Training with PUSH

PUSH vs Tendo Unit Initial Analysis

First day working with the @trainwithpush device at all. Jumping right into it... LOL... Measured counter-movement jump w/ hands on hips on just jump with the PUSH device on and got 25.0" from the Just Jump and 24.6" from PUSH. Two things are 1-the PUSH device acknowledges that using the waistband will be more accurate. I have it and will use it in the future. 2-I have told people for years that teaching the use of more stiffness on landings with the just jump mat will skew the height upward because it is measuring your air-time. So you can land at a deeper knee angle but it looks like you came into the ground normally because you are stopping harder and faster. From there I did eccentric barbell drop jumps which is a movement I cannot currently measure with any device I have except timing the eccentric contraction for its relationship to normal jumping speeds (which I already do). So measured sport back squat next (half squats... lol) and I will just report variation between the PUSH and the Tendo rep by rep from here (for 3x2 @ 140K paired with seated vertical jumps): Push:Tendo .40:.49, .40:.44, .44:.50, .41:.50, .40:.48, .40:.49. So overall the Tendo measured 17% faster rep speeds on average power for an average rep of .48 meters/second versus PUSH at .41 meters/second. More on this to come soon! #SportScience

Velocity-Based Training Applied To "Squatting Every Day"

More to come on this as I summarize my findings as I intend to submit this as a case study to the Australian Strength & Conditioning Association. Long story short (n=1): squatting every day will make you strong fast.

Peak Power Across Exercises

 Peak Power Across Exercises

So much more to the selection of training exercises than whether they are a "power" exercise or not...

Here we see a breakdown of peak power (wattage) and velocity (meters/sec) across 3 different training exercises: power snatch, clean high pull with block @ knee height, clean pulls with block @ knee height. Long story short peak power on the power snatch was 1790 Watts @ 2.03 M/S, on clean high pulls with block @ knee height was 1752 watts @ 1.49 M/S (97.8% of Power Snatch), and clean pulls with block @ knee height was 1903 watts @ 1.33 M/S (106% of Power Snatch). So overall we have from low to high power ranking by exercise of clean high pulls @ knee height last, power snatches second, and clean pulls @ knee height first but with a total range of just 6% difference across exercises! Not a lot of variation there across very different velocity ranges: Power Snatch is 152% of the velocity of the clean pull with block @ knee height and 136% of clean high pulls with block @ knee height.

Clearly there has to be more to exercise selection than this. There absolutely is and some of it is still beyond my current level of understanding but a couple of key points:

- There should be clear considerations of training limitations of  your specific population. You are far less likely to use power snatches with a baseball pitcher than you are with a sprinter or jumper in track and field.

- From past analyses I know that peak power on the power snatch would have continued to rise if the movement had continued on to a squat snatch (full snatch). If so it is very likely that peak power would have equated or potentially exceeded that of the clean pull off blocks at knee height. This is a real consideration for athletes who have great training histories where they are able to tolerate more variation and greater ranges of motion in training. This is not common, but high-performance in sport is most certainly anything but common. 

- Having the ability to simplify tasks and allow for more mastery to occur, using language of Dan Pfaff, is clearly very possible. So if power was the goal and the athlete had power snatches scheduled but either they pushed speed and power work of other more direct training means pretty hard or you think they are just a little off in technical execution today then you can simplify the movement and still generate a quality training effect. If the purpose is power then you can get that but go with better quality and more training density.


This analysis shows you can train for "power" effectively across three exercises with very different demands. If you were to decide that something like that was important... :)

USA Volleyball Will Not Let This Blog Post Die So I Decided To Kill It

http://www.teamusa.org/USA-Volleyball/USA-Teams/Karch-Kiralys-Blog/The-Importance-of-Functional-Strength

First things first: I LOVE Karch Kiraly. I talk to kids about Karch Kiraly every single week. A lot of the kids I talk to STILL do not know who he is but I have blogged about him before and he is a hero for myself and other fans of volleyball in the USA and worldwide.

But on this topic Karch is wrong. Very wrong. This blog post has been shared several times via social media and I just cannot take it anymore.

