Just a quick post today to share with you some of my favorite exercises to develop power for athletes. Obviously there are plenty more exercises that I like to use throughout a training year, but these are just a couple of my favorite ones if you need some variation and something different from the traditional plyo exercises and the common Olympic lifts.
Unloaded squat jumps are a great exercise that I learned from Cal Dietz, strength coach at the University of Minnesota. It allows you to jump higher by pulling down on the bands as you jump (although it doesn’t necessarily translate into more power development), but because of the height of the jump, you have more force to absorb (or decelerate) when you come back on the floor. That really is what’s beneficial about the exercise; an increased ability to absorb forces and react to high velocities.
The second one is more of a method than an exercise itself. It’s called the complex method, and the concept is simply to perform a heavy lifting exercise (with about 90% of your 1RM) for 2-3 reps, rest for anywhere from 30 seconds to 2 minutes and then perform a bodyweight plyometrics exercise. The idea is that the heavy lifting exercise will activate more fast-twitch muscle fibers that you’ll in turn be able to use when doing the plyo exercise. In the video I perform them within 15 seconds, but ideally you’d want a longer rest.
The third one is a medicine ball throw variation that I got from Eric Cressey. It incorporates more velocity in the movement by running a couple steps and jumping before smashing the med ball into the wall. I’ll use this variation a lot with baseball players.
The last one is a variation of an Olympic lift. The reason I like it so much is because it usually is so much easier to teach and to learn than the traditional Olympic lifts. The 1-arm DB snatch is very effective to develop power and will take minimal time to master. If you haven’t already, try it!
As I mentioned in the beginning, this really is just the tip of the iceberg, as there are so many exercises to help develop power. I just wanted to share some of my favorite ones with you if you always end up using the same ones and need variety!
Don’t forget to sign up for my newsletter and you’ll also receive my 3 sports training reports for FREE!
I was reading Tony Gentilcore’s blog post last week and I noticed a comment he made: “(…)there are numerous people (and nutritionist for that matter) who, despite knowing better, like to push off things like 100 calorie snack packs as viable “healthy” options.” That reminded me of a blog post I wrote about a year ago: Let’s Stop Over-Complicating Nutrition. (As a matter of fact, I was just re-reading it as I put the link to the original post, and it’s so good I have a hard time believing I wrote that!)
A lot of nutritionists, people involved in health and fitness, and people in general have been focusing way too much on calories when trying to improve their health. I have a groundbreaking news for you: IT’S NOT THE ANSWER! As I mentioned in my blog post linked above: “Good nutrition, no matter what your goal is, should be to eat as much natural, unprocessed foods as possible. Our ancestors never had any weight or cholesterol problem because they were eating too much red meat or too many eggs! And I’m pretty damn sure they never EVER counted calories either.” (Wait….did I just quote myself here?!? Next thing you’ll know is I’ll be referring to myself at the 3rd person!)
This guy is probably the only one who can refer to himself at the 3rd person, and it will still be acceptable
With that being said, counting calories is not the way to healthy eating habits. But why?
Focusing on the number of calories you’re eating, believe it or not, can lead you to making poor decisions about your diet. Here are a couple examples:
- Choosing low fat dairy products. While it seems like the smart thing to do, as you may already know dietary fat doesn’t necessarily translate into body fat, which is usually a huge misconception among most people. Also, there are estrogen hormones found in conventional (non-organic) milk that are linked to the growth of many tumors and different types of cancer; and “(…)one of the most biologically active and dangerous estrogen metabolites is found in the highest concentrations in skim milk(…) Whole milk also had the lowest total amount of estrogens”, according to Brian St. Pierre, a reputable nutritionist.
This might be your safest bet in terms of milk…
- Choosing low-fat variations of vinaigrettes and marinades. While a lot of the condiments available on the shelf of your local supermarket are not great to start with, when choosing the low-fat variety you’re basically substituting a source of fat (usually oil) that contains 9 kcal/gram for sugar, which contains 4 kcal/gram to make up for taste. Even if you get less calories here, processed white sugar is still one of the worst things you can put in your body. The best alternative is always to make your own vinaigrettes with olive oil, vinegar and spices.
