Here is a review of Charlie Weingroff’s Training=Rehab, Rehab=Training DVD set by up and coming strength and conditioning coach, Cheri Pearce. Cheri interned for me last spring, and then spent the past summer interning at Mike Boyle Strength and Conditioning. She came back as a volunteer this fall and is heading off to intern at Cressey Performance in January. She has been extremely busy but found time to review this DVD set that I can’t recommend enough. If you haven’t picked up this set yet, you are missing out. I’ll have a link after the review on where you can pick up a copy.
B
At first glance of Charlie Weingroff’s DVD set I thought it was going to be beyond my scope of knowledge. Never judge a DVD by its cover. The first 10-15 minutes are Charlie in a nutshell. He is a WWE fan, Golf expert, fantasy sports participant and Green Lantern fanatic. He is human ladies and gentlemen, not just some ridiculously smart Physical Therapist/Strength and Conditioning Coach. He gives props to his influences such as, Gray Cook, Vladimir Janda, Shirley Sahrmann and Mike Boyle as the basis for his current philosophies on rehabilitation and training.
One point Weingroff makes clear, that no matter what field you presently reside, basic principles for the human body remain the same. This is why he is actively trying to bridge the gap of between the doctor, physical therapist and strength coach. He believes that each professional plays an integral part in the steps back to performance and encourages you to surround yourself with colleagues of similar conceptual belief systems.
Furthermore, Weingroff is not your typical boring classroom teacher. He is animated, passionate and accessible. His personality draws you in and keeps you wanting more. I found myself looking up articles he was referencing because I want to know what he knows. As I watched the lecture and practical based DVDs I was nodding in agreement with his ideas simply because they made sense. He easily explains difficult concepts in a way any one can understand. What I admire most about Charlie Weingroff, while his opinions are his own he will distinctly define what is fact and how he arrived at that conclusion because he has the knowledge to back it up. He truly wants you to be a better trainer, coach or therapist and that comes through on the DVDs.
Cheri
I’ve got some outstanding news for all of you who attend conferences. One of the premier conferences this season is being put on by an outstanding group, the Boston Sports Medicine Performance Group. The group is headed by a good friend of mine, Art Horne. Art has been hosting these conferences for the past 5 years and this years is by far the biggest and best line-up of speakers.
Famously uttered by Sir Isaac Newton,
“If I can see further than anyone else, it is only because I am standing on the shoulders of giants.”
What Newton meant was simply by taking advantage of all those that had made discoveries prior was he able to make the significant impact that he did at that time. BSMPG has invited the titans of Sports Medicine and Performance to Boston for an upcoming conference June 3-4, 2011.
Dr. Shirley Sahrmann, Tom Myers, Clare Frank, Charlie Weingroff and Pete Viteritti will serve as keynote speakers for this event which runs alongside specialized breakout sessions with Giants from the fields of Basketball Training, Hockey Training and Sports Medicine and Rehabilitation.
NEW! By popular request, This conference will feature 3 individual tracks of study to choose from (Basketball, Hockey, and Sports Medicine / Rehabilitation), with our keynote speakers tying each track together.
- Attendees may choose one particular focus along with lectures from each keynote speaker OR may mix and match speakers and lectures througout the day to best suit their interest and educational needs.
Art has also offered a special savings only available for readers of SB Coaches College. He knows that our readers care about their education and are invested in making themselves better coaches and practitioners. He’s offered a savings of $50 on the registration! This is an incredible offer for what’s going to be an OUTSTANDING CONFERENCE. There will be great opportunity for networking and learning as there tends to be many high end coaches and trainers that always attend.
If you haven’t decided on which conference you are going to attend this season, this is the one you NEED to be at. Hopefully this coupon makes the decision that much easier for you…you will not be disappointed in the knowledge and information you will gain.
and Register here
I hope to see you all there and here’s some video highlights from last years conference.
and 2009′s
B
It’s the middle of winter here in the northeast and it’s almost time to start thinking about seminar and conference season that is about to hit come the spring and summer months.
If you’re in the northeast there are usually plenty of opportunities to learn and make yourself a better professional. Perform Better typically puts on a number of clinics in the Providence and Boston areas and you can always find something good in New York.
I want to tell you all about a fantastic seminar that is hosted by my good friends at Northeastern University, Art Horne and Dan Boothby. They might put on the most well diversified seminar in the country. They bring in top notch speakers and experts in a number of fields and bring them all to one location so you, the attendee can better yourself.
Their seminar has undergone an evolution as well. Four years ago, the seminar started as a sports medicine lecture series that was targeted primarily towards athletic trainers, physical therapists and strength and conditioning coaches.
Then three years they decided to put the first ever Hockey Performance Summit on that turned out to be a hit.
Last year was their first attempt at a duel track seminar targeting both Hockey and Basketball strength and conditioning professionals…and that again was outstanding.
And this year they are having a three track seminar with keynote speakers. There is a Hockey track, Basketball track and a Sports Medicine track. This by far is one of the most well thought out and planned conference in some time.
I’m not even going into the speakers nor the depth of their knowledge base, but I feel quite honored to be apart of the group. This seminar will be the highlight of my summer learning experience and I hope that all of you can somehow fit this into your schedule because you will not be disappointed.
Art and Dan are stand up guys with a lot of class and you will not be disappointed with the seminar that put on.
Check out more info here:
This article isn’t going to drastically change the way you train your athletes. What it will do though is give you an intern’s perspective from the weight room; and it will get you to talk. Whether you start up a conversation with your colleagues, an intern, your athletes, your grandparents, or even your pet guinea pig that your sister somehow managed to persuade your parents into buying (not that I’d know anything about that), it doesn’t matter- someone’s going to get better.
Connecting the dots- looking at Northeastern University’s AT and S&C departments
I want to preface this section by saying that I clearly haven’t ventured around to every collegiate training center and taken a look at the interactions between the athletic trainers and the strength and conditioning coaches. However, from what I’ve read and seen in few different settings, it’s a pretty safe bet to say that the two sides aren’t just lacking in knowledge about each other, but also an appreciation. As a strength coach, you definitely don’t have to know the various tests, modalities, and rehab techniques that athletic trainers practice on a daily basis. And as an athletic trainer, you don’t have to know Eastern European block periodization concepts as well as you know how to use those funny looking electrode thingies with the sticky patches that make my biceps twitch. Yet having at least an appreciation for what your colleagues do can only benefit your athletes, and the program, in the long run.
I don’t want anyone to get the idea that I’m just saying this about Northeastern because Coach Art Horne gave me copious amounts of protein powder this summer (I’m back in Wisconsin now so unless he plans on shipping those tubs, I’m out of luck). However, the direction that Northeastern is going will allow both groups to better cater to their athletes.
How many times have you seen departments provide in-services for each other on topics that both groups can relate to? Without putting down the staff here at Wisconsin, I can say not very often. The most recent topic at Northeastern was “Treating and Training the Ice Hockey Athlete,” in which Coach Dan Boothby discussed programming and exercise selection, while AT Steve Clark spoke about FAI, surgical outcomes, and rehab. Creating a common language between the two departments also helps athletes from wondering why they’ve performed a “bird-dog” in the athletic training room, a “kneeling superman” in the weight room, and an “opposite-arm-opposite-leg-reach-with-anti-rotational-core-stability” during physical therapy. A common language doesn’t have to stop with exercises though, co-writing a nutrition manual helps fill a much-needed gap in the market.
Lots of kettlebells, two coaches, two athletes, one awful (awesome?) circuit.
