Program Design: College vs. Pro

One of the toughest things to do as a strength coach is balancing the in-season training loads of the athletes with your set of priorities; what you need to get done with your athletes including gaining performance, or just keeping them healthy. 

Understanding all of the competing demands the athletes you work with are under can be complicated, so I wanted to talk about how I’ve attempted balance them. When I’m working with college teams or private clients, I am always very systemized, I like to have a plan written out for them way ahead of time. For my college teams, I eventually got in the habit of writing out a full semester of workouts and progressions at the start of the semester. The trouble with that is things happen that are outside of your control. Missed training sessions or injuries, or something else unforeseen. 

I frequently ran into issues in the college sector where I would finish explaining a training session and there would be five athletes waiting to tell me they were hurt and needed to adjust the workout. This would happen for all of the eight or nine teams I worked with and added up to a lot of on-the-fly adjustments that I had to make.

Typically, the plans I write are very detailed, writing out the actual details of sets, reps, intensities, and exercise selection for the timeframe of the training wave or series of waves. At the college level they would typically be written for 3- to 4-week blocks. 

These blocks are really nice and clean, leading to progress that is precise and predictable. But, I have found that doesn't work everywhere. 

At the professional level the speed of communication is much faster. I no longer have to wait to hear a possible miscommunication about injuries from athletes or coaches. I hear directly from a medical professional, and I hear quickly. So I've needed to develop into someone who can be okay with planning workouts on a day-by-day basis if that's needed. With the amount of nicks and dings these athletes compete with, this seems to be the best approach. 

A rigid planner at heart, that was a tough pill to swallow, and unfortunately, I have not yet found a way that I can implement the planning process I used to use in its entirety. 

What it’s evolved to is setting my goals at the beginning of the season, and working with each athlete to determine what their top priorities are. After these goals and priorities are set, they are the framework that I follow to plan on a day-to-day basis. These goals are what drive the focus of what we do.  If the goal is better fitness and better conditioning, then that's what I’m focused on when I'm planning workouts. Whenever I consider adding something to the program the question I ask myself is always: “Is this something that comes directly back to supporting enhanced conditioning and enhanced fitness (or other set priority)?” 

If I was still in the college setting, I wouldn’t be able to work this way, it would just be too time consuming. However, I do like the individuality that it gives all of the athletes.

This new planning structure makes me still feel like we are working towards that one primary goal, even if I cannot plan nearly as far ahead. I do go back and review past weeks to make sure that when we do have the opportunity to repeat a lift, we are progressing in some way, whether that be volume or intensity, whatever is appropriate. 

I’m pleased with this approach, it makes me feel that I can move fast enough to meet the needs of the players. When I had a firm and structured plan, I was not able to do that and felt I was not adjusting quickly enough. 

So, take a look at the population you work with, and see what the best way is to plan for your athlete’s goals. This “best way” will give you room to make decisions on the fly without jeopardizing long term goals, effectively balancing the training demands of your athletes.

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Breathing Basics: Switching Sympathetic to Parasympathetic

Breathing drills have become an important foundation to each and everyone of my training sessions and it is something that, while complex on the surface, can be implemented in very simple ways that come with huge payoff.

If you want to get a primer in breathing drills, please check out my post from a few years back to get a foundational understanding of WHY they can be an important part of any training session: BREATHING DRILLS

In the past, I really only used one breathing drill per session, today it is up to a minimum of three. I like using a 3-drill circuit as the first thing the athlete does in their session for dual purpose of reaching the autonomic nervous system and targeting the respiratory muscles for warm-up purposes.

When using these drills in this way, paying attention to the way the athlete is breathing is very important. In this case the correct way would be to get as much air in as you can through your nose, hold it for a moment, and then exhale through the mouth. 

Perhaps this runner could benefit from a pre-session breathing circuit to help optimize airflow and prevent excessive exhaustion?

Outside of this there are body positions that are more optimal to do this in than others, however this may be more useful when we are trying to reset positions than anything else. In truth, it really does not matter the position in which you are breathing, the most important thing is that we are breathing deeply. 

The main goal of this type of breathing drill is to take us or our athletes from a sympathetic to a parasympathetic state. This would mean switching your brain away from the daily stresses that all people deal with (from their boss, family, relationships, etc.) to focusing on the practice/training session in which they are about to engage. It helps the mind separate from the noise that doesn't help while you’re training, practicing, or competing. 

The other purpose that the breathing serves is to get the airflow to go through the body in a way that is extremely helpful for learning how to properly brace and support the spine. This is a safety enhancement, first and foremost, and a performance enhancement second. We want the body to be able to brace against and resist force, while we also want it to be able to produce force. Both of these are optimized with proper breathing. 

