Without a doubt, program design is one of the most challenging things for up-and-coming coaches to learn. With that in mind, here are a few thoughts on the topic - and I may even turn this into a regular series.
1. Volume matters.
I just counted them up, and it turns out, I wrote 105 programs in the month of October. I've basically been doing this since 2001, and in these kind of volumes since we opened Cressey Sports Performance in 2007.
When you do anything 3-4 times per day, eventually, it becomes a lot easier. This is why I encourage young coaches to seek out opportunities to program early on in their careers as often as possible. Have a family member who wants to drop 20 pounds? Offer to write something up. Have a buddy who wants a bigger bench press? Write up a specialization program. The best learning experiences will come when they report back on their experiences and you tinker with the program on the fly, but truthfully, even if they don't actually follow through on the program, you'll get better from going through the process.
Moreover, make sure you have a wide variety of clients early on in your training career. You want to program for everyone from athletes, to general fitness folks, to post-rehab cases.
[bctt tweet="Be a good generalist to build a foundation for becoming a specialist later."]
2. Get some momentum.
Never, ever sit down to write a single program. Rather, always block off some time where you can write several in a row.
Programming is just like any other skill you practice; you need to find your groove. While I write programs every day, the truth is that I feel like the process comes more easily when it's 6-7 in a row on a Sunday night than 1-2 on a Tuesday morning. Like everything in life, "deep work" creates superior results - so try to find blocks of time devoted exclusively to programming.
If you're early in your career and don't have a lot of them to write, use it as an opportunity to write programs for hypothetical clients, or use it as a chance to review old programs you've written - and update them with new things you've learned.
3. Remember that programming is both a science and an art.
If you take two really skilled, experienced strength and conditioning coaches and have them write a program for the exact same athlete, you might get two markedly different programs. Coaches usually agree on the 90% of principles, but may disagree on the means to accomplish objectives. Just because one coach prefers to use block pulls and another likes trap bar deadlifts in month 1 doesn't make either of them incorrect. It's just an opportunity to highlight that there is an artistic component that goes hand-in-hand with the true science behind creating adaptation with training.
That said, there are scenarios where you don't get "poetic license" with your program. As an over the top example, you won't ever be able to convince me that a behind-the-neck barbell press is a good initiative in a 65-year-old man who is six weeks post-op on a rotator cuff repair. Science is so strong in some cases you can't even get to the art discussion; you have to earn the right (with your education) to get to that point.
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I hope you all had a great weekend. I just got back in the wee hours of Monday morning after teaching a shoulder course in Atlanta, so the new content at EricCressey.com will come in a day or two.
In the meantime, here's some recommended reading for the week:
The Power of Moments - If you've followed me for any length of time, you'll know that I'm a fan of Chip and Dan Heath's writing. This book is no exception, and for any of the fitness entrepreneurs (or any entrepreneurs) out there, I'd call it a must-read.
Skill Acquisition Considerations for Athletes - These are lecture notes from a recent presentation Nick Winkelman delivered, and they're absolutely outstanding. I'd call this a must-read for any coach.
Top Tweet of the Week
Front Squats + Chin-ups = very underrated pairing if you want to get in a quick lift.
We're long overdue for a new installment of my "Exercise of the Week" series, so here's a look at one of my favorite warm-up/cool-down drills. With TRX Deep Squat Prying, you get a great lat inhibition exercise that has the added benefit of training some hip and ankle mobility, plus core stability. In other words, it delivers some fantastic bang for your training buck. Check it out!
A lot of people debate whether neutral neck positioning is important. I don't think it's even a debatable subject, though. Give today's video a watch to learn more:
As additional "ammo," check out this Tweet I came across the other day. Hat tip to Charlie Weingroff for sharing it. Would you want to put your spine in these extended positions while you squat or deadlift?
Realtime MRI vs traditional static MRI - seems you can learn different things from a dynamic scan? Here's my neck last week. @KingsImagingpic.twitter.com/xB8fvOciPv
If you still think that hanging out in cervical extension all day - and then loading it up when lifting - isn't a problem, then I don't know what else to tell you.
I cover this topic in quite a bit of depth in my "Nuances of the Neck" presentation as part of my popular resource, Sturdy Shoulder Solutions. For more information, please visit www.SturdyShoulders.com.
