The Basics of Training Structure

In life, what it takes to accomplish something is what it takes. There is no way around it. They’re a thousand ways to skin a cat, but there is only one way that will work for you. Every athlete comes from a different background, lifestyle, sport history, etc. Every athlete will view and respond to coaching differently, they will each take a different path to get to the same outcome, and that’s the point.

While I don’t know what every athlete’s life story is, I do know that they’re human, and that means I can get them from point A to B when given time. At the end of the day, the body responds to stimuli. The stimuli perceived, along with the order of stimuli, and current status of the athlete, will help dictate the adaptation from the prescribed stimuli.

What is the Stimulus Provided?

There is a curvilinear relationship between the velocity of a given movement, and the force produced by the given movement. For the most part, as the force of the movement goes up, the velocity of the movement goes down. The same is true the other way around.

This means that if you are looking to increase a particular 1RM, you will need to spend a bunch of your training time in the zone of high force/ load velocity. If you are trying to run a faster 40yd dash, you will be spending most of your time in the velocity based zone. If you’re training to be a field athlete, you will be spending a bunch of time in differentiating ratios of velocity based and forced based loads. When/how much you spend your time in each zone is dependent on your training experience, time of year, and performance goal.

When is the Stimulus Provided?

Each type of stimuli will solicit a different response from the body, some of the stimuli are much more devastating physically and/or neurologically than others. Because of the individual response to stimuli, how you organize the training day/ week/ month/ year is of vital importance.

For example, increasing lean muscle mass (hypertrophy) involves loads of moderate-to-high force outputs, with volume schemes of 3-5 sets x 6-10 reps. This stimulus causes a much more catabolic response than other forms of stimuli. Goals of increasing strength involves loads of high force output with volume schemes of 3-8 sets x 2-6 reps. Still a very intense training session that requires long rest periods (2-5 minutes), but much less catabolic in nature.

Traditionally, the thought process behind which training stimulus should come first is that you complete the hypertrophic phase before the strength phase. The thought is that athletes with higher amounts of lean muscle mass have a higher ceiling of strength ability compared to those with less muscle mass. So, training strength before hypertrophy might not solicit the best possible strength response.

What is the Athlete’s Current Training Status?

The novice athlete is an empty bucket that possesses loads of potential in regards to filling up that bucket. This means for the most part, anything you do with these athletes will work. However, how much you get out of your program is determined by your style of periodization.

The novice athlete will respond positively & quickly to most any training program, but they will also lose that stimulus just as quickly if not maintained.

So if we look at the traditional training model, hypertrophy before strength, what’s to say that the athlete will not lose some size if all they do is work on strength? This is not likely as these two stimuli are often blended together in most training situations, but what if we paired hypertrophy with a much different stimulus type, like high velocity?

The loads required by high velocity are much lighter than those of strength, and not intense enough to hold onto the strength adaptation the novice recently obtained. The novice athlete will often lose adaptations caused by strength training if not maintained at least 1-2x/ week.

This is why we take a non-traditional approach to performance training. We continually dose athletes with strength, hypertrophy, high velocity, and everything in between to make sure they continue to build all qualities throughout the year. However…. an experienced athlete is better able to hold on to adaptations compared to the novice. The experienced athlete may see better adaptation from a traditional model of periodization because they are given more time, therefore more volume to adapt to a particular stimulus, and they can still maintain the stimulus trained from the pervious cycle.

It’s Still Not Enough

You can chase loading zones, rest periods, volume schemes, force output, joint positions, range of motion, etc. The fact of the matter is that is all comes down to consistency. The response to any stimuli takes more than 1 dose to see any benefit from it. Imagine you’re building a sandcastle on a beach. You want to create an award winning castle. If you dig a trench, protect the castle from the tide, continually add to the castle, and repair damages, you will create a solid structure that can last awhile and collect numerous awards. Ignore the damages, or you don’t tend to the maintenance of the castle, quickly the castle is swept away by the tide. The the castle is your performance level. If you want to elevate your performance, it must be protected, maintained, and built upon regularly.

If you made it this far, you might as well check out our instagram page (we post this stuff all the time)

If you’re still here you must really be bored, but to claim your reward, contact coach Nate at nate@tpstrength.com.

Landmine, the only tool you'll ever need.... pt2

If you’re one of our handful of dedicated fans, you know how much I love using the “landmine” (LM) as a training tool. If it were up to me, it would be a mandatory training tool in all gyms. It’s versatility remains unmatched, the adaptations experienced with landmine training are second to none, and you look cool using it!

I start my persuasive piece of landmine training by saying that everything mentioned above is a little dramatic. Of course there are other tools out there that do things the landmine could never do. Like, you can’t tow a landmine, you can’t use it as timing device, etc. But, in regards to free-weight training modalities, it is by far my favorite tool.

The Physics

In school, you learn that there are 3 classes of mechanical levers named pretty appropriately I’d say: 1st, 2nd, and 3rd class levers. What defines the class of the lever is the placement of 3 key components, and that is the locations of the fulcrum (joint/ pivot point), resistance (load), and effort.

I’ll save the physics lesson for another day, and I’ll give you the answer to which class lever the landmine is… most of the time, and that is a 2nd class lever. A 2nd class lever system places the load in-between the effort and fulcrum. Think of a wheelbarrow, your load is what’s in the wheelbarrow, you provide the effort lifting the load with the attached handles, and the wheel is the joint/ pivot point.

Why is this important? Well, lever systems provide us with either more or less mechanical advantage. The 2nd class lever is the most efficient lever of the three when it comes to lifting loads. This means that you can lift the most weight, with the least amount of effort compared to the other lever types.

Try lifting 200lb bag of dirt in your hands, compared to placing the dirt in a wheelbarrow, tell me if you feel a difference! But enough with this physics stuff, how do we apply in the weight room? Why not just lift dumbbells, and barbells like everyone else?

The Movements

Here are some movement examples :) If you would like some ideas on how to apply landmine movements to your training routine.

The Feels

Dumbbells and barbells are great, but they don’t provide all of the necessary “feel” to a movement that sometimes athletes need. They also may begin to muscle through a movement, which is not what we want when your goal is athletic performance.

The ever ambiguous term of “feel” is used as feedback mechanism. The landmine is free to pivot in any and all planes, but it’s also on a track. Athletes are free to perform pretty much any movement you can think of, but when completed “incorrectly” they often times lose control of the LM or they run into the LM! One of the benefits of free-weight training is the fact that you are required to control loads in space without the assistance of machines. However, many novice athletes have trouble doing just that; experienced athletes learning new movements will need guidance when learning new movements as well.

So, to avoid sticking athletes on a machine to train a muscles, or just throwing them a dumbbell and saying figure it out, the LM provides a safe middle ground that gives the athlete an opportunity to train the movement, while being guided on a track.

That mechanical advantage can play a huge role in providing the athlete with a stimulus that is more conducive to human movement. Hardly ever do we want athletes to muscle through a movement. We want athletes to move cleanly in and out of positions. The LM gives us the opportunity to put on a little more weight, on a freely-moving track, so athletes can complete the movement with little to no errors.

There will be a part 3 because as they say, the sequel is never as good as the original, but the trilogy makes the series.

If you made it this far, you might as well check out our instagram page (we post this stuff all the time)

If you’re still here you must really be bored, but to claim your reward, contact coach Nate at nate@tpstrength.com.

How to Pair Exercise, and Why It isn't as Random as You Think.