Bracing and resisting against forces protects us from injury, while producing force is what aids our performance. Breathing drills are the easiest way to start to teach an athlete’s body how to do those things. The key is making sure that the airflow is going deep down into your belly and expanding into your lower back and into the sides of your waist. 

With this style of breathing we are also activating all of the important muscles in the trunk that are involved in bracing. Activating these muscles help realign the bony structures in our body to aid in stability and bracing.  For example, many people tend to have an anterior pelvic tilt. If you think about your hips as a bucket of water, if you dip it forward, that would be an anterior pelvic tilt, and the water is now spilling out a little bit. Breathing drills help us pull those hips back into neutral and teach the muscles what that feels like to be neutral and braced in that position. Another good example of this would be rib position. 

Another common positional fault would be an overextended position in the ribs, which carries over to both injury risk and performance. This is another common postural fault that increases injury risk and can decrease performance just through an ineffective improper rib position. If someone is standing and they seem to be sticking their chest out, they are probably overextended. They're not just standing straight up, they're going beyond that. The telltale sign for this is we see the ribs sticking out. There are simple breathing drills that work to tuck those ribs back in and teach them where they should be. We need to get them to have a closer relationship with the diaphragm, which is extremely important from a positional standpoint. 

Nothing fancy here. Just deep breaths.

We went pretty into the weeds here but the most important thing to take away is if you come into the gym a little stressed out, just take some time and do a breathing drill. For example, eight deep breaths as a minimum. You can do those seated, close your eyes or don't close them, just make sure that air goes in through your nose and out through your mouth, traveling deep deep down into your belly. Doing this alone will really help you feel more calm and ready to get into your training session or whatever it is that you're trying to transition into.

Since you’re here: We have a small favor to ask! At SAPT, we are committed to sharing quality information that is both entertaining and compelling to help build better athletes. Please take a moment to share the articles on social media, engage us authors with questions and comments below, and link to articles when appropriate if you have a blog or participate on forums of related topics.

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Feeding the Family: Clean Plate Club

I don't know about anybody reading this, but when I was growing up, the big thing that my parents always said was that you wanted to try and finish all the food on your plate at any meal. My mom made a game out of it, and called it the Clean Plate Club. It was a celebration if I ate everything on my plate. In my house it was not something that was strictly enforced, but rather something to be attempted at every meal and celebrated when it was achieved. This helped me have a positive association with eating everything on my plate (and not thinking twice about having seconds!). 

But I know in other homes, it would be typical to take it to a bit of a different level, where children are told they have to sit at the dinner table until they eat everything on their plate. This method doesn’t necessarily create a positive association, but it does effectively make the children grow up into adults who feel a sense of guilt for not eating all the food they’ve ordered or made at home.

Okay, so what’s my point here? Well, BOTH situations are examples of us teaching our children to ignore their hunger and satiety cues in favor of not wasting food. This could result in a lifetime of slight overeating that will add up to unwanted weight gain at some point in their lives.

So, I want to talk about this concept for parents, because I believe it is really up to the parents to make important dietary decisions for their children in the early years (say, the first 10 or so). Up to a certain point, parents are the ones that introduce different types of foods to their children. If you introduce them early on to a lot of processed foods, that are quite frankly delicious, then it's pretty tough to dig yourself out of that hole to get them to eat vegetables and other unprocessed foods. 

How parents talk about and influence the eating of their children is very important.

Another thing to keep in mind is that children are born really knowing exactly how much they should eat on any given day. This is why their appetites can fluctuate pretty dramatically day to day and is impacted by several factors such as their activity level, if they are getting sick, or if they are about to grow. The activity level of the day before can affect the appetite of the next day, with a high activity day prior making the kids want to eat more, and the kids wanting to eat less after a low activity day. As parents, we need to be mindful of what factors could be driving appetite and be attentive to what they need (or don’t). 

Of course as any seasoned parent knows, at the dinner table, there’s a balance that needs to be struck between appetite fluctuations and just pickiness. I know my kids are extremely picky, so what may look like a lack of appetite may just be them being picky. The key is to keep up the positive association with eating, but also with respecting their actual appetites that day. Avoid forcing them to continue eating when they are not and definitely avoid any kind of shaming or guilt if your child is wanting more food - they’re growing! It’s something to celebrate!

Many times at the dinner table there is a little bit of negotiation that has to go on as well. I know a lot of parents out there know what I am talking about. If we have something really delicious with our meal, like applesauce for my kids, that’s all they will want to eat and will ask for more apple sauce. You have to be careful in those situations. While applesauce is a fine choice, I want them to eat some of their salad or some of the hamburger, too. So we say “Okay, but first you need to take two bites of the other things on your plate. If you do that, and you're still hungry, then yes, you can have some more applesauce.” This way they'll get through some of the other food. The point is that we aren’t sitting there making them eat everything on their plate, we are noticing that they are still hungry and trying to get them to eat a little more balanced. That's where I try to be flexible and help them understand that they don’t have to have it all, but they do have to try everything. 

