Your Force Fitness/Bloomington Athletic Revolution is all about ‘long-term young athlete development’.
Now, what does that mean?
And why is it the very best approach for your young athlete?
Well… That’s easy:
It is very standard for Coaches and Training Facilities to both expect and ‘sell’ parents on the fact that the young athletes in their care will become decidedly better in only 6 or 8 weeks’ worth of training.
And in fact, they’re correct in saying so.
But not because their training system is somehow superior or because they possess unique talents as a Coach, quite simply, it’s because human beings are adaptive machines that alter (become better) under the strain of applied demand (training).
This is especially true for young people in the age bracket of 6 – 18. This time of life represents a literal coming of age with respect to maturation and athletic ability. The Central Nervous System is learning to master the art of movement, bones are growing more dense and muscles are becoming naturally longer and more powerful.
You could, quite literally, ask a 15 year old soccer player to run stairs 3 times per week for 6 weeks and show improvements to both their speed and power output capacity. That doesn’t mean running stairs is an efficient training style, it just means that the human body is designed to accommodate the stress it is placed under by getting faster and stronger.
In short – with young athletes, EVERYTHING works… But what works best?
In response to the point raised in the ‘Mistake #2’ title, we need to look beyond trying to get young athletes better right now. They will get better as a natural result of training – that’s the point I made above.
What are focus must be on is the long-term gains that will make them better (optimally better) over time. Look at it from this angle:
Could your child pass Grade 2 in 6 weeks?
Could they obtain a Masters Degree before the graduated from High School?
In academics, there is a need to progress through a systemic process of knowledge acquisition. When done well and in proper sequence, optimal intelligence is gained and your child as the ability (although perhaps not desire!) to become a world-class Rocket Scientist. Without the process or long-term sequence, their ability to excel in anything would be greatly diminished.
Stop by Force Fitness/Bloomington Athletic Revolution anytime to see just what I mean.
Our address is:
3205 W Fullerton Pike, Bloomington, In 47403
Or, call me at your convenience 812-822-0636
Wil
If you want to see what our athlete programs are all about CLICK HERE for your free 14 day trial!
Here at the Force Fitness/Athletic Revolution, we place on emphasis on making sure your young athlete is as fast as they possibly can be.
Speed and Agility are very important to the success of any young athlete…
… But most Coaches and Trainers make mistakes when it comes to training for speed.
Here’s what I mean:
It is customary to see young athletes being taught and drilled on how to run as fast as possible in a straight line.
Coaches spend hours teaching the mechanics of ‘linear speed’. Arm drive, hip drive, ankle push, forward lean – all the usual suspects. Whether on a high speed treadmill, gymnasium floor or football field, anywhere you go, you’ll likely see Coaches teaching the techniques of running fast in a straight line moving forward.
Now, I don’t really have any fundamental issue with respect to this style of training. I could (and will) argue that virtually every sport is played in a non-linear format and so spending time on the mechanics of an exercise that a young athlete won’t typically ever need in a sporting situation is paramount to a large waste of time.
But young athletes (as you will read later) need to be exposed to as much training stimulus as possible – in all formats. In that, no training style should ever be considered ‘not worth the time’ when we’re talking about preadolescent or high school aged athletes.
But the fact that linear speed training is both taught and drilled INSTEAD of more functional and useable styles of speed and agility work is where I draw the concern.
Football, baseball, soccer, basketball, volleyball – you name the sport. Very seldom does a young athlete need to sprint forward with proper form; and they almost never hit ‘top-end-speed’ for any length of time. If you look at any of the sports from a positional standpoint, that reality is even less likely.
Sports are multi-directional and varying in speed. Young athletes must be taught how to move efficiently and quickly at angles (not just forward) and be ingrained with the knowledge and ability of how to decelerate (stop) and shift (change directions) as fast as possible.
Sport speed isn’t about straight lines. It’s about angular quickness and the ability to re-accelerate.
Come on in and enjoy a complementary ‘2 Weeks Free’ of training at our Force Fitness/ Bloomington Athletic Revolution and see just how much faster your young athletes are going to become.