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I hope you all had a great weekend and are enjoying these World Series games. You can't beat playoff baseball!
Here are some recommended resources for the week:
10 Daily Habits of Healthy Lifters - I contributed a few paragraphs for this compilation at T-Nation, and the end result included several excellent recommendations.
Bored and Brilliant - I had the long car ride from Massachusetts to Florida last week, and this is one of the audiobooks I covered to pass the time. Manoush Zomorodi took an outstanding look at how technology impacts our lives in negative ways. While it wasn't written from a strength and conditioning perspective, I could totally see how to apply its lessons to the fitness realm.
Happy Monday! I hope everyone had a great weekend. The baseball off-season is in full swing and I have several evaluations today, so we'll be sharing some good content from around the web to keep you entertained until I have a spare moment to pull together some content. Check it out:
Changing Baseball Culture: A Call to Action - In light of a few recent conversations, I thought it was a good time to reincarnate this guest post from my good friend Eric Schoenberg.
The Older You Are, The Worse You Sleep - I thought this essay from Dr. Matthew Walker for The Wall Street Journal was intriguing. At the very least, it was nice to see a well-researched article on a health topic in a more mainstream publication.
Top Tweet of the Week
It's amazing how many people on the internet who've never played pro sports know exactly how pro athletes should do their jobs.
I hope you all had a great weekend. I forgot how awesome the playoff baseball time of year was - in spite of the sleep deprivation! Here are a few good reads from around the 'net to kick off your week:
Unplugged - I'm currently working my way through this book from Dr. Andy Galpin, Brian Mackenzie, and Phil White. It's a fascinating, expansive look at technology in our lives, particularly with respect to how we monitor and train for fitness.
Market Toward One Audience and You'll Enjoy the Perks of Many - My business partner, Pete Dupuis, made some awesome points in this recent blog. Effectively, on the road to becoming an accomplished specialist, you have to first be a good generalist.
Thoughts on MLB Player Development - This was a Facebook post I put up later in the day yesterday that could have been a separate blog post.
Top Tweet of the Week
A lot of players talk about trusting the process. What happens when your process is terrible and you don’t know it?
I've written and spoken a lot about the importance of proper serratus anterior function for shoulder health. In today's video, I want to demonstrate this importance in a non-traditional way: by showing what happens when serratus anterior isn't able to do its job. Check out the impact of long thoracic nerve palsy on shoulder function:
Speaking of shoulder health, if you're looking to learn more about how I assess, program, and coach for the shoulder joints, be sure to my popular Sturdy Shoulder Solutions resource.
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Today's guest post comes from Lee Taft, the creator of the Certified Speed and Agility Coach (CSAC) course. I'm a huge fan of this certification, and it's on sale for $200 off through Sunday at midnight. Enjoy! -EC
As a kid, I was a big fan of “The Flintstones.” I loved how Fred and Barney could run so fast. I can remember when they were chased by a Sabretooth Tiger; it was amazing how they could escape so quickly. Hmm, maybe there is something to that…
Fast forward to 2017, I still love speed. But now, I actually study it. I continually ask myself the question; “Why were humans given the ability to have speed and quickness?” This question has taken me down a road not many speed coaches travel. Many of these coaches like the traditional route of current methods of training. That’s cool, and in most cases, proves to be quite successful. But…
What if coaches would investigate more down the road of our human history? What if they allowed themselves to be vulnerable to the ways of how we escaped or attacked for survival? How would they think differently about speed?
What if we asked the question, “Why were we given the ability to have speed and quickness?” What can we learn when we venture down that path?
Here are a few of my thoughts:
1. Survival drives us through channels not so easily understood from a Central Nervous System (CNS) standpoint. We have to bow down to the subconscious effort that makes us move quickly on instinct or reflex. This is harder to understand, so we try to ignore it as a viable option for speed training.
2. Playing competitive sports actually taps into our CNS – or should I go deeper and say our “sympathetic nervous system?” This is where our heightened awareness of our surroundings kicks in. If I am caught in a rundown in baseball – or going to be tackled in football, or being chased during soccer i- it takes us to a level of effort we don’t commonly experience in our daily lives.
