EXCELSIOR SPORTS

Coordinative Specificity: Triangulating On The Target III

noreply@blogger.com (Excelsior Sports) — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 19:20:00 +0000

“Needs analysis” is a 3-headed monster, but a necessary first step in planning training. Here’s the final part in our series about getting an accurate fix on your performance target — with the focus now on coordination.

“Power is nothing without control.”
— Pirelli Tyre

To briefly summarize what we’ve covered so far:

Specificity is not a 1-dimensional entity. It actually has at least 3 dimensions — mechanics, energetics and coordination — each of which has a few nuances to it. None are overly complicated, and each offers some time-tested ideas that we can lean on for answers.

We need to scout our performance target from all 3 angles in order to make sure important signals aren’t lost in the noise. Otherwise, the simulation trap is waiting for us. I try to avoid falling into that trap at all costs. It’s too crowded already, plus it’s like a black hole (once you’ve been pulled in, it’s kind of tough to get out).

Rethinking a basic issue like specificity involves checking one’s assumptions. As noble as that task may be, it pretty much guarantees that you’ll be visiting your “discomfort zone” as well as losing popularity with lots of folks. The good news: you’ll get a much clearer picture of your target and also discover some useful things about the people that you’re working with (like who’s serious about training and who isn’t).

Specificity³: Coordination
Throughout this series, I’ve tried my best to convince you that we can’t rely on outward appearances when analyzing task demands. What we really need are objective criteria. The 3-dimensional specificity paradigm I’m proposing is simply a framework for those criteria. Mechanics, energetics and coordination are perspectives we can use to get a fix on a 3-D target — effectively triangulating on it. Certain things may not be visible from any single vantage point, so in order to be sure we don’t miss something it’s important not to rely on just one or two of them.

Unfortunately, many people seem to take a 1-dimensional approach to specificity. They often lock onto one viewpoint without giving much thought to the others. Moreover, some folks are unclear on the concept in the first place because they have (a) fallen into the simulation trap or accepted some half-truth as fact and (b) never rechecked their assumptions. It’s no wonder this can be such a challenging issue.

In parts I and II, we’ve considered mechanical and energetic criteria as well as their practical implications. Now let’s focus on coordination. We’re going to peek inside a black box — the human head — but don’t worry. That isn’t such a scary exercise after all when we use science as our guide. As we’ll see, this brings us to the bigger issues of motor learning, skill acquisition and expertise.

Don’t Let The Jargon Throw You
What is “coordinative specificity” anyway — and why use such an uncommon term in the first place? If you follow the international literature, especially some classic resources authored in Eastern Europe, you’ll find discussions about developing athletes’ coordinative abilities (Drabik 1996; Harre 1982). Think of these as the basic elements of technical skills that we use when performing motor tasks:

Adaptive ability — modification of action sequence upon observing or anticipating novel/changing conditions and situations
Balance — static and dynamic equilibrium
Combinatory ability — coordination of body movements into a given action
Differentiation — accurate, economical adjustment of body movements and mechanics
Orientation — spatial and temporal control of body movements
Reactiveness — quick, well-directed response to stimuli
Rhythm — observation and implementation of dynamic motion pattern, timing and variation

In those same resources, you’ll find coordinative abilities discussed in the context of agility, which really comprises an athlete’s entire movement skill set (yes, there’s more to it than just changing direction or speed). These abilities are believed to be most trainable in preadolescence, which is considered a critical or sensitive period for skill development. This window of opportunity begins to close during adolescence, during which the focus should progress from basic movement competencies and fitness qualities to specific skills and abilities — i.e. from general to special preparation. There is a biological basis for this, which I’ll briefly touch on in a moment.

That’s why it’s so important to think like an educator when training athletes, particularly regarding their developmental status. We need to task our students with the right things at the right times and sequentially steer them toward their ultimate performance target. Teach developmentally-appropriate content, and get your students fluent in “sport generic” prerequisites — i.e. coordinative abilities — first. These provide the platform on which “sport specific” skills can then be built.

So let’s be clear: Progressing toward specific performance targets is the name of the game, with progression being the central concept. There’s no doubt about that. But the key is to approach training as a long-term curriculum that begins with a broad base and gradually zeros in on a long-range goal. Like any developmental curriculum, early-specialization or fast-track programs rarely succeed.

Expert and nonexpert involvement in other activities. Source: Starkes J.L. & Ericsson K.A. (Editors) Expert Performance in Sports. Champaign IL: Human Kinetics, 2003; p. 99.

Put On Your Motor Learning Hat
Consider the movement skills involved in a target activity from a motor behavior standpoint. There’s a classic paradigm called practice specificity that we can lean on here (its origin is tough to trace; refer to Magill 2006, Schmidt & Lee 2005 and Schmidt & Wrisberg 2007). It states that the demands of a training task should correspond to the target activity with respect to its sensorimotor, processing and contextual effects. In many cases, this can be accomplished without emulating a task’s outward appearance. Our goal is to maximize the acquisition, retention and transfer of motor skills; not to imitate a target activity’s movement patterns. Time after time, that leads to the simulation trap. Instead, we want to task the system with functional problems where we’re focused on certain criteria and not just on kinematics.

In other words, we need to direct our attention to things we can’t always see clearly; and not just focus on the things we can see easily. Right, no problem...at least until you have to explain what you’re doing to coaches or parents. Needless to say, that’s easier said than done. They usually want their kids doing “sport specific” drills and probably aren’t interested in hearing about some triangulation nonsense.

Here’s an analogy I’ve had some success with when dealing with that issue: Think of training in terms of upgrading a computer system. The hardware and software must work together, which is why you get optimal results by improving both of them in a coordinated way. Now the unique thing about athletes is that:

They don’t come with factory-installed software programs. We’re each born with a template, and software upgrades are a work in progress starting from birth (unfortunately, so are downgrades in the case of detraining or debilitation).

Their hardware is upgraded by their software. We don’t have to buy the new programs and peripherals separately. If we reprogram the software correctly, the hardware issues largely take care of themselves.

The whole remodeling process is shaped by task demands (this is the essence of the SAID principle, i.e. specific adaptation to imposed demands). We can’t install our new operating system from a CD or the web. Instead, it involves a time-consuming process called learning; hence the value of a good teacher and sound material.

Movement is one of the essential tasks that their on-board computers coordinate. Consider the problems this presents. The operating system must manage the momentum of a complex machine as it moves over various terrain, navigates through traffic, and manipulates all sorts of objects. It supports itself on a single limb (when walking), and repeatedly launches itself as a projectile (when running and jumping). Its center of mass is regularly outside its base of support when changing velocities. External forces — especially gravity — constantly disturb its balance.

So the practical question becomes: What are we tasking each student’s operating system to do? Specifically:

Are we challenging it with skill-based problems, in keeping with the SAID principle?
Are these problems developmentally appropriate, progressing from generic to specific?
Do criteria — mechanical, energetic and coordinative — take precedence over appearances?

In my experience, a good first step toward being able to answer yes to each question is simply: Don’t get cute. Keep things low-tech for the most part and prompt your athletes (rather than some gizmo) to solve the problem. Chances are you won’t find them sitting on guided-resistance machines or counting reps while playing the game, regardless of where it is on the endurance-power continuum. Of course there are exceptions, but life tends to be a free-weight sport.

Gravity Is Trying To Put You On The Ground
For that matter, gravity is trying to defeat pretty much everything that you do — and it’s relentless. I know this seems like a pedantic point, but it actually puts running and jumping (along with every other athletic skill) in a new light when you think about it.

So take a minute and think about it. Trust me, we have a teachable moment here.

Now consider the implications for training:

Get on your feet and get moving. Focus your time and effort on exercises that involve some sort of technique. As a rule of thumb, if it doesn’t require skill (and good coaching!) it probably doesn’t deserve high priority.

The issue is one of guided vs. unguided resistance, not machines vs. free weights. I’m a big fan of certain machines, e.g. cable-pulley stations that allow you to do all kinds of useful exercises by redirecting the load. The real key is whether you have to control, direct and stabilize the load (note that controlling it doesn’t mean moving slowly; refer to part I of this series for more discussion about this issue). There are other examples of machines that serve useful roles, as long as there is a clear and compelling reason. But generally speaking, free weights of all kinds — not just the ones made of iron — are where it’s at.

You don’t necessarily have to move the load in multiple planes, as long as it’s free to move in all planes (in biomechanics speak, this is referred to as unlimited degrees of freedom). If you’re doing a traditional barbell exercise where the action is more or less uniplanar, it can be very “functional”; likewise, a multiplanar exercise with some combination of frontal/sagittal/transverse action may not be very “functional” at all — especially if an apparatus is guiding you through the movement path and our specificity criteria aren’t being met. Again prompt your athletes to control, direct and stabilize the load with sound technique, rather than try to move in all planes for its own sake. [How’s this for a paradox: maybe the fact that the load isn’t moving in multiple directions is what makes it functional!]

If I haven’t insulted your intelligence enough already, here’s a pop quiz: In which direction is gravity pulling? We can move in all planes. That’s a fact. But the principal force that governs everything we do is acting in only one. I’m not implying that you should just do single-plane exercises and be done with it; in fact, it’s a good idea to vary them according to some kind of matrix. But focus on real-world movements and don’t go overboard with the multiple-plane thing. Even if the action occurs mostly in one direction, there’s probably still plenty going on in others. [Think about how this helps resolve the paradox in my previous point.]

Use balance or stability training methods with discretion. Balance is one of the coordinative abilities and is clearly important. The problem is that many people are using questionable methods for balance training and/or adding instability to exercises where it’s not safe or appropriate. The more instability you introduce into a task, the lower an athlete’s force output tends to be (note that EMG activity is not a proxy for force production). Even when a balance exercise prompts a lot of muscle activation, much of this tends to involve protective co-contraction (e.g. to keep from falling) rather than power output. So it’s important to be clear about the goal of such tasks and to be careful about using them when strength training — particularly if they involve inflatable/labile surfaces.

OK that won’t make me too popular with the functional training crowd (as if they liked me very much to begin with), but hopefully you get the idea.

Developmental Issues
As I mentioned in part I, there are 3 essential steps involved in preparing any sound strategy, including a training program:

Zero in on the performance target. This gets into the issue of specificity.
Assess the situation. This must be done with regard to students’ developmental status.
Select tactics for achieving generic as well as specific goals and objectives. This gets into the issue of planned variation in means and methods, i.e. periodization.

Even if you’ve mastered steps #1 and #3, you can get into big trouble if you skip step #2: Recognize the situation. When training athletes — i.e. when helping them acquire new movement skills — developmental considerations are the central situational issue. We have to know where our students are developmentally and which aspects of the curriculum are (or are not) appropriate at a given time.

Long-term skill acquisition has an interesting biological basis. A remarkable pruning process occurs in the brain before and during adolescence, in which unused connections between neurons are eliminated. Meanwhile, connections that are used regularly are reinforced, making them faster and more efficient. The process is guided by genetics (nature) as well as experience (nurture), and may be the ultimate example of the use-it-or-lose-it principle.

Nerve proliferation and pruning in childhood and adolescence. Source: Wallis C., et al. What makes teens tick? TIME 163(19): 56-65, 2004.

As is the case in academics, aspiring young athletes progress further by learning a systematic physical education syllabus, not by trying to skip ahead. Fundamentals must be learned and automated properly in order to master complex skills later on — just like the three Rs (reading, ’riting, ’rithmetic) are prerequisites for advanced academic skills. Competence should always precede performance.

Brain maturation from ages 5-20. Source: www.nimh.nih.gov.

The Language of Movement

In the introductory part of this series, I proposed viewing locomotion — and running and jumping in particular — as a basic language of movement. This is the common skill set that many sports share; and it makes many so-called sport specific issues look a bit subtler in the scheme of things. We definitely need to identify truly specialized needs in order to maximize our athletes’ performance and minimize their injury risks. But it’s important to consider these sport generic demands first.

“Language of movement” is not just a buzzterm. Both movement and speech are acquired skills; and in both cases, the learning process involves the brain’s motor centers. [Those centers reside just above the earhole in the brain maturation figure above — notice any changes occurring there?] Achieving fluency requires sequenced development that begins with prerequisites, and progresses toward more advanced and applied content. This is why we need to take the term “student-athlete” literally and use educationally-based strategies in our training programs. Consider it a badge of honor if your micro-, meso- and macrocycles can be accurately described as lesson plans, syllabi and curricula, respectively.

Why do I keep railing about this topic? Because our schools rarely teach running and jumping mechanics to our children. That’s a frank observation, and I’m not trying to be an iconoclast or play the blame game. It’s just a fact that our national standards for physical education don’t address the basic mechanics of these skills (NASPE 2004). In my opinion, those mechanics need to be taught for all the reasons discussed above. I’m really looking forward to the day when that starts happening because it’s a big blind spot with big implications for health and performance.

The Curriculum
An impressive body of evidence supports the “10 year rule” for achieving mastery (Charness et al. 2006, Starkes & Ericsson 2003). The acquisition of expertise in a wide range of performance domains, including sport, involves up to 10 years — or 10,000 hours — of regular, guided, deliberate preparation.

The benefits of such overlearning are well documented. This presents a daunting practical challenge because it involves an average of about 20 hours per week, every week for 10 years! Consider the time and effort that must also be devoted to restoration/regeneration measures in order to prevent overtraining, and preparation becomes a full-time job. Many dedicated athletes only train about half that much, and it’s not necessarily because they’re taking shortcuts. School, work, rules and life in general make such a commitment virtually impossible for most amateur athletes. Yet it’s very hard to reach elite levels without investing massive time and effort.

Not everyone aspires to be an elite athlete, but that doesn’t mean they don’t want to get the most out of their investment. Therein lies the value of approaching preparation as a long-term curriculum.

Here’s an example of how to plan long-term training in a series of progressive stages (Balyi 2004, Charness et al. 2006, Starkes & Ericsson 2003):

Years 1-2: Fundamental. Training tasks involve deliberate play rather than performance-oriented activity, while emphasizing basic movement competencies and fun. The skills introduced in this stage should be simple but challenging for youth athletes.

Years 3-4: Novice (“learning to train”). Training begins to involve structured practice. The program still emphasizes basic movement competencies and mechanics, while starting to target the development of motor abilities.

Years 5-6: Intermediate (“training to train”). Training begins to involve deliberate practice, with balanced emphasis on competency-based and performance-based tasks. The program continues targeting the development of movement techniques and motor abilities.

Years 7-8: Advanced (“training to compete”). Development of specific techniques and abilities gets high priority, while applying these in complex tactics and competitive situations.

Years 9-10: Elite (“training to win”). Mastery of specific strategies, skills and abilities gets top priority. The program focuses on achieving sports performance expertise.

Movement mechanics and techniques, as well as basic fitness qualities — i.e. general preparation tasks — are priorities during the early stages. The intent is to automate these so the athlete can progressively focus on tactical and strategic targets — i.e. special preparation tasks — as he/she advances toward the elite level. Practitioners should introduce age-appropriate movement skills such that athletes can practice them at each level with the expectation of achieving proficiency at others (Bar-Or 1995; Drabik 1996; Malina, Bouchard & Bar-Or 2004). As athletes master each skill, they should subsequently review and maintain it while progressing to newer, more complex tasks.

The bottom line: think like an educator. From our day-to-day decisions about content and management to longer-term developmental and planning issues, it’s all about being a teacher. Training is synonymous with learning!

So There You Have It
That’s it, my hare-brained take on the coordinative specificity side of our triangulation scheme. As an addendum, I’m also including some evidence-based teaching guidelines below. Those are much more than a checklist. You’ll find that they challenge some conventional beliefs and involve some interesting decisions.

This whole triangulation concept is just a revised approach to needs analysis, the first step in exercise prescription (Kraemer 1983). Dr K originally proposed a 2-pronged (mechanical and energetic) analysis of the target activity. We’ve simply added a third prong (coordination) and updated the criteria used in each. The intersection of these 3 prongs of specificity is the sweet spot. That’s where we’ll find the special preparation tasks that closely correspond to a target activity.

In closing, we’ve covered a lot of ground in this series, but the basic concepts are straightforward: We need to select our training tactics with respect to the target as well as the situation. Our target (specificity) is a bit cagey, so we’re triangulating to make sure we don’t miss it. That’s orienteering 101. Our situation (developmental status) requires us to think like teachers, being sure to task our students appropriately and guide them toward their long-range target. That’s education 101. If those two ideas make sense, you’ve got it!

Acknowledgments
Thanks to Walt Cline, John Gray, Loren Landow and Mike Napierala

Resources

Balyi I. Long-term athlete development: trainability in childhood and adolescence. Olympic Coach 16(1): 4-9, 2004.
Bar-Or O. (Editor) The Child & Adolescent Athlete. Oxford: Blackwell Science, 1995.
Charness N., Feltovich P.J., Hoffman R.R. & Ericsson K.A. (Editors) The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise & Expert Performance. New York NY: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
Drabik J. Children & Sports Training. Island Pond VT: Stadion Publishing, 1996.
Harre D. (Editor) Principles of Sports Training. Berlin: Sportverlag, 1982.
Kraemer W.J. Exercise prescription in resistance training: a needs analysis. NSCA Journal 5(1): 64-65, 1983.
Magill R.A. Motor Learning & Control (8th Edition). New York NY: McGraw-Hill, 2006.
Malina R.M., Bouchard C. & Bar-Or O. Growth, Maturation & Physical Activity (2nd Edition). Champaign IL: Human Kinetics, 2004.
National Association for Sport & Physical Education. Moving Into the Future (2nd Edition). New York NY: McGraw-Hill, 2004.
Schmidt R.A. & Lee T.D. Motor Control & Learning (4th Edition). Champaign IL: Human Kinetics, 2005.
Schmidt R.A. & Wrisberg C.A. Motor Learning & Performance (4th Edition). Champaign IL: Human Kinetics, 2007.
Starkes J.L. & Ericsson K.A. (Editors) Expert Performance in Sports. Champaign IL: Human Kinetics, 2003.

* * * * *

Motor Learning Guidelines

Certain strategies for teaching motor skills yield superior results. Some are straightforward, whereas others may seem counterintuitive. For example, according to the principle of practice specificity, the sensorimotor, processing and contextual demands of training tasks should correspond to the target activity in order to maximize the acquisition, retention and transfer of motor skills. However, an optimal level of “contextual interference” in the form of varied or random practice tends to enhance learning, albeit at the expense of short-term performance.

Following is a summary of evidence-based guidelines for teaching movement skills:

Physical vs. Mental Practice. Active physical practice is generally superior to mental practice. The practitioner can usually achieve optimal learning effects by skillfully combining them, however, with the latter being especially useful for pre-performance preparation. Purposeful, structured practice activities can be supplemented with “off task” imaging and cognitive rehearsal. Regardless of how dynamic a task is, the key objectives are information processing, decision making and problem solving. Optimal arousal, motivation and focused attention are necessary to achieve the desired learning and performance goals.

Amount of Practice. The benefits of overlearning skills are well documented. According to the “10 year rule” for achieving mastery, the acquisition of expertise in a wide range of performance domains, including sport, involves up to 10 years — or 10,000 hours — of regular, guided, deliberate preparation. More practice is generally better, but its content and structure are also vital.

Whole vs. Part Practice. Two criteria should form the basis for this choice: number and interdependence of skill parts, and athlete’s developmental status. “Part practice” is preferable for tasks that are highly complex, but low in organization. “Whole practice” is preferable for tasks that are low in complexity, but highly organized. There are advantages to each method because functional tasks tend to reside in the middle of this continuum, and skill acquisition involves learning the parts as well as uniting them into a cohesive whole. Given the limits on athletes’ attention capacity, it is usually appropriate to use variants of part practice such as task segmentation or simplification. If these are impractical, the practitioner should cue athletes’ attention on specific part(s) when practicing whole skills.

Augmented Feedback & Instruction. Extrinsic feedback is beneficial when a skill is complex or the athlete is a novice, and essential when intrinsic feedback is limited or difficult to interpret. Frequent feedback is important during the early stage of learning, but can be detrimental if the athlete becomes dependent on it. The practitioner’s instructions should combine demonstration/modeling and verbal instruction; focus on (but not be redundant with) intrinsic feedback; provide information on proper performance as well as error correction; progress from qualitative to quantitative information; and gradually decrease in frequency.