While I’m clearly not in a position to pass judgment, as I haven’t been there myself, I can say that as an intern, being in an environment where I was able to pester athletic trainers and strength coaches with questions on a day-to-day basis was a privilege.
So what have you done to make not just your department, but also the system, operate more efficiently?
A future PT getting it done in the weight room.
There’s more than one approach to assessing your athletes
I’m not just talking about the various movement screens and clinical evaluations that people have come up with throughout the years. While many of those are great tools, finding out what type of athletes you’re dealing with can have a profound effect on how you go about programming.
This past summer I had the privilege of interning under Professor Larry Cahalin- a cardiopulmonary physical therapist at Northeastern who presented at the Boston Sports Medicine and Performance Group Symposium. Despite the fact that his mind functions on a completely different level than mine, I was able to learn a lot from him- both from our talks, and the secondary data analysis we performed on his inspiratory muscle training (IMT) study with the Northeastern men’s hockey team. While the vast majority of studies and practical applications with IMT have focused on people with various diseases, a few individuals within this field have begun to look at the effects an organized training regime can have on healthy athletes.
Here’s a past study that Professor Cahalin was involved in: IMT Research Paper.
IMT- not that easy… check out the 10th video down: http://ptjournal.apta.org/misc/videos.dtl.
What Professor Cahalin, and many of his colleagues believe, is that the power curve generated from the test of incremental respiratory endurance (TIRE) can not only provide important information directly related to the test (which in the long run will allow norms to be developed for a variety of sports), but is also a good indicator of fatigue curves and by association, muscle fiber breakup within the body. For instance, power athletes with an abundance of fast twitch muscle fibers (sprinters, throwers, track cyclists, running backs, etc.) will demonstrate a quick peak in power, while endurance athletes show a much flatter curve. While examining the initial data, one athlete’s numbers on the Northeastern men’s hockey team leaned heavily towards the power athlete (high type II fiber percentage) make-up. While skill alone may help a high-school hockey player make it to the college scene, a healthy dose of favorable genetics is useful in taking collegiate athletes to the next level. After making a quick guess that this individual’s TIRE results also meant a successful career thus far, I decided to double check. Score one for Mike- his collegiate hockey career had been more than successful and he was most likely headed for the NHL. On the other hand, after testing the cross-country team, it was interesting to see how many demonstrated fatigue curves similar to that of a power athlete. It doesn’t necessarily mean that they need to quit running and join an Olympic lifting club, just that their coach may be interested in checking out their 400m times.
The Wingate test- a common measurement of an athlete’s anaerobic power, has also shown similar results, and the research is there to prove it (Bar-Or 1980;. The next step is making the statistical correlation between the two tests and having coaches buy into it.
Turn your athletes into coaches
When coaching a large group of athletes, you either need to hammer technique from day one, or ensure that they aren’t just responding to cues- your athletes are taking what you say into the next set and even next week’s training. Or do both.
While having two assistant strength coaches, a GA, and three undergraduate interns is always nice, most coaches don’t have this privilege. So how do you find another set of eyes? Look a few lines up. When athletes know what they’re doing, know why they’re doing it, and it makes sense to them, they can start coaching each other. At this point they’ve reached the third level of understanding- consciously competent. This is preceded by unconsciously incompetent and consciously incompetent, and followed by unconsciously competent. Not only are athletes spotting each other, but it makes your life less stressful as you’re not watching fifteen different athletes box squat their 3RM.
This also sets up a system of accountability. Athletes know when someone is not pulling (or pushing) their own weight. Having athletes coach each other also provides a system that your freshman can walk right into. Not only do they come into a training atmosphere in which their upperclassmen teammates are focused and gettin’ at it, but time is spent with them in a smaller group setting and the fundamentals can be worked on.
The human body doesn’t operate in extremes
One of the most basic, yet difficult concepts for me to wrap my head around has been the idea that the body is rarely in an all or nothing state. Yes there is the all or nothing principal when it comes to motor unit activation, but when we’re looking at biomechanics, it’s difficult to find extremes. Coach Horne likes using Boston and LA as a metaphor. We’re not on either coast, but maybe somewhere around Chicago. For those that are geographically challenged (I’m right there with you- I had no idea what the capital of South Dakota was for the longest time), let’s get some real world examples going.
This summer I ignorantly blurted out that I thought, with all my infinite wisdom, that all crew athletes were destined for herniated disks due to constant flexion and extension of the lumbar spine. A little extreme? Maybe, but I like to live life on the edge. Anyway, one of the Northeastern basketball players, who used to row for his high school team, explained that he was actually taught the hip hinge from day one and that most of the movement came from his hips and his thoracic spine. The hip hinge? In a non-weight room setting? Blasphemy. After talking to Eric Gahan, an athletic trainer at BU, I realized that this type of technique was actually becoming much more popular with coaches as AT’s, PT’s, S&C coaches, and physicians stepped in with their input.
So what’s my point? We already know that repeated and/or prolonged lumbar flexion and lumbar hyperextension aren’t the greatest things for your back. It’s almost cliché at this point to cite the work that McGill’s has done in this field. However, despite the fact that crew athletes might be moving into flexion, do they ever truly reach it? What is a neutral spinal alignment? Is it the athlete’s “natural” posture? There are environmental and genetic factors that need to be considered as well. A neutral lumbar spine means you’re not in Boston or LA, just somewhere in-between.
Let’s look at one more example.
This past summer, Charlie Weingroff spoke at the BSMPG Symposium about lower extremity performance. One of the many points I took away from his talk was what happens to the patella tendon in a box squat when the tibia is kept vertical (namely the difference between “roll” and “glide” of the femur). This summer, Coach Horne took the vertical tibia concept and applied it to the vast majority of men’s basketball single legged training. While this probably took a lot of stress off their knees, I immediately went with my “all or nothing” principle and took this idea back to Wisconsin and was shocked when Coach Jim Snider (men’s and women’s hockey strength coach) didn’t agree that athletes needed to maintain a vertical tibia in single legged movements. Yes, that was probably the first time two coaches have ever disagreed…
After talking the idea over for a good hour and half, we came to the conclusion that we had neglected the fact that Coach Horne and Coach Snider train two different populations. Basketball athletes are notorious for poor ankle mobility and knee pain. Hockey athletes on the other hand demonstrate a fair amount of anterior translation of the tibiofemoral joint within the skating stride. On top of that, very few of Coach Snider’s athletes actually have knee pain. While the concept of keeping a vertical tibia is extremely useful, trying to apply it to every situation doesn’t make sense.
Maybe the most important concept that I learned this summer was that in order to get work done, it’s imperative that at least three cups of coffee are downed before noon (at least according to Art). On that note, thank you to all the coaches and researchers that have helped me get better over the years.
References
Bar-Or, Dotan, Inbar, Rothstein, Karlsson, and Tesch. “Anaerobic Capacity and Muscle Fiber Type Distribution in Man.” International Journal of Sports Medicine (1980): 82-85. Web. <https://www.thieme-connect.com/ejournals/abstract/sportsmed/doi/10.1055/s-2008-1034636>.
Mike Boykin is currently an undergraduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he is pursuing a degree in Kinesiology with a focus in Exercise and Movement Science. With an unending drive to further his education, Mike has interned under physical therapists, athletic trainers, and strength and conditioning coaches. Feel free to contact him at boykin@wisc.edu.
