Theme is defined as a unifying or dominating idea; a motif.

While many remember this term from English/literature class in grade school, it actually plays an important role in the overall training process.

There are two themes to consider when designing a program:

1. The theme of the training cycle
2. The theme of the training day

Training Cycle Theme

The theme of the training cycle is basically telling us what we are attempting to achieve in a given period of time – 4-weeks, 8-weeks, 12-weeks, etc – however long your mesocycle is.  Several mesocycles typically make up a full program, with an emphasis on being fully prepared and ready to compete at the end of the program.

Typically, this would take on names like:

– Work capacity or anatomical adaptation
– Endurance
– Strength or max strength
– Power
– Peaking
– Offseason
– Restoration

Obviously the type of quality you want to express in a mesocycle will be dependant on your goals and what you need to achieve.

As I have talked about before, you wouldn’t want to focus one quality (IE strength) at the expense of not even trying to maintain another (IE power or work capacity). This is where understanding the theme of the training cycle becomes important. Planning your training out, you want to consider what the dominant quality is going to be in each phase of training and then how much volume of the other qualities you are going to perform in an attempt to maintain those qualities and not let them just go down the drain. Obviously, the dominant quality will be trained with great volume than the secondary qualities, but they should still be in there somewhere. A way to ensure that things are staying on track is to establish a theme for the day.

Theme for the day

Much like a theme for the training cycle, a theme for the day tells us what the goal/objective is for that day.  The same typeof themes listed above could be applied to each training day to help us decide what we want to accomplish.  When combining this with the theme of the training cycle, we can then get an idea of how to plan the mesocycle, as a greater amount of training days will be devoted to the primary quality, while a lesser amount of training days/volume will be devoted to the secondary quality.

An Example

Training with a strength emphasis:

Monday – Lower body strength work
Tuesday – Tempo Runs/med ball circuits
Wednesday – Upper body strength work/moderate conditioning
Thursday – plyos and speed/acceleration training
Friday – restorative training
Saturday – Sprinting workout/Full body workout (low volume power training/strength work)
Sunday – Off

In this example, strength training is performed three days a week – Day 1 is a lower body emphasis, Day 2 an upper body emphasis and on Day 6 we do a full body lifting session.  The secondary qualities are power and work capacity.  Power is trained using med ball throws, a low volume of plyos and sprinting and some low volume power work before lifting on Saturday (this could be med balls, plyos, olympic lift variations, etc), while the work capacity is trained on Tuesday with tempo runs, Wednesday with some moderate conditioning, and Friday.  Friday is restorative training, which can be anything from active rest to easy body weight circuits that emphasize any limitations the athlete may have and are done with an emphasis below 70% effort so as not to be to taxing on the nervous system and conflict with the Saturday’s training or delay recovery from Thursdays power training.

This example is just one week.  Typically, I would write out the theme for the day for all of the weeks in the given cycle and then plan from there.  I’ll use the following abbreviations of terms in the example below:

S = Strength
P = Power (this can be sprinting, olympic lifts, med balls, speed agility quickness, plyos, etc)
W = Work capacity
R = Restorative

If two qualities are written on the same day, in means that the first quality is the main focus and the second quality is at a low volume and can be dropped if need be depending on how the athlete is performing that day.

Note: If power training is a secondary quality on a strength day, that does not mean that it is trained after the strength training.  Train your power exercises or sprinting prior to your actual lifting, so that fatigue from lifting does not break down form and decrease overall power.  The volume should be low for power training prior to lifting anyway.  Another option would be to perform one workout in the morning and another later in the day.

