Category — Interviews

I just wanted to let everyone know that I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Mike Robertson for his In the Trenches Podcast.

Mike and I discussed:

• Soft tissue therapy and massage
• Breathing and the diaphragm
• Fascial line considerations in training
• Some of the mistakes I have made in my career

Hope you ENJOY IT!

Patrick
patrick@optimumsportsperformance.com

Today I havea really great interview with Seattle Sounders Athletic Development Coach Dave Tenney.

I have had the pleasure of corresponding with Dave through Mike Boyle’s strengthcoach.com and have found Dave to be an excellent resource for training information.  He brings a very well rounded approach to Strength and Conditioning, two terms that probably don’t justify what he does as a coach, as his programs are highly specific and take into account the importance of individuality with each athlete.

In this interview we covered topics like:

• Dave’s philosophy on training soccer athletes
   
• The importance of aerobic work for soccer players and understanding the specific alactic/aerobic needs of these athletes
   
• Issues with relying solely on high-intensity interval training in your program
   
• Use of the Omega Wave to objectify recovery following competition
   
• Ideas on recovery strategies for the athletes
   

The interview is a little long, but the content is very rich and I am excited to present it too you.

Hope you enjoy it!

Patrick
patrick@optimumsportsperformance.com

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1) Dave, thanks for taking time out of your busy schedule to do this interview. Can you briefly give the readers a little bit of background on yourself, as well as your overall philosophy for preparing soccer athletes?

I came into the profession of fitness (strength & conditioning, or whatever you want to call our profession today) after both playing and coaching soccer, which I believe gives me a different philosophy and perspective from many performance coaches. After an eight year, undistinguished and mediocre professional playing career (2 years in the German minor leagues and 6 years in professional indoors), I ended up finishing my bachelors (Coaching Science) at George Mason University and went into the graduate program (Exercise Science) there while working with both soccer programs. While coaching at Mason and doing the youth soccer circuit, I had the opportunity to participate in a UEFA/European ‘A’ license soccer coaching course in the Czech Republic in 2004. The 5-week course was conducted at Charles University in Prague, and, besides teaching a variety of coaching methodologies, it was also highly scientific, and was a fantastic introduction to the Eastern European perspective on performance enhancement. Following this course I “transitioned” to the title of fitness coach for the George Mason men’s and women’s soccer programs, as well as the Washington Freedom women’s team (currently a WPS franchise). Currently, I am the fitness coach for the Seattle Sounders FC (MLS), and will be finishing my fourth year in the league (’07 & ’08 in Kansas City).

Regarding my philosophy of preparing soccer athletes, I would say that 80% of the work I would do is fairly specific. It’s funny that a lot of people think of “sports-specific”, and they think of doing something in a weight room, that may mimic the movement patterns of the sport. I am a strong believer in soccer-specific training, meaning that the athletes spend most of their time on the field, with the proper footwear, using a ball. I think the best way to do a majority of fitness work is to utilize different game forms to train the aerobic or anaerobic systems in a game-related manner. However, I also believe there are crucial components that make up final 20% of work that needs to be done which are outside the playing field. I think maximum strength work is important in the off-season, as well as work in the gym aimed at targeting the alactic and oxidative systems. In our league, it’s very difficult to make strength gains in season, but our aim is to maintain strength, and do any necessary stability and corrective work that may prevent injuries.

What I am looking at this year, as my philosophy “evolves”, is getting that balance right between the 80% specific work vs. the 20% non-specific work. We have started to see with this group in Seattle, as we get into a lot of games, and end up in a weekly rhythm of game-recovery training-pregame training-game, etc. we actually end up seeing a drop in fitness levels slowly over a 4-6 week period. This is the case especially with our less fit players. Is it because the load of the game is not strong enough to stimulate fitness gains (maybe the less fit players play more conservatively), or is it that the oxidative or glycolytic systems aren’t really fully recovered before having to play in the next game? I think this speaks for the importance of that 20% of non-specific work that seems to fall by the wayside with so congested playing schedule.