One of the reasons that I love the field of collegiate athletics is the competitive nature of the business. As a whole, our athletic department is competing to be superior to the other eight in the Big Sky Conference. This competitiveness permeates all the way from administration and staff, to the coaches, and finally to teams and individual athletes. Although I don’t know many of the other strength coaches in the Big Sky personally, I feel like every day I train my athletes, I am competing against them to do a better job getting my athletes prepared to win conference championships. This extreme level of competitiveness drives me to find out what steps I need to take to make me a better coach for my athletes.
Just like countless other coaches in this industry, I have sacrificed in order to improve at my craft. I have moved across the country twice, interned for little to no money, and am working on completing my Master’s degree. I did not make all of these sacrifices in hopes of being a mediocre coach. One resounding piece of advice I have received from strength & conditioning coaches across the country is that attending seminars and conferences is a sacrifice you MUST make to get better in this industry. And often times, the money you spend to attend these conferences comes back to you in the long run, because of the ideas and knowledge you gain from the experience and the people you meet. Since I started actually earning a paycheck for strength & conditioning, I have managed to attend my share of seminars and have met many outstanding coaches. However, I still must operate within the financial confines of a married man who just purchased a home, works with hundreds of athletes, and all while still being a student. And there are times when I get to the end of the month and realize I barely have enough money to support my wife and me, let alone spend money on continuing education.
With all that being said, I absolutely love my job and in no way will I let my financial situation dictate what kind of coach I am going to become. At this point in my career I know I cannot attend every conference and seminar that I would want to, but at the same time, I want to be getting better every single day at what I do. The good news is there are plenty of other ways to continue to grow as a coach in lieu of only going to conferences (coming from the guy who just attended two in less than a month). Here are some suggestions on how to get better on a budget:
1. Subscribe to free newsletters
Mike Boyle, Brijesh Patel (SB Coaches College), Mike Robertson, Eric Cressey, Adam Feit (YSCCa), Rob Taylor (SMARTER Team Training). These are only a few of the names in our industry who provide a FREE newsletter just for registering through their respective websites. These newsletters are often packed full of useful information that could help even the best strength coaches get better at what they do. Often times the newsletters contain video content, articles, and interviews. There are no excuses not to be signed up for these. As an aside, I actually won a copy of Functional Strength Coach 3.0 by being on Mike Boyle’s mailing list. All I had to do was make a video to explain why I was deserving of the product. It turned out to be a savings of almost $200 and it took me 10 minutes to make the video! Being proactive will pay off!
2. Email / phone correspondence
Although these are more informal ways to connect with coaches and other professionals, sometimes it allows you the opportunity to contact someone who is extremely far away from you that you may not meet otherwise. But be patient; these coaches are just as busy as you are, and are not necessarily going to call you back soon, if at all. Don’t take it personally. Remember that there are probably hundreds, if not thousands, of people trying to contact these coaches as well. However, if you are patient and send a couple of emails or leave a confident detailed messages about why you want to talk to them, sometimes you’ll get lucky and get to communicate with some really great coaches. The knowledge I have gained about being a better coach from these interactions is probably more than I got out of my entire undergrad experience. Many of the people I talk to in the strength and conditioning profession are solely through email or phone contact, and I have never met them in person. Use peers as a resource and don’t be afraid of ego!
3. Visit free informational websites / blogs / podcasts
Similar to newsletters, fitness websites are great places to access tremendous content for no cost. There are too many good ones to list, but my personal favorites would be sbcoachescollege.com, t-muscle.com, ericcressey.com, robertsontrainingsystems.com, and elitefts.com. One thing I really like from these sites, aside from their great content, is that often times they have a recommended resources page, which is really helpful when selecting books and products for purchase.
Along these same lines, try to visit as many collegiate strength & conditioning websites as possible. The NSCA’s website has a pretty comprehensive list of universities who have strength & conditioning pages. Many of their websites include staff philosophies, nutritional information, and exercise demonstrations. Again, invaluable information that can make you better at what you do.
As for blogs, again there are too many good ones to list, but I really like all the guys of Cressey Performance (Tony Gentilcore, Brian St. Pierre, & Eric Cressey), Mike Robertson, Dan John, Diesel Crew, Nate Green, Alwyn Cosgrove, and Luka Hocevar to name several. Blogs are great because the content is updated frequently and is usually entertaining to read.
The mother of all free content comes from free podcasts. The two that I listen to are from Robertson Training Systems and the FitCast. Again, outstanding content and you get to listen to the opinions of some of the best professionals in our business.
Finally there are some relatively inexpensive pay websites (strengthcoach.com, sportsrehabexpert.com, bighousepower.com, myfittube.com) that have extremely excellent reputations and are run by very qualified coaches (personally I have only used strengthcoach.com). Some of these sites also include open forums where you can get advice and talk shop with some of the greatest coaches in the world, which is worth the price of membership itself!
4. Taking advantage of social networking sites
I’m about as against wasting my time with social networking sites as the next coach, but some of these sites are great in terms of accessing helpful information. One that I just joined, Strength Performance Network, is like facebook for coaches, and has a ton of great video content, as well as a chat area to talk with other professionals. Then there is always facebook, but often times I have found it better to join fan pages promoting a coach’s facility or company rather than being their personal facebook friend, because the site is still intended for uniting “friends” rather than strangers with agendas. Just be forewarned that facebook seems to be more about promotion rather than learning, but it is still a pretty decent way to get in contact with coaches.
5. Earning continuing education from classes
If you are like me and certified through the NSCA, you are expected to earn 6.0 CEUs by December 31, 2011. 5.5 of those CEUs can come from course work. According to the NSCA, you can earn .3 CEUs per hour for a quarter class, and .5 CEUs per hour for a semester class, with a maximum of 2.0 CEUs per class. If you work at a college, you should be able to take classes at a highly discounted rate. At Eastern Washington University, I pay five dollars for up to 10 credits! Not only are you earning continuing education units by taking classes, you are hopefully gaining a ton of knowledge from the experience. I prefer taking advanced anatomy, biomechanics, or computer classes. All of these will definitely make you better at what you do and give you some sympathy for what your student athletes endure on a weekly basis!
And I can hear a collective moaning from the post-graduate group about taking classes again. But the bottom line is that it doesn’t hurt to be challenged every once in a while, and we typically have pretty open schedules during the middle of the day when these classes are being offered. Homework definitely is not fun, but how many hours a night do you waste watching American Idol and Dancing with the Stars? Suck it up.
6. Checking out books from the library
I typically purchase one or two books a month from Amazon that relate to strength and conditioning, and another one for personal enrichment. However, the other day when I was in our library looking for some research for my thesis, I found they had a copy of one of the books I was going to buy later that month (Mechanical Low Back Pain). From now on, I always check in our school and local library for books that I want to purchase before buying online in hopes of saving a few bucks. Why buy when you can read them for free.
7. Attend clinics & seminars regionally
Try to find out what is regionally when planning to attend seminars. If it is local, you can save money on traveling funds and meals. And typically if you contact the people hosting the event, they can sometimes provide you with contact information from other people attending the clinic. That way, you might be able to find someone to split the cost of a room, as well be able to get to spend some extra time with a fitness professional you would otherwise only see at the conference.
8. Convince administration to help with conference costs
As stated previously, nothing beats attending a large conference or seminar in terms of meeting new people and learning a ton of great stuff. It has been my experience that in the university setting, the beginning of the school year is typically when the administration is willing to be more flexible with spending. Budgets have been replenished and there is a renewed sense of resources and commitment to the advancement of the department (at least for the first couple weeks). In my opinion, this is the best time to approach an AD about money to budget towards attending conferences. Let them know exactly why it is important that you attend the seminar, how it will make your athletes better, provide a detailed list of costs and how you plan to incur some of the expenses through department fundraisers or out of your own pocket, and then cross your fingers that they agree to help. If you strike out here, at least you know then what you’re dealing with in terms of how much money you need to save in order to get to the conference. And don’t be discouraged to attend. Often times if you let the administrators know that you will be attending anyway, they will understand how important it is to your staff and may help you the next time you plan to attend a seminar or conference. You can also use other coaches as a resource for additional funds. A little money from each athletic team could help to get you to a conference.