The themes for each day in week 1 posted above are:

Week 1
Mon – S
Tues – W
Wed – S/W
Thurs – P
Fri – R/Light work capacity
Sat – S/P
Sun – Off

I would then carry out this type of concept for the next 3-weeks (assuming this is a 4-week cycle of training) and have a strength workout at least ever 2-3 days, with the secondary qualities fitting in between:

Week 2
Mon – S/W
Tues – P
Wed – R/Light Work capacity
Thurs – S
Fri – S
Sat – P
Sun – Off

Week 3
Mon – S
Tues – W
Wed – S/P
Thurs – R
Fri – S
Sat – P
Sun – Off

Week 4 – Unloading Week (lower volume on everything and back off intensity)
Mon – S
Tues – W
Wed – S
Thurs – P
Fri – R
Sat – S
Sun – Off

That is just the general theme of everything.  From there you would have to plan out the workouts and the intensity and volume and decide on where to take the program – this would be different for each individual, as some individuals have better recovery and work capacity than others.  Cookie cutter programs yield undesirable results.

In addition, you need to remember that a template is just a guide.  It is not etched in stone.  If an athlete walks in and is not ready to train or under-recovered from previous training, then you would need to make sure you have a lighter workout to fall back on or just allow the individual to take a rest day and come back the next day ready to work.  You should also evaluate your training program to make sure that the athlete is able to tolerate the volume/intensity of training you have prescribed for them.

As you can see, the above template rotates around the three strength workouts of the week, to ensure that other qualities are trained in the desired training period.  One could have a set template that is followed each week and change the variables as needed for the individual.  There are many ways you can put together the program and this is just one possible example for one phase of training.

No matter how you slice it, establish a theme for the training cycle and a theme for each day.  The theme should reflect your needs and your goals.  Work towards your goals, attain your goals, and destroy the competition.

Defining Training

Exercising vs. Training is an interesting debate, as I find most people just ‘exercise’ without thinking about what they are doing.  Before continuing, I should define the two and detail their differences:

• Exercising is about going to the gym and working out.  There isn’t really a rhyme or reason to what you are doing.  It doesn’t build on the last workout.  There may be a goal in mind (IE, fat loss) but the workout is more just a collection of “stuff” rather than something specific.  Typically exercisers just love to sweat and know that they are working hard, as a “hard workout” and “being sore” justifies the “stuff” they did the night before – whether it was beneficial or not is an entirely different story.

• Training on the other hand is about specifics.  There is a goal, the program reflects that goal, and each session plays a distinct role in helping you move closer to that goal.  Rather than doing “stuff”, the trainee goes to the gym with an objective in mind, or as I say a theme(I’ll talk about this in another article).  They have certain things they want to accomplish that day and they make sure they take care of business.  In addition, those that are “training” are very processes oriented and know that if today doesn’t not feel like a great day, they can back off of the intensity a bit, because the objective is to be there at the end of the program and not just destroy yourself in one session because“if you don’t work really hard and get sore after each workout it is a waste of time.”

With those two definitions in mind, it can be pretty clear to see exactly where you stand.  Are you a person that heads to the gym and does a bunch of “stuff”?  Or, are you a person that heads to the gym with specific information to guide you in the training process?

Fitness for the masses

I can’t tell you how many times I am asked questions about things like Crossfit, P90x, Insanity, or the poorly thrown together bootcamp workouts that have been popular of late.

These types of things (in my opinion) fall into the category of “exercising”.  They have little to do with the training process and more to do with just giving you are hard workout.  Whether or not that workout is beneficial to you (the individual) is moot.  Rather, what is important is that you sweat a lot, get sore and perceive the workout to be hard.  I emphasize perceive because these programs are nothing more than marketing hype.

