It's time for this month's installment of my random thoughts on sports performance training. In light of this week's $50 off sale on Mike Boyle's outstanding resource, Complete Youth Training, I thought I'd focus this edition on the training of young athletes.
1.Puberty changes everything.
The best players at age 11 usually aren't always the best players at age 18 for two reasons:
a. They're usually the ones that get heavily overused by an overzealous coach who wants to win now - and end up injured, missing crucial developmental time periods.
b. Puberty changes absolutely everything. The hormonal and biomechanical changes that kick in during adolescence massively impact how one controls the center of mass within the base of support.
Prepubescent training is all about having fun and establishing solid foundations of movement that set young athletes up for future success.
2. Some training practices are more about establishing routines as they are about creating adaptation.
All our athletes begin their training sessions with self-myofascial release work: foam rolling, lacrosse ball trigger point work, the FMR Stick, and the Acumobility Ball. This includes younger athletes who honestly probably don't really need it.
Why do these youngsters do it, too? Because I want it to become a habit. I want them to realize that the gym isn't just about lifting heavy stuff, throwing med balls, and running fast. Rather, it's also a place where you can go to take care of soreness and actually leave feeling better than when you arrived. This proactive approach at age 13 helps us tremendously when they're age 18 and have more legitimate stresses on their bodies.
Just shorten that rolling series up and get right to the good stuff!
3. Youth training should be all about linear progress for the first two years of organized strength training.
It drives me crazy when kids have to re-gain initial strength. As an example, let's say a kid comes in at age 15 and takes his trap bar deadlift from 135 to 225 over the course of three months. His technique is pristine and he's learned how to put force into the ground.
Then, his sports season starts and he disappears for six months. At the end of the season, he comes back in and starts all over at 135 pounds. Sure, this time around, there's a bit of a technical foundation, and he makes those gains a little bit faster than the first time around. Really, though, we're talking about a situation where he wasted 1/8 of his high school development window.
We've all seen this graphic in the performance realms before, but the truth is that the image on the right applies to intermediate and experienced athletes. The goal is to never have setbacks in beginners because the positive adaptations are so easy to come by with consistent training, even if it's only two days per week of in-season work.
This is one reason why I've added a new component to every young athlete evaluation I do: a discussion about expectations and timelines. Every kid who walks in our facility will say that they want to play Division 1 sports. Very few truly appreciate the consistency and work ethic it will take to get to that point.
4. Make sure your medicine balls are the right weights.
I'm often asked what weight medicine balls we use for our training - and I always respond with a range: 4-8lb for our rotational work, and 4-12lb for our overhead work.
This range accounts not only for the type of exercise, but also the size of the athlete. A 13-year-old athlete will do best with a 4-pound ball for rotational med ball scoop tosses, whereas a 250-pound MLB player will handle a 8lb ball much better.
This, however, might be the most impressive med ball video you'll ever see from a 13-year-old, regardless of weight!
5. With skinny young male athletes, competition works amazingly on the nutrition front.
If you're training teenage male athletes who want to gain weight, nothing works better than having weekly weigh-ins that are charted for everyone to see. We've done it two years in a row with our college development program, and it's also proven extremely successful in our high school athletes. These quantifiable changes not only help to evaluate progress, but they also drive camaraderie among your athletes. Since we starting doing this, we see more guys going out to meals together, chatting each other up on the nutrition front, and discussing what has been working well for them.
Another interesting observation on this front: young athletes are often very out-of-touch with huge swings in body weight. As an example, earlier this week, I had an athlete tell me that he was 145 pounds during an evaluation. When we actually weighed him in, he was 133 pounds. That's an 8.3% loss of body weight! I'm 183 pounds, and if you dropped me by 8.3% to 167.8 pounds, I'd feel absolutely miserable. Young athletes aren't in-tune enough with their bodies to recognize this, though. It's up to us to make them consciously aware of how big swings in body weight are bad for not only performance, but also health and academic performance (dehydration has a massive impact on brain function).
Wrap-up
I could go on and on about lessons learned in training young athletes (and I might, at a later date), but in the meantime, I'd strongly encourage you to check out Mike Boyle's resource, Complete Youth Training. I loved this product as both a strength and conditioning coach and a parent. Mike did a tremendous job of outlining the problems in the current youth sports landscape while also including practical solutions to these concerns. You can learn more - and get $50 off through tonight at midnight - HERE.
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A few years ago, I posted this Tweet, and it got a pretty big response:
Biggest regret I hear from college athletes? They should've started strength training sooner. Getting stronger is a game changer for performance AND the ability to acquire new skills. If you're 21 and just gaining strength you should have had when at age 16, you're way behind.
