The role of the Fitness Coach (or Strength & Conditioning Coach, or Coach of Physical Preparation, or whatever you want to call it) is to raise the athletes’ level of fitness to its highest potential in preparation for sports competition. With a variety of movement based rehabilitation courses available these days, many fitness coaches have gravitated towards them as a way to “branch out” and extend their services. However, I feel that, in the process of doing so, we (as a profession) have gotten away from developing fundamental fitness qualities in our athletes, as we have gotten so bogged down with focusing on only one aspect of their development – movement.

I certainly will never (ever) discourage a coach from taking more courses and advancing their learning and I do believe that it is important for coaches to educate themselves on various rehabilitation methods to allow themselves to effectively communicate with the medical staff and be a part of the solution when an athlete is injured or returning from injury. Just as I would encourage medical professionals to learn about basic conditioning methods so they too can discuss with the fitness coach and not hold athletes back, which can sometimes happen, because they don’t understand the possibilities of training when injured or preparing the body for sport when returning from injury. Additionally, I do feel that there is something that strength coaches may be able to gain from a number of these courses in terms of how they see things within an athletes movement, which may lead them to select a certain exercise over another.

However, many Fitness Coaches have gotten so far away from developing the fundamentals of fitness and focusing on movement that they actually have athletes who may move decently but lack basic fitness competency. What ends up happening is that as fatigue sets in during the competition the athletes “good movement” begins to break down and the athlete ends up in this vicious cycle of injury, rehab, competition, injury, rehab, competition, etc…This was part of the reason Charlie Weingroff, Joel Jamieson, and myself got together to record our Strength in Motion DVD– to show coaches how to combine a movement based approach with concepts that are essential to being a great strength coach and developing well-rounded athletes.

Requisite Competencies

Requisite competencies are the aspects of training that I feel are essential to develop in all athletes. These are the fundamentals. The basics. If you focus on only one area or aspect of these requisite competencies then you end up with a deficient athlete who lacks a well-rounded fitness base. The three requisite competencies, as I see it, are:

1. Movement Competency
2. Work Capacity Competency
3. Locomotion Competency

Movement Competency

Many fitness coaches live here and do a good job with this (as I stated earlier). In this area the key goal is progress the athlete to a level where they can move efficiently and fluidly in all three planes of motion, they have appropriate joint ranges of motion to satisfy the needs and demands of their sport, and they have basic competency of fundamental exercises – push, pull, squat, hinge, and lunge.

Work Capacity Competency

Work capacity is essential to general preparation for sport. This competency should be focused on developing a very robust level of fitness that can tolerate high amounts of work and allow the individual to be resilient when it comes to recovering from hard training or competition. Having a well developed aerobic system is a good starting point and how you develop this will depend on the methods you choose and, to a certain extent, the sport the athlete is training for – sports specific work capacity being the ultimate goal.

Locomotion Competency

Movement competency deals with how an individual performs movement statically while locomotion competency deals with how well the person propels them-self through space (how they loco-mote). One can loco-mote in a variety of ways and they should all be developed – crawling, walking, skipping, running, and jumping (plyometrics, hopping, leaping, bounding, etc). The goal of locomotion competency is to develop athletes so that they have a very large catalog of locomotion options that they can call upon when participating in sport.

Wrapping up

These are the fundamentals. They are not sexy by any means but they are an essential starting point when planning training. The role of the Fitness Coach should be to enhance all of these qualities and set the athlete up for success in their given sport. Focusing on only one component of the above requisite competencies ends up leaving athlete deficient and preventing them from attaining their highest potential. I know most coaches will read this and think, “I already know all that. We already do this stuff!”. But I would encourage you to really look at your program and think long and hard about whether or not you are doing the basics well. I think many believe that they do these things (when in fact they may only do one or two of them well) but they may be leaving some things on the table when it comes to developing requisite competencies.

Recovering from competition is something that athletes and coaches are always looking to maximize. There are many ideas out there on how to approach the situation with everything from, “lift hard the day after the game since it is the day which is furthest away from the next game” to“take a full day of rest the day after the game to allow yourself to recover”.

A new study in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research by Tufano et. al. (2012), Effect of Aerobic Recovery Intensity on Delayed-Onset Muscle Soreness and Strength, set out to look at the result that different aerobic intensities had on recovery from a delayed-onset muscle soreness (DOMS) bout of resistance training.

