Emphasize Individual Pathways to Sport Expertise

Research on expertise, talent identification and development has tended to be mono-disciplinary, typically adopting genocentric or environmentalist positions, with an overriding focus on operational issues. In this paper, the validity of dualist positions on sport expertise is evaluated. It is argued that, to advance understanding of expertise and talent development, a shift towards a multidisciplinary and integrative science focus is necessary, along with the development of a comprehensive multidisciplinary theoretical rationale. Here we elucidate dynamical systems theory as a multidisciplinary theoretical rationale for capturing how multiple interacting constraints can shape the development of expert performers. This approach suggests that talent development programmes should eschew the notion of common optimal performance models, emphasize the individual nature of pathways to expertise, and identify the range of interacting constraints that impinge on performance potential of individual athletes, rather than evaluating current performance on physical tests referenced to group norms.

Did you grab the essence of that abstract? I'll wait while you read it once more and let everything sink in...

Fascinating. Often in team sport the coaches and, thus, the athletes become focused on everyone on the team achieving the same physical performance norms. For example: everyone on a soccer team must achieve or exceed 11-minutes on the Beep Test, every front row player on a women's volleyball team must touch at least 10'0", or every 100m sprinter must perform at least 75 continuous push-ups.

But what if EVERY athlete simply can not achieve these norms? As a coach, what is the message you send? Is it one of insistence upon achieving the norm at the detriment to development of more important skill sets? Or to the detriment of continuing to develop a well-rounded athlete that in the long-run may, in fact, exceed these norms?

The message in this abstract ("Expert performance in sport and the dynamics of talent development."

Sports Medicine

2010.) is the same message we send to parents, athletes, and coaches alike at SAPT. We constantly emphasize individual successes and performance over and above any comparative norms. And this is the ROOT of why we provide unique and individual programming for every single one of our clients. Why would you train exactly like someone else? You're unique, right? I know I am. My strengths are different than yours. And my weaknesses will be just as unique to me.

Do yourself or your kid a favor when looking for performance training options (be it physical preparation, technical skill development, or mental performance) and seek out the sources that provide an individually focused approach. Yes, it will cost a few dollars more than, say, an enormous "speed camp" cattle call, but in the end it will be well worth it to foster true performance development in your athlete.

Strength Training In-Season & Cirque Video

For most of our readers this is a "preaching to the choir" study I found: "Effects of complex training on explosive strength in adolescent male basketball players." But, I thought it was worth posting for those few of our readers who may not be fully sold on in-season training:

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of a complex training program, a combined practice of weighttraining and plyometrics, on explosive strength development of young basketball players. Twenty-five young male athletes, aged 14-15 years old, were assessed using squat jump (SJ), countermovement jump (CMJ), Abalakov test (ABA), depth jump (DJ), mechanical power (MP), and medicine ball throw (MBT), before and after a 10-week in-season training program. Both the control group (CG; n = 10) and the experimental group (EG; n = 15) kept up their regular sports practice; additionally, the EG performed 2 sessions per week of a complex training program. The EG significantly improved in the SJ, CMJ, ABA, and MBT values (p < 0.05). The CG significantly decreased the values (p < 0.05) of CMJ, ABA, and MP, while significantly increasing the MBT values (p < 0.05). Our results support the use of complex training to improve the upper and lower body explosivity levels in young basketball players. In conclusion, this study showed that more strength conditioning is needed during the sport practice season. Furthermore, we also conclude that complex training is a useful working tool for coaches, innovative in this strength-training domain, equally contributing to a better time-efficient training.

As a college strength and conditioning coach and the owner of SAPT, I've seen countless times how important strength training is for athletes to remain strong, fast, and free of injury during the practice and in-season time frame. I always get a chuckle out of athletes (or their parents) who only "need" 4-6 weeks of preparation before their respective tryouts begin.

Check out this nonsense someone sent to me (and by nonsense, I mean this is absolutely so amazing that it is ridiculous):

Lastly, Ryan and I are expecting a new bambino or bambina at the end of May! Have you ever heard the term "Irish twins?" I hadn't... apparently, it refers to siblings born in close succession. It originated in the 1800's and was a derogatory term used to describe the reproductive tendencies of Irish immigrants. Someone suggested yesterday I will have Irish twins with baby #2. Technically, I think they would need to be born closer to 12 months apart... our kids will be 23 months apart, thank you very much.

30 Things I Want to Share

I started this post back in September when I noticed that I was exactly 30 years and 30 weeks old, thus, the 30 points I want to share. I hope you enjoy this one... going back and rereading what I had written, I realized this post was better than I originally gave it credit for. Lots of things I've learned about training, coaching, and life throughout!

