOSIVE – Late Preparation – Max Strength and Power

With my more advanced athletes there will be ‘loading’ of all parts of the Force-Velocity curve from the beginning of the preparation period, which will only be 4 weeks in most cases. It will be the emphasis that I will shift BUT all forms of training are present from the outset. This means that advanced athletes will be loading up on hypertrophy, strength and power either in the same session or at least in the same week (microcycle). See later in the blog for more information on this.

But What Happens when they come in for 2 weeks and go on the road for 2 weeks?

In the above figure (on the left) we have a scenario where the athlete has trained for a few weeks and built up the intensity, only to then go on the road for 1 week. The orange column was supposed to be a 75% week (of the planned 100% of intensity for that block). If they only go away for a week I just get them to repeat the load of the previous week.

If they go away for two weeks in a row (on the right) where they would have achieved the planned 100% load had they stayed for a full month in training, when they come back, I have to start from scratch!

The only way to break this cycle is to lift on the road – preferably as soon as they exit the tournament but before the following week

The key with in-season programming is to have your ‘benchmark’ levels of performance that you can hold your athlete or team accountable to. I want my less advanced athletes to be motivated to keep making progressions in the intensity of their lifts, and buy into the principle of ”no missed lifts.”

For my less advanced athletes I really want to get them to progressively build up to a few cycles of 100% intensity before switching up to a more concurrent method (see below).

As for the more Advanced athletes

A couple of common approaches to strength training in-season are:

1 . A weekly undulating model – An undulating model as proposed by Charles Poliquin uses weekly variations in load. It is quite common as an in-season model which fluctuates between 1-2 weeks of hypertrophy and 1-2 weeks of maximal strength/power. It allows the CNS to recover during periods where there is already high neural stimulus from a busy competition schedule.

I believe Dan Baker uses this form of week to week variation in strength sets and reps schemes to maintain strength and muscle mass using a form of weekly undulations in strength. (Undulating wave 12/8/10/6). In this example the weeks of 12 and 10 reps would represent hypertrophy weeks and the weeks of 8 and 6 reps would represent strength.

2. A daily undulating model– which uses variations in the same week. This is something we use quite a lot with Tennis players where we will plug in a session which combines Strength and Power a couple of times a week. Or you can have one session which focuses on a strength and one which focuses on power. This is an example of the concurrent method – where you are training strength and power in the same week.

In the earlier scenario above, where they miss a few weeks of strength training while they are competing I am less concerned about this. I feel more confident that I can get them back into their training by progressively increasing load during the first week. I can do this by doing a 50% load in the first session back (muscular endurance 3 x 12-15), a 75% load in the second (hypertrophy 4 x 6-10) and by the third session of the week we can be getting back to our 100% load (max strength 5×5). So we top up their strength the first week they are back.

Then in the second week we can do the session which combines Strength and Power a couple of times a week. Or you can have one session which focuses on a strength and one which focuses on power. This gets them feeling a little sharper before they go back on the road again.

Hope you have found this article useful.

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How Do You Decide on the Goals of an S&C Programme?

January 10, 2023/in APA Blog /by dazdrake

One of the benefits of running a strength & conditioning coaching company is that each year I get to mentor a new set of coaches. In the last few weeks two questions have been raised by some of the interns which I thought would make a good blog topic for discussion.

How do you decide on the goals of the S&C programme?
How do you periodise the goals into an Annual Training plan?

Where to Start?

These are fundamental questions all coaches need to ask and a thorough needs analysis is required which boils down to gathering information on:

The Athlete
The Sport
The Training Philosophy of the Organisation

Regardless of which sport you may be focusing on, there are so many outstanding coaches to learn from. I aspire to have a Training System that other practitioners will find helpful and be impactful in our industry. I’m certainly not where I want to be yet, and many of my ideas are influenced by others. The list is too long to mention everyone but the list below is based on coaches I have taken the time to study their methods in detail.

