Functional Path Training

Can Do

Instead of looking at ways to predict injury and search for hidden dysfunctions I prefer to spend the time looking at possibilities to determine their level of trainability. I focus on what the athlete can do and use that as a starting point. In most cases the athlete has made it to a certain level because of what they can do. My job is to enhance those abilities and minimize the weaknesses while addressing them in a progressive manner to enable them to progress further athletically. Recognize the wisdom of the body and it’s ability to figure it out by devising training programs that fit the athlete instead of fitting the athlete to the program. Start with what they can do and dial up the program as they progress and adapt. Ultimately the goal is to reconcile what they can do with what the must do to be ready to thrive as adaptable athletes in the competitive environment.

 

House of Cards

Build your athletes from the ground up. Emphasize training movements that connect and coordinate. Start with fundamental movements and add complexity as the athlete’s gain mastery of the fundamentals. Don’t worry  about being sport specific; instead emphasize movements that are sport appropriate to prepare the athlete for the sport demands. Take your time, adaptation takes time it will not happen overnight. If you don’t do this you are building a fragile athlete that is much like a house of cards that will blow over in the slightest breeze.

More

Doing more is quite seductive. Often when you begin to do more the returns are quite impressive, so the temptation is do even more. The logic is didn’t I just make big improvements by doing more? So you do more – more training sessions, more weight, more mileage on and on. What’s the result? The more is better blues – If you are lucky it is just stagnation, a plateau, if not it is an injury or steep regression. There is no need to go this route; more is certainly not better. There is a time a time and place to do more as part of a normal progression, but to constantly try to do more will quickly yield diminishing returns. Train smart, focus on quality and efficiency in training. Never lose sight of the fact that training is preparation for competition, so training should never be an end unto itself. Do what is necessary, not more. Always remember training accumulates so less can be more.

Evolution of Strength Training – A Personal Perspective - 51 Years of Experiences (Conclusions/Lessons)

As I wrote this series of posts and reflected on the lessons I learned I wanted to summarize with some practical conclusions so that young coaches and athletes starting out would not make the same mistakes I made. There is no form of human motion that does not require some expression of force; therefore all sports will derive benefit from sport appropriate strength training. The physical quality of strength is the underpinning for the optimum development of other biomotor qualities. That being said it is crucial to have an in-depth understanding of the strength and power demands of the sport you are preparing for and design the program to meet those demands while also considering the qualities of the individual athlete.

The weight room can be a trap because gaining measureable strength (Chasing numbers) can be seductive. To a certain extent there is a direct return on the investment, the more you do the more strength you gain, especially at younger training ages and in the anabolically enriched (Often it’s the biology not the training program) teenage male athlete.  It is imperative that you never lose site of the fact that strength training is about developing strength you can use and apply on the field, court, track or pool, and this does not always equate with strength you can measure in the weight room.

Despite the fact that we know better there is still a huge influence from bodybuilding training methods, the emphasis in these programs is on training the muscles. This can be very seductive, but questionable in the transfer to sport performance. My mantra after learning by going down the path of bodybuilding and coming to a dead end street is to never lose sight of the fact that you must train movements not individual muscles. Athletic movements depend on muscle synergies and coordination; it is not a bodybuilding contest. Develop “go muscles” not ”show muscles” that look good at the beach but do not transfer to function.

As far as Olympic lifting the key here is to remember that you are not training Olympic lifters but that you are training athletes who are using the Olympic lifting movements to increase explosive power. There are many adaptations of the Olympic lifting movements with dumbbells, sandbags and kettlebells that will fit a wide variety of sports and level of athlete. Get beyond the bar, as the sole mode of resistance here and it will offer a wide range of possibilities for improving explosive power.

Perhaps one of the biggest lessons I have learned and has been reinforced over the last 15 years is the roll of strength training with the female athlete. Strength training is a must for the female athlete starting out at or before puberty and continued throughout her career. The female athlete must strength train more often and never stop including training right into taper/peaking phase of competition. My rule of thumb is to emphasize volume of intensity is selecting the distribution the work. Female athletes will get more bang for their buck from the time invested. A good comprehensive strength-training program will help to create a favorable endocrine hormonal environment that will have a very positive influence on body composition

It is not about facilities and fancy equipment. Think bodyweight before external resistance. You can strength train anywhere and anytime. Do not make your program dependent of facilities. The same goes for time, something is better than nothing. In certain sports and where there is an extended competitive season a 15 to 20 minute workout three to four time a week is better than one hour long session a week. Make the strength-training blend with the sport training where possible. Never underestimate the value that a short sharp session can have to prime the endocrine hormonal system and positively stimulate the nervous system.