2) There has been a lot of discussion lately about aerobic training. Soccer is a sport of short intense bursts followed by periods of recovery (jogging, moving into position, etc). Many want to just do intense interval training and forget about the importance of total energy system development. Can you please talk a little bit about the energy system development work you do with the Seattle Sounders, and how it fits into the overall training program?

Well, first we’ll need to come to the agreement that soccer is an alactic-aerobic dominant sport. Meaning that the typical movement profile within a match involves a player making, on average, a 20-meter sprint every 30-90sec over the course of a 90-minute match. Depending on the position, players will make approximately 50-80 sprints in the game, and yet cover 10-14km (check research by Thomas Reilly, Jens Bangsbo, or Raymond Verheijen for more specifics). So, we could then assume that most intense actions are short enough that the energy required can be fulfilled by the alactic system, and the resting intervals should be enough time that the oxidative system aids the replenishment of ATP for the alactic system. So, if I come to this conclusion about the sport of soccer, then what role would anaerobic (lactic) intervals have within my program? Why would I want to train my system to create large amounts of lactic energy?

I don’t want to totally minimize the importance of the lactic system, however, in energy production within a game. There will be periods of time that a player’s alactic system is not fully recovered, or that the required workload becomes too high, and an athlete will need to fall back on his/her lactic system to provide energy. However, it appears that an over-reliance on lactic energy can be very taxing on the body, and is not efficient.

I made an interesting observation last year when Seattle was lucky enough to play summer exhibition matches against world-class club teams FC Barcelona and Chelsea FC. Watching someone like Lionel Messi play, arguably the best player in the world now, or Drogba and Anelka at Chelsea, it was pretty clear that the higher the level of play becomes, the more alactic-aerobic it is. Messiwould stand right in front of us, and float slowly across the field, until BANG, at the right time, he would take off like a 100m sprinter, to look to get the ball behind the defense. After his run, he would continue to float and probe until the next opening came. His play couldn’t be any more alactic-aerobic. If you watch a typical average level US college soccer game though, you will see a frantic paced game, that probably borders more on a alactic-lactic type sport at times, where the goal is to keep this non-stop pace up until the coach substitutes player out (only 3 subs are permitted in pro or international soccer) to replace them with fresher players who can maintain this frantic pace. The higher the level of play, the more alactic-aerobic the game becomes, probably because of how well pro players control the ball, as well as because of how well conditioned most are.

To me, this is more justification to train sport-specifically. Use the ball and training games, vary durations of work, and modify the size, shape of your field to train the energy systems you want. We have found that playing 5 against 5 type exercises on slightly large fields will elicit HR ranges in the 90-95% zone fairly easily. We can then program 4-8min “aerobic power” type games to stimulate pretty significant aerobic adaptations. Look at any research done by Hoff, Helgerud, & Wisløff out of Norway, andyou will find some pretty compelling data on the aerobic adaptations that can take place with this type of specific work.

The biggest mistake that coaches make, however, is the lack of ability to program the alactic training effectively. I was lucky enough to see several great examples of this in the Czech Republic, where they are masters of it. It’s important to create different 1v1 or 2v2 exercises where players are asked to work maximally for 6-20sec, but then given about a minute of rest before they go again, to truly overload alactic capacity in the right way (6-12sec work, work:rest 1:8-10). Alactic capacity is fairly genetic, and difficult to influence, which means that training sessions to target it, must be right on. Typically, coaches will not give enough rest, and it soon becomes more of a lactic power exercise (20-30sec work, with a work:rest of 1:3). What coaches don’t understand, is that, if the work part over 6-12sec is truly maximal, then the proper rest period will also train the oxidative system to recover effectively as well. I have also found that hill sprints and sled pushes over this same work and rest scheme also help to create adaptations that improve “soccer-specific” performance pretty significantly as well. This sled and hill work can become an important part of that “non-specific 20%” programming.