When attempting to create a exercise/ training plan, one factor that must be considered is the method of pairing/grouping exercises. While there is no 1 right answer that will provide ultimate success to your plan, the ever famous answer of “it depends” truly dictates the “why” behind what you’re doing with your plan.

Exercise grouping, in my opinion, really should begin with answering the question of who is this for? If you are a fan of the blog, you should know by now that there is a massive difference between training the experienced athlete and training the novice athlete. The biggest difference is their response to training stimuli.

The experienced athlete has a training background that allows them to train more often, at a higher intensity compared to the novice athlete. This may seem like a simple concept, but far too often I see the novice athlete train like the pro, and to be honest it’ll work for a little bit, but it’s not sustainable. Because of the fact that the experienced athlete can handle more stress compared to the novice, what it takes to fatigue the experienced athlete is much higher compared to the beginner. How does this influence exercise order/ grouping?

I’ll use the example of post activation potentiation (PAPE) to answer the above question. PAPE is defined differently across the realm of strength training, but the goal remains the same, and that is to enhance performance for a brief time period. There have been numerous studies trying to decide what the best way to accomplish this phenomena, but for the purpose of this blog we will use the example of lifting a heavy object followed by matching the movement pattern of the lift with a light/ dynamic movement (i.e a bench press paired with a MB chest past). This would be a strength stimulus paired with a power stimulus.

Research has shown (and anecdotally at our gym) that the experienced athlete will see the increased performance from a grouping like the one mentioned above, as the heavy bench press will fatigue the athlete, but they are better able to recover from the stimulus, and throw the med ball at a higher velocity. The novice athlete will complete the same pair of exercises and actually see a decrease in velocity with their med ball throw because they were excessively fatigued and unable to recover in time.

The long term goal of PAPE training is to get the athlete to consistently preform at the higher level of stimulus to receive a higher level of adaptation in their training cycle with a particular movement compared to traditional training methods blocking similar training stimuli together (i.e speed work followed by power, then strength, concluding with conditioning).

For the novice athlete to experience an increase in MB throwing velocity, they would need to complete their throws towards the beginning of the training day when they are the least fatigued. Speed/ power movements require the high amounts of neuromuscular output, but athletes are able to recover relatively quickly compared to the high demands of heavy strength training and/or conditioning. Placing heavy strength training and/ or conditioning before speed and power will result in decreased adaptation of speed and power qualities. Not to worry, athletes of any training experience can still pair exercises together, and receive a positive adaptation.

When it comes down to it, everything we prescribe an athlete requires the athlete to respond to a given stress. The stress placed on the athlete can be planned in a way that allows the athlete to respond to multiple different types of stress in a given training day. It can be as simple as pairing an upper body movement with a lower body movement so that each extremity can recover while the opposite works.

You could also pair fatiguing and non-fatiguing movements on the same half of the body to get the athlete to feel a particular movement “better,” or act as a corrective to their primary movement. One example would be to pair a anterior trunk exercise like a deadbug with a traditional barbell RDL. The deadbug promotes pelvic stability, which is a required quality of the barbell RDL.

Here are some more examples of a PAPE pairing, a optimized recovery pairing, and a complimentary pairing:

PAPE PAIR

-BB LATE STANCE OVER-COMING ISO

-REST

-ACCEL BOUNDING

RECOVERY PAIR

-DB SA INCLINE ROW

-KB LONG SEATED DORSIFLEX

COMPLIMENTARY PAIR

-HIGH BRIDGE SA TRUNK ROT

-MB SHOT PUT

As you can see, it truly depends on your goal. If you can answer the why behind why you are doing it with solid reasoning, then keep on keeping on. If you aren’t seeing the progress you thought you would, you might want to consider mixing things up a bit.

If you made this far, you might as well check out our instagram page (we post this stuff all the time)

If you’re still here you must really be bored, but to claim your reward, contact coach Nate at nate@tpstrength.com.

The 5 "W's" and 1 "H" of Testing Athletes

When it comes to getting the most out of your athletes, testing is most certainly not the end all be all. This is especially true for us, and others who operate in the private sector of performance training. That doesn’t mean testing is not important, nor that it should be overlooked. What, when, why, where, who, and how all must be considered when deciding you test day protocols.

What?

Some may consider this the most important question in deciding your test day protocol, and I would tend to agree. The “what” sets the foundation of what you are going to work on throughout your training cycle. If your training goal is to increase a 1RM by X amount of weight, then your training cycle should be built around that goal. Training to increase a 1RM, especially for the experienced athlete takes a lot of time, and energy. Wasting either one of those factors may lead to a missed goal.

The human body is extremely adaptive, specific, and because of those qualities, it what will do exactly what you tell it to do. Sounds great, right? It can be, but to often we tell our bodies to do things that don’t actually build towards the goal we set.

If you are creating a program for a team or athlete, find out exactly what you feel needs to be improved upon the most. Write it down, circle it, highlight it, and don’t forget it about it.

When?

A question that is often not answered correctly, and it’s to no one person’s fault. A coach will lay out a program, with everything planned to the second. The only issue is that we can’t predict the future. Athletes go through ups and downs on a day to day, hour by hour basis. Your plan to bump someone’s 1RM may go completely out the window if an athlete got 3 hours of sleep the night before because they were fighting with their significant other. Their 1RM suffers on test day, making your program look like eyewash.

With that being said, you do your best to follow your tried and true principles to put athletes in the best possible scenario to succeed. We know, for the most part, an intermediate(1-3 years training experience) to experienced athlete (5+ years of training experience) needs about 8-12 weeks to adapt to a given stimulus. That stimulus initially causes the athlete to see a decrease in performance, but eventually they adapt to the stimulus, and improve performance.

Knowing the “when” behind a particular peak must be planned for. It gets tricky for field sport athletes because they have a season they need to “peak” for. Unfortunately this peak is very short lived, and cannot be maintained over a lengthy season. So, there should be several test days planned throughout the training year to make sure athletes are maintaining their adaptations, and moving in the right direction. This will also tell coaches if their athletes are ready to perform. Day to day testing will provide coaches insight on athlete readiness, but that’s another topic for another day.

Why?

Why are you testing what you’re testing, and when you’re testing it? This “why” question has already been preposed in the paragraphs above if you think about it. If you don’t know why you’re doing what you’re doing, you shouldn’t be doing it.

Does a 23 year collegiate pitcher who has little to no injury history, throws 90+ with great command, and has 10 years of training experience really need to spend 10 weeks increasing his squat max? I say no.

The amount of time and effort it takes to do that is more than people realize. Plus, it doesn’t matter how much he squats, as it is not a demand of his sport. He needs to be able to throw gas on a regular basis.

I would be more concerned with the range of motion at key joints, like the hips, pelvis, shoulders, spine, etc. I would also be making sure his expressions of power stay up throughout the year. So test day for this athlete may just include a movement screen (with and without external load), a broad jump, vertical jump, and a 10yd dash. In all reality, I can test these weekly, and I don’t need to waste a whole day at the end of the cycle to tell me if he improved.

Where?

Not much to say here, just keep it consistent. If you test one day in 90 degree heat on a grass field, and the next test day you move inside to a climate controlled atmosphere on turf, expect to see some different metrics.

You also want to avoid extreme climates on test day. When the body has to handle excessive stress from climate, their numbers will be negatively effected. Testing to match “sport environment” should be reserved for actual competition.

Who?