USAV was wrong to utilize this picture of plank exercises being performed this way:

These exercises are to be performed correctly and are to follow a proper progression. I know, believe me I know, these exercises look hard. They ARE HARD! But if they are to aid the athlete in the development of high-performance they are to be performed correctly. No need in attempting to make someone feel like they are better trained than they really are. I am sure the athletes performing these are thinking they are doing great work. So when someone like myself comes along and critiques and attempts to correct them we have an uphill battle because they have believed all this time that they have been killing it on their core strength. I quote one of my mentors, Michael Boyle, often on this, "Your athletes are the mirror you see yourself in and the window that others see you through. If they are doing something wrong it is directly your fault." If Coach Boyle walked in and saw these exercises being performed this way I would be embarrassed, not proud. It can be basic, as Karch's blog suggests, but it has to be done right! Would USA Volleyball allow a picture like this to represent their program and process:

Absolutely not!

Karch was wrong when he suggested multi-tasking as a solution to managing the young athlete's time. A sweet gesture, perhaps, by attempting to give these athletes credit for being soooooo busy but reality tells a different story. According to this study, commissioned by Nokia, not just young people but people in general who have a smartphone check it every 6 1/2 minutes, 150 times a day! Talk about a time waster! That is a great place to start: put your phones down!

When I mentioned before that many of the kids I talk to every week do not know who Karch is that is not to slight him but this does suggest that even as "volleyball addicts" these kids are not paying attention to volleyball, its history, or its heroes if they do not know who Karch Kiraly is. We have to find a way to make those things that are truly important the most important thing. Lou Holtz says this terrifically with his WIN "What's Important Now" philosophy. Smartphone? Not important. Studying? Important. Getting better at volleyball? Important. Getting stronger? Also important. 

Beyond that the research is pretty clear that as multi-taskers we suck. Better to give one task our full attention than to attempt to do too much at once and water down learning and transfer effects. There is a quote that comes from Zen philosophy that says, "Before enlightenment chop wood carry water, after enlightenment, chop wood carry water." It is the purpose that lies beyond just doing the thing that makes what we do significant. 

Karch was also wrong to solicit the advice of an athletic trainer who by definition, according to the NATA, are not exercise professionals. It is a rather harmless wrong in the big picture goal of this blog post but nevertheless still wrong. The team has a strength and conditioning coach, Tim Pelot to my knowledge, and Karch and/or USAV should have done the right thing and involved him in this discussion from the beginning.  If Karch had asked Tim for advice in handling injuries I am sure that athletic trainers on the other side would be equally offended. That is not his job and any strength coach who suggests it is is acting unprofessionally. There are exceptions to this as there are many professionals who are dual-credentialed as athletic trainers, physical therapists, and/or strength and conditioning professionals but we cannot assume that those other skills are a competency and I will make no such assumption here.

This all was very likely an afterthought to USAV in their big picture of things, I mean it is JUST a blog post, but none of this supports the idea of "conditioning as homework", as John Kessel of USAV has stated many, many times before being anything more than a token gesture that volleyball athletes should try to strength train some when they can squeeze it in. I hold USAV to a very high standard and think very highly of the work they do, that Karch does and has done, and that John Kessel does. That is the reason I find this to be so disagreeable and so upsetting.

In the closing of the blog post Karch talks about how his dad would sneak away from work for 90-minutes every day to play volleyball on the beach. As his dad was a doctor doing very important work I think that this carries with it a great lesson but not as it was suggested being attached to the rest of the blog. If it is important you will find a way to get it done, as Karch's dad did, but if it is not you will find an excuse. Find a way!

"We Get What We Tolerate" - Hugh McCutcheon

Former coach of the US Women's National Volleyball team and all-around genius Hugh McCutcheon is fond of saying this. For everything that we all believe we are capable of as directors, coaches, athletes, what we allow to happen through our developmental process is what we become. If we know better but do not do better, consistently, than we are no further ahead than those who do not know better at all. Knowledge and wisdom are not the same thing and there are knowledgeable fools everywhere if you are paying attention.

How do we reconcile these gaps for ourselves? Does this lessen the message shared with us from others who we know are excellent practitioners yet you see things they are doing with people and that they allow that are simply not acceptable? In my mind this does not lessen the message at all it just means that there may be more work to be done than even these practitioners may be able to fully comprehend for many reasons. Maybe they are viewing their own work with rose-colored glasses; which is always ironic because it is often coaches/teachers who believe that parents are the primary population where this exists. Maybe they are aware of what is happening, and not happening, in their program but chalk it up to having a "lesser" population or individual they are working with.