Beyond the scope of soccer training, just when looking at “interval training”, I think it’s prudent to really investigate whether someone is talking about sprint interval work (SIT), or high-intensity interval work (HIIT). SIT would appear to target the alactic and aerobic systems pretty well (6-10 sec work, >40 sec rest), while HIIT work (longer duration of work, less rest) would seem to target the lactic system more. So, coaches just need to be clear that these two types of intervals will elicit different types of adaptations over time. There are a lot of younger American players now that come into our league who have clearly trained almost exclusively with HIIT methods of conditioning training. My experience is that some of these athletes don’t make it because they are losing that “pop” or that sharpness. We recently had a high draft pick player who could do 300yd shuttles the entire day, and not fatigue. But he never seemed like he could be explosive. At the same time, we had an older European ex-World Cup player, who was heavily reliant on his speed for his style of play. When we would do plyos, this older European player would be exhausted after doing eight high hurdle jumps. His work was visibly maximal. This college players would jump over the
eight hurdles (not visibly maximal), jog back and be ready to do it again. I tried and tried to get him to do things more explosively, but it seemed to be difficult to change. Slowly, I came to the realization that with our over reliance on HIIT work, we may be creating a culture of athletes who can do things at 90% speed all day, but can’t do things maximally when they need to.

3) I know you guys are using the Omega Wave with your athletes. Can you talk about how you are using the Omega Wave and how it helps you dictate the training program for individual athletes?

For those of you who don’t know, OmegaWave is a non-invasive assessment tool, used to measure the readiness and level of optimization of all of the functional systems of the body, prior to a training day or week. The athlete wears a series of electrodes (including EKG), and the OmegaWavedevice measures over a five-minute period: HRV, metabolic capacities (DiffECG), and neuromuscular fatigue (Omega potential). The data from the assessment are immediately available after completion of the test.

We typically test all players who started a match the morning of the first recovery session following a game. This assessment then gives us a snap shot of where each player is at in terms of fatigue. Not just the level of fatigue, but more important, we get an indication of which specific system may be the “weak link” for that week. For example, we have some “sprinter” type players who experience a lowered Omega potential implying a certain level of CNS/neuromuscular fatigue after every match. It could be 48 more hours until that athlete can really gain any adaptation from speed or power work.

The biggest area we use it for is to look at HRV, and which players become more sympathetic (SNS) or parasympathetic (PSNS) dominant during their recovery phase. Athletes who become more sympathetically dominant eventually have a significantly higher risk of muscle injury over time, per my observations this year. It’s actually been possible to predict most of our muscle injuries this year through OmegaWave. The issue at the professional team level is determining as a staff how to modify an individual’s training load within a team setting to prevent an injury from then occurring.

The alternate danger group distinguished through HRV, are those athletes who become overly parasympathetic over time. My experience this year has shown that soccer players with a strong glycolytic make-up, with concurrently lower oxidative capacities, are far more likely to have strong parasympathetic dominance in their recovery phase. As a result, such athletes seems to have the sensation of “shutting down” – they experience lowered RHR, can be a little sluggish in training, and show signs on their OW assessment of hypothyroid function and lowered hormonal output. We have 3-4 players in this category, and they are really good with following the protocol we’ve set up for this (after consultation with Val Nasedkin and Joel Jamieson) involving contrast recovery work, some specific high-resistance bike intervals, and nutrition modifications. According to the Russian designers of OmegaWave, athletes who are “slightly” parasympathetic are said to be an optimal state, but these athletes end up being significantly parasympathetic dominant.

Finally, the metabolic assessment on the OW gives us feedback on the oxidative, lactic, and alactic capacities of the athlete, as well as concurrent physiological markers such as AT, RHR, VO2max. What these all do is give us insight into the long-term adaptations to our training program. Val Nasedkin, the Russian designer of OW, thinks that most training adaptations in team sports should be aimed at improving oxidative abilities. I would have to agree in the respect that our players with huge “lactic” engines are able to cover a lot of ground in a match. But there fatigue is deeper and far more severe (typically very parasympathetic), and they take longer to recover from games. Verkhoshansky methodology, laid out in Block Training System in Endurance Running seems to support Nasedkin’s belief as well. He continues to stress how important the decrease in blood lactate accumulation is for improved performance. As a result, the aim of Verkhoshanksy methods were to train to improve the oxidative capacity of both slow and fast twitch fibers through the increase of mitochondrial density.