• I’ve discovered that with every moment older I get, the less and less interested in material objects I become. I guess this is how real adults are able to buy things like vacation homes and afford retirement.
• Weight training does not make women gain weight, unless they are eating like they want to gain weight.

• Considering the cost of gas consumption when purchasing a car is one of the greatest financial lessons my parents ever taught me. It is also the reason why we own a Prius.
• Imposing a strict tempo is probably the most important change I’ve made in my programming over the last 4 years. Prior to that I really had very little appreciation for how powerful training the eccentric and isometric portions of every movement can be.
• Knowing you can provide well for you children is hugely satisfying.

• I frequently feel that only a handful of trainers/coaches in the world actually know how to teach a squat correctly.
• A professor I had in undergrad once told me "a Bachelor’s degree simply shows you have the ability to commit to something and finish it over a long period of time. The people at your first job will still have to teach you what you really need to know." It’s all about experience.
• Certifications mean very little. It’s, again, all about experience.
• Everyone who lives in and around DC should check out the National Arboretum. It’s a beautiful and relaxing place to unwind.
• I recently read a running book that did a much greater job explaining the importance of working at your current pacing level (i.e. % of 1RM for weights) than any weight-training book I’ve ever read. The book is Daniel’s Running Formula.
• Every trained female should be able to perform at least 3 pull-ups. I used to make excuses for myself about why I would never be able to do them… then I smartened up and figured out a great pull-up progression (see #9). After a bit of time, I found myself doing sets of 10 dead-hang pull-ups.
• Mel Siff’s Supertraining is still the most comprehensive book about anything ever written. My mind is blown every time I crack that book open. How someone produces a work like that is beyond my understanding.
• You can tell a great deal about how parents raise their children by how their kids act in the face of a challenge.
• “If you want to be fast, you have to move fast.” This is referring to bar speed in the weight room.
• “You will pass out before you die.” Another great weight room quote from a mentor of mine.
• If you’re unsure about set/rep schemes as they relate to percentage of 1RM. You MUST read Tim Kontos’ article on Prilepin’s Chart. I continue to reference this when I need solid guidance on final decisions in volume and intensity.
• Working to become less egocentric is an important endeavor to improve overall satisfaction with your life. For example, women who avoid the free weight area of a gym because “all the guys stare at me.” No they don’t. Get over yourself.
• Coaches (strength or sport) who become frustrated at athletes easily are not well equipped to be teaching in the first place. We’re teaching more than how to set a screen or do a pushup, we’re teaching life skills.

• Not having spent any time around babies before having one, I never really knew what the big-deal was… I get it now!
• Everyone should consider wearing shoes that have a zero drop or a very low drop. I don’t like the term “barefoot” shoes because you’re not barefoot. You still have shoes on they just don’t have any elevation change from heel to toe.
• You will be better off if you make an effort to go to sleep and wake up at around the same time every day (yes, weekend days are still days, so they count towards this).
• You don’t have to yell at athletes and put on a big show to get them motivated to perform. Just treat them calmly and with respect. Get excited when appropriate.

• Television is such a massive waste of time.
• Work on soft-tissue quality regularly.

• I fully believe in the idea and pursuit of the American Dream.

What is Your Secret?

Many of you may be familiar with Ross, who, I personally believe, is the only human being alive who seems to possess outstanding development of all three of his energy systems. I mean, how many people do you know that can - on any given day of the week, mind you - perform a true 1-arm pullup, deadlift over 550lbs, do 1-arm standing rollouts (with a weight vest), jump rope like he's in fast forward, and slay dragons? Below are two awesome clips that many of you have probably already seen, but I post them for those that haven't (or for those that can't get enough of this stuff):

'Nuff said.

He has accomplished what many people strive for in multiple sectors (strength, endurance, body composition, etc.). And he has done this primarily by training with minimal equipment either in his home garage or outside.

One of the things I like most about Ross is he has a great way of boiling complex topics down and communicating them in a way that makes it easy for his followers to understand. Not too long ago, I was reading some of the forums on his site, and someone asked him,

"Ross, what did you do to accomplish what you did?"

They were, of course, referring to some particular piece of equipment, or maybe a secret training methodology they hadn't heard of/tried before. The point is, they wanted to know what his "secret" was.

Ross responded with a simple yet profound piece of training advice:

Years and years of hard work.

That was it. That was all he said. I chuckled to myself at my desk, as I knew the person asking the question may have been slightly miffed and probably felt like Ross was short-changing him by not giving him a complete answer. The reality was that couldn't have been further from the truth; Ross was giving the young person probably the best thing he/she could have heard.