"The worst thing youth developmental athletes can do is to max out one biomotor ability and save themselves from developing ALL abilities. A long term program must develop all, not just strength. Strength, endurance, speed, flexibility.... No exploitation allowed."
This is one of the most glaring misconceptions about long-term athletic development, and I think it warrants a thorough response.
To be clear, I am all for prioritizing a host of biomotor abilities at a young age and continuing to develop them over the course of the athletic lifespan. You can't just turn athletes into powerlifters.
However, where I do disagree with this statement is that it implies that all these separate qualities are their own unique domains that must be trained separately. In reality, we have to look at things as a pyramid, not a collection of separate silos. The foundation of that pyramid is undoubtedly maximal strength.
"...maximal relative strength has a “trickle-down” effect to all things athletic. If you took your best squat from 200 pounds to 400 pounds, a single body weight squat would feel a lot easier, wouldn’t it? How about a single vertical jump? You have about 0.2 seconds to exert force on a classic vertical jump test; you’ll never make use of all the strength that you have, regardless of how good your rate of force development (explosive strength) is.
"However, let’s say (hypothetically) that you can put 50% of your maximal strength to work in that short time period. If we keep that percentage constant, isn’t an athlete with more maximal strength automatically at a great advantage? The 200-pound squatter can exert 100 pounds of force into the ground; the 400-pound squatter can exert 200 pounds. Is there really any question as to who can jump higher?"
This assertion has been consistently validated in the research world: a lack of maximal strength limits one's power potential. Having a strength foundation allows you to make the most of your plyometric, sprint, and agility progressions.
There are implications on the endurance end of the continuum as well.
"Now, let’s take this a step further to the endurance end of the spectrum. If you go from 200 to 400 pounds on that 1-rep max squat, wouldn’t a set of 20 body weight squats feel easier?
"If you could do lunges with 100 pound dumbbells in each hand, wouldn’t running five miles with just your body weight feel easier? You may have never thought of it, but every athletic endurance endeavor is really nothing more than a series of submaximal efforts."
Obviously, these strength numbers are unrealistic for the overwhelming majority of high level endurance athletes, but they aren't for competitive athletes from other sports requiring a blend of strength, power, and endurance. If you need further proof, check out the research I cited in my article, 5 Resistance Training Myths in the Running World.
Strength has implications for how well athletes move, too. The initial reply mentioned flexibility, which according to Wikipedia) is "the range of movement in a joint or series of joints." This is a static measure, whereas athletic success is more governed by mobility, which is one's ability to reach a position or posture. The difference is the presence of stability in a given circumstance, and that's impacted by muscular control. In fact, I would actually argue that the biggest "trickle-down" effect of maximal strength is joint stability, which in turn impacts mobility. As an example, this 6-11 athlete couldn't squat well when he first came in, but after eight weeks of training built a foundation of strength, he was able to do this:
All athletic qualities are important, but to say that they should all be trained equally at all times - especially in young athletes with a huge window of adaptations in front of them - is extremely short-sighted. Imagine a child that tried to take math, science, and history courses before mastering language skills. If you can't read and write, you will struggle to pick up these more progressive challenges. Strength is foundational in this same way, and this is the pyramid through which I view it:
The closer the items are to the bottom, the more heavily impacted by strength they are. We can debate where each of these items should be positioned on the pyramid (and it likely depends on the athlete in question), but nobody can debate that strength is an important foundation for all these other qualities. It's rooted not only in anecdotal experience of many elite coaches, but also in loads and loads of research.
As a closing thought, a while back, I reviewed Mike Boyle's great new resource, Complete Youth Training. After reviewing it, I told Mike that I enjoyed it not only as a strength and conditioning coach, but also as a parent of twin daughters. I think the most compelling statement Mike made in the entire resource is that one of the most impactful things he's done with his daughter (an accomplished D1 hockey player) was to strength train a minimum of two days per week since she was 11 years old. When you've got strength at a young age - and you preserve/build it over the years - the rest of your training becomes that much more productive.
Mike's put this resource on sale for 1/3 off this week, and I'd strongly encourage you to check it out, whether you're a strength and conditioning professional, rehabilitation specialist, sport coach, or parent of a young athlete. There's some excellent information in there for everyone. You can learn more HERE.
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Happy Friday the 13th! Hopefully none of this recommended reading is bad luck.
ASMI Injuries in Baseball Course - Mike Reinold just put this great course on sale, and it's an absolute steal compared to what you would have had to pay to travel and attend it. There's some excellent information from some of the top baseball sports medicine professionals in the world, so I'd call it "must watch" for anyone who trains or treats baseball players. It's on sale for 50% off through this Sunday(the discount is automatically applied). You can check it out HERE.