Again, a topic we have touched on above. The experienced athlete will respond differently to a given stimulus, and will require different goals/ expectations compared to the novice athlete. If a 14 year old soccer player walks into the facility for the first time, I can assume their squat max is going to be subpar. Test their body weight squat, and go from there. Give them an opportunity to grow into the squat max (if that’s what you feel is most important). I can safely get them to jump, and perform a short sprint with minimal risk of injury. These two data points alone will tell me more than enough about what the athlete needs to work on to increase on field performance.

Contraindications may prevent you from running a particular test. If it is not required by their sport and/or their overall health, and they are not physically prepared to complete the test, don’t run it.

How?

This is heavily test dependent, and is all dependent on the questions to be answered above. If you are testing for maximum strength output, you need to make sure you are going to find that answer by placing the athlete in the best possible scenario to succeed.

I’ll keep using the squat max example. Everything from pre-test activities, to the testing protocol must be accounted for to ensure accurate metrics. The body can handle short bursts of power and speed because they are not too fatiguing, and athletes are often able to recover from them quickly. Completing a test of max strength places enormous amounts of stress on the athlete (especially the experienced ones). Recovery from max strength tests can take days to recover from. If you were to do this before a jump or sprint test, the jump and sprint numbers would not accurately represent the athlete’s current capabilities. Neurologically, and physically, they would be too fatigued to preform at high levels. You could get away with it… maybe… if you were testing a novice because they literally do not know how to solicit a level of strength to cause that much fatigue. But, it should still be avoided.

Variables such as test surface (turf, grass, rubber, hardwood, concrete, shoes), time of day, rest time, warm up length, warm up intensity (potentiation?), and test protocol modalities all effect the outcome of tests and must be keep consistent to truly see accurate adaptions.

Finally

This is quite literally a fraction of the beginning of what is to be considered when testing athletes. Mix this with the amount of athletes your testing, and facility limits, and you’re about ready to explode LOL. But if you can answer these questions with confidence, and reason, you can’t go wrong. Keep an open mind, know how to adapt, and don’t get too high if your numbers prove successful, or too low if you don’t see what you anticipated. Often times the answers you seek are found in the questions above.

If you made this far, you might as well check out our instagram page (we post this stuff all the time)

If you’re still here you must really be bored, but to claim your reward, contact coach Nate at nate@tpstrength.com.

How to get the most out of your Sprint Work

The key to sprinting faster is keeping what you do as simple as possible. But, sprinting faster is a multi-lock door, with a 2 keypad codes that only 23 people in the world know. Not to worry, I am here to give you at least 2 of the digits for one of those keypads… but not in the right order ;)

All jokes aside, the vast majority of athletes, and general population folks (parents) still think they are going to get faster by essentially running some conditioning drills, coasting through an agility ladder, or even worse…. sprinting at the end of a workout to make sure they “know how to be fast when tired.”

If I could insert a “gasping” emoji or maybe a “face-palm” emoji, I would. Sprint work only requires that you stick to a few foundational/ non-negotiable principles, and those are:

1. Sprint with maximum intent with every rep

2. Know the goal behind your speed session (short and long term)

3. Be as fresh as possible for every rep

If you stick to these principles, you’ll get faster. Let’s talk about why.

• Sprint with maximum intent for every rep

This can honestly apply to any exercise/movement/drill that any athlete is doing to improve their ability. Intent is defined as the effort applied with each rep. Now that doesn’t just mean how hard you push, it means having awareness with what you are doing.

Where people often come up short in sprint development is that their rep-to-rep intent takes a dive due to fatigue, or lack of focus. When this happens, we give our athletes an extended rest period, and coach up any potential errors they may have with technique. We also love to put our athletes in competitive situations. This means racing, tag, or a game. Be careful when adding equipment or rules to sprint drills, as they will take away from your top speed.

Anecdotally, head to head races always… and I mean always produces a faster sprint time compared to running solo. This is derived from intent! The intent on winning! Faster times means a better stimulus from sprinting, better stimulus means increased adaptation to sprinting, increased adaption means…. well you know.. a better athlete.

• Know the goal behind your sprint session (short and long term)

Training an experienced 100m sprinter requires a totally different training goal when compared to the 13 year old baseball player. The drills that may be a brief warm up modality for the vet will be a whole teaching block for the youth athlete.

The youth baseball athlete needs to develop the ability for short/ quick bursts of acceleration, and will hardly ever reach terminal velocity. The 100m sprinter needs to “take their time” getting up to speed, and only runs in 1 direction!

Having your youth athlete on day 1 of sprint training bust out some 60m dashes because they need it for their showcase days will result in injury, and/or subpar adaptation.

If your goal of the session is to teach mechanics, and start to build a foundation of sprint ability, then spend more time on drills, plyos, etc. Do not expect the athlete to be as fresh as a daisy, and run their fastest 40 on that particular day.

If your goal is to test your 10/40/60/ or 100m dash time, then you shouldn’t be spending a ton of time on mechanical drills, plyos, resisted sprints etc. because these will over stress the athlete and cause excessive fatigue. Which means they will not be their fastest that day.

You also must consider what your training day looks like the day before your sprint session, immediately after the session, and the following day. Remember, we want adaptation to the stimulus provided. If you complete a 60 minute terminal velocity session, followed by hypertrophic lower body left, you are not going to get the best ROI from that sprint session.

• Be as fresh as possible for every rep

This principle goes back to the previous 2. Speed is not about being tired, and running until your legs fall off. This principle also applies to your plyos, mechanical drills, and resisted sprinting. If you are unable to complete a rep with max intent you essentially wasted that rep. The more fatigued you are, the less ROI you are going to get from the sprints you complete.

Know your goal, and plan your session around that goal. Yes, the athlete may need to spend time jumping, cycling, and/or towing a sled. But, too much drilling takes away from the actual sprint.

Checkout this link to one of sprint sessions with some of our high school athletes. They all have a training age greater than 1 year, and they all were working on acceleration: Accel Playlist

If you made this far, you might as well check out our instagram page (we post this stuff all the time)

If you’re still here you must really be bored, but to claim your reward, contact coach Nate at nate@tpstrength.com.

The Landmine... the Only Tool You'll Ever Need

Alright, maybe not the only tool you’ll ever need but still, a very valuable tool to have!

Why we love landmines so much is that they are so versatile, but on a relative track as well. The landmine creates a second class lever for most, if not all exercises you choose to complete. A second class lever is the most efficient lever when it comes to performing work.

Think of a wheelbarrow, the load is the middle, the effort you put into the wheelbarrow to lift it up is on one side, and the fulcrum aka the wheel, is on the other end. You can load up the wheelbarrow and you are still able to lift and maneuver effectively. That is a landmine, but instead of a wheel, you have a pivot point that’s multi-planar. These qualities are what bolster the versatility of the landmine.

The “track” mentioned earlier helps athletes quite literally stay on track in key compound movements such as an overhead press, squat, or lunge. Dumbbells and non-pivoting barbells are great, but each are missing key functions that the landmine provides.

Non-pivoting barbells are great for loading the house in traditional power lifting, and olympic movements, but the bar path created by these movements limit variability. And when you train field sport athletes, with movements taking place in all planes, a bar path predominately in the sagittal plane will only take you so far.

Dumbbells provide the variability we crave, as they require athletes to stabilize the dumbbell in all three cardinal planes of motion… but that also makes teaching complex and simple movements a little more tricky. Either the dumbbell is too heavy making it hard to control and manipulate, or it’s too light and the stimulus provided just isn’t enough. We do love DB’s for goblet squats, hinges, and carries because they movements require little to no coordination from the extremities.