At the end of the day, it would appear that metabolically, it may just be important for you to have at least one big engine, whether it be the lactic or oxidative. Since we are always getting new players in, it’s important to remember that these metabolic adaptations are very long-term types of adaptations. With OW, it’s easy to note the genetic tendencies of athletes to rely on one system or another. It’s also fairly easy then, with this metabolic assessment tool, to see which athlete’s systems (lactic, oxidative, or alactic) respond quicker to training. We have some speed/power players with us that take forever to make decent aerobic/oxidative adaptations, because that’s just not how they are genetically wired. This allows us to see that, and by patient with such an athlete.

4) Recovery is an essential component for athletes between training, competition, and travel. Can you speak to the recovery strategies that you have in place with the Sounders?

Beyond some of the ideas above regarding recovery, there are some other different things that we do. At this point in the season, we have about three games per week. If we have less than three days before the next game, then our players will do a “non-impact” recovery, which will involve 20 minutes on a spin bike, followed foam rolling, stretching, plus some mobility and stability exercises. With so little time to do strength training at this time in the season, we also need to add in some core, upper-body, and body weight strength work on this day. The biggest issue we have in this sport regarding training programs and recovery work is the decision of how much specific work to do the 2nd day after a game. Many soccer coaches want to begin to do a lot of field work again, thinking that the players have already had one day off, but I have found that typically, players are still in a pretty fatigued state still 36 hours after a match.

We also have a full time massage therapist, who will work with different players over the course of the week. We are lucky that our medical staff consists of a physical therapist (head trainer), an ATC, and massage therapist, so our athletes are well cared for. I have also brought in an assistant, Jordan Webb, who is certified in PRI (Postural Restoration), to be able to monitor movement dysfunction that we may need to address in different individuals over the course of the season.

5) Thanks for the great interview, Dave. I am sure the readers appreciate the information you have shared with us today. Can you please tell everyone about anything you have coming up in the future (projects, lectures, etc)?

Well, we will be flying around 20,000 miles in the next two months playing in various places through North & Central America, so the best chance you’ll have to see me is in the airport!! I was just interviewed by Anthony Renna for the StrengthCoach podcast, so that should be up on iTunes soon. The only other lecture activity I really have is at the MLS Athletic Trainers Conference, which runs concurrently with the MLS Combine, in January in Miami. I will be doing a presentation on how we are utilizing OmegaWave as a tool to prevent injuries.

Thanks for the opportunity for the interview Patrick, and keep up the good work!!

Last month I attended the NSCA National Conference and watched a lecture on sprint biomechanics given by Jon Goodwin.  The lecture was easily the best of the weekend and I jotted down a lot of notes.  Jon was nice enough to take time out of his busy schedule (as both a coach and researcher on sprint biomechanics) to do this interview and I am very excited to present it to you.

Enjoy!

Patrick
patrick@optimumsportsperformance.com

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1. Thanks for taking the time out of your day to do this interview, Jon.  Could you please tell the readers a little bit about yourself.

Essentially, I’m a frustrated athlete. Injury ended my involvement in athletics and like many, coaching was my next avenue to stay involved in the sport I loved. I started coaching in 1997 and from there my coaching interest progressed from athletics to strength and conditioning. Whilst this was going on I completed a BSc in Sport Rehabilitation and an MSc in Biomedical Engineering before progressing from teaching biomechanics at undergraduate level to validating both a BSc in Strength and Conditioning in 2006 and a distance learning MSc in Strength and Conditioning in 2008 at St Mary’s University College in the UK. I now run these programmes whilst continuing some coaching and starting studies towards a PhD in sprint mechanics.

2. Your presentation at the NSCA National Conference on sprint mechanics was excellent.  In that presentation you talked a lot contact length and contact frequency in attaining high velocity.  Can you please talk a little bit about this?  More specifically, why is contact frequency so important and what can we do about it?

The mechanical relationship here is real simple and governed by real simple rules.
 