Today we have a special guest blog post from Rod Root, one of our awesome coaches and someone that take a lot of time and energy to research nutrition and supplementation to help you all get the best results possible.
So here is Rod’s post….
Go-To Supplements
Recently, I’ve had High School athletes ask me about supplements. It made me feel old, but instantly I thought to myself “If I only knew then…” I was in their shoes at their age. I was always looking for the best new and extreme magic potion at the health store that was going to give me that extra edge. After years of money blown and time wasted I discovered that there is no magic potion. The only way to build a high performing body is through proper nutrition and hard work. However, proper supplementation can be huge for an athlete. The tricky part is which ones to use and how/when to use them.
The best piece of advice I can give is to use any dietary supplement just as its name implies- to SUPPLEMENT a healthy diet. However, supplements can improve your health and help your body perform at an optimal level. If I had to choose three I would recommend:
1. Fish Oil
I encourage all athletes to invest in fish oil. I do not have enough space to go into all of the benefits, but the Omega-3 fatty-acids in fish oil fight inflammation (think injury and soreness), promote joint health, support cognitive brain function and focus, promote heart health /circulation, and even improve eye health. Fish isn’t always available and this is the next best thing. I recommend 4-5 grams per day. We offer two high-quality options at Force!
2. Multi-vitamin
No diet is perfect. A multi-vitamin is a simple way to fill any gaps your diet creates. Males should opt for a “men’s formula” of some sort, mainly because it will not contain Iron. Women need just the opposite and should opt for a “women’s formula”. A good multi-vitamin will help the body combat the daily stress that school and sport can bring and prime the immune system to fight illness. Don’t miss a day- Leave them on your bathroom sink. You won’t brush your teeth without seeing the bottle.
3. Protein
Athletes are constantly breaking down muscle and connective tissue. The body needs protein to repair and grow! Whey isolate is an easy way to fit in some extra protein throughout the day. Whey a great option for pre/post workout shakes, breakfast smoothies, or snacks. An athlete should try to consume around 1g of protein per 1lb of bodyweight per day.
The plain-Jane Whey proteins work for most athletes. Ideally a good powder will have BCAA’s (branched chain amino acids), which are bricks that build your muscles. After an intense workout our muscles are starving for these. Think of our bodies as brick homes in Southern Florida. Training or competition is like a hurricane that tests the foundation and strength of our home. Our bodies are smart homeowners. Immediately after (even during) the “storm” we begin to repair our walls and build them back stronger, sturdier, thicker, and bigger. We cannot build without bricks! Grab a shake ASAP after a session or game, ideally with some carbs (twice as many grams of carbs vs. protein) to aid in recovery.
Protein shakes make excellent snacks. Athletes can keep the dry powder in a shaker, add water from the nearest drinking fountain, and drink between classes. Get creative with smoothies! Buy frozen berries in bulk and toss a cup-full in a blender with a scoop of vanilla whey or try blending some natural peanut butter, a frozen banana, and a scoop of chocolate powder.
As with anything else in life, you get what you pay for. Cheap powders are sometimes chalky and grainy, while some are downright nasty. The Metabolic Drive chocolate protein we offer at Force is the best tasting I’ve ever had.
These are the top three supplements I would recommend to anyone, especially athletes. Others I love are creatine, greens supplements, ground flaxseed, Vitamin B complex, probiotics, and green tea extract. (Feel free to Email me if you have any questions about these!)
Training had been going well for you, but recently your numbers in the weight room haven’t been going up or they are even going down. You’re feeling sluggish when trying to work on your speed and generally you don’t want to spend your time training today.
You’ve hit a plateau.
In fact you are actually overtrained. Overtraining syndrome is a real thing that faces many top athletes at the highest levels of athletics. Overtraining syndrome has many symptoms or signs, among them:
Tired, lack of energy
Mild leg soreness.
