Now, what I'd like to do is go through a simple man's approach to the entire process of building an efficient and speedy athlete. It should be obvious by now that a cookie cutter approach isn’t optimal, yet you’re probably wondering how to determine where to focus your efforts and what type of training will be best for you. Now I’m gonna try to answer those questions. Hopefully, this will give you an idea on my thought process when it comes to evaluating an athlete. This should read sort of like a checklist:
1. Are you trying to run on flat tires? The first thing you’ll want to do is make sure you've established proper movement efficiency, coordination, and movement patterns. Take a look at your ability to move efficiently at a low intensity. Before you can move well at a high intensity (jumping, cutting, sprinting, changing direction, etc.), you have to be able to move properly at a low intensity (bouncing and moving around with quick and light feet). Think of a game like hopscotch or jump rope or the myriad of mostly useless type drills that a football player would go through in training camp such as agility ladders, cone drills, dot drills and other related drills. How efficiently can you move? Are you somewhat light on your feet or are you heavy footed and find drills like these a real challenge for
you? Answer honestly. You shouldn't really have to think too hard about this.
One easy little test you can use to test basic movement efficiency is draw a line or place a piece of tape on the ground. Stand on both legs and hop forward and back over the line for 10 seconds. Repeat with one leg. You oughta be able to get around 60 total hops with both legs and 30-40 on one leg within those 10 seconds.
If you find it difficult to count fast enough just count the forward hops. Aim for 30 on both legs and 15-20 on one.
You don't need to be like Allen Iverson or Ladanian Tomlinson but ask yourself these questions:
A: Do people call you quick and agile or slow and heavy-footed?
B: Can you carry out the movements in your sport properly or are coaches constantly telling you that you need to work on your footwork?
C: Do you sound like an elephant when you run or are you as smooth and quiet as a butterfly?
Remember, you don’t have to be superb in this department, you just need to make sure you have a little air in your tires. A race car with flat tires ain't going
nowhere in a hurry and neither are you! If you aren't satisfied with your score here the next step is to figure out what the problem is. If you score less than satisfactory here, take a look at 1a through 1d to determine what problems you might need to correct. If you pass, go on to number two.
1a.You're too fat!? What's your body-fat like? Remember, if you have to haul around a 50 pound tub of lard it’s gonna slow you down! If you’re overweight look at your diet and activity levels. Cut down on sugars and increase the
consumption of things you can actually shoot or grow. If you’re overweight, you also probably lack basic fitness, or GPP. The solution is to get up off your butt and get involved in more activity. Have fun and PLAY your way into shape.
1b. You lack coordination or you're just heavy footed? This probably means you just never learned to move efficiently as a youngster and you need to spend time doing that. This means you should probably spend quite a bit of time developing the capacity to move lighter on your feet. Break out the jump rope, agility ladder, SAQ (speed, agility and quickness) type drills, and other basic lower intensity plyometric and agility type drills. You have a couple of options.
You can either PLAY and get involved in as many activities as you can, or you can make an effort to spend at least 20-minutes 3 days per week working on various drills designed to get you more coordinated on your feet - or you can do both.
1c. You lack mobility? Go through the mobility tests I described earlier. Can you perform a squat without your heels rising up? Can you bring your heel up to
your butt without much effort? Can you lie on your back and bring one knee to your chest without tearing a hip flexor? Are you supple and mobile or are you tighter than a drum? If you have mobility problems the best way to fix them is to spend 20 seconds twice a day with specific static stretches and perform plenty of dynamic stretches prior to your workout. If your calves are tight simply stretch your calves. If your hip flexors are tight stretch your hip flexors. If your quads are tight stretch your quads.
2. Assuming you've met all the basic requirements for #1, now it's time to assess your relative strength. Are you strong enough to be an explosive athlete? A modicum of strength is necessary. What are your lifting numbers like? Do you squat and deadlift at least 1.5 to 2 x your bodyweight? If yes you can go on to number 3. If not you need to get stronger overall. That shouldn't be too difficult.
Take a look at the first workout in the next session and take a look at some of the templates in appendix B.