Firstly, obeying simple laws of mechanics our motion is only altered by forces. We are subjected to 2 important forces when we run – gravity vertically and air resistance mostly horizontally. If not for these 2 forces we would just continue throught the air at a constant velocity forever. The job of running at max velocity is then to apply forces in such a way that we overcome the changes in motion that these forces create. i.e. when we land we need to arrest the downward velocity we have accrued during freefall and also overcome the loss of horizontal velocity we are subjected to due to air resistance.

Next, we need to think about when we are able to apply the forces that can do these jobs. The answer to that is simple too. The only time we can express these forces actively is when we have a surface to push against. i.e. when we are on the ground.
 
So now we’re left to consider; what are the variables we have access to while the athlete is on the ground? What things can a coach enable an athlete to change to apply force in a more effective way to allow faster top running velocities?
 
There are 2 variables we have access to here.

The first is contact length, the distance travelled by the centre of mass whilst the athlete is in contact with the ground. This is controlled by how long your legs are and how far you reach in front of your mass and/or push off behind.

The second is contact time, the time you take in contact with the ground. This is controlled by how long it takes the athlete to apply enough impulse (force x time) to halt their downward velocity and reaccelerate themself back into the air for the next flight phase.

You should be able to see here, we have the components of our standard equations for velocity; a displacement and a time taken to cover that displacement. This leaves us with a fundamentally important relationship for speed (and acceleration and agility) coaches to keep in mind.
 
Velocity = Contact length / contact time

Obviously our leg length isn’t something we’re actively going to change (not ethically anyway) and wide contact positions such as reaching in front or pushing off a long way behind have been demonstrated to become progressively more ineffective mechanically. Whilst there is likely to be some plasticity in contact length, possibly controlled by athletes strength around the hip, contact length probably only offers small opportunities for change. i.e. getting stronger might enable you to handle longer contact lengths (so allowing faster velocities) but we certainly aren’t going to cue athletes technically to reach out in front or push off further behind.
 
Contact time on the other hand has been shown to be a huge variable of importance. The primary thing faster sprinters do differently is they generate much higher peak leg extension forces on the ground and they do it much more quickly. This means they can overcome gravity and project themselves back in to the air in less time (air time being virtually almost constant across runners of different ability). With this capability they are able to cover their contact length in less time. So what happens to our equation? Contact time gets smaller, so velocity gets larger. This is the primary mechanism by which faster sprinters travel at faster velocities than slower ones.

3. Coaches are always looking for ways to make their athletes faster.  Some coaches teach “quick feet drills” and other coaches work on starts and more technical aspects of the drive phase.  You have been critical of these types of drills for speed development stating that, “Technique is only important if it produces greater ground force production”.  Can you please explain your stance on these drills and what you recommend coaches do instead?

I’ve never thought of myself of being critical of anything, but I guess I have been just a little! Certainly I’m always looking to understand what adaptation/responses we are likely to see in response to different drills to allow us to cut potentially ineffective elements. 
 
I guess my central point is, the only way we can travel at faster velocities is through the way in which we affect ground force production and therein the equation given above. Therefore understanding good technique, good coaching cues and effective drills is about seeing how these things are related to ground force production.
 
Fast feet drills have an outcome of focussing attention on geting the foot off the ground quick, but this isn’t how we reduce ground contact time in sport. In sport we reduce ground contact time by expressing our forces more quickly to enable the acceleration job to be done in less time and so the athlete to move off the ground into their next movement skill. Fast feet drills are therefore cueing an inappropriate pre-activation pattern which results in low ground force production on contact.

Drive phase coaching I believe I often see go wrong as coaches cue their sprinters to stay in a drive phase for longer when in fact they don’t have the leg extension strength capabilities to allow this mechanically. Athletes then just try and achieve the outcome of ‘staying low’ by folding through the torso and losing effective body position. Weaker athletes should not be coached to stay down for longer until they are given the strength capacity to do so. To stay in a drive position they need to be able to apply enough leg extension force, in the ground time available, to overcome gravity vertically and then have plenty of force ‘left over’ to be directed horizontally. i.e. the strength ability to accelerate at a high rate is what enables a low drive position. Athletes who are too weak to accelerate at a high rate need to come upright much sooner. If you want your sprinter to stay down longer, get them stronger.
 