This got me thinking about how important the virtue of patience really is. There are countless athletes that will never see their full potential come to fruition because of impatience. Or someone whose goals lie strictly in the aesthetic realm may never succeed because it's always an "I want it now" approach.

Leo Tolstoy, the famous author of War and Peace, wrote in that very novel:

"The two most powerful warriors are patience and time."

So true. And, carrying that quote over to the exercise science realm: a program written by an expert coach who perfectly manipulates intensity, frequency, exercise selection, and volume, will do nothing for someone who lacks patience. Impatience will dissolve any potential positive outcome that could be attained by intelligent program design.

Athletes and non-athletes alike will never get to where they want to be unless they're willing to fight tooth and nail, every single day, for years and years on end. If a client/athlete approaches me and is too impatient to be willing to progress through one step at a time, then I honestly can't really help them. I can't be the coach they need to take them from Point A to Point B unless they can actually understand that there is no magic pill.

I receive countless questions on a monthly basis through email, Facebook, and in-person meetings on "how can I lose this weight" or "how can I increase my vertical ten inches over the next month" or, my favorite, the good ol' "what is the best exercise I can do to make my pecs bigger?"

I've honestly boiled down my answer to:

"Eat whole, unprocessed foods. Pick up heavy things. Repeat this for years on end."

Sometimes this irritates people, but it's the truth. In fact, it makes training all the more enjoyable when you're expectations are realistic.

That's all for now...I don't think I really have a closing point, but I hope Ross's lesson to the young padawan in the beginning hits home for some of you. Years and years of hard work....well, let's all keep goin' then.

Understanding the Competing Demands of Your Athletes

I'll never forget my first major lesson in programming for athletes. I had been writing training plans for the athletes and general fitness clientele at SAPT for a couple months at this point, when Chris told me to write the next wave for one of our baseball guys. Now, this particular high school senior definitely fell to the right of the athletic bell curve: he was on scholarship to play baseball for a SEC Division I university (which he is currently doing), was right on track to win the region in wrestling (which he did), and carried a general sense of "I'm gonna make you crap the back of your pants if you get in my way" about him when he pushed the prowler.

This being the case, my first thought when Chris told me to write his next wave was, "Sweet! I'm gonna get to have a lot of fun with this guy." I eagerly sat down at my computer, cup of coffee in my left hand, while my right hand performed arts of wizardry (that would be, using the mouse to spray excellence all over the programming template).

For his first lower body day, I gave him some loaded jump squats and med ball work, followed up by multiple sets of heavy squats, then some speed deadlifts, followed by some high volume unilateral work and core stability exercises, with a decent chunk of hip dominant accessory work to bring up the rear. It was the perfect program. "This kid was going to grow like a weed upon finishing this 3-week wave," I intoned to myself at my desk.

Or not.

The next day, Chris and Sarah gently pulled me aside to give me a little lesson of the SAPT dojo:

"Something you need to understand is most of these kids have countless competing demands outside of the SAPT walls. In order to continue to truly develop them as athletes, you need to understand what they're facing throughout the other 23 hours of the day"

As it turns out, this high school senior I was so eager to obliterate was, at the time, throwing multiple days per week, playing at showcases on the weekends, lifting in the afternoons with his high school baseball team, AND lifting every morning during a weight training class. (Yes, you read that correctly, he actually dropped out of one of his core classes to take not one, but two, different weight training classes so he could lift every morning in the block scheduling system). Suffice to say, this guy loved being around the iron, up to the point of it nearly being disadvantageous because of all the abuse his body was receiving.

And I wanted to give him 100+ repetitions of CNS-intensive lower body movements in one single session. Right....

Now, (slightly, but only slightly) to my credit, up until I joined SAPT, the large majority of experience I had training people consisted of working with the Division 1 athletes of Virginia Tech, along with personal training a wide variety of clientele in both the Blacksburg and Northern Va areas. In both of these scenarios, the time I had with the athletes/fitness clients in the weight room was the only resistance training they were getting each day. Not to mention, the VT strength coach was handling the programming, and he was in constant communication with the coaches of the teams we were working with (so he knew what the kids were doing outside of the weight room).

In fact, that's one of the greatest differences between training athletes in the private sector (ex. a place like SAPT) and the public sector (ex. working for a Division I,II, or III university). In the private sector, you often have little control of what the athletes are doing outside your walls from a resistance training standpoint, as local coaches often demand that the players attend team lifts, conditioning sessions, and technique training (which sometimes, unfortunately, means throwing a ball until you're blue in the face).