Twenty-six women in their early to mid-twenties participated in the study. The subjects were randomly assigned to one of three groups:

1. Moderate Intensity Cycling – 20min of riding at 70% of age predicted max HR reserve at 80rpm
2. Low Intensity Cycling – 20min of riding at 30% of age predicted max HR reserve at 80rpm
3. Rest (control) – 20min of sitting on the bike without pedaling

Baseline testing consisted of a pain scale evaluation, isometric force of the right quadriceps, and dynamic strength of the right quadriceps.

Within one week of baseline testing the subjects reported back to the lab for five consecutive days. Day 1 consisted of the DOMS inducing training protocol: 6 sets x 10 reps of maximum eccentric efforts for the knee extensors. Following this protocol the subjects then performed their randomly assigned recovery protocol (listed above). The subjects were re-tested on the above variables, immediately post and then days 2-5 the subjects reported back to the lab and where assessed in the same baseline variables at 24h, 48h, 72h, and 96h.

Some of the findings:

• Pain Scale was the greatest immediately post training than any other time period.
• Dynamic strength was significantly greater pre-intervention compared to immediately post; however, it was not significantly greater at 24h, 48h, 72h, or 96h.
• While the control group and low intensity group showed no significant differences in isometric strength during any of the time periods the moderate intensity group showed no differences between baseline testing and 48h, however 72h and 96h were significantly greater than at 24h of recovery.

Practical Application

This was an interesting study. I am still trying to figure out what I can pull from it knowing that the subjects are not athletes and knowing that they performed the recovery protocol after the eccentric training protocol rather than the next day, which may have been more “real-world” for an athlete who goes out and competes one day and then comes back the next day to train. Also, the paper did not tell how much time was placed between the training protocol and the recovery protocol.

Trying to get an athlete to recover quickly following a competition is often an important goal for most coaches, especially in sports where the athlete may be required to compete multiple times a week (e.g., hockey, basketball, soccer, or baseball). The idea of going to the gym to train the day following a competition is something that many coaches place importance on and the hypothesis is that by moving around and getting blood flowing one is able to remove greater amounts of waste product and shuttle more nutrients to the cells to promote greater healing and restoration. This, of course, is still up for debate as science is still trying to understand what exactly is going on – perhaps there is also a large psychological component that goes into doing some exercise following competition and allowing the athlete to mentally get back in the game rather than sitting around and loafing, and perhaps this also can be helpful from a recovery standpoint. At any rate, it seems like doing something has benefit and the next question is always, “how much should we do?”. “Do we do a full on heavy lifting session the day after the game“.“Do we do a light foam rolling and mobility/stretch session?”

While this study did not look at doing high-intensity work following the eccentric training protocol it has been my experience that most athletes do not want to do a heavy or high-intensity session the day after the game. Most are pretty beat up, sore (pain scale was indicated in this paper), and tired – provided they played a significant role in the game – and the last thing they are thinking about is training hard. What we might be able to take away from this paper is that doing too little is simply not enough. Perhaps some medium intensity aerobic work would be the best option to keep the athletes moving following the game, get blood flowing, and prevent psychological lulls in the weekly schedule.

Of course this paper only looked at one aspect of the recovery process (training) and we should also keep in mind that recovery following intense competition is often multifaceted and often includes a variety of restorative modalities – massage, cold water therapy, nutrition, sleep, etc. Taking all of these things into consideration, as well as how we train the day following a game, can potentially further the athlete’s ability to recover.

Similar to the findings in this paper, I have been a fan of the idea that the day after a game we do some form of moderate intensity aerobic work. The modalities I often use include things such as:

• Circuit training workouts using body weight activities, light calisthenics, low resistance exercises, and even working in various cardiovascular activities into the circuit (IE, light runs of short distance during the circuit, light cycling or versa climber). HR monitors are worn to ensure the individual is in the appropriate HR zone.
• High resistance bike rides performed on  a spin bike with a high intensity (45-50rpms) for a set period of time (usually we do several rounds of 5min high resistance : 2.5min easy pedaling) and HR monitors are worn to ensure the individual is in the appropriate HR zone.
• Bodybuilder type training, which is what I call doing loads around 75% of less for 8-12 repetitions, not to failure (leaving 2-3 reps in the tank), and using total body movements (squatting, bench press, rowing movements, lunging movements, etc).