Baseball – there are some incredibly bright coaches in baseball and I have studied everything I can get hold of from Eric Cressey (Cressey Performance). Also Mike Robertson (Indianapolis Fitness and Sports Training (IFAST) in Indianapolis, Indiana), Randy Sullivan (Florida Baseball Armory)
Combat sports – Danny Wilson (Boxing Science), Dr Duncan French (UFC)
Tennis – Matt Kuzdub
College sports – Cal Dietz
Training facilities – Mike Boyle (MBSC), Mark Vestegen (EXOS), Joe DeFranco (DeFranco Training)
Field sports- Dan Baker, Vern Gambetta, Kelvin Giles (Movement Dynamics)

In this blog I’ll focus on the goal setting process and specifically the Athlete. Many of my ideas have been influenced by the coaches above, and others besides. I’ll touch on Periodisation but I’ll go into more detail on that topic in a follow up blog.

The Athlete

When you work with an athlete for the first time, in order to set some goals you need to determine what their strengths and weaknesses are. This starts with an Assessment process. Early in my career in 2003 I was fortunate to read ”Athlete Body in Balance – Gray Cook.”

This is still one of my go to texts that I like to re-read each year. I really like the concept of developing the Athlete through a progressive approach starting with Functional Movement –> then Functional Performance –> and finally Functional Skill.

Functional Movement – Move Well

Off the back of reading Gray’s book and also having the opportunity to learn from Kelvin Giles, I created the APA Physical Competency Assessment (PCA). I describe it as a bridge between a physiotherapy musculo-skeletal screen and a Fitness test. We look at the function/competency of the athlete’s movements in a range of patterns:

Overhead Squat
Lunge & return
Single leg squat (pistol on a box)
Hop & land
Press up
Lying pull up

These movements require a combination of mobility and stability and relative body strength. They show you if an athlete has the competency to perform a movement but they don’t necessarily highlight the reason why an athlete can’t perform them. Is it a ”software issue”, meaning they just need to practice the movement more to gain competence and develop the software (the neural input- ability to time and coordinate a specific pattern)? Or is it that they lack the hardware (the muscles, the bones, and the tissues resulting from not having enough mobility & stability to get into the position in the first place). So this is where the musculoskeletal screen comes in handy as it gives more clues. Some strength & conditioning coaches are more interested in functional anatomy and physical therapy etc and develop expertise in how to assess individual joints for strength and range of motion.

I personally try to up-skill myself on these type of clinical assessments each year but I’d rather refer out to a physiotherapist for the most part. I tend to focus more on looking at gross movements rather than individual joints. However, it definitely pays off to understand Functional Anatomy better.

As Gray Cook says; ”it takes a lot of time for the tissue to remodel. And when you’re doing strength training for the first time you’re doing software re-organisation for the first 3-4 weeks before you ever get any change in tissues like increased bone density or hypertrophy of muscles.”

That’s because most of us can organise a movement situation well if we are moving well and we do it often enough to allow for healthy adaptation – your first adaptation is going to be neural and your second adaptation is tissue.

Yet much of our fitness is focused on tissue. Now you may be able to re-set and or reprogramme the neural software in a matter of minutes and get changes within a session. In terms of tissue re-modelling it takes weeks and months to make those kind of changes, which is why I guess it becomes a focus.

Elite Adult

For an elite adult I broadly talk about it taking 12 weeks to Peak (that’s based on 4-6 weeks strength block*, 2-4 weeks power block and 1-2 weeks speed (peaking) block). But the strength block is a maximum strength block meaning loads above 85% 1RM from the get go.

For a great example of how a collegiate level athlete might go about this I highly recommend you read Triphasic training by Cal Dietz – or you can read by blog overviews here and here.

Clearly this type of training approach is only appropriate to someone who has training experience and is quite ‘Advanced.’ So a novice adult undertaking a training programme for the first time would need to build up to lifting those kind of loads and would do more ‘basic’ training to prepare for that, which might take another 12 weeks of progressive loading of the tissues.

Below is an example of a 6 month training plan – assuming no interruptions in training, all phases are 4 weeks and separated by a week of unloading.

