Breaking Down The Broad Jump
In the second portion of our football testing series we will take a look at the standing broad jump. This test is a fantastic assessment of lower body horizontal power. This tool works great for football players, who have to explosively move of the line of scrimmage once the ball gets snapped. A common misconception is that you merely stand on a line and jump. Don’t be fooled by the simplicity of this assessment. Horizontal jumping can be a complex coordination pattern because the upper and lower extremities must move harmoniously in order to achieve optimal results. Let’s take a look at a few factors that can help you or your athletes add a few inches.
The Arm Swing
It’s no surprise that lower body power is what propels you forward during this test but the arms play a vital role in projecting you higher off the ground and further down the tape measure. The most efficient swing technique would be to start in a standing position with your arms out in front of you. As you drop down to “load the spring” your arms should sweep back, followed by an immediate, powerful swing forward as you takeoff.
http://youtu.be/lqc_pyG7ELk
Build Those Glutes
The hip complex packs a lot of useful muscles that are crucial in just about every sport and activity of daily living. Unfortunately, many people do not train this area of the body as much as they should. We often sit in chairs, whether at school or work, and that equates to hitting the “off” switch for this important muscle group. Driving through hips during the jump and getting this area fully extended will propel the athlete further. Simple hip extention exercises like glute bridges, whether bodyweight or weighted, will help bring life back to your butt. Below are a couple videos to help with the exercise selection:
http://youtu.be/pMQV6A8F8Qw
http://youtu.be/8j4kWFHRq9o
Own The Descent
Does it matter how awesome the take off was if a plane crashes near the end of its flight? The same theory (obviously to a lesser extent) holds true during the broad jump test. Height and distance are all based upon the action taken prior to take off but this in no way omits an individual from having to properly land each jump. When landing a jump it is important to land in a position that allows the force to dissipate. This is achieved by bending the knees and sinking back the hips. An athlete should never land in a stiff-legged position. When landing, it is also important that the knees land in a position stacked in-line with the ankles and do not collapse or cave medially. Both of these habits place a high amount of stress on the joints and can lead to serious injury. Below is a chart with normative data to see how football players stack up in this test and other common tests by position. Check back next we as we move on to discuss the bench press.
References:
Lockie, R. G., Schultz, A. B., Callaghan, S. J., & Jeffriess, M. D. (2012). PHYSIOLOGICAL PROFILE OF NATIONAL-LEVEL JUNIOR AMERICAN FOOTBALL PLAYERS IN AUSTRALIA. Serbian Journal Of Sports Sciences, 6(4), 127-136.
Oh Dem Hammies! Hamstring Info and Harry Potter Analogies Part 1
Do you have tight hamstrings? Do you stretch them only to find that you’re not any closer to the suppleness that you desire in those posterior hip extenders? Have you tweaked/pulled your hamstring (due to your tightness maybe...)? Do you feel they’re tighter than Gringotts Bank Security?
Today, we’ll go over some of the reasons why the hamstrings might be tight and in part 2 we’ll go over some of the prevention/rehabilitation techniques to deal with hamstring tweaks.
You may be surprised to find that your tight hamstrings are not actually tight… That sounds like something Professor Dumbledore might say.
Below are some of the potential culprits of “tight” hamstrings. (You’ll see why I put “tight” in quotation marks at the end.)
1. Protective tension.
This is when the brain is telling the hamstrings to remain “on,” for one reason or another, and it creates a sensation of tightness when the hamstrings are stretched. Why does this happen? I’m actually a good example of this. I have congenital laxity (meaning my joints are loose and I’m rather flexible) but for a period of about 3 years, my hamstrings were constantly tight and I could feel them being tugged on every time I bent over, and because of my laxity -and a lifetime of NEVER feeling tight- this was as odd as Hagrid’s love for horribly frightening beasts.
Here’s what was happening: my pelvis tilted, wildly I might add, anteriorly (forward).
The hamstrings attach to the (posterior) bottom of the pelvis (your “sit” bones) and my brain sensed the constant pelvic tilt and was desperately trying to prevent me tilting forward anymore by firing my hamstrings continually in an attempt to pull my pelvis back into a neutral position. That pelvic tilt results in instability throughout the lower back and pelvis. The brain HATES it when the body is unstable and will do anything necessary to regain stability, which in this case was locking down those hamstrings tighter than a Full Body-Bind Curse.