Pain in muscles and joints
Sudden drop in performance
Lack of performance gains
Inability to sleep
Decreased immunity (increased number of colds, and sore throats)
Decrease in training capacity / intensity
Loss of enthusiasm for the sport
Increased incidence of injuries.
These symptoms of overtraining syndrome are often called a training plateau and can seriously affect your performance in a negative way. For athletes overtraining can seriously take your performance down, or in many cases be the beginning of an injury.
So how do you avoid these drastic drops in training performance?
Plan Ahead
Any good training plan should include periods of rest. Athletes want to train the entire year, it is in your DNA to try to do what others won’t or can’t, but it will negatively affect your performance.
Get this guy out and start planning!
If you don’t plan ahead, you are likely to let your emotions get the best of you and hit the gym right away for your first training session after the season. Likely you are doing this before your body is ready to do so and risking hindering your training for the entire upcoming year.
So plan ahead and include at least a couple weeks of recovery right after the season. This time is especially important to let your body heal and get ready for the next season. This is the beginning of what is called a transition period and allows you to recharge. The second part of a transition period may have other activities called active rest, that can include different training styles, or exercises (just make sure you aren’t doing some activity that you are completely unaccustomed to, you could get hurt)
Plan to include a transition period after the season and you can plan for great results the entire year.
Regress your training
Regression during training means to back a movement down a level, or make it slightly easier for a short period of time to let your body recover without an interruption in training. For my athletes I regress the training every 3-4 weeks during their training cycle for 1 week. There are many ways to regress.
Both in the exercises you are doing and in the set up of a current training cycle you can have regression that will lead to PROGRESSION in the future.
For exercise selection you can do several things to regress training. Among them:
-Go from Dynamic exercise to Static exercise i.e if your core training is normally about movement, change it up to isometric holds, like planks or bridge holds.
-Weighted exercise to Bodyweight exercise i.e. change your bench presses to push ups for a week to recharge.
-Smaller base of support on the exercise to larger base of support for an exercise i.e. Go from normal squats to a split squat, making the exercise target different areas and challenge you to stabilize rather than purely on strength.
To regress an overall plan consider the following
-Decrease the volume of training during a week. That is the total pounds lifted in a week.
-Decrease intensity of training during a week. In this case don’t go up to high weights for low reps or near maximal loads.
-Decrease the number of training sessions. Instead of training 3-4 days a week, train 2 days a week.
Change your Training Focus
This goes along with the previous way to avoid overtraining but is important and needs to be said. Change up the focus of your training at different times of the year. If you focus solely on strength, or focus only on gaining more muscle mass, your body will become accustomed to the training and adapt. This will not allow you to keep making gains, getting faster, and stronger and will instead stall your training.
Focus on conditioning for 3-4 weeks, then on muscle endurance, strength, power etc. Make sure to add pieces of all these training focuses to each period of your training so that you can retain these qualities as you go forward. You don’t want to be super strong but not be able to make it through a whole game!
By changing the focus of training every 4-6 weeks you will find yourself refreshed and looking forward to the next phase of your development.
This guy might have focused a little too much on his biceps.
Foam Rolling: Cheap massage.
When trying to get stronger and faster, the body must needs to be taken care of. To make sure that athletes recover and remain healthy I have all my athletes do foam rolling and stretching in each session.
Foam rolling is essentially a form of self myofascial release or self massage where you can help to break down scar tissue and adhesions that are developed through training and being an athlete. Scar tissue and adhesions inhibit the muscle from performing at their highest levels.
Major muscle groups like the quadriceps, hamstrings, pectoralis major can be rolled but make sure to include areas like the thoracic spine, and iliotibial band where connective tissue can develop adhesions and scar tissue that needs to be broken up.
Keep in mind that this will not help overnight, but foam rolling before every training session should keep you from becoming overtrained in the future.
Get more Sleep!
This is the most important of all the tips to keep you from being overtrained. GET MORE SLEEP. It really can be that simple. During sleep your body does the majority of its recovery work. Your muscles are able to repair and get prepared for the next day’s training.
If you are getting less than 8 hours of sleep a night then you are going to hit a plateau sooner rather than later.
