When I ran Endeavor Sports Performance, much of the way we designed our programs for youth athletes was guided by things I had learned from Coach Boyle. In short, he’s had a profound impact on how I view the training process.
This is a great resource (for coaches, sports training professionals AND parents) that addresses many of the most impactful misconceptions of training youth athletes, and how following popular advice will absolutely lead to blunted long-term performance.
Given his 25+ years of experience training kids, I asked him to put together a quick post highlighting the three most common mistakes he sees in training youth athletes. Check out the article below:
Top 3 Mistakes in Training Youth Athletes by Mike Boyle
A friend asked me to try to sum up what I considered the top three mistakes in training young athletes, so after giving it some thought, here goes:
Mistake 1- Seeing kids as mini-adults.
I’m amazed at how many trainers will write or email and talk about the troubles they are having getting into the youth strength training market ( think 11-14 yrs old). I always say something along the lines of “what does your program look like” and I constantly hear back about all the latest ideas. Breathing, corrective exercises, screening etc.
My response is always the same. Kids don’t need that stuff, they need the weight room basics. Much like elementary school is about reading, writing and math, training kids is about throwing, sprinting, jumping and lifting. I love the KISS principle. Keep It Simple Stu_ _ _.
Kids want to move and have fun. Breathing, screening and corrective exercises are neither fun, nor particularly useful for kids.
Mistake 2- Not Seeing That Practice Covers a Lot of Bases
I was discussing agility with Jim Kielbaso from the IYCA the other day and my comment was “we don’t do much agility.” As coaches, we have to remember that most of these kids are practicing 3-5 times a week, but get no strength work, no power work and no speed work. We need to, as I like to say, fill the empty buckets. The agility/change of direction bucket is getting filled at practice, but the strength, power and speed buckets are usually empty.
In addition, practice takes care of conditioning. I think there is no need for conditioning with kids, and that lots of what we try to do just makes kids slower.
Kids don’t want to hear you talk. I have a ten second rule. I don’t want coaches talking for more than ten seconds. I really like the John Wooden idea:
Do this, not this, this.
Show them what you want them to do, don’t tell them. Show them what not to do and then, show them the correct technique again.
Then, let them do it. Kids learn through doing, not through listening. That’s tough for coaches to hear, but it’s true.
The best teacher is a great demonstrator. The best learning comes from doing.
For those of you that don’t know Devan, he’s been the Head of Hockey Performance at UMass Lowell for the last 7 years. The impact he’s had on that program is evident not only through the success of the team during his tenure (5 Hockey East Championship Appearances, 3 Hockey East Championships, 5 trips to the NCAA tournament with an appearance to the Regional Final in all 5 with one Frozen Four appearance), but also by the number of players that have developed into professional hockey players (25 players have turned pro, and the most undrafted players to play in the NHL of any NCAA program in the country over the last 7 years).
Devan is one of my most trusted resources within the field because he’s constantly trying to push his programming to the next level. Over the last year, he’s developed a cost-effective jump testing system that allows him to gain diagnostic insight into one of the most important areas of his player’s physical development. Most importantly, he’s using this assessment to directly influence his programming to deliver better outcomes.
This is what makes Intent such a great resource. In each area of performance or wellness monitoring, Devan and his co-author Justin Roethingshoefer start with the end in mind. In other words, they start with the questions, “What information do I need to collect to improve our training outcomes and game-day readiness?” and “How can I use this information to positively impact our players’ development?” They address these questions while outlining resources that can fit within ANY budget.
In this article, I asked Devan to share information about his jump profiling system with you because I know it has had a profoundly positive impact on his players’ results, and it can do the same for you. Enjoy.
Profiling Performance Qualities through Jump Testing by Devan McConnell
Training athletes at the highest level is about more than doing work for work’s sake. Working hard is always a prerequisite, but working smart needs to be prioritized as well. It’s important to identify strengths and weaknesses in an effort to pinpoint specific qualities that can either lead to or keep an athlete from attaining his or her optimal performance. This is key in terms of making the best use of an athlete’s time in the weight room to get the best return on their training investment. One of the strategies I use to both gain insight into my athlete’s physiological strengths and weaknesses, as well to design individualized training programs within the team environment is jump profiling.