- Choosing 100 calories snack packs over a natural food snack. If you’re going to eat a piece of fruit with a handful of nuts you’re already way over a hundred calories, but even if you smash me as hard as you can with a steel chair over the head, I still pick the piece of fruit and nuts over a 100 calories snack.
…and this chair shot also finally proves that wrestling is not fake!
Those 100 calories snack packs are packed with processed ingredients and preservatives which realistically don’t bring you any nutrients nor do they fill you up. (Don’t tell me you couldn’t eat 5 of these 100 calories snack and still be hungry!)
…100% unhealthy
These are really just a couple examples to show you that counting calories is not the answer. Focus on eating whole, natural foods; when doing that you get a bunch of fibers, vitamins , minerals and all the good stuff that helps make you feel fuller, longer. By doing that, it’s very difficult to over eat. Try and exercise a little bit every day in combination with that, and I guarantee you that you’ll never EVER need to count calories or go on a diet to loose weight.
Too many 100 calories snack packs for Yokozuna…
This might just be one too many wrestling references for a single blog post….so I’m done!
Don’t forget to sign up for my newsletter for your 3 FREE reports on sports performance training!!
Hopefully you’re familiar with the term knee valgus…otherwise you might just think I’m trying to impress you with big words.
I promise it’s not the case! But the good thing about knee valgus is it can be explained in one simple image:
But don’t look at the picture for too long your knees might start yo hurt!
Anyways, the knee valgus is a joint position that we’re trying to avoid. A lot of females are predisposed to it because of their structurally wider hips, and it’s a position that is at the origin of ACL tears and many other knee issues.
This is something that should be taken care in 2 different ways. First, you want to strengthen the muscles that are responsible to control that movement; the glute medius along with some other hip external rotator muscles are responsible for preventing the knee valgus to happen, either in a static posture or in a dynamic movement. And second, we want to improve motor control and make the connection between those same muscles and the brain, so that your body knows not to fall in that position. Whether it’s during lifting exercises, speed, agility, power exercises or any type of activity, your body should know how to prevent the knee valgus collapse.
In the beginning, this needs quite a bit of coaching for some athletes, especially females, to stay out of that position and know how it should feel like to jump, land and transition without letting your knees collapse in. During jumping exercises especially, this is something that should be emphasized. Teaching athletes to land with their “knees out” is crucial. But often times, the loading part of a jump gets overlooked and this just as important as the landing part.
Poor motor control of the hip muscles might look like this during the initial part of the jump, or the “loading” if you will:
Did you noticed how the knees were coming in during the loading part, even if the landing was good? Improving motor control and recruitment of the right muscles should make the loading of a jump look more like this:
This is something to be aware of, not only with jumps, but with med ball slams, Olympic lifts and most of the power exercises that require a “loading” phase.
Don’t forget to sign up for my newsletter to get all the insights in the strength and conditioning world; it’s FREE and you’ll receive my 3 sport performance training reports on top of that!
As I’ve mentioned in recent blog posts, I’m messing around with all of the stuff Joel Jamieson talks about in his Ultimate MMA Conditioning book. I’m currently doing what we could call an ‘endurance block’. After doing max strength for 6 straight years, I figured it would be a nice change of pace and it would give me a chance to improve my conditioning. I’m working a lot on my aerobic system right now with this program, and one of the method from Joel’s book I’m using is called the ‘threshold method’.
The goal of that method is to push your anaerobic threshold higher. If you’re not familiar with the anaerobic threshold, it’s basically the point at which your body starts to produce energy predominantly through the anaerobic system; your anaerobic threshold is expressed by a specific at heart rate. Below that heart rate your body produces energy mainly through the aerobic system. When you go past that threshold it means that your body starts accumulating fatigue at a pretty fast rate and it’s usually a sign you won’t be able to maintain the same intensity level much longer.