Plan some time off, regress your training, change your training focus and get more sleep. Follow those simple steps and you will have no problem avoiding the dreaded plateaus that can come with training to be a great athlete.
Outside of making you get more sleep, the right training program, from the right coaches will help to make sure that you do not hit plateaus or be overtrained. In Indiana, the right training program is at Force Fitness and Performance. Give us a call 812 822 0636 or email me directly at wil@beforcefit.com
The question below was posed to me on our facebook page recently (if you don’t “like” the page already, please do so here and I thought it might be valuable to talk about the answer here on the blog. So lets get down to business.
Question for all of you Olympic lifters. I have heard many times when performing a power clean that the upward jump movement should begin when the bar crosses the “Hit” zone. Where exactly is this on the thigh? I am not sure if it is where the bar lays across your quad at full arm extension or not. I want to make sure I am performing this move correctly, and also prevent injury in the future. Thanks.
-JD, Indianpolis, IN
Is this guy in the “Hit” zone?
JD asks a really great question that I think leads to more answers than he bargained for. His direct question was, where is the “Hit” zone on the thigh, but leads to an even bigger question of what is the “Hit” zone.
Lets first start with what the hit zone is. Although I have never called it the hit zone, I believe JD is referring to the 2nd pull of the clean or snatch. The 1st pull is, of course, when an athlete initiates the movement off the floor and is usually fairly slow. The 2nd pull on the other hand is much more active and should be aimed at making the bar move at a maximum velocity upwards. Weightlifters choosing to catch in a low position also have a 3rd pull where they “pull” themselves under the bar to catch in the bottom of a front squat position. Today though we are talking about power cleans and the 3rd pull is minimized when performing the power variety of cleans.
So moving on to his first question: should the 2nd pull initiate when the bar is at a point at the top of the thighs when the athlete’s arms are at full extension? And to a further extent what does this look like?
At the point JD is talking about there should be triple extension of the ankles, knees and hips propelling the athlete upwards and even leaving the ground. This is the point at which the bar is moving with its maximum velocity, but an athlete cannot wait until this point to aggressively move the bar upwards, this should actually happen much earlier.
The “Hit” zone in this case should start just above the knees, and from that point forward the athlete should be attempting to accelerate the bar to a maximum velocity until that point in which their arms are fully extended and the bar is laying across the top of their thigh. This completes the 2nd Pull. This aggressive thinking starts in the 1st pull, off the floor, but moving the bar from a stop makes bar velocity less of a factor at the very start of the lift.
Pyrros Dimas, in the video above does a tremendous job of creating constant acceleration of the bar and hitting the best triple extension positon I know of.
Many athletes make the mistake of waiting until the very top of their thigh to start aggressively pulling the bar, by this time it is too late. The bar is moving too slowly and will be too difficult to accelerate to the velocity needed.
I find though that this wait and pray approach to the Olympic lifts is often the norm for athletes that have had prior experience with the Olympic lifts. To re-teach them an aggressive pull that starts just above the knee, I have athletes start in the dead hang position just above the knee. From this stopped position they must start accelerating immediately and be aggressive from the start of this pull, there is no chance of a made lift if they wait too long.
So in summary, although I have never called it the Hit zone, I believe that it is an accurate portrayal of the aggressive and violent nature of the 2nd pull in Olympic lifting. The Hit zone though is much larger than JD suspected and should really start just above the knee and continue to full triple extension. If you or JD apply this type of thinking, I know that you will see dramatic increases in your power clean and power snatch.
I think it’s time to re-examine the way athletes train.
Athletes train all off-season long in programs designed to get them better: Jumping higher, moving faster, being stronger, but the moment their season rolls around (or pre-season, even), their focus is shifted to winning games, and performing at a higher level than the previous year.
What was this guy's training like?
If their off-season program was worth its salt then they no doubt will have no problem performing at a higher level than the previous season early in their season, but what really allows athletes to perform at a higher level than the previous season?