I would just suggest thinking about how your family talks about eating at the dinner table, and just investigate that a bit. I think many people eat with the idea that food is expensive, we don’t want to waste it! They also think: “I have a little bit more room before I’m stuffed, I can finish that.” And I agree, the last thing we want to do is be wasting food. But, this approach leads to excess calories being eaten, that many people don’t intend to eat or need.

We never want to waste food, so just be willing to pack up the leftovers for another day and consider putting smaller portions on your child’s plates. How eating is approached from childhood can really influence how a person eats when they are adults. The goal is for a positive association between food, but with respect to hunger and satiety cues. This will build children into adults who are better prepared for navigating our world of delicious, but nutritionally devoid convenience foods.

Is Muscle Activation a Myth?

Around ten years ago this idea became popular that you must activate muscles prior to starting an activity, especially muscles that would be considered weak. In the last couple of years however, it’s come out that this isn’t really true. Muscles are either strong or they aren’t, there’s really no benefit to “turning muscles on” when they are still weak afterwards. A common example that I have heard almost endlessly would be: your glutes aren’t working, we need to “activate” them. And the next step would be to do some glute bridges or band resisted side-steps to, theoretically, turn on that muscle group.

The goal of this blog post is to talk about this idea of warming-up the body vs activating muscles vs strengthening muscles, and how I approach this today. 

Ten years ago, muscle activation was a cutting edge practice, so I adopted it as well because the information presented at the time made sense to me. Again, and especially at the time, the most common muscle group that seemingly always needed to be activated would be the glutes, with trainers and strength coaches and personal trainers alike all saying they need to be “turned on” to protect against knee injury. 

At that time we would do lots activation drills in our dynamic warmup, which is one of the things I’ve changed my mind on a bit. I don't at all believe that we are mitigating injury risk in that moment by “activating” the glutes. The muscles are just weak, and it will take time to build the strength in those muscles to actually reduce the risk for injury. 

It’s a lot easier to say that someone got hurt because they didn’t “activate” their glutes, instead of telling the truth and saying the athlete is just weak in that area. The real solution is to continue to lift weights and get stronger. That's not the solution that people want to hear, because it's not a quick fix. Long term solutions are not nearly as popular as short term ones, but you have to actually get into a long term strength training program to get permanently stronger to have the best chance of staying injury free. 

However, I'm not sure you would see a massive difference in my written warm-ups between then and now. That's what's interesting about this. The thing that has changed is the mental side, or what I'm actually saying to my players. Instead of saying we are “activating” muscles, I say that we are just getting extra reps to warm-up. I will put in glute bridges of all kinds and add in monster walks to every pre-practice warm-up. But not because I’m activating a muscle, but because these are things that make the players feel good, and they are helping strengthen those muscles. It's the extra reps that are slowly playing their part in strengthening the hips. During the season when I’m trying to strike the best possible minimum effective dose (i.e., we don’t do one rep more than needed) and a frequent game schedule, this may be the only way we are able to train these muscles, as big lifts are few and far between in-season.

For me, everything always comes back to strength. Muscles don’t need to be “activated”, they need to be strengthened. A funny thing I’ve seen over the years is that when younger coaches look at “old school” training programs prioritizing squatting, deadlifting, and lunging, they are surprised at how simple they are. They think this can’t be everything, am I missing a page? 

But there's not, it just always comes back to the fundamentals. Strength is the base and that’s what I prioritize. I’m always looking for new things to add in to help build that base of strength, but the longer I do this the more I realize that it’s about getting stronger in very basic fundamental exercises. Athlete longevity and success, I firmly believe, is about being strong and having great technique.

This whole thing reminds me of the dramatic shifts that occur in science and medicine in relatively short time periods. When I was growing up, the idea was that you were supposed to put infants on their stomachs to sleep (because if they slept on their backs they might die). By the time that I had kids, it was the exact opposite, now they were supposed to sleep on their backs (because if they sleep on their stomachs they might die!). It only took 20-30 years to completely change the idea of how an infant is supposed to sleep. And this isn’t about the semantics or intention of activating or strengthening a muscle, this is about actual life and death!

So when we come to strength training and exercise science, you must use the common sense that comes with experience because the field itself is so young. That’s as a coach or as an athlete. Athletes have a pretty good sense of what is good or bad for them and what will or won’t work for them. 

The point is that even if you’re completely new or have a ton of experience, still listen to new ideas, but think about them before you take them as law. The biggest mistake is to just completely listen to someone, without remembering that the field is very new, and it’s changing all the time. This is why the main thing that changed about my warmups is my understanding of what we're doing and why. The methods used are still fairly similar, but the intention has shifted.