How do you fix APT? Through lots of dedicated anterior core work (i.e. plank variations) and glute strength. Once my pelvic tilt was in a more neutral position… voilaThe tightness was gone. So, if your hamstrings feel tight, check our your pelvic alignment. Stretching the hamstrings will NOT improve your flexibility in this case; they're already stretched to the max!
2. Neural tension.
I know this will sound similar to the above reason, but this particular tension generally results from an injury. The most likely answer is an injury to a lower back disc. (since the nerve for the hamstrings runs through that region.) If there’s damage to a disc in the L1-S1 region, there’s potentially compression on the nerve for the hamstrings which could result in mishaps in the neural messages (communication between brain and muscles) causing hamstring tightness. Usually this type of tension is accompanied by other symptoms such as tingling, shooting pain, electric pain or numbness. Two common tests to check for spinal issues are the slump test and the heel drop test (which consists of standing on your toes then dropping to you heels. If pain occurs, congratulations! You might have a compression issue.)
3 and 4. Nasty fibrotic tissue or tendonosis in the hamstring.
Sometimes muscle fibers get junky and gunky, from poor movements, overuse, or prior injury, -or all of the above- which changes the length and function of the muscle. Instead of the muscle fibers running parallel and working harmoniously, they’re twisted up like spaghetti noodles (and work as well together and a plate of spaghetti). Soft tissue work such as SMR or possibly work by a professional is in order to help restore the tissue quality.
Other areas to target for soft tissue would would be the adductors (since they attach to the pelvis as well) and those fellas are Gunk-City in a lot of folks.
5. The hamstring muscles are truly short.
Yep, they're are people out there either because of their genes (not their jeans. Ha!) or a surgery where the hamstring was immobilized in a shortened position (though this is not common), their hamstrings are physically shorter than they should be. This can happen over time (but to a small-ish degree) in folks who sit down a lot during the day because the pelvis is tilted posteriorly (tucking your butt under) which does shorten the hamstrings a bit. However, this probably isn’t the main source of tightness since they are only short at the very end range of motion.
So what have we learned? If your hamstring is tight, it’s not necessarily it’s fault nor will endless hamstring stretches change anything (even if you’re drew the genetic short stick. Stretching won’t do that much. Sorry.). Soft tissue work in the hamstrings, adductors, and glutes as well as some dedicated anterior core work and glute training (*cough* swings *cough*) can help to solve some tight hamstring issues.
Check back in next week for some hamstring injury causes and care.
Coaching Youth Athletes 101
Anyone who has ever worked with children will tell you that it can be either the most rewarding experience of your life or it can make you want to beat your head against a wall until Miley Cyrus’ music no longer sounds horrible. I find that the factors that determine the outcome of your experience will depend largely upon the approach you take. What is unfortunate is that most individuals that end up coachingyounger athletes tend to be volunteers or parents -who care and are enthusiastic to help- but with little knowledge or experience in performance or athletic development. Because of this, they are often limited in knowing what to do with the athletes aside from what they were put through when they played.
Though their intentions always mean well, it’s not uncommon for these coaches to get lost in competition and lose sight of the true purpose of youth sports. From this, issues such as early-sport specialization arise and rob the athletes of what they really need: HUMAN DEVELOPMENT.
Notice that I said human and not athletic development. The reason for this is because we do not necessarily know what each child will go onto do with their lives, but we can safely bet that they will be humans. Sports teach individuals multiple lessons and skills that transcend the athletic realm and carryover into everyday life situations. By focusing solely on how much faster you can make your 9 year-old team limits how much you can truly help them.
Many coaches may be asking what they should be doing with their youth athletes if they aren’t focusing on making them better at their particular sport. You should be making them better at their sport, but you should be doing it with the bigger picture in mind. It’s for that reason that I’ve compiled this list of rules to help you do the best for your athletes.
*I'd like to use this sidebar and define a youth athlete as 13 and under. Obviously each age will need to be handled in its own way due to maturity, but the reason I associate it with this number is because that is the average age of which puberty hits and their physiology begins to change.
1. Do No Harm
Seems simple, right? Wrong. The thing about sports performance and human development is that most harm done is typically caused by ignorance, and because of that, is seldom realized by the conflicting party. This means that a coach with the best of intentions, may not realize that what they’re doing may actually have negative effects in the long run. It’s for that reason, that most of the other rules that I will be laying out all come back to this one simple, golden rule: Do no harm!