A jump testing profile is a way to get a better picture on how an athlete develops force. The Vertical Jump has long been an indicator of power output…a simple and fairly accurate portrayal of an athlete’s ability to create force. In general terms, the higher one can jump, the faster they can skate.
Movement is basic physics…to propel one’s body forward (or up, in the case of a vertical jump), one has to apply force into the ground. The harder and faster one can push away from the ground, the further they are going to move and the faster they will go from A to B.
Sprinting, whether on land or on ice, is directly related to how much force an athlete can generate and apply to the ground in a horizontal fashion.
Jumping is the same, except that the force applied to the ground is in the vertical direction. Therefore, strength and conditioning coaches have long extrapolated vertical jump height to sprinting speed. While this is all fine and good, the reality is that different athletes with identical vertical jump heights may have different strategies with which to accomplish that task. In addition, those different strategies will have an impact on skating speed in different ways.
38.1″ vertical jump (in the middle of his junior season). Up from 34.5″ at pre-season and 29.3″ his freshman year.
For example, player A may reach a vertical jump height of 30” utilizing the stretch shortening cycle to produce the necessary force. Player B may also reach the same 30” benchmark, but will produce force much more muscularly. Neither of these strategies is right or wrong, just different. But by developing a jump profile, we are able to better understand what qualities they have, and what qualities they need to improve, beyond simply trying to “jump higher”.
Player A, who relies on the stretch shortening cycle to create force, is said to be very “elastic”. Picture a well-inflated basketball bouncing…. there is springiness in their stride.
Player B doesn’t have that bouncy quality, but they have more push on each stride. How they skate, and whether they possess a great first stride or high top-end velocity will probably be different, due to their specific force-generation abilities.
The elastic player is more likely to have short, choppy strides in an unconscious attempt to utilize the stretch shortening cycle (which by the way, has much less influence on sprinting speed on ice than it does on land, due to the longer contact times of the blade with the ice, compared to the shoe on the ground with sprinting). On the other hand, player B probably has a very powerful first couple of strides, covering a lot of ice in just a few pushes. This is because they are more adept at overcoming inertia from a dead stop, which is largely influenced by muscular strength.
If we know where each of these athletes lie from a force application standpoint, we can tailor some of their training to improve their weak link.
In order to assess the athletes’ profile, we utilize several different vertical jump variations designed to tease out their relative strengths and weaknesses while producing force. The baseline variation is the simple Counter Movement Jump. This is the typical vertical jump variation, with a down-up counter movement and full arm swing. The counter movement in this instance would be considered a “slow stretch shortening cycle”, in that is still takes advantage of elastic energy to increase power output, but not to the same degree as the next jump variation.
The Drop Jump is performed with hands on hips, so there is no upper body contribution. The athlete starts by standing on top of a predetermined height (usually a bench, which is typically 18” off the ground). They step off the bench, drop to the floor, and upon landing, attempt to immediately “rebound” back up in the air as quickly and as high as possible. Ideally, both jump height and contact time on the ground are taken into account. This requires a piece of equipment like a Just Jump Mat, which calculates both metrics. By looking at the height of the drop jump, the time spent on the ground, and also a metric called Reactive Strength Index (RSI), we can begin to see how reactive or elastic they are.
The third vertical jump variation is called the Non Counter Movement Jump. This is also performed with hands on hips to minimize the upper body contribution to the jump height. The athlete begins in a squatting position, slightly above parallel. They hold this position for :2, so as to negate any potential stored elastic energy. After the holding period, they rapidly jump upwards. The relative height of this jump will be indicative of their ability to produce force via concentric muscle action without any contribution from the stretch shortening cycle. This variation will be most influenced by strength development.
Once you have all three metrics; Vertical Jump, Drop Jump (Ht., Ct. time, and corresponding RSI), and Non Counter Movement, you can begin to compare and contrast the differences.
Counter Movement Jump should always be the highest. Assuming the athlete has a respectable score (different for different populations, but with my college hockey players, this is ~28”), looking at which of the other two jumps has the closest height to the CMJ will be very telling.
If the NCM is within 90% of the Counter Movement, but the Drop Jump height is below that, you are dealing with an athlete who would benefit from more short contact type plyometrics, in order to improve their elastic qualities. On the other hand, if the DJ height is within 90% of the CMJ, but the NCM is relatively low, this athlete probably utilizes the SSC very well, but would benefit from more muscular force application techniques, such as loaded box jumps that don’t utilize elastic energy.
