In the mid 1970’s Arthur Jones invented a new machine system designed around an elliptical cam. The Nautilus system was based on accentuated eccentric loading and one set to failure. It was not that these were the first machines, but they were the first machines that were marketed with a training system and philosophy to back them up. Nautilus centers sprang up all around the country. Several high profile pro football teams and prominent collegiate programs adapted the system. It appealed to the American mentality of instant gratification. It was hard work, it hurt, and the workout was over in twenty to thirty minutes. In addition because of the eccentric emphasis it was possible to gain hypertrophy rather quickly, which appealed to American football. Things began to change rapidly with the advent of the full-time professional “Strength Coach.” In the seventies few colleges had strength coaches and if they did most of their attention was centered on football. In professional sport there were few fulltime strength coaches. In 1976 Bob Ward, who was the track coach at Fullerton College in California, was hired by the Dallas Cowboys. He had a full time year around program that was backed by management so that the player’s had to comply. This was a game changer. It was the exception, not the norm. Superior talent and genetics continued to prevail even into the late 1980’s. Not all the teams in professional football had fulltime strength and conditioning coaches. The advent of the strength coach in college and professional sport was like a good news bad news joke. The good news was that now there would be someone who whose sole responsibility was to condition the athletes. The bad news was that was that with the exception of those who had a track and field background they seldom got out of the weight room.
In the mid eighties the research of Garhammer, Stone and O’Bryant on the periodization of strength training represented a significant breakthrough. Their work quickly became the accepted norm and in many circle sis still practiced today. It was a model that I quickly found out that it worked for someone just starting a strength program, but once they used the model once it required modification. The fallacy here was that strength was periodized independent of the other physical qualities. Strength is one quality that must be integrated with all other qualities.
In 1985 I began my foray into professional sports with the Chicago White Sox and the Bulls as an assistant to Al Vermeil. Once again the same old myths and misconceptions which I thought had been forgotten reared their ugly head. You would have thought that by 1985 with the success that athletes had enjoyed world wide with a comprehensive conditioning program that the coaches and athletes would have been embraced this training as an opportunity to better themselves. I think since that there had been little emphasis on training in professional basketball and baseball the attitude on the part of the coaches was let them play, those who are talented will succeed and those who are not will fall by the wayside. I kept hearing that Basketball and baseball was different. Don’t lift heavy because it will hurt your shooting or impair your throwing and hitting. The White Sox trainer told me that pitchers should not lift overhead because it would hurt their shoulder. When I stated that didn’t they lift their arm overhead when they pitched I was told I didn’t understand the game.
In 1987 I took over as Director of Conditioning for the Chicago White Sox. It was an opportunity to put together a systematic comprehensive program in professional sport. No one in professional baseball had a systematic year around program. In order to make it work I decided that we needed to make the program more specific to the demands of the sport of baseball. It needed to include more work on balance and proprioception and significantly more work on rotation. In my search for new methods and concepts I was influenced by Dr. Lois Klatt, head of the Human performance Lab at Concordia University in River Forest, Illinois and the book Total Body Training Bob Gajda and Robert Dominguez. I gradually moved away from weight training to the concept of strength training. Weight training is one method of strength training, in order to train a complete athlete it is necessary to utilize all methods available to achieve the desired goal. What evolved was a functional strength training program that was adapted to the multi-plane demands of the sport of baseball as well as the unique demands of the specific positions. The program was based on biomechanical analysis so that the movements we were training were specific. Pitchers had a specific program; catchers had a specific program, rather than one program for all. All these programs had all components linked so that what was done with speed and agility training was related to balance and proprioception work which in turn was related to the strength training work. My goal with the White Sox was to create a model that would work in any sport. I was lucky to be able to use the resources available to work toward accomplishing this task. We were able to achieve good results with the White Sox both in terms of measurable improvements of speed and power as well as significant reduction of injuries.
In 1987 I had the opportunity to attend the European Athletic Coaches Association Conference in France. At that conference I was introduce to the concepts of strength and power development of a French sport scientist, Gilles Cometti. He had a big influence on the design of the strength training of the three time world champions Swiss Shot Putter Werner Gunthor. His methods involved combinations of slow and fast eccentric work. Isometric holds for as long as sixty sends and ballistic explosive work. I applied these ideas with good results, but still was not quite sure where it all fit in the system. In the nineties I continued to refine the ideas and concepts I had learned over the previous twenty years. Another piece of the puzzle was a research article published in 1993 by Wilson, Greg J., Newton, Robert U., Murphy, Aaron J. and Humphries, Brendan J. “The optimal training load for the development of dynamic athletic performance.” Medicine And Science In Sports And Exercise Vol. 23 pp. 1279-1286. I think article in many ways closed the circle for me. It answered some questions and raised some other questions.
It is interesting to note as we supposedly gained more knowledge and sophistication in the field I began to see more monkey see, monkey do syndrome. If it is good for them and they just won the national championship then it must be good for us. There is a prevalent attitude that the greatest testament for a piece of equipment or a particular training method is the affirmation of winning. What I have seen through my experience is that success is often achieved in spite of, not because of the training and that superior talent and genetics oftentimes prevail. A good sound training program is not based on equipment or personalities, but on sound scientific training principles. We need to consider what is really high tech? A machine for every body part with everything connected to a computer is not the answer. What is more high tech - the machine or the body? I have come to the realization that the body is the ultimate high tech machine. The farther away we get from the body the less specific the training.
Where are we going? What have we learned? The key is the ability to apply the strength to the sport or in your event. That is what Sam Cunningham was trying to tell me in my first year of coaching. Just because he could not lift more weight that is not what is most important. The ability to recruit and fire the muscles in a coordinated pattern is what is most important. Strength training is about neural drive; it is training the command and control system. That is why it is so important to train movements not muscles! I now define strength training as coordination training with appropriate resistance to handle bodyweight, project an implement, resist gravity and optimize ground reaction forces. It demands training across the whole spectrum of strength and power depending on training age, physical maturation, gender and time of the training year. It involves a variety of methods systematically applied starting with the ability to handle and control bodyweight against gravity.
This is where we have to go in order to progress to do a better job of integrating strength training, making it specific in order to develop athleticism. After forty years the journey continues. I believe it will always be a work a work in progress.