2. Make It Fun
The secret to keep participation and enthusiasm high will always be to keep it fun for the kids. This is why our main priority for our youth athletes at SAPT is always to make it enjoyable for them. The second that a child loses interest in an activity or exercise, you can kiss goodbye the idea of them taking direction or cues effectively. Not only will they be harder to work with, but they won’t receive the full benefit of the drills due to their passive participation.
It’s also important to note that if a child can learn to enjoy sports and exercise at a young age, it goes a looooooong way in their life. Therefore, it's imperative in order to maintain an effective program going, keep the drills fun, keep your enthusiasm high, and remember that the occasional joke and fist-bump go a long way.
3. Focus On The Children, Not The Outcome
I like to think that everyone associated with youth sports is mature enough to know that winning isn’t everything. But, the video below suggests otherwise. This in my mind is a perfect example of a man breaking rule number one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuaV6UKtP0s
As Sigmund Freud has taught us, events and feelings that we experience in our childhood severely affect who we become. If a child is reprimanded in such an intense way as shown in the video, there will clearly be some negative feelings. The last thing we want to do as a coach is to be the source of these negative emotions or experiences associated with physical activity. This has the potential to cause the kid to no longer want to participate and can leave an impact on their self-confidence. And that is exactly what a country battling an obesity crisis needs: more individuals who grow up with ill feelings toward exercise *insert sarcastic tone here*
Focusing so much on the outcome can start to create a fear of losing amongst the athletes. This can start to overshadow any yearning for improvement and subtly inhibit their ability to take risks, which is necessary for them to learn from their actions. A good coach should instead focus more of their efforts on empowering their youth athletes and leave any emotions of frustration on the bench. If a player misses a shot, yelling at them will do nothing. Instead, the coach should give constructive advice for next time, wrap up with a small fist bump, and take note what to work on more at practice.
4. Know What the Youth Athlete Needs
It’s not uncommon for me to be asked, “how can I get my 9 year old stronger and faster?” My answer is always: Let them play and move more. The reason for this is because children have different aspects to their physiology, morphology and adaptability as compared to adults. Many of their systems are still learning how to react to different challenges and situations within regards to motor control. For this reason, careful thought must be given to drills/exercises, when to give them and the amount of volume to give them in. Young athletes that participate in too specific of drills are often being limited in overall athletic performance.
The main systems of movement that I find large deficits within youth populations are often as follows: proprioception, the vestibular system, and cross-body coordination.
Proprioception is synonymous for body-awareness. We can all think of younger athletes that we know that move as if they're a new born giraffe. It's often not so much an issue of strength, but an issue of internal awareness that throws off their abilities. Traditional sport drills often consist of high-speed cone and ladder work or even skill-specific work. Do it all you want, until that kid learns where he's at in space, it's just going to turn poop into slightly faster poop. Drills that provide external feedback as to where the athlete is at in space are going to be your best bet. So controlled ground work such as rolling, tumbling and crawling work wonders for making an athlete more cognizant of where their limbs are.
The vestibular system works hand in hand with the body's mechanoceptors to help maintain balance. Often times issues within the vestibular system will show similarly to poor body awareness. The cochlea, a deep, inner ear organ acts as a gyroscope to help determine which way is up and syncs this information with the body's proprioceptive feedback to help determine how to maintain balance. If an athlete has poor balance, they're going to have poor weight shift patterns. If they can't shift their weight effectively, they can't accelerate or decelerate effectively. So thus, once again, sport-specific agility drills will be hard pressed for improvement. There are a variety of ways to challenge the vestibular system, my favorite once again is rolling as it can help to recalibrate the cochlea. Single leg drills, tumbling and up & go drills can also be helpful.