The last piece to look at is the contact time and RSI from the drop jump. The speed of the contact time is directly related to the ability to utilize the SSC. If a hockey athlete has a contact time above .4 seconds, they aren’t showcasing an ability to use elastic energy. If the jump is slow, but they achieve a respectable height, they are using muscular force as their preferred strategy. If the jump is .2-.4, but not very high, they are using the SSC, but it is not able to generate much in the way of force. As you can see, there is some individual interpretation that is required, but the jump profile will begin to paint a more detailed picture of how your athletes perform.
Jump profiling is just one of many player monitoring strategies that can be used to individualize training prescriptions for athletes within a team setting. I go much more in-depth into my jump profiling system, as well as player monitoring and sport science, and how to develop a holistic system that takes many factors into account in my new book Intent: A Practical Approach to Applied Sport Science for Athletic Development. In addition to outlining a comprehensive monitoring philosophy, the book also shares a number of low-budget resources so you can start collecting actionable data without overhauling your budget.
“Kevin Neeld is one of the top 5-6 strength and conditioning coaches in the ice hockey world.” – Mike Boyle, Head S&C Coach, US Women’s Olympic Team
“…if you want to be the best, Kevin is the one you have to train with” – Brijesh Patel, Head S&C Coach, Quinnipiac University
29 Lessons on Hockey Development
Last week I had an opportunity to speak at a youth hockey camp in Toms River, NJ that Jack Walchessen was running.
Jack has been a long-time training client who, after a successful OHL career (Captain of the Peterborough Petes and recipient of the Dan Snyder Memorial Trophy for Humanitarian of the Year), decided to transition his training from preparing for another hockey season to preparing for PSTs and BUDs in pursuit of becoming a Navy Seal, which was an interesting challenge for both of us.
When Jack first asked me to come speak, I agreed immediately. Then he dropped this on me (I’m paraphrasing): “I’d like you to cover training, nutrition, and recovery…I’ll have players under 10 up through the U-18 level, and their parents. You’ll have one hour.”
Pretty straight forward, right?
As usual, I got fired up on Starbucks and talked fast, so we were able to cover a lot. With that in mind, I wanted to share 29 of the messages that I discussed in the presentation with you. This a quick read, but should leave you with a few tips on areas you can improve upon.
29 Lessons on Hockey Development
1) Being an athlete is a 24-hour/day commitment. The older you get, the more important it is to view everything you do away from the rink as part of your preparation. You can’t just show up and expect to be great.
2) Physical preparation, nutrition, and recovery will ALL have a significant effect on your performance. If you’re doing really well in one or two of these areas, focus your energy on making improvements in the other(s).
3) Training allows players to execute their skill sets at the highest level, and can often make up for mediocre abilities. It doesn’t matter if you have the best shot in the world if you don’t have the speed/quickness (and hockey sense) to create the time and space you need to release it.
4) Eating real food, consistently, will not only make sure you’re properly fueled for games, you’ll also be able to train harder, recover faster, and generally adapt better, so EVERYTHING you do will lead to you making faster progress.
5) Sleep is arguably the most important part of recovery that every player at every age and level can make significant improvements on. Mild sleep deprivation (e.g. think 6 hours per night), consistently, can have the same detrimental effect on performance as not sleeping at all for an entire night. Think about that.
6) Simply, you can’t develop as a player if you’re hurt. Improving your durability should be a goal of every hockey training program.
7) The injury risk associated with the training process should be as close to zero as possible. Any training method, or coach, that has a reputation for injuring people should be avoided at all costs.
8) Weightlifting has a lower incidence of injury than playing soccer. As adults, we need to stop perpetuating this myth that lifting weights is not safe for kids. No parent in their right mind would not allow their kid to play youth soccer because of fear of injury.
Tempo Goblet Squats are a great way to teach kids proper technique, while also improving lower body strength and low position endurance. And…they’re incredibly safe.
9) I’ve said this a million times…maybe not a million…but at least 12, quick feet training is NOT speed training.
Just a few more seconds…THEN you’ll be faster
10) Ladder drills are more specific to tap dancing than they are to skating.
Step 1: Watch this. And when you finish laughing at the Knight Rider, Elevator Music and Missy Elliot mash-up they decided was most appropriate for this video, look at his body position (he goes no where), hand movement (short choppy arcs coming only from moving at the elbow, not the shoulder), and eye position (buried into the ground).
