Today’s episode features Dr. Michael Yessis, who appeared previously on episode #142 of this podcast, going in depth on the 1×20 strength training system and its advantages, as well as the importance of not over-developing an athlete’s general strength in favor of their sport skill. Today’s episode builds on that last show, by going into Doc’s take on skill acquisition and how it sets up a training program.
For every 10 shows and articles on strength training in athletic performance, you might get one on skill development and acquisition, if you are lucky, and these are never the popular pieces of work. At the end of the day, a primary goal of strength training is to allow an athlete to set up the effective execution of their sport skill. Basic skills would include running faster and jumping higher, but also spread to things like swinging, throwing and changing directions on the field, as well as the finer points of various sports.
For me, it’s always been hard to think I did a “good job” in teaching an athlete to do a barbell lift properly, while knowing that their capacity to perform their sport skill was poor and I was doing nothing else to help improve it. Even with the silos and lines that are drawn in the modern strength coach/sport coach setup, the strength coach can, at the very least, by understanding the demands of sport skill, help create the capacity for better sport skill performance, and at the most, offer special strength exercises that can significantly help the athlete in their sport skill and therefore sport gameplay, leading to a better chance of winning the game.
In this show that Doc and I may not see eye to eye on absolutely everything in the change of direction space, but he really makes me think, and given his knowledge base and experience as well as the results that many coaches are getting with his training methods, this episode is a fantastic resource for anyone working with athletes. Doc also has a book out called “Building a Better Athlete” that encapsulates many of the ideas discussed in this episode.
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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View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage.Dr. Michael Yessis’ Key Points
- Doc’s take on the evolution and relationships of strength coach versus a sport coach
- The Soviet’s use of other games for mental relaxation, even in “in season” play
- Doc’s thoughts on which mainline sport skills that all strength coaches should have a basic working biomechanical knowledge of
- What knowledge a coach should have on the skill of change of direction for athletes, and Doc’s take on agility training
- Doc’s take on the concept of a “perfect technique” in sport skill
- Key technical points on the skill of throwing, and improving the “front leg action” in this situation
- The importance of using special exercises to shore up biomechanical gaps in technique
- What a training year looks like for an athlete who already has the requisite general strength ability for their sport
- Why only playing one’s sport will yield a ceiling in performance (with no other emphasis or concentration of skills)
Dr. Michael Yessis Quotes
“Skill, in my estimation, determines your workout. Without looking at skill, or the sill execution, your program is not the best that it can be”
“The more skills athlete’s learn, the greater is their motor development, which allows them to be even better in the sport that they specialize in”
“They need all the basic skills: running, jumping, throwing, kicking, hitting, to really learn them and understand them. Right now, I have seen very few strength coaches have a handle on what constitutes effective running”
“If they are missing certain athletes of their skill execution, I come up with a strength exercise that duplicates what’s missing. That exercise duplicates the same neuromuscular pathway that’s used in the execution of that skill”
“If you look at the cuts, you see two or three stutter steps, this is not effective cutting, it takes time. A good cutting action is executed in one step”
“For each athlete, there is a perfect execution, they have to learn it within the bandwidth of their physical abilities”
“(In throwing) After the weight is shifted or transferred, then we have rotation of the pelvis. Is it off the forward leg, or off the rear leg? Ideally the greater transfer of power is off the forward leg because that’s where you have the longest lever of the hips from left to right”
“Most athletes rotate hips and shoulders together (when throwing), what I call a “body swinger”
“(To improve front leg action) first I would master weight transfer without any throwing”
“If you want to build a better throwing athlete, you want to take a look at what he is not doing, or what he is doing”
“Without specialized exercises, you are not going to get maximal (technical) improvement”
“The more general work you do on a higher level, the worse athlete you are going to become”
“(Skill execution) should start from the ages of 9-12…. and this is when you must come in with specialized exercises… skill execution must start very early”
“The more you play and the less you train, the poorer the athlete you will be… who are the athletes in the pro’s, they are the athletes who played multiple sports”
“The more experiences an athlete has, the more he develops his reflexes, which allows him to go to a higher level”
“I do the (gym) exercise to see if there is improvement in skill execution… and if there is no increase in any of those we have not done our job”
About Dr. Michael Yessis
Michael Yessis is a teacher, sports performance trainer, biomechanist, and author. He earned a Ph.D. from the University of Southern California. He has done work translating, adapting, and implementing sports training methodology from the former Soviet Union, including work by Yuri Verkhoshansky, Anatoliy Bondarchuk, and Vladimir Issurin, for over fifty years.
Yessis has worked extensively with professional and amateur athletes, including Todd Marinovich, Evander Holyfield, Dianne DeNecochea, Jose Luiz Barbosa, and others in over 50 years of active work. Yessis worked with the Los Angeles Rams and Los Angeles Raiders professional football teams, as well as Team USA Volleyball.
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