I certainly could go on but I think it is best to end with a concise definition of strength training that I have evolved over the years: Strength Training is coordination training with appropriate resistance to handle bodyweight, project an implement, move or resist movement of another body, resist gravity and optimize ground reaction forces.

I will continue to search for better ways and more efficient strength training methodology. I personally strength train at least thee to four days a week, an imperative necessary with aging to try to offset the effects of gravity. For me the journey continues.

Evolution of Strength Training – A Personal Perspective - 51 Years of Experiences (Part Six)

In the last twenty years as have had the opportunity to work with a variety of sports and I was exposed to many theories and methods, but basically I found that at the end of the day it all came back to executing the basics of sound training principles consistently. It is so easy and somewhat trendy to copy the latest and greatest strength-training program of a great team or athlete, the monkey see, monkey do syndrome. If it is good for them and they just won the national championship then it is 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 sometimes 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? I got a call recently from a friend who had just visited a new training facility, he could not wait to call me and tell me about the “high tech” facility he had just visited. They had a machine for everything. Everything was connected to a computer. 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 nervous system. 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. It is how you can recruit and fire the muscles in a coordinated pattern that 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! 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.

Next post I will summarize with conclusions, lessons learned and what to look for in the future.

Evolution of Strength Training – A Personal Perspective - 51 Years of Experiences (Part Five)

Things began to change rapidly with the advent of the full-time professional “Strength Coach.” In the seventies very 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 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 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. The 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, which gave me the 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, more work on rotation. I was very influenced by Dr. Lois Klatt, head of the Human performance Lab at Concordia University in River Forest, Illinois who introduced me the book Total Body Training Bob Gajda and Robert Dominguez. The emphasis was that movement is multi – joint, multi-plane, it involves balance and proprioception. This got me to think past the muscle and look closely at the movement. I 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 more 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.

Evolution of Strength Training – A Personal Perspective - 51 Years of Experiences (Part Four)

Another key milestone in the evolution of my ideas on training in general and strength training in particular was the 1972 AAU Learn by Doing track & field clinic in Sacramento, California. Many of the top track & filed coaches in the country were in attendance. The opportunity to interact with them was invaluable. Two of the “Learn by Doing” stations were devoted to Plyometric training that was new and revolutionary at the time. Each evening there were presentations by Polish triple jump coach Tadeusz Starzynski who was the coach of Joseph Schmidt, three-time Olympic Gold medalist; he presented the whole spectrum of his training program for triple jumpers. It obviously involved a lot of jumping exercises, but it included medicine ball work and some very specific weight training and virtually no heavy lifting. There was nowhere near the extent of weight training we were having our athlete do and the weight training that was done was much more specific. This experience had profound influence on my thinking going forward and how I trained my athletes for explosive power from that time on. I immediately incorporated his concepts and ideas in my personal training, as well as with the athletes I was coaching. The results were a tremendous increase in explosiveness and speed.

In 1973-74 while attending graduate school at Stanford University I also had the opportunity to coach the jumpers and decathletes. This gave the opportunity to apply what I had learned with more mature male athletes. It was also the opportunity to work with Payton Jordan, the track coach at Stanford who was a pioneer in weight training. He had worked with a man named John Jesse who authored many books on strength training for sport. Jesse was way ahead of his time in the application of strength training to prevention and rehabilitation of injuries. Doctor Wesley Ruff, my adviser, encouraged me to do research in the area of strength and power training, which I found very helpful. This helped me to better understand the scientific reasons for the things that I was observing as a coach and experiencing as an athlete.

In 1975 –77 at Santa Barbara high school was my first experience working with female athletes. I did not make distinctions as to gender, they were all athletes, the girls strength trained with the boys. In fact we learned that the girl’s derived even more spectacular benefits than the boys and that they needed to continue their strength training throughout the season or the drop off would be dramatic. The strength training was an important part of the program regardless of the event.

Before the late 1970’s there did not seem to be the distinctions between all the styles of lifting. You just put together an eclectic program, you were not labeled a free weight guy, an Olympic lifting guy, a Crossfit or a HIT guy - you just trained athletes. Two things changed this:

1) Olympic lifting ascendancy in the late 1970s, which I believe, resulted from misinterpretation of the spectacular gains made by the Bulgarian weight lifters. The Bulgarian methods were thoroughly detailed by Carl Miller in his book Olympic Lifting Training Manual (A book I still find a good reference today). The Olympic lifting movements had always played a major role in weight training for improving sport performance, but things seemed to change in the late seventies. There was an attempt to blindly copy Olympic lifting training protocols without any apparent regard to it’s relationship to the whole training program. Just because an Olympic lifter, who does nothing but lift, is able to lift up to five times a day does not mean that a football player or a basketball player who has to run and jump and do other training should attempt multiple lifting sessions in a day. Olympic lifting for sport performance is a means to an end. If you are an Olympic weight lifter then it is as end in itself, because those lifts are the performance standard.