Step 2: Watch this. Enjoy the impressive rhythmicity as you note the similarities in speed of foot movement, but completely absence of the body going anywhere.
Step 3: Watch this, read the next section below, and then consider which two of these videos look the most similar?
11) Look at the cadence of his foot turnover during the starts, turns and when he opens up in the straight away. Even when his feet are moving fast, it’s still a much slower cadence than “quick feet drills”. This is a crucial distinction between speed training drills that transfer to skating and those that transfer to running. The longer the skate blade is in contact with the ice, the larger the propulsive force that can be produced with each stride.
12) Even tap dancers can keep their eyes straight ahead while they move their feet. Among the many negatives of using ladders for speed development, the athletes bury their eyes into the ground to make sure they don’t step on the ladder. There is no ladder on the ice. The ladder doesn’t matter.
Note the eye position.
13) Speed training doesn’t need to look like speed training to improve speed. In other words, just running more sprints is rarely the best solution. Most kids can’t go faster because of strength and technique limitations. Overlooking these is like optimizing the fuel injection into a 2-cylinder engine with crooked alignment. In other words, it’s like my car. Don’t be like my car.
For most youth players, THIS is speed training.
14) This is one of my favorite videos from my 7 years at Endeavor. A lot of lessons to be learned here. A cast over his wrist didn’t cause him to miss a single week of training. “Big legs” and “strong legs” aren’t always the same thing. Most hockey players I hear say “I don’t lift lower body because my legs are big enough” are really saying “my legs are fat, and I’m lazy.” Despite being considered small, Kyle’s incredibly strong. There’s a reason he was the first two-time Captain at Harvard since 1923. World-class work ethic.
15) Understanding what is limiting you from achieving your goal is arguably the most important part of the development process. Most people skip the “diagnostic” step, and just throw a bunch of training at someone and hope it works. Would you be comfortable doing this with your car? “Yea, we uh, went ahead and changed your oil, put in new windshield wipers, and rotated your tires.” “Is that what was wrong with my AC?” “We didn’t check, but most cars need those things so we just did that. Good luck.”
16) We drastically over-complicate nutrition. Eat REAL food as often as you can. If you do this, most other problems take care of themselves. There are a few real food rules I recommend using as guidelines: 1) Real food can be hunted or grown; 2) Real food was real food 10,000 years ago; 3) Real food has one ingredient. I asked a young girl at the talk to list all of the ingredients in broccoli. She covered her face with her hands, got super red, peeked out from behind her hands, and said, broccoli? NAILED IT! You don’t need to be a dietician to get this part right.
17) When you eat real food, food shopping is a breeze. Work the perimeter of the store (produce, meat, eggs), duck into an aisle to pick up some spices, and if you’re eating beans with every meal like I’ve been for the last 3 weeks…toilet paper, and you’re done.
Real Food: Eggs, black beans, spinach, cherry tomatoes, onions and roasted garlic.
18) If you’ve struggled to master reading food labels, I have a solution: If it has a food label, don’t buy it. Problem solved.
Real Pop Tart Label. Don’t you just love how the sodium acid pyrophosphate compliments the thiamin hydrochloride?
19) Most kids skip breakfast or eat cereal, eat a sandwich and chips for lunch, and eat whatever their parents make them for dinner. This means for the overwhelming majority of the day, they don’t consume any actual REAL nutrition.
20) It doesn’t matter how old you are, if you are capable of picking something up, putting it in a bag, and then putting that bag into another bag, you have all of the requisite skill sets to pack your own lunch. Don’t rely on your parents to do this for you; take responsibility for your own eating.
21) Mild dehydration can significantly impair mental and physical performance. Don’t worry about counting how much water you drink every day. Your pee should be clear ALL day long. If it’s not, you’re not drinking enough water.
22) Juice is not good for you. We need to stop hiding behind the “vitamin” content in juice as a justification for it being good. EVERYONE reading this knows someone affected by Type II Diabetes and/or obesity. NO ONE reading this knows a single person affected by scurvy. We have a bigger problem with sugar intake than we do with vitamin C deficiency.
Sugar content in common drinks (Image from: littlebitsweet.wordpress.com)
23) “Sitting is the new smoking.” The body adapts to the positions it spends the most time in. We need to make a conscious effort to get up regularly to interrupt the body literally molding itself to better fit in your couch.