Practice Distribution. Motor skill learning generally improves with shorter, more frequent practice sessions. There are practical considerations, however, in terms of limited time and possible trade-offs with amount of practice. “Distributed practice” tends to improve long-term acquisition and transfer of continuous skills, as well as acute performance. “Massed practice” tends to improve acquisition and transfer of discrete skills, but can reduce acute performance.

Practice Variation. It may be advantageous for novice athletes to begin with “blocked practice” involving one version of a task until they master the basic technique. The practitioner should then introduce “varied practice” — i.e. changing task order or conditions — to help athletes develop specific schemas. This may seem paradoxical because blocked practice usually improves acute performance, but reduces learning, retention and transfer. Varied practice can reduce acute performance, but significantly improves long-term skill acquisition.

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Energetic Specificity: Triangulating On The Target II

noreply@blogger.com (Excelsior Sports) — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 21:18:00 +0000

“Needs analysis” is a 3-headed monster, but a necessary first step in planning training. Here’s the next part in our series about getting an accurate fix on your performance target — with the focus now on metabolic demands.

“You can observe a lot just by watching.”
— Lawrence Peter Berra

To briefly recap what we’ve covered previously:

Specificity is not a 1-dimensional entity. It actually has at least 3 dimensions — mechanics, energetics and coordination — each of which has a few nuances to it. None are overly complicated, and each offers some time-tested ideas that we can lean on for answers.

We need to scout our performance target from all 3 angles in order to make sure important signals aren’t lost in the noise. Otherwise, the simulation trap is waiting for us. I try to avoid falling into that trap at all costs. It’s too crowded already, plus it’s like a black hole (once you get pulled in, it seems to be tough to get out).

Keep in mind that rethinking a basic idea like specificity involves the unpleasant task of checking our assumptions. As noble of an endeavor as that may be, it pretty much guarantees that you’ll be visiting the “discomfort zone” as well as losing popularity with a lot of folks. The good news is that you’ll have a much clearer picture of your target when you come out the other side. You may also discover some useful things about the people you’re working with (like who the pretenders are and who’s serious about their training).

Specificity³: Energetics

If you’ve been following this series, hopefully I’ve convinced you that we can’t rely on outward appearances when analyzing task demands. We need objective criteria. Our 3-dimensional specificity paradigm gives us a framework for those criteria. Think of mechanics, energetics and coordination as perspectives we’re using to get a fix on a 3-D target — effectively triangulating on it. To make sure we don’t miss something, it’s important not to rely on any single vantage point because certain things may not be visible from there.

So far, we’ve considered mechanical criteria and their practical implications. Now let’s focus on energetics. Believe it or not, this doesn’t have to be a painful exercise — although you may have a new task on your plate once you see where we’re going.

We won’t delve into some mind-numbing dissertation on physiology and bioenergetic system contributions to this or that activity. Actually it’s important to have a handle on how those systems work, but here’s what matters most right now: Our energy systems interact. I’m not talking about interaction in the sense of just co-existing or complementing each other; they are truly integrated. Here are some examples:

Phosphocreatine (PC) isn’t just an ‘anaerobic’ high-energy fuel. The PC circuit is the mechanism by which ‘aerobic’ energy is shuttled from the mitochondria to the contractile site. Ever wonder why your ability to generate power is compromised when VO2 is engaged? A hint: your PC stores are busy multi-tasking.

The two steps in glycolysis that yield energy — phosphoenolpyruvate (PEP) and 1,3-diphosphoglycerate (1,3-DPG) — are both high-energy phosphates, similar to PC. In effect, glycolysis is a more complex, less powerful mechanism for achieving the same objective as the PC pathway, i.e. donating phosphate groups to replenish ATP.

We have a lactate shuttle mechanism for transporting glycolytic end-products to different tissues where they can be oxidized. This is another example of cooperation between ‘anaerobic’ and ‘aerobic’ pathways that increases energy yield.

We are fundamentally ‘anaerobic’ organisms with an ‘aerobic’ pathway that originally evolved as an O2 detoxification mechanism. The beauty of the system is that we also derive energy from this process. That’s a wake-up call for those who think life revolves around oxidative metabolism and submaximal activity. If you’re skeptical, do a bit of homework on why oxygen is toxic in high concentrations, or why reactive oxygen species can be so problematic. Also check into the creatine trigger theory of metabolic control. It’s the real hub of activity.

It’s time to rethink where the line is drawn between one energy system and the next. For that matter, the distinction between aerobic and anaerobic metabolism may be a false dichotomy — or at least a very fuzzy one. [I’m using aerobic/anaerobic terms because they’re the most popular; but oxidative/non-oxidative metabolism is more accurate.] The take-home message is that we have several energetic subsystems functioning together as an integrated unit.

Here’s why all of this is a good thing: As practitioners, it simplifies our task. We don’t need to speculate about the relative contributions of each energy system, or how to selectively train and test them. In order to be sure we’re hitting our specificity target, all we need to do is model our program on the demands of the sport. Basically, that means putting on our coaching hats, grabbing a clipboard and stopwatch, and analyzing game footage.

I can’t take credit for the idea, but I will take the heat for coming up with the phrase...

Tactical Metabolic Training

“Tactical” in this context doesn’t refer to military or law enforcement. It has to do with the playing tactics — and corresponding energetics — required to achieve strategic goals in competition. If we identify the target activity’s exercise:relief intervals and effort distributions, and then train specifically for those, the energy system contributions will take care of themselves.

Table 1 outlines a simple 5-step procedure for modeling the special endurance demands of a sport. The rationale is straightforward. Few sports involve a single, brief effort. Most consist of ongoing activity with intense, intermittent bursts — or a series of plays with periodic rest intervals. Athletes need the metabolic power to execute their assignments at the required effort level; as well as the capacity and recoverability to do so repetitively. A simple, pragmatic way to achieve metabolic specificity is to model a conditioning program on the activity/inactivity patterns of competition.

This is a variation on the concept of speed-endurance that originated in racing events. The underlying strategy is to develop the physical and technical qualities needed to achieve a pre-determined effort distribution, or (series of) target pace(s), in competition. It’s the essence of planned performance training and is a simple extension of the scouting process that coaches use in most sports. We’re just taking it a step further and analyzing the work trends that result from executing a specific game plan.

You’ll need to make some important decisions regarding what to look for when scouting. Let’s start with an obvious consideration: whom to evaluate. In addition to scouting your upcoming opponents, you should scout and grade yourself as well. It’s also a good idea to model some other teams whose playing style is similar to yours but whose execution is better, even if they’re not one of your opponents. Basically, you want to scout a hero that can be used as an exemplary model of performance — especially if your team is struggling to execute certain aspects of its game plan.

Another key consideration involves which segments of the game to model, as well as how much of it to simulate in training and testing. Both objective and subjective criteria are useful here. Although this issue looks like it could get complicated in continuous or transitional sports, some clear trends typically jump out at you when you replay the game and start breaking things down. Check out the resources cited below for some examples applied to basketball, football and lacrosse. These were chosen to illustrate how variations in playing rules and strategies affect exercise:relief patterns and overall metabolic demands.

Did I mention that our energy systems interact? Just checking.

Pros & Cons

Tactical metabolic modeling offers certain advantages:

It fulfills several specificity criteria.

It economizes training time and effort by using skill-based tasks as metabolic conditioning drills (e.g. performing a series of playbook assignments in competition-specific workloads).

It optimizes athletes’ arousal, attention and motivation, thereby yielding superior learning/training effects.

It circumvents the painstaking effort and equipment involved in telemetric or time-motion analysis.

It’s important to understand the limitations of this method as well:

Tactical modeling doesn’t provide a direct measure of workload intensity (unless accompanied by telemetry data). The practitioner must therefore establish target training pace(s) for the observed interval duration(s).

Tactical models based on play start-stoppage patterns may not account for the total volume of work performed in competition, especially if activity continues when play is suspended (e.g. after a score, penalty or time-out). Depending on the sport, athletes may realign themselves, go in motion between plays, enter/leave the game for substitution, etc. In such cases, the model should account for shift durations that may not coincide with play suspension and resumption.

In general, however, tactical metabolic modeling is a pragmatic way to select special endurance tasks based on the underlying tempo of competition. It’s not the only method that should be used to develop the energy systems. Table 2 summarizes the traditional methods of training for special endurance (tactical metabolic training is essentially the “competitive-trial” method applied to complex sports). The athlete’s training status, the phase of training and the demands of the sport should determine the respective role of each method.

Two Down, One To Go

So there you have it, a practical approach to the energetic specificity side of our triangulation scheme. I was first introduced to this concept by Dr. David Pendergast, Professor of Physiology at the University at Buffalo, when I was an undergraduate student there 25 years ago. The idea may be not be anything new. Dr. Pendergast really perfected the methodology. As for using the term “tactical” to describe it, you can blame me for that (it seemed like a good idea at the time).

By the way, if you’ve ever seen the mysterious menu of “metabolic drills” that’s been floating around the sport of football for decades, and wondered where it originated, I’ll spill the beans: It was the brainchild of a project Dr. Pendergast was working on with the Buffalo Bills in the mid-1970s. It was never intended as a one-size-fits-all program, but when that coaching staff scattered around the country (taking the menu with them, of course) it got romanticized and morphed into various forms.

Finally, this whole triangulation concept is just a revised approach to needs analysis, the first step in exercise prescription (Kraemer 1983). Dr K originally proposed a 2-pronged (mechanical and energetic) analysis of the target activity. We’re simply adding a third prong (coordination) and updating the criteria used in each. Next up: coordination.

Acknowledgments
Thanks to Dr. David Pendergast and John Taylor

Resources

Harre D. Endurance — classification and development. Modern Athlete & Coach 16(4): 19-21, 1978.
Harre D. (Editor) Principles of Sports Training. Berlin: Sportverlag, 1982.
Kraemer W.J. Exercise prescription in resistance training: a needs analysis. NSCA Journal 5(1): 64-65, 1983.
Plisk S.S., Stenersen S.B. The lacrosse face-off. NSCA Journal 14(2): 6-8 & 77-91, 1992.
Plisk S.S. Regression analyses of NCAA division I Final Four men’s lacrosse competition. Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research 8(1): 28-42, 1994.
Plisk S.S., Gambetta V. Tactical metabolic training. Strength & Conditioning 19(2): 44-53, 1997.
Plisk S.S. Speed, agility, and speed-endurance development. In: T.R. Baechle & R.W. Earle (Editors)/National Strength & Conditioning Association, Essentials of Strength Training & Conditioning (3rd Edition). Champaign IL: Human Kinetics, 2008; pp. 457-485.
Schmolinsky G. (Editor) Track & Field. Toronto: Sport Books Publisher, 1993.
Steinhofer D. Terminology and differentiation of training methods. Modern Athlete & Coach 35(1): 15-21, 1997.
Taylor J. Basketball: applying time motion data to conditioning. Strength & Conditioning Journal 25(2): 57-64, 2003.
Taylor J. A tactical metabolic training model for collegiate basketball. Strength & Conditioning Journal 26(5): 22-29, 2004.
Viru A., Korge P., Parnat J. Classification of training methods. Modern Athlete & Coach 14(5/6): 31-33, 1976.
Viru A. Adaptation in Sports Training. Boca Raton FL: CRC Press, 1995.

* * * * *

Table 1: Tactical metabolic modeling procedure for establishing special endurance training/testing criteria. Source: Plisk & Gambetta (1997); Plisk (2008).

1. Identify competition model with respect to:

Level (professional, collegiate, high school, club, etc; conference, division, league, etc)

Scheme/style/system (offensive; defensive)

Time period (contest, game, match, etc; half, period, quarter, etc)

Personnel (team; platoon/shift; position)

2. Identify nature and scope of tactical events:

Intensity level (subjective; objective)

Outcome, goal and/or objective (settled events, e.g. attack, possession, rally, series, etc; unsettled/transitional events, e.g. clear, fast break, special teams, turnover, etc; power play, extra-man/man-down situation, etc)

3. Record video of specific competition(s) or segment(s) with respect to selected tactical events and assignments.

4. Evaluate:

Fundamental exercise:relief pattern (frequency distribution; central tendency and variability)

Subdivisions (sprints and/or transitional events superimposed on continuous activity)

Set-groupings as a function of extended-recovery intervals consequent to injuries, penalties, scores, media/official/tactical time-outs

5. Select core training/testing task(s):

Workload intensity/duration

Position- and/or situation-specific assignment(s) and technique(s)

Table 2: Classic methods for special endurance development. “Repetition” methods are appropriate for speed/agility training. “Competitive-trial” and “interval” methods are appropriate for speed-endurance training. Sources: Harre (1978,1982); Schmolinsky (1993); Steinhofer (1997); Viru et al. (1976); Viru (1995).

Competitive-Trial Methods

Supramaximal training:

Intensity … greater than competition

Duration/distance … less than competition

Maximal training:

Intensity … equal to or less than competition

Duration/distance … equal to competition

Submaximal training:

Intensity … less than competition

Duration/distance … greater than competition

Distance-Duration Methods

Continuous training [70-95% competitive speed/power]

Variable training, i.e. structured changes in intensity, duration, volume and density

Fartlek training, i.e. unstructured changes in intensity, duration, volume and density

Interval Methods

Extensive training:

Intensity … low-medium [60-80% competitive speed/power]

Duration/distance … short-medium, e.g. 14-180 sec @ 100-1,000 m running distance (advanced athletes); 17-100 sec @ 100-400 m running distance (beginners)

Volume … large, e.g. 8-40 reps (advanced athletes); 5-12 reps (beginners)

Density … high; short incomplete relief interval allowing HR to recover to 125-130 bpm (advanced athletes) or 110-120 bpm (beginners), i.e. <⅓ time needed for complete recovery; e.g. 45-90 sec or 60-120 sec for advanced or beginner athletes, respectively

Intensive training:

Intensity … high [80-90% competitive speed/power]

Duration/distance … short, e.g. 13-180 sec @ 100-1,000 m running distance (advanced athletes); 14-95 sec @ 100-400 m running distance (beginners)

Volume … small, e.g. 4-12 reps (advanced athletes); or 4-8 reps (beginners)

Density … medium; longer but still incomplete relief interval allowing HR to recover to 110-120 bpm, e.g. 90-180 sec (advanced athletes); 120-240 sec (beginners)

Repetition Methods

Intensity … very high [90-100% competitive speed/power]

Duration/distance … very short/medium, e.g. 2-3 sec up to several min

Volume … very small, e.g. 3-6 reps

Density … low; long near-complete rest interval allowing HR to recover to <100 bpm, e.g. 3-45 min

203 450-XLCR | excelsiorsports@gmail.com
Prepare To Be A Champion!

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Strategy
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40 Yard Dash
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Pro Agility Drill
3 Cone Drill

Check out the video clips in the right margin or visit our YouTube channel to view more samples from this DVD set.

Mechanical Specificity: Triangulating On The Target I

noreply@blogger.com (Excelsior Sports) — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 13:19:00 +0000

“Needs analysis” is a 3-headed monster, but a necessary first step in planning training. Here’s how to get an accurate fix on your performance target — starting with its mechanical demands — along with some practical take-aways.

“These natural laws have consistent, predictable consequences.
They exist whether or not we recognize them.
And they exert their effects on us without our consent or awareness.”
— Hyrum W. Smith

The longer I’m involved in the sports performance profession, the more I appreciate the elementary concepts I learned as a kid. That may sound strange coming from someone who explores advanced topics and takes pride in being scientific, but it’s true. In fact, the more scientifically you approach the field, the more frequently you’ll find yourself confronting the basics — and the more you’ll realize that advanced concepts are really just fundamentally sound. In my experience, this is one of the great insights of our profession.

Here’s how simple some of the most advanced issues can be:

If you want to be sure your training program is “sport specific” and avoid the simulation trap, triangulate on the target. That’s orienteering 101, straight out of the boy scout manual.

In order to task your athletes with the right things at the right times and steer them toward that target, think like an educator. Teach developmentally-appropriate content and get your students fluent in “sport generic” prerequisites first.

The secret of periodization is pretty anticlimactic: Build your program on an educational model. Curriculum design is the name of the game.

The reason for illustrating my point with these examples is that, together, they summarize the whole planning process. There are 3 essential steps involved in preparing any sound strategy, including a training program:

Zero in on the performance target. This gets into the issue of specificity.
Assess the situation. This must be done with regard to students’ developmental status.
Select tactics for achieving generic as well as specific goals and objectives. This gets into the issue of planned variation in means and methods, i.e. periodization.

Even if you’ve mastered steps #2 and #3, you can miss the target badly if you don’t get an accurate fix on it first. Veering off course even by just a little bit early on can get you into big trouble later. That’s a distinct problem because step #1 — analyzing task demands — is the dreary part of the process. Who wants to spend time on some mundane needs analysis when there’s coaching to do? Besides, we already know what’s specific and what isn’t, don’t we? Let’s get on with it and focus on the fun stuff.

Time Out
I won’t try to pull the everything-you-thought-you-knew-is-wrong shtick. But if you see where I’m going with this, you should be prepared to leave your comfort zone. Here’s why: even if you keep your baloney detector cranked up to maximum, you may find that a half-truth or two has slipped through your defenses. I know, that’s not supposed to happen. But give the carnival barkers of the world credit. There’s no denying how some of them influence pop culture. Their sales pitches are cute and their koolaid is tasty, and they sure are persistent. Mostly they’re counting on the fact that people avoid critical thinking like a root canal.

So at the risk of being uncomfortable for a moment, let’s rethink this specificity thing and see what’s what. Heck, it might just validate that everything you thought you knew is right!

Checking Basic Assumptions
If you accept the premise that specificity has a few nuances to it, and the sports training scene has a bad case of simulation, then the smartest thing we can do is back up occasionally and reconsider fundamental ideas. That’s especially true when the idea in question gets hackneyed and misinterpreted the way specificity does.

To summarize: we can’t rely on outward appearances when analyzing task demands. We need objective criteria. Specificity exists in several dimensions, providing us with a framework for those criteria: mechanics, energetics and coordination. Think of these as three perspectives you’re using to get a fix on a 3-D target. It’s important not to rely on any single vantage point because certain things won’t be visible from there. To make sure we don’t miss something, we need to triangulate on our target — just like a good navigator or outdoorsman does.

That’s all fine and good as a paradigm, but as practitioners we need actionable ideas. So let’s take a closer look at specificity from each perspective. We’ll start with mechanics, which will be the focus of the remainder of this article. I’ll tackle energetics and coordination in subsequent posts.

Buckle up your headgear. The basic concepts below may be older than dirt, but some of the take-away messages challenge the conventional wisdom.

Specificity³: Mechanics
In high school, I thought physics was the science of memorizing lots of formulas and laws without understanding what they meant. I was just trying to pass the tests. Years later, I discovered what those laws really mean.

They mean everything.

If you want to understand how things move and work — even if you’re a coach, and those things are bodies or barbells — physics is where it’s at. I don’t mean the subatomic or quantum stuff. I’m talking about foundational mechanical concepts: power, impulse and force. A decade after my first hack at the laws of motion, while trying to get my head around biomechanics (physiology was my strong suit), they kept resurfacing over and over. I never got too excited about lever systems or movement planes; but every granular, real-world discussion of mechanics I could find dealt with power, impulse and force. That was fascinating because it brought everything together.

Functional strength is expressed in terms of velocity (power), rate or time of application (impulse), and acceleration (force). Indeed, the universal job description for athletes might read: “If you expect to win, you must apply power/impulse/force more skillfully than your opponent. It’s trainable. Get to work.” Think about it. It’s true in sports that involve biking, jumping, lifting, running, rowing, skating, skiing, striking, swimming, throwing — and any others I’m forgetting where moving faster than the other player matters.

So I kept revisiting these three concepts. And looking at the corresponding diagrams. And digesting the conventional (as well as not-so-conventional) belief systems. Some of those beliefs made sense; others didn’t. Some interpretations seemed to be on the right track. Some, like the peak power worshipers, combined elements of truth with nonsense. Others were completely asinine, like the HIT jedis’ endless assault on reason. [There’s an important lesson here: Valid concepts can be misinterpreted, either intentionally or unintentionally; and the resulting half-truths are very dangerous because those kernels of truth can seduce people. Actionable ideas require valid principles as well as sound interpretations.]

