Summer Prep

Always an exciting time for me. The 'Volleyball' text above has me as excited about reading as I have been in a long time. The chapter on 'Biomechanics of Jumping' alone is worth the price of the whole book.

In the picture you can also see the bottom half of Dan Pfaff's General Strength DVD to the right. Dan Pfaff is my current man crush and his thought process alone paralyzes me. His presentations for the TCACC (2005) on training theory/chronic loading where he discusses 'enzymatic routing and fascial connections' made so much sense to me and yet requires so much more study to really make the concepts concrete and applicable. Many experts can have this effect on others where they can communicate something so eloquently you feel much more confident in your knowledge of the material than you should be.

Also on my list of reading for the new couple of weeks:

Oschman, James. Energy Medicine: The Scientific Basis (A Pfaff Recommendation)

Wooden, John. Coach Wooden's Pyramid of Success: Building Blocks for a Better Life (Just the connection of brick and mortar life qualities hit me hard)

Ericsson, K. Anders. Expert Performance in Sports. (The Reference everyone references when it comes to expert performance)

Collins, Jim. How The Mighty Fall. (Good to Great was, ha, great so this should be a good, no, great read. The five step-wise stages of decline introduced on the book's jacket was enough to lock this one in my sights)

Stone, Michael H. Principles and Practice of Resistance Training. (Reading through this one for the 3rd time. My reading pace is either much slower than everyone else or I have less confidence in my mastery of the material. A little bit of column A, a little bit of column B...)

As for summer training, I am looking at this summer as improving on and extending our performance from the spring. Some of my plyometric progressions have developed much differently than those of my mentors but I have confidence in my ability to manage the distribution of intensity/volume appropriately. Some of the work we have done in the spring has helped my practical understanding of said management skills and I will apply this knowledge as best as I can to our summer programming. To say that I am not always fascinated and always learning would not give the body's adaptive processes enough credit...

One methodology concept I have been working hard on is that of stable variation. I plan to elaborate much more on this later but essentially I rotate the speed/power stimulus in nearly every session on a weekly or bi-weekly basis while stabilizing our strength work by using sessions with more consistency in the stimulus (more linear to slightly non-linear depending on several factors). My feeling is that when we are evaluating the complexity of physical development we have to not just think of the weight on the bar (although this is an obvious indicator for success). There also must be concern for an appropriate level of coordination development that teaches the athlete to be flexible in the performance of motor tasks. When athletes lack this level of coordination you will find less transfer from general to specific work.

I am also finishing part deux of my principles of volleyball performance training article focused on methodology. Part I was a little lengthy for most readers so I'm hoping I can be a bit more brief.

Inspiration

"You have to ask yourself, 'Who am I being if my players' eyes are not shining?'" - John Kessel, USA Volleyball

Short and Long-Term Progression:

I'm all for kaizen but don't mind seeing technical adjustments and good training processes feed the organism's machinery. For example...

Today had one of my very serious collegiate athletes (as serious as one can be with the schedule they have this month) begin with a series of seated vertical jumps and med ball vertical tosses (2s x 3r per movement in combination). We moved past that into elasticity jumps (a hop onto the contact mat into an explosive vertical jump) paired with elasticity throws (a hop into a vertical toss). Same set/rep combination. After that we loaded the movement with the vertimax for 4 s x 2r and kicked things into high gear. Once we made the technical and positional adjustments the focus shifted to maximize the elastic response and finishing the jump. So the progression led to about a 3" increase in jump performance through the session. That 3" represented the performance this athlete is capable of if the right adjustments are made in combination with the right speed/power development methodology.

So in total, the jumps performed today were in this range:

A1. Seated Vertical Jumps - 2s x 3r (21.5 avg)
A2. Med Ball Vertical Tosses - 2s x3r (3k med ball)
B1. Elasticity (Single-Response) Jumps - 2s x 3r (21.5-22-22 avg)
B2. Elasticity Tosses - 2s x 3r (3k med ball)
C1. Vertimax Elasticity Jumps - 4s x 2r
D1. Elasticity (Single-Response) Jumps (Test) - (24.5, 24.7)

Not exactly a high volume of ground contacts (36 g.c.'s if you count the med ball throws; as an aside, I have noticed that the transition from a med ball throw into landing parallels the simple adjustment process off of a maximum vertical jump) but certainly high quality. We did all of this after an extensive warm-up (around 25 minutes today). Training finished with bb f split squats and trunk/abdominal work. Bonus to high quality programming: athlete has no more complaints of knee pain or stiffness in the outer quad/hip area.