3. Our body kicks into what we call fight or flight: the survival mode. This occurs all the time during sports competition. It drives us to make incredible speedy plays. It forces us to react in such a way that our feet move quicker than our conscious mind can drive them. This is where I want to concentrate on for the rest of this article. I want to share with you strategies to make you faster!
Repositioning
Repositioning is a term I use to relate to how an athlete moves his or her feet quickly into a more effective angle to either accelerate or decelerate the body. Terms I have used to describe repositioning are:
Plyo Step: The plyo step is an action that occurs when one foot is repositioned behind, to the side, or at any angle behind the body. This act quickly drives the body in a new direction of travel.
Hip Turn: This is basically the same as the plyo step except the athlete turns and accelerate back away from the direction they were facing. Repositioning occurs to find an angle to push the body in that direction.
Directional Step: Think base-stealing. The athlete will face sideways but turn and run. The front foot opens to be in a greater supportive position to push down and back during acceleration steps.
The goal is to get into acceleration posture as quickly as possible to make a play when one of these repositioning steps occur.
A great drill to work on repositioning is what I call “Ball Drops.”
a. Simply have a partner or coach stand 10-15 feet away from the athlete with a tennis ball held out at shoulder height.
b. The athlete is in an athletic parallel stance facing the coach, turned sideways, or back facing- depending on the drill.
c. The coach will drop the ball and the athlete must accelerate to catch the ball before the 2nd bounce. I encourage the coach to use the command “Go” at the exact time of the drop to help when vision is not an option.
The action you will see 99.9% of the time is a repositioning or a hip turn or plyo step (the directional step is the act of preparing the front leg for push off; it angles in the direction of travel). Perform this drill facing forwards for four reps, sideways for four reps, and backwards for four reps (2 to eaach side for the side-facing and back-facing). Perform this drill 2-3x per week to tap into the "fight or flight" response.
Reactive Shuffle or Crossover
In this drill, the focus is on reacting to either a partner (like a mirror drill) or the coaches signal to go right or left.
a. The athlete gets in a great defensive stance and prepares to explode to her right or left.
b. The coach will quickly point in either direction.
c. The athlete will create quick force into the ground in the opposite direction of travel. Typically, there will be a repositioning step unless the athlete starts in a wide stance where outward pressure is effective in the current stance.
d. As soon as the athlete shuffles one to two times, he will shuffle back.
e. The same drill is repeated, but now using a crossover step.
Perform 3-4 sets of ten seconds of both the shuffle and crossover drill. Allow 40-60s of recovery between bouts.
Shuffle
Partner Mirror
Crossover with Directional Step
Hip Turn to Crossover
The final skill I want to write about might be one of the most important “survival” speed skills an athlete can have. It falls under the “retreating” set of skills where the athlete moves back away from the direction they are initially facing.
The hip turn can allow an athlete to escape or attack. The critical features are:
1. The athlete must “stay in the tunnel.” Do not rise up and down; stay level.
2. By staying level, the immediate repositioning that takes place allows for a great push off angle to move the body in a new direction.
3. The athlete should attempt to create length and cover distance quickly. Short choppy steps are not effective when in “survival mode.” GET MOVING!
4. In the snapshots below, the athlete is performing a hip turn based on the coaches command or signal. The athlete will perform a hip turn and either a shuffle, crossover, or run - and then recover back to the start position as soon as possible!
Perform 3-4 sets of 7-10s of work. If quickness/speed is the goal we want to do it in short bursts of time and not long duration where speed in compromised. Recover for roughly 45 seconds and repeat.
Now, I know it sounds kind of crazy to be talking about survival, cavemen, and “fight or flight” when we are referring to speed, but we have to always look at the genesis of all things. Animals that don’t have reactive speed have other ways to protect themselves. Humans have intelligence and the ability to escape or attack using systems derived out of our CNS to help us use our speed. Our job as coaches is to tap into this ability and use it to help our athletes “naturally” move fast!
Note from EC: As I mentioned earlier, Lee Taft is the creator of the Certified Speed and Agility Coach (CSAC) course. To say that it's excellent would be an understatement, and we're actually implementing it as part of our staff training curriculum; all CSP coaches go through the CSAC course. In fact, I think so highly of Lee's work that it was even filmed at our facility! Through Sunday at midnight, it's on sale for $200 off. If you're looking for top notch direction in coaching movement training with your athletes, look no further. You can check it out HERE.