Landmines take a barbell, and quite literally, pivots. The second class lever on a pivoting fulcrum allows us to load the movement appropriately, forces the athletes to stabilize the load, all while having some built in assistance.

Checkout our very short playlist with some examples of landmine movements!

If you made this far, you might as well check out our instagram page (we post this stuff all the time)

If you’re still here you must really be bored, but to claim your reward, contact coach Nate at nate@tpstrength.com.

How to Alter your Split Squat to Get Exactly what you Need out of it!

Many look at the traditional split squat and think: “This will help my legs get stronger.” And for the most part, the masses are correct, the split squat will help your legs get stronger. My questions for you is, how do you load it? How split is your split squat? How deep should you go? What are your feet doing? If you don’t know the answers to these questions, then you might want to stick around for a nice read :)

One of our favorite lower body movements, the split squat, biases load to the lead leg of movement. So, if your right leg is in front, it is doing the majority of the work. In our training book, this qualifies as a unilateral lower body movement, specifically: a unilateral squat pattern. This distinction is crucial, as the joint position of the lower limbs dictates what muscles will do more and/ or less work.

There are about 1.5 million different ways this split squat can be modified. To save you the trouble of learning all of those variations, let’s talk about 3 big ones: Dumbbell (DB) Contralateral (opposite side) Front Heel Elevated (FHE) Split Squat, DB Ipsilateral (same side) Rear Foot Elevated (RFE) Split Squat, and DB Goblet Split Squat.

DB Contra FHE Split Squat:

• Placing the DB in the hand opposite to the working leg does a couple of things. One of those things is that the load placement biases hip eccentric external rotation (ER), and early stance mechanics. Pair this heel elevation, and boom! You feed into that bias even more so.

• Biasing heel strike/ early stance mechanics is a new fan favorite of ours because so many people are “stuck” on their toes, or in a late phase of the gait cycle. Getting athletes to feel their heel allows the body to actively supinate their foot, thus giving them the ability to go through a full cycle of movement. This bias also gets some much needed work of the adductors, hamstrings, and internal rotators.

DB Ipsi RFE Split Squat:

• Placing the DB in the same side hand of the working leg does exactly what you think it will do… the opposite of contra & FHE… bias mid-late stance mechanics!

• Just because someone is “stuck” in late stance, doesn’t mean it’s bad to bias that stance from time to time. The reason being is that athletes need to propel forward! Late stance is the final piece to the propulsion puzzle, and in athletics it’s highly beneficial to be good at this action! Hip concentric ER is what we are looking for, and because the ipsi side load pulls us forward , we get that! Elevating the back foot does this to a greater degree. Caution though, if you are lacking hip extension, you could feed into compensations that you’ve built over time, and potentially cause more issues.

DB Goblet Split Squat

• Taking a traditional stance, we are still sitting a more early/ mid stance bias. The shin stays relatively vertical throughout the movement, but the load being held at chest level increases the demand on the anterior trunk musculature.

• We are still getting hip rotators to work, we are still building lower body strength, don’t worry! We like to use this load placement to help promote core strength, and as a tool to teach athletes how to balance in space, while on a flat surface. Elevating toes, and feet is often too complicated for the novice athlete to learn how to move.

These are just a few examples of how a simple load placement can lead to adaptations going to one side of the spectrum, or the other. At the end of the day, if you’re a 0, any and all of this will work (mostly). The details of load placement, and where your feet are key for athletes with multiple compensation patterns to dig through, stay away from an injured muscle group, or if you want athletes to feel a certain muscle group a certain way. Give it a try!

If you made this far, you might as well check out our instagram page (we post this stuff all the time)

If you’re still here you must really be bored, but to claim your reward, contact coach Nate at nate@tpstrength.com.

KB Ipsi RFE Split Squat

Consistency: The #1 Variable in Training

What people seem to forget is that there are levels to everything we do in life. An athlete who dreams of becoming a professional baseball player needs to, and should train differently than a 50 year old dad who just wants to be able to stay healthy, and play with his kids. We preach human movement at TP, and while both scenarios involve training the human body, the mentality of training is dramatically different between the two.

To elevate your skill set to the next level, you must consider that there may not be a healthy balance between your social life, and your sport life. Hours upon hours must be dedicated to practicing your craft, studying your craft, and actually competing.

One of , if not the biggest portion of our evaluation process is the talk between coach and prospective athlete. In that conversation we ask “why are you here? What our your goals? What are you willing to commit to in order to accomplish those goals?” Those answers alone will tell us how committed the athlete is/ should be. Where athletes fall short is sticking to those commitments, and they don’t even realize it.

If you truly want to earn a collegiate scholarship, or sign a big league contract, the amount of time it takes to get to that level is mind boggling, and sometimes overwhelming. Let’s break it down:

An average in-season high school baseball athlete will have (and this is just in-season)

• 3-5 games/ week

• practice on the days without games

• 7-8 hours of school (+ homework)

• 3-5 hours of strength and conditioning

If you are not getting 7-8 hours of sleep per day, and/ or not eating 3-5 meals per day, your body accumulates too much stress, and continually breaks down. Pretty soon, injuries start to pop up, and next thing you know, you’re out of the lineup due to preventable causes.

In the weight-room, our program must be concise and to the point to avoid excessive stress. We plan our in-season protocols around the sports schedule to do just that. Who we can’t help is athletes who don’t take care of themselves, or don’t show up.

What separates athletes who not only survive, but thrive in-season, from those who get hurt from preventable causes is their level of planning. We tell our athletes to build-out their daily/ weekly schedule. Focus on the non-negotiables first, and the rest is easy. For example:

You know you’re getting 8 hours of sleep and/ or relaxation time

You know you have 8 hours of school

You know you have 2-4 hours of baseball/ day

You know you have 3-5 hours of strength training/ week

You know you have to eat, shower, etc.

Now fill in the blanks! Homework, hanging out with friends, etc.

Making time, not finding time, for what is important to your success is the first step in athletic development. This is also the first step that is often skipped over. How much time you dedicate to each area is dependent on your true goal. This refers back to the levels comment.

The vast majority of professional athletes did not play baseball year-round, but when they did, they were prepared to do so, and each rep meant something. Dreams of playing big league ball require a higher level of commitment to your craft compared to an athlete just trying to make the high school team, and that’s how it’s suppose to be! There is a reason why there are so few professional athletes in the world.

High level athletes (genetics aside) find ways to get the job done on the field, in the weight room, in the kitchen, and any extra hurdles they may need to climb over to get to where they want to go.

Development takes time, there is no magic pill that says otherwise. You tell us what you want to do, and we will tell you how to do it. But do not expect us to solve all of your problems with spotty attendance. Commit, stay committed, and success will surely follow.

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Why Competition Matters

Competition raises the standards, competition separates those who can do the dew from those who cannot do the dew. Over the past several years, the TP staff and I have noticed one commonality between all those who participate in our training classes. Between the novice/ beginner level athlete, and the mature/ seasoned TP vet. It doesn’t matter what level your at, it is about what you’re welling to do to get to the next level. What separates those doing the dew, and those who do not is the mentality of the athlete when they compete.

We cannot host a baseball game in our gym, we cannot take our basketball players out to the parking lot and ask them to play a game for the sake of training. This is not our job. Our job is to prepare the TP athlete for the rigors of competition (physically and mentally), not create their game in our gym. With that being said, what we can do is pair our athletes together, stir them up a little bit, and watch them go!

I ask athletes all of the time “who in this gym can you beat in a race, right now, no doubt?”