This type of work, along with soft tissue work (aimed at the individuals specific needs – both physiologically and structurally), has been useful at getting guys back on track. Of course I am always looking to refine these methods and ideas but hopefully this offers readers something to think about, consider, and play with.

The idea of programming can be a confusing one and as I discussed in a previous blog article, Concurrent Training: Strength and Aerobic Training at the Same Time?, both strength training and aerobic training apply different types of stress on the body and thus produce different molecular adaptations.

The big argument that always comes back is, “How practical is being able to always separate the two?”. Obviously we only have seven days in the week and with athletes needing to attend practice, competitions, and (if you are working with high school or college athletes) class, it can get really difficult to practically lay some of this stuff out as time is limited. Research happens in a much more controlled environment than the “real world” and sometimes we need to get creative with training structure.

What if we have to do Strength Training and Aerobic Training in the Same Session?

Performing strength training and conditioning tasks in the same session is a common way of prescribing training as it allows us to train several qualities in a time efficient manner. As I discussed in the Concurrent Training article, the amount of focus you place on each task will be dependent on the goals of the training session, the phase of training and the athlete’s individual needs. One question that people often ask is,“Which should I do first? Conditioning or Strength Training?”. My reply to that is always, “It depends”.

A 2009 paper by Coffey and Hawley looked at successive bouts of strength and aerobic training during two different training session – one where the eight subjects performed strength training first and the other where the subjects performed aerobic training first.

Session 1

• Resistance Training: Leg Extensions – 8 sets x 5 reps @ 80% intensity; Rest = 3min
• 15min rest period
• Endurance Training: Cycling – 30min continuously at a power output of approximately 70% of the individuals VO2peak

Session 2 (2 weeks after Session 1)

• Endurance Training: Cycling – 30min continuously at a power output of approximately 70% of the individuals VO2peak
• 15min rest period
• Resistance Training: Leg Extensions – 8 sets x 5 reps @ 80% intensity; Rest = 3min

Key Findings

• When endurance training was performed before resistance training (Session 2) there was a decrease in genes specifically associated with hypertrophy; therefore, the anabolic effect of resistance training may be blunted.
• When resistance training is performed before endurance training (Session 1) there is potential to exacerbate inflammation and protein degradation
• The results of this study are consistent with other studies indicating that there is an interference effect that takes place when two types of different training modalities are performed in the same session (as discussed in the Concurrent Training article)

Practical Application

It would appear that anyway you slice it you get some sort of negative effect. Do your conditioning before your resistance training and you blunt the anabolic response. Do your resistance training before your conditioning and you end up with greater amounts of inflammation and protein degradation.

Thus, to answer the question of, “Which should I do first?”, we have to take into consideration the individuals needs because, as I stated earlier,“It depends!”

When looking at the individual athlete and trying to understand their needs it is important to remember that most team sport athletes do not need to maximize their potential in one single area (strength or power) but rather need to be a little more well-rounded and possess the capacity to repeat explosive and powerful efforts over the course of a game.

Oftentimes, when testing an athlete, we will typically find that the athlete tends to be dominant in one physical aspect (IE, strength) and may be lacking in another (IE, conditioning or sport specific work capacity), thus, our training should reflect that athlete’s needs during certain training phases when we are trying to make improvements in specific qualities.

For example, For an athlete who is already strong, powerful, and posses a large amount of muscle mass, my goals of training may be to improve their general fitness and work capacity and maintain their strength and power. In this athlete I may choose to perform some conditioning work first in the session and follow that with a low volume strength session, as maintenance work, for a few weeks until I get the fitness changes that I want. For an athlete who possess great conditioning but lacks strength and power my goal in that first phase of training would be to perform the strength and power work first in the session, to prioritize that quality, and then perform some low volume conditioning (maintenance work) at the end of session.

Obviously the most ideal situation would be to break up the week, separate the qualities, and train them at the volumes and intensities necessary for the individual; however, this is not always possible. In the offseason, when there are less demands placed on the individual, you may be able to get away with this type of setup but as the season draws near you may need to get more creative with your programming and figure out how to prioritize specific qualities on the limited training days that are available to you.