In the end the rules are simple for me.

Drills should involve active strike patterns towards the ground, affirmative foot contacts and generally high levels of stiffness throught the leg i.e. the leg doesn’t flex much on landing.
Coaching cues should always consider the strength capabilities of the athlete. Often (although not always) the route to improving the technical model is changing strength or mobility qualities rather than giving repeated technical cues.

4. When talking about developing speed you mentioned that the vertical foces are the most important ones that we need to overcome, which makes sense since gravity is something that is always there.  You say that the horizontal forces are not as important.  Can you please expand on this?

As you say, large horizontal force production is not the answer as we are not overall accelerating horizontally, only vertically. Even when we accelerate horizontally at the start of a run we just tip/incline the system forward to facilitate using strong triple extension pushing mechanics. We only come upright as we approach top speed because we have less time available and so more of our effort has to be directed vertically to overcome gravity. If gravity was smaller we would be able to stay in a drive phase for longer.

This isn’t to say that horizontal forces aren’t relevant. For example if our athlete exhibits high braking forces then they will have to equally generate horizontal propulsive forces to conter this. Therefore reducing horizontal braking forces is often a focus of coaching, with powerful hip extensors being a potential factor here.

5. Lets talk about exercise.  What are some exercises that you have your sprinters do that you find particularly effective?  Are you using any special strength exercises or stick more to the meat and potatoes lifts like squats, cleans, deadlifts, etc.?

As a scientist as well as a coach I would say I don’t have enough data to demonstrate what works. We are doing training intervention studies at St Mary’s to try and answer this and I think some other universities in the states are also on the case (Peter Weyands group for example).
What I can tell you is what I have used, and therefore believe works (having removed plenty of things I tried that were probably mistakes!).

Obviously balance around the body is key for injury prevention, but in the main there are a few key functions of the body that are key to sprint performance.

Powerful hip extensors potentially reduce braking forces and brace the leg against the ground, preventing collapse of the leg spring and facilitating high rates of force production vertically.
An ability to stiffen the knee and ankle through eccentric control in knee extensors and ankle plantar flexors plus strong tendons, allows for fast force production on contact.  \Therefore I periodise general training activities into the programme to provide variation and a progression in stimulus from strength towards power and speed.

Although most exercises are in the programme all year round, emphasis shifts in the pattern here:

Hip Extension: Deadlift and RDL — Weightlifting — Heavy sledge runs – hopping and bounding

Knee stiffness: ATG Squats — heavy eccentric (over 1RM) single leg leg press — 1/4 squat jumps and jerks  — 2 foot hurdle bounds

Ankle: Heavy eccentric (over 1RM) single leg calf raise/lower  — 2 foot hurdle bounds
Plus some general hip flexor strength work to facilitate deceleration of the leg in late stance and initiate forward swing of the leg.

If acceleration is the target of general training then the knee and ankle focus changes a little so that concentric power is the focus rather than eccentric control.
 
This format is then adapted to deal with individual athletes mechanics. If an athlete is hip dominant then there will more of a knee ankle focus for them and vice versa. By way of example, Christophe Lemaitre who recently won the euro championships, I would class as hip dominant. He has a long contact length (observation, not measured) reaching in front and therefore for the velocity he travels at, affords himself a long contact time which helps him overcome gravity with what appear to be relatively weaker knee and ankle. In my mind a knee/ankle dominated programme for one winter would allow him to combine this ability with a shorter contact times and then run a good deal quicker. (he’s also light and has long legs so has some natural advantages for top speed running. If we was to be given a hypertrophy programme I would suggest it should mostly only be for knee extensors and ankle plantar flexors.)

6. In your opinion, how strong is strong enough?  We have seen some great sprinters who do very little resistance training.  How much lifting do sprinters need to do, volume or frequnecy wise?  While every athlete is different and has different needs, do you have a basic template that you follow for programming training for your sprinters that you can speak a little bit about?