Do you want to know the answer from majority of the kids? “Ummmm…. I don’t know…. maybe like 1 or 2 guys??” And that is mentality we are aiming to change at TP.

Having a level of confidence is imperative to success not only in sport, but in life. We aren’t trying to create cocky ass-holes, but we are trying to create an atmosphere of “I don’t care who you are, where you come from, or why you’re here, all I know is I am going to beat you.”

This mentality does more for an athlete than any number of push-ups or squats will do. You may be able to squat the house, but if you wilt under the tiniest bit of pressure, you won’t be playing long.

If kids are able to take this mentality to the gym, the return on investment from their time in the gym will be substantially higher than those who do not have that competitive edge.

A certain level of a competition forces the athlete to be present in the moment, focus on intent, and complete the task at hand.

Over time, little decisions between skipping a rep & completing the set, or sleeping in & getting out of bed, add up. Before you know it, we either have an athlete pleased with their progress, and ready to commit to another semester of training, or a pissed off parent wondering why their hard earned $ didn’t create the specimen athlete they had in mind.

Whether you’re a coach running a weight room, or an athlete training by themselves in a basement, you know what I mean when I say competition matters. Creating that mentality will go propel you further in your career, more than any squat max ever could.

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A Push-Up that is more than a Push-Up

Why do a boring, regular ole push-up, when you can add a plate to one side?

- It is the details that matter at TP! Sure a 2 inch bias on one side will not make or break an athlete, but what it will do is bias the spine to rotate away from the elevated side.... thus giving more rotation and expansion to that side.

- Why do we want more rotation/ expansion to the back side of the body? Well, have you ever walked? Ran? Thrown a ball? All of these activities require more rotation than you think. Without it, your body will go else where to get the necessary rotation... which isn't necessarily a good thing.

Link in Picture! (and here)

Stop Training in-season?... No

One of the biggest, and steepest uphill battles we face in the strength training industry is the stigma associated with in-season training. In my experience, the athletes that are more reluctant to training during their season are typically non-contact sport athletes (I’m looking at you baseball… swimming… tennis…basketball). This isn’t a slam piece to call out athletes, this is an informative piece that will hopefully provide some insight into some appropriate training protocols for different levels of athletes in different sports.

Let’s get one thing out of the way: if you have been training on a consistent basis in a structured program for less than 2 years, and you’re under the age of 18… no matter the time of year…. you need to stay in the weight room. Without a foundation of “strength” novice level athletes are more prone to injury, decreases in performance on the field, and loss of performance gains in the weight room. The novice athlete has so much room to develop, and 2-3 month season is no excuse not to take advantage of that window. Performance gains can and should be made in season. So, for all of you wondering whether or not your youth athlete should stick with their training routine, the answer is yes. Unless your goal in life is to be the all-team JV athlete, your thought process when it comes to development should be long term.

So outside of the youth population, should you train in-season? The answer is still yes, we just need to be more careful monitoring the stress we prescribe our athletes along with stress that occurs outside of the facility. To get an athlete to perform at the peak of their current ability gets way harder as they develop. The more training experience they have, the more energy & time it takes to see even the slightest improvements in strength, speed, or power. They need that energy to be applied to their sport (why they are training in the first place).

Looking at (fig-1), you’ll see a generic representation of a typical athlete’s improvement timeline. At the start you’ll notice a sharp increase in performance, and the sharp rise starts to flatten out as you gather more experience. If you’re an athlete in that first bubble closest to the y-axis, then we cannot afford to stop development for a few months. You may see improvements quickly, but I guarantee that you will lose those improvements just as fast, if not faster if you cease training all together. If you are an athlete a little further away from the x and y axis, you can see it takes much more time to increase performance. That means it takes much more energy as well. Athletes need energy for the sport. The more advanced athlete’s program will typically focus on strength/power/ speed maintenance and above all- total movement ability. This way we do not take away from their on-field performance.

figure 1

What does all of this information mean at the end of the day? The less experience you have, the more you can train in-season without negatively effecting your performance on the field. The more training experience you have, the more cautious we have to be with training in-season, maintenance and readiness are top priorities.

The more experienced athlete will also be better suited to hold on to any performance gains throughout a season compared to a novice athlete. This is because the majority of performance gains occurs neurologically in the novice athlete. Neurological advancements are the first to develop, and the first to be lost. The more experienced athlete will also improve neurologically, however they will also see morphological changes as well. Increases on muscle size will allow the athlete to hold on to their adaptations when appropriately prescribed. This is demonstrated in figures 2 and 3 listed below.

fig 2

fig 3

Finally, the goal the performance training is just that… performance. This is goes hand and hand with injury prevention. When an athlete drops their structured training volume in exchange for unstructured sport practice, their chance of injury goes through the roof. Do not get me wrong, they need to play their sport at the end of the day. But depending on the sport/ position, the body will start to develop greater asymmetries, and sport specific adaptations that if not monitored can compromise performance. Combined with unwarranted weight loss, this could spell disaster. A quality strength coach will regularly monitor factors such as range of motion at key joints (hip/shoulder), body weight, power expression, and daily readiness while micro-dosing strength work. This can only happen if an athlete stays in the weight-room.

There are levels to everything, and if you have aspirations of playing sports beyond high school, you have to be ready for the college workload. Cessation of training every 4-5 months will delay adaptation, decrease performance, and increase the likelihood of injury. The less experience an athlete posses, the more consistent they need to be in the weight-room. The more experience an athlete posses, the easier they can maintain performance. Do not be afraid of a qualified strength coach that nows how to develop athletes. Trust the coach to keep your athlete on track to accomplish their goals.

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And…. our movement channel!

Youth Athlete Strength Training

When should my kid start a training program? A question that is posed to all strength coaches alike since the vast majority of athletes playing competitive sports are youth athletes. This means that the vast majority of strength and conditioning centers will probably have a solid number of youth athletes (ages 9-16). Every coach will have a different answer, and I believe it lies in your definition the phrase “training program.” At TP, we follow the Long Term Athletic Development plan (LTAD). Simply put, each age group will have a structured plan, how structured that plan may be is dependent on the age group. The younger the athlete, the less traditionally structured the program is. (And to be honest, we like to throw out everything a textbook might say about how to train a youth athlete).

So… when should my kid start training? The answer is yesterday! Just like any other profession, strength coaches have stereotype, and that is we make all of our athletes lift heavy weights all the time. While this may be true for some coaches… it couldn’t be further from the truth for us. Don’t get me wrong, lifting heavy weights is essential, but only in the appropriate setting. This stereotype makes people shy away from sending their kid to strength coach, when in actuality, hiring a certified professional could be the best investment you make for your athlete’s career. But if we don’t just lift heavy weights all the time, what do we do with youth athletes?

We teach them how to use their body’s while making the sessions as engaging and fun as possible. For kids under the age of 13, training will more often than not look like games and obstacle courses than lifting. Kids do not want to hear “hey, you got 3x10 on back squat, tempo of 31X.” They want to hear “hey, this is a race! You need to carry this ball over these boxes….first one back wins!” As simple as this may sound, youth training can truly be structured play. You can incorporate the same squat pattern in any number of ways without having to actually “squat.”