Maybe it was just a matter of digesting power-impulse-force concepts enough times, but I finally picked up on some take-away messages that had been jumping out at me all along. I just needed to see them. So here they are, compiled into a short course on the science and practice of mechanical specificity. Yes, we’re (briefly) going back to school now. No, this isn’t the last word on the subject. I’ll try to spell out the key points without insulting anyone’s intelligence too badly.

Power. As best as I can tell, there are at least 5 take-home messages about the F-V curve that too few folks are taking home:

The force-velocity relationship in skeletal muscle [dashed red line], and resulting power production/absorption [solid blue line], in concentric and eccentric actions. The greatest forces occur during explosive eccentric (lengthening) actions. Depending on the movement, peak power [Pm] is usually produced at 30-50% of maximum force [Fm] and velocity [Vm]. Redrawn from: Newton R.U., Kraemer W.J. Strength & Conditioning 16(5): 20-31, 1994. Adapted from: Faulkner J.A., Claflin D.R., McCully K.K. In: Human Muscle Power, N.L. Jones, N. McCartney & A.J. McComas (Editors). Champaign IL: Human Kinetics, 1986; pp. 81-94.

There is a reciprocal relationship between F and V. On the one hand, motion (as measured with metrics like velocity and acceleration) only occurs as a result of force; while on the other hand, our ability to apply force is velocity-dependent.

The eccentric side of the F-V curve is not a mirror image of the concentric side. There is an inverse relationship between concentric (shortening) F and V; whereas eccentric (lengthening) F tends to increase with V. People who are not prepared for the extreme F and power absorbed during explosive braking actions are at serious risk of injury and/or underperformance.

Think of the F-V curve as an illustration of the stretch-shortening cycle. When we move, we regularly traverse from the lower/right side (eccentric action) to the upper/left side (concentric action). There aren’t many movements that exist at a specific point on the curve. Most involve a range of F, V and power inputs/outputs. Furthermore, this occurs in real time — usually tenths of a second, even during nonballistic movements. More about that in a moment.

It’s true that peak concentric power occurs at intermediate F or V, but we don’t land on top of the mountain by falling there. We have to climb the power curve, which ties in with the previous point. So whether we’re performing a “heavy resistance” movement or an “explosive” movement, we should think of velocity specificity as the final/top speed achieved — not as the only V or power that matters, or the only point on the curve to train for. This is why power is important across the entire curve, not just in the peak zone.

Training at different zones on the curve tends to amplify the overall effect. Think of various potentiation methods (complexes, combinations, wave loads etc) in terms of how they prompt us to apply effort in different zones. Thus, “nonspecific” movements still serve a valuable role even for advanced athletes — another reason to strike a balance between generic and specific training methods, rather than go overboard in either direction. One tactic can set up another.

Impulse. Real-world movements have time constraints where F application is necessarily measured in fractions of a second. This is true for ballistic, high-powered activities like running and jumping as well as nonballistic, low-powered activities like walking. Thus, the F-T curve gives us another useful window on movement mechanics:

Force as a function of time, indicating maximum strength, rate of force development [RFD], and force at 0.2 second for untrained [solid blue line], heavy-resistance trained [dashed red line], and explosive-ballistic trained [dotted black line] subjects. Impulse is the change in momentum resulting from a force, measured as the product of force and time (represented by the area under each curve), and is increased by improving RFD. When performing functional movements, force is typically applied very briefly, i.e. often 0.1 – 0.2 second, whereas absolute maximum force development may require 0.6 – 0.8 second. Redrawn from: Newton R.U., Kraemer W.J. Strength & Conditioning 16(5): 20-31, 1994. Adapted from data from: Häkkinen K., Komi P.V. Scandinavian Journal of Sports Science 7(2): 55-64 & 65-76, 1985.

Regardless of how strong you are, it takes time to reach whatever peak level of F you’re capable of applying. While this varies with the task being performed, fast-twitchy athletes can develop peak F toward the lower end of the range (~0.6 sec); whereas slow-twitchy athletes develop peak F toward the higher end (~0.8 sec). This is trainable.

Many functional tasks don’t allow us the luxury of time; hence the importance of RFD. An elite sprinter (running @ 12 m/sec) must execute ~5 strides/sec, with ground contact times of 0.1 sec or less; an elite marathoner (5-6 m/sec) must execute ~2.5 strides/sec, with ground contact times of 0.2 sec or less; and so on. Applying F over longer time intervals is not a realistic option for producing the required impulse — a fact that applies not only to ballistic tasks like running, but many other activities as well. Brief application of F is the rule rather than the exception in functional movements.

For the most part, what you train for is what you get; although a combination of methods tends to amplify their overall effect. “Heavy resistance” movements tend to move the F-T curve up, while “explosive” movements tend to move it to the left. The best of both worlds is to use one method to potentiate the effects of another. Once again, “nonspecific” movements can serve a valuable role even for advanced athletes.

Force. The great thing about F=m•a is that we don’t have to sprain our brains with another graph. A cartoon will do:

Once the mass is established, by definition, maximum F is achieved by maximally accelerating it. Hence, movement ROM can be considered an acceleration path. While F is load-dependent, the intent to move explosively — i.e. maximally accelerating the resistance with sound technique, even if it’s too heavy to move rapidly — is equally important. Full volitional effort yields the greatest neuromuscular activation and adaptive response.

During ballistic movements, accelerate with good form through the full ROM and launch the mass at maximal V. This applies to virtually any activity involving a projectile — e.g. running, jumping, throwing, kicking etc. Note that Olympic weightlifting movements are unique examples of semi-ballistic actions: the mass is accelerated through the initial ROM; but rather than release the bar, the athlete maintains his/her grip and catches it across the shoulders (e.g. clean) or at arms’ length overhead (e.g. jerk, snatch).

During nonballistic movements like the squat or deadlift, accelerate with good form through the sticking region (typically the first ⅓ - ½ of ROM) and then decelerate as you approach full extension (during the last ⅓ - ½). In this sense, “heavy resistance” movements can be performed “explosively”. Using the squat as an example: sit at a controlled speed into an optimal position (don’t free fall into the descent); accelerate out of the hole and through the sticking point as powerfully as possible; and throttle down at the top of each rep so the bar doesn’t jump off your shoulders. Sound risky? Remember gravity will decelerate the bar as you back off your effort toward the top of the ascent. Plus we’re talking about at least moderately heavy resistance that isn’t easy to move rapidly even when attempting to do so (gravity is always trying to decelerate it). If the bar is still moving upward by virtue of momentum at the top of the ROM, consider two options: you may be accelerating beyond the sticking point, and should adjust your effort during the latter part of the rep; or the resistance is so light that you would do better to perform a ballistic movement with equipment designed to be launched explosively.

Don’t confuse this method with “speed reps” where light weight is accelerated through the entire ROM without releasing it. Such movements are futile because more effort is spent decelerating the weight for self-protection than accelerating it for beneficial F generation. It’s true that eccentric muscle actions are part of normal movement, and that negative work plays a useful role in strength development when prudently applied. However, such lengthening muscle actions are best performed as preparatory countermovements (from a flexed position) rather than terminal braking motions (at full extension).

In addition to selecting a movement technique that enables the athlete to maximize F application, we must also choose appropriate work protocols. In practice, this has several implications: conduct strength training after appropriate priming activity in conditions of minimal fatigue; structure training sessions around brief work bouts and frequent recovery periods; where feasible, distribute daily sessions into modules separated by recovery breaks; and further subdivide workloads into brief clusters separated by rest-pauses. The rationale: fatigue is a progressive process that begins at the onset of work and affects task execution well before failure occurs. It’s a normal result of intense activity, but must be managed because it interferes with skill acquisition and performance.

That Wasn’t So Bad...Or Was It?
Taken one at a time, the typical response to these points is “thanks, I already knew that.” Unfortunately, many people should qualify this with “...but I still disregard it regularly.” Fundamentals are funny things — essential yet unexciting, and profound when taken together. Even though overlooking them is a costly mistake, it sure seems to be a great way to become popular!

So there it is, my deranged take on the mechanical specificity side of our triangulation scheme. All we really did was take a closer look at the forces, or kinetics, involved in locomotor activities; and then infer some training guidelines. That’s a perspective we otherwise wouldn’t get by looking just at movement patterns, or kinematics. If you’re familiar with the dynamic correspondence paradigm (Verkhoshansky 1977, 2006), you’ll notice we’ve really been leaning on that. According to this concept, training tasks should be specific to the target activity in terms of:

Rate and time of peak F production (impulse) and the range of V at which it is applied
Dynamics of effort (power)
Amplitude and direction of movement
Accentuated region of force application
Regime of muscular work

Finally, this whole triangulation concept is just a revised approach to needs analysis, the first step in exercise prescription (Kraemer 1983). Dr K originally proposed a 2-pronged (mechanical and energetic) analysis of the target activity. We’re simply adding a third prong (coordination) and updating the criteria used in each. Next up: energetics.

Acknowledgment

Thanks to Jon Goodwin

Resources

Fleck S.J. & Kraemer W.J. Designing Resistance Training Programs (3rd Edition). Champaign IL: Human Kinetics, 2003.
Kraemer W.J. Exercise prescription in resistance training: a needs analysis. NSCA Journal 5(1): 64-65, 1983.
Plisk S.S. Speed, agility, and speed-endurance development. In: T.R. Baechle & R.W. Earle (Editors), Essentials of Strength Training & Conditioning (3rd Edition). Champaign IL: Human Kinetics, 2008; pp. 457-485.
Stone M.H., Stone M.E. & Sands W.A. Principles & Practice of Resistance Training. Champaign IL: Human Kinetics, 2007.
Verkhoshansky Y.V. Fundamentals of Special Strength-Training in Sport. Moscow: Fizkultura i Spovt, 1977 [Livonia MI: Sportivny, 1986; translated by A. Charniga Jr].
Verkhoshansky Y.V. Special Strength Training. Muskegon MI: Ultimate Athlete Concepts, 2006.
Zatsiorsky V.M. & Kraemer W.J. Science & Practice of Strength Training (2nd Edition). Champaign IL: Human Kinetics, 2006.

203 450-XLCR | excelsiorsports@gmail.com
Prepare To Be A Champion!

Develop a comprehensive plan of attack and teach your athletes detailed, proven performance techniques for each event with our 6-DVD set on NFL Scouting Combine Preparation — part of our New School of Human Performance series available through Perform Better:

Strategy
Bench Press
40 Yard Dash
Jumps & Long Shuttle
Pro Agility Drill
3 Cone Drill

Check out the video clips in the right margin or visit our YouTube channel to view more samples from this DVD set.

Science & Professional Practice: Unfinished Business

noreply@blogger.com (Excelsior Sports) — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 21:54:00 +0000

Here are some intriguing questions — along with unpublished answers — from a terrific series of roundtable articles that was discontinued 2 years ago.

“Science is often misrepresented as
‘the body of knowledge acquired by performing replicated controlled experiments in the laboratory.’
Actually, science is something much broader: the acquisition of reliable knowledge about the world.”
— Jared Diamond, Collapse

In '06-'07, I had the opportunity to participate in a 9-part roundtable article chaired by Dr. Bill Kraemer entitled “Using Science To Improve Professional Practice”, to be published in Strength & Conditioning Journal. I eagerly accepted the invitation to join the discussion, as the questions Dr. Kraemer prepared were very important and timely (not surprisingly, considering his wealth of knowledge). I was also excited to contribute to a panel that reads like a who’s who of experts in the field: Dr. Jill Bush, Dr. Steve Fleck, Dr. Jay Gump, Dr. Jay Hoffman, Dr. Terry Housh, Joe Hughes, Jerry Martin, Mike Nitka, Meg Stone, Dr. Mike Stone, John Taylor, Jon Torine, Dr. Travis Triplett, Al Vermeil and Dr. Darryn Willoughby.

Unfortunately, the series was discontinued after the first 3 installments. Parts #1-3 addressed the following issues respectively:

Part 1: For today’s Strength & Conditioning specialist, what type of academic and professional training can optimize a young person’s chances for success in the field in the 21st century?

Part 2: As we learn more scientifically about different aspects of sport and exercise science, how can the Strength & Conditioning coach best use the scientific literature to their advantage in the practice of the profession?

Part 3: With the increasing amount of information that is being produced scientifically by laboratories around the world, what would you tell the Strength & Conditioning coach as to how to keep up and monitor things?

Revisiting my answers to these 3 questions as well as the remaining 6, I found that my thoughts haven’t changed much — although my disdain for “mythologists” (as Dr. K calls them) is probably even stronger now than it was then. I believe we have a big problem in this field with our signal-to-noise ratio. More about that and some other follow-up ideas below.

Enough Digressing Already
More importantly, I think Dr. K was drilling into too many thought-provoking issues to go 3-and-out. So here are questions #4-9. I will humbly include my responses in the hope they’ll kick off some discussion, but I believe the real value here is in the questions themselves. My good friend and colleague John Taylor has also been kind enough to share his responses:

4. A coach once said “I cannot wait for science to tell me what to do, I have to train athletes.” How can science be used, yet not impede progress for new program innovations and practices?

Plisk: In my experience, these kinds of statements are used as a smokescreen by nescient or obstinate coaches. Such people are easy to spot because their methods are often driven by preferences rather than principles, sometimes to the point of being unsound. In any case, this mentality isn’t just irrational. It’s unprofessional and intolerable because other people’s efforts are wasted or misdirected as a result.

Having said that, our scope of practice has expanded and diversified to the point where it’s very challenging — and often unrealistic — for one person to master all the competencies. The key is to grasp and apply scientific, fundamentally sound practices while continuing to learn and grow professionally.

Keep in mind that every branch of science can be understood at an elementary level. For example, the laws of motion (upon which movement mechanics are based) are taught in high school. Granted, these can get lost in the curriculum — and science teachers may not illustrate essential concepts like force, impulse, power and so on with sports/training examples. But I struggle with the notion of “waiting for science” when it’s so basic.

Taylor: It is not necessary to wait for science when developing training protocols. Provisionally it is important that professionals continually enhance their understanding of the physical world around their efforts to develop the highest standards of practice. Much of the practice of Strength & Conditioning is based in the elementary aspects of science (physics, i.e. Newton’s Laws and basic lever systems).

The profession is still very young. Even with the recent explosion of research-based information, what is done in practice is often ahead of research. Although it is likely this situation will always exist at some level, what is important is the on going search for knowledge and its practical application. Those who espouse the premise “they can’t wait for science” are likely unwilling to take the time to investigate what the science says. Change is often difficult, especially for those who have been in the profession many years. New science may suggest professionals need to alter training methods that have been used for years. This often requires a major paradigm shift, thus the need to let go of methodologies that are ingrained in their psyche. The challenge is to overcome the psyche and apply what one learns from science to propel oneself forward, while continuing to innovate and experiment with the practical application of new knowledge.

5. Obviously, not all Strength & Conditioning coaches interact with exercise and sport scientists. How can this occur and what ideas do you have for initiating such contacts for coaches at all levels of our field?

Plisk: Contact the exercise/sport science faculty at nearby schools. With internet/e-mail capabilities, this has never been easier. Invite them to visit your site, conduct in-service training with you and your staff, and/or participate in clinics or workshops. Likewise, offer to contribute to similar activities hosted at their site. In either case, be proactive and willing to help with the organizational work.

Attend and contribute to local, regional and national conferences or seminars whenever possible. Consider participating in committees or special interest groups. In addition to helping advance the profession, these are excellent opportunities to network with colleagues and start productive relationships.

Taylor: At the collegiate level this can be accomplished by contacting the exercise science or physical education department and offering to collaborate on potential research studies (including facilitating access to athletes as possible subjects as well as use of equipment and facilities). Professionals can further interaction by offering services as an adjunct instructor or guest lecturer, and inviting professors to provide in-service training for staff and/or educational lectures for student-athletes. This approach in creating relationships with academia can also be used at the high school level, although it may be somewhat problematic if a college or university is not nearby. All professionals can facilitate collegial relationships with the scientific community though networking at national conferences and local professional events.

6. A professor at The Ohio State University in information technology gave a commencement speech and said the biggest challenge for the 21st century is to teach people how to evaluate information. How would you suggest that coaches evaluate information?

Plisk: In a word: wisely! As knowledge workers, it’s a daily challenge to avoid information overload and distraction. A fringe benefit of the principle-based approach is that it makes an effective noise filter and baloney detector.

Every profession has its self promoters and carnival barkers who are better at hyping than educating. My recommendation is to put personal preferences aside and stick to the fundamentals. They’re invaluable for making objective, non-judgmental decisions on whether a given idea is sound.

Use common sense and be especially wary of half-truths. The mythologists of the world usually try to use kernels of truth to justify — and sell — nonsensical ideas.

Taylor: First and foremost, one must evaluate the source of information. Is it an authoritative source? Consider the reputation of the author and the publisher. Experts amongst their peers are usually cited and referenced in the literature. It is important to discern whether authors are accomplished professionals with regards to the subject matter. Do they display knowledge of theories and schools of thought as well as provide sufficient methodology for purposes of duplication and verification?

Consider the accuracy of information. Is it peer reviewed? Do authors make use of referenced information? Is the information dated? New information may be available that invalidates the old.

Consider the scope of coverage. One study does not provide a definitive answer. Does the information extensively or marginally cover the subject? Does the information update or substantiate other information? Consider if the information is a primary source (actual research study) or a secondary source that’s based on primary sources.

Consider the objectivity of the information. Is the persuasive language biased or overly opinionated in providing analysis of the subject matter? What is the reason for providing the information? Consider possible advertising influences as well as underwriting.

When evaluating information, do so with an open and questioning mind. Consider all information even though it may not support one’s case or point of view. Look for answers but don’t always expect them. Evaluating information should be thought-provoking and assist in one’s decision making. Look not strictly for answers, but direction.

7. What do sport and exercise scientists need to know in order to better direct their research toward questions and problems that are important to the Strength & Conditioning practitioner?

Plisk: Researchers and practitioners both need to realize that science is a two-way street. Just as good practitioners apply evidence-based coaching methods, good scientists conduct practical research studies. In an applied profession like ours, practitioners have a “civic responsibility” to help steer the scientific process. Don’t wait for an invitation. Proactively seek opportunities to give back.

This brings us to a key point: Every field has secretive practitioners. Each of us should consider how much of what we do is really original versus how much was learned from others, and then applied with modifications and wrinkles. We all stand on the shoulders of colleagues and predecessors, whether it’s from reading the literature, attending presentations or interacting with mentors.

Sharing best practices facilitates the growth of our profession (and society). Secrecy and protectionism hinders it. Although our profession is competitive by nature, I believe we each have an obligation to share our ideas and experiences.

Taylor: Sport and exercise scientists need to know the perspective of the practitioner. Often information that is most useful is produced by exercise scientists that were or are practitioners to some degree or have had experiences as a practitioner. For those who have little experience as a practitioner, it is vital they work collaboratively with practitioners. This creates a climate where sport scientist and practitioners have a mutual interest and understanding of important questions and problems.

Collaborative efforts are often impaired due to secrecy on the practitioner’s part, especially in the fiercely competitive collegiate environment. Some believe training methods need to be kept secret in an effort to maintain a teams’ edge on the field of competition. Empirically speaking, practitioners know certain methods are effective. These methods need to be shared with the scientific community for study. Sharing increases the body of knowledge and the use of evidence-based methods, both of which promote professionalism.

8. What is the role of science in today’s field of Strength & Conditioning? How can it play an effective role?

Plisk: Science is the basis of rational thought and productive action in any discipline. In an applied knowledge profession like ours, there is a reciprocal relationship between science and practice. Science should be the foundation upon which the art of coaching is based. Practice should be the proving ground where principles and theories are applied, and new hypotheses are generated.

Taylor: The role of science in today’s profession is more vital then ever. With the growth in number of colleges and high schools that have full-time Strength & Conditioning professionals comes added pressure and accountability. Sport coaches look to the Strength & Conditioning professional to ensure athletes are prepared for competition. Good professionals need to utilize evidence based means and methods to maintain a competitive edge and ensure accountability.