Hypertrophy – 3-4 x 8-15 reps – 65-80% 1RM
Strength – 5 x 5-8 reps – 80-87% 1RM
Maximal strength – 5 x 3 reps – near maximum force – 93% 1RM
Maximal strength* – 5 x 1-3 reps – maximum force – 93-100% 1RM
Explosive power – 5 x 3-5 reps – 50-80% 1RM
Speed – 30-50% 1RM

There is an argument that unless you are in the professional sport of power lifting or Olympic weight lifting you may not need to go to maximum force loads due to the extra stress on the body, but I’ll address that when we talk about the demands of the Sport in the next blog. It’s also not possible in some sports to have athletes commit to 12-24 weeks in a row without some form of competition, so again I’ll address that in the next blog.

I have regularly used this systematic approach in my own training to fully appreciate how my body feels during each training phase. I have also used it with adult clients who can commit to seeing me consistently.

Key point: During the first phase, which is associated with lower intensity work, often called Hypertrophy phase, it is a good opportunity to work on the hardware and software to improve how well the athlete moves. At APA we refer to this as the GET FIT phase. It’s probably not the best term to describe it, as GET FIT probably makes coaches think of lots of continuous runs and bodyweight circuits. Although the aerobic fitness is part of it, it is about laying a foundation of fitness that ultimately sets the body up for success in the next phase.

The GET FIT phase would be an ideal time to use the PCA to assess your athlete to see how well they move.

Functional Performance – Move Fast

Needless to say that strength and power work in the gym are critical components of the training we use to develop the ultimate goal of moving fast – producing high forces at high speeds. There are slightly different assessments we can use to assess the athlete here.

Now I’m not going to go into specific details on the Fitness test and some of the other strength/power tests that you can use as part of the ”Functional Performance,” aspect of assessment. These are broadly speaking well understood by coaches and are used to see how much horse power the athlete is capable of harnessing. This is where you can use:

Sprint tests – to measure acceleration and maximum velocity
Jump tests – to measure power output
Endurance tests – to measure aerobic speed and anaerobic power/fatigue index
Strength tests – to measure peak force and rate of force development

At APA I personally start to incorporate all these tests with secondary school age children onward (11 years and over) to build up a picture of an athlete’s strengths and weaknesses. Even though there is a typical hierarchy to the way we progressively remodel tissue (progressive overload) – of volume to intensity (endurance to speed) it is still useful to know which aspect the athlete is better or worse at to best target the training most effectively. Some athletes are better at sprint and jump tests, but find endurance and strength tests more difficult. Others, for example, are very strong in the gym but struggle to express that force at the time frames required in sport (so will need more speed and power work). You get some athletes that are outstanding in endurance activities, some who are generally good across the board, and also others who are generally poor in all areas.

Key point: During the second phase, which is associated with higher intensity work, often called Strength phase, it is a good opportunity to work on upgrading the hardware to improve how fast the athlete moves. At APA we refer to this as the GET STRONG phase. If an athlete is a beginner or has had a long period off training, we will do the training in a sequential fashion meaning there will be a focus on strength first. Then we change focus to Power which at APA we refer to as a GET EXPLOSIVE phase.

The GET STRONG and GET EXPLOSIVE Phase would be an ideal time to do a Fitness test.

Risk Reward

Please be cautious with what sort of assessment you do here and WHEN in the training plan. All coaches like assessments and numbers and want to benchmark starting levels of functional performance. This way it is easier to show improvements. I get it! But you may be testing a quality that you have not yet trained fully so the idea of asking an athlete to give a maximum effort in a particular test (such as a 20m sprint or a 3RM back squat) may be a risk if it comes at the wrong time.

So please be cautious if opting to do a Fitness test at the beginning of a GET FIT phase.

If I am going to do it at the start of a GET FIT PHASE I usually get children to do the Fitness test after a few weeks of training so not to shock the body in the first week or two of resuming training (even though some coaches will say they are not at a true baseline level of performance a few weeks in, I’d rather not take the risk of getting an injury).

As for strength testing, with technology and some simple maths we can estimate strength and power levels pretty well from sub-maximal loads without needing to go to maximum. APA are fortunate to have a Gym Aware to measure bar velocity so it can help in this regard.

Children versus Adults

Now with children you can’t expect them to reach those levels of tissue loading in 12-24 weeks.