None of this changes the fact that at whatever level we are talking about if what you observe actually happening in programming is less than what you expected this just demonstrates that in virtually every population there is room for growth. Some of the solutions for such problems are simple and some are more complex. The skill-set required to be a leader of excellence is truly vast.

Similar dialogue is profiled in the excellent book "Higher, Faster, Stronger" where Peter Vint refers the author to the text "Better", on the process of improved medical care, where the author Atul Gawande notes, "we have not effectively used the abilities science has already given us. And we have not made remotely adequate efforts to change that." So again it is worth noting that if there are things being missed in the process of physical preparation these are simply gaps that must be filled. If those who have brought things to this point have missed them then the responsibility falls on us to continue to find ways to address them. Sometimes we are not ready to run the program we want to run because the program we are running is insufficient.

Someone who talks about training one person may have limited knowledge in how to make a program run in a group or team environment but you can be damn sure that what they are able to do in their environment can add a special amount of focus that often gets lost in the process when we lose sight of the individual. Can they do your job as a team/group coach? Maybe not, but what they can do can only help you.

I was inspired recently when I had the opportunity to see expert performance coach Mark McLaughlin give his talk "Learning To Train One" at Mike Robertson and Bill Hartmann's Midwest Performance Enhancement Seminar. Mark's points resonated strongly because I have coached in many different environments with large groups of 25-50, in a University team environment, and with individuals/small groups. Many of us have this diversity in our backgrounds but for those who do not and may be very dialed in to your specific experience with either teams or individuals there are some things that do not translate easily across these training populations. Yet if you have not learned how to effectively train one person there is no sense in deluding yourself into believing you are prepared to train 10, 15, or 20+ people. Mark is right it all starts with one. Sometimes not even one person. It may be one correction. Of attitude in groups or making one positive change, one person at a time in a team. Mark's approach is uncompromising but his laser-like focus on excellence and quality translates across all populations. He does not tolerate less and he talked consistently of teachable moments and holding athletes accountable for a higher standard.

In the past I had a colleague who because we had a falling out I will only refer to as CV. To this day I still tell people that there is something special about what CV concentrates on and the questions CV ponders. Yet in dialogue we shared with another colleague whom I consider a mentor my opinion was that CV approached it from a very disrespectful place. CV simply could not understand why my mentor would allow things to be done the way they were in his program. My opinion was that my mentor has always done an outstanding job, keeps athletes/clients healthy and happy, and if there was anything being left on the table in development it was up to people like CV and myself to find ways to do the job better. If others are unconvinced that the changes you believe are necessary are possible then if you believe they are important enough you have to make them. Be the change. Lead the way.

Telling someone you can do the job better is not doing it better. Seeing what someone else has built as a program and picking at it is not the same thing as building a program, a business, and a culture. Maybe your skills are better suited for improving on something that has already been developed, for consulting, but you do not know that you have the skills and ability to build that program from nothing unless you have done it; which let's face it those who have spend less time talking about it from that perspective. Therefore you may never get the opportunity to do what you are truly great at if you do not have the ability to collaborate successfully and humbly learn from everyone. Have the humility to listen and learn, to contribute and challenge others respectfully when necessary, and represent positive change in what you do.

Training Density

Actually revising this article because I went in a completely different direction but thought it was still worth sharing. A little abstract...

“The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet. He is supported on crutches, but lacks so much support of muscle. He has a fine Geneva watch, but he fails of the skill to tell the hour by the sun.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

The irony of having improved knowledge, systems, and methods available to us in this day and age only to have the demands on those same things squeezed for every ounce of efficiency is something many of us struggle with in the day to day management of teams and athletes worldwide. For everything we gain that helps us do our jobs better it seems we lose something else along the way that makes doing our jobs equally challenging in a different way. It seems obvious that at the highest levels sports have never been played at a higher level however when we evaluate ourselves, and our programs, most of us have a very good idea of just how much we feel is being left on the table. Most often this is absolutely by necessity but one of the absolute truths that gets lost in the shuffle is this, “More is not better. Less is not better. Only better is better.” 

