5.  How would you deal with a (tennis) coach who believes their player should not be lifting heavy weights.  It will slow them down and could injure their back.

 

 

 

Gil actually answered this question in the context of Football (soccer) because this is a sport where he has experienced this sort of comment.  Don’t be confused by the photo above of an American football player.  This was not the sport Gil was talking about.  But I saw the picture and I thought it was a good stereotypical image of a coach that came to mind and illustrates what we’re up against!!!   One thing I must mention that Gil said (which I did not expect) is that professional footballers are truly exceptional athletes; every young boy aspires to become one but most are just not born of superior genes and end up filtering into other sports.   Given Gil’s association with Rugby it was refreshing honesty-something we must acknowledge about footballers once we look beyond all the drama with diving players and the lack of existence of an S&C culture at the top level!

 

 

Gil went on to say that they really are the most robust kind of all athletes when you think that they play 60 games plus each season  and seem to get by with a quick patch up job by the medical team and sub-optimal S&C programmes!

 

 

Anyway, back to the question!!!!!   Gil’s reply was succinct.  ‘The bottom line is coaches don’t know what they don’t know.   They are unconsciously incompetent.’

 

 

Gil gave an example of a unnamed Team whose medical team were giving the S&C department ear ache for doing too heavy squatting with their players which was causing them (it was alleged) back pain and pain during matches.  The S&C coach asked Gil for advice as this was a very difficult situation.  For the record these were male professional footballers and squatting 65kg!!!!!!  Gil has a 13 year old female overhead squatting half of that!!!!

 

 

To me this is unbelievable and if you look at this logically it isn’t a stretch to say that perhaps the reason these pro players are breaking down in matches is because they are so weak they can’t tolerate the impact forces of the contacts/collisions that take place in football.   How awesome might our pro footballers be if they actually delivered somewhere close to their athletic potential in the gym????

 

 

6.  What is starting strength and how do you train it?

 

 

Well, if you already read Lessons 2 you will have seen the definition from Mel Siff’s Supertraining.  But here it is again,

 

 

“starting-strength” refers to the ability of the muscles to develop force at the beginning of the working contraction before external movement occurs and is always produced under conditions of isometric muscle action. This fact alone has important consequences for strength training, because it dispels the opinion that the once-popular method of isometric training should be completely abandoned in modern training. On the contrary, the ability to generate starting strength rapidly can exert a profound effect on the dynamics of an entire movement, not only in terms of the magnitude of the impulse, but also regarding the psychological sensation of “lightness” that it creates during the crucial initial stage of a highly resisted movement.

 

 

Gil said that the basis for all acceleration based movements comes from isometric muscle actions and training to develop this would definitely help greatly with acceleration.  I questioned what sort of weight because I have read on more than one occasion that starting strength has been described as the ability to initiate movement quickly using moderate loads which enable you to get the bar moving quickly.  From discussions with Gil he said that I shouldn’t confuse acceleration speed of the bar with acceleration strength.  Yes the bar travels at its fastest during the 2nd pull when RFD is highest (peak RFD) but acceleration strength is initially gathered under isometric conditions which is best done under heavy load– using the principle of an immovable load!

 

 

Below is an example of APA coach Fabrizio Gargiulo demonstrating a 5-10sec isometric 1st pull using a load marginally greater than his 1RM Deadlift so that the focus is on starting strength.  (For the record he could do a lot more but he hadn’t done a proper warm-up!!!)  Something to consider is that this type of isometric work could actually be very appropriate for a complete beginner to learn how to gather up their force to ‘feel’ what it is like to properly brace and develop those internal forces that Gil was talking about so important in getting the right POSTURE!!!

 

 

Now one point to note is that resisted running is quite popular for a neural overload at the speed end of the continuum.  When asked if you could put athletes in harnesses with resistance from the coach or with a really heavy weighted sled to train the sprint motion isometrically Gil said you could, but he wouldn’t, because you could affect the sprint mechanics. For me personally, I quite like the use of ‘bungees’ to run against for agility work or light sleds for sprinting but if I want to do something really heavy to help develop sprint starts I’ll squat and deadlift!!!!

 

 

Once you get over the fact that they are not actually going to lift it then actually the heavier the better!! You might want to inform the parents of the 11 year old girl what you’re doing first though!!

 

 

Below is an example of APA coach Fabrizio Gargiulo demonstrating a 5-10sec isometric 1st pull using a load.  This is at a weight that you could normally rep out for 3-5RM but doing singles for 5-10sec isometrics soon adds up!

 

 

 
7.  How do you organise speed, plyometrics and strength/olympic weight lifting into a microcycle?

 

 

If truth be told we didn’t get into this in great detail as by the time Gil spoke about the underpinning theory, answered our questions and did some practice at the first pull and 2nd pulls from hangs we were running out of time.  There were a couple of key messages I took about how Gil organises his programmes:

 

 

1.   Train the qualities of strength, power and speed concurrently.  Gil has never done a plyometrics session in isolation for example it has always dovetailed with a weights session or even a speed session.  Gil likes to have plyos always present somewhere; in general strength blocks this might be in the warm-ups for proprioception.  In strength blocks these might happen before or after the weights and in the strength/power block they will be more than likely complexed together with the weights!!

 

 

A typical progression over several mesocycles might be:

 

 

General Strength >  Maximal Strength >  Maximal Strength/Power > Maintenance of Strength > Taper

 

 

Gil was suggesting he would take out the plyos and heavy power work in the phase before the taper.  I have seen this before where you actually get a rebound effect as the true neural transfer takes place AFTER you stop doing them!!

 

 

2.  Vary the Training Load weekly.   Gil personally favours keeping the sets x reps fairly constant so say 4 x 6 for the whole mesocycle of 4 weeks but varying the percentage between H, MH, VH, M where on the Very High week you push for a greater percentage of the Repetition Maximum determined in the first week microcycle say 105% plus.  I am a bit more traditional and like to keep going heavier over 3 weeks gradually then have a bigger Deload on the 4th week or even 5th or 6th week with my youngest athletes.  But perhaps this is because I am working with younger athletes who have a bigger window for week on week gains.

 

 

I also quite like the ideal of changing it up in some cycles so rather than increasing Training Load with increases biased towards the Load end, I like to start with 3 x 6 and build volume at that same weight over 4 weeks such as 3 x 6 > 4 x 6 > 3 x8 > 4 x 8

 

 

3. Combinations for conditioning.  Gil talked about using combinations- where you do 3 similar exercises back to back to make one rep.  So this could be derivatives of the Olympic lifts such as a pull from hang into a high pull from hang into the full catch.   Or it could be 3 big movements such as a clean into a front squat into a push press.

 

 

Gil has used these successfully both at the initial basic strength block to develop connective tissue adaptations and work capacity as well as at the end in power cycles to really get some anaerobic conditioning work in.  He has used a 3 rep combination for 10 rounds (30 reps) with a goal of 2 minutes or under looking to drive the heart rate up to >200 bpm and then going again once it drops to below 140 bpm.