One thing I cannot tolerate is laziness. When I am not coaching,like this period of time right now, I grow very angry at coaches and athletes that I observe phoning in workouts, practices, training plans and programs. Let me start with the athletes for right now.
One trap that many athletes fall in is the idea that "the grass is always greener". Rather than, to put it bluntly, shutting up and doing their training, some athletes want to scrutinize every single drill, workout, and practice looking for things that they can disagree with. Maybe they read a blog, or watched youtube, or talked to their buddy who competes for All-America Awesomeness University and found out that they do things quite differently there. One thing I have always told my athletes is to walk into your workouts with a good attitude and know that most coaches want their athletes to succeed. Sometimes an athlete becomes so convinced that what they are doing is wrong that they convince themselves that their coach's main goal in life is to hold them down and make sure they don't improve. There is a lot of "blind leading the blind" going on nowadays in sports and training, any fool can publish a workout, or training philosophy to a website with no credentials whatsoever. When I get challenged on a topic by one of these "gurus" I always have one and only one question..."Who have you coached?". I attach this point to the "athletes" section because nowadays everyone sees themselves as an expert, and both coaches and athletes need to make sure they are always furthering their education.
To the coaches, some of them, you know who you are. Don't phone in workouts, it's frustrating. I had the "pleasure" of working with a coach who was AMAZED that I write my programs weeks and months in advance. As the coach said to me "wow, sometimes I don't even know what I'm doing an hour before practice!" I would like to say that this is an isolated example but it's blatantly obvious to me this example is the status quo for many programs across the country. Here is an example of a training program for weightlifting I have observed all too often.
Week 1 3x12of 10 lifts
Week 2 3x10 of 10 lifts
Week 3 3x8 of 10 lifts
Week 4 3x6 of 10 lifts
...and the program continues like this all season long. One area of my coaching philosophy I feel I have a great grasp on, is to acknowledge that I don't know everything and I can always learn something new. This does not mean that I will be like some, and throw out my whole program and adapt a whole new training scheme, it means if I learn something new I will research how to implement it along with what I already know. Another example is a coach whose athlete posted on their facebook a youtube video of a hammer thrower doing various core lifts for training, the coaches response was "this looks good, we will do all of these for 3 sets of 8 next week". Really? Come on. No research? Are you that insecure and have that little confidence in your program that you will redo everything at the drop of a hat?
In conclusion, the main thesis of this post is to constantly learn and constantly go into things with an open mind. If you are stubborn and hard headed you will never grow as a coach or athlete. A quote I love (because it's one I came up with myself) is what I will close with. The day I stop being a student, I will also stop being a teacher.
Friday, October 25, 2013
Wednesday, September 25, 2013
Program Design Basics
Ok haven't had a blog post in a while so figured I'd put one up about my program design. This example is going to be extremely basic and won't have anything as far as sports specificity or general "flava" but if you know nothing about program design, it's a decent guideline.
Phases, cycles blah blah blah exercise science blah blah blah central nervous system.
This title means I am not going to cover how to design a full training program or talk about how to get your central nervous system active for a competition and not how to totally fry your CNS during a phase. I'm simply going to show how for a single day, during a single session, I would design a program. If I was to go any deeper into that it would be more of a journal article and less of a blog post.
Order of importance
One extremely basic guideline that is almost always overlooked is the order of the lifts and where they fall in the workout. At some point an athlete will always ask "do I HAVE to do (insert lift here) first??". And they always is always "yes" if not "yes, now shut up and do it"...not really...well sometimes...depending on the athlete. You will always do the most explosive lifts first that utilize the most muscle groups and that have the highest demand on the CNS system. The Olympic lifts are ALWAYS the priority..no...stop interrupting....ALWAYS....just to hammer it home....Olympic lifts.....ALWAYS....Come....First. Well not always sometimes if posterior chain strength is the most important thing I will have squats first and then an hour rest and then Olympic lifts but you get the idea!
USA Weightlifting used to use the A,B,C lift system of teaching program design (A Lifts are Olympic lifts, B. Lifts were Pulls and Leg Strengthening and C lifts were basically everything else). If you are a noob and don't know much about designing workouts then...well first of all go find a good coach! You need constant supervision as a beginner how else will you improve! If you are a noob coach, then this style of program design isn't a bad place to start, but go find a course on Olympic weightlifting and grow a bit. I say that because depending on the athlete, workout, needs, point of the season, etc I will routinely have RDLs in front of pulls, or push press in front of squats depending on the need. But I am just generalizing a lot right now.
Sets and Reps
"Coooooaaaaach do I need to do 5 Sets of 3 and 2 reps? Can't I just do 3 sets of 10. No, you can't. For a number of reasons. For Olympic lifts for beginners I will rarely if ever go above 3 reps in a single set (except for combinations, ie 3 pulls+3 cleans + 3 front squats). The general rule of thumb is to never ever go above 6 reps in a set of Olympic lifts. There has been some literature out there saying that some coaches do go over this, and my questions is always "Why?". What is the ultimate goal of your Olympic lifting workout? Will high reps help or hurt? One of the main problems with high rep Olympic lifting for beginners is the same basic reason why I have the lifts in the beginning of the workout. They are demanding on the CNS and beginners will have a number of technical flaws. It doesn't matter how strong of an athlete you/they are, after 4 or 5 lifts for a beginner a clean becomes a jumping upright row and a snatch becomes a jumping front shoulder raise. Especially in pre-season why do high reps? Pre-season is the time to hone and learn technique, not develop technical flaws and give Coach Schmidt grey hair. So if you ever wondered why I keep the repetitions low, that is part of the reason why. I'd rather have beginners do 7 sets of triples with light weight and 2-5min recovery than 3 sets of 10 and develop technical flaws, or worse, develop an injury.