This is by no means an exhaustive list on how to get better in the field of strength and conditioning on a budget, but hopefully there are a few things you can take away from this article to not only save you some money, but to also motivate you to get better at what you do. Coming from the background of a competitive athlete, I always want to be the best at what I do, and am motivated to do what it takes to get better. But if I can save some money in the process, it can’t hurt. Hopefully this helps some people who are in the same boat as me.
This is a common question that gets posed to my athletes. I ask them what are you doing to make yourself better.
Are you working as hard as you can to make yourself better?
Are you encouraging and pushing your teammates to make them better?
Are you eating breakfast every day and getting more fruits and veggies in your diet?
Are you getting to sleep on time and focusing on your recovery efforts?
I ask my athletes these questions to put ownership on them and realize that they are the ones who control what type of results they are going to get out of the training program. The better results they get from their efforts, the greater their confidence and ultimately the better their performance. If you believe in yourself more and believe you won’t fail, you will perform at a higher level and won’t let distractions and disappointments in your way.
But we as coaches also have to look at ourselves and ask ourselves “What are we doing to make ourselves better?”
If we are asking our athletes to sacrifice their time and energy to becoming better, we must ask ourselves to do the same.
Are we reading more to increase our knowledge base to better help our athletes?
Are we attending conferences to pick up more tools that we can use in our toolbox?
Are we training and seeing how effective our programs are?
Are we calling, visiting and or emailing other coaches to find out what others are doing?
Are we learning how to be better coaches, communicators and educators?
Are we investing in ourselves to better help our athletes?
Getting better is a two way street. You have to raise the bar on yourself if you expect your athletes to do the same.
The more we can help ourselves, the better we will be able to serve our athletes.
What are you doing to make yourself better?
We here at SBCC like to give you information about great sites and practices that will help you all to become better professionals. Today’s post is about a fantastic site that make research much more applicable and easier to use and understand. My good friend Dr. Shawn Thistle has a great site that’s been around for about 2 years now called Research Review Service Fitness.
www.fitness.researchreviewservice.com
Research Review Service FITNESS, now in its second year, is an online service designed to help busy fitness professionals incorporate current scientific literature into their client interactions.
How RRS-Fitness works:
Every week, RRS posts 1-2 new reviews which analyze, contextualize, and put into practice the findings of a recently published scientific article from industry-leading peer-reviewed journals. Each review takes 5-10 minutes to read and focuses on the practical application of results and functional knowledge of research methodology. The reviews are all contained in a database that subscribers have full access to (it now contains > 175 reviews!). Topical content is varied and comprehensive, ranging from exercise sciences to sports injuries and rehabilitation.
The overall goal of RRS-Fitness is to increase knowledge translation from the scientific literature to those in contact with clients in all types of exercise and training environments.
Top 5 Reasons to Subscribe to RRS-Fitness:
1) Weekly reviews of the latest research.
2) Quickly read and applicable information in the comfort of your home or office.
3) Affordable subscription rates compared to attending conferences.
4) Large database of existing reviews.
5) Save your time, stay current, and improve your results!
RRS-FITNESS Mission Statement: RRS FITNESS will strive to enhance evidence-based knowledge translation and practical application in the exercise and fitness industry by providing contemporary, relevant and applicable scientific literature to subscribers in a consistent, unbiased, easily understood format. Our overarching goal is to disseminate exercise sciences research to training professionals, students and institutions worldwide. RRS FITNESS will operate in a financially and environmentally responsible manner, and maintain a strong commitment to prompt customer service.
Dr. Shawn was kind enough to share some recent postings on Research Review Service FITNESS
Each week, RRS-FITNESS (www.fitness.researchreviewservice.com) posts a concise, comprehensive review of a recently published scientific article that can affect the way you assist your clients or athletes. Here are some highlights from a few recent postings…
1) Tight hamstrings – do we stretch, or strengthen in a lengthened position? (Man Ther 2010; 15: 26-31.)
Joint range of motion (ROM) is inherently dependent upon muscle (and fascial) length. Stretching has generally been recommended as a means of improving muscle length, and therefore joint ROM. However, improvements in muscle length following stretching protocols are likely do to a combination of an increase in stretch tolerance (a neurological effect) and a change in the viscoelastic behavior of the muscle (a mechanical effect). This brings into question the long-term efficacy of stretching interventions.
Theoretically, training in a lengthened position should add sarcomeres in series to the muscle, hence increasing its length (4). This study did not find a significant change in flexibility for any of the groups (those who stretched, and those who performed a specific strengthening protocol). However, this study did provide evidence of a shifting in the length-tension relationship of the knee flexors (hamstrings) following training in a lengthened position. This is further evidence of the body’s incredible ability to adapt to the demands we place on it, particularly when we challenge it in unique and novel ways…
2) The use of unstable surfaces to train the core (Appl J Physiol Nutr Metab 2010; 35: 91-108.)
Contrary to training for a specific activity that requires dynamic balance (either sport or rehabilitation), core training normally involves a static or isometric task ± movement. Many research studies utilize training protocols for the core that involve unstable and labile surfaces. This large body of research has produced varying results and because of this a synthesis of the literature is required to discover the specificity and effectiveness of the use of instability methods to train the core musculature.
This review provides a great review of the literature on core stability, as well as many practical applications. For example…”core training, much like seasonal training, must be periodized. This means that core training should be properly varied throughout the season. For instance, ground based lifts may be best for improving both stability and specificity to sport. Utilizing an unstable surface may not be best for improving absolute strength and power development because they can lower the intensity of the exercise.”
3) Cardiovasular benefits of flaxseed consumption (Appl Physiol Nutr & Metab 2009; 34: 965-974.)
Certain dietary choices can significantly improve cardiovascular health – one of which is regularly including sources omega-3 (ω-3) polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs). Flaxseed has been identified as a source of ω-3 PUFAs. Flaxseed is also a good source of 2 other nutrients that contribute to positive cardiovascular effects: dietary fibre and phytoestrogens called lignans.
In “Conclusions & Practical Application”: Consuming moderate doses of ground flaxseed (1–4 tbsp,1 tbsp = 7 g) per day can modestly reduce circulating total cholesterol (6%–11%) and LDL cholesterol (9%–18%) levels, as well as lowering various markers associated with atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. Dietary flaxseed may also protect against ischemic heart disease by improving vascular relaxation responses and by inhibiting the incidence of ventricular fibrillation. It is important to note that much of the data is still inconsistent, and further research – larger clinical trials such as RCTs – are needed in all areas.
For complete reviews on these studies and more current, practical science – subscribe at: www.fitness.researchreviewservice.com
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The Boston Sports Medicine and Performance Group puts on great conferences
This past weekend I was able to go to one of the best conferences I have ever had the pleasure of attending. This was the
2nd annual Hockey & Basketball Performance Symposium in Boston, MA, on the campus of Northeastern University. Being a basketball strength coach myself, I knew I could get a ton out of the event. I really had no idea how much I would learn, not only from the presentations, but from the conversations with attendees that took place outside of the conference. I am sure that I will be referring to advice I received this weekend for the rest of my career in the Strength & Conditioning industry. For those who were unable to attend, I am going to provide some brief feedback from the basketball presentations and keynote speakers that you can possibly take back to your own programs.