Most sports coaches have little or no expertise in the area of sport and exercise science. Many times they expect professionals to use non-evidenced based approaches, solely because it’s what they have done in the past. It then becomes necessary for the Strength & Conditioning professional to educate the sport coach on the importance and effectiveness of utilizing an evidenced-based approach.

Often sport coaches still question or disregard suggested training methods validated by science. Most likely this will continue until such time the body of knowledge is so great that evidence-based methods can’t be ignored; or a high-profile coach consistently wins utilizing evidence-based methods. Humans are creatures of habit. It has been my experience that sport coaches fall into the extreme category, especially if they have had any prior success with a particular approach. One often hears “This is not the way we did it at University X” regardless of whether University X used evidence-based methods. Change is difficult, especially for sport coaches when they become familiar/comfortable with methods they have utilized for many years, even though those methods aren’t evidence-based (or have even been disproved by the scientific body of knowledge as ineffective or counterproductive).

Science legitimizes the profession of Strength & Conditioning. It provides the evidence to validate (to sport coaches, administrators, athletes, parents) one’s methods. Science makes it difficult to dispute evidence-based methods, thus assisting the Strength & Conditioning professional in changing a culture based strictly on old habits and flawed belief systems.

9. With the internet and marketing today on a host of products how can the Strength & Conditioning specialist evaluate the veracity of information in today’s field?

Plisk: Please see response #6.

Taylor: Most of the same principles stated in the question regarding evaluating information can be applied here:

Consider the source. Is it authoritative?
Consider the accuracy. What does the science say?
Consider the scope of coverage. Is information on the product updated or substantiated with other information? What experiences have other professionals had with the product?
Consider the objectivity of the information. Is there possible advertising influence as well as underwriting of the product?
Evaluate information/products with a critical mind.

Afterthought: A Call For Best Practices
Before proceeding, I’d like to suggest going back through the questions one more time without reading our posted answers. Write down your own thoughts — and then consider the following.

This isn’t the last word on the subject, but I think #9 brings us to the mother lode: The key to evaluating information (and more broadly, to improving practice through science) is to be disciplined enough to first consider the right questions; and then take a “best practices” approach to finding answers. Asking the right questions begins with not settling for cookbook solutions or menus of drills. Basically, it means asking why and how instead of just what.

I know, best practices is a buzzword that gets hackneyed all over the place. But when you unpack this term, you’ll find some pretty powerful ideas. For one thing, it takes you to a place that’s principled as well as evidence-based — two extraordinary things to be. I’m not talking about just reading some research studies or trying to do the right thing in a vague sense.

Here’s what I am talking about:

Spell out a set of principles that you have enough conviction in to write down, post in plain view for all to see, and explain in terms a child could understand. The good news is that you don’t need to invent these from scratch. When you consider the big picture, a set of time-honored and battle-tested training principles emerges. You can tell you’re onto something special if they seem like no-brainers when considered individually, but involve some challenging trade-offs or paradoxes when considered collectively.

Consider the body of evidence. This is no small task because our field is multidisciplinary by nature, and each line of evidence is a work in progress that exists on different levels. This brings me to my next point.

Embrace the concept of levels of evidence. Rigorously validated, bulletproof facts are at one end of the continuum; empirical ideas/hypotheses are at the other. There’s nothing wrong with empiricism as long as you recognize it as such (in fact, this is where many valuable ideas are generated).

It Gets Even Better
Being principled and evidence-based goes a long way toward filtering out the noise, but there’s still a problem: Both principles and evidence can be misinterpreted. Indeed they often are, for a variety of reasons. So we need some kind of check-and-balance to keep us from going off the reservation.

Fortunately we’ve got a good one: consensus.

Consensus decision-making is the linchpin of our best practices paradigm. It’s not the only way to resolve a problem and it isn’t perfect, but for purposes of fine-tuning the baloney detector it’s tough to beat. Sound complicated? Here’s how straightforward it can be: If two rational people — using evidence and principles as their guide — can look one another in the eye and agree that an idea makes sense, chances are they’re on the right track. If they can’t agree, chances are someone is veering off. It’s that simple.

The state of the art in any discipline is a moving target, so best practices are more than just an operating platform. They are a point of departure for innovation and experimentation — and a great way to improve the signal-to-noise ratio.

203 450-XLCR | excelsiorsports@gmail.com
Prepare To Be A Champion!

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Strategy
Bench Press
40 Yard Dash
Jumps & Long Shuttle
Pro Agility Drill
3 Cone Drill

Check out the video clips in the right margin or visit our YouTube channel to view more samples from this DVD set.

The Next Lightning Strike

noreply@blogger.com (Excelsior Sports) — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 14:00:00 +0000

Usain Bolt and his coach, Glen Mills, have stated their performance target for this season: 9.54 in the 100. Here’s why that may be within striking distance — along with a take-home message about technique.

“It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”
— Lawrence Peter Berra

He’s 22 years old. He’s a multiple world record holder. He has not only set new performance standards for sprinting, but so far done it with apparent ease. And based on statements in a recent news conference, neither Usain “Lightning” Bolt nor his coach plan to rest on their laurels. On the contrary, they’re stepping up their game.

With the '09 IAAF World Championships approaching (in Berlin during the 3rd week of August), Bolt’s coach Glen Mills believes he can significantly improve his 100m performance this season. Their target: 9.54 seconds. Holy smokes!

In my opinion, it’s not a matter of whether Bolt can do it. As we’ll see, he might have been pretty close to that time last summer in Beijing if he hadn’t eased up before the finish line. It’s really a matter of all the stars lining up, from preparation to opportunity to staying healthy. Bolt’s health is already at least a minor issue, having suffered a puncture wound to his left foot earlier this year that required surgery. Even with relatively quick and full recovery, the injury must be hindering his training. But there’s nothing more exciting — or dangerous — than a competitive athlete fighting through a setback.

Lightning Strikes At The '08 Olympics
If you followed the Track & Field events in Beijing, particularly the short sprints, you may have noticed a couple of unusual things happening. For one thing, the top competitors weren’t talking quite as much trash as usual before the events. In fact, they were downright sportsmanlike with one another. That was our first hint that something remarkable was brewing.

We got confirmation when the starter’s pistol went off in the men’s 100m and 200m sprints, and 4x100m relay. Jamaican phenom Usain Bolt chewed up the track at speeds never seen before, revising the record books in the process. His 6'5" build, novel running style and world-record times (9.69 and 19.30 seconds, respectively) ignited a buzz about whether he established a “new technique” of sprinting. Of course, everyone was left wondering how fast he might have run the 100m if he hadn’t started celebrating 20 meters before the finish — and what he might achieve in the future.

New Sprinting Technique?
There’s no doubt about it, Bolt’s Olympic performances were electrifying. His reaction time was actually a bit slower than previous 100m record-holders, and his acceleration was similar. He hit the afterburners at the halfway point, however, covering the next several 10m increments in 0.82 second each. He achieved a peak velocity of 12.2 meters/second (27.3 mph) and then maintained it for almost 40 meters. That’s a first — and being a 200-400m specialist, he might have done it longer if he hadn’t broken form after 80 meters.

100m Split Times: Elite Sprinters. Reaction times [RT], 10m splits [in seconds] and performance times [TIME] for sprinters that have run the 100m in under 9.8 seconds: Ben Johnson (1988), Maurice Greene (1999), Tim Montgomery (2002), Asafa Powell (2005) and Usain Bolt (2008).

In fact, if Bolt had maintained those 0.82 second split times through the finish line, his 9.69 performance would have been even more jaw-dropping: 9.60. Assuming he could have done that last year, 9.54 may be within reach this year. It will be interesting to see.

Regardless of whether he actually hits that target, what’s the secret of Bolt’s speed? While his peak stride frequency is impressive, it isn’t unusual for an elite athlete: 4.9 strides per second. His stride length, on the other hand, is astounding: 2.5 meters (more than 8 feet). To put that in context, a stride length of 2 meters (a little over 7 feet) puts you in pretty elite company, assuming your frequency is ~5 per second. At 2.2 meters, you’re world-class. But 2.5 is unheard of. With each ground strike, Bolt projected himself further and faster than the other athletes, galloping 100 meters in 40 strides. By comparison, 44-48 strides is typical for elite sprinters.

So Usain Bolt’s stride length sets him apart from his peers as well as all of us mere mortals. The problem with a fact like this, however, is that it sounds simplistic enough to get misinterpreted all over the place. It’s important to understand how he achieves such tremendous stride length.

Here are the take-away messages:

Stride length and frequency interact. Bolt’s stride length was achieved while maintaining high frequency. It’s pointless — or even counterproductive — to consider either parameter independently. It’s true that velocity is the product of length and frequency; but those are metrics, not causes. This brings me to my next point.

Velocity is a result of force. Stride length and frequency, as well as corresponding velocity, are functions of the forces athletes apply while running.

Stride length is not increased in the way that many people assume — by reaching out and pulling the ground under the body, or overstriding. That’s a guaranteed way to create braking forces, defeat the stretch-shortening mechanism (due to heel strike), and actually reduce length and frequency. Because we become projectiles when we run, “effective stride length” is increased by striking the ground directly under the body (without heel contact), thus applying more impulse, minimizing ground time and maximizing frequency.

Sprinting Fundamentals
As remarkable as Usain Bolt’s performances were, they still fit the fundamental technical model of sprinting — albeit with a different result. It’s a lesson in the law of incremental effects: Small differences, when repeated consistently, can add up to big margins of victory.

In a nutshell, linear sprinting involves a series of subtasks: the start, acceleration and maximum velocity (the basic features of each are summarized below). Although the respective movement mechanics are distinct, acceleration and maximum velocity running are both characterized by two phases: flight, which includes recovery and ground preparation; and support, which includes eccentric braking and concentric propulsion.

Elite male and female sprinters cover 100m in less than 10 or 11 seconds, respectively. In order to achieve those times, these athletes have to accelerate to velocities of 25-27 mph in about 5 seconds, and then stay there for about 5 more. This would be pretty impressive even with a flying start, but the best in the world do it from a static start. Some essential things have to happen in order to run at such high velocities:

Elite sprinters execute 5 strides per second (once they reach top speed, 50+ meters from the start).

They spend less than 0.1 second on the ground.

They spend about 0.1 second in the air.

During leg recovery, their foot swings forward at 40+ mph.

Peak ground reaction forces are up to 4 times the athlete’s body weight — and that’s when landing correctly, with the forefoot striking the ground beneath the center of gravity. By comparison, ground reaction forces can approach 6 times body weight when overstriding (a common problem in less qualified athletes where the heel strikes the ground in front of the body).

Think about this last point. It means a 190 lb sprinter like Bolt applies a force — with one leg — equivalent to approximately 760 lbs at ground strike! This is one reason why strength is so important for performance and injury prevention. If athletes can’t tolerate these forces, often it’s just a matter of time before they’re sidelined with injuries that are often attributed to overuse.

Staying healthy isn’t the only reason strength is important. The more power athletes can generate, the faster they can move. Many people still don’t appreciate the cause-and-effect relationship between force and velocity. Great athletes don’t just survive these forces — they thrive on them. They use them to “stretch load” their muscles, and immediately shorten them in a reactive/elastic manner when pushing off. The trick is to do this in the blink of an eye. Fortunately, we’re all born with reflexes that can be trained to help make this happen. But no one runs with the big dogs by spending more time on the ground, and consequently decreasing their stride rate.

Explosive ground reaction forces are the name of the game in sports involving rapid acceleration, deceleration and/or change of direction — in a word, athleticism. Remember this the next time someone tries to tell you that strength is incompatible with speed. Velocity is a function of force!

Unclear On The Concept
Coaches who don’t understand the interaction (or mechanism) of stride rate and length often come up with interesting guidelines for teaching running technique. One popular example is the notion of lengthening your stride by reaching forward with the leg and trying to pull the ground under you. This results in the distinct problem of overstriding, which is counterproductive for the reasons mentioned above. [These coaches are like mechanics who try to make your car go faster by manipulating a gauge on the dashboard instead of tuning up the engine. In this case, the problem isn’t just that it’s futile; it also activates the brakes and beats up the chassis.]

In order to strike the ground properly with the forefoot, the prior action — leg recovery — must be executed properly. This means:

Lifting the foot close to the hip
Punching the knee in front of the hip and rapidly decelerating the leg as it swings forward
Touching down directly under the hips such that the forefoot (not heel) strikes the ground, loading the ankle properly

Keep in mind that running differs fundamentally from walking. The former is a ballistic activity where the body is repeatedly launched as a projectile; the latter isn’t. Reaching forward is an effective way to lengthen your stride when walking because it’s a nonballistic, “heel-to-toe” movement. When running, however, stride length is increased by striking the ground underneath the body, driving off the ground in the shortest possible time, and thereby projecting oneself further and faster. This is why elite athletes explosively push the ground backward, rather than reach forward and pull.

Another common but incorrect coaching guideline is to keep the feet close to the ground when running. This is a popular misconception in sports where athletes change velocities regularly. Unfortunately, the trade-off negates any benefits: Stride rate and overall running speed are reduced if the foot isn’t lifted near the hip when recovering the leg. So even when agility is the name of the game, teach your athletes to lift the heel close to the buttock during recovery and “step over” the opposite knee when swinging the leg forward.

Going Forward
Running is the basic means of locomotion in many sports, so the mechanics of sprinting have broad application. When you’re preparing athletes for other linear sprinting events (e.g. 40 yard dash), adapting these concepts is a pretty straightforward task. It’s a bit more complex in multidirectional sports, but the basic principles still apply. Check out reference #14 below for more thorough discussion of this issue.

Usain Bolt’s performance in Beijing was unique enough to warrant reconsidering how best to teach running mechanics to athletes. At the end of the day, however, he may have simply achieved a different outcome with the same time-tested fundamentals his competitors were using. He just took advantage of that big frame and tremendous ability of his, with amazing results. Bolt is entering his prime — and since he has only competed in the 100m for 2 years, the rest of the '09 track season should be interesting!

* * * * *

Sprinting Technique

Start. The sprint start may appear to be a straightforward task where an athlete simply drives off the line at an appropriate angle (ideally ~45° from horizontal). In practice, efficient starting technique should enable the athlete to accomplish two objectives:

• Overcome inertia by applying maximal impulse via explosive push-off with both legs.
• After extension, quickly swing the rear leg to the front side of the body in preparation for subsequent ground strike.

Regardless of whether the athlete starts from a standing (2-point) or crouched (3- or 4-point) position, staggering the feet in a medium “heel-to-toe” stance usually yields optimal results. Competitive sprinters use starting blocks and a crouched stance. Respective front and rear knee angles are ~90° and 110-130°, and are similar in sprinters of high or average qualification. The hip angles tend to differ: ~40° and ~80°, respectively, for elite sprinters versus ~50° and ~90° for sub-elite. Although trunk lean is comparable in the two groups, elite sprinters tend to align their center of gravity closer to the starting line.

The rear leg produces greater initial force, but lifts off earlier in order to swing forward; whereas the front leg exerts force longer, generates more impulse, and thereby influences starting momentum to a greater extent. Elite sprinters apply force for less than 0.37 second with the front leg and 0.18 second with the rear leg. Peak starting force and impulse can exceed 1500 Newtons and 230 Newton•seconds, respectively, with resultant block clearance velocities up to 3.9 meters/second and accelerations up to 11.8 meters/second².

Arm action serves an important function at the start. As the rear foot lifts off and leg swings forward, the athlete should swing the opposite arm forward and up, with the elbow flexed ~90° and hand moving toward the forehead. This action helps enhance momentum and overcome inertia, and prepares the arm to swing backward when executing the first ground strike. The opposite arm should initially extend backward as the contralateral (front) leg drives through full extension, after which it swings forward.

Acceleration. Qualified athletes accelerate by rapidly increasing both stride frequency and length for the first 15-20 meters, or 8-10 strides, from a static start. The sprinter’s body angle should progressively climb from ~45° to 5°, with the head in neutral position and eyes focused forward.

Because of forward lean during acceleration, the athlete’s leg action is less cyclical than that performed in maximum velocity running. The leg is in a “power line” position at the completion of the drive phase, i.e. fully extended in line with the long axis of the body rather than behind it. From this position, he/she initiates recovery by punching the knee in front of the hip such that the thigh is perpendicular — and lower is leg parallel — to the trunk. Once in ground preparation position, the leg extends down/backward, striking the ground at smaller hip and knee angles than those occurring at maximum velocity. Ground contact tends to occur behind the center of gravity during the first two strides, after which the foot makes contact beneath or a short distance in front of it.

The support phase consists of two subphases: eccentric braking and concentric propulsion. During acceleration, these are coupled as a long-response SSC action. In elite sprinters, the durations of the support phases for the first two strides are less than 0.20 and 0.18 second, respectively, and the flight phase durations are less than 0.70 and 0.90 second. With each stride, both phases decrease in duration as the athlete accelerates toward maximum velocity. Peak ground reaction forces during the acceleration phase can exceed 3000 Watts.

Arm action facilitates leg drive, and should resemble an explosive hammering motion. The elbows are flexed ~90° and move close to body as the hands swing forward/up to approximately shoulder height, and down/backward past the hips. At full shoulder extension, the athlete’s upper arm is perpendicular to the trunk. Arm action and accompanying trunk rotation serve mechanical and neuromuscular roles: they offset the axial angular momentum of the contralateral leg and hip, and exploit reciprocal innervation patterns.

Maximum Velocity. Qualified sprinters begin transitioning to maximum velocity running mechanics about 8-10 strides, or 15-20 meters, from a static start. Although still accelerating, the athlete approaches a more upright position (within 5° of vertical). Stride length begins to plateau, but continues increasing gradually up to ~45 meters; whereas stride frequency increases up to ~25 meters.

Optimal recovery begins with “triple flexion” of the ankle, knee and hip on the back side of the body, such that the athlete lifts his/her heel close to the buttock. This enables the leg to subsequently swing under the body at high speed as the athlete punches the knee in front of the hip (peak foot-swing velocity exceeds 20 meters/second in elite sprinters). Once the athlete properly positions his/her leg on the front side, ground preparation should involve rapid foot descent, with the foot accelerating down and backward upon ground strike.

Ground contact should occur directly beneath — or minimal distance in front of — the athlete’s center of gravity. Once again, the support phase consists of two subphases: eccentric braking action and concentric propulsion. By virtue of a short-response SSC, brief coupling time between these actions results in powerful and impulsive “triple extension” of the hip, knee and ankle. In order to execute this action correctly, the athlete must precede it with proper leg recovery and ground preparation, as described above.

At maximum velocity, an elite sprinter’s flight phase duration is 0.12 – 0.14 second, and support phase duration is 0.08 – 0.10 second. Ground reaction forces during the support phase can approach 1800 Newtons. Skilled athletes effectively minimize horizontal braking forces and vertical displacement during each foot strike, and produce greater impulse by generating peak forces earlier during support (e.g. within 0.04 second) than less qualified athletes. This suggests that “late recovery” and “early support” mechanics are critical in terms of efficiency and performance at high running velocities.

Watch 2 slow motion/digitized strides of Usain Bolt’s world-record 200m performance in Beijing, courtesy of Dr. Loren Chiu.