I have talked to a few people who are satisfied with their results on all three of these exercise programs.  They lost weight – which was their main objective – and they were excited about that because for the first time ever, they actually stuck to a training program.  This is obviously excellent and one of great things about these programs is that they actually get people up and exercising and moving.  However, upon further inspection of what they are doing, you find that their exercise technique is really poor.  They haven’t learned anything because the program is constantly changing, and there is no time to build a foundation and adapt (Muscle confusion is idiotic and is nothing more than a marketing scam.  Yes, the body adapts to training and yes you need to change things.  But, you don’t need to change things from workout to workout and you don’t necessarily even need to change exercises, as any variation in training stimulus – repetition number, rep tempo, sets, rest interval, sequence, etc – will provide a enough of a change to force an adaptation without performing a totally different workout and not taking the time to learn how to properly train.).  Finally, their results are usually accompanied by some sort of ache or pain that has either (a) been there before the program – meaning the program didn’t address this issue or (b) is totally new – meaning the program helped to create this issue (or the issue had already been created, but the inappropriate exercise selection caused the individual to be more “aware” of the issue).

Obviously there are going to be people who come back and say, “I got great results and feel fine!”  There will be outliers with anything and programs developed for the masses will be appropriate for some and less appropriate (READ not appropriate at all) for others.  One of the limitations is that there is no way to tell if this program is appropriate for you because there is no one there to assess you and get an idea of what a good starting point may be.  The programs are simply designed to make people do work, and don’t address anything more than that.

Fitness for the individual

Training is an individual endeavor.  The training program should address your limitations, your starting point, your goals and your needs.  Most of the exercises in the programs I mentioned above are fine.  In fact, I use a lot of them – squats, lunges, plyometrics, olympic lifts – in my training programs.  It isn’t the exercise that is bad, it is what you bring to the exercise that is the problem.  If you have limitations and restrictions in mobility, if you are weak and unable to perform those exercises at the intensity that is being shown on the DVD or in the class, or if you don’t even understand how to properly perform those exercises, you are asking for trouble!  This is where the training program needs to stop, back up and say, “Wait a minute.  This may not be right for you AT THIS TIME.”  You then need to determine what IS right for you at this time.  Where is your starting point and where are you training to get to?  This is the training process and this is how training should take place and evolve.  Rather than just doing the workout of the day and throwing you to the wolves, we need to get down to the “nitty gritty” and come up with something that is specific to you.

I talked to one guy that told me his back has been hurting for 2-weeks since his last Crossfit workout, where they were doing an ungodly number of hang cleans in a specific amount of time (this in and of itself is a foolish application of a great exercise).  He asked me what he could do for his back pain and one of the things I told him was to stop doing silly workouts.  He said he loved the training because it was hard and best of all, he could go on the website and get the workout of the day FOR FREE!  To which I replied, “Back pain, FOR FREE…AWESOME!”

I can’t tell you how many people we have seen come to our facility after going to bootcamp for months and yet they have general aches and pains from training and extremely poor exercise form.  I guess exercise technique is only a minor detail when the real objective is to make people sweat and get sore?

Conclusion

Working out is fun and important.  There is nothing wrong with intensity (when it is appropriately applied) and I applaud several of these training programs for getting people up out of their seat and moving.  However, the program should address your needs.  Shy away from fitness programs designed for the masses and seek out something that is specific to you.

We know that many injuries happen during a phase of deceleration (IE, stopping yourself or slowing down in order to make a cut on the field, landing after jumping for a ball, at foot strike during a run, etc).

Or in the case of the title of this article, an injury happened when Spaceball One made the jump to Ludicrous speed and needed to slow down quickly once they realized they overshot Lonestar and his Winnebago (poor Lord Dark Helmet!).

Learning to stop yourself is a critical element in sports performance and, with everyone so concerned about trying to go faster, we often overlook this component of training.  Due to its importance, I tend to place deceleration training first in my program design.  While this is important for any athlete, I find this extremely important for youth athletes; who typically don’t have great mechanics on the field and a low level of strength to handle the forces that are placed upon them during competition.

Parents are always concerned about having their kids in the gym training for two main reasons:

1. The kids will get hurt, as lifting weights can be dangerous.
2. If the kids are lifting weights then they aren’t practicing or competing in their sport.  Which means they aren’t getting better.

Obviously both of these statements are inaccurate.  The first one was discussed in my article on resistance training for youth athletes, and the second was broken down when I talked about the Long-Term Athletic Development Model.