Day 1
The first presentation of the day was by Tim Beltz of the University of Pittsburgh on Strength Development for College Basketball Players. Tim not only works with the Men’s and Women’s basketball teams, but the baseball and softball teams, so he provided some outstanding real world perspective on practical training methodology. As an aside, Tim was probably the most entertaining speaker I heard this weekend from the standpoint of his humor and general personality. Some of the points I took away from Tim’s presentation:
- If you do anything with your basketball player, EVALUATE them. I believe the more assessment we do, the more understanding we have of our athlete and the more effective our program design becomes. Some evaluations that Tim uses that I want to integrate into my program are:
- Side Bridge: Tim does a side bridge hold on both sides and averages the two sides.
- Hyper hold ISO
- Specific angle measurements of the hip / knee in a squat pattern: Tim measured the angles before the hip tucked under.
- Tim also sets goals for each training phase and categorizes them by importance, which is something we could do a better job of to see if our athletes are meeting our training objectives.
The most important thing I got took from Tim is the importance of developing relationships with our athletes. Tim explained how he looks to his seniors on feedback on what they want to do in their training and incorporates these suggestions into his own workouts to give the players a sense of accountability. Again, Tim was an outstanding speaker who I would highly recommend seeing if you get the chance.
Next up was Amanda Kimball from the University of Connecticut, who spoke in Building a Champion. Amanda works with several programs at UCONN, most notably being the two-time defending National Champion Women’s basketball team. Amanda was very down to Earth in her presentation and was very open to questions afterward. Some things I got from her presentation:
- Competition is essential in your program. Amanda was someone who introduced competitive situations between upper / lower classmen, on-court positions, and even between other teams in the department pretty regularly. It doesn’t really matter what the competitions consists of, just choose things that are appropriate to your population and have kids compete.
- Variety is another essential, especially if you are dealing with a population such as basketball. The bottom line is that basketball players want to play basketball, not train to play basketball. By keeping variety in your training routines, through various warm-ups, tweaks on exercises, or competitive situations, we can keep the athletes engaged in doing the “boring” things (corrective exercises) that they must do.
- Building accountability and camaraderie is only possible through consistent exposure to competitive, uncomfortable environments. This does not mean putting our athletes at risk for injury, but it does means pushing them past their threshold at times.
Amanda’s philosophy of KISS was evident when she explained the nuances of her program. It was a great opportunity to see how hard athletes who were so successful competed and bought in to the culture that Amanda creates.
Next up was the always entertaining and controversial Dr. Bill Sands from the Monfort Human Performance Lab in Grand Junction, Colorado, who spoke on the misunderstood topic of recovery. I had the pleasure of conducting my thesis data collection with Dr. Sands and from firsthand experience I can tell you he is one of the most brilliant minds in the field of human performance and exercise testing. Although touching on all of the great points Dr. Sands made would take an entire paper, here were some of the main tidbits I took from his lecture:
- As strength coaches, we don’t know nearly enough about recovery. Our methods of recovery are more reactive than proactive, meaning we wait until symptoms of overtraining are manifest rather than making sure our programming helps our athletes avoid overtraining altogether, and bottom line is that this in unacceptable.
- The idea that a program we design can have “non-responders,” meaning we have neutral or even detrimental effects on some of our athlete’s progress, is absurd.
- Athletes that adapt to training and reach the period of supercompensation should be relatively free of fatigue, swelling, and injury or illness. But how often have our athletes on the cusp of important competitions demonstrated one if not several of these characteristics?
- The best methods for recovery seem to be simply resting, practicing good post-workout nutrition habits with a bar or protein-carb blended drink, and reducing exercise-induced swelling.
- Athletes today are competing far too much in order to recovery sufficiently. Dr. Sands showed evidence of the correlations between the increasing numbers of competitions and the decreased performance levels, especially in track & field (Sands et al., 2007). This seems to be due to the fact that as our athletes reach their genetic performance capacity, the athlete’s performance outcome is more of a product of their level of fatigue than their level of training.
- We cannot accept guesswork when it comes to whether or not our athletes are recovering. Recovery needs to be programmed into our workouts. Dr. Sands talked about keeping track of body weight and heart rate on a daily basis and tracking whenever the value falls outside of 2 standard deviations of our mean value. This can only be done after you’ve collected sufficient data in order to establish a baseline of function. He also agreed a test like a vertical jump, when performed off a power plate, is a great indicator of fatigue because it would allow us to look at factors such as jump height, contact time, and the rate of force development, which can all be impacted by the level of fatigue.
I believed Dr. Sands opened the eyes of a lot of attendees in the room and made us understand that we must serve all our athletes in continuing to improve while under our care and that understanding the role of fatigue in programming could help us do so.
The next speaker was Keith D’Amelio from Stanford University who spoke on the topic of Performance Assessment for Basketball. Keith has spent time in both the college and NBA levels, so he has a tremendous understanding for what qualities are necessary to make it to the next level. Some important things that Keith touched on were:
- All the NBA combine tests (and NFL for that matter) are assessments of athletic potential rather than true predictors of performance success.
- The lane agility test, ¾ court sprint, and bench press pretty much suck for predicting likelihood of making it in the NBA. The lane agility has too much of a backpedal component and too long of a shuffle component to reflect the true demands on the court. As Keith put it, if you shuffle more than twice, you’re already beat. The ¾ court sprint is too linear and rarely occurs on the court before changing direction. And the bench press is…the bench press. It’s a tool in the tool box, but not necessarily a predictor of NBA potential.
- The 4 Jump Test is an outstanding, catch all type of test. This was the consensus throughout multiple presentations. Not only do you see power output, but elasticity (average of 4 jumps / max no-step vertical) and their coordination with a multiple response test.
- Another solid test is the Hop & Stop. You are able to test power when applied unilaterally, stability at the hip, knee, and ankle / foot complex, and asymmetries between sides. Keith uses it as a return to play test as well as a performance test.
- Be critical of our own tests for performance. Keith is part of Nike’s team that came up with new testing protocols for the NBA combine, which will be implemented next year. That isn’t to say that Keith only uses these tests in his own training. Keith also utilizes the Pro Agility, 10 Yard Sprint, 4 Jump Test, and the Hop & Stop tests when evaluating an athlete. If you can justify why you are testing it, and you’re consistent with implementation, more tests equal better understanding of our athletes.
Keith was a very engaging and approachable guy and I look forward to learning from him in the future.
The next presentation was the one I was looking forward to seeing the most, and the presenter didn’t disappoint. It was by Charlie Winegroff, a Physical Therapist / Performance Coach / Savant, who presented on Lower Body Performance and Whole Body Vibration Training. Charlie is not only the most brilliant person I’ve had the pleasure to talk with about training, but he’s one of the most humble and approachable people you’ll ever meet. That being said, here were some of the take home messages from Charlie’s presentation:
- Numerous patella femoral disorders can be linked back to biomechanical dysfunction.
- Lateral subluxation of the patella is actually internal rotation of the femur. If you have someone who tries to manipulate the position of the patella and doesn’t fix the hip, they are actually exacerbating the dysfunction.
- Many issues at the knee can be linked back to the foot, ankle, or hip. When examining pain the knee, look for a decrease in hip external rotation, hip abduction, sagittal dorsiflexion, and an increase in pronation.
- Keep a vertical tibia when executing lower body lifts with individuals more prone to patella femoral disorders. A vertical tibia reduces pressure on the posterior horn of the knee and provides more “daylight” behind the patella in terms of the bony-ligamentous interaction.