A typical youth session may look something like this:

1. 8 minutes obstacle course warm up

2. 10 minutes shuttle sprint race

3. 10 minutes sled race grocery shopping

4. Bear crawl-crab walk- single leg balance ball catch 3x10 each

5. Multi-position start to sprint- prone swimmers- single leg box jump

6. Seated stand up to sit down- push up position cone drop

Now, I’ll give an example of a typical high school level athlete’s session:

1. 12 minutes- Linear based dynamic warm up

2. 10 minutes- A-Skip progression SS 10 yd sled push (match skip prog)

3. 10 mintes- 10 yd sprint SS 10 yd sled tow at 30% bw (3:1)

4. Trunk and Spine work

5. Power/ Plyo block

6. Strength Block

7. Accessory Block

Now, doesn’t one of those sessions look way more fun than the other? They are more similar than you think! The obstacle course warm up takes all of the components of the linear dynamic, and smashes them together in one fun course. The shuttle sprint race gets athletes to sprint as fast as they can, while changing directions, just like a 10 yd sprint and 10 yd sled tow would. The bear crawl to grab walk to single leg balance is just trunk and spine work smashed together! I can go on, but you get the point! It’s all the same movements, just presented in a different way for different levels of athletes.

At the end of the day, we want athletes to enjoy training, and create a positive relationship with the gym. Once they start to grow up, and their sport gets more serious, so will their training. Youth strength training has a negative stigma attached to it, and I believe that comes from misinformation and poor coaching. Youth training can be so much more than lifting weights. It can be literally anything that gets kids to engage, learn, develop, and most importantly have fun.

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Or you can checkout an example of a simple warm up drill we use with our youth athletes: cool video

Periodization: Beginners to the Elite

When you start to train, you may feel great… rather quickly. When you go from training 0x/ week to training 3+x/week, you can pretty much do anything, and see some acute results. You’re excited, and want to keep training, but then you notice, you’re not seeing those results from the beginning. Why? you’re working just as hard, training the same amount of time per week, hitting all your big lifts, but that’s just the thing! You need progress to progress!

Periodization is just a fancy term for planning in the strength and conditioning world. The variables you can manipulate, and track are endless! Some will claim they have the best scheme to develop strength, others will say their method is best for endurance, but at the end of the day one plan will work for one athlete and not for another. This is where getting to know your athlete is vital. To create a plan that works for you, we use variables such as: your goals, current training status, requirements of your sport/ life, how much time we have to train, and time of year. These factors will allow us to select the correct plan for you!

Beginners are like a sponge, and as I mentioned, you can pretty much do anything for a little bit and see results. Adaptation to your training routine will take place almost immediately as long as you’re sleeping and eating appropriately. This will not last long however. Eventually you will need to map out your plan. In my opinion, beginners need to spend blocks of time focusing on one goal at a time. When mapping out your plan, you want each phase to build on the previous. If your end goal is speed, but have the stiffness of wet paper, you can sprint all day long with only minimal improvements in speed. You need strength, and if you’re past puberty, you more than likely need size to attain some strength! In the beginning, the more time you spend developing size and the strength, the higher the ceiling you will have for speed development. How this would look in a periodized format would be, hypertrophy training followed by strength, to power, and finally speed training. This is called “linear” or “traditional” periodization.

Hypertrophy training will involve higher volume schemes at lower weight loads, and as you move down the phases volume will decrease and load will increase. Undulating volume and load either weekly, or biweekly is termed “non-linear” or “undulating” periodization. Training multiple phases at the same time, while undulating volume and load is termed “undulating conjugate” or “undulating concurrent” periodization

-Hypertrophy: 3-5 sets x 6-12 reps with loads between 60-80% of an athletes 1 rep max

-Strength: 3-8 sets x 1-6 reps with loads between 80-100% of an athletes 1 rep max

-Power: 3-10 sets x 2-5 reps with loads between 30-85% of an athletes 1 rep max

-Speed: 3-10 sets x 2-10 reps with loads between 0-30% of an athletes 1 rep max.

Following this format will allow the novice athlete to develop size which will help bolster is strength capabilities. When the loads are higher, strength development can take place. With a foundation of strength, the athlete’s power capabilities will increase; which also means their speed ability will increase as well.

If you have 12 weeks to train, traditionally you’ll spend about 3-4 weeks on each phase, broken up with a deload week between each phase giving the athlete a chance to recover and adapt. The younger the athlete, the longer you can spend in hypertrophy and strength. A true novice will need to spend time learning how to train in a pattern development phase. The training parameters can range from anywhere between 2-6 sets x 6-20 reps (quite a large spectrum, I know). The novice needs time to practice the movement, learn how to develop force/ intent with the movement, and demonstrate consistent rep-to-rep coordination before moving to any other phase.

The intermediate to elite level athletes will train the same qualities listed above what could change is how long they are in a particular phase, and how many phases they train concurrently (strength and speed at the same time) in their training cycle. Spending too much time in one phase will fatigue that quality you are training to develop, and that is totally necessary to see improvement. However, if you got an elite level guy who is looking for a job at the professional level, they need to be ready to go at any moment in time. The elite level athlete will have a sufficient training age that allows them to spend 1-2 weeks in a strength phase, and focus on speed and power. The larger the training age, the less time you will need to spend in hypertrophy and strength. Checkout the training scheme below for 3 athletes as an example.

Beginner- 4 weeks pattern development, 4 weeks hypertrophy, 1 week deload, 4 weeks strength, 1 week deload, 4 weeks power (traditional periodization)

Intermediate- 3 weeks pattern development, 2 weeks hypertrophy, 1 week deload, 2 weeks hypertrophy, 2 weeks strength, 1 week deload, 2 weeks power, 2 weeks strength, 1 week deload, 2 weeks speed (biweekly undulating periodization)

Elite- 1 week pattern development, 1 week hypertrophy/strength, 1 week strength/power, 1 week power/speed, 1 week deload, 1 week hypertrophy/strength, 1 week strength/power, 1 week power/speed, 1 week deload, 1 week strength/power, 2 weeks power/ speed, 1 week strength, 1 week deload. (weekly undulating concurrent periodization)

You can even have daily undulation periodization, where the training emphasis changes day to day! At the end of the day, you have to know who you are working with. This will help you decide which plan will work best for your situation. If you only have 8 weeks to train an elite level athlete a traditional plan probably isn’t the best idea, but may be perfect for a novice. We have barely scratched the surface of what goes into a training plan. There is so many other variables that were’t even mentioned. This is truly just the outline of a few different examples for a power dominate athlete. What happens if your goal isn’t to be the fastest on the field? Maybe your training goal is to run a marathon, in which case your training plan would look totally different! Know your goal, and work backwards from there ;).

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If you want to watch an incredible video on periodization, from a great coach, click here.

FreeLap Timing System

How fast are you? A question posed to athletes and coaches alike, and their answers will often have more weight to those questions than most think. This is why accuracy of sprint times is so important. Not only will accurate timing protocols allow coaches to track progress, but athletes competing for a scholarship will rely heavily on those times to at least get a “look” from a college scout. This is why we recently purchased the “FreeLap Timing System.”

The FreeLap Timing System (freelap) is a timing system that produces a magentic field around the timing gait. Athletes wear a tracking chip on their waistband, and when the chip crosses the magnetic field, times are recorded. Setting up the freelap system takes about 2-3 minutes, and requires a smart device for data to be exported to via the freelap app. Timing gaits are posted at your desired distance, tracking chips are placed on the waistband of the athlete, once this is completed you are essentially ready to run. This simple set up is huge for a facility like ours because not only can we track times on our athletes, we can track multiple athletes at once while receiving live feedback after each sprint. Whether we are testing, or tracking, this data allows us to make critical volume decisions, and give accurate coaching cues.

