A Balanced Training Plan

It has been a while since I have updated this blog, as life has been busy for me lately, but perhaps another reason has just been a short psychological break of mine from reading and writing about athletics and human performance related activities (when you live and breathe this material for months and even years on end, sometimes you just need a little break). Anyways, I am back at it, and hope to string together a few good articles, as well as some high quality videos on my YouTube site.

For some time I have wanted to relay the idea of a balanced training program in athletics. In recent years, several authors who specialize in sport performance, and perhaps more notably, vertical jumping, have stressed heavily the importance of tackling your weaknesses as an athlete as the first priority in any training program. For example…..if you are 6′ and 160lbs, and have standing jump of 30″, while your running jump is in the high 30’s, but you only can squat around 200, most coaches with this philosophy will make bringing your squat up the number one priority. Now if your game is a standing vertical jump or a electronic 10 yard dash, then go right ahead, but if your sport requires any higher motor functions than this, you need to always remember balance in your program.
So what do I mean by balance? Well, there are several qualities which make up the necessary requirements to succeed in each sport. Let’s look at a couple of examples. The first is that of an olympic weightlifter. Here are the foundational qualities of olympic weightlifting and the ways that they can be improved specifically to lifting weights:
Absolute Strength: Improved by maximal or near maximal lifts, and possibly a base of hypertrophy, or auxiliary sessions designed for hypertrophy.

Explosive Strength: Improved by olympic lifts (the sport specific exercise) as well as a variety of jumps and similar plyometric/shock work

Quickness: Improved by practicing olympic lifts; important for dropping under the bar quickly.

Work Capacity: Improved by gradually increasing the volume of lifts done year to year in the range of 5-10% Supplementary lifting sessions with reps of 8-10 in single joint or other simple lifts can also be useful.

Flexibility: Improved by the olympic lifts done with full catch variations as well as stretching exercises.

So there we have balance in weightlifting, now let’s move on to something a little more complex, say the triple jump in track and field. Here are the important qualities for this demanding event:

Maximal Speed: Improved by speed work on the track, particularly flying sprints and bounding in excess of 20 meters.

Reactive Power: Improved by plyometrics, such as bounding and depth jumps.

Coordination: Improved by the sport specific exercise, triple jumping and other bounding variants.

Explosive Strength: Improved by Olympic weightlifting and plyometrics.

Absolute Strength: Improved by heavy squats, step-ups and similar exercises.

Elasticity: Improved by jumping, running, and any other sort of dynamic exercise which relies on the elastic power of the tendons to provide human locomotion.

Work Capacity: Improved by gradually increasing the number of jumps/bounds taken in practice per year, as well as general capacity means such as long sprints, and circuit training.

Now in something such as triple jump, one could say, well I am pretty good in everything, but my strength needs work! So I had better spend most of my time in the weight room this coming season, and then I will be in good shape for jumping farther in the spring. Although this is not a bad idea, one really needs to look at the framework of an entire season to understand well, what will happen if one would seek to improve one area of their event at the expense of others.

Firstly, it should be considered that it is unwise to dramatically increase the training load from cycle to cycle. The load should only be increased about 5% from week to week, in order to optimize the body’s adaptive resources. Now if an athlete decides that they are really going to start getting after it in the weight room, then there is going to have to be a sacrifice somewhere else in the program, unless the 5% rule is planning on being broken. Of course, this is NOT to say that we shouldn’t go around combating weaknesses in training, as we certainly should. The goal, however, is not to go overboard, and focus the training program around one weakness. I would say that if there are weak points in an athlete, say for example our triple jumper (weak in absolute and somewhat explosive strength) we could change their yearly training program from this:

Maximal Speed: 25%

Reactive Power: 25%

Coordination: we will take this variable out for this example:

Explosive Strength: 25%

Absolute Strength: 15%

Elasticity: 10%

Work Capacity: This is always trying to be improved….so this is out for this example

To this: Maximal Speed: 20%

Reactive Power: 25%

Explosive Strength: 30%

Absolute Strength: 20%

Elasticity: 10%

I suppose this is fairly common knowledge for most coaches and a lot of athletes, but I felt it may be good to reiterate it in a way that might be from a new or unique perspective. It is also extremely important to realize that although sometimes the only way to improve is to get stronger, it is important to remember the ways that we want to get stronger. In the majority of cases, explosive athletes can make good improvements in the weight room when lifting is used secondary to sprints, plyometrics and the like. Even lifting in volumes as low as 2-3 sets of 8-10 in one or two exercises done twice a week will yield good results in strength improvement (when plyometrics, throws, sprints and jumps are composing the primary portion of your program). I did not lift much in high school, probably around once or twice a week doing one exercise for basketball in season, but yet I gained a good amount of strength and was almost as strong relative to bodyweight as I have ever been. I also combined this with very good leaping ability (able to get my head up to the rim at 6′ tall). As I went to college, I probably doubled or even tripled the time I spent in the weight room, but I found that those periods where I did not balance weight room activity with elastic, speed and plyometric work, my jumping ability really took a dive, especially my leaping ability from a longer run-up (my speed got very bad as well). It was not until my junior year of college that I had a truly balanced program which allowed me to achieve record leaping ability.

So as far as this story goes, here are some practical recommendations for balance in training.

Always keep the primary sport exercise as the top priority, whatever that might be (high jumping, discus throwing, playing basketball, etc…)
Take a look at your weaknesses and where you want to be regarding those weaknesses by the start of your season. What do you need to do to get there without sacrificing the other important elements of your training?
Always work on improving work capacity. Once you get to a certain point in your training, work capacity is everything, because you can get to the point where you are squatting double your bodyweight and start hitting big PR’s in different jumps and suddenly crash for 2 weeks if you haven’t been watching your volumes and rest/recovery ratios. A powerful CNS demands great responsibility! (If you have come a long way to get there, some of the elite athletes in the world have always had high-powered CNS and fast twitch muscles and can just take more training, period.)

Joel

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