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 10^th 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.