Consistency is the number one variable that will determine sprint times. The freelap system removes the #1 most inconsistent variable of all, and that is a coach and their stopwatch. I myself will not produce consistent times on a daily basis, the only thing consistent about a coach is the coach themselves. Removing this variable by placing job of gathering times with a machine makes each rep more valuable in the sense that athlete does not waist reps with bad times; plus I can now analyze the technique of the sprint without having to worry about a stopwatch. The freelap system has been proven by research to be within two-hundredths of second compared to a multi beam timing systems (the gold standard of timing systems).

With this new tool, the possibilities are endless. Test days will be more seamless, and take less time to gather athlete data. Data is more accurate and accessible, and with this data we can create even more accurate training protocols specific to each athlete. Not to mention when athletes see timing gear, they usually bow up, and sprint a little faster as well!

I will be diving into our sprint data in the future. I will discuss how we use the data, how to apply the data, and what the data actually means to athletes. Thank you for your time! I hope you enjoyed the read! If you have any questions hit us up!

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Backward Running: What is it? Why is it important? How do we use it at TP?

Backwards running (BR)  can be described in several ways, for our purposes, we will define BR as- as a form of locomotion containing a single leg support phase, followed immediately by double flight phase. Essentially, there is never a point in time where there are two feet on the ground. 

Your initial thought could be, why would I ever need to run backwards if I am not a defensive back in American football? While this may be true, the physiological benefits of BR are quite extensive, and they have been proven to translate to increased sprint and sport performance. Some key differences between BR and forward running (FR) include a very basic one… you can’t see where you are going! This means that you must rely on other senses, such as sound, to help you dictate where your body is in space. BR places greater metabolic strain (28%) on the body at relative and absolute intensities (Uthoff, at el 2018). BR does not utilize the stretch shortening cycle like FR, so there is a higher demand for concentric and isometric contractions. In studies comparing BR and FR programs, similar performance increases in sprint speed and jump height were shared between the groups, researchers have also shown less mechanical strain at the knee when compared to FR as well, suggest possible rehab modalities.

Just like any physical gesture, it must be taught. While backwards running for a baseball player may not be the number one aspect of their training program, it can be used as an accessory movement to help develop sprinting, and other athletic abilities. Our training sessions are designed to build toward the goal of the session. This means, if the primary goal of the session is to perform a linear sprint for 30 yards as fast as possible, everything we do from plyometrics, to technical drills will be to enhance that sprint. It may sound easy to go tell an athlete to “run as fast as you can from here to there.” But, without proper warm up protocols, and preparation movements to get the athlete to their peak potential in that moment, the net return in adaptation from the sprint will be compromised. 

With that being said, we use backward running as a one of our warm up movements to help potentiate athletes for future movements in the session. I will list some examples of backwards movements below: 

REACH BACKS TO PAUSE, REFLEX, HOP, CONTINUOUS

BKWDS POGOS

SL RDL

FIGURE 4 TO KICK BACK PAUSE, REFLEX, INDIVIDUAL, CONTINUOUS

REVERSE LUNGE

REACH BACK RUN 

ALT REVERSE HOPS, SINGLE, DOUBLE, CONTINUOUS 

To what degree we use each of these movements depends on the group present, time of year, and goal of the session. Due to the increased metabolic demand, one must make sure not to spend too much time working in reverse, as you can fatigue the athlete, and take away from performance. However, if the focus of the session is backward running development, the majority of the day is spent in reverse. We use a day like this as an “Active Recovery Day” to get the athletes out of their normal running patterns to give those muscle actions a chance to recover, while still getting development in other areas. 

The benefits of BR can be extensive. How much we use it is dependent on athlete status, athlete’s sport, time of year, and goal of the session. If prescribed appropriately, BR can help develop several athletic qualities! 

Thank you for your time!

Coach Nate Garcia 

nate@tpstrength.com

tim@tpstrength.com

scott@tpstrength.com 

914-486-7678

Instagram: tp_strength

References:

Cronin J, Harrison C, Oliver J, Uthoff A, Winwood P. A New Direction to Athletic Performance: Understanding the Acture and Longitudinal Responses to Backward Running. 2018

In Season Training

Once the off season is over, it is crucial that we maintain the strength and speeds improvements during the season. Novice athletes with a small training age are more susceptible to lose their off season gains, so it is even more imperative that we keep them in the weight room. Checkout out this link to our Instagram page, and watch our vlog post on in-season training! https://www.instagram.com/tp_strength/

How to Implement the A-Skip Progression into Your Speed Program (PT 2)

There is a list of complimentary exercises that you can pair with the ASP. Exercises can either help teach the pattern, prepare the athlete to sprint, increase rate of force development (RFD), increase ground reaction force (GRF), increase joint range of motion, or even potentiate muscles before sprinting. When teaching a pattern, it is best to keep the athlete in similar positions throughout the session, and repeat that pattern for the remainder of the session. Once the progression has been taught, exercises selected to pair with the progression should either be a regressed and loaded movement, or a progressed and explosive movement.

Lets dive deeper into the qualities associated with acceleration in relation to sprinting. Acceleration is the rate of change of the velocity of an object with respect to time. From an isolated stance, we must get the mass of the athlete up to speed as quickly as possible (in most instances). This requires high amounts of horizontal force production, longer ground contact times, and lower stride rates. Athletes who lack adequate strength will have lower top end speeds, and take a longer time to get to those speeds. This is why we must develop strength before considering moving fast. In order to match the qualities associated with acceleration, use drills that have a longer amortization phase (longer ground contact time), and horizontal force application. 

Early in sprint development, movements are typically slower with a greater emphasis on force development rather than speed. In order to keep the emphasis on force development, pushing/towing a sled is often prescribed. The load on the sled is heavier, and speed of the movement is slowed. Appropriate loading parameters can vary anywhere between 30-120% of the athletes body weight. Anything below 30% is reserved for movement teaching, or loaded sprinting. It is imperative that coaches do not prescribe excessive loads for sprinting. Research suggests that loads exceeding 30% of an athlete’s body weight can lead to altered sprint mechanics, which takes away from sprint development. 

At the end of the day, the athlete needs to practice the movement. Pairing the A-skip with movements that share similar qualities in body position, amortization length, and force production will not only help teach the progression, but you will further develop all qualities associated with sprinting. 

If you have any questions, please let us know!

Thank you for your time!

Coach Nate Garcia 

nate@tpstrength.com

tim@tpstrength.com

scott@tpstrength.com 

914-486-7678

Instagram: tp_strength

How to Implement the A-Skip Progression into Your Speed Program (PT 1)

We have covered what the ASP is, now it is time to program it into your speed development program! 

In the very beginning, as I have mentioned several times before, this is a teaching tool! Most novice athletes lack proper strength and coordination when it comes to sprinting. Our goal with the ASP is to use it as a warm up drill before sprinting, but before we can do that, the athlete must demonstrate movement mastery so it does not over tax the athlete’s readiness level. The parameters for this discussion are as follows: 

Age: 16

Sport: Baseball/football

Position: Wherever you need me coach

Time of Year: Winter

Training Duration (Sprint only): 60 minutes

Being a multisport athlete, post peak height velocity, we can assume that this student has a solid athletic background and should be able to progress through our ASP relatively quickly…. but let's not get crazy yet. 