Resources

Bosco C., Vittori C. Biomechanical characteristics of sprint running during maximal and supramaximal speed. New Studies in Athletics 1(1): 39-45, 1986.
Delecluse C. Influence of strength training on sprint running performance: current findings and implications for training. Sports Medicine 24(3): 147-156, 1997.
Dick F.W. Sprints & Relays. London: British Amateur Athletic Board, 1987.
Gambetta V., Winckler G., Rogers J., Orognen J., Seagrave L., Jolly S. Sprints and relays. In: TAC Track & Field Coaching Manual (2nd Edition), V. Gambetta (Editor)/TAC Development Committees. Champaign IL: Leisure Press, 1989; pp. 55-70.
Harland M.J., Steele J.R. Biomechanics of the sprint start. Sports Medicine 23(1): 11-20, 1997.
Hawley J.A. (Editor) Running. Oxford: Blackwell Science, 2000.
Hochmuth G. Biomechanics of Athletic Movement (4th Edition). Berlin: Sportverlag, 1984.
Jarver J. (Editor) Sprints & Relays (5th Edition). Los Altos CA: Tafnews Press, 2000.
Kozlov I., Muravyev V. Muscles and the sprint. Soviet Sports Review 27(6): 192-195, 1992.
Mach G. The individual sprint events. In: Athletes in Action, H. Payne (Editor)/International Amateur Athletic Federation. London: Pelham, 1985; pp. 12-34.
Mero A., Komi P.V., Gregor R.J. Biomechanics of sprint running. Sports Medicine 13(6): 376-392, 1992.
Moravec P., Ruzicka J., Susanka P., Dostal E., Kodejs M., Nosek M. The 1987 International Athletic Foundation/IAAF scientific project report: time analysis of the 100 metres events at the II World Championships in athletics. New Studies in Athletics 3(3): 61-96, 1988.
Ozolin E. Contemporary sprint technique (parts 1-2). Soviet Sports Review 21(3): 109-114, 1986; 21(4): 190-195, 1986.
Plisk S.S. Speed, agility, and speed-endurance development. In: T.R. Baechle & R.W. Earle (Editors), Essentials of Strength Training & Conditioning (3rd Edition). Champaign IL: Human Kinetics, 2008; pp. 457-485.
Putnam C.A., Kozey J.W. Substantive issues in running. In: Biomechanics of Sport, C.L. Vaughan (Editor). Boca Raton FL: CRC Press, 1989; pp. 1-33.
Schmolinsky G. (Editor) Track & Field. Toronto: Sport Books Publisher, 1993.
Seagrave L. Introduction to sprinting. New Studies in Athletics 11(2/3): 93-113, 1996.
Wiemann K., Tidow G. Relative activity of hip and knee extensors in sprinting — implications for training. New Studies in Athletics 10(1): 29-49, 1995.
Wood G.A. Biomechanical limitations to sprint running. In: Medicine & Sport Science, Volume 25: Current Research in Sports Biomechanics, M. Hebbelink, R.J. Shephard, B. Van Gheluwe & J. Atha (Editors). Basel: Karger, 1987; pp. 58-71.

203 450-XLCR | excelsiorsports@gmail.com
Prepare To Be A Champion!

Develop a comprehensive plan of attack and teach your athletes detailed, proven performance techniques for each event with our 6-DVD set on NFL Scouting Combine Preparation — part of our New School of Human Performance series available through Perform Better:

Strategy
Bench Press
40 Yard Dash
Jumps & Long Shuttle
Pro Agility Drill
3 Cone Drill

Check out the video clips in the right margin or visit our YouTube channel to view more samples from this DVD set.

The 5 Most Dangerous Words In The Profession

noreply@blogger.com (Excelsior Sports) — Fri, 29 May 2009 18:34:00 +0000

“Is your program sport-specific?” seems like a straightforward question, but there’s a trap lurking beneath the surface. Here’s how to avoid taking the fall.

“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble.
It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”
— Mark Twain

I have good news and bad news. For starters here’s the bad news: The subject of this article is specificity, possibly the most mundane and unexciting concept in all of training. Why go there when we could tackle so many other interesting, urgent issues? Specificity is worth revisiting precisely because it’s such a foundational concept that it tends to slip under our radar. Of all the time-honored training principles, none seem to get bastardized and misinterpreted the way this one does. Maybe that shouldn’t be surprising. Who wants to think about stuff like analyzing task demands when there’s planning and coaching to do?

Now here’s the good news: Specificity really isn’t boring at all when you consider its place in the planning process. It is the essential first step in preparing any strategy: zeroing in on the target. You can be an expert at the next two steps — understanding the situation and selecting tactics — but if you don’t get an accurate fix on your performance target, odds are you’ll miss it despite your best efforts.

So hopefully I’ve got your attention and you’ll read on. I’ll try to keep it interesting and present a worthwhile take-away message. If I can accomplish that, with luck you won’t be caught off guard the next time you hear the five most dangerous words in the profession.

The Simulation Epidemic

There’s no doubt about it, the sports training scene has come down with a bad case of simulation over the last decade or so. In my opinion, it has become the pandemic of our profession. Some practitioners are missing the target worse than ever, emphasizing “sport specific” training tasks that are based on outward appearances more so than actual demands. It’s a classic example of unintended consequences: Start with a basic principle (specificity), give lots of people easy access to lots of information — some of which is sound, but some of which is nonsense — and even with good intentions, the signal-to-noise ratio gets fubar fast.

To be clear: every sport has some specific demands. However, most sports share some generic demands as well. For the majority of athletes — at least those involved in terrestrial activities — there is a skill set that matters more than throwing, kicking, dribbling, stickhandling and so on. I’m talking about the common locomotor skills of running and jumping.

Here comes the painful part of this exercise. Think about what the demands of locomotion really mean for training, in terms of injury prevention as well as performance. In ground-based sports from A to Z, whether the players are female or male, think about how these general demands should influence your training priorities. Consider the implications not only for advanced athletes, but also for novices and intermediates. Then — brace yourself — compare this with the “specialized” programs many coaches and parents want you to provide.

Therein lies the problem.

Of course there are sports that don’t involve running or jumping — cycling, rowing and swimming are obvious examples — but you get the idea. We need to select training tactics with respect to both specificity (the target) and developmental considerations (the situation). But here’s the rub: no matter how compelling this need for basic training might be, the trick is to balance needs with wants. People won’t do a program they don’t accept; and it’s remarkably tough to get some folks to buy into the idea of developmentally-appropriate, movement-based training.

In my experience, this challenge presents itself on a few fronts:

It’s hard to convince many people of the need for generic training or the pitfalls of getting too specific, especially early in an athlete’s development. Make no mistake, progressing toward specific performance targets is the name of the game, with progression being the central concept. The key is to approach training as a long-term curriculum that begins with a broad base — the prerequisites — and gradually zeros in on the target. As is the case with any developmental curriculum, however, fast-track or early-specialization programs usually backfire. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what many coaches and parents want.

It’s hard to convince many people of the need for remedial training, especially later in an athlete’s development. Running and jumping mechanics are rarely taught in schools, probably because they’re not included in our national standards for physical education (NASPE 2004). Yet they comprise the essential language of movement that athletes need to be fluent in, making them the most “generic” and important skill set of all. As acquired skills, these should be part of the syllabus during children’s critical developmental periods; but the assumption seems to be that they’re innate skills and don’t need to be taught. This is a big blind spot with big implications (e.g. it’s one thing to accept that a high school student-athlete isn’t ready for a college program, but it’s another thing altogether to accept going back to elementary school for corrective work).

Many people have difficulty distinguishing specificity from simulation because of the nature of specificity itself. It is neither one-dimensional nor a stand-alone principle. As will be discussed below, it has at least three dimensions; and is one of seven principles that must be considered collectively.

With all these stumbling blocks, we’ve got some work to do if we’re going to set things straight. Fortunately, there’s a simple way to make sure you never miss the target again, and to help guide people out of the simulation trap.

Specificity³: Triangulating On The Target

Most people would probably agree that specificity is where it’s at, even if they don’t agree on how it’s defined. “Specific adaptation to imposed demands” (SAID) is widely acknowledged as a fundamental premise of training. Here in the West, traditional definitions of specificity usually address issues like muscle/joint involvement, range of motion and movement velocity. Beyond these, however, there really aren’t any standard criteria — which leaves the door open for plenty of opinion and (mis)interpretation. As we’ll see, there are some pillars we can lean on to help us come up with a working definition.

One of the central premises of the “functional training” school of thought is that movement involves the entire body. As a general rule, it’s not a question of which muscle groups we use; the issue is what they’re being tasked with, how they’re interacting, and how the operating system coordinates them. Paradoxically, muscles that might not appear to be main movers can in fact be major contributors because of the way forces are transmitted through the system. So we can’t rely just on outward appearances when analyzing a target task’s demands. We need objective criteria.

Specificity exists in several dimensions, giving us a useful framework for categorizing those criteria:

Mechanical
Energetic
Coordinative

Think of these as three different perspectives you’re using to try to get a fix on a 3-D target. It’s important not to rely on just one or two perspectives because certain things may not be visible from each vantage point. In effect, we want to do what a good outdoorsman or navigator does when searching for an elusive object: triangulate on it.

Each perspective offers a useful paradigm we can build on. Let’s take them one at a time:

Mechanics. This is where we’ll look through the biomechanist’s lens at the forces, or kinetics, involved in the target activity. This is a perspective that we otherwise wouldn’t get by looking just at movement patterns, or kinematics.

Forces are vector quantities, which means they have direction and magnitude. They’re expressed in terms of acceleration, velocity, and rate or time of application. Furthermore, they’re applied via various muscle actions including concentric, eccentric and isometric — as well as reactive-elastic actions involving a combination of these, called the stretch-shortening cycle. Depending on the mode of locomotion, forces are transmitted and summated through the kinetic chain in technique-specific ways.

The dynamic correspondence paradigm addresses all of these factors (Verkhoshansky 1977, 2006). According to this concept, training tasks should be specific to the target activity in terms of:

Rate and time of peak force production (impulse) and the velocities at which it is applied
Dynamics of effort (power)
Amplitude and direction of movement
Accentuated region of force application
Regime of muscular work

It’s hard to find a better working definition of mechanical specificity than this — especially when evaluating propulsive ground-reaction forces. Dynamic correspondence seems like cutting-edge stuff, but was first introduced decades ago. This idea originated in the former Soviet Union, perhaps explaining why it’s still sinking in here in the West.

A comment about velocity specificity is in order. Because of the cause-and-effect relationship between force and velocity, it’s rather meaningless to consider either variable independently. When analyzing (or training for) a task, keep in mind that the forces producing the action are causative factors; whereas the resulting accelerations and velocities are outcomes. Athletes must be able to skillfully apply forces across the velocity spectrum even when they’re already moving fast. Achievable movement speed is also load-dependent — a major factor when ballistically launching oneself as a projectile, particularly when doing so from single support (as when running). In this sense, velocity specificity is really the final movement velocity targeted when accelerating a mass. The take-home message: regardless of movement speed, performance boils down to the forces an athlete generates.

Energetics. This lens seems to intimidate some people because they think they need to be an exercise physiologist to use it. The good news: We don’t need to concern ourselves with all that unfathomable stuff about energy systems; we just need to create an exercise:relief profile of the sport to use as a model in training. For this, we’ll put on our coaching hats and grab a clipboard, stopwatch and some game footage.

Few sports involve a single, brief effort. Most consist of ongoing activity with intense, intermittent bursts — or a series of plays with periodic rest intervals. Athletes need the metabolic power to execute their assignments at the required effort level, as well as the capacity (and recoverability) to do so repetitively. A simple, pragmatic way to achieve metabolic specificity in training is to model a conditioning program on the activity/inactivity patterns of competition.

That’s the idea behind the tactical metabolic training paradigm (Plisk & Gambetta 1997, Plisk 2008). It involves a simple 5-step procedure we can use to model the “special endurance” demands of a sport and then prepare athletes for them. “Tactical” in this context doesn’t refer to military or law enforcement. It has to do with the playing tactics used to achieve strategic goals in competition, and the energetics involved in doing so. If we identify the exercise:relief intervals and effort distribution of the target activity, and then train specifically for those, the energy system contributions will take care of themselves.

Coordination. This is where we’ll look through the motor behaviorist’s lens at the movement skills involved in the target activity. Here we can lean on the classic motor learning paradigm of practice specificity, which states that the demands of a training task should correspond to the target activity with respect to sensorimotor, processing and contextual effects (the origin of this principle is hard to trace; refer to Magill 2006, Schmidt & Lee 2005, and Schmidt & Wrisberg 2007). Our goal should be to maximize the acquisition, retention and transfer of motor skills. In other words, it’s not necessarily about mimicking the target activity’s movement patterns or kinematics — it’s about tasking the system with functional problems.

In this sense, training is like upgrading a computer system. We’ll get optimal results by improving both the hardware and software in a coordinated way, since they must work together. What’s unique about athletes is that their hardware is upgraded by their software, and this whole remodeling process is shaped by task demands. As a practical matter, the question then becomes: What are we tasking their software to do? The essence of functionality is to challenge the system with skill-based problems. This means criteria must take precedence over appearances. So, to put it bluntly, don’t get cute. Keep things pretty low-tech for the most part and prompt your athletes (rather than some gadget) to do the problem solving.

This touches on the related issue of balance or stability training. These methods have become so popular that a cottage industry has grown around them, but we need to keep things in perspective. Balance is part of a suite of “coordinative abilities” that have been recognized throughout the international community for decades (Drabik 1996; Harre 1982). Think of these as the basic elements of technical skills we use to perform motor tasks:

Adaptive ability — modification of action sequence upon observing or anticipating novel/changing conditions and situations
Balance — static and dynamic equilibrium
Combinatory ability — coordination of body movements into a given action
Differentiation — accurate, economical adjustment of body movements and mechanics
Orientation — spatial and temporal control of body movements
Reactiveness — quick, well-directed response to stimuli
Rhythm — observation and implementation of dynamic motion pattern, timing and variation

Regardless of how useful balance training may be, keep in mind that the more instability you introduce into a task, the lower the athlete’s force output tends to be. Even if a balance exercise prompts a lot of muscle activation, much of this tends to involve protective co-contraction (e.g. to keep from losing balance) rather than power production. So it’s important to be clear about the goal of such tasks and to be especially careful about including them in strength training.

To sum up, there’s no denying the importance of SAID. Just remember that it refers to Specificity³:

Take a look through the mechanics lens — even if you’re sure the activity you’re training for is an “endurance sport”. Regardless of whether the energy systems are at steady state or maxed out, there’s a good chance that some explosive forces are being generated where the rubber meets the road.

Take a look through the energetics lens — even if you’re sure the activity you’re training for is a “power sport”. You might be surprised at the special endurance demands of competition or practice. Likewise, even long-duration sports usually involve intermittent stop-and-go activity, not just a continuous submaximal effort.

Always, always, always look at the target activity through the coordination lens. Regardless of where athletes are on the power-endurance continuum, chances are you won’t see them sitting on guided-resistance machines or counting reps while playing the game. Of course there are exceptions, but for the most part life tends to be a free-weight sport.

The intersection of these three prongs of specificity is where we’ll find the “special preparation” tasks that closely correspond to a target activity. The more we steer an exercise toward one prong at the expense of the others, the lower the correspondence tends to be (in other words, the more of a “general preparation” task it becomes). That’s not a value judgment. It’s a useful rule of thumb when prioritizing and selecting training activities.

This brings us to the short list of movements that seem to be staples in many training programs, including Olympic-style lifts, squats and plyometrics. Each of these satisfies most or all of the criteria mentioned above. Collectively, they work well together because they can potentiate one another’s effects. Still, some people react negatively when asked to do them — as if the fact that they’re commonly used in sports like football makes them inappropriate for other activities. When you think about it, however, football shares the same basic demands as other ground-based activities; and the main purpose of these movements is to improve athleticism and prevent injury, not to bodybuild. So when you encounter resistance, it helps to remind people that such generic exercises are the right medicine for a wide range of athletes as long as appropriate doses, or loads, are prescribed.

Fundamentals

Having clarified what specificity actually is, as well as what it isn’t, let’s put things in context. Specificity is one of at least seven training principles that have stood the test of time (Dick 2007; Harre 1982; Matveyev 1977; Stone, Stone & Sands 2007; Zatsiorsky & Kraemer 2006). This isn’t just a checklist of no-brainers. Fundamentally sound training involves making some important decisions and resolving some challenging trade-offs:

Accommodation: The biological response to constant stimuli decreases with repeated application. Novel/beneficial stressors yield adaptation; whereas monotonous/detrimental stressors yield stagnation or decay.

Continuity: The body’s homeostatic mechanisms up-regulate corresponding systems in response to training; and down-regulate them in response to detraining.

Individuality: The same stimuli induce unique responses in each athlete due to genetic differences, developmental/training status and environmental factors.

Progression: Long-term preparation should be planned such that tasks become progressively more challenging with respect to critical/sensitive developmental periods. Optimal learning and training effects are achieved by advancing from general to special movements and extensive to intensive workloads.

Specificity³: Adaptation becomes increasingly specific to imposed demands as the athlete’s level of preparation improves. Training tasks should correspond to the mechanical, energetic and coordinative demands of the sport.

Synergy: Focus should be directed toward integrated movement qualities and systemic training effects. The challenge is to plan and implement various stimuli in order to exploit cumulative and interactive responses, and minimize fatigue/compatibility problems.

Variability²: Adaptive responses to strenuous loading are manifested during subsequent unloading periods. Summated/sequenced training effects are realized through planned distribution or variation in training means (content) and methods (workload) on a cyclic or “periodic” basis.

The problem with these principles is that they often fly under people’s radar because they seem mundane. Consequently, some of them are misunderstood while others aren’t commonly recognized, at least on this side of the pond. In many resources published in the West, specificity and progressive overload are two that seem to be universally accepted, but after that it’s a crapshoot (by contrast, in the international community — especially the former Eastern Bloc — a full list of principles dominates entire chapters in most of the classic books on sports training). The result is predictable: Principles tend to get lost in the noise and many people are unclear on the concepts. It’s no wonder unsound or nonsensical training practices are still so common in some settings.

The first time you skim through the list of principles, it will probably occur to you that each one is just common sense. But go through them one more time and consider them collectively. Notice how some seem to conflict with each other even though they make sense individually. Two obvious examples are specificity and variation. The trade-off between these principles is one of the most important paradoxes of all because it drives the central decisions we have to make.

According to the SAID concept, training needs to be specific to a performance target or we’re just getting exercise. At the same time, we know that the system will accommodate (read: stagnate) if the training stimulus is too narrow. In effect, then, we need a bandwidth of variation around the target — and the earlier an athlete is in their development, the broader this bandwidth needs to be.

To borrow a pitching analogy: first, we need to be sure that we’ve identified the strike zone, and for that matter that we’re in the right ballpark. Next, we need to know the situation. In baseball, this starts with knowing the count; in training, it means knowing an athlete’s developmental status. Then we can select our pitches. Sometimes we’ll want to aim it right down the pipe; other times we’ll want to deliberately miss the strike zone a bit, to keep the other player on its toes.

Task analysis (specificity) is the unexciting, tedious part of planning. Selecting tactics (variation) is where the fun stuff is, and where we tend to focus our attention much of the time. But we can get into big trouble if we don’t first zero in on the correct target or recognize the situation — two distinct problems when overloaded with information. This is precisely when principles are most valuable, but also easiest to overlook. They make a great baloney detector and noise filter, enabling us to find superior information — i.e. the signal in the noise — and hopefully use it in a superior manner. Above all, remember that principles are natural laws that won’t cease and desist no matter how distracted or preoccupied we may be.

Good Old Needs Analysis: New & Improved!

Certain aspects of the triangulation concept should sound familiar. It’s really just a revised approach to needs analysis, the first step in exercise prescription (Kraemer 1983). Originally, this step involved a two-pronged (mechanical and energetic) analysis of a sport’s demands. We’re simply adding a third prong (coordination) and updating the criteria used in each.

There are corollaries to needs analysis in other professions. Occupational and Physical Therapists design “return to work” programs that have high fidelity to patients’ job demands. Therapists commonly use work domain analysis (Brannick, Levine & Morgeson 2007) as well as task analysis (Watson & Wilson 2003) procedures to model the performance demands and constraints of certain activities. The central idea is to evaluate the interaction between people, environments and activities; and then plan and implement intervention programs that improve how these factors fit together.

Athletic activities tend to be at the high end of the continuum in terms of both performance and stress. Our ultimate goal should still be to improve athletes’ fitness to their target activity and environment. Our intervention programs should be designed, first and foremost, as developmentally-appropriate curricula where the emphasis progresses from general to special preparation over the long term.

Is Your Program Sport-Generic?

When you consider the common skill set or “language of movement” that many sports share, their specialized demands start to look a bit subtler in the scheme of things. In order to maximize athletes’ performance and minimize injury risks, we do need to identify truly sport specific issues. But it’s important to start with sport generic demands.