Pay Attention to total Volume in a workout as WELL as Intensity
Too often athletes and/or coaches will focus specifically on Intensity (as in percentage of 1RM) in a workout and overlook volume. Think back to some of the workouts I have written for you. Try to remember the total volume variations in the workout. If intensity rises and and volume stays the same, what would happen? What if volume increased and intensity decreased? What if both decreased? For track athletes what was throwing volume like when lifting volume dropped? Pay attention to this type of thing, because it is planned and there is a reason for it, however that is another subject completely.
Consistent Recovery
Recover between sets. NSCA recommends between 2 and 4.5mins of recovery for max strength. I generally have athletes keep it around 2.5min or so unless otherwise stated.
In closing
The main points to take away:
Don't do too many lifts in a session.
Make sure the lifts are in an order that makes sense.
Don't go high reps on any of the olympic lifts.
Volume as well as intensity is important
Make sure your recovery is consistent
and most importantly...
NEVER SACRIFICE TECHNIQUE!
That's it, adios!
Phases, cycles blah blah blah exercise science blah blah blah central nervous system.
This title means I am not going to cover how to design a full training program or talk about how to get your central nervous system active for a competition and not how to totally fry your CNS during a phase. I'm simply going to show how for a single day, during a single session, I would design a program. If I was to go any deeper into that it would be more of a journal article and less of a blog post.
Order of importance
One extremely basic guideline that is almost always overlooked is the order of the lifts and where they fall in the workout. At some point an athlete will always ask "do I HAVE to do (insert lift here) first??". And they always is always "yes" if not "yes, now shut up and do it"...not really...well sometimes...depending on the athlete. You will always do the most explosive lifts first that utilize the most muscle groups and that have the highest demand on the CNS system. The Olympic lifts are ALWAYS the priority..no...stop interrupting....ALWAYS....just to hammer it home....Olympic lifts.....ALWAYS....Come....First. Well not always sometimes if posterior chain strength is the most important thing I will have squats first and then an hour rest and then Olympic lifts but you get the idea!
USA Weightlifting used to use the A,B,C lift system of teaching program design (A Lifts are Olympic lifts, B. Lifts were Pulls and Leg Strengthening and C lifts were basically everything else). If you are a noob and don't know much about designing workouts then...well first of all go find a good coach! You need constant supervision as a beginner how else will you improve! If you are a noob coach, then this style of program design isn't a bad place to start, but go find a course on Olympic weightlifting and grow a bit. I say that because depending on the athlete, workout, needs, point of the season, etc I will routinely have RDLs in front of pulls, or push press in front of squats depending on the need. But I am just generalizing a lot right now.
Sets and Reps
"Coooooaaaaach do I need to do 5 Sets of 3 and 2 reps? Can't I just do 3 sets of 10. No, you can't. For a number of reasons. For Olympic lifts for beginners I will rarely if ever go above 3 reps in a single set (except for combinations, ie 3 pulls+3 cleans + 3 front squats). The general rule of thumb is to never ever go above 6 reps in a set of Olympic lifts. There has been some literature out there saying that some coaches do go over this, and my questions is always "Why?". What is the ultimate goal of your Olympic lifting workout? Will high reps help or hurt? One of the main problems with high rep Olympic lifting for beginners is the same basic reason why I have the lifts in the beginning of the workout. They are demanding on the CNS and beginners will have a number of technical flaws. It doesn't matter how strong of an athlete you/they are, after 4 or 5 lifts for a beginner a clean becomes a jumping upright row and a snatch becomes a jumping front shoulder raise. Especially in pre-season why do high reps? Pre-season is the time to hone and learn technique, not develop technical flaws and give Coach Schmidt grey hair. So if you ever wondered why I keep the repetitions low, that is part of the reason why. I'd rather have beginners do 7 sets of triples with light weight and 2-5min recovery than 3 sets of 10 and develop technical flaws, or worse, develop an injury.
Pay Attention to total Volume in a workout as WELL as Intensity
Too often athletes and/or coaches will focus specifically on Intensity (as in percentage of 1RM) in a workout and overlook volume. Think back to some of the workouts I have written for you. Try to remember the total volume variations in the workout. If intensity rises and and volume stays the same, what would happen? What if volume increased and intensity decreased? What if both decreased? For track athletes what was throwing volume like when lifting volume dropped? Pay attention to this type of thing, because it is planned and there is a reason for it, however that is another subject completely.
Consistent Recovery
Recover between sets. NSCA recommends between 2 and 4.5mins of recovery for max strength. I generally have athletes keep it around 2.5min or so unless otherwise stated.
In closing
The main points to take away:
Don't do too many lifts in a session.
Make sure the lifts are in an order that makes sense.
Don't go high reps on any of the olympic lifts.
Volume as well as intensity is important
Make sure your recovery is consistent
and most importantly...
NEVER SACRIFICE TECHNIQUE!
That's it, adios!
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