It is generally understood that the body is physically better equipped to handle more intensive training means once children have been through puberty. By this stage they have finished growing and their hardware has been upgraded thanks to the surge in hormones and increases in lean mass. So how do you approach working with children?

Long term Athlete Development

In 2005 I read a really interesting book which really helped me to consolidate my ideas around the APA Training System. The book talked a lot about the Key Stages of Long term Athlete Development (LTAD) and also Optimal Windows of Trainability. The book also gave some really good insights on Periodisation concepts and how much competition per year a child should do as they go through the stages of development. I’ll go into more detail on this in the next blog.

I used the principles of the book to design six stages for my training methodology (At APA we talk about Basic level– 3 stages – which covers childhood and puberty, approximating 10-under, 12-under and 14-under; and Advanced level – 3 stages- which covers post puberty onward; 16-under, 18-under and pro level). Note that for girls, these stages could occur two years earlier. I typically think of post puberty as a jumping off point to ramp up training intensity to the Advanced Method (although I have been known to introduce higher loads in adolescence if the child has a good training history).

I personally give credit also to Jon Oliver & Rhodri Lloyd – The Youth Physical Development Model (2012), which brought into focus the idea that critical windows of training needed updating and actually all training qualities should be trained all the time, and particularly that strength needs to be a focus from middle childhood (5 yrs old) all the way through to adulthood.

Going back to Gray Cook’s point that when you’re doing strength training (or any new skill for that matter) for the first time, you’re doing software re-organisation for the first 3-4 weeks before you ever get any change in tissues like increased bone density or hypertrophy of muscles. When I think about all the skills I would want a complete athlete to have, that gives you a pretty good idea that one of the priorities in childhood is to learn all the Fundamental Movement Skills (FMS) as well as Fundamental Sport Skills (FSS), collectively these are known as Physical Literacy.

If you think about it there are a lot of movement skills to master:

ABCs (Agility, Balance, Coordination, Speed)
RJT (Run, Jump, Throw)
KGBs (Kineasthesia, Gliding, Buoyancy, Striking with objects)
CPKs (Catching, Passing, Kicking, Striking with body)

When strength is developed alongside FMS it creates a foundation for all other forms of exercise and helps children to develop controlled movements. So the biggest part of assessment of a youth athlete is assessment of Physical Literacy in a range of skills.

Key Point: At APA we refer to these Fundamentals under the umbrella term ‘SKILL.’ Skill has three sub-components:

Reaction speed
Balance
Coordination – I include all the RJT, KGBs and CPKs under coordination

I refer to Agility & Speed under ‘SPEED’ and there are 5 Biomotor Abilities that make up the APA training system.

SKILL <– Coordination Profile
SUPPLENESS <– PCA
SPEED <– Fitness test
STRENGTH <– Fitness test
STAMINA <– Fitness test

How Do You Test Skill?

At APA we created the Coordination Profile which is an assessment specifically created to be used with children as it doesn’t bias higher performance to those children who are more physically mature, as you would see with the Fitness test. To be honest, it used to be a very big part of the Training System, but now the challenges have been incorporated into the syllabus rather than performing lots of assessments with the younger children.

The Full version has 14 different challenges and the Modified version has 7 which includes challenges like skipping rope, throwing, balance, racket skills over an obstacle course, hexagon drill, reaction ball and a jump.

Even if you haven’t created a specific assessment to ‘test’ skill, I’m pretty sure that most coaches have developed a progressive training syllabus where the focus of the skill changes throughout the year. James Baker was someone in the 2000s who was a leader in bringing more ‘physical’ into the Physical Education syllabus at his school – St Peters High School- between 2013-2017 before moving to Qatar to work at Aspire. You are only limited by your imagination.

Below are some simple example progressions of skills for speed and strength that could be used to informally assess and teach a youth athlete. Essentially our annual plan takes into account all the software organisation (uploading) we want to do, so by the end of the year we have more skillful athletes – who MOVE WELL.

Hope you have found this article useful. I’ve included lots of different links to coaches that have influenced my ideas about athlete assessment. It should give you plenty of places to look for further ideas on all the different types of assessments you can do.

