This week’s guest is Andy Eggerth, head track coach at Kennesaw State University where he works primarily with multi-event athletes. Andy is also a coaching educator as he is an instructor for the USTFCCCA Coaches Academy and has written the physiology curriculum. I first found Andy through an incredible presentation of his on a variety of restoration means for speed and power athletes through the USTFCCCA website.
Andy has been a contributor to Just Fly Sports in the past with a fantastic Q&A on the subject of lactate in speed-power development. It’s kind of counter-intuitive to think that some athletes might actually need a small to moderate dose of speed-endurance work to be at their fastest, or jump highest, but as long as I’ve been a coach, I’ve seen this in action (many of those years without knowing exactly why) for over a decade now.
Andy does such a great job of taking physiology and making it interesting in regards to the demands of sport. If my exercise science courses in school were more like the work Andy does, I would have been a kid on Christmas day for each class.
For the podcast today, Andy expands on some points he covered in his original article on Lactate, and also covers a lot of other important topics, such as individualization of training, career and seasonal periodization, potentiation, neurotransmitters, plyometrics, and more. This episode is one of the best blends of science and practice that I’ve been able to record, as Andy is such a tremendous resource in this area.
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:
- Andy’s background in coaching
- Key factors in individualizing training for speed and power athletes
- Off-season vs. In-season training ideas in terms of volume, intensity, and overshoot
- “Career” periodization
- Strength training differences between freshman, upperclassmen and post-collegiates, as well as throughout the season
- Thoughts on potentiation and performance
- Neurotransmitters and related recovery and readiness implications
- Lactate benefits, and lactate shock as a technical inhibitor
- Lactate response across a spectrum of athletes
- Yearly periodization for plyometrics
“Too often, we as coaches get caught up in “this year”, we want them to win the championship, get a PR, break a record. We lose sight of the big picture when we are too narrow focused. If we want a high peak to the pyramid, we want a broad base to the pyramid. I think that broad base is having sound fundamentals, techniques, mechanics and work capacity that is specific to the sport you are doing”
“With our post-collegiate athletes that are very highly developed, we’re just touching on absolute strength to make sure we are going to maintain those levels, but not trying to gain more. Sometimes the weightroom even goes more recovery in nature with those post-collegiates to prevent injury since they already have such high levels of power output”
“When athletes get into overtrained states, serotonin levels rise”
“If you really tax the central nervous system, it might take you 7-10 days to recover… whereas metabolic fatigue, usually 24 hours, 48 hours at most you’ll bounce back.”
“Lactate is a very positive (fuel) source for us”
“If you have a lactate workout on Monday, you might have that lactate shock, and kill skill development on Tuesday, Wednesday because of that lactate shock”
“Boo’s talked about (skill in states of duress) training proprioceptors, if you do a heavy squat workout and then do hurdle mobility afterwards, you’ve fried proprioceptors, and now you have rely on some other ones to get through the hurdles with skill and coordination”
“(Compared to some fast-twitch, powerful athletes) Some athletes produce almost no lactic acid during acceleration development”
“When we got away from stimulating the endocrine system strong enough (this athlete) began to look like garbage… with this type of athlete, we need to keep stimulating the endocrine system”
“Some people respond well to the tempo running…what I typically find, it seems like it is your lower level athletes that are going to respond better that way. Your high caliber athletes are not going to respond well to a lot of tempo, it’s going to blow them up”
“Women are usually going to get a little better testosterone stimulus from doing higher sets, higher volume, and a little lower intensity; when they go really high intensity and real low volume, the women’s testosterone levels tend to come down a little bit”
“I do (drop jumps) pretty sparingly, but I do use them because I like to touch on the golgi-tendon organs”
About Andy Eggerth
Andy Eggerth, a nine-time Atlantic Sun Coach of the Year and 2013 USTFCCCA South Region Coach of the Year, is the Director of Track and Field and Cross Country at Kennesaw State University.
During his first five years at Kennesaw State, Eggerth has had tremendous success with both the cross country and track and field programs. He has coached 15 All-Americans since coming to KSU, and his teams have won eight Atlantic Sun Conference Track and Field Championships and one Cross Country title in 2010.
Eggerth is an instructor for the USTFCCCA Coaches Academy and has written the physiology curriculum. He has “Elite Coach” certification from the IAAF in sprints and hurdles, USATF level 3 certification in the Jumps, USTFCCCA certification in the throws, and has been to USATF level 2 certification schools in distance events, combined events, jumps, and throws.
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