March Madness: In-Season Training
Ah, the spring! (well, it would be if it wasn't snowing so much here in D.C.!) This means that the spring sports are ramping up. Schedules get tighter, days get longer, and the body takes a beating.
This month SAPT is going to provide stellar reasons why every athlete should continue their strength training in-season. Some of these include (but are not limited to):
- Prevention of strength and power decreases (both of which are rather important, especially during the end of the season during the play-offs. No good to be weak and slow!)
- Increase strength and power (see above reason)
- Prevention of over-use injuries. (How many times did you throw that ball today?)
- Mental breaks (ah, brain can relax.)
All that plus a super special guest post JUST for coaches.
Check back later this week as we get rolling into a healthy, strong, and successful season!
Guest Post: Speed and Agility Development by Goose
So you want to run like this guy!
But you feel like this guy?
No need to freak out, here are a couple of tips to get you running lightning fast!
1. Conditioning
If you slack on your conditioning it doesn’t matter how fast you can run. You’ll be pooped out after one play and rock the bench for the rest of the game! Here are some suggestions, as well as a link, to get your conditioning game on par:
-Sled Workouts
-Track Workouts
Any conditioning work you do should be focused on maintaining a fast speed for a 15-30 seconds time span. A strong conditioning base is imperative as the game comprises of repeated quick all out bursts of speed for a long time. Keep this in mind when designing your workouts and the role rest plays in said workout.
2. Acceleration
Once your conditioning and strength training needs are met, now it’s time for the fun! Acceleration work should focus on improving your ability to reach your top speed as fast as possible. If you’re a running back, wide receiver, linebacker, or safety you’ll be more efficient at your job if you can reach top speed within 15-20 yards rather than 25-30 yards. Here are some suggestions on how to improve acceleration:
-Downhill Running (Use a slight downhill)
All three of these drills force quicker turn over (how fast your feet hit the ground) and/or exert high amounts of force on the ground. Both are the components needed to accelerate proficiently.
3. Believe in the process!
A lot of young athletes are really eager and fired up to improve but then get discouraged when it doesn’t come fast and easy. Improving your abilities is an everyday, 24/7, 365 day grind. If you are putting in the work on the field and in the weight room, plus staying diligent with flexibility and mobility work, then result will come. (Note from Kelsey: and EAT REAL FOOD!!!) Be patient, allow your body to do its thing, and trust in your coach’s plan!
Breathing Mechanics: Why Football Players Should Care
Breathing? Really? How could something as simple and common as breathing possibly affect football performance? If you're willing to spend about eight minutes to read this, you won't be sorry! Proper breathing mechanics are an aspect of sports performance that is a) largely ignored by a decent chunk of the athletic community (but is growing in exposure thanks to the PRI, Eric Cressey, Chalrie Weingrof, Kevin Neeld, Mike Robertson and a host of other smart coaches.) and b) are the 6 Degrees to Kevin Bacon of athletic movement. Everything connects back to breathing mechanics. Note- this is going to barely scratch the surface of all the breathing literature out there, so fitness nerds, don't get uptight about missing information. The point of this article is to explain the importance if breathing mechanics and provide some practical applications for coaches and players. If this post sparks your interest and you want to learn more, I recommend a search on the Posture Restoration Institute (from which I derived most of the information); all their articles are a good starting point.
A brief anatomy lesson is needed before we proceed.
The diaphragm is an umbrella shaped muscle and when it contracts, it pushes your organs down. This creates a large space in your lungs thus lowering the pressure. The one thing I remember from physics is that air moves from high pressure to low pressure. So, when there’s a lower pressure in your lungs, air whooshes in. (ha! And you that you sucked it in. Nope, it forces itself in. This blew my mind when I first learned the secrets of inhalation.)
Diaphragms are cool and important (understatement!) but breathing requires accessory muscles too. Our intercostals (rib muscles) and scalenes and sternocleidomastoids (neck muscles) contribute to the life-giving act of breathing. We need to use ALL THREE areas.
You can test yourself to see what area you tend to rely on most often based on if you get a cramp during exercise. For example, my neck (scalenes and SCM) is hyperactive during exercise and I get neck cramps during sprint work. Got a stitch in your side? Probably relying more on intercostals than your diaphragm.
Think of it like this: Harry Potter is the diaphragm, Hermione is the intercostals, and Ron is the neck muscles (mainly because Ron is so temperamental and is easily irritated, much like the scalenes).
As a coach or player, here's a quick test of breathing mechanics. Lye supine with your knees bent at 90 degrees against a wall. Place your hands just beneath your rib cage (this helps determine if the abdomen is expanding 360 degrees during inhalation). Take a DEEEEEEEP breath and exhale.