The first 10-12 minutes of the session will include our dynamic warm up and group preparation series. The goal of the warm up is to elevate the athlete’s readiness level by prepping the joints for specific movements, inducing thermogenesis, increasing blood flow to the working muscles, and tuning up the central nervous system for work. Since we use the ASP during our acceleration focus days, our warm up will match the necessary qualities associated with acceleration mechanical and physiological demands. Typically, the segment length of the warm up is 10-20 yards. Since this is the beginning of our athletes training, and we do not want to negatively affect our training, the segment will be on the shorter side (10 yards). If the athlete requires any “special” warmup drills that we noted from our screening process, we will include this as well. 

We then move into the plyometric section of the day. This portion will be 8-10 minutes in length, with plenty of rest opportunities between sets. Acceleration qualities include a longer amortization phase (longer ground contact time), and high force output. We are forcing the body to get out of a stand still position, and up to speed as quickly as possible. Our plyometrics will match these qualities. We will either go with “Hurdle Hops” or a “Broad Jump” series. I will save the “why” behind these drills for another post, but essentially these drills develop the same qualities associated with the ASP and acceleration. This helps get the athletes mind ready for the focus of the day. 

After plyometrics, we move into the technical/ strength section of the session. This is where we implement the ASP. Later in the training cycle, the ASP will be used as a plyometric, but as I said before… we are still in the teaching phase of the progression. We love pairing other drills with the ASP, but we have to be cautious not to over fatigue the athlete and take away from their learning ability. Drills such the wall drill, sled tow/push, and arm drill are appropriate and share similar qualities with the ASP. The ratio of reps for the ASP to other drills should favor the ASP heavily (3-5:1-2). Segment length for the ASP should stay between 10-15 yards depending on which stage the athlete is able to complete. This will be the longest segment of the progression lasting between 15-20 minutes. 

We conclude the session with sprints. The early stages of speed development will not include many sprints. Since our focus is acceleration, the distance will be kept under 10 yards. This is the shortest segment of the session lasting 7-10 minutes, with ample opportunity for rest between bouts. A personal preference of mine is to keep to the theme of the day (acceleration teaching) I will either keep the athlete in a 2 point linear start stance, or baseball start stance. A volume of 4-8 sprints with a recovery period of walking back to the starting line +15-30 seconds (maybe more if I need to make a coaching cue). 

In the very beginning, rest periods should be longer between segments. Learning a new skill requires as much focus as possible. Intentionally fatiguing the athlete will take away from their ability to learn, and prolong movement mastery. Once there is a foundation of movement competence, we can start building some work capacity with our speed sessions; keeping in mind that it all depends on the goal of the session. If we are trying to run as fast as possible that day, the parameters of previously mentioned completely change, and work capacity shouldn’t even be a thought in your head!

Thank you for your time!

Coach Nate Garcia 

nate@tpstrength.com

tim@tpstrength.com

scott@tpstrength.com 

914-486-7678

Instagram: tp_strength

Why the A-Skip Progression Should be a Pillar of Your Speed Program (Pt 4)

Now that we know what the ASP is, we must decide when it is appropriate to use it. At Total Performance, we use the ASP as a teaching tool and warm up progression. Clearly, if we ask a novice athlete to demonstrate the power progression of the series, the athlete will surely fail in the beginning. Just as well, if we ask an elite athlete to repeat the basic fundamentals of the progression, they will not get enough of a stimulus to elicit a positive training response. 

Typically athletes who lack strength, speed, and proper sprint mechanics will need to spend more time learning the ASP compared to more advanced athletes. So, if you are working with this type of athlete, the speed session should consist primarily of drills, and plyometrics. The end of the session will consist of sprint variations that match the goal of the session . This is a similar approach I take with more advanced athletes as well who may have just finished their sport season. I still want to improve their sprint ability, but I want to give the athlete a break from the grind of their sport season, which typically involves a ton of sprinting!

The first few levels of the progression can seem quite slow, and without inspired coaching, athletes will lack intent behind the drill, and it becomes a waste of time. In order to keep the athlete in tune with the drill, I will often combine it with either a sled drill, wall drill, arm drill, or a sprint. Coaching this progression requires “feel.” The athlete needs time to practice, but we don’t want them marching up and down a 50 yard stretch of turf. Typically, 10-20 yards is an appropriate distance because they have enough distance to get several reps, but not too long to mentally fatigue the athlete. Once we get to the power and bounding stages of the progression, volume must be more carefully considered as these are high level plyometrics that can fatigue athletes quickly. If you say the goal of the session is to run as fast as possible, and then you prescribe 15 minutes of repeated 30 yard bounds, you are not going to see the fastest times. The athlete is now sprinting in a fatigued state, and we must be careful not to overtrain the athlete. 

Next week will continue our discussion with this progression. The later stages of the progression are high level plyometrics. We will dive into the physical adaptations associated with plyometrics and how it translates to sports performance.

Thank you for your time!

Coach Nate Garcia 

nate@tpstrength.com

tim@tpstrength.com

scott@tpstrength.com 

914-486-7678

Instagram: tp_strength

Why the A-Skip Progression Should be a Pillar of Your Speed Program (Pt 3)

As an athlete builds movement efficiency and strength, the advanced segments of the ASP should be picked up with relative ease. However, if an athlete has a slow rate of force development (RFD), whether it is due to a lack of strength or speed, they will struggle. Simply practicing the movement will only go so far if they do not have a solid foundation of strength to operate on. As I have taught this progression to athletes of every level, from novice to elite, I have observed that the athletes that have prior training/playing experience will be able advance through this progression quickly. 

After “A-Skip Continuous” mastery, we can now expose the athlete to the “Power Skip.” The rhythm of the movement and the amount of ground contact during the movement both change, and it can be awkward at first. This is the first time in the progression that the athlete will have to demonstrate similar force development rates to that of sprinting. In every level prior to power, the athlete will either have one foot on the ground or two. In the power progression, there is never a moment in time where the athlete will be supported by both legs. This is why it can be difficult for athletes who may not have a strength base to perform the movement; they simply lack the ability to support their body weight on one limb in a dynamic fashion. When introducing the power rhythm, I will give them an “Alternate Single Leg Pogo” drill. This gets the athlete familiar with the new movement, and gives the coach an opportunity to see if the athlete is truly prepared for the power skip. Both legs remain “locked” (with slight flexion of the ground knee) and they begin to hop forward. Every 3 hops they switch legs, always landing on one leg, never two. Then we will introduce the A-position by flexing the hip when alternating between hops, “Individual Power Skip.” Finally, every hop will require a rapid flexion/extension of each leg, as they power skip for the prescribed distance. 

The final progression of the ASP is “Linear Bound.” This progression demands the most from the athlete, as they are now bounding off one leg onto the next. We are looking for the repeated horizontal and vertical force displacement as they bound for the prescribed distance. As I have mentioned previously, athletes must be efficient when redirecting ground forces for this movement. If they are not, the bound will be relatively small, and they will not be able to repeat the movement with any sort of coordination or speed. 

Now that the ASP is mastered… There is a whole other can of worms with the Frans Bosch reflex drills that are pretty similar to the first few levels of the ASP, but they require higher levels of movement coordination. I do not know other coaches who use the ASP to prepare for the Bosch reflex, and there is no literature to say that an athlete who cannot complete the ASP shouldn’t use the Bosch reflex progression. But, I have noticed that an athlete that struggles with the later phases of the ASP usually struggles with the Bosch reflex. 

Next week I will begin to go into the who, what, when, where, why, and how behind the ASP. I will also introduce the Bosch reflex, and the differences between the two drills. 

Thank you for your time!

Coach Nate Garcia 

nate@tpstrength.com

tim@tpstrength.com

scott@tpstrength.com 

914-486-7678

Instagram: tp_strength