Evolutionary Athletics

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This will be the first installment of a seven part series examining the seven variables one can manipulate to design a training program.

The first variable one can manipulate is the mode, or type, of exercise. Essentially all movements can be broken down into three types of exercise: quickness, power, and strength.

Quickness is characterized by rapid fire, low force movements. Think of typing or ping pong to wrap your head around quickness exercises. Some examples of quickness exercises include line hops, dot drills, jumping rope, light weight dumbbell swings, stiff leg sprints, agility ladder work, and top end sprinting.

Power exercises are characterized by high force and high velocity movements. Power just happens to be the most coveted quality in all of sports performance. The simplest measure of power is the vertical jump test. It just so happens that the vertical jump is also the ONLY NFL combine test that correlates to playing time in the league. With all of the combine secrets like crowding the line in the 40, the spiderman pro 20 technique, etc…, the simplest test- and the hardest to cheat- is the most effective indicator of success. Power exercises also encompass the greatest variety of movements. Power is often described as strength x speed, and while this may be an oversimplification (P=f*d/t) it is effective at describing the two major contributing factors: strength and speed. Some break down the power category into two different sub categories: speed-strength and strength-speed. While this may further complicate the issue it does provide some additional clarity. Speed-strength emphasizes the velocity of movement while strength-speed emphasizes the strength component of power. To make it easier think of speed-strength exercises as unweighted power exercises like altitude drops, depth jumps, vertical jumps, sprint acceleration, agility drills, and run up jumping.

Strength-speed exercises include an additional load on a high velocity movement. The most common practice is the Westside-Barbell dynamic effort method with 40-65% of your maximal effort for 8-12 sets of 2-3 reps. The DE method can be applied to squats, deadlifts, Romanian deadlifts, glute ham raises, basically any exercise you can think of. You can perform movements with straight bar weight, chains, and bands. Other strength-speed movements include Olympic lifts, heavy Kettlebell swings, cleans, and snatches, and weighted jump squats.

Finally we have strength exercises. These movements are characterized by low velocity and moderate force output. Strength work is probably the type of exercise most people are familiar with. This includes bodybuilding type work as well as heavy maximal lifting. “WAIT! You just said that these are low force exercises but maximal lifting is not a low force activity, is it?” Yes it is! See, if you weigh 200lbs and do an altitude drop off of a 3 foot box when you land your muscles create roughly 2000lbs of force on impact. How many 2000lb squatters are there in the world? 0. So while maximal lifting is quite intensive, on the force register it ranks as a moderate force exercise. This is because force = mass x acceleration and maximal weight training emphasizes the mass component at the expense of the velocity component. Power exercises, on the other hand, present an optimal blend of mass and acceleration.  Look at the speed of this maximal squat attempt.

Now that we have successfully identified each of the modes/types of exercise lets discuss how to organize them into a training program. Personally I am a big fan of block training, also known as concentrated loading, where you focus on one or two of the training modes to create a synergistic effect. This results in greater overall gains in the desired goal. The following training templates present themselves.

For a strong but slow athlete you should use a power template. The following templates are excellent choices:

***Note the mode before the colon is day 1 and the modes after the colon are day 2 for all of the following template***

Quickness : Power (Speed-strength)

or

Quickness : Power (Speed-Strength)+Quickness

or

Quickness+Speed-Strength : Strength Speed

or

Quickness+Speed-Strength : Strength Speed+Quickness

If you are a quick but weak athlete the following templates may be effective:

Strength  : Strength

or

Strength : Power (Strength-Speed)+Strength

or

Strength + Strength : Power (Strength-Speed)+Strength

As a quick aside, you will have noticed that repetition ranges have not been listed.  This will be addressed in future installments and the training templates will be fleshed out as the series progresses.

Finally, when thinking about concentrated loading we must not forget the key word “concentrated”. With this in mind if you are truly seeking quickness you would want to use the template that emphasized quickness the most with the least amount of other work (power). This would be the second template with quickness appearing on both training days and power only appearing on one. If your goal was power you would want a program with power work on both days and quickness work on only one day.

I hope you enjoyed the first installment of the Seven Keys series, there is more to come.

-Alex