Functional Path Training

Difference Makers

The difference makers can be events, people or situations and much more. Mindset matters, maybe much more that we think. Accepting challenges and working in the discomfort zone are difference makers. Ultimately, you the coach are the most significant difference maker.

Role of Olympic Lifting in Athletic Development

In the athlete development process Olympic style weight training has occupied a large role. This has both good and bad implications. Olympic style weight lifting is a training method that is excellent for developing power. Competitive Olympic lifting consists of two movements, the clean and jerk and the snatch. The derivatives of those movements are what make up the majority of the training exercises. There is no question of the inherent value of these exercises as a tool to raise explosive power, but the method must be kept in context and reconciled with the overall goal of the strength-training program.

In order to achieve optimum return there are several key points that must be considered: the first point is that Olympic lifting is a sport. That sport consists of lifting as much weight as possible in the clean and jerk and the snatch. Those lifts have a high technical demand, but the skill is a closed skill that occurs in a narrow range of movement. The Olympic lifting movements do produce tremendous power production because of the distance the weight must travel, the weight and the speed requirements. This power production is highly dependent on the technical proficiency of the individual lifter. Essentially, the training of the weight lifter consists of the actual Olympic lifts and some derivative and assistance exercises. There is no running, jumping or other demands on their system. The sole focus is on lifting as much weight as possible in those two lifts.

Olympic lifters traditionally have lifted several times a day. This began in the 1980s because of the influence of the Bulgarians who emerged as a dominant power in the 1970s. The Bulgarian weightlifters were reported to have had as many as six lifting sessions in a training day, repeated for up to five or six training days in a microcycle. Each session seldom ever exceeded sixty minutes. All sessions were at very high intensity. Once again the point must be made that all these athletes did was lift. It also should be pointed out that they were full time “professional” athletes. Perhaps the most important underlying factor that enabled them to accomplish this extreme training regimen was a program of systematic doping. We know that was a huge factor in the lifters ability to recover and handle the high volumes of high intensity work necessary to make the type of strength gains these lifters were making.

This is not meant to be negative or to denigrate the sport; rather it is to put the emphasis on Olympic lifting in perspective. Too many coaches have blindly copied the methods of the Olympic lifters without taking these things into consideration. Even if you are an Olympic lifting coach the volumes and intensities reported from the former Eastern bloc countries are beyond anything a drug free athlete can possibly handle for any significant length of time.

Let’s take this a step further. It has become very popular among the strength coaching community to center their strength-training program on Olympic lifting. Many strength coaches blindly copied the volumes and intensities of the Bulgarian and Soviet lifters without taking into account the previously mentioned facts. This volume and intensity was applied in addition to the running, agility work, jumping and the sport specific training. It should be easy to see the problems that would arise.

The Olympic lifts are very technical in their demands. Typically when we work with athletes their lifting sessions are sequenced after their other work in their particular sport. This is not optimum time to utilize lifts with a significant technical element and high neural demand, because fatigue will compromise technique. The other factor that must be considered when extrapolating from the world of Olympic weightlifting is body proportions. Olympic lifters, in effect, are pre-selected by their body types. In order to be successful tall athletes with long limbs are quickly selected out. Smaller athletes with limb lengths that afford a lever advantage succeed. Therefore, to apply Olympic lifting movements without taking into consideration body proportions can severely compromise the effectiveness of the methods.

Another argument given for the use of the Olympic lifting movements is that they help with jumping because in biomechanical analysis of Olympic lifting the pattern of force closely resembled the vertical jump. I may be missing something here, but why not just jump with resistance. To learn and master the technical complexity of the Olympic lifting movements to improve jumping seems to be a bit of a stretch. In most situations when working with athletes there is not an infinite amount of time available for training. Therefore chose methods that will allow you to train the athlete in order to be better at their sport within the restraints of the available time.

Recognizing these limitations, the use of Olympic lifting movements are viable and have a place across the spectrum of sports because of their potential for power development. But the movements must be adapted and modified to fit the athlete. It literally must fit the athlete. Body proportions must be carefully considered. Significant modification must be made for the tall athlete. It is important to point out that the Olympic lifting movements do not have to be done with a bar. I have found that Olympic movements with dumbbells to be particularly effective. The factor of body proportions is eliminated because the dumbbell “fits the body.” The disadvantage of the dumbbell is that you will eventually be limited in the amount of weight that can be lifted so that if you are working with sports that require strength dominated power like football or the throws then it is necessary to use the bar to achieve heavier loading. Dumbbells also allow modification of the pulling movements to be done in diagonal and rotational patterns. The bar essentially locks you into the Sagittal plane. Another interesting modification of Olympic lifting movements is the use of sandbags.