If an athlete is breathing properly we should see three things:
1. Circumferential expansion of the the abdomen (front and back)
2. Rib expansion (front and back too)
3. Li'l bit of apical (upper ribs) elevation. Note: too often THIS is where you'll see the breathing take place. You can tell because the shoulders will rise up towards the ears.
It's when one of these areas is impaired that we see dysfunction (pain/injuries) occur. Harry Potter is awesome but he would never have defeated Voldemort if he didn’t have Ron and Hermione.
1. Breathing affects EVERYTHING. The average person takes roughly 20,000 breaths per day. That's a LOT of contractions of the diaphragm. Aberrant breathing patterns will not only alter the ability of the diaphragm to function efficiently but it creates hyperactivity and hypertonicity (high tone/tension in the muscle) of the accessory muscles AND of muscles down the line (believe it or not, it can affect hip mobility!).
2. Think about the accessory muscles (and their neighbors): scalenes, SCM, levator scapulae, pec minor, trapezius... if those guys are tight and irritated, that will wreck havoc on cervical posture and shoulder mobility and function. Why do you care about that? If the cervical posture is whacked out (aka, your neck) those muscles are not going to function properly, it'll be harder to strengthen them in the way they need it and that puts you at a greater risk for concussions. Shoulder function/mobility is especially important for quarterbacks. If the shoulder isn't moving properly, say hello to rips, tears, and strains of the rotator cuff, bicep tendons, and labrums. Hooray.
3. All that tension spreads to the rest of the body. It increases the sympathetic state (flight or fight response) and thus not allowing the body to fully recover after workouts/practices/ games. This will eventually run down the athletes. The increased sympathetic state will increase anxiety, mess with sleep patterns, and can even decrease pain threshhold; all of these equal poopy workouts and even worse recovery.
Hopefully, after all that, I've convinced you that breathing patterns, make that PROPER breathing patterns, are extremely important and integral to athletic success. Again, if you truly want to improve performance, you should see a professional and get assessed and trained. (that was a shameless plug, I know, but it's true!)
But, run through 4 quick and simple things coaches and players can add to/be cognizant of to create a better breathing environment.
1. Posture Re-education:
Why? Three words: Zone of Apposition.
"Achieving the optimal ZOA really depends on the shape/orientation of your ribcage. If your lower anterior (front) ribcage tends to be elevated (as in picture on the left), it can alter the length-tension relationship of your diaphragm resulting in aberrant breathing pattern, lumbopelvic instability (hips and spine...BAD place for instability) and a cascade of movement dysfunctions." - Bill Hartman
Read about the Zone of Apposition on PRI's website.
2. Breathing Re-Education
As mentioned above in the "what you should see" part, we need to teach our athletes (and ourselves) how to
a) Achieve circumferential expansion. This does not mean just the belly sticking out during inhalation, but we need lateral expansion too (out to the sides and back of the body). A lot of people will "hollow" that is, draw in the belly and elevate the ribs and shoulders. This needs to stop. A drill like this will help.
b) Breathe with the abdomen and chest moving at the SAME TIME. The accessory muscles (notably the neck muscles) should be relaxed. Here's a video from Bill Hartman that encompasses both points:
c) Learn to get our ribs down with a neutral spine! Too often athletes have the mega arch (lordosis) in the lower back. This needs to stop! Compare the two pictures above, see how the lower portion of the ribcage is down on the "correct" picture? This is how we need to inhale and exhale. Exhalation should be active: the abs should be involved to help pull the ribs down.
3. Coaching Breathing
We need to teach athletes how to get to a neutral spine with the ribs down. The picture of the supine breathing above is a perfect drill for that. The floor gives feedback so the athlete can feel their spine and whether or not it's neutral. It's a great way to teach a "packed neck" too (meaning, no cranking on that neck into extension). The left hand can help monitor rib position to teach the athlete what "ribs down" feels like. THIS MUST HAPPEN FIRST before we expect them to move well during more strenuous exercise. Have your athletes spend a few minutes before training breathing in proper position.
4. Breathing drills
Breathing "reps" should be 3-4 sec inhale through the nose, a 5-8 sec exhale through pursed lips with a 1-2 sec hold. A great drill is the supine 90/90 position from above. It's a low level drill that will help the athlete be successful. Here's another example:
And this one, especially for those who live in a more "extended" posture:
There are more advanced drills, but these should be enough to get your athletes rolling.
So to recap:
Breathing mechanics are important. It affects all aspects of athletic performance. Breath well.
Re-educate posture and patterns.
Breathing is important.
Position Specific Drills: Defense
This Blog Post is Brought To You By: Goose, Man of Many Talents
Position Specific Training: Defense
When training a football defensive player, the 5 primary aspects of focus are: strength, explosiveness, footwork/agility, and reactiveness.