24) One of the primary strategies your body uses to stabilize itself is vision. This is why you can stand on one leg so much easier with your eyes open than with your eyes closed. Components of vision are trainable. If you stare at a cell phone for hours each day, you’re training your vision to fixate on something a few inches in front of your face. This impairs your ability to use your vision more dynamically (e.g. to absorb and process all of the movement around you while you’re on the ice) and teaches your body to over-rely on visually fixating on a single point for stability. Usually these people stare at the floor while they walk to feel “grounded” and fall apart on a single-leg stance test when they close their eyes.
25) Being “ready” to perform is a balancing act between stress and recovery resources. If you aren’t making the progress you want or feel like you’re constantly worn down, try to tease out if it’s because you’re doing too much (e.g. playing on 2 teams, practicing 5 times per week than playing 4+ games on weekends) or not providing enough recovery resources (e.g. CONSISTENT real food, hydration, quality sleep, etc.).
26) One of the most powerful ways to improve sleep is to keep your room cold, dark, and quiet. Make sure your cell phone is on “do not disturb” mode and face down, as this will allow all of your messages/calls to come in, but the sound and light from the phone won’t impair your sleep.
When all else fails, take a cue from my wife and sneak a quick nap in during the day. If you nap for a full 90 minutes, you’ll actually get some “deep sleep” in, which is the type characterized by hormone release associated with tissue growth and repair, and such a deep state of unconsciousness that you won’t notice if your dog climbs on top of you and wedges into the awkward spoon position.
27) Three things every player can start doing TODAY to improve their development are to: 1) Find a quality hockey training program; 2) Start eating a vegetable with every meal; and 3) Carry a water bottle with you all day long.
28) Commit to excellence in everything you do. Be the best athlete you can. Be the best student you can. Be the best friend you can. Be the best son/daughter/brother/sister you can. Take pride in who you are as a person.
29) Everyone that told Johnny Gaudreau he was too small to succeed at the Midget, Junior, College, and Pro levels was right. He was. He is. But he succeeds anyway. Don’t let other people tell you what you can and can’t achieve. No one knows what you’re capable of.
“Kevin Neeld is one of the top 5-6 strength and conditioning coaches in the ice hockey world.” – Mike Boyle, Head S&C Coach, US Women’s Olympic Team
“…if you want to be the best, Kevin is the one you have to train with” – Brijesh Patel, Head S&C Coach, Quinnipiac University
Elite Athletic Development: Mike Robertson Q&A
Today I’m excited to share a Q&A that I did with Mike Robertson, co-creator of the Elite Athletic Development series. Building off his guest post from the other day, one of the 4 jump training mistakes he mentioned was only training bilateral jumps.
This is an important topic because the degree to which training transfers to improved sport performance can depend on how specific the qualities or movements are to what takes place in your sport. In other words, and tying things back to the the lateral bound post from a couple weeks ago, jumping vertically off two legs won’t transfer to skating as much as jumping diagonally off of one.
This idea sets the stage for today’s Q&A, where Mike discusses a few key concepts that transfer more to rotational power development, which has applications in every team sport, but is especially relevant for hockey, baseball, golf, and soccer.
Q&A With Mike Robertson
KN: A couple weeks ago, you had a great post on thorax rotation. Knowing that most of my audience is from the hockey world, can you talk about what thorax rotation is, and why it’s so important for rotational athletes?
MR: I think thorax rotation is a critical component for every rotational athlete.
But far too often we just think “thoracic spine,” and not the thorax – i.e. the spine, ribs, sternum, etc.
While I hate to be reductionist in my thinking, here are a few prerequisites for good movement:
Mobile yet stable hips,
Tri-planar core stability,
A thorax that can rotate on top of those stable abs.
However, here’s what we see a ton of at our gym:
An anteriorly tilted pelvis, which limits rotation at the hip,
An extended/deep lower back, which puts the abs in a very poor position to control and position the spine, pelvis and ribcage, and
An extended thorax that limits rotation.
So there’s not just one issue that limits the ability of an athlete to rotate well, but a multitude of factors.
Another big take home point is that we’ve driven this concept to t-spine extension into the ground. Sure if the t-spine is too flexed that limits rotation, but too much extension limits rotation as well.
