You’ve been searching Instagram and Youtube for the “best” exercises for your sport, for some time, and although fun, have you found the results you are looking for?
Perhaps you’ve been running through the same plyometrics, sprints and lifts for years, but have found a stalling point you can’t seem to get through? The workout program is very important to one’s success, but the experience of the workout is also crucial, how athletes feel and learn skills as the training unfolds.
For athletes, multiple factors tie into personal bests, and we often find that the “perfect workout program” that worked in the past, may not deliver the same results the second time around.
The question to ask might be, what do you feel when you train? What did training feel like when you were setting personal bests? Is it drudgery, either from a motivational perspective, or from one of trying to piece together the “right” workout?
Although it may not seem like it, the workout experience can be the difference between a 35” and 40” vertical jump, a 5.2 an a 4.8 40 yard dash, and a 6’6” high jump versus a 7’ high jump.
If you are stuck in your training, let the 6 principles below ignite some new motivation, and results, for the athletic ability of you and your athletes.
- Randomization
- Exercise Swapping
- Re-animation of jumping and sprinting elements
- Get in touch with the spinal engine
- Take a deeper look at mental factors
- Find more ways to compete and have fun
1. Add an Element of Randomization in Training (If you are your own “coach”)
Of course, we know that too much energy trying to figure out the “ultimate workout” is counterproductive, as it drains one’s free will (got this idea from Dan John and his anecdotes of prison workout effectiveness) and subsequently takes away from the energy and adaptation that can go into one’s personal workouts.
Basically, free will is finite. Solving a complex math problem immediately prior to working out will diminish the quality of the workout, or whatever else you are doing.
To remedy this, if you are your own coach (and even if you aren’t), adding elements of random chance to a workout can be both fun, anticipatory, and keep from excessive “willpower spending”. Dan John had a workout based on three dice he would roll to determine what he was doing. This isn’t too dissimilar to using a deck of cards to determine how many pushups to do each set, and of what kind.
The first dice roll would determine the exercise, the second, sets and reps, and the third, the workout finisher. Voila!
Elements of randomness can even have a role in the coaching process. The former head cross country coach at my alma-mater would utilize what he called “lottery runs”, where athletes had to run a 400 at a good clip, and on the homestretch, he would flip a coin. The result of the coin flip would determine if the athletes would run another lap for an 800 (you could add on any distance in reality, however), or stop at the 400 mark. (In hindsight, this would have been a potentially good strategy for some of my long sprinters who lacked mental strength in training… or a potentially bad one, but either way would have been a learning experience)
2. Stop Doing the Same Plyometric and Strength Training Exercises
If I’ve learned anything through the guests on my podcast, it’s that the rush for the “most powerful” plyometric exercises will create early glass ceilings on athletic ability. Same goes with reaching for intense barbell training, that carries with it powerful neural gains, but can stiffen learning, rhythms and technical athlete ability. Once you up the intensity in strength training, it’s very difficult to go back, and takes time to let the nervous system reset itself… if the athlete is even mentally OK with going there.
It’s not that lifting and plyometrics is bad at all, rather, it’s a crucial tool for the acquisition of many a world record, but, it’s just that, a tool.
In Bondarchuk’s training schemes, which I’ve learned more and more about from great people in the field like Martin Bingisser, Nick Garcia, and Derek Evely, we know that for every developmental training cycle, all exercises change. Now this training ideal was originally meant for throws, but it’s application runs over into all events.
If you are doing depth jumps in some form all year, how fast do you think the rate of diminishing returns will arise? How will your skill development be limited by not spending time learning other plyometric movements that feed into the whole? Athletes achieve the greatest gains from plyometrics and related work in the skill acquisition phase, and afterwards the benefits are primarily found in potentiation, but even this diminishes over time with the use of the same exercise.
If you are in a rut, it might be a good idea to scrap all strength, special strength and plyometric work you are doing, and replace it with different movements to improve skill in a new way. Another option is to scrap them completely for a time, and take a look at the next ideal, which may be even more powerful.
3. Re-embrace Jumping and Sprinting in a New Light (Quit Looking so far Outside These Core Skills)
If there is one thing I love about track and field, and continue to enjoy more each and every year, is the purity of the sport in terms of human movement. In Western culture particularly, we get so carried away with raw force, strength, special strength, intense or creative plyometric exercises and the like, that it takes our attention away from the beauty of the events and movements themselves.
You can often tell an athlete that moves more like they do in the weightroom and plyometric exercise than their actual event, as it’s subtly more mechanical and forceful, while great movers in their event (and basketball dunk specialists too) have an insane innate ability to direct their joints in the exact manner that will yield them the best result.
I’m always blown away watching professional dunkers, such as Guy Dupuy pull out amazing movement. Check out this dunk below where at 1:34, he takes off to dunk over a sizeable group of people. His brain-body connection is good enough that the shin of his swing leg externally rotates to allow for his low takeoff position, without his foot scraping the ground. It’s these subtleties, added together, that make Dupuy able to do the incredible dunks he can pull off.
One of the most underrated training means is to learn to “feel” your event or skill in a new way.
Track and field hurdles are a mean of experiencing sprinting and jumping in a subtly different way, one of the reasons I love hurdling and hurdle drills for all athletes, particularly those interested in sprinting and jumping higher. Clearly there is much more out there than hurdles as well to build rhythm and dynamic subtle expression of speed and power in basic movement.
