I’m currently working on a project at work where I need make a detailed plan of our training system at Endeavor, which I could explain to someone who has no idea what we’re doing.  Getting started on that project, I struggled just putting something down on paper, simply because I didn’t know where to start.  I was trying to think: “What do you cover first? How do you make someone understand all the subtleties of how you build a training program? Why we do the things we do? etc.”  After brainstorming for a little while and exchanging some ideas with Kevin Neeld, I was up to something.

But what are the steps to detailing a complete training systems?

To me the first step is to highlight the philosophies behind the system.  This is what’s going to guide you in building  programs and knowing what components to include in your training programs.  Your philosophy doesn’t have to be extremely detailed and it doesn’t have be 5 pages long.  It’s really just knowing what your goals are and what the underlying concepts of your systems are.  To me, these are 3 ideas behind a good philosophy:

• The priorities of a good training program are, and always should be:

• The Joint-by-Joint approach to training

• The Anatomy Trains concept; everything works together in the body and isolation doesn’t exist

Those 3 concepts help shape a mindset of what you’re trying to accomplish and what the general directions of your training programs is.  Once  a background philosophy is established, you can put the building blocks of a training program in place and develop the tools to use for each component:

• Self-myofascial release (foam rollers, lacrosse balls, the stick, etc)
• Dynamic warm up (mobility exercises, activation drills, corrective work, etc)
• Speed training
• Power training (plyometrics, Olympic lifts, med ball throws)
• Strength training
• Core work
• Conditioning
• Injury prevention strategies
• Flexibility

Once this is established, the next thing to do is to incorporate all of these things in a structured training program, or what you may call the art of program design.  Managing volumes, loads, recovery periods and the like is a task that’s not easy.  This is something that is totally dependent on your athletes, their sports, training background, phase of the season, recovery capacities, genetics, and much more.  Although the basics of program design can be taught, only will you become better at that with experience and by listening to your athletes.

And last but not least, is the coaching itself.  This is an area that might seem pretty simple, but you really need to understand the fundamentals of functional movements in order to coach even the most basic exercises the right way.  Athletes need to learn to move the right way before anything else; it doesn’t matter how good your program looks on paper if your athletes move like crap.  Because in the end it comes back to the first 2 goals of the whole program: do no harm, and decrease the risks of preventable injuries.  Such concepts as the neutral spine, the packed shoulder blades and the packed neck are just some the concepts of coaching that need to be understood in order to make your athletes move better.

There are many things to go over when detailing a whole training system.  Sure there are probably things I haven’t mentioned that might be important, but in the end I feel like those are the basics to understand to build a good, efficient training system.  This is how we do things at Endeavor.

Interestingly this is all stuff that Kevin Neeld goes over into his book Ultimate Hockey Training.  He goes into great detail about every aspect of a complete training system that has been proven effective for years.  And please don’t be fooled by the title; this book could’ve simply been called Ulitmate Training System because it goes far beyond the concept of training for hockey.  No matter what sports you’re coaching, it is an invaluable resource to have.

Wanna get 3 FREE sports performance reports? Just enter your info below!

We all know there are more than one line of thought in the fitness industry.  Strength coaches and personal trainers argue a lot over what’s the best way to do things; everybody has his philosophy and his own training system.  There are some things that are backed by science, others not so much, and some that are just good marketing tools.

Regardless of what your training system is and what you believe in, there are some things in common that smart, educated people believe in.  Whether you’re a powerlifting guy, an Olympic lifting guy, a Poliquin guy, an injury prevention guy, or even a Crossfit guy, there is at least one thing everyone can agree on.  If you put all of those people in the same room they might try to kill each other over what they don’t agree on.  But one overlooked principle is actually crucial in making any training system efficient (or somewhat efficient), and that smart people in each camp preach by: form.

Exercise form is often overlooked when judging the efficiency of a training method or system.  No matter which system you believe in, or even if you developed your own, I’m sure one of the things that make your system effective is the way the exercises are performed.  Because after all, good movement is good movement.  This is something that even the smart people in Crossfit would agree on.  I don’t think ALL Crossfit advocates are stupid; I’m sure there are some smart people who believe in it.  And I’m sure that those smart people are preaching good form on their lifts BEFORE trying to get the best time on a given circuit.  There are many things I disagree with about the whole Crossfit thing, but if I was going to get in an argument with a smart Crossfit advocate, I would probably agree that there are some benefits to it when done the right way, with flawless form on every single rep.

Not exactly what I mean by “flawless form”

In the end, no matter what training system you believe in, the most important thing is ‘good movement’.  You want your body to move the right way, and that is not something we can argue over.  Integrity in the joints and in the basic movement patterns is what we’re after.  Moving well and without compensation is the foundation of any athletic endeavor; you develop functional movement first, performance second and skills at last.  Whatever you do, the quality of your movement will dictate the outcome; and the better you move, the easier it’s going to be to achieve high performance and athletic success with minimal risk of injuries.

I’m sure you can agree with me on that….

For more insights on strength and conditioning, just sign up for my newsletter!  It’s FREE and you’ll get instant access to my 3 reports on sports training!