Kettlebell Swings

Ok this post isn't exactly about kettlebell swings but just about swings in general. I started doing swings intermittently with my athletes about a year ago but I never really gave them much of a chance myself. We used dumbbells with our athletes because it was all we had. They were ok but I didn't think that much of them. Fast forward to January 13th, 2017 at the GSCA Strength clinic. Sherman Ledford of quest-nutrition.com gives me a loading pin to try out. I was going to use it for carries much like you do for stones in strongman. I have used broken barbell sleeves before in the same manner and really liked doing the carries for conditioning and abdominal strength. But then I had an idea. I attached a D handle from one of my blast straps and started swinging. It felt ok although I didn't really know if it was ok or not. For the record, Sherman didn't endorse using the loading pin in that manner. I started over a week ago doing 100 swings per day with different rep schemes and weights. I've gone up to 100lbs for 20 reps and although there is some hand discomfort (more on that in a minute), you can really feel it working the glutes. In fact, I didn't feel it anywhere else other than my lungs. The hand discomfort was something that was going to be a limiting factor though. The D handle isn't quite big enough for my hands so the pain of it pushing against my fingers was annoying. And this is coming from a guy who deadlifts with a hook grip and has the thumbs to prove it. So I started looking around the weight room for an alternative. I never throw anything away for just such an occasion. I have some old reactor sled belts that are absolutely awful for pulling sleds. In fact, they are so awful that when I googled a picture to put on here, I couldn't find one. If you are in a program that squats and cleans, you have no shot at getting them over your butt in order to pull the sled. Each of the belts is basically a thick seat belt that loops through a metal ring. I got the idea to use this from the Spud Kettlebell Strap. I know at some point I will buy one of these but in the meantime I wanted to see if this would work since I already have 10 that are just sitting around. Turns out they work quite well and are much more comfortable on my hands. I worked up to 75lbs for 20 reps and had no discomfort at all. Here is a video from the loading pin. https://youtu.be/dfPuaklTeeU?t=3s The thing that has me really excited is doing them for conditioning and fat loss. As a former offensive lineman and long time offensive line coach, I despise just about all types of running. This allows me to do my conditioning without going anywhere. I've set a goal of 100 swings per day for the foreseeable future. I am hoping for an increase in my deadlift and the shedding of some body fat. After a week of doing these everyday, I am now convinced that they will become a staple in training my athletes.

Update-I finally made a copy of the Hungarian Core Blaster.

Learning the Ropes

Recently we started using ropes in our training. We had an old tug of war rope sitting in the gym and I decided to grab my circular saw and cut it up into 12 different pieces of about 5-6 feet long. That gave us one rope for each rack in our weight room. Now on Monday-Wednesday-Friday we use the ropes for bodyweight rows as part of our warm-up. Our warm-up consists of a circuit of overhead squats (with a doubled up mini-band around the knees), rope rows, and pec/calf stretches. There are a few reasons we decided to use the ropes on a more regular basis.

1. Its really hard to mess up a rope row. When pulling on a stationary object for bodyweight rows, you can get all kinds of arm angles instead of the nice perpendicular angle that you want. With a rope row, this is almost natural.
2. You get a tremendous amount of grip work with the ropes. When we first started using them, almost no one was able to keep their grip for all three sets. Now its not a problem.
3. More bicep work. I know, I know. But we don't have the time to do any "beach work" so it keeps the kids enthusiastic about lifting. Teenagers want more muscular arms and anytime I can help them with that, while keeping it "functional", I will. We especially get good effort when we combine our pushups with rows for super sets during our high rep upper body tier.
4. More upper back work. This is the foremost reason I include these three days per week in our warm-up. I am of the belief that you cannot do too much upper back work. It keeps the shoulders healthy and provides a strong platform for our squats and assists in stabilizing the bar in our overhead lifts.