From a technical perspective make sure that you as a coach know and understand the technique. Master the teaching progressions. Be sure to allow time in the training program for skill acquisition before adding significant loading. Also teach and preferably train the movements in a non-fatigued state. Adapt the method to the athlete, not the athlete to the method. Remember you are not training Olympic lifters; you are training athletes who use the Olympic lifts and derivatives to raise explosive power.

The Coaching Process

Coaching is a process that has a firm foundation in pedagogy (practice of teaching), supported by science, forged in experience, proven and tested in the competitive arena. Part of the process is maintaining a delicate balance between pedagogy, science, experience and ultimately the results in the competitive arena. Today my concern is that with a huge shift toward science and analytics we no longer have the necessary balance. Experience based practice must be coupled with evidence based practice to produce results. Science should serve the coach, not the other way around. The ultimate proof are results in competition achieved ethically through consistent training over time. The coach and coaching should always be the cornerstone of this process.

Questions

Learn to ask the right (appropriate) question. Be willing to ask the hard questions others are unwilling to ask. Here are some questions I find myself asking quite often:

What is the difference?

Can I replicate that?

Will that work in a different environment and situation?

Is that result an outlier?

Where do you go from here?

How do you dial it up or dial it down?

Is what you are doing facilities, equipment and technology dependent?

If so can you do it without facilities, equipment or technology?

What is the absolute minimum you do to achieve an adaptive response?

If you have just achieved a personal best or won a championship – What do you have to do to get better?

How do you measure the effectiveness of your training program?

Where do you get your ideas?

Who or what inspires you?

Can you explain what you do to a ten year ?

What are you personally doing to get better as a coach?

Where will the biggest gains in your sports come from?

Where are the possibilities for marginal gains?

Do you have mastery of the basics?

Do you review the basics everyday? If not why not?

How do teach and refine the technical model of your sport?

Is your technical model sound?

Who is your alter ego? Who keeps you on track and honest?

What are the facts?

Is what you are doing proactive or reactive? Why?

Does your system and methodology rely only on evidence based practice or does it take into consideration practice based evidence?

Who are your role models?

When it is all said and done the words of Gertrude Stein come to mind: “The answer is there is no answer.” So keep asking questions to grow and learn.

The Human Body – A Perspective

Think of the body as a versatile musician who can play beautiful classical pieces and shift rapidly to jazz riffs and then in the next instant to a hip hop beat. What is wondrous is that all this can occur on demand in an instant. The body is not a machine. It is highly adaptable and self-organizing designed for optimization of movement. The body is capable of getting in amazing positions and shapes but it is not about those positions it is all about the transitions, connections, rhythm, timing and coordination that allow it get into and out of those positions in milliseconds. Coaching demands that we understand and train the connections. We do this by giving the body increasingly complex movement problems to solve and then give it the space to solve those problems. Sometimes it is symphony and sometime it pure jazz improvisation let the body play.

Real Smart People

I don’t why it took me forty years to figure out that the smartest people are not the ones who are always talking and telling you what they know. The real smart people are those who are listening and asking questions. Stay away from the “experts” with all the answers – chances are they are selling something or have had one experience many times with no breath or depth to the experience.

I learned to find someone who has fallen and got back up and forged ahead and is better for the experience. The real smart people have skin in the game, they are on the firing line working, trying, failing and getting up and getting better. This is experience that is meaningful.

My take home lesson after 45 years of coaching is to learn to ask smart questions, sharpen your listening skills, be true to your beliefs and practice what you preach.

The Job of Coaching?

Coaching is not a job it is not an industry! It is a way of life, a lifestyle, a profession. It is fueled by passion and driven by dedication to improving the lives of the athletes we work with work. To adopt this lifestyle is not for the faint of heart or the dilettante. Extrinsic rewards are few, fame and recognition is minimal and fleeting. The joy of coaching is not in the championships and the world-class athletes it is the day-to-day and week to week satisfaction of seeing athletes focus and dedicate themselves to excellence. It is seeing the 13 foot long jumper improve to 14 feet, no one notices that but you and the athlete, but that is enough. Those are the intrinsic rewards, the things that make it all worthwhile. At the end of the day it is the satisfaction of knowing that you the coach can make a real difference.

Coaching Tips from Chef Bobby Flay

Yesterday I caught the end an interview with noted chef Bobby Flay. He offered two pearls of wisdom that I found very appropriate for coaches. The first one was to never rest on your laurels, constantly strive to get better, keep an edge. The second was to stress the fundamentals everyday. He reminds his chefs everyday to salt and pepper both sides of the meat. Everything is based on repetition of sound fundamentals. Food for thought and action as you begin your week.