- An exercise like a box squat can be a great teaching and training tool with basketball athletes as long as it’s coached well and we DON’T LOAD THE HELL OUT OF IT, especially with taller athletes who have poor limb and segmental stability.
- Something of an aside I got from Charlie after his presentation was examining your athlete’s cervical function. Three simple tests to look at cervical function:
- Chin to chest
- Chin to clavicle
- Head to back
Make sure the feet are together and the jaw is closed but not clenched when performing the tests. Most likely you will find restrictions which need to be treated through soft tissue therapy. And don’t stretch it like I did! It only aggravates the limitations.
Again, Charlie is a brilliant man, case closed. When his DVD comes out, I think it will revolutionize the industry.
The last presenter of the day was Bill Hartman, a Physical Therapist / performance Coach from Indianapolis Fitness and Sports Training (I-FAST). I’ve read Bill’s work in the past, but he was more of a legend than real to me, so it was great to finally see him in person. Like with most of the presenters, it’s almost unfair to summarize him because of the quality of his presentation, but here were the most lasting things I took from Bill:
- Dysfunction comes in many packages, whether physiological (muscle / tissue length, symmetry), biomechanical (joint function), or neurological (motor control), so there has to be numerous, appropriate corrective interventions.
- The foot is a huge player in dysfunction. Some of the common foot issues are over pronation / supination, loss of arch, and / or excessive abduction. These can all lead to referred issues up the kinetic chain. Doing things like reestablishing the arch of the foot can fix other dysfunctions elsewhere. One cool point Bill made in regards to the feet was that if you see flexion in the lateral toes, look for a lateral hip issue.
- Active Oscillatory Stretching (AOS) and Eccentric Quasi-Isometrics (EQIs) are both effective for stimulating the addition of sarcomeres in series. AOS involves a static hold at the end range of motion with oscillation applied for at least one minute, while EQIs involve prolonged holds at end range of motion under load to create fatigue resulting in eccentric lengthening.
- Improving breathing patterns can result in improved lumbo-pelvic stability by improving diaphragmatic control. Practice breathing by expanding the abdominal wall and not the chest.
By far the biggest take home I got from Bill’s presentation is to buy Bill, Mike Robertson, and Eric Cressey’s product Assess & Correct because Bill definitely outlined the importance of having a multifaceted approach to assessing our athletes.
Day 2
The second day began with a presentation from the University of Virginia’s Mike Curtis, who spoke on the topic of Movement Training for Basketball. I hadn’t heard of Mike before this presentation, and quite honestly I’m disappointed in myself for not finding out about him sooner. Mike was a tremendous presenter and let the audience know a great deal about the intricacy that goes into his program design. Some of the take-homes:
- Mike did a great job of relating his screening tool to a particular movement capability. The overhead squat represented an ability to create and maintain an athletic base, the hurdle step represented acceleration mechanics, and the inline lunge represented deceleration mechanics.
- Utilization of tri-planar lunging for assessment allows us to see the segmental interactions when momentum has an impact on us, as in our sport.
- Teach deceleration mechanics and yielding strength before working on explosive plyometrics and agility. Watch your athletes land and really study what is happening at the hip, knee, and ankle. Enhance their ability to control themselves before exposing them to unpredictable environments and actions.
- Progressive stages of learning are crucial to ensure skill acquisition. The stages of learning include: unconscious incomprehension, conscious incomprehension, conscious comprehension, unconscious comprehension.
- Fit your cueing to your athlete’s stage of training. The lower their stage of learning, the more productive, positive feedback and cueing they need.
- Progress will happen differently for different athletes. It’s important to hold our athletes accountable for quality at all stages in order to progress.
- Study the game of basketball. Understand the movements necessary to be successful. Progressively train these qualities to set your basketball athletes up for success once practice begins. If we wait for the sport coaches to teach fundamental movements necessary to succeed on the court (chasing off a screen, getting turned and balanced for a jump shot, hard shows for bigs), then it’s already too late.
Mike really understands the game of basketball and does some great things to get his players ready for success on the court.
The final presentation I took in that day was from the Godfather himself, Mike Boyle, who definitely needs no introduction. Coach Boyle presented on the Death of Squatting, which has received its fair share of attention (and criticism) since it came out in his DVD Functional Strength Coach 3.0. Basically, like Mike says, he’s a coach who’s open to change. And in his experience with watching and coaching the squat (which is probably more than your’s and mine’s combined), he was finding an unacceptable amount of back pain and a failure of the back before the legs fatigued when lifting maximally. So in his search for an exercise that could give him the anabolic effect that he wanted, engage the lateral sub-system (adductors, glute medius, and QL), while decreasing spinal loads, he examined single leg squat variations. Through years of practical research and experimentation with his athletes, Mike came to the conclusion that the rear foot elevated split squat (not Bulgarian lunge) was an exercise that allowed his to maintain the anabolic effect because of the loads, engaged the lateral sub-system, and all while decreasing spinal loads by 50-75%. Like Coach Boyle said, we didn’t have to agree and believe every word that he said, we just needed to suspend our belief long enough to hear the logic of the argument, which I believe is overwhelmingly difficult to argue against. Boyle is the best when it comes to entertaining an audience while articulating his message, and has been very influential in my development as a coach.
Again, it is pretty obvious through the write-up that this was the best of the best in the fitness industry. I haven’t seen this many All-stars in the business in one place outside of a Perform Better summit. If you have the opportunity to attend this event next year, do so. I can’t wait to come back and hope to see you all there.
References
- Sands, W.H., Wurtz, B.R., Stone, M.H., Brown, M.R., McNeal, J.R., & Jemni, M. What is happening to Olympic gold medal performances? USKSCA 3rd Annual Conference, 2007; Inverclyde, Largs Scotland. Edinborough, Scotland: SportScotland; 2007.
Recently, I had the privilege of attending the Collegiate Strength and Conditioning Coaches Association (CSCCa) conference in Orlando, Florida. For those who are unfamiliar with the CSCCa, it is professional organization dedicated to the continuing development of the collegiate and professional strength coach. This year happened to be the 10 year anniversary of the association. What I love about the CSCCa when compared to the NSCA, is that its limited to only collegiate and professional strength coaches, as opposed to personal trainers, private fitness facility owners and employees, and all other assorted fitness “gurus” and “experts” who are really glorified businessmen. Don’t get me wrong, I respect anyone in the fitness industry who provides a safe and effective product for helping people meet their fitness goals, it’s just that I have no desire to be a part of the business side of things. With that being said, I want to let you all in on the inner workings of the conference, including the various happenings and presentations that you might not of had the pleasure of enjoying this past week.
Day 1
The conference started on Wednesday, May 7th, with a roundtable forum moderated by Jim Lathrop and Ron Thomson of Purdue University. This was actually my favorite idea of the entire conference, as it allowed us the opportunity to connect intimately with a small group of strength coaches in a relaxed environment. Basically, the room was divided into tables of 8 to 10 coaches, and we were given a topic to discuss amongst the group. My table included coaches such as Pat Ivey, Assistant Athletic Director for Athletic Performance at the University of Missouri, Nathan Moe, Head Strength Coach from South Dakota State University, Scott Sinclair, Assistant Strength Coach from University of Central Florida, and Elisa Angeles, Assistant Strength Coach from University of Norte Dame. The topics we discussed ranged from our backgrounds and training philosophies, what we look for when hiring coaches, the qualities of a good employee, and how we see the field changing over the next decade. The qualities that Coach Ivey talked about when looking for a coach for his program were what he referred to as “soft skills.” These basically consisted of a candidate’s body language, self confidence, coaching motor, and how they conducted themselves in front of athletes and the fellow training staff. Coach Ivey also commented that the profession of strength and conditioning as a whole needs to be more proactive and accountable when it comes to making things better for our athletes, rather than complaining about ”the cards we’re dealt”. Coach Moe said that loyalty was one of the most important qualities he looked for when hiring an assistant, which makes sense because you need to stand behind you and show confidence in what you do, so the athletes will buy in to the program. Again, I thought this was the best part of the conference because it allowed us to connect and really speak in an unabashed manner. I just wish it could have been longer, and that we could have rotated tables to meet more coaches.