And we won’t even broach the topic of how proper airflow can fix BOTH issues… 🙂
KN: That’s a great point about about their being a “sweet spot” of thoracic positioning that allows for optimal rotation. It’s another great example of ideas in training not being black and white, and also highlights the importance of having a good assessment process. Doing more t-spine extension work may be extremely helpful for one person, yet completely inappropriate for another.
In a similar context, you recently wrote a great article on “alternating function.” What is alternating function, why is it important, and what are a few examples of how you integrate these concepts into training?
MR: Well if we take that “well moving” athlete I described above, alternating function is the ability to properly position, and coordinate, the hips, core and thorax to create seamless, integrated movement.
Thorax rotation is a critical component of alternating function, but it’s not the whole show.
Take a slap shot in hockey for example (I was going to say golf, but in writing they always say to “know your audience!”). When a right handed player goes into his backswing, he is going through the following motions:
Externally rotating the right shoulder and left hip,
Internally rotating the right hip and left shoulder, and
Creating right trunk rotation which is anchored by a tri-planar left ab wall.
And then when you’re talking about the follow through, just take that whole list above and flip-flop it.
The follow through of what we can all assume was a highlight reel goal
But here’s the thing – the first step is being able to achieve the positions first. Many people are doing the right things, but don’t have the biomechanics “prerequisites” to do them with compensation.
Once you can achieve the right positions, it’s all about patterning and coordination to tie it all back together.
KN: This is one of the areas I think sports performance coaches can really help sport coaches. When athlete’s don’t possess the range of motion, strength, or control to get into the positions or perform the motions the coaches want, they’re set up for failure right away. A good assessment and training program can help identify those barriers so the coaches have a more “moldable” athlete to teach.
Switching gears, a few months back you and I spoke about the misconceptions regarding energy system development for hockey players. Can you talk about how your approach to conditioning has evolved over the last few years, and what some of the major factors are in designing a conditioning program for an athlete?
MR: Well I’m the first to admit I did everything wrong early-on.
I fell into the trap of “glycolytics fix everything,” with no real understanding of the physiological demands of most team sports.
Nowadays, I’m very focused on building that aerobic base first. I’m also a big believer in using low-intensity work early-on in an off-season even if an athlete is well-conditioned, just to make a smoother transition into high-intensity work.
But once you get past the methods of training, I think we can all prepare an athlete physiologically for their sport.
The next big step is merging the physiology with the demands of the sport from a loading perspective.
Let’s take your standard aerobic power running protocol, where you have an athlete running 2 minutes on and taking 1 minute off.
That’s a great program physiology wise, and it may work well at a certain point in your program, but I don’t think that’s where you need to leave guys off.
When you get into high intensity aerobic work (15 seconds on, 15 seconds off) and start to pair that with decelerations and change of direction, now I think you’re really on to something.
At the end of the day, the goal isn’t to see how fit we can make our athletes. That looks nice during pre-season testing, but the ultimate goal is to create an athlete who can meet both the physiological and biomechnical demands of their sport.
KN: Making the transition from off-season to pre-season as seamless as possible is definitely a key component to a good training program. Wrapping up, for someone new to your EADS series, can you talk about how this event came to be and what someone thinking of investing in the videos can expect to get?
MR: The original EADS seminar came about because of a dinner Joe Kenn and I had back in 2013. He and I always try to get together when he’s in town for the combine, and somehow we got on the topic of speaking at seminars.
We were both lamenting the fact that at most seminars, you get maybe 45-50 minutes to speak. By the time you do your intro and your close, you probably only have 25-30 minutes to actually talk training!
We decided that night that we were going to do a course, and in 2014 we hosted our first EAD seminar.
Every year since, we’ve hosted an Elite Athletic Development seminar, because we’re incredibly passionate about sharing what we do with other coaches.
I think what most people enjoy about these seminars is that they are very real and transparent. Joe and I are very open about what we’re doing, what’s working, and where we’ve failed.
At this year’s event, we both started off with our keystone talks – for me it was the R7 Approach to Training, where I discuss how we structure our programming at IFAST.
Joe started with his Tier System talk, which outlines how he uses the tier system to build all of his athletic development programs.
From there, my focus on the weekend was bridging the gap between philosophy and application. I did a talk on breathing and core training, and another on single-leg training.
The goal was to not only give you the reasoning behind my approach, but to then go in the gym and show you how to coach it.