Since you’re here: We have a small favor to ask! At SAPT, we are committed to sharing quality information that is both entertaining and compelling to help build better athletes. Please take a moment to share the articles on social media, engage us authors with questions and comments below, and link to articles when appropriate if you have a blog or participate on forums of related topics.

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Reasonable Warm-ups

In the case of warm ups and stretching, you need to have an idea of what is appropriate for the situation for which you are warming up or stretching. Different stretching/warm-ups are used whether an athlete is prepping or recovering from an activity. 

But do not forget that every athlete’s body is different, some need more stretching/warm-up time than others. However, if it’s much more than others (in the same group or team) this is may be a good indicator that something is wrong and the body is not ready for normal activity. 

I’ve seen players “need” nearly an hour warm-up BEFORE they get to my dynamic warmup that I give them. That’s an excessive amount of time! Needing this amount of time is typically an indicator of poor recovery, poor strength, and poor balance within the body in some way. 

But, if the athlete is requesting this, then that’s what they need to feel ready. As we all know, sometimes it is the mind that needs the ramp up time. 

Generally, I’d say this type of example is of an athlete with poor recovery and balance, and will often manifest itself with everything feeling tight. If this is the case, a separate stretching workout should be done the night before or in the morning before the practice time frame begins.

However it gets done, that amount of stretching that will take 45-75 minutes should not be a part of the practice time period. If you (or an athlete you know) need that level of warming up and stretching, you’ve got to get that on your own time. You also need to understand that there likely are other issues at play that need to be identified and strategized around if that has not already been done. Again, constant tightness is often the manifestation of other issues.

A normal warm-up period will be 10-20-min for most ball sports while track athletes may take 30-minutes or more. Keep in mind track athletes are a different kind of athlete with very specific physical requirements. 

With this we are looking at different shades of preparation and different shades of athletes and that does matter as well. So bottom line, don’t waste your time on a long warm-up when the reality is, the need for a lengthy warm-up may be caused by some other factors that need to be dealt with in other parts of an athlete’s training day.

Since you’re here: We have a small favor to ask! At SAPT, we are committed to sharing quality information that is both entertaining and compelling to help build better athletes. Please take a moment to share the articles on social media, engage us authors with questions and comments below, and link to articles when appropriate if you have a blog or participate on forums of related topics.

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Eating to 80% Full

Let’s talk about calories.

All we need to know with calories is the amount. If you want to lose weight, or if you want to gain weight, it's all about the caloric balance in the end. There's no magic formula for this. For example, we’ve all heard of these experiments where people would eat a Mcdonald’s or 7-Eleven diet and still lose weight. Mind blowing, am-I-right? Not really. 

If you’re only goal is to lose weight, all you need to really worry about is a negative calorie balance. There's a million different ways that you can do this. That’s one of the reasons that things like intermittent fasting, ketogenic diets, and whatever else are so popular, is because it gets you into a negative balance with what are - on the surface - easy to follow rules.

But In the end, they don't work for most people because they're so restrictive. They overly restrict the things that people like to eat that aren’t necessarily considered healthy, but are just fine in moderation. This is why learning how to truly EAT is a better long term plan. 

Removing carbohydrates from your diet for the rest of your life is not realistic, it's really just a short term strategy. Different diets whether it’s high fat and low carb or low fat and high carb will make you perform and feel differently, but both can help you lose weight. 

The thing that confuses people is that the popular diets they see models or physique competitors use are short term solutions, not long term plans. Most people’s goal is not to step on stage, but to be 10 pounds lighter and feel better about themselves. For this to happen, it’s more about understanding very basic dietary concepts. One is to consume more quality non-processed foods. 

Another important one I use with my nutrition coaching is the concept of eating to 80% full. Essentially you can eat whatever you want, as long as you don’t eat until you’re stuffed. That's a strategy that works extremely well.

In the end if you are looking to perform at a high level or to build lean body mass, what you eat is going to matter. But if you're just trying to lose a little bit of weight or feel a little bit better, ignore all of the fads. Just start with eating until you're 80% full and see how that works for you. Once you get comfortable with that, there’s plenty more strategies to start trying, just start simple. 

Please remember, ignore the fads and strive to learn how to eat in a sustainable way for a lifetime. You need those sound habits before you use any other advanced methods. Diet is something to be thought of in the long term, not what can make a quick fix. Using sound and simple habits such as the 80% rule will definitely get the best results and allow you to keep them.

Since you’re here: We have a small favor to ask! At SAPT, we are committed to sharing quality information that is both entertaining and compelling to help build better athletes. Please take a moment to share the articles on social media, engage us authors with questions and comments below, and link to articles when appropriate if you have a blog or participate on forums of related topics.

Thank you! SAPT