Day 2
Thursday May 8th started with a workout with the TRX reps, including the one and only Robert Dos Remedios. Dos took us through a circuit consisting of a TRX core exercise, a TRX upper body exercise, a TRX lower body plyo, kettlebell swings, and battling ropes. It was awesome, and I want to thank Coach Dos, Aaron Woods, and the rest of the TRX Suspension Training team for starting the day off right.
Thursday was the first official day of presentations. The day started with the “Dueling Strength Coaches” presentation, which included Kevin Yoxall of Auburn University and Tim Socha of Boise State University, who are both Head Strength Coaches at their respected universities, working primarily with football. Both coaches covered their in season training philosophies. For the most part, both had similar philosophies, in that they believe that training groups should be separated into a veteran group and redshirts group, which may even include first and second year guys, or players who need extra work. Veterans needed to be trained with the idea that they needed to “maintain their juice for practice and games,” in the words of Coach Socha. Veterans trained three times a week with both coaches, while the redshirt group trained between 4 and 5 days a week depending on the system. The biggest theme between the coaches was that the in season training time was intended to maintain or even improve the strength of the veterans in order to build their confidence, while it was an opportunity for the redshirts and younger players to compete in the weight room and during conditioning in lieu of participating in games. Both coaches used this time to not only increase strength and power, but to instill a sense of accountability and work ethic with their younger players, showing them what it’s going to take to make it as a collegiate football player. Both coaches implanted these values through early morning workouts, multiple workouts per week, and competitions. The main competitions took place on the same day as the football team’s game. Coach Socha even talked about how he gives the entire redshirt class an identity by giving them a name, with this year’s class being “The Blacksmiths,” and that at the end of the year he gives out awards based on how they performed over the course of the season.
Some of the insights Coach Yoxall provided were how he adjusted training percentages based off the energy level of the players at practice rather than having training intensities set in stone. Also, Coach Yoxall talked about how the veterans get wrapped up in what the redshirts are doing during their competitions, even asking Coach Yoxall how hard the redshirts are training during their “game days.” Finally, Coach Yoxall talked about his desire for injured players to be in the weight room working even harder than the healthy players on what they can do, without aggravating their existing injuries, in order to maintain their connection to the team.
Some of Coach Socha’s insights included giving his players more variety in training on Sunday, allowing the veterans choices for the different exercise categories depending on how they felt. He also starts to vary the workouts later in the season depending on whether the athlete is a lineman or a skill position player, allowing the skill players to do more pause squats with light weight to spare their legs, while the linemen may perform cluster sets to maintain intensity and volume. Coach Socha also stated that he uses the first three weeks of in season training to teach the redshirts the fundamentals of the lifts rather than loading them too early. Overall, this presentation was excellent, and it was great to see how two successful football strength coaches run their respective programs.
The next presentation was by the Sports Dietician Jackie Berning, which covered pre, during, and post exercise nutrition for sports performance. While the information was not ground breaking, the presentation was extremely informative and really provided some insight into the nutritional habits of today’s athletes. Some of the numbers Jackie shared with us were staggering: 30% of athletes skip breakfast, 25% skip lunch, 86% eat fast food each week, and 82% of male track, basketball and football players surveyed couldn’t identify the fuel their body used for a workout. The information on fluid was also extremely helpful, because it put exact numbers on what is necessary to stay hydrated. In order to be sufficiently hydrated, athletes should consume 5-7 ml / kg of body weight (12-20 ounces) 4 hours before their competition, and again 2 to 3 hours prior. If consuming a sports drink, Jackie recommended that the carbohydrate should be between 6 and 8% of the total volume, and the sodium should be between 460-900 mg / L, which ended up being about 15 g of carbs and 110-165 mg of sodium per 8 ounce serving. Jackie emphasized that these types of sports drinks are integral for athletes who skip their pre exercise meal, have low carbohydrate diets, are involved in tournament play, or have 2 to 3 consecutive practices. Also, athletes need to consume three cups of fluid for every pound they lose. She also mentioned a nutritional study (I would site it, but no PowerPoint was provided) in which there were two groups: one was fed intermittently throughout the day (experimental), and the other consumed what can be referred to as the typical collegiate athlete diet, in which the calories are back loaded in the evening rather than spread throughout the day (control). The study found that those who consumed more calories at the end of the day had a higher percentage of body fat without gaining weight than the group who consumed their calories intermittently over the day over a 12 week period. This was due to the fact that the control group spent more of their day in a negative energy balance and was unable to metabolize the calories they took in at night, therefore effectively storing them as fat. Again, most of this information was common sense if you had somewhat of a nutrition background, but it was good to reiterate to our athletes the importance of staying hydrated, eating breakfast, and spreading calories throughout the day.
The next presentation in the afternoon was by world renowned speed coach Tom Shaw, which covered linear speed development. Shaw has worked with numerous NFL first round picks, the last 8 number one draft picks, and the last 9 Super Bowl MVP’s, so his resume is impressive to say the least. Coach Shaw spoke about how speed comes down to two simple things: stride length and stride frequency. Two players that Shaw coached, Calvin Johnson and Chris Johnson, completed their 40 yards dashes in 17 and 19 steps and ran a 4.36 and a 4.24, respectively. Stride length is extremely difficult to teach according to Shaw, but if you can increase stride length by only two inches each step, it would lead to about a .2 decrease in the time of a 40 yard dash. However, over striding in order to increase stride length taxes the weakest muscle in the upper thigh, the hamstring, and can lead to chronic strains and tears. Coach Shaw believes that adding resistance and assistance runs are the most effective ways to increase stride length.
In terms of upper body mechanics, Coach Shaw didn’t care about hand position as long as the hand stayed relaxed. The arm swing does not cross the imaginary center line of the body, and the hand must swing from behind the hip to over the shoulder. One misconception that Shaw talked about was the importance of the start when running the 40 yard dash. He felt that people over valued the start, and didn’t spend enough time on the 20 to 40 yard phase. He also talked about counting the steps during the first 20 yards of a 40 yard dash. He counts the strides of one leg over 20 yards, and he said that if you were not past 20 yards by the 6th step (12th total step), then you are basically running in place. You can really see that he is a knowledgeable guy, and that he has a passion for helping his athletes get better.
The next presentation was by Johnny Parker, who is a legend in the field of Strength and Conditioning. He has worked with numerous teams, including the New York Giants, San Francisco 49ers, and New England Patriots. The title of his presentation was “Lessons Learned,” and he definitely had a great deal to share. Some of the highlights:
One of his biggest mentors, Bill Parcels, taught him that he needed to go home every day and think about what he did, how he could do it better, and think about the team and how to build them up or get on them.
Coach Bobby Knight, when he worked at Indiana University, taught him that if there’s a way to win, you have to find it, and there isn’t such a thing as try, there’s just do.