However, there are some other things that one must understand with regard to that second statement and training deceleration.  Mainly, the time in the weight room or offseason conditioning should be a time to learn how to appropriately move and perform the tasks that are required of you in competition.  When kids go out onto the field to play, there is not 50% or 75%.  There is only 100%.  They are all out, all the time.  Practicing at 100% is to fast of a pace to actually learn what is going on.  The weight room and offseason training is a wonderful opportunity to slow things down and allow kids the chance to actually learn how to do things right.  As they become more aware of the proper form and technique, you can begin to speed things up, until they are working at competition pace with great technique.

The two things I like athletes to learn right away are

1. How to land
2. How to stop themselves

How to land is taught by using low level plyometric exercises and working on sticking the landing.  Typically I’ll have the individual hold the landing position for a 2-3 count before repeating the jump.  The focus is not on how high the athlete jumps in this phase, but rather, on how proficiently they land – Is the landing soft?  Are the joints in good alignment?  How balanced do they look? – This should be performed both with bilateral and unilateral plyometrics and in vertical (up and down – think traditional jumps in place), horizontal (forward and backward) and lateral (side to side) planes.  I use low repetitions (4-6) so that fatigue does not compromise technique and the ability to understand how to land properly.  Remember, “Practice doesn’t make perfect, it makes permanent.  Only perfect practice makes perfect.” 

Learning to stop (decelerate) is taught on a 10-yrd field.  The athletes stand at the start line and run out to the 5-yard line and attempt to decelerate themselves by breaking down into an athletic position.  They then back pedal 5-yrds to the start line, and then re-accelerate forward through the finish line, which is 10-yrds ahead.  The key points to make are that the athletes need to first learn the mechanics of slowing down before just running through the drill.  The goal isn’t to just make kids tired and exhaust them, but rather to foster a learning environment, where they can develop useable skills.  To do this, I start by just having the athletes walk through the drill several times.  Each time we start to walk a little faster until we are at a jog.  Once the athletes can jog through the drill proficiently, we can begin to speed things up to real time and develop that skill in a more competitive environment.  I teach the athletes to decelerate themselves in this drill in a few different ways:

1. Breaking down to an athletic position
2. Breaking down to a position where one foot is slightly in front of the other (similar to a lunge position but the feet are slightly closer together).  Remember to work on this with both the dominant and non-dominant sides
3. Breaking down to a lateral position, in which case the athletes will lateral shuffle back to the start line (rather than back pedal) before turning and sprinting towards the 10-yrd finish line.  Again, remember to work on this with both sides

Putting it into practice

Putting these techniques into practice are not hard and should not be overly complicated.  Remember to have the athletes walk through the tasks slowly at first to learn and understand what is expected of them in each position.  Coach them through the movements and don’t just let them go through the motions, as this does nothing to enhance the developmental process.

Last week I had the opportunity to work with a group of junior high and high school lacrosse athletes (33 kids on the field and me!).  All were worked on were fundamentals.  We did some easy warm up and mobility exercises and then worked on basic bodyweight movements like squats, lunges, push ups, and planks (since we were on the field and not in the gym).  We then did some low-level plyometric exercises with a deceleration emphasis – squat jump to stick the landing and ice-skater hops with a landing stick.  We then finished with the 10-yrd deceleration drill.  You would be amazed at how many athletes had a hard time stopping themselves in a balanced position.  But, we slowed it down and walked through the drill several times to help improve their understanding of what was supposed to take place.  Things as simple as this can go a long way for sports coaches.  It doesn’t have to take a huge chunk of practice time.  You just need to be consistent and specific with a few of the drills and really ensure that the kids are learning them properly.  Teach deceleration first and reap the benefits.

The Long-Term Athletic Development (LTAD) Model is basically a set up guidelines for the preparation of athletes starting from a very young age all the way up to elite competition.