Work Capacity - Part Two

It is important to distinguish the development of a large work capacity from the development of an aerobic base. The development of an appropriate aerobic foundation is a component part of work capacity but in sprint sports, intermittent sprint sports and transition game sports it is not anywhere near as significant a portion of the work capacity as conventional wisdom would have us believe. Even in pure endurance sports I believe the means of development of an aerobic base needs to be revisited. It is important to remember that training is cumulative. Work capacity accumulates and builds upon itself from year to year. Therefore with the aerobic component, once the capacity is increased and the aerobic power is elevated that component cannot be significantly raised. The focus needs to shift to efficiency; how the aerobic component can best contribute to performance.

In the vast majority of the sports we know we need to develop an aerobic component. In the research and coaching literature we have been bombarded with the concept of the aerobic base. The fundamental dichotomy that exists is how to develop the aerobic power necessary to recover from the short intense burst of an activity that occurs in a game without compromising the explosive power necessary for optimal performance during the bursts. It is during the bursts that actual game performance is measured and decided. Here is where we need to think and act outside the box. Volumes of research literature and thousands of doctoral dissertations have been written on all the various factors of aerobic exercise. It is only recently that there has been significant work done to more specifically direct us in this area. Max VO₂ is easy to measure; it is the gold standard lab test to give aerobic information. Because it is easy to measure and deeply embedded research literature do not make it correct. I maintain that it is an overrated measure. Time and effort could be better spent in other areas. For the intermittent sprint sport and transition sport athlete we do not need max VO₂ tests to train the aerobic component.

To better guide us in the application of work capacity concept I recommend the following principles as a guide:

• At younger training ages volume and general work will be the primary stimulus for adaptation. (Training age is how long an athlete has been in a formal training program.) Experience has shown us that with younger athletes virtually anything you do will make the athlete better. The more you do the better you get. This can become a trap that if this is continued as the athlete accumulates training age. Eventually it will yield diminishing returns.
• At advanced training ages, intensity is the stimulus for development. As the athlete progresses it becomes self-defeating to continually try to do more. The shift needs to be made to more intense work, higher quality effort and technical refinement.
• No component of fitness should be developed in isolation. Perhaps one of the biggest mistakes made in contemporary training is the inordinate placed on one component of fitness to the detriment of others. It is easy to fall into this, but ultimately this is unproductive. No one component is more important than another. There must be a careful blend. That is not to say that certain components would not be emphasized at certain phases of the year, but essentially all components of training should be trained during all phases, just in different proportions.
• The role of general work (GPP) changes with increasing training age. At the younger training ages with the developing athlete general work assumes a great emphasis. It makes up the greatest proportion of the training. As we stated in our first principle, volume will be the initial stimulus to force adaptation. As the athlete matures, because training is cumulative, general work assumes less importance. There is less need for GPP and more need for specific work and technical refinement. For the athlete of more advanced training age general work is used for regeneration and a break from more intense training.

Work Capacity – Part One

To better understand work capacity it helps to think of it this way. In order for an athlete to improve they must be able to do a certain amount of work. They must be able to work at a level that will ensure enough stress to achieve a positive training adaptation. For example, a sprinter whose general fitness limits their ability to sprint, that would significantly limit their ability to improve. Therefore our goal is to build an extensive work capacity base that fits the specific demands of the athlete’s sport and meets the athlete’s individual needs. Too often this is confused with building an aerobic base. It is much more than an aerobic base; in fact in speed/power/skill sports it is best to forget the concept of aerobic as it has traditionally has been thought of. In the language of training theory work capacity falls into the category of general physical preparation (GPP).

There are three components of work capacity:

• The ability to tolerate a high workload – the key word here is to tolerate. Many athletes are capable of doing an occasional high workload, but cannot adapt to this workload on any kind of consistent basis.
• The ability to recover from the workload sufficiently for the next workout or competition. This is closely tied to the first concept. If the athlete cannot recover then they are risking overuse injuries or overtraining. They will not be able to adapt to the training stress.
• The capacity to resist fatigue whatever the source. It is more than aerobic, it is the ability to resist neural fatigue and mental fatigue.
• Refinement of the efficiency and coordination of the cardiovascular, metabolic and nervous systems. It is more than cardiovascular efficiency. It is preparing the whole athlete to be as efficient as possible.

To better understand the concept of work capacity I have found it useful to think of it as those qualities that are limiting factors to the development of other qualities. It consists of those capacities and components of athletic fitness that, if deficient, would limit the ability to do more training. Those would be body composition, too fat or too lean, limited flexibility, inadequate aerobic capacity, aerobic power, anaerobic capacity, strength endurance, or anaerobic power. All of these are prerequisites for being able to handle a level of work. A limitation in any of these components would have serious implications and severely limit an athlete’s work capacity.

To help better understand the concept of work capacity there are three conceptual terms. The first is capacity, which is the total amount of energy available to perform work. In simple terms it is the size of the tank. The second term is power, the amount of energy that can be produced per unit of time. The third term is efficiency, which is the optimal use of the energy available. It is efficiency that I focus on in training.