I'd put money on us with a 27-28" average at the end of summer. If my stats on our training numbers are consistent so far, this should positively correlate with approach jump performance.

EGO

An exaggerated sense of self-importance; conceit.

So one of my athletes was involved in a discussion with a club coach about a year or so back. In discussion she mentioned that she had the opportunity to attend Karch Kiraly's Volleyball Academy that prior summer. She mentioned some of the positive things she had taken from Karch, of which I'm sure there were many, and this coach just had to let her know that, "Well I have beaten Karch before."

To keep this short, let me go ahead and go over what this coach has not done:

1-He has not won 3 Olympic gold medals.
2-He has not been twice named best volleyball player in the world by the Federation of International V0lleyball (FIVB)
3-He has not helped redefine the sport and the competitive spirit of the United States, especially relative to international competition.

Besides the fact that I have a huge amount of respect for Karch Kiraly, both as a player and as an ambassador for the sport, I have a very hard time respecting others who can only make themselves feel better by building themselves up and tearing others down.

I have told my athletes that in all seriousness if my training program ever becomes more about me and my ego, less about them, and I start to refer to myself as "The Diesel" or some other nonsense then I want one of them to punch me in the face.

Appropriate Coaching Blog Post

This blog is courtesy of John Kessel and USA Volleyball:

Appropriate Coaching Blog Post

I will make sure that coaches within my network of influence read this at least once.

I think that so many coaches are simply not comprehensive enough in their approach to really develop athletes and volleyball players. There is either a purely technical focus, or a psychological focus, or a "just play hard" focus. Great coaching is great blending of the motor qualities of the sport and the psychological qualities of performance.

D-I Baby!

So one of my long-term athlete development program clients (within my EVP program this is my ELITE program) just signed a D-I volleyball scholarship. Full ride!

This particular client has trained harder and more consistently then any client I HAVE EVER HAD. I know that the second she finishes a tournament I will get 2 text messages: the first tells me how her and her team did, and the second is asking me WHEN ARE WE GOING TO TRAIN AGAIN? When she text me tonight to tell me that she was signing her scholarship her next text was... WHEN ARE WE GOING TO TRAIN AGAIN? After 6 years of hard work I can honestly say that I'm not surprised by what success she has achieved.

Needless to say I'm very excited.

Also in the works:
Met someone today in a relatively random conversation at a volleyball tournament on development. As it turns out, she works in the biomechanics/motion lab at a local university. She's got force plates, motion analysis software, the works. We quickly progressed our discussion into talk on a project to measure and evaluate performance of collegiate volleyball players I have training with me.

So today was a good day.

Pow-Wah

Crazy, crazy times...

I am now the Club Director for Bexar County Volleyball Academy and things are very crazy. If it wasn't for the tendo unit I picked up recently I would have nothing to be excited about in my training.

Thought this would be a good time to do a basic overview of technical/performance issues involving olympic lifts and speed/power development.

Often the argument presented is that power version of the lifts initiated from the floor offer more benefit to athletes. Not sure that I agree there.

80K Power Snatch 60K Hang Snatch 70K Hang Snatch

Set 1
1. 1678 W, 2.14 M/S 1. 1411 W, 2.40 M/S 1. 1598 W, 2.33 M/S
2. 1615 W, 2.06 M/S 2. 1411 W, 2.4 0 M/S 2. 1619 W, 2.36 M/S
Set 2
1. 1717 W, 2.19 M/S 1. 1517 W, 2.58 M/S 1. 1633 W, 2.38 M/S
2. 1615, 2.06 M/S 2. 1476 W, 2.51 M/S 2. 1612 W, 2.35 M/S

*Any coincidence that the 1st rep of the 2nd set was my best rep on each exercise? (Vids are linked via youtube)

80K P Sn
1656 W, 2.11 M/S
100% W, 85% M/S

70K H Sn
1616 W, 2.36 M/S
98% W, 96% M/S

60K H Sn
1454 W, 2.47 M/S
88% W, 100% M/S

Obviously the heavier lifts are producing more power, however, the hang versions are producing a high percentage of the same power (98 and 88% respectively) while producing more speed (60K was 12% faster and 70k was 10.5% faster). This comparison was not made to be exact or precise. My primary purpose was to see for myself if a reduced load with reduced ROM lift could produce comparable power/speed. Did it.