2) In the mid 1970’s a new machine oriented system was invented by Arthur Jones, the Nautilus system based on slow 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. It appealed to the American mentality of instant gratification. It was hard work, but it was over rather quickly. In addition because of the eccentric emphasis it was possible to gain hypertrophy rather quickly that appealed to American football.

Evolution of Strength Training – A Personal Perspective - 51 Years of Experiences (Part Four)

Another key milestone in the evolution of my ideas on training in general and strength training in particular was the 1972 AAU Learn by Doing track & field clinic in Sacramento, California. Many of the top track & filed coaches in the country were in attendance. The opportunity to interact with them was invaluable. Two of the “Learn by Doing” stations were devoted to Plyometric training that was new and revolutionary at the time. Each evening there were presentations by Polish triple jump coach Tadeusz Starzynski who was the coach of Joseph Schmidt, three-time Olympic Gold medalist; he presented the whole spectrum of his training program for triple jumpers. It obviously involved a lot of jumping exercises, but it included medicine ball work and some very specific weight training and virtually no heavy lifting. There was nowhere near the extent of weight training we were having our athlete do and the weight training that was done was much more specific. This experience had profound influence on my thinking going forward and how I trained my athletes for explosive power from that time on. I immediately incorporated his concepts and ideas in my personal training, as well as with the athletes I was coaching. The results were a tremendous increase in explosiveness and speed.

In 1973-74 while attending graduate school at Stanford University I also had the opportunity to coach the jumpers and decathletes. This gave the opportunity to apply what I had learned with more mature male athletes. It was also the opportunity to work with Payton Jordan, the track coach at Stanford who was a pioneer in weight training. He had worked with a man named John Jesse who authored many books on strength training for sport. Jesse was way ahead of his time in the application of strength training to prevention and rehabilitation of injuries. Doctor Wesley Ruff, my adviser, encouraged me to do research in the area of strength and power training, which I found very helpful. This helped me to better understand the scientific reasons for the things that I was observing as a coach and experiencing as an athlete.

In 1975 –77 at Santa Barbara high school was my first experience working with female athletes. I did not make distinctions as to gender, they were all athletes, the girls strength trained with the boys. In fact we learned that the girl’s derived even more spectacular benefits than the boys and that they needed to continue their strength training throughout the season or the drop off would be dramatic. The strength training was an important part of the program regardless of the event.

Before the late 1970’s there did not seem to be the distinctions between all the styles of lifting. You just put together an eclectic program, you were not labeled a free weight guy, an Olympic lifting guy, a Crossfit or a HIT guy - you just trained athletes. Two things changed this:

1) Olympic lifting ascendancy in the late 1970s, which I believe, resulted from misinterpretation of the spectacular gains made by the Bulgarian weight lifters. The Bulgarian methods were thoroughly detailed by Carl Miller in his book Olympic Lifting Training Manual (A book I still find a good reference today). The Olympic lifting movements had always played a major role in weight training for improving sport performance, but things seemed to change in the late seventies. There was an attempt to blindly copy Olympic lifting training protocols without any apparent regard to it’s relationship to the whole training program. Just because an Olympic lifter, who does nothing but lift, is able to lift up to five times a day does not mean that a football player or a basketball player who has to run and jump and do other training should attempt multiple lifting sessions in a day. Olympic lifting for sport performance is a means to an end. If you are an Olympic weight lifter then it is as end in itself, because those lifts are the performance standard.

2) In the mid 1970’s a new machine oriented system was invented by Arthur Jones, the Nautilus system based on slow 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. It appealed to the American mentality of instant gratification. It was hard work, but it was over rather quickly. In addition because of the eccentric emphasis it was possible to gain hypertrophy rather quickly that appealed to American football.

Evolution of Strength Training – A Personal Perspective - 51 Years of Experiences (Part Three)

That spring, in my first track coaching assignment, I got the opportunity to coach one of the best athletes I have ever coached, Sam Cunningham. He became California State Champion in the Shot put that year and also an All American football running back. He was 6’3” tall, weighed 225, he could run the 100 in 9.7, but by my thinking he was “weak, “ because he could not lift much weight in the weight room. Yet he had tremendous explosive power. This led me to begin to ask the question: How much strength is enough? A question I continue to ask.

In the fall of 1969 I began training for the decathlon. I did all my strength training with Curt Harper, a world-class discus thrower. Working with Curt we trained on a varied strength-training program that involved Olympic lifting and power lifting. I got very strong in the weight room – 330 Bench, 250 Clean & Jerk and 365 full Squat for five reps at a bodyweight of 188 pounds. The only problem was that the work in the weight room was not transferring into performance on the track and in the field. Once again I begin to question the whole place that weight training had in the program. Three things led me to modify my approach:

1) The writing of Ken Dougherty in his books Modern Track and Field and Track and Field Omnibook, especially the latter. In these book he talked about concepts that would latter evolve into my thinking on special and specific strength.

