My Dad was the Head Football Coach at Pike County in the late 70’s and early 80’s. During those days, the Head Coach took on all the responsibilities of the team. Cutting grass, rounding up equipment, raising money, getting players to practice, and even running the weight room. My Dad didn’t know a lot about lifting weights but he was smart enough to latch on to a system that had some success. He used Bigger, Faster, Stronger with his athletes and taught me from an early age that the Power Clean was the most important lift for football. I can remember his exact words. “If you could only do one lift, it would have to be the power clean.” Now my Dad was and still is the smartest person I have ever met. So I took his words to heart. About the only thing I cared about in high school was the Squat and Power Clean. I was the exact opposite of almost every high school student in America. Add in the fact that I have the body type that is conducive to a good power clean, I quickly found out that I was pretty good at it as well. Around this time, I also read an article by Alan Headrick from the Air Force Academy. He said that the #1 predictor of the starters on the Offensive Line was the Power Clean. Since I was an Offensive Lineman that was all I needed to hear. After my senior year of high school football I was able to power clean 305x4 with pretty good technique. I also had a 30 inch vertical jump at 250 lbs. This made me even more of a believer of the BFS concept of transfer.
Then as I grew older, I started reading more about the Westside Methods and Louie Simmons. Westside is almost anti-olympic lifts (even if they are not, it comes off that way) and I fell right in line with their thinking. They believed that any lift could be explosive, not just the Olympic lifts and they do have a point. Many times Weightlifting coaches will talk about the 2nd pull and how explosive it is and will compare it to a max or near max effort squat. That is not a fair assessment. It would be more rightly compared to a dynamic effort box squat, deadlift, or bench press. That is comparing apples to apples. No one is going to argue that a snatch generates more force than a slow max effort squat. But comparing the snatch to the dynamic box squat gets much closer. What Westside said made sense to me. Many from the Westside methodology also like to say that doing box jumps, medicine ball throws, etc. more effectively trains the triple extension. And they might be right. And after all, the triple extension is the most important thing, right? More on this later. Westside also likes to say that the lifts are hard to teach and it is easier to teach a deadlift or box squat. I almost agree there. I also started to believe that maybe the reason the starters in football Power Clean more is because they are the better athletes. So I started believing that “Good athletes power clean well, but the Power Clean doesn’t make better athletes.”
But during my transition to Westside I noticed a few things about myself that changed. I eventually added 400 lbs. to my squat and 150 to my deadlift. I power cleaned 315 easy after not doing a power clean for over 3 years. Anybody who saw me squat or deadlift, knew I was an explosive squatter. Everything measured up. Except I could no longer jump. When I was in college I could dunk a basketball from a standing position under the basket. Now I could barely grab the rim. Granted I had gained some weight, but the increase in strength and explosiveness should have at least held me stable. I could dunk at 250 lbs. but could barely grab the rim at 265 even though my strength and explosiveness increased exponentially. Something was wrong and I was starting to see what it was.
During this time I also had an opportunity to hear Bill Gillespie at Liberty University speak. He talked about the Power Clean and deadlift and how they were summation lifts. Summations lifts are lifts that are better built by doing other lifts instead of the lift itself. I fell hook, line, and sinker. I felt it was better to spend time doing the pull versions of the Olympic Lifts instead of focusing on the full lift themselves. This led me in the right direction but wasn’t where I needed to be. Around this time, I started having my kids perform more and more cleans. I noticed that as we performed the clean we improved our athleticism, coordination, and explosiveness. I have no numbers to back this up, but if I noticed it, it must be happening.
Then in July, I attended a USA Weightlifting Club Coach Certification Class. I will never be the same. The first thing I learned was that the Olympic Lifts are not hard to teach. I just didn’t know how to teach them. I also learned that there are more reasons to do the Olympic Lifts other than to train triple extension. Here is my short list.