3. Assuming you've met all the basic requirements for #1 and #2, now it's time to dig a little deeper to see how to continue building your athleticism. Once you've reached this level, improving your performance is a matter of either A, putting a bigger engine in your car (getting stronger), or B, modifying your engine to better express it’s horsepower (working on explosiveness to better express your
strength):
A: Putting a bigger engine in your car
Putting a bigger engine in your car just means that you'd continue to build your strength and size so that you have more oomph behind your movements. You can only modify the engine in a race-car so much. Eventually, the only way you’re gonna make the car any faster is to put a bigger engine in the SOB. It’s the same with athletes. You can work on various explosive drills, run sprints every day, work on mobility, nutrition, and a host of other things, but eventually you reach a point where you’re not gonna get any faster or more explosive until you put a bigger engine underneath your hood. You do that by getting bigger and stronger overall. To drive this point home think of this: Why can't a 14 year elite athlete run as fast as a 25 year old elite athlete no matter how well they move or how much power training they do? Why can’t an average girl throw as far as an average guy, hit as hard as a guy, run as fast as a guy, or jump as high a guy?
Because they're not as big and strong!! I’ve actually worked with a lot of athletes in this category who enhanced their speed and vertical jumps by a significant amount with doing any specific speed, jump, or movement training
WHATSOEVER; they just got stronger overall!
or
B: Modifying the engine in your car so that you get more horsepower out of your existing motor
Modifying the motor in your car just means that you'd train yourself to get more oomph out of the muscle and strength you already have. You do this by working on better expressing your strength, or building up your explosiveness, so that you apply more force in less time, which you'd do by engaging in more explosive, plyometric, and speed oriented work.
Ok. Now, the way we determine whether you need a bigger engine or a modified engine is to take a close look at your performance in various tasks. We have to determine whether you’re stronger then you are fast, or whether you’re faster then you are strong. Look at the following evaluations:
A: First off, take a look at your lifting numbers in relationship to athletic
measures such as vertical jump, 40-yard dash, and agility drills. Are you one of those guys who is stronger than an ox in the weight room - a guy who squats and bench presses a ton yet whose speed and vertical jumping ability pales in
comparison? Or are you one of those guys who is weaker than a kitten yet fairly explosive and fast? Are you one of those people who gets off the line like a raging bull the first 10 yards of a sprint but is slower than molasses after 20 yards yards?
If so, you're stronger then you are fast. Or are you one of those guys whose initial acceleration is slow but your top speed is impressive? If so, you're faster then you are strong.
If you perform the Olympic lifts and if you have really good technique with them, you can look at the ratio between the various lifts to get an idea where you stand in this department. An athlete that is faster than strong will tend to have a clean that is more than 70% of his back squat and a snatch that is more than 65% of his front squat.
When making these observations and determinations there really aren’t any hard and fast guidelines here and there's not really a chart you can look at to see where you stack up. You have to use some common sense.
If you're the guy who is stronger then you are fast, you probably should focus on improving your explosiveness, which you'd do by following a routine such as the 2nd workout in the next section. If you're the type of guy who is faster then you are strong, you could benefit from driving up your strength.
What about everyone else? What if you're not sure where you fit in? Then you’ll have to take a closer look. One of the things I do is take a close look at several various jumping related tests. Here are the tests:
1. First, record your normal standing vertical jump. Next, stand on a box 12-18 inches high and execute a depth jump for maximum height. Simply step off the box, hit the ground, and rebound up as high as possible. Record the results of those 2 tests. If your jump from the ground is higher than your bounce jump, you
most likely need more work on explosiveness. If your bounce jump is higher than your jump from the ground, you could probably benefit from more strength and raw horsepower.
2. Next, compare your best bilateral (2-legged) running vertical jump and compare it to your best unilateral (single leg) running jump. Simply take a running start and jump as high as you can. Record the results of those 2 tests. If your bilateral jump is significantly (20% +) higher then your unilateral jump, you probably could benefit from focusing more on explosiveness. (You could also probably benefit from focusing more on hamstring and glute strength). If your uni-lateral jump is higher then your bilateral jump, you could probably benefit from more basic strength and hypertrophy work.
Those observations will tell you a lot, but you can even take things a step further:
4. How does your game speed rank in relationship to your linear speed?***
***This will be covered in detail in a later chapter
Are you as agile as you are fast? One thing you can do to help make this evaluation is compare your straight ahead linear speed to a test of speed that requires change of direction. Record your best 40-yard dash and compare it to your best 20-yard shuttle. If you don't know how to do a 20-yard shuttle here's how. Take 3 cones and place them 5 yards apart so that they look like this A---B---C
----10 yards
Start at B and face the direction of B with one hand on the ground. Whenever you’re ready, start by running to A and touching the line, then run to C and touch the line, then run back the other direction through B. Stop the clock as soon as you run through B the 2nd time.
