Today’s episode features strength coach and sport scientist Mladen Jovanović. Mladen is the owner of complementarytraining.net and is a thought leader in physical preparation, particularly in the arena of building the best possible training programs for team sport athletes. Mladen brings in the work of many of the world’s great philosophers and thinkers in his process, fielding universal principles that often supercede existing periodization theory.
Mladen has worked in a variety of elite level sports in countries including Serbia, Sweden, Qatar, Turkey, Australia and the USA. A leading individual in the sport science community, Mladen’s interests include velocity based training, statistical modelling and the philosophy/management of sports programmes.
I’ve been looking forward to having Mladen on the show for some time, as I’m always impressed by his work and thought process. It’s always great to chat with those who utilize reason from a variety of other fields to lead us towards a better path in athletics. One of the biggest things I initially wanted to chat with Mladen about was the use of mental heuristics in how we tend to view and create workout programs, but our chat led us down the paths of flow and free play in athletic performance, robust vs. “peak-performance” training, flaws of classical periodization theory and real-life experiences, as well as velocity based training ideas.
In the aftermath of episodes such as with Dr. Tommy John, and then our sport play roundtable, as well as my own experiences training with intuitive minds such as Paul Cater, I’ve realized the shortcomings of strict, planned, drill and internal cue based sessions, and how “breaking out of the robot factory”, so to speak, is one of the most powerful lessons coaches can learn and use.
Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, supplier of high-end athletic development tools, such as the Freelap timing system, kBox, Sprint 1080, and more.
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Key Points:
- What’s new in the life of Mladen Jovanović
- How much training should be planned versus spontaneous and free flowing
- The point of gym work with (team sport players such as soccer) is to be robust, rather than to run as fast or jump as high as possible
- Guidelines for velocity based work and bar speed monitoring
- Thoughts on delayed training effects and phase potentiation
- Mladen’s thoughts on planning robust training for team sport athletes
Quotes:
“I think we are missing the play element in training”
“You need to be a snake to sneak in the hard work without it clashing with the athletes (soccer players who find lifting boring)”
“You need to find a balance between giving players freedom, and having strict training”
“There are multiple applications for using velocity based training”
“We still need to rely on coaching intuition and traditional (stuff), you cannot just rely on velocity based training”
“Using (VBT) percentages is biased based on the initial rep”
“The main benefit of velocity based training is live feedback. If your intent is maximal then you are going to get higher levels of strength.”
“(Regarding periodization) let’s find the things we need to do, and do them all the time”
“Every time you push an athlete, especially on the highest level of competition, they are going into the unknown, you can’t rely on the studies on student population that bench press 70 kilos (to validate what you are doing at this point).”
“(With team sport athletes) we rotate things more often so that they don’t hit the (training) ceiling…. What happens after the peak? It’s the volley. You don’t want this in team sports”
“In team sports, (your periodization) is always limited by logistics. At the end of the day, rather than having “perfect” training, you want to have “robust” training. Robust training is training that works in several scenarios.”
About Mladen Jovanović:
Mladen Jovanović is a strength coach, sport scientist and Phd candidate. He has worked in a variety of elite level sports in countries including Serbia, Sweden, Qatar, Turkey, Australia and the USA. A leading individual in the sport science community, Mladen’s interests include predictive analysis, machine learning, velocity based training, statistical modelling and the philosophy/management of sports programmes. In his free time, he trains Boxing/MMA and lifts weights, along with reading statistics and learning programming language.
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