1. Manipulation of your body around external forces-When you perform a full clean or snatch, you actually pull yourself under the bar after the second pull. This helps build athleticism with each repetition.
2. Catching and Absorbing External Forces-In the full versions of the Clean and Snatch you learn to catch and absorb weights. This happens in sports all the time and not just with our own bodies but with other bodies in sports like football and wrestling. I also believe that this can contribute to agility by building deceleration ability.
3. Functionality-You say you can’t do a perfect Power Clean? That’s fine. The fact that you pull and catch and then struggle with the weight is going to build more functional strength than just doing a squat or deadlift or even the pull version of the clean.
4. Flexibility-Repeated stretching of the wrists, elbows, and hips occur on every rep. This is something most of our kids need desperately.
5. Teachability-Most of the Olympic Lifts can be made easier to teach by knowing where to start and by progressing slowly.
I highly recommend that every coach take the USAW Club Coach Course. I learned more about weightlifting that weekend than nearly my whole life put together. Even if you don’t jump right into an Olympic lifting program, you can learn things about technique that totally change the way you run your weight room.
Monday, January 31, 2011
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Strongman Training
Strongman training is quickly becoming a popular way to train and condition athletes. There are quite a few exercises you can do in your weight room with equipment that you already have. You just have to be creative and the benefits are numerous. First and foremost it creates a competitive environment. Because you usually only have a few implements, your athletes will have to compete in front of others and this always makes them work harder. Second it is a change from the traditional weight room exercises. Many times just changing up your program can foster more effort from your athletes. Third, you can train your athletes in an unstable environment. Now I am not talking about bouncing around on some ball although that may have its place. I am talking about moving real weights really fast and explosive. This is more like sport competition than traditional lifting. And best of all, its fun. Our kids absolutely love strongman training and constantly want to try more weight, go longer distances, and beat their old times. I will go through a few exercises we have used with some success.
Implements You Already Have
There are many things you already have and don’t even know it. You just have to be creative. Almost every school has a few of the following: trap bars, curl bars, and medicine balls. Here are a few exercises you can do with stuff you already have available.
Trap Bar Farmer’s Walk-Load up a trap bar and walk. Seems pretty simple but it’s extremely effective. One draw back is that it is not as unstable as traditional Farmer’s Walk implements, but the on the plus side you can use more weight. Our weight room is about 18 yards long and we do trips of 2, 3, 4, and 6. The hardest part is the turn. You really have to work to keep the bar from spinning you into the ground. We have enough room for 3 people to go at a time and usually will race each other and log the best times from one group to another. This movement really hammers the grip, traps, and entire lower body.
Curl Bar Farmer’s Walk-Almost everybody has old curl bars lying around. The good thing is that they do not have to be in good shape. Each person needs two, one for each hand. With these, the weight has to be lower because they are more unstable. But that’s ok. The parameters for the walks can be the same as with the Trap Bar. This movement also hammers the grip, traps, and lower body.
Zercher Walks-Most people have never heard of Zercher squats. This is a squat where you hold the bar in the crook of your elbows instead of on your back or clavicles. Zercher walks require you to hold the bar in the crook of your elbows and walk. It may be beneficial to fold up a big towel to pad the bar. It can become quite uncomfortable for the elbows if you don’t. You will feel this one all over. It will work your upper back, lower back, traps, biceps, and abs. Of course, all the walks will increase lower body strength.
Stone Load and Carry-You probably don't have strongman stones and don't have the means to make them. What you do probably have is an old broken bar that has one of the sleeves detached. This may be hard to imagine so try to follow me. Set the broken sleeve on its end. Load bumper plates up until you are satisfied with the load. Put a solid collar on the end to keep all the weights in place. Now pick it up and walk. This can be excruciating.
Implements You Can Easily Find
Items in the category are things you might not readily have but you can easily find for free. Or you may have to go deep into storage to find them.