Some of these concepts and ideas are covered in the latest DVD I recorded with Charlie Weingroff, and Joel Jamieson. The DVD comes out November 6th, but don’t forget that you can get on the pre-sale list and save $25. Sign up HERE!

Discussions of energy system training have been raging as of late and with the importance of the aerobic system being talked about more and more many are getting confused about how to structure programming or how all the pieces fit together.

One of the biggest misunderstandings seems to come when discussing the lactate system as numerous coaches are under the belief that lactate training is the most important type of energy system training and that this is where many sports are played at. I have had numerous discussions with colleagues who call or email me asking me questions like, “But sport “x” is more of a lactate sport so we need to train with high intensity intervals to improve that and don’t need to do as much aerobic work, right?”

Now, I am not going to say that performing intervals that produce lactate is a bad thing or wrong (it’s not actually bad at all and it can be extremely beneficial and important to enhancing the individuals buffering capacity when used appropriately at the right time in the training program and in the right amount of volume/frequency). What I will say however, is that when an athlete is in shape and fit to play their sport and their aerobic system is well developed those same intervals or those same work to rest ratios of the sport should not require them to rely so much on the lactate system to produce energy as their lactate threshold will be at a higher percentage of their max HR.

There really aren’t any sports (that I can think of) that are truly “lactic”. Even sports that we often consider to be “lactic” events, such as a 400m sprint or some of the short duration rowing events in the Olympics, will have a lower contribution from the lactate system in those that are at a high level and fit to perform the event. The only reason they would ever be very “lactic” would be if you were out of shape to perform that event and thus you would rely more heavily on your lactate system for energy production and instead of running the race you would suffer through the race.

The key to improving an athletes sport specific work capacity or sport specific energy system is to understand what the requisite competencies of that energy system are. For example, many colleagues understand the Functional Movement Screen and its hierarchy as far as choosing exercises and correcting the tests. If an individual has a really poor Overhead Squat Test but they also have an asymmetrical Active Straight Leg Raise Test then you would not begin by attempting to “correct” the overhead squat without first spending time addressing the active straight leg raise and making sure that it is symmetrical and at the least a “2″ on the FMS grading scale.

The same concept could be applied for energy system training. If an athlete is unfit, has a lactate threshold that is relatively low compared to their max HR, and fatigues at a faster rate when playing the sport, you wouldn’t just start doing a ton of high intensity interval training (IE, high volumes and very frequently in the training week) right out of the gate to make them better as the requisite competency for improving the above qualities is to enhance the aerobic system and the individuals lactate threshold so that they can produce more high intensity efforts with less fatigue and without relying on the lactate system – a system which happens to be inefficient for energy production in the long term and also an energy system that requires the body a longer period of time post game, post practice, or post training to try and recover from as it can be pretty taxing stuff.

The goal in this situation really comes down to three key factors:

1. How you sequence your training session/training qualities within the training week
2. Applying your anaerobic training methods in the correct training phase
3. Choosing the right amount of anaerobic work – the right aerobic to anaerobic ratio within each specific training phase –  which would depend on the athletes fitness level, the sport, the goal of the phase, and where you are in your training program

When used appropriately some lactate intervals can be beneficial for raising the lactate threshold in a team sport athlete, however, that type of work should be chosen wisely and done at the correct time to ensure the requisite competencies are first developed and appropriate recovery time can take place between these workouts to allow the athlete to reap the biggest benefit.

Furthermore, when thinking about the sequencing of training within program design/planning it should be considered that having a sound lactic capacity is really a product of having a well developed aerobic system, which would allow you to work at higher percentages of your max HR (higher lactate threshold) and buffer hydrogen ions more efficiently.

My article yesterday about Lactate Training sparked some good debate and questions on Facebook. Justin Rippy of Athlete Genesis had some good comments that I wanted to bring to everyone’s attention and comment more specifically on.

First, he asked what I felt the most effective way of training the aerobic system for a power athlete would be. To which I replied:

“Justin, it depends on the athlete and sport. “Power athletes” is way to vague. How much aerobic capacity does a powerlifter or olympic lifter need vs a soccer player or a football player? What about the position on the field? If all you do is run back kickoffs, then I don’t need you to have as much of an aerobic capacity (since you will do one high intensity effort and then rest for the next 8-10min) but if you are an every down receiver who runs the go route all the time (like Randy Moss) then you will need more of an aerobic capacity. See what I am saying? Everyone wants a simple formula of “do this on Monday and that on Tuesday”. It isn’t simple like that! You need to actually sit down and think about training and what sort of adaptations you are trying to bring out.”

