I was recently thumbing through my twitter feed and I came upon a picture that showed an athlete at the combine in an acceleration phase of a 40-yard dash. The athlete is tilted over in a perfect drive phase with his knee driving up and his rear leg extended on the floor. The author had the driving knee circled with red and arrow pointing to it saying squat. The rear leg had an orange circle with an arrow saying Power clean.
Initially, I saw this and laughed. Why didn’t I think of this sooner? I wished it could only be this simple. If we all squat the world and clean everything and we could all be fast. I see the carryover and what they are trying to get across. The toe-off is a triple extension in a clean. The swing leg is bent to be about the angle of doing a squat and when you push down, it is like standing up with a bar on your back. That should answer all the questions. But then I thought to myself that this is how many people think because this is the world they know and are comfortable in.
Most people get into training because they love the weight room. I am one of them. But, they never really get into sprinting or speed, which is, unfortunately, a reason why athletes show up in the facilities. In a world of statistics, it is easy to show how much someone has improved their squat or bench. Show the above picture and hope there was a transfer of one movement to the next. Also, most places don’t have the space to run. Nor do they want to risk putting an electronic clock on an athlete and risk their business because the results are not carrying over. This became apparent to me when I was in Columbus OH, at The Spot Fitness with JL Holdsworth who was hosting a RPR seminar. JL is no stranger to lifting having totals of a 905 squat, 775 bench, 804 deadlift.
As we were talking about training and sprinting. And I told him about my journey of realizing that these exercises really did little to improve sprinting. When I told him of the day that I dragged my power racks out to the curb for someone to pick up, he said he was about to have an anxiety attack. I then explained to him why I didn’t think they were effective.
First, both exercises, clean and squat, are off 2 legs. That minimizes the use of any lateral chain mechanisms that hold the stance leg in place. I think that a big component of running is the lateral stability in the stance leg. The better the runner, the more the stance leg runs vertically up the side of the body. The more that stance leg drifts over to the middle, the less power the body can produce and it creates a scenario where the body needs to rotate around the leg in the middle. Neither of these exercises challenge the lateral chain.
“Vertically Stacked” Running. Ankle, knee and hip are lined up well.
The power clean is a great exercise for Olympic lifting, but it also may have a role in speed development. I think the idea comes from the supposed research that an Olympic lift could beat a sprinter in a very short sprint, maybe 10-15m. I have never seen the research nor could I find it, but I remember when I was a GA back in the early 90’s and NSCA was debating the usefulness of Olympic lifts in their recommendations. This was the nugget of information that seemed to push them toward their support of the lift. There were, however, people who argued strongly against them.
If that research was true, the way I see the clean as being beneficial is the concept that faster sprinters get to their first step faster than slower sprinters (Zero Step, JB Morin). In a clean, the athlete gets into a “block” like position and explodes weight up, which in a sprinter’s case, forward. The center of mass for the athlete has to move. If you can pull 400 lbs, an athlete should be able to move their body explosively forward, after which acceleration mechanics will take over, like the foot landing under the body for minimal deceleration and chest lifts to create clearance for hip and knee drive.
A squat can be beneficial, when the lifter is in his squat position, his ankles are in a rocker position which will aid in getting a good glute contraction and teach an athlete to get depth by using his ankles rather than his spine. I like the Olympic lifter’s initial slow hip drive to ensure a good triple extension. The good ones will have the bar against the shin and the knees over the bar.
Here is my problem with the clean. If the research was true, they used the best lifters in the world who have perfect form. For me, the perfect form is first the ankles bend properly. I see athletes get depth by bending or curving their spine. Where I see it the most is on the actual pull. The Olympians do a great job keeping their spinal posture intact. I never see it with the athlete/Olympic lifter.
I see it in the deadlift as well. On the pull, there is a moment when the spine curves. When that happens, the body loses its integrity and there is no reflex left in the body. If that becomes the overriding mechanism, the athlete is training to arch their back on extension out of the blocks which results in a foot landing early and decelerating.
This is one of the most common errors I encounter watching a “gym rat” coming out of the blocks. Also, most lifters never get true extension before they go into their catch. They catch short so the bar doesn’t have to travel as far. But the bigger issue is that a sprinter is getting triple extension off one foot and the swing leg needs to flex to get into good position. If the runner has a curved spine, he can never get into that position. The curved spine will not allow for knee to come forward. And the neural system won’t allow an explosive push when the spine is in a disadvantageous position.
I think in a perfect world where form is always perfect, Olympic lifts would be useful for developing sprinters. But, I rarely see a high school and sometimes college athlete who can hold that form.