Cooler Pushes-I believe that I invented these. After a game this year, we brought back a load of Pepsi’s in a large cooler. We arrived home late so we put the cooler by the door. On Monday morning I tried to move them into my office. Loaded with water and drinks it was very hard to move. I had to get low and drive to get it to my office. When I got finished the light bulb went off. Every school I have been to has old coolers lying around with broken handles and/or holes. We had 3. So we loaded them up and pushed them. It is very similar to the Prowler Sled but for free. Because the cooler is so low to the ground, you have to stay really low. It simulates the start in sprints and driving off the ball for offensive and defensive lineman. We call it the goal line drill. Of course if you have a sled you can add weight to and drive, by all means use it.
Tug-of-War-This one is easy. The hard part is finding a good rope. These ropes are invaluable because there are many things you can do with them. For Tug-of-War it is best to do one-on-one competitions but you can also do team competitions.
Cooler Pulls-This is a variation of the cooler push. We attach our rope to the cooler, sit and pull hand over hand. This really works the upper back, grip, and biceps. The trick here is to find a way to attach the rope where you do not have to use a handle because it will most certainly pull the handle right off.
Cooler Push/Pull-This is one event that we time every week. We start with pulling the cooler the length of the weight room. We then immediately get up and push the cooler back to the starting point. You wouldn’t believe the competition that this builds. Not to mention that every single muscle in your body gets exhausted.
Medicine Ball Throws-For this exercise, just throw any size medicine ball. You can do one throw for distance, multiple throws for distance, throwing the length of the field for time, or just use your imagination. You can also try and throw over the field goal posts from varying distances.
Medicine Ball Wrestling-This event is simple. Get a large medicine ball and have two athletes try and wrestle it away from each other. This will work the arms, grip, and back in addition to teaching leverage and balance.
Implements A Little Harder To Get
This category involves things a little harder to get. Mainly I am speaking of tractor tires. But all you really have to do is search around and somebody will give them to you for free. They have to pay to get rid of the old tires so they will be more than willing to give them up.
Tire Flips-This is probably the King of Strongman training. There are multiple variations you can use. I have done relay flips, multiple flips for time, explosive flips, etc. You can pretty much do anything you want to do. This most closely simulates the hip drive that all offensive and defensive linemen need to compete.
Tire Fights-Turn your big tractor tire on one end. Have two athletes on opposite sides of the tire. They push the tire back and forth until the tire hits the ground. This movement forces them to absorb force and reverse the tire in an explosive manner. This is also a total body effort similar to a Jerk and gets very competitive.
Ideas I Haven’t Tried
There are multiple things you can come up with that go beyond the scope of this article. Sand bag training has become quite popular and you can do sand bag carries, squats, cleans, overhead squats, throws, and heavy loads (onto a truck bed or high plyometric box). I read an article the other day from a strength coach who loads a bunch of weights, heavy dummies, and anything else he can find into the end zone. The athlete’s job is to move all the “stuff” from one side of the end zone to the other. Every week he adds more “stuff”.
You can see that by just using your imagination and some ingenuity, you can come up with an endless arrangement to help train your athletes. You will be hard pressed to find a method of training that fosters the excitement and effort of strongman training.
Implements You Already Have
There are many things you already have and don’t even know it. You just have to be creative. Almost every school has a few of the following: trap bars, curl bars, and medicine balls. Here are a few exercises you can do with stuff you already have available.
Trap Bar Farmer’s Walk-Load up a trap bar and walk. Seems pretty simple but it’s extremely effective. One draw back is that it is not as unstable as traditional Farmer’s Walk implements, but the on the plus side you can use more weight. Our weight room is about 18 yards long and we do trips of 2, 3, 4, and 6. The hardest part is the turn. You really have to work to keep the bar from spinning you into the ground. We have enough room for 3 people to go at a time and usually will race each other and log the best times from one group to another. This movement really hammers the grip, traps, and entire lower body.