Next, compare the results of that 20-yard shuttle to your best 40-yard dash. The 20-yard shuttle should be at least .4 seconds faster than the 40. If it’s not, you could probably stand to work a bit more on your lateral movement and agility.
5. Next, you basically take all that material and mull it over and determine the best course of action for yourself as an athlete, or for your athletes if you’re a coach. It's probably not something you'll ever feel that you've completely mastered. It's an ongoing process and the things you learn as an athlete or as a coach are always improving as you learn more and find better ways of assessing things, but this will get the job done.
Additionally, make sure you use some common sense when reading in to the testing. If you lack explosiveness in relationship to your strength, is it really because of your motor abilities or is their some other problem? In other words, could it be that you carry too much excess weight? Do you play a sport like
basketball or track and have to work under a coach that believes that waking up at 5 am and hitting the pavement for 5 miles every day (and burning up your fast twitch muscle), is the way to get you in shape? Are you over-trained in general?
Or do you have a build that is good for strength but not really conducive to displaying great speed (very thick joints with ultra short legs) Any of those things can kind've masks the results of those evaluations. There's not always a clear-cut answer but most of the time there is.
6. Assuming you've met the requirements for #1, #2, and #3, meaning that you've established proper movement efficiency, you're not fat, you're mobile, you're strong enough, and you still can't determine exactly what type of training you should do, I'd recommend you start off focusing on more of an explosive oriented routine to start. Keep in mind, when training to better display your strength (display explosiveness), a general reduction in volume is necessary as these gains occur most readily when the body is in a fairly well rested state. In general it only takes about 60% of the volume to generate explosive gains as it does to generate gains in strength. In fact, a lot of times just reducing volume overall will generate gains in speed and explosiveness as many people are over-reached or slightly over-trained and don’t even know it. If someone is not making gains I’ve often found it's because they’re training with too much junk volume and throwing too many conflicting signals at the body. By simply optimizing their recovery, they allow a lot of fatigue to dissipate and start to progress.
Examples:
A sample of an off-season explosive oriented workout might look something like this.
The goal here is to maintain strength while focusing on better displaying that strength.
This workout would be for someone who is stronger than they are fast.
Monday
Dynamic warm-up
**Depth Drops- 6 x 3 (stand on a box equivalent to your best vertical jump, drop off the box, and freeze up on the balls of your feet at impact)
20-yard sprint- repeat until times begin to decline
Wednesday Dynamic warm-up
40-yard sprints - repeat until time declines
Jump squat- 6 x 5 at 20-30% of max squat Deadlift - 3 x 3 @ 80-85% ***
Friday or Saturday Dynamic warmup Depth jumps- 6-8 x 3 Glute Ham raise- 4 x 6-8
Follow that format for 4 weeks and eliminate the Wednesday workout the last week.
Note: An explosive oriented phase is also a great time to implement horizontal loading (towing), as I will talk about later.
** Depth drops can be performed a variety of ways. Moving forward off the box, moving sideways off the box, landing in a lunge off the box, single-legged etc.
** Strength can be maintained with 1/3 the volume it took to build that strength, providing the intensity (load) is maintained. For someone looking to maintain strength, I would typically prescribe 2-3 sets of 2-3 reps with an 85 to 90% load once per week.
A sample of an off-season strength oriented workout might look like this. The goal here is to push up strength, and perhaps even hypertrophy, while maintaining the ability to display that strength:
Monday
Short Sprints (10’s, 20’s or 40’s) - ~4-6 reps each. Stop prior to any noticeable drop-off in performance.
Squat- 5 x 5 @85% (try to increase the weight or reps each week- work up to a set of 5 using several warm-up sets and then maintain the same weight for all 5 sets. You might only get 2 or 3 reps on your last 2 sets. When you get all 5 sets of 5, increase the load the next workout - make sure you're doing a true deep back squat)
Leg curl, glute ham, or romanian deadlift - 4 x 6-8 Thursday or Friday
Jump Squat with pause 4 x 3 @ 30% of max squat, (perform these by lowering into a full squat position, pausing for 3-5 seconds, and exploding up into a jump)
Deadlift- 4 x 3 @85-90% (try to increase the weight or reps each week- work up to a heavy set of 3 using several warm-up sets and then maintain the same weight for all the remaining sets. You might only get 1 or 2 reps on your last 2 sets.
When you get all 4 sets of 3 reps increase the load the following workout)
Bulgarian split squat or lunge- 2 x 6-8 per leg