For certain sports or activities, it’s then pretty obvious that having a higher anaerobic threshold can be beneficial. It can help push fatigue back and perform at a higher intensity for longer. That being said, you need to work on your aerobic system to improve your anaerobic threshold. I can already hear a lot of you say: “training the aerobic system is BS; it produces a negative hormone response, it makes you lose muscle and strength, etc, etc, etc”. But before you go crazy about how much you dislike aerobic training, I’m gonna tell you that you might be surprised at how you can train it to push your anaerobic threshold higher without running a marathon.
Confused?
The threshold method actually uses intervals, longer ones that is, to reap the benefits of this method. If the goal is to push your anaerobic threshold higher, we need to train at that intensity that’s around your threshold or close to it. The duration of the intervals can be anywhere between 3 and 10 minutes and the rest periods can vary from 1 to 5 minutes (1). How much you’re going to do is going to depend on your conditioning level before starting to use this method because, trust me, it’s pretty hard. So let’s say you’re anaerobic threshold is at 172 BPM (beat per minute), you’d want to maintain your heart rate around that level (+/- 5 BPM) for 3 to 10 minutes.
This is a pretty high intensity to maintain for a period of time that long, and although you’re never really supposed to feel like you can’t go anymore, you’ll always feel like you’re pretty close to that point, but it just stays in that very uncomfortable zone the whole time. It can definitely be mentally challenging, as you need to push yourself to keep going for the duration of the work period.
Personally I’ve found this training method to be pretty darn hard, but the results have been really noticeable when I play hockey. Give this method a shot if you’re looking at improving your conditioning level, you’ll be surprised at how effective it is!
References
(1) Jamieson J. (2009). Ultimate MMA Conditioning, pp 41-42.
Two days ago, we started having staff lifts again at Endeavor. For the past 4-5 months, we all have been doing our own thing by ourselves. The reason being that we had different schedules that didn’t really allow us to all lift together. Prior to that, me and Kevin have been consistently lifting together for over a year and a half. Going into the summer and starting to lift by myself didn’t seem that bad of an idea; it was allowing me to wok on things that might be a little more specific for me (injury preventions strategies, limitations, personal goals, etc) instead of having one program for the whole staff. It was also a good thing to just be able to lift whenever I felt like it and didn’t have to accommodate anyone’s schedule. And there I went, getting on that journey all by myself, with no set program to follow, just figuring what I would be doing the day of.
Some ideas sound look good in theory, but when you put them to the test…
By doing that, I was slowly doing less and less every training session, being less and less motivated and in the last couple of weeks especially, I felt like I was just training because I needed to. I wasn’t looking forward to it anymore. But the worst part of all of this is that I didn’t really realize any of those things until recently. I’ve always been keeping a training log in the form of a blog for the last 4+ years. I’ve been doing this because it’s an easy way to keep track of everything, make sure you’re not losing previous training programs, easy to track back previous months and years of training and because it’s free. Sure it’s there for everyone to see, but I don’t really care about that as I do it for myself and for the convenience of it. That being said, Lately I was looking back at those last months of training and noticed a couple of things:
My training volume was really low
My upper body pulling volume was really low
I probably missed more training sessions in the last 4 months than I have in the last 4 years
I progressively stopped conditioning
My numbers were really not impressive (not that they ever were, but considerably weak for me)
I also noticed recently, as I’ve mentioned earlier, that the idea of lifting weights was becoming less and less appealing to me. Coincidentally, I had a talk with Kevin about 2 weeks ago and he brought up the idea of doing staff lifts again as he was surprisingly feeling in a similar way I was. This is pretty much when I realized how unproductive my training sessions had become recently.
I was getting there…
So I wrote a staff training program last week, and me and Kevin were planning on starting to lift together again. I also happened to e-mail the program to Matt, Karl (the 2 other coaches at Endeavor) and Jared (our boss) as I thought they might be interested in giving the program a shot.