The squat also poses similar issues. Like the clean, the squat can create some postural issues that make the transfer limited or minimal to what we hope to do. Once a bar goes on an athlete’s back, it changes their spinal posture in the neck region. This creates some slack in the system.
When the athlete goes to stand up with the bar on his back, it is not a reflexive push but a slower muscular push. Also, due to a traditional powerlifting squat technique, we often coach our athlete’s to not let the knees go over the feet when we squat, thereby training the body to eliminate the first joint that needs to bend in athletic movements. To make the situation worse, for the athlete to get depth, they will break at the waist. When they go to stand up with the bar, the muscles that initiate the movement will be the spinal erectors and not the hips.
While this squat method works well for powerlifting, it doesn’t often result in an explosive start or even develop hip power or triple extension. Again, I think a good indicator is the spine and shin parallel analogy. If they stay parallel, often times, the hips will be the driver. Here is an extreme example of someone who has mastered the movement and would have a better chance of having the squat transfer to their start.
So, the question remains, what can we do to get more out of our weight room. I will not get radical here and throw the squat rack out. The goal is to not have JL have an anxiety attack. A great start is the use of Reflexive Performance Reset (reflexiveperformance.com). This gets athletes to recruit muscles in a correct firing pattern. So, an athlete who has been initiating hip extension with erectors will now have glutes fore first. It will also allow for athletes to get more stability in their squats and cleans with an improved lateral chain structure. Dave Tate writes about this in his blog where JL reset his body with “wake-up” drills.
The next step is to allow the ankles to get back to doing their job, bending. Cal Dietz and I wrote about it in our book, Triphasic Training for Football. Any exercise in the weight room will focus on the ankle bending first. By doing this, the first joint is loaded and allows the other joints to load in a symmetrical fashion. This also teaches athletes how to get depth with their ankles instead of their backs. Coaches always yell at players to stay low. In the weight room, they get low by bending at the waist. This puts their body out of balance and they fall easily. An elite athlete, disregarding size, will always load the ankle and get depth with the ankle.
Don’t neglect single leg work. Running is done on one leg. Make sure single leg work gets some work, whether it is step-ups, Single leg RDL’s, or lunges, try to end in a position that replicates a toe-off position, which is swing leg hip up and possibly onto big toe. This is the position that an athlete wants to be in as his foot comes off the ground. Sprinting happens so fast that it is hard to capture what is happening in an exercise. If the body knows where to end, it will often find that spot and organize itself to get there during the cycle.
At the end of a squat set, try some hip tips to strengthen the glute med which supports the lateral chain when sprinting.
Get strong isometrically. Again this is something that is discussed in Triphasic Football. I have found that my gym rat athletes who feel the absolute need to powerlift always have a great transfer when we add these exercises to their workouts. Usually, I get them when they have lifted heavy for 6 weeks. I get them to stop and these for 3 weeks. This would include holding a split squat position for a duration. In my first week or 2, we go for a 30-sec hold and then shorten it to 5 sec with an explosive concentric movement. I also add plyometric drops into a split squat form an elevation of 18-24 inches.
And following a couple of weeks of that workout, we would go into an eccentric movement. I use my kbox for this. But I have changed ow I use it. After spending a weekend with Henk Kraaijenhoff, I use it for eccentric overload. We get the wheel spinning as fast as possible with 2 squats and on the 3rd coming down, the athlete will shift to one leg and absorb the load. If it is appropriately used, he should not be able to stand up from that point. This has really advanced my athletes.
Allow for unweighted and de-weighted drills to work spectrum of force-velocity curve. Again, more Triphasic work from Triphasic Training for Football. We will do our squat jumps and single leg squat jumps from rubber bands suspended from the ceiling. This will gets limbs to move faster than before and work more velocity on the force/velocity curve.
We have also taken that one step further. A tip I picked up from JB Morin is to use no body weight or zero gravity. I use my Shuttle MVP with no bands except one to catch the sled after the jump. We go face down on the sled and kick back hard. The band stops the sled from hitting the end of the run. In this scenario, the limbs move much faster than before. After these workouts, athletes were very sore but had some big gains in their vertical jumps. Morin uses a skateboard to have athletes lay on and jump from that position.
And, let’s not forget to sprint. We don’t want to end up in this scenario.
Check out reflexiveperformance.com for training coming to you. And Triphasic Football Vol 2 will also be out soon with new workouts and exercises to build on what was done last year as well as a summer season and in-season workout.
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