Then Justin posed the following question/statement:

I very much agree with your post, I’m just seeing it from a neurological perspective. Very few athletes ever recover to that ‘normal’ state where neurologically all muscles are capable of fully lengthening against load. What I’m saying is that in training we often stress someone maximally to create adaptation. Recovery has always been viewed as more of a submaximal stimulus, whether it be during a training session or between training sessions. What if we were to look at a new paradigm where we stimulate the recovery systems of a person maximally, as opposed to just the mobilizers. What happens to a human being when their recover systems become so strong that there’s almost nothing that can be thrown at them they can’t recover from? Then hrv always stays high and we enter into an adaptive state where many of the negatives of training disappear (soreness, inflammation), allowing high neuroplasticity and rapid adaptation to any stressor. In my experience, this ability to recover is a much more general trait to train within every human being.

-Justin

Justin, you have some interesting comments. I think I know where you are going with this but I choose to explain things differently.

The goal of training is not necessarily to stimulate the recovery system but rather to disrupt homeostasis and allow the body to recover and make adaptations. What you are describing is the resiliency of the body to bounce back from stressors applied to it. This is what I refer to as the Physiological Buffer Zone. I discussed this concept briefly about a year and a half ago when I talked about my Theory on Movement Reserve. I also go way more in depth on this concept as well as programming ideas in the DVD I did with Charlie Weingroff and Joel Jamieson, which should be coming out in October (I’ll update the blog when it comes out).

In a nut shell, three things make up my physiological buffer zone:

1. Good movement
2. High level of stress resistance
3. High level of fitness

We have ways of measuring these capacities and we have ways of improving/training these capacities. When an athlete is functioning at a high level these capacities are at their highest. Stress resistance is a particularly interesting one as it tends to modulate up and down depending on what else we have going on in our live, giving it a very plastic quality. Something I talked about when I discussed my concept of the Stress Account.

So, in reality, we want to create some breakdown, some damage, and some disruption of homeostasis. Basically, if we are always recovered then there is nothing for our body to adapt to and there is no reason for it to ever improve. The goal of training is not to be optimally recovered but rather to have the ability to OPTIMALLY ADAPT to the stress that is being placed on you. Thus, your comment about stressing someone maximally in order to create adaptation needs to be clarified as the goal is not to stress them maximally but stress them only as much as they need to get the result you seek and then no more. Think stimulation not maximal stress.The same is true with your comment on recovery being more of a submaximal stimulus. Sometimes it is and sometimes it isn’t. It just depends on the individual and what you are trying to achieve – you don’t always want to intervene on the natural processes of the body and force recovery while other times you may want to help push an individual into a more recovered state.

The key to understanding this concept of stress, recovery, and adaptation is the biological term hormesis. Basically, this term helps us understand the bodies adaptive response to low or high dose stressors. When we apply a low dose stress the body is able to make a favorable adaptation and is actually beneficial to the cells; however, a high dose of that same stress causes the body to break down or, in terms of toxic substances, can kill us. I believe this is what Robert Sapolsky is referring to when he made the quote, “We have a definition for a low level of stress – it’s called stimulation.”

As coaches, being aware of this we can then stimulate the athlete to the appropriate amount, allow adaptation to take place, and slowly continue to build the individuals resiliency, their physiological buffer zone. As that buffer zone improves the athlete can then handle greater loads, greater volumes, and greater frequencies of training. A good example of this might be an Olympic athlete or a Tour De France rider who trains for years, and years, and years, building volume, fitness, and tolerance to those stressors. The flip side is the person who sees this training program, has about two years of training under their belt, and then tries to mimic the training program and gets burned out, injured, and throws their hormonal system in the dumps within 12 weeks because the dose of stress was way to high for their body to adapt to (IE, it was toxic). Thus, instead of going slow and stimulating, they welt full speed ahead and crushed themself.

So, it is not the recovery system that needs to be strong as much as it is all aspects of the physiological buffer zone that need to be firing on all cylinders to allow the person to favorably tolerate the stressors being placed on them. Of course, it takes time – a long time – to build something like this and most people are very impatient so that can make things challenging!

Hope that helps give you some ideas!