So I submit now that the very best of what my programming has to offer fails in comparison to what has been lost for the youth athlete of today: growing up to learn the value of diversity in movement and activities, in learning to push their bodies hard but also knowing what it is to just walk or run when you have “nowhere to go but all day to get there”, to understand that failure is not something you can opt out of in the learning process but is there for us because our growth requires it. No, our program cannot give these kids that environment back yet but our programming can take steps that will impact their value systems in such a way that they can, with time, grow to appreciate these things. Then mindfulness perhaps becomes the center. Not upgrades. Not efficiency. Just, perhaps, simple awareness that what we value grows with us.

“You want to know how to paint a perfect painting? It’s easy. Make yourself perfect and just paint naturally. That’s the way all the experts do it. The making of a painting or the fixing of a motorcycle isn’t separate from the rest of your existence. If you’re a sloppy thinker the six days of the week you aren’t working on your machine, what trap avoidances, what gimmicks, can make you all of a sudden sharp on the seventh? It all goes together.” – Robert Pirsig (from “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”)

There are no shortcuts. The voodoo? The crazy skills of that manual therapist you hear legendary stories about? They are just paying attention. Perhaps better attention. But still nevertheless they didn’t spontaneously develop those skills. The movie “Miracle” and Herb Brooks? No way! Every account we have of the tremendous process of identification and development of that team says that there were deliberate steps taken every step of the way to let everyone know this was possible. The only miracle may have been in getting people to believe. We don’t need our clients/athletes to know right now that they can do it. All they have to know, and believe, is that it is possible.

And perhaps if we had been taking better care of ourselves, or our clients/athletes of themselves, then the necessity of such magic would be reduced. Irrefutable. Qualifying what is important about what we pay attention to is certainly necessary. But we still have to understand the value system and way of thinking that led our clients/athletes to this point: what is it that you thought was so important that it allowed you to make your health/performance less important? That is a message aligned with quality and with excellence. That is a conversation I will gladly take part in.

“I’ve come to a frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom. It’s my personal approach that creates the climate. It’s my daily mood that makes the weather. As a teacher, I possess a tremendous power to make a child’s life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated and a child humanized or dehumanized.” – Haim Ginott

The gaps present in the development status of our clients/athletes require that we develop a similar value system in learning how to identify and address key strengths and weaknesses in their performance. These gaps are where plateaus happen and where everyone gets stuck. We have to be able to address these gaps competently but we have to remember these gaps are not where our clients/athletes live it is just where they get stuck. We may sell the correction of these gaps as a major part of our process, because they are, but if we do not first and foremost offer up our work’s quality and excellence as the umbrella under which everything else lives then we leave people with the idea that their fix is transactional. We have to be able to lay the groundwork on the need for transformation. For a majority of us having that standard of excellence as a transactional figure in their lives is the only thing that gives us the ability to help these people make transformational changes (for more on transactional vs transformational please read “InsideOut Coaching” from Joe Ehrmann). We cannot and will not be able to “rah rah rah” our way out of some of these problems. Enthusiasm is always required but in the absence of the necessary skills to help others make positive changes it is a shallow form of connection. We will still have to accept responsibility for not being able to identify those things that limited someone in their pursuit of achieving their full potential.

If we can instead use this message of transformation, of quality, and of excellence to take progression and growth as a step-by-step process we will better understand the things that limit ourselves and our clients/athletes. The simplicity of this process should not be underestimated. There is a story about JP Morgan that says he offered a large sum of money to any person who could share with him the secret of success. After many failures a man came to his office and offered an envelope. JP Morgan opened the enveloped, read its contents, and gave the man the money. What was in the envelope? “1. Write down the things you have to do today. 2. Do them.”

If we attempt to aid our clients/athletes in their growth and use the power of our connection as the driver I think we will have found a far more powerful way to get things done. Instead of discussing the ankle joint and why it fails we should instead be as specific as possible and discuss “13-year-old Emma’s ankle” and the things we absolutely have to do to keep Emma healthy. Use this process to do what we can to help Emma and others, learn what we have to in order to do what we cannot currently do, and then do them. 1. How do we address Emma’s ankle properly? 2. How do we make Emma unstoppable?