Curl Bar Farmer’s Walk-Almost everybody has old curl bars lying around. The good thing is that they do not have to be in good shape. Each person needs two, one for each hand. With these, the weight has to be lower because they are more unstable. But that’s ok. The parameters for the walks can be the same as with the Trap Bar. This movement also hammers the grip, traps, and lower body.
Zercher Walks-Most people have never heard of Zercher squats. This is a squat where you hold the bar in the crook of your elbows instead of on your back or clavicles. Zercher walks require you to hold the bar in the crook of your elbows and walk. It may be beneficial to fold up a big towel to pad the bar. It can become quite uncomfortable for the elbows if you don’t. You will feel this one all over. It will work your upper back, lower back, traps, biceps, and abs. Of course, all the walks will increase lower body strength.
Stone Load and Carry-You probably don't have strongman stones and don't have the means to make them. What you do probably have is an old broken bar that has one of the sleeves detached. This may be hard to imagine so try to follow me. Set the broken sleeve on its end. Load bumper plates up until you are satisfied with the load. Put a solid collar on the end to keep all the weights in place. Now pick it up and walk. This can be excruciating.
Implements You Can Easily Find
Items in the category are things you might not readily have but you can easily find for free. Or you may have to go deep into storage to find them.
Cooler Pushes-I believe that I invented these. After a game this year, we brought back a load of Pepsi’s in a large cooler. We arrived home late so we put the cooler by the door. On Monday morning I tried to move them into my office. Loaded with water and drinks it was very hard to move. I had to get low and drive to get it to my office. When I got finished the light bulb went off. Every school I have been to has old coolers lying around with broken handles and/or holes. We had 3. So we loaded them up and pushed them. It is very similar to the Prowler Sled but for free. Because the cooler is so low to the ground, you have to stay really low. It simulates the start in sprints and driving off the ball for offensive and defensive lineman. We call it the goal line drill. Of course if you have a sled you can add weight to and drive, by all means use it.
Tug-of-War-This one is easy. The hard part is finding a good rope. These ropes are invaluable because there are many things you can do with them. For Tug-of-War it is best to do one-on-one competitions but you can also do team competitions.
Cooler Pulls-This is a variation of the cooler push. We attach our rope to the cooler, sit and pull hand over hand. This really works the upper back, grip, and biceps. The trick here is to find a way to attach the rope where you do not have to use a handle because it will most certainly pull the handle right off.
Cooler Push/Pull-This is one event that we time every week. We start with pulling the cooler the length of the weight room. We then immediately get up and push the cooler back to the starting point. You wouldn’t believe the competition that this builds. Not to mention that every single muscle in your body gets exhausted.
Medicine Ball Throws-For this exercise, just throw any size medicine ball. You can do one throw for distance, multiple throws for distance, throwing the length of the field for time, or just use your imagination. You can also try and throw over the field goal posts from varying distances.
Medicine Ball Wrestling-This event is simple. Get a large medicine ball and have two athletes try and wrestle it away from each other. This will work the arms, grip, and back in addition to teaching leverage and balance.
Implements A Little Harder To Get
This category involves things a little harder to get. Mainly I am speaking of tractor tires. But all you really have to do is search around and somebody will give them to you for free. They have to pay to get rid of the old tires so they will be more than willing to give them up.
Tire Flips-This is probably the King of Strongman training. There are multiple variations you can use. I have done relay flips, multiple flips for time, explosive flips, etc. You can pretty much do anything you want to do. This most closely simulates the hip drive that all offensive and defensive linemen need to compete.
Tire Fights-Turn your big tractor tire on one end. Have two athletes on opposite sides of the tire. They push the tire back and forth until the tire hits the ground. This movement forces them to absorb force and reverse the tire in an explosive manner. This is also a total body effort similar to a Jerk and gets very competitive.