There is no ‘strong enough’. Providing they don’t break, you can never have a spinter that wouldn’t benefit from being able to express more force more quickly when the hit the ground. However there are some caveats to this statement.
 
One is that there certainly is a point of ‘muscular enough’. More muscle mass enables sprinters to run faster through the application of higher ground forces. However for all athletes there is a threshold where this relationships flips; where the strength pay off is outweighed by the additional resistance you have to overcome to accelerate your bodyweight vertically. We don’t have any numbers to say when this point is for individual athletes so coaches have to make a judgement call. I certainly think there are some 10.0 sprinters around that would run a bit quicker if they weighed a few lbs less. Perhaps dropping some of the pecs and guns and even a bit more body fat in some cases would help!

The second is that with a finite limit on optimal muscle mass there is then a ceiling on how strong we can get a sprinter. Our general training is designed to educate the athlete to rapidly activate all of their big, high threshold, fast twitch motor units in a co-ordinated fashion. Well once they can do this maximally and with sound steering/control, since we can’t get them bigger to get further strength increases, then general training ceases to be effective in pushing the athlete forward in terms of force production (not to say there aren’t other benefits).
 
As strength coaches we need to accept that the closer athletes get to their optimal muscle mass, and rapid maximal activation of that mass, then our general training methods become progressively less effective. Eventually all that is left is becoming more skillful in expressing that force in the specifics of our sports task, in this case sprinting.

The sprinters we see eccel without strength training are the rare and lucky breeds who are naturally able to achieve many of the outcomes that our general training is directed at. Perhaps they are gifted with a level of hypertrophy that is optimal without any resistance training, perhaps they naturally are able to recuit all of their big fast twitch motor units in a skilfull manner upon ground contact. I’m sure we can often still improve these athletes further, but certainly the gains are likely to be a lot smaller.

Having said all that, most of us aren’t lucky enough to work with animals like that, and generally have big gains to be made. In those cases then typically gym based work takes a precedence for me in the first 3 months of a winter off season. 3 gym based sessions, and possibly 4 will be in place where we think the athletes structure and general force producing capabilities are a limiting factor. Progressively running reclaims the front seat through mid winter and by the time May/June comes round then general strength training gets dropped almost completely, about 8-12 weeks before key races of the season. In this period all training efforts are in refining the way forces are applied in running specifically. It’s another common mistake that I think is made, people wanting to hang on to their big general strength training exercises for too long into a season. General strength gains built over months or years don’t disappear when we stop lifting. Our squat score goes down but that’s more a skill issue than an underlying strength issue, and the skill we are concerned with is running, not squatting. The fatigue from continuing heavy lifting far outweighs any benefit from continuing strength work. Squatting a 190kg PB 2 weeks before a race will not likely enhance performance as that strength is ony being expressed in a squat action and we haven’t had any time to transfer that to force production in our running action. Squatting 180kg 2 months before and then practicing running with that strength, in a more rested state, is what is likely to improve performance.

7. It has been a real pleasure doing this interview, Jon, and I’m sure the readers will certainly take a lot away from it.  Can you please tell the readers what you are up to next or where they can hear more from you?
 
I’m busy writing at the moment; some book chapters on speed, agility, plyometrics and biomechanics in S&C, plus a few research studies that we completed a while back but I’ve been too busy to write up.

Not sure where they might hear from me next. I’d love to come back to NSCA if I’m wanted. Always happy to take a trip to the US to chat about training!

I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Scotland based Strength and Conditioning Coach Cedric Unholz. 

In this interview we discuss:

• Manual Therapy
• My philosophy of training
• My biggest influences in the field
• Some of the resources I recommend to strength coaches and soft tissue therapists

Hope you enjoy it!

Patrick
patrick@optimumsportsperformance.com

I was recently interviewed by my friend and colleague Zack Lush on the topic of arm care for high school baseball players.  I talked mainly about soft tissue therapy and recovery strategies.  While there is a question or two that are specific to baseball, most of what is in the interview can be applied to high school athletes in any sport.

Hope you enjoy it!

Patrick
patrick@optimumsportsperformance.com