Sport Specific Training for High School Athletes

First let me say that this issue should be dead. Almost every single high school athlete can still be classified as a relative beginner. Most will have less than 4 years of actual lifting experience and some may have even less because of a lack of effective program design. For that reason, almost all should be trained in the same manner.  I don't really understand why coaches believe there should be a separate program for each sport or that some sports shouldn't do this exercise or that exercise. Now that may have some merit as you get into the college and professional ranks, but every strength and conditioning program should have the emphasis on building explosiveness in the hips and legs and balanced strength in the upper body. The whole point of the program should be to build an athlete who is stronger, more muscular, and more explosive. What sport does not need those attributes? I tell all my athletes when we first start, that I am trying to make them better overall athletes. We want to run faster, jump higher, and be explosive. I'm not trying to make a football player out of a guy who plays baseball year round. If he goes through our program, he will be a better baseball player. Basketball players will be able to jump higher and handle the pounding of playing aggressive defense. Sprinters will have strong hamstrings and starts that enable them to get the most out of their bodies in track. Throwers will have the explosiveness required to propel the implements as far as their technique allows. Pitchers will have strong legs that enable the stress to be taken off of the shoulders and strong upper backs to help decelerate the arm and prevent injury. Football isn't the only sport where the bulk of the off-season (and in-season in my opinion) should be spent in the racks. Here is my basic outline for all sports and the one I use the most often with my athletes.
Monday
Clean
Bench
Single Leg Movement
Upper body superset for volume and muscle mass development
Wednesday
Snatch
Low Box Squat
Overhead Press
Clean Pull/Shrug Pull
Posterior Chain Exercise
Friday
Clean and Jerk
Front Squat
Chinups
Snatch Pull/High Pull
Posterior Chain Exercise

I don't think there are high school athletes that would not benefit from this type of program. We will have a variety of speakers at this year's GSCA clinic. You can learn more about it at http://www.gscaclinic.blogspot.com/.

Structural Balance

Structural balance is a concept that I have been intrigued by for over 10 years. Charles Poliquin, to my knowledge, was the first to popularize this concept. His view is that there is an optimal strength ratio for multiple lifts and muscle groups of the upper and lower body. Charles Poliquin, along with Bill Starr, where the first two guys I really studied when I first started lifting. I still use many of his concepts to this day. Much like movement screening, these tests should reveal where an athlete is weak and what area he needs to bring up in order to be able to perform at his highest level. If an area is severly lacking, it is what is holding the lifter or athlete back.  He based all of the upper body tests on the 14 inch close grip bench press. Here are the ratios...
100%-Close Grip Bench Press
83%-45 degree Incline Bench Press-Medium Grip
81%-Chinups-Bodyweight + added weight
64%-Behind the Neck Press
46%-Preacher Curl with a Straight Bar
30%-Reverse Barbell Curl
9%-External Rotations-Done for 8 reps instead of max single. Search his article for a description on how to do this exercise.

When I ran the numbers on myself, I found that I was weak on preacher curl and external rotations. This wasn't suprising as I have done maybe 10 sets ever of preacher curl and haven't worked my external rotators directly in quite some time.

I know he has one for the lower body but haven't been able to find much about it. The only thing I found is that your front squat should be 85% of your back squat. I am sure that this is a high bar olympic back squat along with a full front squat.

Test yourself and see where you stand.

Movement Screening

Movement Screening is becoming one of my main interests. I believe that Gray Cook leads in this area and most others have followed suit. The information you can get from some of these tests are invaluable for your athletes and for you. The best example I can think of is with my offensive lineman. If you watch the NFL Combine at all, you will hear Mike Mayock say knee-bender and waist-bender one bazillion times. Now I am no movement expert at all. If anything, I am only an expert on how to raise two sets of twins. However, if you look at the ability to bend at the waist, it all begins at the ankle. If athletes are able to properly dorsiflex their ankle joint, then they are more able to keep their upper bodies in a good power position because the center of mass will always seek to stay over the base of support. So if you have someone with tight ankles, they must bend at the waist in order to keep their weight over their base of support. For this reason it is imperative that coaches institute drills and exercises that emphasize dorsiflexion, particularly with the knee flexed. I have found that one of the best ways to do this is with a loaded full squat stretch. We will assume a squat stance with the bar on our back as if we are going to perform full squats. I then instruct our athletes to squat down as far as they are able to go. Most of our dorsiflexion challenged athletes will immediately feel a stretch behind their ankles. We will then sway (think baseball catcher receiving a ball on the black) from side to side to deepen the stretch. I have had one athlete in particular who has totally changed his ability to bend at the knees after about 6 weeks of doing this 3 times per week. He might have acquired the ability earlier, I just didn't notice it until then. He went from having to bend at the waist to keep the bar over the middle of the foot, to being able to sit completely upright with his knees past his toes and the bar over the base of support. This ability in invaluable for all types of athletes and especially my football offensive lineman and defensive lineman.