Strength is Part 1, this is where you lay the foundation. Building an elite athletes is analogous to building a house: you can't do without a strong, solid foundation. Therefore, strength is the foundation upon which you develop explosiveness, agility, and reactiveness. The athlete must be strong enough to: move their bodyweight effectively in all 3 planes of motion - aka frontal, transverse, and sagittal for you kinesiology majors out there - and manhandle and tackle an offensive player. Staple lower body strength exercises all athletes should do are squats, deadlifts, and lunge variations (just ensure you fit the variation of said movements to the individual). Pair these with upper body strength builders such as the bench press, pullup, overhead press, and rowing variations, and you're well on your way toward success. When performed properly in an intelligently designed strength program, these will get the most meat the bones of your athletes and set them on the road to becoming behemoths!
Strength training turns boys into men!
Explosiveness is Part 2. This is when the application of strength translates into moving faster and jumping higher. "Explosiveness" (the coveted athletic attribute) entails exerting a high amount of force really fast, as in split-seconds fast. To train this, perform exercises which force you (or your athletes) to move fast. This is where plyometrics and Olympic lifts come in!Plyometric exercises such as cone/hurdle hops, box jumps, vertical/broad jumps force you to exert high amounts of force in milliseconds.
**Word of Caution!!!** Olympic lifts are great for developing explosiveness, HOWEVER they are extremely technical; so technical they have their own sport! They are only to be done under the supervision of an experienced coach who can properly teach/progress them to maximize gains and reduce injury risk*. (*Note from Kelsey: and athletes should demonstrate proficient strength and technique in the squat and deadlift. The Oly-lifts should be reserved for strong, experienced athletes, aka, not the average high school athlete.)
Working on explosiveness is critical for all defensive positions. Defensive ends/tackles have to be explosive to get a jump on the offensive line to tackle the running back or sack the QB. Meanwhile, linebackers, corner backs, and safeties must be able to jump higher than receiver in order to break up or intercept passes.
Agility and Footwork are part 3. Here's where the foundation analogy starts to make more sense: the application of strength and explosiveness equates to improved speed and change of direction. Agility and footwork go hand in hand like peanut butter and jelly! You need to know how and where to place your feet, relative to your body, in order to avoid injury and effectively change direction. If you try to change direction and your step is too short, too long, or at the wrong angle you are putting your ankles, knees, and hips in a disadvantageous (and potentially injurious) position. A great way to start working on foot position and running technique is to spend a few minutes during the first portion of a training session on agility ladder drills, for lateral, diagonal, and change-of-direction work. Once you become proficient at the ladder drills, you can progress to cone drills on turf or grass where you work on changing directions in game-like scenarios.
Last but not least we have Reactiveness, whichis the culmination of all four qualities. Everything a defensive player does involves reaction! They react to the snap, react to the QB, react to the runner or the receiver, and they react to grab a fumble. You need to be strong and explosive to move your body fast and you need agility/footwork to react to the play and make something happen. A couple of training ideas would be:
-Reactive starts to a whistle
-Reaction ball training
-Reacting to the QB drill
-Sprint shuffle cone drills
-Cone agility box drill
Training doesn't have to complicated or use fancy equipment or techniques. Focus on strength first, then the subsequent qualities and your team will be unstoppable!
The most fun/dangerous reaction drills ever!
Concussion Prevention
What’s the point of making your entire body bulletproof with your perfect training regimen if you’re just going to sit the bench because of a concussion? I’ve seen a great deal of fantastic athletes brought down by a simple bonk on the head. Football is the most notorious of this conundrum and organizations such as high school leagues, the NCAA, and even the NFL are implementing precautionary measures to limit the amount of brain cells killed each year by concussions. With that being said, these organizations have taken some mighty (and some questionable) steps for the protection of their athletes. In today’s post, I’m going to shed some light on a few ways that you can help to protect yourself.
1. LEARN how to tackle. Knowing how to tackle corretly is one of the most fundamental parts of football. It happens almost every play. Yet not that much time is spent on technique drills. By technique drills, I’m not talking about hitting sleds or dummies, I’m talking about taking the time to teach positioning and mechanics. Take the time to learn step by step movements on get yourself low, wrap up, use your hips and drive. It’s a skill and technique should be practiced even in the off-season.
2. Do Shrugs. This one’s simple. Shrug variations are great for building some stability in your neck and keeping your head from bouncing around. Plus, they help you to look like Bane and that’s a win-win.
