Today’s episode features sports performance coaches Jake Jensen and Jeff Moyer. Jake and Jeff are unique in that they are in-the-trenches coaches who are personally familiar with the work of two legendary coaches and researchers in the field, Dr. Michael Yessis and Dr. Anatoliy Bondarchuk. Jeff is the owner of DC Sports Training while Jake works as the head strength coach for a professional hockey team in Berlin, Germany.
The training methodology of Anatoliy Bondarchuk in particular has caused some waves in the field in the last few years, but the issue with his system is really the fact that Dr. Bondarchuk coached track and field throwers, where team sports have a lot more complexity in terms of the progression of different skills within that sport, let alone team tactics, strategy, and winning!
If you listen to this podcast, there is a good chance that you care much more than simply getting athletes stronger in some familiar barbell lifts and saying you did your job. As sports performance coaches, we strive to get athletes better at , well, sports! By blending the ideals of Dr. Bondarchuk in terms of training organization and adaptation, and looking at the special exercise battery of Dr. Yessis, we have some formidable weapons in helping athletes reach their highest potential. This is where Jake and Jeff have done tremendous work in pushing the field forward (check out their recent article on the topic for Just Fly Sports)in regards to maximizing training transfer for a spectrum of athletes.
On today’s episode, Jake and Jeff cover the role of general strength development within the scopes of the Bondarchuk and Yessis systems, and then go in detail on how the “SDE” category of the Bondarchuk system can be adapted for team sport performance. This is a forward thinking episode that is setting a precedent for the impact of a sports performance coach, as well as thought provoking for coaches of any sport.
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:
- Jake and Jeff’s backgrounds
- The role of general strength development and 1-rep maxes in the Bondarchuk and Yessis training systems
- What to make of the “things in the middle” of the Bondarchuk pyramid, such as special strength, and if it could possibly be done without
- How to track key performance indicators (or SDE’s) for team sport performance
- How many workouts Jake and Jeff put in a training cycle given the Bondarchuk principles and adaptation types
- How to monitor when an athlete adapts to a training cycle and when to change exercises for non-throwing/track athletes
Quotes:
“There is a lot of technique that goes into being able to lift heavy weight for a single. For an athlete who plays a team sport, as a strength coach, I have to ask myself, how much time do I want to spend teaching this guy how to brace through an 8 second grinder for a squat”
“Dealing with Doc, we never did anything under 8 reps (in the weightroom) but those 8 reps were as heavy as you can get”
“The thing people have to remember about Anatoli Bondarchuk is he’s done everything. There are a lot of instances where he uses max effort, 110% squats”
“In some applications, super heavy-ass squatting… nasty, raw strength is very important”
“It’s hard to learn with max intensity lifting”
“By the time we get down to the 8’s, (in the 1×20 system) we are doing some heavy isometrics as well”
“What’s wrong with powerlifting today…. too many of these kids won’t lift over 10 reps”
“Anything that is special developmental (in the Bondarchuk system) has to involve tactics for team sports”
“We are doing some kind of jumping (to track adaptation and what type of adapter the athlete is)”
“If you are going to get to know your athletes better, you should have a system in place”
“It doesn’t have to be a complicated system of measuring things to see how your athlete adapts, you just have to pay attention… pay attention to learning the skill”
“Pushups can be a test exercise, I took that from Bondarchuk. Do a set of max pushups, how many can you get?… they go up and up and up until they don’t anymore, and then the whole program needs to change”
About Jake Jensen
Jake Jensen is the Head strength and conditioning coach at EHC Eisbaeren Berlin, a professional hockey club in Germany. He earned his bachelors degree from the University of Utah in 2016. Jake has had the pleasure of working with many outstanding professionals in a variety sporting of fields, throughout his career. Notably, he has worked as translator for Ultimate Athlete Concepts, working primarily on books written by Anatoliy P. Bondarchuk.
About Jeff Moyer
Jeff Moyer is the owner of Dynamic Correspondence Sports Training, whose motto is, “We Build Better Athletes.” At DC Sports Training, athletes work on the physical, mental and visual aspects to the sports. Their goal is to deliver the athletes of the greater Pittsburgh area the highest, most efficient results year after year of training with us. We will exhaust our means in order for our athletes to achieve the highest results, and to create a system model that will develop our athletes both physically and intellectually. Education must be the road to which will help us set this standard. Our results will be the vehicle which to drive us.
Jeff graduated in 2004 from Hartwick College where he was a two sport athlete (Football & Track & Field). Jeff has been a sport coach (Basketball & Football) at the youth, JV, Varsity and College level for football for over 10years. Jeff has been in the strength in conditioning industry for over a decade, having worked in the medical, private, team, high school and collegiate settings, training clients from youth development, to rehabilitation and sport performance.
Jeff has a relentless passion for all things physical preparation. His pedagogy is heavily influenced by Eastern Bloc sport science, while apprenticing under Dr. Michael Yessis and Yosef Johnson of Ultimate Athlete Concepts. Jeff has also been fortunate enough to extensively study with and work with Dr. Natalia Verkhoshansky, Mike Woicik of the Dallas Cowboys, Louie Simmons of Wesitside Barbell and Fellowship under Dave Tate of EliteFTS.
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