Cross-body coordination can also be a major hole within an athlete's movement vocabulary. So much of day-to-day life consists of movements within the sagital plane that it's no wonder that they can't integrate multi-planar movements amongst body parts. A cross-body movement is going to force contralateral limbs to coordinate and respond accordingly to the rest of the body. Anyone that has taught single leg cone hop drills, karaokas, or even A-skips understands just how hard it can be to get some athletes to sync their arm and leg swings accordingly. It's actually EXTREMELY IMPORTANT that we facilitate these types of movements within their extra-curricular activities. The reason for this is that coordinating the contralateral movements forces stimulation of the corpus callosum, an area of the brain that is responsible for communication between the left and right hemispheres. It also functions to maintain a balance of arousal/attention, tactile localization, and is active in certain eye movements. Needless to say, it's very important in athletics and should be constantly addressed. Any movement that forces focus on opposing limb coordination is great, but my favorite drill to fire up the corpus callosum is a SUPER SLOW cross crawl. It forces them to focus on the movement and the single leg element challenges their vestibular system. If needed, you can even have them do it supine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtv9--OXRFE
A really cool point that I think I should make is that if you ever watch a child play, they are already working on these attributes. They roll down hills(vestibular), they climb trees(tension/body awareness/cross-body movements), they balance on things(vestibular/body awareness), they spin around until they get dizzy(vestibular) and much more! The best part is they enjoy it! It's literally written into their genetic, developmental process. It's funny how we try to intervene and institutionalize their movements to improve them when they could actually get more benefit from natural and genuine play. That is if we can get them out from in front of the tv...
Back to making them stronger and faster, simply focusing on these three aspects will improve almost any kids performance. Tension and ground based drills to help give body awareness, vestibular drills to utilize the body awareness and balance, and cross crawl movements to put it all together to locomotion, will significantly improve their movement and recruitment patterns. It's important to remember that at this age, it's very hard to actually increase fiber unit contractile properties. Meaning they're not going to get big guns or really develop the fast twitch fibers the way teenagers or adults can. What they can improve is the amount of motor unit recruitment within certain movements. So just by practicing quality movements with decent force production will get them better at recruiting more muscles within that movement so long as their body awareness, vestibular system and coordination are not holding them back. So a combination of GPP/natural play and sport practice should be fully sufficient to improving athletic development so long as they are kept in the correct ratios. Let them play and move more.
5. Know Their Limits
I'm going to start with this: YOUTH ATHLETES SHOULD NOT BE FORCED TO FATIGUE. Sadly, I see many coaches, instructors and even P.E. teachers missing the point of youth physical activity and just running kids into the ground. Having kids work up a sweat and burn calories isn't a bad thing, but putting on a P90x or Insanity video for gym class or practice is just plain negligent. Everyone that has dealt with kids knows that they like to move. Whatever program you run, if there's a game to be played, they will go all out and the sweat will be rolling. Making kids run for the sake of running or doing stupid, "workouts" violates rule #2 and can push into breaking rule #5.
Due to their smaller stroke volume and their noted inefficient ventilation, a child's heart rate will increase more quickly and stay higher as when compared to adults. Add this to the fact that their systems have a harder time regulating the core body temperature and therefore become more readily dehydrated, you have a pretty easy formula for fatigue. Even though children do bounce back and recover quickly, keep in mind the negative effects that fatigue has on skill and movement acquisition. At their young age, almost every movement is a skill, be it jumping, landing, running etc. Being purposely and constantly pushed to fatigue is going to create compensations and inefficiencies in the movements which can carry on into their future athletic endeavors(like when they actually should be competitive). It also runs the chance of mentally fatiguing them and burning them out, which again is not what they need.
Now don't get me wrong, I believe that our children should be fit and I understand that it is possible to create positive aerobic training adaptation amongst youth populations. The point that I'm trying to make is that this shouldn't be a priority for a youth coach. Make them run, drill and play games, even throw in a line touch or two. Just keep the quality skill acquisition objective number one and remember that they will take care of their own conditioning if you engage them right.
Lastly a Note For The Parents
I want to end this article with a note and some charts to any parents in the crowd about the importance of sport diversity. We've already written several articles on early sport specialization and even the Washington Post is catching on, but it's still an issue that we continue to run into and honestly, it's hurting your kids' chances of getting that future scholarship. Many sport coaches will tell you that your children have to train year-round to make it in their sport, but the research says opposite.
Above is the youth training pyramid from the NSCA. It's literally an association devoted entirely to optimizing athletic performance. I think they know what they're talking about when they say multi-lateral development(multiple sports and skills) is the foundation for high performance. The wider the base you make for your child, the higher the peak can be. Having your kid do the same movements over and over again throughout the year(I'm looking at you swimmers!!!) is only limiting their true potential. Take it from someone who teaches movement to athletes for a living, the multi-sport athletes are healthier and learn/progress MUCH faster than the kids who do the same thing throughout the year. Think about it and take an outside look at your child's activities.