Other useful drills...
Loaded Duck Walks
Stretches on a Seated Calf Raise
Overhead squats
Overhead duck walks
Not allowing your kids to wear those stupid shoes with the air and bouncy mechanisms in the heal their whole life.

Breakfast of Champions

No I'm not talking about wheaties or Dbol. For me, my breakfast of choice has become coffee mixed with two scoops of whey protein and a pinch of instant chocolate pudding. I love coffee and for 5 years or so I have been getting about 30 grams of sugar in every morning coffee. But recently, I switched to protein powder and instant pudding. I replaced 30 grams of sugar with 52 grams of protein and the amount of carbs from the pudding ends up being less than 6 grams per day. This has been a great way for me to start my day and get some extra protein in my diet. Not to mention how much better it tastes. Since I am a chocoholic, mixing chocolate protein with chocolate pudding gives me a nice treat every morning that should make a difference in how I look and feel. Nothing ground breaking but something that should make a difference in the long run. Over the course of a year, my old coffee routine would have me consume 10,950 grams of extra sugar per year. I have now replaced that with 18,980 grams of protein and only 1800 grams of sugar, give or take.

How I Adapted 5/3/1 Periodization To Our Program

When we first started the 5/3/1 protocol, it took some tinkering to get it suited for our program. First off, to get the full take on the 5/3/1 program you have to get Jim Wendler's 5/3/1 book. It is invaluable. You can pick it up at http://www.elitefts.com/. For us, this set/rep scheme seemed perfect. First off, it fit into our 3 weeks of loading with a 1 week of deloading protocol. Second, it allowed us to set a percentage but still allow flexibility to go off the plan if your having a good day. Third it allowed for intra-workout competition between lifters of different abilities.
In a nutshell, the 5/3/1 program has you work up to near a 5 rep max the first week, a 3 rep max the second week, and a 1 rep max the last week. I say near because our percentages are set so on the last set, the lifter can complete more than the minimum required. On the last set, we encourage our lifters to get as many reps as possible without missing or losing technique. These last two points are imperative. We never sacrifice technique and I discourage missing weights almost all of the time. This even works for our in-season lifters or the guy who just stayed up to 4am doing a project. If its a bad day, only complete the reps that are required. If you feel good, get AMRAP. Many times we also do a back down set with a lesser percentage for 8-10 reps for more volume. This program also picks up where linear periodization leaves off. Many of our younger kids gain strength so fast that the percentages can't keep up with them. By having plus sets, we can get around them not doing enough work to continue to make fast progress.
The following is our protocol for squat and it has worked very well. We test a below parallel squat but we train a low box squat. Most of our lifters squat off of a 12 inch box. This puts them well below parallel. You can see my previous post on the box squat for more information. We also drop our percentages for the box squat to account for a pause and a somewhat deeper range of motion. We normally take off about 10% from the training percents. For example, of we were going to start the first week at 80% on squat, we would use 70% like the example below. Since bench press is tested and trained the same, we would use 80% the first week.
Week 1-up to 70% x 5+
Week 2-up to 76% x 3+
Week 3-up to 82% x 1+
Week 4-70% x 5 with no plus sets. Should be easy.
Week 5-up to 73% x 5+
Week 6-up to 79% x 3+
Week 7-up to 85% x 1+
Week 8-70% x 5 with no plus sets. Should be easy.
Week 9- TEST
Week 10-Start over.

This type program insures that most every body is able to complete their daily reps even if they feel bad and allows the lifter to push himself when he feels good. Here is one example of  a success story. Very good athlete squatted 365 as an incoming freshman. Squatted 505 at the end of his freshman year. Then squatted 565 at the end of football season. He never trained with more than 435 in the gym but because of our plus sets, he was always able to push himself when he felt good. Our average increase on squat is 56lbs. per semester. We use this protocol on the bench press and squat. We program our clean differently but still maintain a 3/1 load to deload.