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I've got an important point to make today, and I think it's best illustrated with a hypothetical story.
Let's say that a 14-year-old, 6-0, 140-pound kid - we'll call him Joey - comes in to Cressey Sports Performance and does an evaluation with me in September. He says that he currently throws 70-72mph, but wants to hit 80mph by the start of the upcoming spring baseball season - and that he's willing to do anything to reach that goal.
We put Joey on a great strength and conditioning program - lifting, sprint/agility/jumping challenges, medicine ball drills, arm care exercises, self-myofascial release, and mobility work - and he crushes it with his nutrition. Joey gets on a solid throwing program, and fine-tunes his grip on the baseball and some mechanical flaws with our pitching coordinator.
Joey gets manual therapy with our massage therapist, and also makes a dedicated effort to improve his sleep quality and quantity. He hangs out with a bunch of professional baseball players in a motivating environment, and even reads some sports psychology books to prepare himself mentally. Joey crushes his offseason with us - and puberty is still kicking in to help the cause.
And, the results show up in the spring: Joey is consistently pitching harder than 80mph, surpassing his goal.
It must have been the lifting, right? Or the medicine ball work? Or the arm care? Or the nutrition improvements and weight gain? Or the mechanical changes? Or a simple grip adjustment on his fastball? Or better sleep? Or just the gains associated with puberty?
What I also failed to mention is that Joey was taking algebra in school. He also shoveled his driveway whenever it snowed. And he stopped eating gluten because he felt like it made him bloated. And he got a new pair of sneakers. And his mother switched from a minivan to a SUV. Joey even developed a weird ritual of half-naked shadow boxing in the mirror every night with the Spice Girls playing in the background. You've got to have a routine, right?
Of course, everyone takes note of Joey's crazy progress and asks him what the "secret" was. How does Joey respond? Puberty, gluten, the minivan, and his Spice Girls infatuation are all sensitive subjects he doesn't want to publicly discuss, so those are off the table. Nobody gets excited hearing about algebra, sneakers, grip adjustments, or mobility work, so those are lame discussion points for the local newspaper interview. Hanging out with professional baseball players seems like a cooler story line, though, so that's what he goes with: his progress all had to do with environment.
Nevermind the fact that Joey gained 30 pounds and started sleeping more than six hours per night. And, forget that he can actually touch his toes and do a body weight lunge without tipping over. And, overlook the fact that he is no longer throwing accidental cutters on every pitch because his delivery was so out of whack. Heck, those old shoes may have been terribly constructed and put Joey into horrible positions in his pitching delivery.
I know what you're saying: this is an extreme example - and you're right. However, we see a modified version of it all the time. Tom Brady refuses to eat tomatoes. Marshawn Lynch eats Skittles during games. Chris Sale needs to eat fast food to keep his weight up.
Usually, progress is incredibly multi-factorial. The results come not just from a lot of different directions, but from the synergistic interaction of many factors. And, sometimes there are other factors that may confound how we evaluate the path to success.
Tom Brady is still going to be an elite NFL quarterback if he has tomatoes for dinner the night before a game.
The 40 calories worth of Skittles Marshawn Lynch eats on gameday probably have zero impact on his performance.
Chris Sale's slider is going to be absolutely filthy even if he chooses pizza over chicken, broccoli, and rice.
And, in our example above, Joey's progress was completely unrelated to a myriad of things that took place. But, that doesn't mean we can ever really know what percentage was related to strength and conditioning vs. pitching instruction vs. nutrition vs. a host of other factors. We just know that success comes for a variety of reasons, so you have to check a lot of boxes to determine what contributed to that success. And, you have to recognize that unless you have perfectly controlled research studies, you'll likely have a very hard time isolating where the success really originated.
A perfect example of this is the debate on posture's impacts on pain and performance. Anecdotal evidence tells us that it does make a difference, but the research is actually shockingly inconclusive in this regard; we just don't know exactly how big a role (if any) that it plays in one's ability to stay healthy.
If you're looking to learn more about the controversial link between posture and performance, I'd encourage you to check out my popular resource, Sturdy Shoulder Solutions. I delve into this subject - along with many others - in great detail.
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