Part 6: The First Transition Period
The Triathlete Strength Training PrimerPart 6: The First Transition Period
The series continues! Last week’s epic edition provided us two example cycles for a triathlete to use during their off-season. For each cycle, specific exercises were selected based upon the physiological adaptations they provide and whether or not they matched the goals of the General or Specific Preparation Period. This week we’ll tackle the First Transition Period, otherwise known as the pre-season.
The First Transition Period…
In Part 1 of this series, we talked about how we use the First Transition Period to shift from high-volume to high-intensity training. This philosophy makes sense for power and strength focused athletes, but not so much for the triathlete. Let’s take a look at why this is the case.
- For power and strength sports, the pre-season in the weight room is full of grunting, aggressiveness, and heavy weights. These athletes have dedicated the past few months to filling the holes in their game, and getting as strong, as fast, and as explosive as possible. During the off-season, they had the luxury of spending four to five days a week in the gym, but sport-practice has picked up with the arrival of the pre-season. These athletes may only be able to spend 2-3 days in the gym, and they need to make those days count. The high-volume off-season training will be replaced by a cycle or two specifically devoted to lower volume, higher intensity training in order to peak their physical condition for competition.
- For a triathlete (or any endurance athlete)you should utilize the pre-season in a slightly different way. By dividing the off-season into “general” and “specific” periods, we truly extracted the most out of our training thus far. Our strength focus began in Week 1 of the off-season. We built up a massive total body strength base in the Gen. Prep. Period, and then changed our exercise selection in order to convert this strength increase to muscle groups and movement patterns that have the most carry-over to the sport of triathlon.
A Triathlete’s Pre-Season Focus…
As triathletes, we recognize that maximum strength isn’t the most important aspect of triathlon, and we want to use the pre-season to peak our ability to tolerate the physiological demands of our sport. In this case, that would be local muscular endurance and ability to sustain a high power output for extended periods of time.
As for conditioning, the bulk of our conditioning work in the weight room will be aerobic based. We accomplished the goal of building anaerobic power and then improving our anaerobic capacity during the off-season. The implementation of interval track workouts and tempo training in our sport-practice will allow us to take our increased power and capacity, and apply it to endurance racing.
Our sport-practice should have largely been focused on building up our aerobic base as much as possible in the off-season, and now we transition into sharpening our racing skills and ability to tolerate higher intensity levels. In the pre-season, we should still include at least 1 or 2 longer duration, endurance-focused workouts throughout the week, but our goal is to maintain what was accomplished during the off-season, and improve upon the previous skills mentioned. In addition, we’ll implement 1 or 2 aerobic-based conditioning circuits in our strength program from now on in order to complement our sport training and enhance our ability to retain our aerobic engine.
In Conclusion….
Let’s take a quick second to summarize our pre-season goals.
- Develop local muscular endurance in the musculature we use to swim, bike, and run.
- Improve our ability to maintain high levels of force production over a pro-longed period of time. This will allow us to maintain performance over the entire race. The more force we can create with each revolution or stride, the faster we will be.
- Shift the use of strength training conditioning circuits to focus more on developing aerobic endurance in order to complement our sport training and maintain our aerobic engine.
That’s all for part 6. Now that we know what our pre-season training goals are, we’re in a great position to design a pre-season strength program. Next week, I’ll show you how to train for local muscular endurance and sustained power production, as well as provide example templates with specific examples. Until the, train on my friends.
The Triathlete Strength Training Primer
Part 1: An Intro to Periodization - Seeing the Bigger Picture Part 2: The Repetition Maximum Continuum Part 3: The Preparatory Period a.ka. the Off-Season Part 4: Off-Season Periodization Part 5: Off-Season Periodization, cont. Part 6: The First Transition Period Part 7: The First Transition Period, cont. Part 8: The Competition Period - In-Season Strength Training Part 9: In-Season Template Part 10: Post- Season Training
Fitness Marketing to Females: Don't Be A Victim
I had the privilege of writing up a blog for Tony Gentilcore's site. He's an awesome coach based up in Boston at Cressey Performance. He's had a huge influence on my development as a coach (mostly through reading his blog, but Steve and I have had the chance to learn from him first hand both in Boston and recently at his seminar). If the title intrigued you, CLICK THIS to read the rest of it.
Enjoy!
5th Annual Pre-Gobble Wobble!
Please come join us for our
5th Annual Pre-Gobble Wobble at SAPT in Fairfax
on Thanksgiving Day morning.
Register TODAY! This event is free for SAPT clients!
