So you are working with a 17-year old football player and you using over speed training and french contrast in the weight room with him, and you took off 0.2 of his 40 time. Awesome! And then what?! What are you going to do next time? When using those methods stop improving? Tow him with the car him with a car and do super maximal lifts?
3×10, 5×10, 10×10, Depth jumps, max effort lifting, over speed running, concentrated loading, hyper gravity training, bands, chains, vibration, electric stimulation, overspeed, supplementation. These have all been proven to work. But as a coach, with the level athlete(s) that you are working with, the question must always be asked, are we at the place that this is necessary?! At what expense will these things effect my athlete? Sure they will get an improvement, but whats the cost of doing business? Is this really needed? Are we just stroking our egos to say we do this advanced work? Are we just trying to crack an egg with a sledgehammer???
“Our industry has a problem, and it’s called Acceleritis.” Henk Kraanijanhof
There are a lot of schools of thought on how to develop athletes and I like to consider myself not in any particular camp. I consider myself a resultist. I am all for getting people better and moving the needle in the right direction. However, I do care about the cost of doing business; and there is always a cost!
I view my time with my athletes usually in 4-year windows. That is around the average time I spent with an athlete, whether that is the case or not. If that is the average time I get, then the question is how can I achieve the highest results each year I get to spend with them? I understand that I am different than most, and I am OK with this. I understand that everyone’s situations are different. That not everyone who works with athletes looks as far down the road as I do. But if you or anyone you know who works particularly with middle, high school & college athletes, please at least take the rest of what I about to write into consideration.
“What doesn’t kill you…makes you less sensitive.” Dr. Natalia Verkhoshansky
Intensity kills sensitivity. Dr. Bondarchuk (who in my opinion is one of, if not thee top expert on adaptation and training transfer) has stated that whether you use high intensity or low intensity with younger athletes, the results will be the same. The difference is that with high intensity work there is no coming back from high intensity, and the plasticity of the nervous system stiffens so that the only way you can keep improving is by using high intensity and or more volume of high intensity.
So to quote the rugby strength coach, Keir Wenham-Flatt: “When you expose an athlete to a training means that they are not yet qualified to use, you rob of the adaptation to it twice: you rob them on the front end because they do not have the basis to get the full development of it. And later on in their career when you need that ace up your sleeve they are desensitized to it.” What is the cost of doing business?!
Many times private industry coaches will say “When my kids come back from college they are always worse than when they left.” Or vice versa, collegiate coaches will say when the kids come back they are worse off. My devil’s advocate question for the coach is, is it the program that made them worse? Or the fact that you use such or intensity methods that you hurt their long term development? So when they go off to school / come back to you, their CNS is so hardened that only a bazooka can make a dent in it.
“After you have had filet mignon, it’s hard to go back to hamburger helper.” Jay Z
About 10 years ago, I worked with a high school football program. I was responsible for athletes from 7th grade to 12th. At the time I was heavily influenced by West Side Barbell, EliteFTS, James “The Thinker” Smith, Charlie Francis and so on. Also at that time I became friends with a gentleman named Yosef Johnson, the owner of Ultimate Athlete Concepts. Yosef and I were having a conversation one day about his athletes, and I was listening to the crazy results he was getting with them. So I asked what he was doing. He said 1×20. We discussed what it was and how he uses it. I was intrigued enough by his results to want to try it. I wasn’t fully committed however so I decided to try it with only have of my athletes. The other half I used a 531 lifting loading parameters with a vertical integration of jumps and sprints (short to long). The exercise selections stayed the same, just the loading parameters were different.
Long story short, every 6-8 weeks I would test my athletes in single leg broad jumps and vertical jumps. And every time it was a 2:1 improvement with the 1×20 group over the other loading group. This happened over several test periods. So then in the spring I decided to switch everyone over to 1×20, and I’ve never really looked back since. Once you have seen how little it takes to get improvement, it’s hard to want to use any more than that.
Don’t confuse a plastic nervous system with a sensitive nervous system. I heard a lot that “Young athletes are very plastic. They will respond to anything.”
- Plasticity of the nervous system means that the athlete is formidable to any type of training to get a result in many directions (strength, power, speed,etc.).
- Sensitivity of the nervous system means that it doesn’t take much for the athlete to get a result.
The contrary to that is that it doesn’t take much to push them over the threshold of too much. I believe that there is a separate threshold for recovery as there is for adaptation. I posed this question to a mentor of mine, Dr. Natalia Verkhoshansky, and she agreed with me especially with lower level athletes.
I see and hear coaches who work with the same biological age and sport athletes that I do (I know everyone is different), and they are using maximum effort lifting, overspeed sprinting, depth jumps from 30” boxes, French contrast methods.
One specific example is there was a coach that used to work with high school football players, and I use to stalk his social media and website. One of the main drivers for this coach was the use of HRV and monitoring recovery. At the same time I was working with athletes of the same age and level. During the summer right before our plyometric phase, I had a football player doing kettlebell jumps. Just 1 set of 10 reps with a 50lb kettlebell. Interesting enough, that coach was also doing kettlebell jumps with is athlete; however, his kid was doing 3 sets of 10 reps with a 70lbs kettlebell. I just found it interesting that we use the same tool (a bit different), but the lens in which we were viewing them was different. He was monitoring HRV and recovery from said work. I was monitoring if my athlete was jumping higher from workout to workout.
Everyone is familiar that with younger athletes that they tend to have a faster ability to recover. However, I pose the question of rather looking at JUST recovery and how much the athlete can handle, look at adaptation and improvements in your KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators) instead. I believe that if you follow adaption and improvement, recovery will happen.
I am not advocating for everyone to use a 1×20 approach, as I really don’t care. However, the question that I want to leave you with is this:
Can you get your athletes better with doing less than what you are currently doing?
I’ll repeat with what I said earlier, once you have seen how little it takes to get improvement, it’s hard to want to use any more than that.
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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