In a guest blog article a week ago, Strength Coach Carson Boddicker wrote about this model and broke down the tasks that apply to each age group.

I wanted to lie out each phase and give parents and coaches some specific bullet points to think about with regard to the development of their young athlete.

FUNdamentals

• Boys 6-9/Girls 6-8
• Emphasis on learning fundamental movement skills.
• Training and activities should be FUN and concentrate on the ABC’s (Agility, Balance and Coordination).
• There should be NO specialization in a specific sport and the children should be encouraged to participate in many different sports and activities in order to be well-rounded athletes in the future.
• There is a low emphasis on competition at this age, and a greater emphasis on learning the playing and learning the rules of the game.

Learn To Train

• Boys 9-12/Girls 8-11
• The emphasis in this stage is to learn basic sports skills (while the emphasis in the FUNdamental stage was to learn basic movement skills).
• Refrain from specializing in one single sport during this time period.
• Athletes should be forced to learn how to compete, and not learn how to win in this stage.  For that reason, focus the majority of the work on practice (60-70%) and a small amount of the work on actual competition (30-40%).
• Children should be encouraged to participate in general conditioning which may include endurance and flexibility work, as well as basic body weight exercises and movements.

Train To Train

• Boys 12-16/Girls 11-15
• Athletes start to develop more specific sports skills.
• Depending on where the athletes are in their maturation process, the emphasis on aerobic and strength training can be more of a focus in this phase.
• Athletes should focus on practices, which are specific to their sport 60% of the time and compete in the actual sport 40% of the time.
• Periodization should be used to help the athletes develop their sports-specific skills

Train To Compete

• Boys 16-18/Females 15-17
• Athletes may now choose to specialize in a specific sport.
• Training becomes a year round focus and should be individualized to the athletes needs, sport and position.
• Athletes are now proficient in basic movement patterns and sports-specific movement patterns and are now ready to try and use those movement patterns in intense competitive environments.
• Competition becomes more of a focus (60%) while training is geared more towards technical preparation (40%).
• Periodization becomes an important aspect of training and athletes should have various periods of down time, to allow for recovery from the competitive season and to focus on aspects of strength, power, work capacity and performance that may need refining.

Train To Win

• Males 19 and older/Females 18 and older
• This is the elite stage of development, where athletes are completely focused on sports preparation and competition.
• Periodization is critical in this stage to ensure the athletes development; however, breaks should be planned into the program to prevent injury or physical and mental burnout.

Conclusions

Hopefully the LTAD model gives you some things to think about with regard to your children or athletes.  I often wonder how many people are thinking about this model when they are coaching young kids.

The other day I saw a man coaching practice for a pee-wee football team.  The children where probably not older than the age of 7 (FUNdamentals stage) and he was teaching them some blocking drills and shouting at them.  He proceeded to then tell one of the kids how his blocking abilities where the “worst thing he had ever seen”.  I have two questions:

1. Who allowed this man to coach kids?
2. Even though he is probably the parent of one of the kids, what qualifies this man to be a coach?  Clearly he doesn’t understand the process lied out above, and clearly he should not be in charge of teaching kids about sports and competition.

Another thing I will say about this model is that parents and coaches need to realize that you can’t skip steps!  Each stage is built on the one before it.  If you have junior high or freshman athletes who have not learned basic fundamentals, have not developed basic sports skills, and have not developed an appropriate level of fitness, then they are not ready for the next level!  They can’t simply jump into the Train To Train phase because they are not ready for it.  So, they need to start with the basics and progress from there.

Finally, not every high school athlete is going to reach the elite status.  If your child or athlete does not have an interest in attaining sports mastery, you should not force it on them.  In the Train To Compete phase, when athletes are thinking about specializing in one sport, those who have no interest at moving onto the next level should remain in recreational sports and enjoy the level of fitness they have developed.  It is this level of fitness that they can carry with them through out their entire lives, remaining healthy and active.