The language of movement analogy isn’t just a buzzword. Both speech and movement are acquired skills that involve the brain’s motor centers. In each case, achieving fluency requires sequenced development that begins with general prerequisites and then progresses toward more specialized or advanced content. The key is to apply educationally-based training strategies — and to take the term “student-athlete” literally. It’s a badge of honor if you can accurately describe your macro-, meso- and microcycles in terms of curriculum, syllabus and lesson plans, respectively.

The challenge in practice is to convey this to someone who has fallen into the simulation trap (but isn’t aware they’re in it) or doesn’t see the connection between training and education (but wants their kid doing an elite athlete’s program). It can also be a tough sell with coaches or parents who react negatively when their athletes do an exercise that’s commonly used in other sports. Hopefully these ideas, and some of the resources cited below, will help improve their signal-to-noise ratio.

In closing, some of our basic assumptions — the things like specificity that we “know for sure” — may be where we’re most likely to miss something or let a half-truth slip through our defenses. Once an idea finds its way into our belief systems, we tend to rationalize it and bring in the reinforcements. It’s normal to acquire biases, defend beliefs, disregard or distort new information that doesn’t conform, and generally develop a bad case of confidence. The more expertise we acquire in one area, the more it tends to bolster our sense of competence in others. That’s often a good thing, but sometimes it can backfire.

It takes real willpower and humility to think critically, to challenge your own beliefs, and to strive for objectivity and rationality — especially when you’re being peppered with information from every angle. The payoff is worth it. So step back and reconsider an elementary idea like specificity. Triangulate, if only to make sure you didn’t miss something on the first pass. Your game plan will really hit its mark when all sides of the target are clearly visible.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Mike Barnes, Luke Bradford, Loren Chiu, Walt Cline, Hank Drought, John Kordich, William Kraemer, Loren Landow, Roger Marandino, Mike Napierala, Tim Piper, Kurt Schmidt, David Spierer, John Taylor, Jay Twell, Dan Wathen and John White

Resources

Brannick M.T., Levine E.L. & Morgeson F.P. Job & Work Analysis (2nd Edition). Los Angeles CA: Sage, 2007.
Dick F.W. Sports Training Principles (5th Edition). London: A&C Black, 2007.
Drabik J. Children & Sports Training. Island Pond VT: Stadion Publishing, 1996.
Fleck S.J. & Kraemer W.J. Designing Resistance Training Programs (3rd Edition). Champaign IL: Human Kinetics, 2003.
Harre D. (Editor) Principles of Sports Training. Berlin: Sportverlag, 1982.
Kraemer W.J. Exercise prescription in resistance training: a needs analysis. NSCA Journal 5(1): 64-65, 1983.
Magill R.A. Motor Learning & Control (8th Edition). New York NY: McGraw-Hill, 2006.
Matveyev L. Fundamentals of Sports Training. Moscow: Fizkultura i Sport, 1977 [Moscow: Progress; translated by A.P. Zdornykh, 1981].
National Association for Sport & Physical Education. Moving Into the Future (2nd Edition). New York NY: McGraw-Hill, 2004.
Plisk S.S. Speed, agility, and speed-endurance development. In: T.R. Baechle & R.W. Earle (Editors), Essentials of Strength Training & Conditioning (3rd Edition). Champaign IL: Human Kinetics, 2008; pp. 457-485.
Plisk S.S. Training principles and program design. Strategies 18(4): 16-21, 2005.
Plisk S.S., Gambetta V. Tactical metabolic training. Strength & Conditioning 19(2): 44-53, 1997.
Schmidt R.A. & Lee T.D. Motor Control & Learning (4th Edition). Champaign IL: Human Kinetics, 2005.
Schmidt R.A. & Wrisberg C.A. Motor Learning & Performance (4th Edition). Champaign IL: Human Kinetics, 2007.
Stone M.H., Stone M.E. & Sands W.A. Principles & Practice of Resistance Training. Champaign IL: Human Kinetics, 2007.
Verkhoshansky Y.V. Fundamentals of Special Strength-Training in Sport. Moscow: Fizkultura i Spovt, 1977 [Livonia MI: Sportivny, 1986; translated by A. Charniga Jr].
Verkhoshansky Y.V. Special Strength Training. Muskegon MI: Ultimate Athlete Concepts, 2006.
Watson D.E. & Wilson S.A. Task Analysis (2nd Edition). Bethesda MD: American Occupational Therapy Association, 2003.
Zatsiorsky V.M. & Kraemer W.J. Science & Practice of Strength Training (2nd Edition). Champaign IL: Human Kinetics, 2006.

203 450-XLCR | excelsiorsports@gmail.com
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Nutrition & Sleep: R&R 101

noreply@blogger.com (Excelsior Sports) — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 13:22:00 +0000

Nutrition and sleep are an athlete’s fundamental means of restoration and regeneration — as well as the foundation of overall health and performance. Here are some essential guidelines.

“Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being
and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”
— World Health Organization

Sound nutrition and sleep are vital to performance and health. Good habits involve more than just knowing what to do and how to do it; they also require regular, proactive behaviors. Unfortunately, ignorance and preference often trump discipline when making our day-to-day choices about what to eat, drink and so on. That might explain why so many people make poor ones.

Knowledge really is power when it’s put into action. Knowing tends to be the straightforward part of the solution; acting on it is the tough part. When behavioral change is involved, the things that are worth doing are rarely easy even when they are simple. So the following nutrition and sleep guidelines aren’t just checklists of no-brainers. Taken one at a time, each point is common sense. Taken together, they involve some tough challenges. That’s the paradox of fundamentals: They may seem too mundane to bother with, but have profound effects when applied consistently.

Don’t beat yourself up too badly if (actually, when) you find it hard to put all of this into practice. Start with one or two obvious opportunities for improvement, giving those enough time to go from hardship to habit — say 2-3 weeks — before taking the next step. The good news: the law of incremental effects applies to nutrition and sleep. Every little thing you do right each day will add up to big dividends in the long run.

NUTRITION 101

Sound nutrition enhances performance, recovery and adaptation. The metabolic effect of food is even more potent than training — which is why neither training nor supplementation can offset poor nutrition.

Never get hungry. Eat 4-6 meals/snacks per day. Maintain a high metabolic rate and nutrient intake by eating every 4 hours. Plan this in advance so good food is available throughout the day. Mornings, as well as during/after exercise, are key windows of opportunity. Breakfast should be the first order of business every day; it literally breaks the fasting state that occurs overnight.

Never get thirsty. Your goal should be to prevent (not quench) thirst. Keep a water bottle with you constantly, drink from it regularly and refill it before it gets empty. Water is the foundation of the Food Pyramid and most important nutrient, comprising more than ⅔ of body mass. Optimal performance is only achieved when you are fully hydrated, but intense activity depletes fluid balance faster than it can be replaced. Thirst lags behind need; by the time you feel thirsty, dehydration is already impairing your athleticism. A carb-protein-electrolyte drink during/after exercise helps minimize fatigue and catabolism.

Eat a variety of foods at each meal or snack. Emphasize complex, unrefined, fiber-rich carbs; lean proteins; and essential unsaturated fats. Each food group provides bioactive compounds that can’t be obtained from supplements. Build every meal and snack on the “1-2-3 rule”:

1 part fat … Fats provide energy, nutrient transport/storage, hormone/cell structure, cushioning, protection and insulation. They supply more than twice the energy of carbs or proteins [9 cal/g] and should comprise 15-20% of diet, most of which are unsaturated oils from vegetable-nut-seed sources. Even when saturated fats are minimized, intake of omega-3 [linolenic] fatty acids in our diets is usually too low relative to omega-6 [linoleic]. This can be corrected by regularly eating coldwater fish (albacore tuna, bluefish, halibut, herring, mackerel, salmon, trout) or flax supplements. Monounsaturated fats (olive oil, canola oil) are also beneficial.

2 parts protein … Amino acids are used for structural building blocks (for tissue growth/repair), energy, as well as regulation of acid-base balance, fluid balance and blood volume. They supply 4 cal/g and should comprise 15-25% of diet.

3 parts carbohydrate … Carbs provide fuel for the neuromuscular system, spare proteins, and prime fat metabolism. High carb intake, coupled with training, will maximize your energy stores and work capacity. Carbs supply 4 cal/g and should comprise 55-65% of diet. Grain, vegetable and fruit sources should be emphasized because they have a low glycemic index, and are high in nutrients and fiber. Processed or refined carbs/sugars should be minimized.

Think color and variety when selecting fruits and vegetables. Get the daily nutrients and phytochemicals needed for health and fitness by eating natural “super foods” that are:

Blue/purple
Green
Red
Yellow/orange
White

Food preparation is as important as selection. You can’t go wrong if it’s baked, boiled, broiled, raw or steamed. Avoid fried, processed, refined or enriched foods — and never microwave anything.

Spice it up. There are at least 7 “super spices” that are loaded with anti-oxidants: cinnamon, ginger, oregano, red pepper, rosemary, thyme and yellow curry. Eating healthy doesn’t mean it has to be bland!

Comments
The ‘just eat right’ mentality is simplistic, as is the whole ‘simple balanced diet’ paradigm. It’s impractical for most people — especially athletes — to follow sound nutritional principles on a regular basis. We tend to miss critical windows of opportunity (e.g. during/after training). Growth, exercise, injury, disease, stress, high calorie intake and large body mass require extraordinary nutrient intake; and yet many foods are nutrient-deficient due to soil depletion, artificial fertilizers, processing, storage and cooking. Our diets are typically too high in saturated fats, simple sugars and salt (mainly because we eat too many processed/refined foods); and too low in calories, complex carbs, essential fats, fiber and other nutrients. This is not the way to optimize health, fitness or performance.

The Food Pyramid and accompanying Dietary Guidelines for Americans have become icons. These are the foundation of the federal government’s nutrition education programs (they are revised every 5 years and will be updated again in 2010). While not specifically aimed at athletes, they are intended to help people make dietary choices that maintain good health and reduce the risk of chronic disease.

Neither is perfect. The pyramid and guidelines have been criticized by reputable health professionals and organizations for several reasons. They promote a high-carbohydrate diet, which isn’t necessarily bad, but may increase the risks of certain health problems and chronic diseases if poor carb choices are made. They advise eating liberally — 6-11 servings per day — from the bread-cereal-rice-pasta group without distinguishing between natural and processed/refined sources. They group fats and sweets together in the use-sparingly category, with no distinction between good fats (monounsaturated, omega-3) and bad ones (hydrogenated oils used in many commercially prepared foods). And it’s difficult for many people to translate a triangular model into what they should put on a round plate. Despite these limitations, they are still a useful starting point.

For more info, read the Dietary Guidelines for Americans or visit our Food & Nutrition Bookstore @ Amazon.

Resources

Benardot D. Advanced Sports Nutrition. Champaign IL: Human Kinetics, 2005.
Brekhman I.I. Man & Biologically Active Substances. Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1980.
Dunford M. (Editor) Sports Nutrition (4th Edition). Chicago IL/Washington DC: American Dietetic Association, 2005.
Duyff R.L. American Dietetic Association Complete Food & Nutrition Guide (2nd Edition). New York NY: John Wiley & Sons, 2002.
Kirschmann J.D. Nutrition Almanac (6th Edition). New York NY: McGraw-Hill, 2006.
Maughan R.J. (Editor) Nutrition in Sport. Oxford: Blackwell Science, 2000.
Maughan R.J. & Burke L. (Editors) Sports Nutrition. Oxford: Blackwell Science, 2003.
Williams M.H. Nutrition for Health, Fitness & Sport (9th Edition). Boston MA: McGraw-Hill, 2009.

* * * * *

SLEEP 101

Sleep is vital to performance and health. Despite being one of the first things many athletes need to improve, it’s often the last thing they want to be coached on. Start with the things that are available and practical, and then progress from there:

Get 1 hour of sleep for every 2 hours you’re awake every day. Sleep loss impairs performance and health. Its effects are cumulative; you never adapt to it. The only way to function optimally is to minimize your “sleep debt”.

Keep regular hours whenever possible. Use sunlight to set your biological clock; get outdoors during the day (especially in the morning) and use as much natural illumination as possible when indoors. Get up and go to bed at the same times each day, including weekends. Occasional deviations will happen; the key is to return to your regular schedule and keep an eye on the bottom line — total sleep.

Make your bedroom a restful place to sleep — cool, dark, quiet, secure and comfortable! Ideal room temperature is 60-65°F [16-18°C]. Light is a powerful alerting/waking cue; a dark room is most conducive to sleeping. Steady, low-level sounds (e.g. fan, air conditioner, “white noise” generator) help block out distracting noises. Your bed should be firm enough to support you comfortably.

Exercise regularly. Training helps relieve stress and improve sleep. Workout timing is important; mornings or afternoons are preferable to evenings. Exercise increases alertness and body temperature, but the subsequent decrease over the next several hours helps induce sleep.

Avoid stimulants (caffeine, nicotine) and excessive alcohol intake, especially in the afternoon and evening. Caffeine and nicotine delay sleep onset and increase nighttime waking. Alcohol is a depressant, but excess consumption interrupts and fragments sleep.

Develop a bedtime routine and make sleep a priority. Regular evening habits give subconscious cues to relax and prepare for sleep. “Switch off” — put away your to do list, set aside concerns for the day, and avoid exposure to bright light in the evening.

Have a light, balanced meal or snack before bedtime. This helps minimize nighttime catabolism; whereas an empty stomach or heavy meal can interfere with sleep.

If you don’t fall asleep within 20-30 minutes, get up and do something boring or relaxing until you feel tired. Don’t stay in bed tossing and turning, expose yourself to bright light or use this time to solve daily problems.

Take “power naps” in the late morning or early afternoon to repay sleep debts. Daytime napping is valuable when recovering from information overload (intensive learning/problem-solving sessions), struggling to stay alert or making up for lost sleep.

Sources: Better Sleep Council; National Sleep Foundation; The Sleep Well

Functions. Sleep comprises ⅓ of our lives and serves a range of restorative functions that affect behavior, performance and mood:

The skeleton decompresses and absorbs fluid and nutrients, which is especially important for cartilagenous tissues that are stressed during activity but have limited blood supply (e.g. spinal discs).

Metabolic rate decreases ~10% and body temperature drops 2-3°F, conserving energy.

Secretion of certain hormones and growth/immune factors peaks during NREM sleep.

The brain replenishes its neurotransmitters during REM sleep and performs other housekeeping tasks in centers that control thinking, learning and emotion.

The high amounts of sleep — especially REM — during infancy and childhood are evidence of its importance for growth and development (newborns sleep 16-18 hours/day, about half of which is REM; whereas adults need about 8 hours/day, less than a quarter of which is REM).

Sleep and performance have reciprocating effects on each other. Intensive learning or problem-solving increases the need for REM sleep; whereas exercise increases NREM as well as total sleep. Sleep stages 1-2 enhance knowledge and skill acquisition, especially when motor learning, critical thinking or decision making tasks are involved. Since these stages tend to occur toward the latter part of the night, unabbreviated/uninterrupted sleep is particularly important.

Deprivation. The problem with sleep deprivation is that we tend to disregard or deny its effects even when they’re evident to others. Our hard work/hard play ethic, the effects of stress and time pressure, the perception that fatigue is a sign of weakness or lack of competitiveness, and so on can make it difficult to admit being tired. The more you experience the following signs and symptoms, the more likely it is that you aren’t getting the sleep that you need:

Difficulty waking up when your alarm sounds, even if set at the same time every day; or staying alert and attentive in boring/monotonous situations (note that an early afternoon dip in alertness is normal)

Impaired concentration, critical thinking or decision making ability, learning capacity, memory (especially short term), motor skill etc.

Reduced attentiveness, creativity, motivation, perceptiveness, productivity etc.

Increased irritability, stress, accidents, mistakes etc.

Perception of fatigue is not an accurate gauge of its effects on performance. When you’re tired, your performance is actually being impaired more than you realize; whereas when you’re well rested (e.g. after a nap), performance is enhanced more than you realize. The take-home message: sleep as much as needed to perform to your full capabilities every day.

Comments
Sleep quality or quantity is often the first thing to suffer when the demands of being an athlete start piling up. It’s challenging to manage time, stress and resulting fatigue. In general, the more serious you are about performance — in sports, school or work — the more important fatigue management becomes. So teach your athletes to take personal responsibility for their sleep habits.

Unfortunately, we have all seen coaches deprive their athletes of sleep one way or another, e.g. by conducting early morning workouts in the name of mental toughness (there’s a theory that sleepless coaches do this to punish others for their own insomnia). It can be hard to convince some coaches that the early bird approach isn’t worth the resulting fatigue and arrested progress. Add to this the effects of an occasional late night or all-nighter, and the stage is set for underachievement — or worse.

For more info, visit our Sleep Bookstore @ Amazon.

Resources

Dement W.C. & Vaughan C. The Promise of Sleep. New York NY: Delacorte Press, 1999.
Kleitman N. Sleep & Wakefulness. Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press, 1987.
Kryger M.H., Roth T. & Dement W.C. (Editors) Principles & Practice of Sleep Medicine (4th Edition). Philadelphia PA: Elsevier/Saunders, 2005.
Maas J.B. Power Sleep. New York NY: Random House/Villard Books, 1998.

203 450-XLCR | excelsiorsports@gmail.com
Prepare To Be A Champion!

Develop a comprehensive plan of attack and teach your athletes detailed, proven performance techniques for each event with our 6-DVD set on NFL Scouting Combine Preparation — part of our New School of Human Performance series available through Perform Better:

Strategy
Bench Press
40 Yard Dash
Jumps & Long Shuttle
Pro Agility Drill
3 Cone Drill

Check out the video clips in the right margin or visit our YouTube channel to view more samples from this DVD set.

What Does The NFL Scouting Combine Tell Us? Let’s Get Real.

noreply@blogger.com (Excelsior Sports) — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 13:00:00 +0000

A recent study raises questions about whether Combine testing predicts performance. It does, but of course it’s not perfect (hint: neither is the research). There’s a bigger practical issue to consider.

A study entitled “The NFL Combine: Does It Predict Performance in the National Football League?” was recently published in the Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research (Kuzmits & Adams 2008). Hats off to these researchers not only for stepping out of the lab and into the real world, but for examining the highest levels of sport. This is the third study that has looked at the relationship between the Combine and performance or draft status, and is the kind of pragmatic research we need more of.

The conclusion of the Kuzmits & Adams paper is an attention grabber: “We find no consistent statistical relationship between combine tests and professional football performance, with the notable exception of sprint tests for running backs...consequently, we question the overall usefulness of the combine.” Wow. That finding differs quite a bit from two prior studies (McGee & Burkett 2003; Sierer et al. 2008). If the media gets hold of this in the next month, they’ll do what they do best — spin it all over the place — especially as the talking heads start weighing in on this issue again.

[Correction: actually my statement about differences in the respective studies’ findings isn’t quite right. It’s not fair to compare their conclusions with those of McGee & Burkett because they examined different variables. Please read Dr. Frank Kuzmits’ comment for clarification. My apologies for the confusion.]

Hold that thought. And please humor me for a moment.

Suppose you’re one of several hundred candidates for a few hundred high-paying job opportunities that come open each year. Your potential employer could be any one of 32 high-profile, highly competitive corporations. The top 400 or so candidates will get job offers, about 300 of which will survive the subsequent probation period. The first few dozen candidates selected can expect 7- or 8-figure contracts; the remainder will get 6-figure offers, and their chances of making the final cut drop accordingly. Most importantly, there’s an annual job fair coming up where — if you’re fortunate enough to be invited — you’ll have an opportunity to showcase yourself and hopefully raise your stock.

By the way, you’ve just spent the past few years doing the mother of all internships. During college, you’ve had lots of opportunities to publicly showcase your talents. Many of your performances were televised and written up in newspapers. All were filmed, and the personnel staff at all 32 corporations have seen those videos. Most of them dispatched scouts to watch you perform, to gather data and character references, and to visit with you in person. You even have an agent who’s promoting you now. So the corporations know about you and can plainly see that you belong at the next level.

Does that mean you wouldn’t bother taking the job fair seriously? Would you question what each aspect of it has to do with on-the-job performance, muse over the purpose of this or that test, or pick and choose which things you’ll participate in and which you won’t? By now, the big boys must know how good you are — plus there’s evidence showing that the job fair doesn’t accurately predict your chances of success anyway. Wouldn’t you still invest time and effort preparing for such an event, especially when so many other people are gearing up for it?