The point of the story above is this: One of the best things you can offer those training under your watch is to not only understand what they are going through outside of your doors, but also be able to effectively program around this. While there are obviously multiple qualities that chip in to the training effect you're looking for, the body can only handle so much stress and thus you must comprehend how to aptly apply, or reduce, each stressor.

Are the athletes in performing loads of sprints and movement training work with their coaches? Reduce the lower body volume and adjust the exercises accordingly.

Are your overhead athletes in a phase where their throwing/hitting volume is ramped up? Pump the brakes a bit on their upper body training.

Is their central nervous system fried from simply doing too much, too frequently both on and off the field? Maybe they just need a light "bloodflow day" when they come to see you.

And this doesn't just apply to competitive athletes. Many times, your general fitness client may show up after completing a 10-hour work day, fighting traffic in the car for another hour, and having received only five hours of sleep the night prior because they had to take their daughter to a 4 a.m. swim practice. Their body may simply refuse to allow them to work at 90%+ of their 1RM.

The program I wrote for the aforementioned athlete may have been appropriate if he was in some sort of accumulation phase of training, his lifting at SAPT was the ONLY lifting he was receiving, and he made a point to eat and sleep as much as humanly possible while outside the gym walls. But this clearly wasn't the case, and so I had to quickly amend the remainder of his program to give him what he needed. To give him what he wasn't receiving from his high school lifting instructor and baseball coach.

Sometimes just a simple understanding what goes on outside of your doors will go a long way in allowing you to provide your people what they are paying you for with their time and money.

I'm Ready to Admit a Few Things

I wanted to give an update to my plant-based dietary efforts this week and also thought there were a couple other things on my mind worth acknowledging/admitting to. Thank goodness people tend to become wiser as they get older…

1. Plant-based diets do not make you stronger, that’s for sure. BUT, they do keep you healthy and help you maintain a healthy body-weight. I’ve been eating a plant-based diet for about 18 or 19 months now. I won’t call myself a vegan or a vegetarian as that’s not completely accurate, but I will tell you that I consume animal products (dairy, meat, poultry, pork, etc.) only about 2% of the time. Here is what I’ve learned:
   • Plant-based diets always get big criticism for their cost, well, let me tell you we spend about 35% less at the grocery store each week than we used to. When you’re not buying family packs of chicken breasts each week, plus all the other animal protein products, your grocery bill takes a nose-dive. We used to spend around $100/week on groceries and now we average between $50-70/week.
   • I eat copious amounts of carbohydrates and maintain a lower body weight than I have in about 10 years. Read into the details there however you want, but I have zero cravings as compared to the way I used to eat (high protein, moderate fat, low/moderate carbohydrate).
   • I’m reducing my risk of a variety of diseases – cancer being the most notable. Cancer risk has been (via credible research) linked to the consumption of animal products, especially dairy. The cancer reason is 100% why I started this endeavor in the first place as cancer has left its mark on my family.
   • You can also reduce your risk of a variety of diseases by eating lots of plants and lean meats.
   • Here’s the biggie: MY STRENGTH LEVELS ARE NOTABLY LOWER than they were before I embraced this dietary lifestyle. Initially, I thought this was a pregnancy by-product issue, but Arabella is now 16-months old, so clearly, that’s no longer the problem. Don’t get me wrong, I haven’t morphed into a weakling, I am usually the strongest female in any room (unless Kelsey is around…), just not by such a large margin anymore! Honestly, I’m not surprised I haven’t been able to gain strength, but I am shocked I haven't been able to come close to achieving pre-pregnancy strength levels.

     

2. Speed squats and/or speed deadlifts triumph over Olympic lifts each and every day of the week in terms of the MOST efficient way to improve explosiveness and strength (I feel like I preach this at least once a week). But, if you consider yourself a strength coach, you better have an excellent knowledge base about how to implement all aspects of strength-speed training – and this includes the Olympic lifts.
3. In the past (thankfully, this is years in the past) I may have been overheard saying something to the effect of “I don’t get it why parents always use their kids as an excuse for not getting to workout. Just commit the time.” And I guarantee whatever variation of this statement I actually used would have been laced with some pretty heavy cynicism. But, I will now admit – as a parent myself – that fitting training into the details of every day is quite a challenge. But, I often remind myself that while I'm training for a lot of personal goals, I'm also training to set an example for my daughter. I want her to see that training is an essential and healthy part of being a responsible adult and something I want her to learn to embrace over time. So, if you’re a parent who fits training into their daily or weekly routine, give yourself a pat on the back!