Remember:

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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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Since you’re here…

…we have a small favor to ask. APA aim to bring you compelling content from the world of sports science and coaching. We are devoted to making athletes fitter, faster and stronger so they can excel in sport. Please take a moment to share the articles on social media, engage the authors with questions and comments below, and link to articles when appropriate if you have a blog or participate on forums of related topics. — APA TEAM

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Are You Happy?

January 2, 2023/in APA Blog /by dazdrake

First of all Happy New Year to all who read this blog. I’ll spare you the cliched post about setting goals – it’s not that I don’t like to set goals, just that they don’t necessarily need to start in January!

Having said that, Christmas is one of the few times where I take a week off and my laptop doesn’t travel with me, so it does give me more time to reflect. Because of the way my mind works I really struggle with completely stopping so I tend to favour the kind of ‘stopping’ that allows me to trick my mind into thinking I’m still ‘doing.’

For me this means cooking and reading. I’m in no hurry to start writing a food blog so instead I just wanted to share with you a summary of a couple of books I did read over the festive period. Depending on my mood I gravitate to different genres, but usually it’s between business or self development (mindset).

On this occasion, I picked out ”Happy” by Fearne Cotton (2017) and ”I have enough-I do enough-I am enough” by Sheridan Stewart (2023)

The back story for this is that I set my company Vision in 2020 to be ”The Best Tennis S&C Team in the World” by 2025. I also recently set a personal goal to ”pay off my mortgage in the next 5 years.” Both of these goals are big scary goals which excite me, but I have realised that they have the potential to pull my time in different (and not entirely complimentary) directions. To achieve the first goal I feel I need clarity to achieve my vision – my inspiration will be fed by isolation and protection from distraction (meaning having time set aside ALONE to work on the Vision). To achieve the second goal I need to be committed to working full-time WITH CLIENTS for the next 5 years.

In the last four months I have aimed to work full-time and also work on my Vision. This has lead me to feel 1) knackered 2) question if it is sustainable? and 3) consider, what makes me the most happy?

I’ve read all the same self-development books as you no doubt have, and one of my all time favourites is ”The 5 AM Club” but the message ultimately speaks to the virtues of sacrifice and suffering in order to achieve your potential and make the biggest contribution/impact in your career.

One quote states:

Victims love entertainment. Victors adore education

In my 30s I couldn’t get enough education and I had no interest in entertainment, and I didn’t really feel like the sacrifices that other people saw I was making made me suffer- it was fun. In my 40s it feels a little different and I feel I need more balance. I still love to educate myself but I feel the need to make more space for other stuff. I’ve read self-development books that say that the idea of balance doesn’t cross the mind of truly successful people. I have spoken to a few trusted friends and in my view, it comes back to taking things one day at a time, doing what makes you happy, and knowing that you can change your mind. I don’t want to feel like a hostage to my goals and constantly be thinking about the future. It is important to be in the present moment.

Life is a journey, not a destination – Ralph Waldo Emerson

The books definitely helped give me food for thought. Rather than review the books in detail I’ll just pull out a few paragraphs that resonated with me. In this blog I’ll start with Sheridan Stewart’s book. I’ll cover Fearne’s in the next blog.

I have enough – Sheridan Stewart (2023)

On finishing her next book

I live in fear of never finishing it. Why? Because I don’t write enough is the obvious answer. But is that true? I don’t write as much or as often as I aspire to but does that mean I don’t write enough?
For the past few years I’ve focused on the idea that I don’t write enough and allowed that belief to become entrenched; yet another thing I’m not satisfied with!
Did I have the imposter syndrome or was I simply a wannabe writer?
But what if I have been writing enough all along. The need to have ‘just a little bit more’ can creep up on you.

AFFIRMATION – I am learning to trust that I know when I have done enough

On having enough

I find myself wondering if holding back from contentment is a learned behaviour? I often feel trapped, cornered and fearful that I won’t amount to much, won’t achieve my full potential. Is this what drives me? And is that a bad thing? I think not, it’s part of how I achieve things, but knowing what is enough doesn’t come easy for me.