Sure you would — unless you wanted your resume promptly shuffled to the bottom of everyone’s list or tossed in the round file.

Getting Real

Take minute to review what the NFL Scouting Combine actually involves. It resembles a 4-day Olympiad. It’s part medical exam, part psychological test, part interview, part workout and part media circus — all of which is about grading and ranking the top candidates for those lucrative jobs.

Then consider a few things:

The Combine isn’t perfect, but no job fair or interview is. With 32 NFL teams evaluating hundreds of prospective players — and considering so many variables — it’s not surprising that the whole process has limitations.

The draft talent pool is narrowed down in advance of the Combine; and medical exams are the top priority. The ~300 invitees represent a short list of college players deemed most likely to have NFL potential (basically, a committee determines which ones will probably be drafted at some point). The Combine gives each team an opportunity to size up those prospects — most importantly regarding their health — and prioritize them based on particular needs.

The Combine was designed by coaches, trainers, general managers and physicians (not scientists). It continues to be updated and revised by committee; although the menu is now pretty stable for the most part, it has been a work in progress for 3 decades. It may be steeped in tradition and belief more so than research evidence, but you don’t abandon established benchmarks and expectations every time a new study shows areas that need improvement. You adapt and modify, hopefully using the evidence to steer things in the right direction going forward.

Despite their limitations, standardized tests are a common feature of many application processes. Consider the entrance exams used by colleges and universities to screen prospective students. Those tests aren’t perfect; nor do they necessarily predict academic success in college with p < .05 accuracy. That’s part of the reason most schools and businesses use multiple admission criteria, which brings us to a related point.

Employers typically consider a battery of criteria in their personnel decisions — not just test scores. In order to assess qualities like character, work ethic, intelligence, demeanor, competitiveness and so on, they tend to use a combination of tests, interviews, background checks etc. Even then, test scores are a means to an end: to grade and rank applicants. Sound familiar? When evaluating people, measurements are used as tools to make judgments.

Research studies showing the limitations of Combine testing have limitations themselves. I’m not bashing the research or the researchers; all studies have limitations. Kuzmits & Adams examined data from 6 consecutive years, but only at 3 offensive positions. Previously, McGee & Burkett (2003) and Sierer et al. (2008) examined all positions, but only for 1 or 2 draft years respectively. Each one of these studies found varying levels of predictive ability between Combine performance on one hand, and draft status or job performance on the other. Some results were “statistically significant”, while others were not; but all may have some practical use.

Perhaps one day the NFL will undertake a scientific role delineation study, and then use the results to create job descriptions and competency tests. With the variety of jobs each team offers on and off the field, that process could get messy — and of course the results wouldn’t be perfect (they never are). This doesn’t mean we settle for less than optimal, particularly with so much at stake. But for our purposes, it’s beside the point.

The point is: For better or worse, NFL teams use some “standard tests” when making their draft decisions. These tests do have some predictive validity, and also give teams valuable face time with prospective players. As long as the NFL (1) offers those huge paychecks and (2) has a battery of generally accepted testing protocols for screening and prioritizing those prospects, lots of highly-motivated athletes will prepare specifically for them.

So describe the Combine however you like: jumping through hoops, exercise in futility, statistically insignificant or whatever. All these same criticisms plus one more — training for the test — can be leveled at Combine preparation as well. My response? You bet it is, and there isn’t anything necessarily wrong with that. More about that issue in a moment.

Back To Our Regularly Scheduled Programming

Hopefully the info above will be helpful in filtering out the noise that the media likes to make as they start bandying about their interpretations of the research. Combine season always dredges up the usual opining about “manufactured speed” vs. “game speed”, and whether it’s possible to train for speed, and whether a particular test reveals anything etc. It makes for some lively (if absurd) debate. With the Combine becoming a bigger media spectacle each year — and the recent study providing new fuel for the commentators — it’s doubtful they’ll be able to resist having at it again.

A suggestion: tune out the nonsense and focus on what matters.

The folks comprising the Combine committee may be as unclear on the concepts of specificity and transfer as the general public is. But you know what? They’ve still managed to arrive at a fairly useful gauntlet of tests and drills. Think about it:

Day 1 — medical pre-exams; Cybex tests; orientation meeting
Day 2 — medical exams; measurables (height, weight, arm length, hand span, body composition); weights and reps (225 lb. bench press); media interviews; psychological tests; team interviews
Day 3 — NFLPA meeting; more psychological tests; more team interviews
Day 4 — workouts (positional skill drills, performance tests, flexibility measurements)

Of course, the workouts conducted on day #4 dominate the televised broadcasts and generate much of the discussion. In addition to skill drills, these include the Vertical jump, Broad jump, 40 yard dash, 3 cone drill, 20 yard (pro agility) shuttle and 60 yard shuttle. In other words, day #4 is a multi-event test of athleticism involving two measures of explosive jumping ability; a linear sprint test with split times; a change-of-direction (cornering) agility test; and two stop-and-go agility tests, the latter of which is arguably redundant. Even when we add the positional skill drills and Weights & Reps test to the mix, none of these simulates actual game conditions. But as a cross-section of overall athletic ability, we could do a lot worse.

Perhaps more importantly, each of these tests (along with the rest of the Combine) serves a larger purpose: it shows who has prepared and who hasn’t; it shows how each athlete responds when asked to line up and perform some sort of athletic task; it shows how well each athlete listens to instructions and follows rules; and it generally gives the coaches an opportunity to make some of those subjective judgments and evaluations mentioned above. It may not be scientific, but don’t underestimate the value of the eyeball test and gut check aspects of the event.

A Little Perspective
We definitely shouldn’t trivialize the validity of data gathered each year at the NFL Scouting Combine. Professional football is serious, high-stakes business for one thing. Furthermore, the sports world would be a better place if there were more evidence-based practitioners using more valid testing and training protocols in all areas. At the end of the day, however, testing isn’t just about collecting data or scoring tests. It’s about how those measurements transfer to job performance (or to put it in coach-speak, how specific they are to the demands of the game). Transfer is a matter of degree — and the game is played by people — which is why the draft process ultimately comes down to evaluation and judgment.

That was the rationale for the take-home messages for NFL prospects I proposed in November:

Prepare like an Olympian
Prepare with the intent of doing everything
Listen to instructions during performance tests and positional drills
You’re being graded on effort as well as execution
Think teamwork, even when your instincts tell you otherwise

As for training to the test: The same criticism could be made about SAT or GRE preparation courses. Indeed, it often is with compelling logic. In my opinion, entrance exams or other standardized tests can (and do) fulfill a useful role when kept in their proper place. They provide certain benchmarks. They establish certain expectations. Hopefully they transfer to real-world performance in a meaningful enough way that the process of preparing for them (over the long as well as short term) does more than show who did their homework. It should also have some valuable carry-over to different jobs, or “generic specificity” to coin an oxymoron.

The Bottom Line
If you have to perform at an Olympiad like the Combine in order to get your shot at the NFL, well, so be it. Set your priorities and get to work. It’s not like running, jumping and moving explosively aren’t part of the game; or like most athletes couldn’t benefit from focusing on the mechanics of those tasks from time to time. They’ll have the rest of their careers to zero back in on the demands of the sport after February — but first they’ve got to get a job offer!

In closing, I’ll lean on that study by Kuzmits & Adams a few more times:

“In the broader context of the draft process, it should be noted that a potential player’s physical performances at the combine are not the only criteria on which draft decisions are made.”

“In addition...the combine affords an opportunity to assemble and analyze the majority of key professional prospects at the same location, at the same time. Thus, for practical purposes, the combine is an efficient process from the standpoint of facilitating social interactions among players and team personnel.”

“This suggests that an overhaul of the combine process may be due and that the inclusion of contemporary human resource selection practices should be an important part of the combine restructure.”

Now that’s the kind of constructive info we need more of from the research community. Hopefully the media pundits covering the Combine will read the whole manuscript.

Resources

Kuzmits F.E., Adams A.J. The NFL combine: does it predict performance in the National Football League? J. Strength Cond. Res. 22(6): 1721-1727, 2008.
McGee K.J., Burkett L.N. The National Football League combine: a reliable predictor of draft status? J. Strength Cond. Res. 17(1): 6-11, 2003.
Sierer S.P., Battaglini C.L., Mihalik J.P., Shields E.W., Tomasini N.T. The National Football League combine: performance differences between drafted and nondrafted players entering the 2004 and 2005 drafts. J. Strength Cond. Res. 22(1): 6-12, 2008.

* * * * *

Afterthought

In my opinion, if there’s one area where the Combine protocol could be immediately improved without shaking things up too much, it’s flexibility testing. Traditionally, five measurements are taken at the Combine: prone overhead, prone behind back, supine low back, seated V hamstring and standing hamstring. I would recommend replacing most of those — or at least starting — with a simpler but more functional movement like the knee-bend flexibility test. This test measures an athlete’s ability to get into the “universal athletic position” and is a useful way to assess composite range of motion. It’s easy to administer, and the only equipment required is an inexpensive goniometer:
Allow 10 minutes for the athlete to warm up and get primed.

The athlete places the feet in a natural shoulder-width stance, holding a dowel rod overhead at arm’s length. Alternatively, the athlete may interlock his/her fingers behind the head.

The athlete squats as low as possible while maintaining balance, keeping the feet flat on the floor and trunk as flat/upright as possible.

Measure the knee angle achieved in the bottom position by aligning the goniometer with the midlines of the thigh (using the axis of the the greater trochanter and lateral epicondyle) and lower leg (using the axis of the fibular head and lateral malleolus).

The rotational axis of the knee is a moving target during flexion/extension, so don’t try to align the goniometer with the joint itself (although typically considered a hinge-like ginglymus joint, the knee is actually two condyloid joints where the femur glides and rotates as it rolls on the articular surface of the tibia). Bony landmarks can be used to determine segmental axes of the long bones, but they correspond poorly with joint axes and shouldn’t be used to align a goniometer.

Rock-bottom for most athletes is usually about 145°-155° (an upright posture or “basic anatomical position” is the zero point). In my experience, 120° or less is the danger zone. If an athlete can’t sit down far enough to get his/her thighs below horizontal while keeping the heels down and head neutral, it’s time to move flexibility up on the priority list. They can’t use it if they can’t move it.

This test doesn’t replace other flexibility indices. It should be used in conjunction with them to identify specific ranges of motion. Although it doesn’t indicate dynamic mobility, it’s a useful starting point for evaluating general static flexibility.

203 450-XLCR | excelsiorsports@gmail.com
Prepare To Be A Champion!

Develop a comprehensive plan of attack and teach your athletes detailed, proven performance techniques for each event with our 6-DVD set on NFL Scouting Combine Preparation — part of our New School of Human Performance series available through Perform Better:

Strategy
Bench Press
40 Yard Dash
Jumps & Long Shuttle
Pro Agility Drill
3 Cone Drill

Check out the video clips in the right margin or visit our YouTube channel to view more samples from this DVD set.

Tapering

noreply@blogger.com (Excelsior Sports) — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 21:42:00 +0000

Here’s what’s involved in “peaking” — or strategically unloading your athletes for a major event — without detraining them.

Tapering is a method of strategically unloading athletes in order to achieve peak levels of preparedness for major competitions. It’s one of those things we hear about more frequently than we see — and when we do see it, it’s rarely done consistently. For every coach who understands the whys and hows of tapering, unfortunately there seem to be two more who either do it incorrectly or don’t believe in doing it at all.

It’s important to realize that the objective of tapering is to unmask the potential an athlete has developed through long-term training rather than to push for further adaptation at the 11th hour. This begins with an understanding of the fitness-fatigue relationship described below (Bannister 1991; Zatsiorsky & Kraemer 2006). Tapering tactics should exploit the same phenomena as summated and sequenced training strategies (Plisk & Stone 2003; Stone, Stone & Sands 2007). They are intended to maximize athletes’ long-term preparation by improving and stabilizing fitness such that it can be maintained for several weeks at a time with reduced volume-loads.

Guidelines

Certain tapering tactics tend to work better than others. According to the available evidence (Bosquet et al. 2007; Mujika & Padilla 2003; Thibault 2007), here’s how to unload before a major competition without detraining significantly:

Maintain intensity and quality at high levels. Intensity is a key parameter for maintaining training-induced adaptations and should not be reduced when tapering.

Reduce overall volume, mainly by cutting the amount of work allocated to nonspecific tasks and low-intensity activities. Volume can be successfully curtailed as much as 40-60% depending on previous stresses and/or the subsequent competition schedule. Volume can be adjusted by decreasing session duration as well as frequency. The first strategy is preferred; whereas the second does not improve performance significantly.

Progressive, ramp-like decreases in volume seem to work better than sharp, step-like reductions.

Maintain frequency at relatively high levels (>80% of normal), especially for advanced/elite athletes. Frequency can be reduced to 30-50% in order to achieve larger reductions in volume, to unload before the final competition of a season (when subsequent detraining won’t be problematic), or when working with less qualified or novice athletes.

An 8-14 day taper, during which training volume is exponentially reduced 40-60%, seems to be an ideal duration for optimizing performance. Shorter durations (less than 1 week) may be appropriate when the preceding mesocycle or block involves a progressive reduction in volume-load to low/moderate levels. Longer durations (up to 1 month) may be needed if prior volume-loads were high, or progressively increased.

Overreaching prior to tapering can enhance performance. Taper duration and volume-load reduction should be adjusted to manage the resulting cumulative fatigue.

This adds up to training sessions that are shorter than usual, conducted at or near the usual frequency, with fewer secondary/tertiary activities, and more attention to quality of effort on primary tasks as well as recovery between efforts.

Keep in mind that many coaches either won’t get this or won’t like it. Likewise, overachiever athletes who believe that more is always better often struggle with this. So in addition to having a well-planned tapering strategy, it’s advisable to proactively educate everyone it will involve well before implementing it. Changing people’s belief systems is hard enough without trying to do it right before the big event.

Although there’s more to athletic performance than adaptation of muscle tissue, the available evidence on myosin heavy chain (MHC) responses to loading/unloading supports tapering. A fast-to-slow conversion of MHC phenotypes tends to occur when skeletal muscle is overloaded either chronically or intermittently; whereas MHC shifts from slow to fast when muscle is unloaded or its weight-bearing activity is reduced (Baldwin & Haddad 2001, 2002; Talmadge 2000). Such protein isoform shifts are part of a constellation of specific changes that also include ATPase activity and sarcoplasmic reticulum — so MHC is an indicator of broad cellular adaptations.

In practice, the trick to peaking seems to be to maintain training frequency and intensity in order to minimize detraining or atrophy, while reducing volume in order to manage fatigue and achieve a slow-to-fast shift as well as an increase in energy stores.

Fitness-Fatigue Paradigm

The fitness-fatigue model is a foundational concept when designing training programs, and is especially important for tapering. According to this theory, an athlete’s preparedness is the sum of two after-effects of training: fitness (which is positive) and fatigue (which is negative). In contrast to “supercompensation” theory — which is based on the premise that there’s a cause-and-effect relationship between these factors — the fitness-fatigue model states that they have opposing effects. This has a simple but profound implication: Preparedness can be optimized with strategies that maximize the fitness responses to training stimuli while minimizing (read: managing) fatigue.

Fitness-Fatigue Model. Preparedness = fitness – fatigue. Source: Zatsiorsky V.M. & Kraemer W.J. Science & Practice of Strength Training (2nd Edition). Champaign IL: Human Kinetics, 2006; p. 13.

Since fatigue is a natural consequence of training stress, especially with high volume-loads — and adaptations are manifested during subsequent unloading periods — fatigue management tactics are integral to a sound program. These can be implemented at different levels:

Long-term (macrocycle) … tapering before major competitions; active rest/transition periods after competitive seasons

Intermediate-term (mesocycle) … restitution microcycles after overreaching microcycles, concentrated blocks or stressful competitions

Short-term (microcycle) … maintenance/restitution workloads or recovery days; daily training routines distributed into modules separated by recovery breaks; intra-session relief breaks or “rest pauses”

More generally, it’s important to educate athletes about the basic principles of nutrition and sleep hygiene, including the need to take personal responsibility for sound eating and sleeping habits. These are the fundamental means of restoration and regeneration — as well as the foundation of overall health and performance.

Putting It Together
At all times, task specificity and fatigue management should really be the driving forces behind speed/agility and strength/power training — in other words, whenever work quality and technique are at a premium. This is especially true when peaking for a major competition. Fatigue is a progressive process that begins at the onset of work and affects task execution well before failure occurs (Brooks, Fahey & Baldwin 2005; Fitts 1996; Gandevia 2001; Ross, Leveritt & Riek 2001; Taylor, Todd & Gandevia 2006). It’s a normal result of intense activity, but tends to interfere with skill acquisition and performance.

The objective of speed-endurance training differs from that of speed/agility or strength/power development: to enhance fatigue resistance and tolerance. For this reason, it involves tactics that purposefully stress the metabolic systems. While the volume-load of speed-endurance work can (and should) be reduced significantly when tapering, by nature it tends to be fatiguing. Striking a balance between tapering and deconditioning during a peaking phase presents a significant challenge for the practitioner. A rule of thumb is to use a procedure like tactical metabolic modeling to zero in on the “special endurance” demands of the event (Plisk & Gambetta 1997); and crop energy system work to the minimum level needed to ensure that athletes are still prepared for those demands, but not detrained or fatigued for the big game.

Resources

Baldwin K.M., Haddad F. Effects of different activity and inactivity paradigms on myosin heavy chain gene expression in striated muscle. J. Appl. Physiol. 90(1): 345-357, 2001.
Baldwin K.M., Haddad F. Skeletal muscle plasticity: cellular and molecular responses to altered physical activity paradigms. Am. J. Phys. Med. Rehabil. 81(11 Suppl): S40-51, 2002.
Bannister E.W. Modeling elite athletic performance. In: J.D. MacDougall, H.A. Wenger & H.J. Green (Editors), Physiological Testing of the High Performance Athlete. Champaign IL: Human Kinetics, 1991; pp. 403-424.
Bosquet L., Montpetit J., Arvisais D., Mujika I. Effects of tapering on performance: a meta-analysis. Med. Sci. Sports Exerc. 39(8): 1358-1365, 2007.
Brooks G.A., Fahey T.D. & Baldwin K.M. Exercise Physiology (4th Edition). New York NY: McGraw-Hill, 2005.
Fitts R.H. Cellular, molecular, and metabolic basis of muscle fatigue. In: Handbook of Physiology, Section 12: Exercise: Regulation & Integration of Multiple Systems, L.B. Rowell & J.T. Shepherd (Editors). New York NY: American Physiological Society/Oxford University Press, 1996; pp. 1151-1183.
Gandevia S.C. Spinal and supraspinal factors in human muscle fatigue. Physiol. Rev. 81(4): 1725-1789, 2001.
Mujika I., Padilla S. Scientific bases for precompetition tapering strategies. Med. Sci. Sports Exerc. 35(7): 1182-1187, 2003.
Plisk S.S., Gambetta V. Tactical metabolic training. Strength Cond. J. 19(2): 44-53, 1997.
Plisk S.S., Stone M.H. Periodization strategies. Strength Cond. J. 25(6): 19-37, 2003.
Ross A., Leveritt M., Riek S. Neural influences on sprint running: training adaptations and acute responses. Sports Med. 31(6): 409-425, 2001.
Stone M.H., Stone M. & Sands W.A. Principles & Practice of Resistance Training. Champaign IL: Human Kinetics, 2007.
Talmadge R.J. Myosin heavy chain isoform expression following reduced neuromuscular activity: potential regulatory mechanisms. Muscle Nerve 23(5): 661-679, 2000.
Taylor J.L., Todd G., Gandevia S.C. Evidence for a supraspinal contribution to human muscle fatigue. Clin. Exp. Pharmacol. Physiol. 33(4): 400-405, 2006.
Thibault G. Resting to win. Training Conditioning 17(4): 53-59, 2007.
Zatsiorsky V.M. & Kraemer W.J. Science & Practice of Strength Training (2nd Edition). Champaign IL: Human Kinetics, 2006.

