Evolutionary Athletics

Recently Evolutionary Athletics contributor Jeremy and I were consulting a local HS football coach about his off season strength and conditioning program. During our discussion a lot of interesting points and subjects came up that I wanted to share.

1. Time will always be a limiting factor. No matter how you slice it, 1 hour is not a lot of time to lift. You do a dynamic warm up with core for 15 minutes, some introductory plyos for 10 minutes and 3 core lifts that last 10 minutes each and your hour is done. That only gives you 3 good lifts.

2. I don’t care how easy some people think teaching Olympic lifts are, you can’t really teach them well in 1 hour. And doing them with working up in weight will take about 1/2 or more of the 35 minutes you have for strength work. They are not really efficient relative to time. I’d rather have kids improving their squats and rdl’s then spending their whole workout doing Olympic lifts.

***Side Rant, Jeremy and I have experience at the collegiate level so we see the “good form” that high school strength coaches teach their athletes and in reality form is terrible. Terrible. So all you HS coaches out there please do yourselves a big favor and have your kids master basic movements like the ones outlined at the end of the article and drop the Olympic lifts. Unless you have a coach who is solely dedicated to strength and conditioning (meaning no other coaching duties on the team) no one on the staff will have enough time to master the O-lifts themselves let alone coach athletes to master them. Simplify, simplify!***

3. Progressions. I really like the old school Coach Davies GPP. For those unfamiliar it entails doing Jumping Jack, Shuffle Split, Burpee, Mountain Climbers for 30 seconds each in a continuous circuit for multiple sets. This lays an excellent foundation for the forces experienced in sprinting and more intensive plyos that come later in the program. In addition your kids WILL get in shape. Remember Louie Simmons famous quote: “You get in shape to train, you don’t train to get in shape.” True. GPP will get the kids in shape so that they are ready to handle the loads of tempo runs, high speed sprints, changing direction, etc… Also once you get through the GPP program your kids should be ready for altitude drops. Wave load your GPP 3-4 times a week working up to 10 circuits of work (20 continuous minutes of activity). Any movements can be used but the key is coupling 2 low intensity plyos (line hops would work), with 2 semi explosive plyos.

4. Progressions. I also like working from ISO to ISOMIO (Pause reps), to normal lifting done with control (like Mike Robertsons recent tempo article on t-nation) in the 60-75% range.

5. Once you get through that progression work into Autoregulatory clusters. This may be the simplest AREG solution in the world. Simple to program, simple to teach, simple to implement. With 3 lifts, limit them to 10 minutes each.

6. Many young Kids need to simply get stronger (after learning to move right). Keep them in a strength block for a while.

7. They also need variety so mix up the methods so they don’t realize they are still in a strength block. Do normal lifts 1 block, then do Schroeders EDI method for a block, then ISO’s for 10-20 seconds for a block. Mix it up.

8. Each block should last about 4 weeks.

9. After 2 strength blocks use 1 power block as a de-load.

10. Remember that you recruit all motor units at 85% of 1rm so with kids you should feel comfortable limiting the load to 85%

11. Start with tempo training and work into controlled eccentrics with Compensatory Acceleration to increase force as opposed to increasing load.

12. I like a Boyle-esque split. One day use Squat, Glute Ham, and Bench Press. The other day use RDL, Lunge, and Pull ups. Alternate them 3-4 days a week.

I am sure there was more but this should get you all thinking for a while.

Enjoy

-Alex