House’s other big talk was his Block Zero programming, which is what he uses not only with his young athletes, but to help on-board new athletes.
We’ve all had a new kid come in our gym who has trained for X number of years, but they haven’t trained in our system. Or used our training techniques.
All in all I think this is a fantastic resource, and one I’m really excited to get out there.
KN: Thanks Mike. Appreciate you sharing your time and expertise!
As a friendly reminder, Mike and Joe’s new Elite Athletic Development 3.0 series is on sale for $100 for the next few days only!
P.S. For more information on how to design PROVEN training programs to improve your athletes speed, power, strength, and conditioning, check out Elite Athletic Development 3.0 today!
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Elite Athletic Development: 4 Jump Training Mistakes
Last week I mentioned that Mike Robertson and Joe Kenn were about to release the newest segment in their Elite Athletic Development series. Well, EADS 3.0 is officially available for purchase today. There’s a ton of quality information packed into these videos, including some good hands-on sessions so you can see not only how two of the top experts in the field design programs, but also how they coach.
As part of the launch, they shared a 3-part video series from Adam Feit and Bobby Smith on Jump Training for power development.
Today we’re going to continue on with the theme of jump training with a special guest post from Mike Robertson on the four top mistakes athletes make with their jump training. This is a quick read, but has a lot of great tips in it for athletes and coaches alike. Enjoy!
4 Jump Training Mistakes from Mike Robertson
I don’t know one single athlete who wouldn’t like to be more explosive.
They could be sporting a 40-inch vert, or an 11-foot broad jump, and they’d still want more!
Over the years, however, jump training has lost some of its luster.
This happens in part because strength is easy to chase and measure.
But at the same time, if your athletes want to be explosive, there’s nothing better than upgrading your jump training.
With that being said, here are four mistakes I see coaches make with regards to their jump training.
Mistake #1 – Only Training Standard, Bilateral Jumps
Everyone loves to talk about the vertical jump.
But when you think about sport, how often do you take off in standard two-legged jump?
Probably not all that often.
Sometimes you get an approach.
Sometimes you don’t.
Sometimes you take off on one leg.
Sometimes it’s both.
Sometimes it’s both, but in an offset or staggered position.
Can you see where I’m going with this?
If you want to build a complete athlete, train them to jump and land from various postures and positions.
They’ll not only be more resilient, but better prepared for the inevitable chaos of sports.
Mistake #2 – Only Training the Vertical Jump
Much like strength, it’s easy to fall in love with the vertical jump.
The biggest reason for this is two-fold:
It’s easy to test, and
It’s fun to train.
But the vertical jump is just one piece of the puzzle.
When we talk vertical jump training, we’re talking about vertical power.
But in many sports, horizontal power is equally (if not more) important.
Instead of focusing solely on the vertical jump, include more broad jumping into your programming.
Or really take it to the next level and start incorporating lateral single-leg jumps.
When you expose your athletes to all these various movements, you’ll find they not only become more athletic, but more resilient as well.
Mistake #3 – Not Training the Landing
While this is technically the third mistake, I should have put it first.
The analogy that I always use is this:
Everyone wants to drive a Ferrari.
They’re super fast, and there would be nothing cooler than taking one out on the open road and seeing what it can do.
But how hard would you want to push that Ferrari if you found out the brakes weren’t working?
Jump training is no different.
Too often, we spend all our time building a bigger vertical, but spend little (or no time) improving our landing!
When it comes to the landing, here are a few things I’m looking for:
Weight shifted slightly forward, but still able to feel the whole foot (including the heels).
Ankles dorsiflexed/quads loaded.
Hips back.
The foot, knee and hip in alignment.
One mistake I made in the past was focusing too much on how the landing sounded.
The cue “Ninja Landings” worked great for my athletes, because they immediately understood that I wanted them to land softly.
But unfortunately, that’s not how it works in sport.
Instead, I want them to land in that athletic posture, but to land normally.
It’s not a quiet landing, but it’s not a loud landing, either.
The goal is to have them land as they naturally would, so that they can take advantage of the stiffness this landing creates.
If they land normally and in good alignment, you’re going to have one heckuva athlete on your hands.
P.S. For more information on how to design PROVEN training programs to improve your athletes speed, power, strength, and conditioning, check out Elite Athletic Development 3.0 today!
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