203 450-XLCR | excelsiorsports@gmail.com
Prepare To Be A Champion!

Develop a comprehensive plan of attack and teach your athletes detailed, proven performance techniques for each event with our 6-DVD set on NFL Scouting Combine Preparation — part of our New School of Human Performance series available through Perform Better:

Strategy
Bench Press
40 Yard Dash
Jumps & Long Shuttle
Pro Agility Drill
3 Cone Drill

Check out the video clips in the right margin or visit our YouTube channel to view more samples from this DVD set.

The Other Olympiad: NFL Scouting Combine

noreply@blogger.com (Excelsior Sports) — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 04:37:00 +0000

Here’s an inside look at what’s actually involved in “the ultimate 4-day job interview”.

For the nation’s top collegiate football players, December means more than just cramming for finals or the usual holiday madness. They’re awaiting a coveted invitation to the NFL Scouting Combine and making plans to start their preparation. Phones are ringing off the hook as agents eagerly recruit top prospects, and then place them in specialized training centers after they’ve signed on the dotted line. In fact, choice of training site seems to be a bigger consideration in this process every year. Combine preparation has become big business, with a growing number of performance coaches jockeying for a piece of it. The Combine itself has even become a high-profile event.

This article will describe what the Combine actually involves (a hint: it’s the mother of all job interviews). For practitioners fortunate enough to help these athletes train for it, hopefully this will be useful in developing strategies enabling them to arrive in Indianapolis in February, knowing what to expect and fully prepared to ace the interview. This is no small challenge, especially considering how extensive the Combine is and how limited your window of time to prepare your athletes may be.

Take-Aways

Let’s start with some take-home messages to share with your NFL prospects:

Prepare like an Olympian. There’s no doubt about it: Preparing for the NFL Scouting Combine usually involves a fair bit of “training for the test”, but there’s more to it than just running and jumping well. As discussed in the next section, the Combine is a 4-day event that’s part medical exam, part psychological test, part interview, part workout and of course part media circus (Table 1). Disappointing performance at any step of the process can be expensive. Above all, it’s not just about drills and tests. It’s about the attitude and character each player exhibits when performing them.

In my experience, preparing for this resembles training for an Olympiad more so than a football season. That’s a wake-up call for many athletes, especially when they discover what’s actually involved and how extensive — as well as different — their preparation needs to be. Consider how many football players have never experienced 6 or more consecutive weeks of double sessions, a pre-event taper, or a running program that’s focused on technique instead of conditioning or punishment. Talk about a paradigm shift — that’s three of them rolled into one! The good news is that most Combine invitees are highly motivated because they know this is their shot to make it to the pros (and they rarely argue when you explain that you won’t run them into the ground). The challenge, however, is that much of this is new territory for them, requiring a leap of faith on several fronts. I have found that advance education is the key, beginning on the day I first meet each athlete.

Prepare with the intent of doing everything. The Combine truly is an invitational camp — i.e. an all-expense-paid opportunity for each athlete to showcase himself. Unless he’s the top-rated player at his position and projected as a first-round draft pick, he doesn’t help his rank or bargaining power by opting out of something or deferring until his school’s pro-timing day. Ultimately it’s the athlete’s call, and he’ll have several factors to consider (including health/injury status and time to prepare after the season). It’s also a good bet he’ll be getting lots of input about this from others, particularly his agent. To the extent you can, counsel your athletes to fully prepare, to understand what’s expected of them in return, and to participate in everything.

Listen to instructions during performance tests and positional drills. Understand what the coaches and scouts want you to do and how they want you to do it so you can execute each drill cleanly, and not have to do repeated trials. Since the menu stays pretty constant and many events are run by the same people each year, doing some advance homework on previous network broadcasts is time well spent.

You’re being graded on effort as well as execution. These are the universal criteria coaches use to grade players’ performance on game day, and athletes need to understand that they’re being graded with these same criteria in every Combine drill and test. There’s more to earning a high grade than just getting a good score or using good technique. Coaches and scouts are looking for “snap-to-whistle” players who hustle and finish everything.

Think teamwork, even when your instincts tell you otherwise. Players are herded through the Combine workouts in position groups. This can get interesting during skill drills, when an athlete may have to line up (and cooperate) with another player who might eventually be competing with him for a draft spot. Obviously, some might not be inclined to play well with others if they think they might be able to gain an edge. The coaches and scouts that run these drills are clear about directing players to work together and help one another — and an athlete’s stock can drop fast if he gives off any vibes that he’s a “me guy”. So advise your athletes to be team players even when they might not be inclined to do so, and to focus their competitiveness on their own effort and execution.

X’s & O’s

The National Invitational Camp, or “NFL Scouting Combine” as it’s popularly known, is conducted each February in Indianapolis (the home base of National Football Scouting, which organizes the event). Up to 335 of the nation’s best college football players are invited to participate, with the number of athletes from each position varying from year to year depending on available talent. Athletes are chosen by a selection committee comprised of directors from NFS and BLESTO scouting services, as well as members of various NFL player personnel departments. The list of invitees is typically published in December, and the players on it receive their invitations via mail.

NFS conducted its first camp for draft-eligible players for member NFL clubs in Tampa in 1982. By 1985, all teams decided to participate and share the costs. After brief stints in a couple other locations, the Combine was moved to Indianapolis in 1987 and has been conducted there ever since. Its main purpose is to ascertain medical information on college football’s top draft-eligible players. Of course, it has evolved through the years to include a battery of tests, interviews and meetings, and is now a thorough and intensive 4-day job interview (Table 1).

Athletes usually put big emphasis on “measurables”, especially the workouts (read: performance tests). These tests are commonly performed at most schools’ pro-timing days as well, typically sometime in March. While the tests are clearly important, it’s important to realize that they’re really a means to an end: grading and ranking players. As part of the entire event, measurables are used to try to gauge the same “immeasurables” most employers screen for when interviewing candidates for a position. Besides a player’s health and durability, these include:

Character and discipline
Work ethic and productivity
Instincts and intelligence
Demeanor and coachability
Competitiveness and teamwork

NFL teams use the Combine to screen prospective players for more than just athleticism. They’re also looking for professionalism. This isn’t such a surprise considering the investment they make in their personnel.

Game Plan

In order to evaluate hundreds of athletes, the NFL Scouting Combine is deployed over a 7-day stretch where groups of players arrive on a rolling basis, and then rotate through a 4-day schedule. Typically starting in the third week of February, the sequence is as follows:

Wed-Sat — Specialists, Offensive linemen, Tight ends
Thu-Sun — Quarterbacks (2 groups), Wide outs (2 groups), Running backs
Fri-Mon — Defensive linemen (2 groups), Linebackers
Sat-Tue — Defensive backs (2 groups)

Here is an overview of how each group’s schedule proceeds:

Day 1. In addition to traveling to Indianapolis, the first day’s events include registrations, medical pre-examinations, orientations and formal interviews. Since medical screening is a top priority, it’s crucial for players to arrive prepared for their medical pre-exam. Athletes should consult their college team’s sportsmedicine staff for any x-rays, MRIs or CT scans performed in past 12 months, along with their interpretation, as well as any written surgery or test notes. Failure to bring any of these to Indianapolis may result in having to repeat tests and possibly getting behind schedule. Players should be advised to keep copies of any test results they bring in case they don’t get the originals back.

The medical pre-exam also includes Cybex isokinetic testing. This test involves bilateral concentric knee extension-flexion at two different speeds on a Cybex HUMAC NORM. As isokinetic testing and rehabilitation has become less popular in recent years, many athletes have no experience with this kind of “accommodating resistance” machine. Hence, it is very useful to familiarize them with one in advance if possible because poor performance on this test can be used to flag a potential problem during the medical exams conducted on day #2. The test protocol is as follows: After warming up on a bike or arc trainer, each player performs 3 practice repetitions on the Cybex. He then performs 3 maximal reps with each leg at 60 degrees/second, as well as 15 maximal reps at 300 degrees/second. The test is usually completed in less than 5 minutes, and results are provided on a 1-page report including the athlete’s demographics, a graph of torque vs. positions curves, best repetition values and comparisons. These are evaluated by an Athletic Trainer and included with the athlete’s folder. The report and all other test results are stored on a CD and provided to each team.

This is also the first of three days of team interviews. On days #1 and #2, these are conducted in a kind of gauntlet format often lasting well into the evening (up to 11 pm). Each team is allowed to send advance invitations to as many as 60 players they’d like to formally interview. These sessions are limited to 15 minutes, where players may rotate from one meeting to the next over a period of hours. There’s even a timer who sounds an airhorn (complete with 2-minute warnings) to keep everyone on schedule. Each team has its own style of conducting these meetings and choosing which staff members attend. By all accounts, pretty much anything goes — short of running live drills — in these interviews. This is an area where many agents have invaluable experience in getting players well prepared. My advice: Know the golden rules (Table 2) and expect the unexpected!

As the Combine has become more of a spectacle each year, athletes should also be prepared for the dog-and-pony show that takes place outside the hotel. Vendors set up shop. Autograph-seekers and people-watchers hang around, hoping to get a glimpse or chat with a future NFL star. While hotel and stadium security do a good job of sequestering the players from outside activity, it helps to know what’s waiting for them when they have to hike between buildings or head off site.

Day 2. The second day’s events include measurements, team medical examinations, media interviews and psychological testing. Formal interviews similar to those described above also continue into the evening.

Measurables include height, weight, arm length, hand span, body composition and “Weights & Reps” (225 lb. bench press test). Contrary to what many athletes are accustomed to, these aren’t conducted in a discreet setting like a doctor’s office or training room. In fact, height and weight are gathered in an auditorium where the players — wearing only compression shorts — are on stage in front of hundreds of coaches and scouts, as well as TV cameras. It would seem the Combine serves, at least in part, as an eyeball test.

Athletes’ body composition is assessed using the BOD POD, another apparatus many of them may be unfamiliar with. It uses “whole-body densitometry” technology to determine lean/fat mass. It’s based on the same principle as hydrostatic weighing, but uses air displacement instead of water. According to the manufacturer, air is more convenient and comfortable than water, thus providing an easier and safer testing environment as well as better reliability, repeatability and accuracy. The surface area of clothing and hair can have a significant impact on measurements, so athletes must wear minimal, form-fitting clothing (compression shorts) and a cap to compress the hair on their heads. The protocol is pretty much effortless and only takes about 5 minutes:

Basic subject information is entered into a computer
BOD POD is calibrated
Body mass is measured with an integrated digital scale
Body volume is measured while sitting inside BOD POD
Thoracic gas volume is measured
Results are displayed

Medical exams are also conducted in a kind of gauntlet format with players proceeding from one room to another, where they’re evaluated by several groups of physicians. Any significant health/injury issue — whether it’s identified during these evaluations, the prior day’s pre-exam results (discussed above) or team scouts’ inquiries with the school’s sports medicine staff — may be grounds for further assessment. That frequently involves being sent off site to a hospital for x-rays or other procedures. This can be very frustrating for athletes because the hospital visit may take several hours and possibly push them off schedule. In reality, it reflects the teams’ effort to do their due diligence when screening prospects’ health status.

The Weights & Reps test is conducted in an interesting environment. Typically, it takes place in a hotel meeting room that’s filled with two galleries of coaches and scouts (flanking the testing station), three spotters and one or two camera crews. Besides the testing station (a bench press preloaded with 225 lbs), a second bench press (usually stocked with up to 315 lbs) is available for players to warm up on as they wait their turn. Testing is done in alphabetical sequence, so depending on where athletes are in the order and how many priming sets they plan to do, some have more time to prepare than others. As each player takes his turn, he must first introduce himself by name and school to each gallery, and then perform as many reps as possible — with a high-energy spotter in his face, two others checking to make sure his buttocks stay on the bench (touching his leg as a warning if the butt lifts off), a camera spotlight shining in his eyes and dozens of observers taking notes. Needless to say, most athletes aren’t accustomed to these kinds of distractions when lifting, and should be prepared for them in advance.

Psychological testing is performed with the Wonderlic Personnel Test, a 12-minute, 50-question intelligence test used to assess aptitude for learning and problem-solving. The test is designed to assess how well people comprehend problems and how quickly they can solve them — in other words, rather than measure what someone knows, it measures their ability to learn and process new information. It’s administered to millions of people in a wide range of occupations each year, but is best known for its use in the pre-draft assessments of prospective NFL players. The questions become progressively more difficult, and test various domains of intelligence by addressing different subject matter. They involve word comparisons, disarranged sentences, sentence parallelism, following directions, number comparisons, number series, analysis of geometric figures, and story problems requiring mathematical or logical solutions. Calculators or other problem-solving devices are not allowed. In order to finish the test, each question would have to be completed on average in 15 seconds.

Legend has it that the Wonderlic Personnel Test was first introduced to the NFL in the early 1970s by Dallas Cowboys coach Tom Landry. By the time the league conducted its first Combine a decade later, it was already a popular tool because — like many other tests at the pre-draft workout — performance is scored with a simple number. A score of 20 indicates average intelligence, corresponding to an IQ of 100.

Day 3. The third day’s events include a meeting with the NFL Players Association, continued psychological screening and informal team interviews. The interviews conducted on day #3 are less structured than those on days #1 and #2, giving teams additional time to meet with certain players or catch up with those they missed on previous days.

The NFLPA meeting includes a presentation entitled “Pipeline To The Pros” aimed at college football players making the transition to playing on Sundays. This presentation addresses a range of issues including: the NFLPA’s mission; their collective bargaining agreement with the NFL; the benefits of completing one’s degree (longer average careers, higher average salaries); the realities of underclassmen declaring early for the draft (1 of every 3 don’t get drafted, 60% of those drafted are selected below round 1); guidelines for working with agents; and information about their financial advisor and player development programs.

Day 4. The final day is dedicated to the workouts that dominate the televised broadcasts and generate so much discussion. These include positional skill drills as well as a multi-event test of athleticism:

Vertical jump
Broad jump
40 yard dash
3 cone drill
20 yard shuttle (Pro agility)
60 yard shuttle (perimeter players only; interior players excluded)
Flexibility tests

With the exception of the vertical jump, which is done on a rubber mat over pavement, all drills and tests are performed on the stadium’s playing surface. Starting in '09, they will be conducted in Lucas Oil Stadium on the same type of Field Turf used in the RCA Dome from '06-'08 (the surface was Astroturf until '05 — an important point to keep in mind when comparing year-over-year results).

Once again, athletes need to be prepared for the media presence in the stadium. Broadcast stages and crews are perched in the stands. Another media platform is built on the field, with additional crews there. The overhead cablecam is in use. In addition to the coaches and scouts running the drills, hundreds more are in the stands — mostly concentrated at the 10 and 40 yard lines.

The workouts start in the morning and may last up to 7 hours, depending on the number of athletes comprising each group. Out of pragmatism, larger groups may get split up, which in turn can affect drill sequence. Workout apparel is provided, although each player must bring his own shoes. This is a major consideration. Cross-trainers, basketball or tennis shoes are good choices for the vertical jump; while cleats are appropriate for everything done on the turf. Some players believe lighter is always better when it comes to footwear, and bring newfangled sprinting shoes with them despite the fact that they offer little traction or stability on this surface. In addition to preparing for these drills on field turf or natural grass whenever possible, my advice to players is to use the same kind of shoes they would wear on game day. Those, along with anything else they’ll need (snack bars, water bottles), should be carried with them in a backpack.

Positional drill menus and descriptions are posted at the NFL Scouting Combine web site. Network broadcast footage is also quite useful for getting a sense of how the respective coaches administer them and what they expect of the players. One thing from the footage that jumps out at me right away is drill duration: Regardless of position, each rep typically lasts 17-20 seconds. The durations of the performance tests are significantly shorter than this, so the coaches take advantage of this opportunity to see how athletes respond to some fatigue. Although the overall metabolic stress is pretty modest — typically 5-6 positional drills, with each player doing two trials of each (one each to the left and right) — this has straightforward implications for training.

While we’re on the subject of performance testing, there’s an urban legend that I have to poke some fun at. Supposedly, the Combine workouts were designed in the belief that you can’t coach speed, and thus a player can’t improve his performance through training. He’s either fast or he isn’t, according to this belief, so these drills will reveal his true athletic ability. This notion still exists to some extent today, although it has evolved. Now we hear coaches and commentators talking about “manufactured speed” vs. “game speed”, and debating whether or not these tests reveal one or the other. In my opinion, this misses the point:

Like the sport itself, if it involves movement, it also involves a set of skills and abilities that can be improved.
As long as the NFL uses a battery of standard tests to screen prospective players, athletes will prepare specifically for them.

So whenever you hear someone say “you can’t coach speed”, understand that it’s really code for “I don’t know how”.

Wrapping Up

I briefly touched on the issue of tapering and importance of explaining its benefits to athletes. That will be the topic of my next post. In the meantime, I recommend the reviews cited below by Bosquet et al. (2007), Mujika & Padilla (2003) and Thibault (2007) for guidance. While these articles were aimed at endurance athletes, their recommendations are very helpful when tapering for the NFL Scouting Combine due to the high volume-loads involved, and the need to manage fatigue. They also fit well with summated training strategies (Plisk & Stone 2003; Stone, Stone & Sands 2007).

An issue we haven’t really addressed is nutrition and hydration. The good news is that meals are provided at the Combine, and some sports drinks and snack bars are available in the stadium on day #4. Still, it’s a good idea for players to bring their own water bottle and snacks to Indianapolis, and to keep these with them at all times. Energy and fluid balance are foundational to performance, particularly over a 4-day stretch like this. Likewise, athletes with special dietary needs should let NFS know in advance so they can plan accordingly.

The bottom line: the Combine is a business trip where the stakes are high. Players invited to participate in it should be businesslike in their approach. If you expect to go pro, conduct yourself like one!

Resources

Bosquet L., Montpetit J., Arvisais D., Mujika I. Effects of tapering on performance: a meta-analysis. Med. Sci. Sports Exerc. 39(8): 1358-1365, 2007.
Mujika I., Padilla S. Scientific bases for precompetition tapering strategies. Med. Sci. Sports Exerc. 35(7): 1182-1187, 2003.
Plisk S.S., Stone M.H. Periodization strategies. Strength Cond. J. 25(6): 19-37, 2003.
Plisk S.S. Speed, agility, and speed-endurance development. In: T.R. Baechle & R.W. Earle (Editors), Essentials of Strength Training & Conditioning (3rd Edition). Champaign IL: Human Kinetics, 2008; pp. 457-485.
Stone M.H., Stone M. & Sands W.A. Principles & Practice of Resistance Training. Champaign IL: Human Kinetics, 2007.
Thibault G. Resting to win. Training Conditioning 17(4): 53-59, 2007.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Doug Harney, Bill Hughan, John Kyle, Ned Simerlein and Derek Touchette

* * * * *

Table 1. Schedule Summary: NFL Scouting Combine

Day #1
Arrive in Indianapolis
Registration
Pre-exam & X-rays
Cybex Isokinetic Test
Orientation meeting
Interviews

Day #2
Measurables
• Height
• Weight
• Arm length & Hand span
• Bod Pod test (body composition)
• Weights & Reps (225 lb. bench press; except PK/PT/KO, QB, WO)
Team medical exams
Media interviews
Wonderlic Personnel Test
Interviews

Day #3
NFLPA meeting
Wonderlic Personnel Test
Interviews

Day #4
Workouts @ Lucas Oil Stadium:
• Flexibility (prone overhead, prone behind back, supine low back, seated V hamstring, standing hamstring)
• Positional skill drills
• 40 yd dash
• Vertical & Broad jumps
• 20 yd shuttle
• 3 cone drill
• 60 yd shuttle (perimeter players; interior players excluded)
Depart from Indianapolis

Table 2. Golden Rules of Interviewing

• Your qualifications will get you in the door. Your attitude will get you the job.
• Do your homework.
• Groom yourself.
• Be prompt.
• Be forthright.
• Be prepared to support your ideas.
• Be positive. Don’t say anything negative about anything or anyone.
• Be team- and future-oriented.
• Be professional!

203 450-XLCR | excelsiorsports@gmail.com
Prepare To Be A Champion!

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Strategy
Bench Press
40 Yard Dash
Jumps & Long Shuttle
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