Today’s episode features coach and inventor, Rolf Ohman. Rolf was born in Sweden but grew up in Brisbane, Australia. He has worked for over 40 years in international sports, as an athlete (Decathlon) and as coach at International and National level. He was the Head Coach for the Dalian Olympic Sports Center 2016-17 and Assistant Head Coach Chinese National Team Sprints/Jumps 2018-19. Rolf is the inventor of the 1080 Technology (such as the 1080 sprint device), and has substantial experience in both the data-based and practical aspects of coaching and training.
In the recent Randy Huntingon podcasts, Randy spoke about how doing hurdle hops over too high of hurdles had the tendency to “kill elasticity”. Rolf Ohman has worked with Randy, and has substantial experience linking the ground contact times in plyometric exercises, as well as the impulse times of various movements in the weight room, to what is observed in athletics. Track and field athletes have faster impulse needs than team sport athletes as well, and Rolf has worked with both populations, and understands which metrics should be optimized in training for different situations.
On today’s podcast, Rolf will speak on the specific drawbacks to using too high of hurdles in bilateral plyometric training, and gives his specific recommendations for which heights he feels are maximally beneficial for both track and team sport individuals. He’ll speak on various elements of transfer in the weight room, such as the progression of the Olympic lifts, as well as thoughts on the transfer present in different elements of gym training, such as the impulse dynamics of lifting seen in elite athletes. Rolf finishes with some thoughts on youth and long term development on the terms of speed and power. Ultimately, this episode helps us to better understand closing the “gap” we often see between the gym, and the forces present on the field of play.
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Timestamps and Main Points:
4:42 – Rolf’s take on the height in hurdle hops, and how it impacts the elasticity of the exercise, as well as drawbacks to using too high of hurdles in the movement
11:13 – What the typical hurdle heights Rolf uses for track and non-track athletes in plyometric training
17:50 – Why Rolf chooses to progress the Olympic lifts in the course of training like he does
24:37 – Rolf’s use of partial vs. full ranges of motion in strength training for athletes
38:29 – Thoughts on oscillating isometric exercises with lifts, compared to a Keiser or air-powered machine setup
52:08 – How contact times and hurdle hop heights change for team sports vs. track
58:59 – How limb speed gets “set” before the age of 15 in athletes, and if athletes miss critical speed windows of training, they will be in a limited place in future performance
“There aren’t a lot of guys around who can produce any sort of RSI index from 1 meter drop jumps… when I use high hurdle hops, which I rarely do, it might be in a setting when I’m seeking some kind of force production”
“If I build maximum strength for my long jumpers with contact times in the 250-300ms range, is that going to help me?”
“If whatever you’re doing in training is on one end of the spectrum, and competition is on the other end of the spectrum, that is “gap-osis”… if that gap is too big, you are going to be in trouble”
“In the first 100-150 milliseconds (of a lift) the athletes who are the best really shine there”
“We’re coordinating the neural system (in the weight room) we are creating the same coupling times that we see in competition…. It makes no sense in choosing weight room exercises that causes velocity to go to the other end of the spectrum”
“Peak power comes much much earlier in normal mass, than what we thought. The normal consensus is that, once you jump off the ground, you hit peak power just when you leave the ground. But when you are lifting a bar, you have to slow the bar down before you reach the top, so you are reaching peak power much much earlier in the lift vs. the end”
“If you put 140kg on a bar, vs. 140kg on a Keiser, you are going to generate about 25% less power (on the bar) because the weight is not getting lighter as you move”
“(In hurdle hops) for me, I virtually never use anything over 30 centimeters”
“You build sprinters at the age of 8-13,15, that’s where you build speed. Whatever windows you open up, or shut down, in that age bracket, that’s what you’ve got to work with later on”
“When you get to age 12-13, that’s when you have the highest limb speed you will ever have…. After that you can’t increase limb velocity anymore, it’s set”
About Rolf Ohman
Rolf Ohman was born in Sweden but grew up in Brisbane, Australia. He has worked for over 40 years in international sports, as an athlete (Decathlon) and as coach at International and National level. He was the Head Coach for the Dalian Olympic Sports Center 2016-17 and Assistant Head Coach Chinese National Team Sprints/Jumps 2018-19.
Rolf has worked extensively with training and testing of physical performance of individual athletes in Track & Field as well as professional soccer and ice-hockey teams. He worked with the Italian National Football Team Fitness Staff in 2012, Udinese FC Serie A Italy in 2013-14, and tested Everton FC in 2015. He has lectured in coaching and sports testing in Sweden, Norway, Finland, Switzerland, Germany, Australia, USA, England, China and Italy.
Rolf is the inventor of the 1080 Technology (such as the 1080 sprint device), and has strengths in both the data-based and practical aspects of coaching and training.
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