Two days ago, me and Kevin started the new program and Jared jumped in. Yesterday, Matt also joined us. I was just thinking that the lower body lift we just did the 4 of us together would have probably crushed me a lot more if I would’ve done it by myself. It was pretty hard, and I know that I would’ve struggled to finish it. But training with the boys made it so much more enjoyable and more easier to go through. I still felt out of breath the whole time and I sweated like a pig, but knowing that these 3 other guys were going through the same thing as me made me just suck it up and push through it. There is a team cohesion component to lifting as a group. You know that the other guys are going through the same thing as you are, everyone is struggling when the training is hard, and we all have the same end goal: finish the program. There is also probably an ego component to it; you don’t want to quit or slow down as the other guys keep pushing through it.
Sometimes it’s good to lose what you’ve had for a little bit to realize how great it is. Do yourself a favor: find a training partner (or training partners) that have similar goals as you, and I can guarantee your progress will skyrocket.
Don’t forget to sign up for my FREE newsletter to get all the latest in the strength and conditioning world!
Sometimes it’s funny to realize how things happen. There are certain ways of doing things, certain trends that we never really question and we just go with the flow. It’s part of our life, of our daily routine, but we never questioned why things are the way they are in the first place. And when you realize why the things are the way they are it makes sense, but at the same time it’s the stupidity of convenience that took us there.
Pretty vague for a blog post intro, right?
Let me explain….
It all started with me reading the book Movement by Gray Cook (which I’m not completely done reading yet). Well, let me start off by saying that it’s definitely a must read for any fitness and strength and conditioning professional. Going through the book I learned a lot about how to assess movement, see the body and movement patterns as wholes, not separate muscles and individual segments. But there were also many ‘Ah-ha!” moments for me in the book. One of these “Ah-ha!” moments was about the evolution of the fitness business. I’ll take a step back from specific strength and conditioning and specific sports training here…
Seriously, you need to read this book.
When you’re educated and competent enough, whether you’re a strength coach or a personal trainer, you know that machines are not the most optimal and functional options for healthy clients and athletes. But the reality is that across the world there are still plenty of coaches and trainers that still put their clients on these machines. I’m still not sure if it’s because they don’t know any better, if they’re REAAALLY lazy and don’t feel like coaching simple movement patterns or they’re just completely retarded. But seriously, if you’re reading this right now it is a sign that you are looking for new information and I won’t teach you anything about why machines are not optimal for strength training. But have you ever asked yourself the question: “how does this machine epidemic started? How did the idea of locking someone into a restricted, unnatural movement pattern that doesn’t require any stabilization from the rest of your body came up?
You definitely need GREAT coaching skills for this…
If we ever thought about it, we each might have our little theory. This one might just be the best one so far….
“In the early days of weight training, trainees took the time to learn to squat properly with full range of motion, balance and control. They developed a strength platform built on a good squat pattern, but modern attitudes disregard the benefits of slow, steady development and consistent acquisition of the squat skill (…). We started thinking more of exercises than of movements.”
“We saw the obvious benefits of training the legs with the squatting exercises. Some people couldn’t do these exercises (…). We modified the general exercise rather than correcting the flawed movement patterns displayed by the trainees. Moving weight became more important than moving.”
That’s quoted from Gray Cook in the book Movement. I think this is right on the money! And that’s how we started modifying exercises to fit people’s limitations. Using heel lifts, doing quarter squats, and then the machine was the modification all the way down the chain. The squatting pattern was used to create a machine that would put you in a seated position, where you don’t have to support the weight of your body and where the involvement of stabilizers is minimized because of the guided movement pattern and the support of your torso on a back rest. That machine is called a leg press. That’s how it started…
People wanted to workout without realizing the importance of movement patterns. So as good as our society is at finding quick fixes, we created easy ways for people to exercise without the need to move well first. We’re more focused on developing muscles than quality of movement. And this is where we stand today.