The 11 Best Books for Smart Meatheads - T-Nation pulled together this compilation of reading recommendations from several of its contributions. My recommendation was (without hesitation) Legacy
Make the Back Squat Feel and Look Better - This was an outstanding guest post from Dr. Nicholas Licameli for Tony Gentilcore's site. It's a longer read, but well worth it, as it's super thorough and links out to some good additional reading/viewing.
Top Tweet of the Week
In coaching, always build on previous “movement successes” as you progress athletes to higher level exercises. Here’s an example: Dead Bugs➡️Back-to-Wall Shoulder Flexion➡️Lateral Lunge w/Overhead Reach➡️Lateral Lunge w/Band Overhead Reach➡️Figure 8 Rollover Stomps. pic.twitter.com/UyhmXSJlSq
I hope you all had a great holiday week. Here's some recommended reading and listening from around the 'net over the past week:
The Best Team Wins - This was an awesome recommendation from my buddy Josh Bonhothal. Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton provide some outstanding strategies for both sports team settings and businesses alike. The section on Baby Boomers vs. Generation Xers vs. Millenials was particularly fascinating.
Matej Hocevar on the Physical Preparation Podcast- Matej is an absolutely awesome guy with a wealth of information to share, and this podcast is an excellent example. He was also an amazing host to my wife and me when we visited Slovenia a few years ago.
7 Ways to Increase Your Training Density - I reincarnated this post from the archives earlier in the week and it was a hit, so I wanted to give it a mention here as well.
Top Tweet of the Week
If throwers try too hard to drive early arm speed, they may give up the core create a late arm action that sprays balls up & arm side (or accidental cutters). We coach athletes: “allow the hips to deliver the hand.” Here’s one of our favorite exercises to teach this patterning. pic.twitter.com/vKRTCsCcFr
With summer training in full swing at both Cressey Sports Performance facilities, I've had all sorts of thoughts rattling around my head on a daily basis, so it set the stage for a new installment of this series on sports performance training.
1. Where an athlete feels an exercise is important, but not on all exercises.
I recently put up two Instagram posts that would appear to contradict one another, to the naked eye.
On one hand, you should always ask athletes where they feel an exercise. And, on the other hand, you sometimes don't want to feel it in one specific place. The answer (as is almost always the case) is "it depends."
When motion is actually taking place, muscles are working concentrically to create that motion. When a muscle shortens, you'll usually develop that "feel" in a certain spot.
Conversely, on an isometric exercise like a carry, there isn't a chance in tissue length, so you won't usually get that same sensation.
Also, keep in mind that the position you're in plays into this as well. If you're squatting, don't expect to "feel" your glutes, hamstrings, or quads specifically in the bottom position or mid-range - but you definitely could feel them a lot at the top as you approach the end of knee and hip extension, as the muscles shorten fully.
In short, "feel" matters - but not all the time.
2. Consider an athlete's age when you're trying to determine why they have a mobility restriction.
One-size-fits-all mobility approaches rarely work because of the way the body changes over the course of the lifespan.
Early on in life, kids are very hypermobile, so you don't really see mobility restrictions. If something seems out of whack, it's probably because they lack adequate motor control at an adjacent joint.
As they hit growth spurts, bones lengthen faster than muscles and tendons can keep up, so restrictions often become more musculotendinous in nature.
As the athletic lifespan continues, those muscular restrictions - in combination with the stress of sports participation or faulty postural habits - can lead to bony blocks and cemented joints. In the years that follow, capsular stiffness can emerge as a problem.
Over time, ligamentous laxity falls off and arthritis becomes more common, limiting range-of-motion even further.
Beyond a lifelong focus on preserving mobility, this knowledge of ROM "regressions" can remind to look to different places at different times. That 14-year-old athletic probably doesn't have capsular stiffness, nor is arthritis a concern. And, that 64-year-old client with the cranky hip probably isn't *only* dealing with muscular problems.
3. Strong guys need longer to train.
Imagine two lifters. Lifter A has one year of training experience and has a personal record deadlift of 315 pounds. Lifter B has 15 years of lifting under his belt and deadlifts 700 pounds. Let's assume both lifters are working up to ~90% of their 1RM in a training session.
Lifter A Warm-up
135x8
185x5
225x3
255x1
275x1
Work sets at 280-285
Lifter B Warm-up
135x8
225x5
315x3
405x3
455x1
495x1
545x1
585x1
605x1
Work sets at 630
Lifter A can get to his working weight in five warm-up sets while lifter B needs nine sets to do so. And, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Lifter B will take more time to unload his plates after finishing his work sets - and he'll probably need an additional warm-up set or two on subsequent assistance exercises. Additionally, chances are that given his time "under the bar" over the years, he'll be a bit older and more banged up (especially at those strength levels), so he'll need to devote more time to the general warm-up before he even gets to deadlifts. Lifter B will also be far more neurally efficient and therefore need more rest between heavy sets than Lifter A even if they've got similar aerobic capacity to facilitate recovery. You're really comparing apples and oranges.