In general terms the following attributes should make an athlete perform at higher levels:
Greater agility: Off- Season Training programs with specific agility training in them should make this a reality
Greater speed: Again an off-season program that works on speed, and explosive strength should accomplish this
Greater strength: Overall strength as well as specific strength will improve performance.
Better conditioning: Off-season activities should also make athletes better conditioned.
Better technical skill: The athletes’ pre-season work, and early season practices will improve skill.
Resistance to injury: This is often the weak link to programs, but improved strength, flexibility and mobility generally handles this.
Could the proper training have prevented this?
Athletes, whether they know it or not, are working on all of these aspects for their entire off-season, and this carries over to the early portion of their season. What happens though when an athlete gets in-season? Typically they are required to practice everyday (increasing their workload), and train minimally and usually on some combination of bench press, squats, and possibly a power clean. This combination of lifts might represent the cream of the crop of in-season training, I recently had an athlete tell me that his in-season lifting from his coach was Bench, incline bench, tricep extension, leg press and curls.
So getting back to what makes an athlete’s performance increase, how does this new in-season training program do when it comes to the tasks at hand?
Greater agility: Practice alone does not accomplish this. In fact studies have shown that game type activities hinders agility performance (1). So Agility is going down.
Greater speed: Practice alone does not increase speed (1). Speed is going down.
Better Conditioned: Athletes in-season should remain well conditioned.
Greater strength: Strength in the lifts performed in-season may improve, but not by much
Better technical skill: Practice should handle this.
Resistance to injury: Here is the big issue. Increased workload from daily practice leads to greater numbers of injuries than anything else. The highest frequency of injuries occurs while athletes are practicing, and if an in-season injury prevention/recovery program is not in-place athletes are at a greater risk of injury (2).
All abilities gained in the off-season will decrease as the season progresses if not properly trained in-season.
The proper strength training, along with mobility and tissue quality work will go a long way to maintaining the qualities gained in the off-season.
So what does a proper in-season program look like?
Day 1.
5 Min General Warm-up
15 min of tissue quality: Foam Rolling or other myofascial release to treat dysfunction.
15 min specific mobility work or injury prevention: Hip Mobility, glute activation, ankle mobility, or proprioceptive training.
10 minutes of flexibility training or generalized stretching.
Day 2.
10 min General Warm-up
5 min tissue quality
10 min plyometric or Agility training
10 min speed training
20 min Strength training
10 min Specific Strength training
With a dedicated day to recovery and continually emphasizing abilities gained in off-season training the athlete will remain healthier and will not lose agility, speed and strength throughout the season.
References:
1. Bangsbo J. Fitness Training in Football: A Scientific Approach. Bagsvaerd, Denmark: HO Storm; 1994.
Connor with his 3 on 3 championship trophy at the 2010 Final 4.
Our athlete programs are about one thing: The Athletes! Each month we will be honoring 1 exceptional athlete as our athlete of the month and for the first award we have chosen a young athlete that is on his way to great things.
For the month of April, Connor Basye has been awarded as Force Fitness and Performance Athlete of the Month. Connor started with Force Fitness and Performance in August of 2009 and has worked diligently for the past 8 months to improve as an athlete. Working on Connor’s strength, quickness and agility all has helped Connor to take his game to the next level.
Connor understands what it takes to succeed and works hard in every session. He has developed great strength for his age in a very short amount of time. Not one to just worry about how strong he is Connor works hard on developing the best technique possible to get the most out of every training opportunity. He has unofficially been awarded Squat of the Day on too many occasions to count!
Connor never let up on his training and understands a concept that many athletes ignore: Preparation to be the best never stops! He continued to train during his basketball season this past winter and in so doing led his 7th grade Tri-North Trojan team in Points, Rebounds, Steals and Assists! He capped off his season being awarded the Trojan Award as MVP.
Connor has chosen to BE BETTER and is the Force Fitness and Performance ATHLETE OF THE MONTH for April 2010. Congratulations Connor.
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Force Fitness and Performance
3205 W. Fullerton Pike
Bloomington, IN 47403
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