Recently, I’ve taken this concept on in coaching track club high jump, through various high jump running means. I’ll often utilize mini-hurdles to craft the rhythm of the approach I’m looking for, and allow athletes to feel different rhythms, mechanics, and lead ups to a takeoff.
This is a common practice amongst European athletes, such as Stefan Holm’s training group:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BTeCREdB-8V/?taken-by=henrikthoms
There was an interesting video I noticed on the “Athletic Jumps” page, showing “High Jump Galloping Running”, which looks silly, but actually has a very strong purpose if you look at the needed angles of running for high jump, as well as the dynamic role of the hamstring in the plant.
I’ve found that utilizing this type of running rhythm in combination with jumps has a profound effect, particularly on achieving a more elastic takeoff.
If I was just focused on traditional jump cues and ideas, and then left everything else to external plyometrics, I’d be missing out on a huge world of training.
World class dunkers don’t do a ton of plyometrics, they just jump in dynamic, and subtly different methods that require various emphasis. This also comes through playing sport and jumping and sprinting in various situations.
4. Get More “In-Touch” with the Spinal Engine
Something I’ve looked at more and more this past year is the “spinal” engine of the athlete. From taking a PRI course, to talking with sprint biomechanist AK Barr, to Dan Pfaff anecdotes, I’m constantly being reminded just how important the flexibility and strength of an athlete’s spinal column is in being a great athlete. This isn’t just true in land based sports, but I also see this in swim athletes, in the ability to do back bridging, handstand and hindu/yoga pushup based work with mobility, differentiation and control.
One of the most fun, and perhaps relevant examples is the link between many “street dunkers”, and their gymnastic abilities. These guys have great strength and coordination of their spinal column!
I couldn’t find the old “Team Flight Brothers” or Slam Nation video showing some of those guys doing back handsprings between dunks, but below is Darren Claxton doing tricks and flips, as well as showcasing a world class vertical.
You’ll see similar principles in other world class athletes, such as high jumper Osku Torro.
Finally, I can’t leave this section without talking about one of the primary ways to stay young, which is various forms of gymnastic based work and related dance. As they say, you are as old as your spine!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=254A-KMxi6I
5. Take a Deeper Look at Mental Training Factors
Training tends to exist in “silos”. There is the silo of technique, the silo of strength, the silo of plyometrics, the silo of planning and periodization, etc. Many of these silos often exist by themselves, and aren’t integrated when looking at the entire picture of training.
One silo that is rarely visited, especially (and unfortunately) when results stall, is the silo of mental training and visualization.
One of my favorite stories in sport psychology and performance is the vivid account of one of the greatest soccer players of all time, Pele, and his pre-game meditations. Pele would visualize in vivid detail, himself as a kid playing soccer on the breach in Brazil, feeling the sand, sun and ocean breeze. In these visualizations he would feel the joy the game brought to him and relive his love for the game.
Logan Christopher, author of mental muscle (I interviewed Logan a year ago, which you can read here), does lots of great work with athletes, mental abilities, and performance. You can see just how effective his methodology can be in the video below, where a fitness enthusiast goes from 2 one arm pushups to 7, with ease!
Taking some inspiration from the video, and remembering pieces from the workouts of Judd Biascoto, Douglas Heel, and of course, Logan, I put this ideal to practice in my last training session. When my jump results weren’t what I wanted, I didn’t look to activation based exercises, circuits, or therapy, as I usually do. I simply preceded each jump with a bit of visualization. The results were not earth-shattering, but they were certainly effective! In a low-energy environment, I added .5” to my jump every time I went through the visualizations, adding 1.5” to my previous best.
When everything else fails (and even when it doesn’t) don’t hesitate to go to the mind.
Building in simple visualization drills into routine training is an important component of addressing the basic movements we do, rather than trying to constantly go “around” to other movements and exercises with hopeful transfer.
6. Find More Ways to Compete and Have Fun
I mention this a lot, but that’s because I hear about it on an almost monthly basis, and that’s how well warmed up athletes are to jump high after playing pick up basketball games. In our podcast, Dan Pfaff talked about a high jumper who, the more he played basketball (and an assumed inverse relationship with the volume of traditional training), the higher he high jumped.
There are lots of “plyometric movements”, many in the purity and rhythm of movement as explained in point 3, found in team sport, and more important to the variety and volume of various plyometric and speed movements in team sport is the intent by which they are carried out. They are performed in a fun, visual, and competitive environment.
When the brain locks on to a goal, and achieves it, dopamine is plentiful, and is a strong driver of locomotion. This drive can exist in regular training, but play and sport supercharges it. Small goals that are routinely accomplished stack up to really drive dopamine, and encourage happiness and locomotion.
One of the huge factors for me in my youth was the constant flow of people to compete with and compare myself to. Knowing there was another jumper in the state an inch better than me drove me to surpass them. Seeing someone do a dunk that was just outside my ability drove me to accomplish that dunk. If it weren’t for these clear and present situations that caused my subconscious to lock onto a goal to accomplish, I would have struggled with achieving them.
As an athlete now in my 30’s this knowledge is what drives me to seek competition to focus my training efforts and make myself as good as I know I can be.
Conclusion
Periodization, set and rep schemes are always important, but they aren’t absolutely everything. The art of creating a workout that gets the most out of athletes is key to success. Many times, this workout comes from not re-hashing the same old training, but finding new ways for athletes to tap into the incredible things their body is capable of, coming through a holistic approach that yields faster sprints, higher jumps, bigger lifts and greater resiliency.
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