Some great quotes:
“You can lift light weights and beat the bad teams wrong, but when you lift heavy and play the good teams, you gotta do it right, all the time.”
“Don’t tell me you tried hard because that’s what you’re supposed to do. You either do it, or you don’t.”
“It doesn’t matter what you did or what you know, there’s always someone younger and hungrier.”
“Greatness is in all of us.”
Coach Parker was a tremendous human being with a huge heart and it definitely came out in his presentation.
The last presentation I attended Thursday was by Dr. Mike Stone, which talked about periodization and programming for strength and power sports. Dr. Stone has authored numerous journal articles, chapters in several texts, and two books in the field of Strength and Conditioning. While there were numerous points that Dr. Stone touched on during his presentation, I will only touch on a few of them. One great point that Dr. Stone made was to make sure we have a plan in place to determine whether athletes are adapting as expected based on our program design, in order to have proof that what you are doing is working. I think this is often times an overlooked aspect of training. As coaches, we must understand the goals we are trying to reach and make sure our athletes are taking steps towards accomplishing these goals or standards, or our training will be random and ineffective. Dr. Stone spoke on how freshmen or newcomers to lifting must be taught how to make a max effort, and just as Coach Parker talked about, there is a huge difference between trying and doing. Dr. Stone did not encourage us to teach our athletes to shy away from intensity and effort; he in fact encouraged it being instilled in the athletes as early as possible, because small increases in effort lead to big increases in performance. Another point of his lecture was that rapid gains in performance are not always in the best interest of our athletes because our performance gains might not be as substantial or long lasting than if the time period of exposure to training and intensity level occurred over a longer period of time. And these rapid gains could lead to accumulated fatigue, which not only would mask performance gains, but could lead to microtrauma and overuse injuries. This is an excellent point for coaches who want to make huge gains over the course of a quarter or semester before athletes leave for summer training on their own. We could actually be doing more harm than good, and be taking away their ability to make continued progress over the course of their break.
Dr. Stone also spoke about the misconception of “linear periodization”, and that periodization is more than changing sets and reps, but that it is a conceptual process in which we look to minimize fatigue and maximize training adaptations while elevating the performance of the athlete at an appropriate time. Stone then went into the evolution of periodization into concepts such as the Conjugated Successive System, Phase Potentiation, and Block Periodization, explaining how Phase Potentiation (a concept developed by Stone and colleagues in the 1980’s) can help the athlete experience superior results by emphasizing the development of specific physiological characteristics (strength-endurance, strength, speed, etc.) through a series of concentrated loads rather than training multiple performance variables simultaneously. This concept would need an entire article in order to truly do it justice. I was truly amazed by the amount of knowledge Dr. Stone possessed. He is one of those “I’ve forgotten more than you know” individuals, and listening to him is like reading Supertraining: you need to hear him probably a dozen more times just to pick up all the information you missed the first 11 sessions.
Day 3
Friday May 9th began for me at Coach Ethan Reeve and Tom Cross’ presentation on Olympic lifting. I really enjoyed the athletic philosophy of Coach Reeve. It was basically three things: if you can’t move, you can’t help us; great athletes make things look easy; and take athletes through a variety of movements until they make them look easy. He is big on coaching, and didn’t feel that the Olympic lifts should be discarded from a program because they are difficult to teach and take time. He felt the benefits of the lifts outweighed the effort and time it takes to teach them. Coach Cross then talked about some of the intricacies of the Olympic lifts. He called the Olympic lifts a process rather than an event because of the many steps involved in perfecting them. He also pointed out something that I have been guilty of preaching, which is that the extension phase of the lifts are less about raising up on the toes, and more about driving through the heels and popping the hips. He said that the action of ankle extension was less about a calf raise and more about going from the heels to the balls of the feet “without the rest of the foot knowing.” A couple great cues he used were taking an “attitude grip” when gripping the bar for a lift, and to “flipping the shirt” to give tactile feedback as to where the bar should be as it elevates. He used a drill where he placed a dowel rod on the outside of the bar when it was on the floor, and had the athletes keep the bar from touching the dowel rod as they lifted it off the floor, making them focus on keeping the bar closer to their axis of rotation and forcing them to extend their knees through the first pull. I thought it was a simple training tool that will yield big results in my coaching of the Olympic lifts. He also isn’t a fan of going from a power position to a strength position in the catch, because he believed that the feet under the hips position is more athletic and that jumping the feet out can lead to pressure on the knees. He then proceeded to ask me, “son, how long do you want your knees healthy for?” To which I answered, “forever,” which, apparently was right. Coach Cross is also a huge fan of using the kettlebell swing to reinforce the hip action needed for the Olympic lifts. Again, just like the rest of the conference, here were two great speakers letting you in on some little things that they do to make what you do better.
Luckily it ended a little early and I was able to catch the entire presentation by David Deets of the University of Missouri titled “The Fastest 40 Minutes in Basketball.” This was great because my main sports are Men and Women’s basketball at Eastern Washington. Coach Deets works with the Men’s basketball team, and as seen by their recent successes, is doing a phenomenal job. Coach Deets made some great points about what our job is as Strength and Conditioning professionals. We have to create a safe and enthusiastic environment for our athletes, be great teachers and educators, sell our program and make the athletes think that what they’re doing is the best there is, and constantly find ways to improve what we are doing. His keys to building a better basketball athlete were all based off dedication to sound training principles, which included a thorough screening process, correctional exercises, and injury preventative training, as well as improving the qualities mental toughness and confidence, which I think is under stressed in Strength and Conditioning training. He also spoke on how you must have an understanding of your team’s style of play, the needs of your individual athletes and the team as a whole, as well as the philosophy and goals of the coaches in order to design an effective training program.
Coach Deets uses a great evaluation tool called the Performance Grade Achievement (PGA) Paradigm, which is a four point scale to assign a score to the athlete based on their performance in 14 different areas, including basics like bench and squat, but also some specific power, speed, and agility tests specifically from the NBA combine. The scores are displayed in the weight room to allow the other players to see their progress and where they need to improve individually and as a team. One thing that Coach Deets did that I really liked was team competitions. Within the competitions, they had a daily champion and a weekly champion based off their performances. One competition that they did consisted of three basic exercises; curls, dips, and pull-ups, and who can get the most total reps in a specific time. He had a championship belt that the winner would get that they would get to carry in to the weight room on the day of the competition, and they would get their name announced as they entered the room. I think little things like this add variety and competitiveness to monotonous training and can keep our athletes interested in the boring things (corrective exercises) that they have to do every day. Coach Deets also employs an “overtime” element to some of his training sessions, which occurs at the end of several training sessions per week (depending on the stage of training), which basically is another chance for the athletes to compete. He described using the Vertimax to perform jumps, pushups, and core work continuously throughout the overtime period. Again, a great concept to keep training fresh and your athletes motivated to compete.
Some things Coach Deets talked about that I truly agree with: conditioning should be more specific on developing speed, agility, reactivity, and quality athletic movement rather than grinding an athlete with multiple track runs and gassers. Coach Deets did not employ any long distance track running with his basketball kids, and I definitely respect that decision. He also begins every exercise session with specific correctional exercises that are determined based off his own movement screen prior to training. It was pretty obvious to see why Coach Deets has been so successful up to this point, and I expect big things from the Missouri Tigers in the upcoming season.
It was truly an amazing opportunity to attend the CSCCa conference. From the coaches I met and connected with, to the informative presentations I had the pleasure of hearing, the conference was a tremendous success. I can’t wait to attend next year’s event in Kansas City and highly encourage anyone who has not attended a conference to try and make it next year.