The list goes on and on, and we arrive at the realization that every lifter will have a different optimal training time. This is why I always disagree when I hear things like, "You're working against yourself if you train for longer than 60 minutes." Meanwhile, just about every accomplished strength sport athlete on the planet trains for longer than 60 minutes in just about every training session. And, many of them are extremely lean and muscular.
Don't waste time in the gym, but don't try to race the clock in every session, either. Do what you need to get to get your work in to deliver a quality training effect.
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I hope you're having a great week. Here is some recommended reading and listening from the strength and conditioning world over the past week:
EC on the Athlete CEO Podcast - I joined the Athlete CEO podcast to talk about everything from entrepreneurship, to the origins of Cressey Sports Performance, to off-field habits that athletes can employ for success in their sport. This is a great new podcast that I'll be following closely myself.
Tone and Message in Coaching - The Resilient Performance crew never disappoints with their writing, and while this is a quick read, it's an excellent one.
Top Tweet of the Week
Always ask, “where do you feel this?” Good movement is good movement, so if individuals feel it in the right places and are asymptomatic, it’s probably correct. Trust your eyes - but use your ears, too. pic.twitter.com/kMUquhaci2
I hope you're having a great week. I'm gearing up for a weekend of presenting in Colorado, but the good news is that having some flights opens up some time for distraction-free reading and writing on the plane. Here are some good reads from around the 'net from the past week:
New Rules for Being a Strength Coach - Todd Hamer wrote this great piece up for EliteFTS, and I love the concept of continuous improvement in strength and conditioning. Todd's a guy who is always seeking to get better, no matter how long he's been in the industry.
Having an Approach to Having an Approach - This was a guest blog I wrote for my business partner, Pete Dupuis, a few years ago. I cover some fitness business concepts, including networking and lifetime value of a customer.
5 No-Diet Ways to Get Lean - I really liked this article from Dani Shugart on behavior modifications for nutritional success.
Top Tweet of the Week
My body weight yesterday was 181.2 upon waking, 188.6 before bed, then 181.6 again this AM. Take-home point: you're dehydrated when you wake up. In summer baseball, a lot of players have 9am games in 90+ degree weather. Coaches: get on players about hydrating early and often.
It's been a quiet week here on the blog because I'm still recovering from last week's Sturdy Shoulder Solutions product launch and the barrage of college athletes who are all starting up at CSP at the same time. Luckily, I do have some good content from around the 'net for you:
Pat Rigsby on Building Your Ideal Fitness Business - Pat Rigsby is the man. I got this email from Mike Robertson in my inbox this morning and cleared time in my schedule to listen to this podcast right away. He always has great business insights for fitness professionals.
Lessons Learned from a Bum Elbow - I posted this story on my Facebook page the other day, and there are a lot of lessons in here for fitness professionals and rehabilitation specialists, especially those who deal with throwing athletes.
Top Tweet of the Week
If the shoulder blade is going one way while the arm goes in the other direction, you're going to run into problems. This athlete's shoulder discomfort goes away when the shoulder blade is guided away from the spine and into upward rotation. Learn more: https://t.co/ZOKzZlG02epic.twitter.com/FaVKzWclmk
Happy Saturday! This edition of "stuff to read"is a few days late in light of the Major League Baseball Draft and release of my new resource, Sturdy Shoulders Solutions. As a quick reminder, it's on sale for $50 off through the end of the day tomorrow (Sunday). You can learn more at www.SturdyShoulders.com.
With it being a shoulder product, I figured I'd use this week to "reincarnate" some upper extremity content from my archives:
Are You Packing the Shoulder Correctly? - Most people don't appreciate the relevant anatomy involved in packing the shoulder, so that may actually utilize the wrong muscles to get the job done. This webinar delves into the topic in detail.
74 years ago, 18-23 yr old men were risking their lives for freedom. This week, 18-23 yr old baseball players are drafted by MLB teams b/c of freedom these soldiers protected. I hope these draftees will thank/help veterans at every opportunity during their careers. #perspectivehttps://t.co/1gOVRjlbtL
Sturdy Shoulder Solutions is one of my most popular products of all time, and I want to give you a little sampling of what's included. In this TRX serratus anterior exercise video excerpt, I talk about the importance of getting good scapulothoracic (shoulder blade on rib cage) movement so that you don't have to find extra glenohumeral (ball on socket) motion. Check it out:
This is a key shoulder health principle I cover in great detail in this resource. You can learn more at www.SturdyShoulders.com.
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