From one point of view, I can see the convenience of making exercising very accessible to pretty much everyone, without any consideration for how well you move of your fitness level. But at the same time, how did we get there in the first place? Why would we need to develop muscles and cardio-vascular capacity without moving well first? When doing so, we’re just putting fitness on top of dysfunction. So we keep making those dysfunctions worse and worse by putting fitness and muscle tone on top of that. And it obviously leads us to overuses and injuries. Moving is exercising. In today’s society we need to encourage people to move more, to be more active, for adopt healthier lifestyles for all the reasons that we already know. But does it mean that we need to put everyone on machines to develop muscles before any consideration for movement quality? I don’t think it has to be the answer.
Moving is exercising. There is no shame on starting at the bottom of the pyramid and focus on what matters. Development of fitness comes after, once movement patterns are developed and controlled.
It’s crazy how things happen sometimes…
Get my 3 FREE sports performance training reports! Simply enter your info below, and get instant access!
Although my blog is mostly about strength and conditioning, this post could apply not only to strength coaches, but also to personal trainers, sport coaches or any kind of teacher in the fitness business.
The way we communicate to our athletes is one of the most important thing in our job. If we can’t get an athlete to execute an exercise or a drill the way we want them to, we failed to do our job, whether it’s because of inappropriate coaching or because of an athlete’s physical limitations or whatever other reason. In the end it’s still our fault if they don’t do something the right way.
That’s why coaching cues are so important and how we communicate them is of utmost importance. One of the mistakes I made as a young strength coach when I started in this field a couple years ago, like most coaches who want to help their athletes, is over-coaching athletes. You want to do everything the right way, and you want your athletes to perform everything perfectly right away. Because of that, we end up overwhelming our athletes with coaching cues. We tell them to get their chest up, shift their hips back, keep their weight on their heels, keep their chin tucked back, and keeping their shoulders packed back before they start a new movement. How do you expect somebody to apply all of those things at the same time? And then, when they don’t get it right away, we just cue them on every single rep they perform and stop them 3 times in the middle of their set to explain something. This will cause a couple of things:
athletes get confused by too many coaching cues
they can’t apply any of them because they have too much going in their head at the same time
they’ll get annoyed with you for talking too much, and not letting them lift
Over-coaching biceps curls…my favorite!
In the end, too many coaching cues will negatively affect the outcome. The KISS principle(Keep It Simple Stupid) applies very well here. When showing a new task (an exercise, a drill, a movement pattern, etc) you should give a very simple description (say as little as possible) of what you want the athlete to achieve and keep your coaching cues to 1 or 2. This will ensure that the athlete doesn’t get confused with what he has to accomplish and can focus on one thing or two and execute it as best as he can. Adjust your cues from there with how the athlete responds and reproduces what you taught him. When gaining experience teaching specific exercises or skills, you also learn which coaching cues work best for different exercises in most cases (I say “most cases” because there are always exceptions). Also, it’s okay to let your athletes do a couple reps wrong once in a while (as long as it doesn’t get dangerous for them), and just talk about it with them when the set is over; they need to differentiate what should feel “right” and what should feel “wrong”. And in some cases, they might just need a couple extra practice reps to apply what you cued them to do.
All in all, the more you coach, the less you coach. By that I mean, the more experienced you get, you’ll find yourself saying less and less; you’re not becoming careless, you’re just becoming a more efficient coach. Your athletes will get better quicker, and they won’t get annoyed with you for trying to over-coach them.
For more insights on sports training and strength and conditioning, make sure to sign up for my newsletter! Hey, you’ll also receive 3 reports on secrets to build better athletes, and all of this for FREE!!
Ok, today (and this whole week for that matter) has been absolutely crazy! Therefore I don’t have much time to write a blog post today. I very rarely do this, but I’ll just give you some links to stuff you should definitely read that I came across lately. Check this out, and I’ll be back next week with fresh content I promise!