2) Training for the decathlon in Santa Barbara gave me the opportunity to train with some of the greatest athletes in the world. I saw how they trained. It also gave me first hand exposure to the European methods of training that up until that point I had only read about. This exposure to the Europeans let me to question the traditional approach that we were taking. They spent less time in the weight room, when they did go to the weight room they were not to be as strong as we were, but they seemed to be able to do a better job of expressing their strength. They engaged in more varied activities like jumping and all types of throws.

3) In the fall of 1971 Pat Matzdorf, from University of Wisconsin, moved to Santa Barbara to train. He had broken the world record in the high jump that year. His strength training was different. Bill Perrin, the track coach at Wisconsin, and a real innovator designed his program. It involved simulation training, which consisted of specific strength training exercises that worked on various parts of the whole jump using a variety of methods including weights and rubber tubing. He also utilized depth jumps in his training. This was my first exposure to a systematic application of Plyometric training.

From 1969 to 1973 I coached at La Cumbre Junior high school in Santa Barbara, California. It was first hand experience working with growth & development in the pre-pubescent and pubescent male athlete. There was not much equipment, even free weights. The strength program consisted primarily of push-ups, pull-ups, dips and rope climb. At this age, with the tremendous linear growth that was occurring body weight exercises were very appropriate loading. I felt that we the key objective was to lay a base of athletic fitness that they could harness when they went to high school. Although at the time I felt somewhat shortchanged that we did not have more weights, in retrospect I was on the right track.

Evolution of Strength Training – A Personal Perspective - 51 Years of Experiences (Part Two)

Through articles in Strength and Health and watching the track team at Fresno State weight train I quickly realized that the sport of track & field was very advanced in the use of weight training. Herb Elliot, who dominated the mile up through the Rome Olympics, and his coach Percy Cerruty made extensive use of strength training. Perry OBrien, the first man to throw sixty feet in the shot put was an avid weight trainer. He was fast enough to lead off a sprint relay, so it obviously did slow him down! Dallas Long, the first man to throw over sixty five feet and Randy Matson, the first man to throw over seventy feet were all avid weight trainers. Lynn Davies, the 1964 Olympic Long Jump champion, was able to significantly improve his speed. Russ Hodge, who broke the world record in the decathlon in the early sixties, made extensive use of weight training in his program. Chuck Coker, the coach at Occidental College in Los Angeles was a pioneer in the implementation of weight training in Track & Field. In college it was the track team, especially the field event people under the direction of Coach Red Estes who extensively used strength training, not the football team. Larry Alexander was a high jumper on the track team who had thoroughly studied the Russian high jump training methods used by Valeri Brummel, who was the world record holder at the time. Larry was kind enough to share his training ideas with me. Brummel’s program made extensive use of a variety of strength training exercises and jumping exercises that we would latter call Plyometrics. Larry also introduced me Track Technique magazine, a magazine devoted to presenting the latest training methods in track & field. These articles laid out a systematic approach as well as reasons for the drills and exercises. I find the information published in the early to mid sixties as timely today as it was then. It is no wonder that I found that when I worked out with the track athletes I got my best results from my strength-training program.

The basic problem with all the programs that I used throughout college was that there was never any recovery. We went heavy on legs as often as three times a week, in addition to running every day, which never allowed our legs to recover. I thought a sore back and dead legs were just a normal part of the training. Fortunately or unfortunately depending on how you look at it, we did not try to lift in season or during spring practice, which actually served as a break. The problem with no workouts in season is that every off-season I was essentially starting over again each off-season. I questioned this because I saw the track athletes lifting throughout their season with no ill effects. In fact the shot putter’s would often lift the day of the meet. Little did I realize that this was a portent of things to come.

After graduating from Fresno State I went to University of California Santa Barbara for my teaching certification. While there I was fortunate to take a class from Sherman Button on conditioning athletes. He was ahead of his time with the material and concepts that he presented. It was a great class because of his comprehensive approach to conditioning built around weight training. The two textbooks for the class were especially helpful - Pat Oshea’s book Scientific Principles and Methods of Strength Training and Foundations of Conditioning by Falls, Walls and Logan. As a class assignment we had to design a yearlong comprehensive training program for our chosen sports. I put together a program for track and field that incorporated all components of training. It was an initial attempt at periodization, but most importantly it forced me to look at weight training in a new light. I was now a coach as well as an athlete. I was responsible for other people. I had to teach them skill and have them ready for competition, so I had to pay attention to the big picture. Strength was only one part of the equation, although a most important part.