On Surrendering

I only have one bum, I can only ride one horse at a time.
Then something clicks into place, and I realise I’ve confused surrender with giving up. Giving up implies defeat, but letting go of that which no longer serves us, surrender, is an act of choice.
How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Why do I think I’m exempt from the basic principles of life?

On Expectations

There is a sweet spot between what we want and what we are willing to do to obtain it.
How can I still dream and have goals without feeling like a massive loser if the dream changes when I’m only partway to the goal?
What happens when you discover that you don’t really enjoy doing what it takes to manifest that Big Dream? Or maybe the time for that particular dream has passed, you’ve outgrown it and a new dream is emerging?
I’m realising that sometimes the role of dreams and goals is to get me up and moving.
I’m starting to see them as guides, sparks of inspiration that light a path that may lead me directly to the Holy Grail or I might sidestep to explore other choices and opportunities.
This understanding allows me to not become attached to a fixed result or outcome, to let go or adapt when required or desired.
Perhaps life doesn’t need to be ALL or NOTHING?

On Taking Action

Let’s talk about inclination for a minute. ”A person’s natural tendency or urge to act or feel in a particular way, a disposition.” We often talk about our dreams in terms of compromise: ”the acceptance of standards that are lower than is desirable.” I like inclination much better!
Weighing up what you think you want to do or achieve, against what you actually feel inclined to do, helps to define your goal towards an outcome that is both satisfying and achievable.
A Venn diagram is a great way to identify the sweet spot, where desire and inspiration meet resources and inclination.
In the first circle, note your dreams and aspirations, and in the second circle place your resources i.e., available time and money.
The place where the circles overlap is where you put what you feel you are inclined to give the project in terms of time and money.
Then step back and think if what you are inclined to commit will bring about the outcome you want?
If not, adapt the goal to better match your inclination, or wait until you have the desired resources to achieve your desired outcome.

Venn diagram

My Summary

I definitely like the words ”surrender” and ”inclination” rather than thinking of ”quitting” and ”compromise”. For me personally, I feel inclined to work full-time (right now) as the personal goal of paying off my mortgage sooner is more appealing while I am younger and have the capacity to work more hours. You also never know when things can change in business so I’d prefer to be busy now when demand is high.

That may change in the future but for now that is what I am inclined to do. This means that in order to achieve my company Vision of being the ”Best Tennis S&C Team in the World” in the next 3 years I will need help – to bring other coaches and researchers into my world to help me answer some of the questions I have. Or, if I have to lead this research myself accept that I will need more time to do it with the clarity I choose. Perhaps I won’t arrive at that clarity in the next 3 years, but that is okay as I’ll look forward to finding my way over a longer period of my career.

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.
Leave a comment, telling me where you’re struggling and how I can help

Since you’re here…

…we have a small favor to ask. APA aim to bring you compelling content from the world of sports science and coaching. We are devoted to making athletes fitter, faster and stronger so they can excel in sport. Please take a moment to share the articles on social media, engage the authors with questions and comments below, and link to articles when appropriate if you have a blog or participate on forums of related topics. — APA TEAM

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Nick Kane

Background

Objective Testing

Gym Assessments

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Damian, Mark & Ted

Background

Forces and Frequency

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Molly Binetti

Background

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Jermaine McCubbine

Background

You may also like from PPP:

Power Training Methods

Rob Gray – Software Re-Organisation

Preface

The Myth of One ”Correct” Repeatable Technique

The Business of Producing Movements & Why We Don’t Need a Boss

Freedom Through Constraints

The Laws of Attraction – Part 1

The Laws of Attraction – Part 2

Pilot Study #1 – Workload Profiling

What Did I Find Out?

Discussion

Coach Perspective

Training Recommendations

Insights from Spellman Performance

Time for a Change

Present Day

Paul Venner – Frans Bosch System

Bottom Up Vs Top Down

Finding the Anchor Points in Our Coaching

Exploration Versus Exploitation

Individualisation

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Junior Elite Tennis Players

When you have 8 weeks

As for the more Advanced athletes

Where to Start?

The Athlete

I have enough – Sheridan Stewart (2023)

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