3. Strengthen your neck CORRECTLY. There are many, “neck strengthening exercises” out there that consist of nodding against a machine or weight attached to your head. These are extremely questionable and I can’t honestly recommend them. If you want to protect your noggin’ from concussions then you need to train your neck to RESIST MOVEMENT, not causemovement. Plus, it’s an old rule of thumb that every time you load active cervical extension (tilting your neck upwards), you kill a puppy. The best way to correctly complete this task is to perform manual resistance as in the photo below. Keep in mind that the neck is comprised of a plethora of tiny muscles and does not need a lot of force to get a training effect.
4. Don’t rely heavily on your pads. I truly believe that football would have a lot less injuries if players weren’t strapped to the teeth with force-absorbing equipment. It gives the athlete a false sense of invincibility and leads to people just throwing their bodies into the opponent. This creates bad habits and reinforces poor tackling technique.
Football Training and Burn Outs: Are They REALLY the Best Option?
Walk into most high school (or college) weight room during the football team's training session and a plethora of sounds attacks your ears. They typically include, but are not limited to: Grunting.
Gasping.
Loading and unloading of plates.
Shouting. (usually "UP! UP! UP! at an athlete who has horrendous form and too much weight on the bar)
The inevitable clatter and crash of weights falling (usually by the same athlete who was the object of the yelling).
Ah, the sounds of a Burn Out.
For those of you who don't know what a Burn Out is, allow me to explain. We'll use a pretty typical example: the bench press. The bar is loaded with five ten pound plates (give or take a plate) on each side. The athlete bangs out as many reps possible with that weight until failure. Then, a plate is stripped off each side and the reps-unto-failure is repeated. This goes on until the athlete is struggling, shaking, and gasping for breath as he pries the unloaded bar off of his chest in an attempt at one more rep.
Logically, does this sound like a good idea? Before you decide, here are some objective points to think about:
1. No matter who is doing a burn out, an experienced lifter or a younger lifter (which most of these high school boys are the latter), their form is going to break down horribly by the second or third "burn out" set. When form degrades, so do joints and ligaments. Isn't one of the goals of weight training to PREVENT injuries?
2. Not only is form degradation a landmine of ligamental explosion, but it also teaches the athletes' bodies to continue to
perform with poor form. Practice doesn't make perfect, it makes permanent. It's imperative the inexperienced lifters (such as every high school boy. I don't care how long they've been "lifting," they don't qualify as "experienced" if they haven't even been alive longer than my Chuck Taylors) learn and practice safe and proper biomechanics for lifts, especially compound lifts such as the bench press, squat, and deadlift. They won't be able to safely handle heavier loads (which is, by the way how one develops strength) because at some point in the future, something is going to give and it ain't gonna be that barbell. Teaching kids to just bang out reps willy nilly is setting them up for a long (or short) life of frustration and injuries in the weight room.
3. Consistently training for failure, especially in new lifters, fries the nervous system. It's really taxing and I don't think most coaches or athletes understand the impact these burn outs have on their field performance. See, the nervous system is kinda important, it drives ALL muscular movement. For example, the faster the brain can send a signal to the muscles to contract, the faster the reaction time, or sprint speed, or the more explosive the tackle will be. Having a fresh, charged up nervous system means faster, stronger, and better players.
Grinding out reps hinders recovery, which will negatively impact performance both on the field and in the weight room, again that opens the door for potential injuries (and losing games). The goal of a weight training session for football players should be to recharge and energize them and let them walk out the door with some gas left in the tank. It shouldn't be to run them into the ground and let them limp out of the door in an exhausted puddle of teenager.
4. Goose said it well in his article about pre-season training: "If the goal is to move fast, then you have to train fast." If a football player needs to be explosive and quick on the field, how is training dozens of reps at a snail's pace going to help? The body is remarkable and adapts to imposed demands (SAID principle). Simply, if you train the body to be slow, it's going to be slow. Again, isn't that the OPPOSITE of what weight training is supposed to do?
There are more reasons, but for now, swish these around in your brain and let them marinate a bit...
Now, back to the original question: does this seem like a good idea to practice with young, inexperienced, testosterone-fueled young men? (who, to be quite frank, need to be slowed down and taught proper form).
If we're focused on strength, shouldn't training sessions include:
1. 1 compound lift, executed with solid technique at an appreciable load for sets of 3-5.
2. 3-4 accessory lifts that are both somewhat sports-specific and balance out some of the inherent assymetries of football players.
3. Tight control on the overall load and volume (especially for in-season athletes) so as not to hinder recovery or overload their systems. This is a SUPER important point.
4. If time, some soft tissue work and some correctives to help prevent overuse injuries.
By managing to load and volume or each work out, the coaches can help their players recover (thus grow stronger and faster) as well as boost their confidence by setting them up for success instead of failure.
Hold onto your helmets because next week we're going to look at specific training techniques for the various positions.