Ideas I Haven’t Tried
There are multiple things you can come up with that go beyond the scope of this article. Sand bag training has become quite popular and you can do sand bag carries, squats, cleans, overhead squats, throws, and heavy loads (onto a truck bed or high plyometric box). I read an article the other day from a strength coach who loads a bunch of weights, heavy dummies, and anything else he can find into the end zone. The athlete’s job is to move all the “stuff” from one side of the end zone to the other. Every week he adds more “stuff”.
You can see that by just using your imagination and some ingenuity, you can come up with an endless arrangement to help train your athletes. You will be hard pressed to find a method of training that fosters the excitement and effort of strongman training.
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Training the Squat
For years I have been a dedicated advocate of box squatting. My own personal experience with the box squat really cemented my philosophy and it has worked well with all of my athletes. I have refined my view on the box squat, however. We used to only parallel box squat much like what Westside Barbell does or used to do. We used a wide stance and a box that put us right at or slightly above parallel. Over the last two years we moved to a low box and took a more moderate stance. The results have been phenomenal. Our standard box is 12 inches high and we require our athletes to sit and pause while remaining tight and then explode up as fast as possible. Only a few of our athletes need a different height box. 12 inches seems to work for most. What we ended up getting was all of our athletes squatting way below parallel on a regular basis. We also continue to break up the eccentric/concentric chain thus allowing us to increase starting strength. Some key points...
1. Always "land soft" on the box. I shouldn't see any fat jiggle when you sit.
2. Don't rock back when you are on the box. Just sit, pause, and get up.
3. Even though we are using a moderate stance, we still start the squat by breaking the hips and not the knees.
4. Have good spots at all times. Dumping a box squat will ruin your bar. We always say that nobody should miss and if you do, the bar should never touch anything. Spotting is key!
5. You must pause completely on the box in order to get the benefits. I can't emphasize this enough. I said pause not relax!
Another advantage of the low box squat is that you can use about 15% lower weights than you would for a free squat. Our experience is that a 1RM low box squat is about 10-16% lower than a 1RM free squat. The discrepency is caused by the length of pause and depth of squat. The 12inch box is much lower for some than others so it represents a much tougher exercise. The advantages are still the same.
To emphasize this point, let me show you how one of our athletes progressed on the squat this year. He squatted 505 this summer so the most weight he used in our program was 430. That represents 85% of his 1RM on the free squat. When we tested, he squatted 565. We have others that have similar results. The guys who get the worst results are the guys who try and cheat the pause. If you cheat the pause, you won't be happy come max time!
One word of warning...I do not believe that you should rely solely on the box squat as your major means for squatting. I have done this in the past and I feel like it led to a reduction in reactive strength. In addition to our box squat, we do full front squats, overhead squats, full cleans, one leg squats, and lunges all during our cycles.
1. Always "land soft" on the box. I shouldn't see any fat jiggle when you sit.
2. Don't rock back when you are on the box. Just sit, pause, and get up.
3. Even though we are using a moderate stance, we still start the squat by breaking the hips and not the knees.
4. Have good spots at all times. Dumping a box squat will ruin your bar. We always say that nobody should miss and if you do, the bar should never touch anything. Spotting is key!
5. You must pause completely on the box in order to get the benefits. I can't emphasize this enough. I said pause not relax!
Another advantage of the low box squat is that you can use about 15% lower weights than you would for a free squat. Our experience is that a 1RM low box squat is about 10-16% lower than a 1RM free squat. The discrepency is caused by the length of pause and depth of squat. The 12inch box is much lower for some than others so it represents a much tougher exercise. The advantages are still the same.
To emphasize this point, let me show you how one of our athletes progressed on the squat this year. He squatted 505 this summer so the most weight he used in our program was 430. That represents 85% of his 1RM on the free squat. When we tested, he squatted 565. We have others that have similar results. The guys who get the worst results are the guys who try and cheat the pause. If you cheat the pause, you won't be happy come max time!
One word of warning...I do not believe that you should rely solely on the box squat as your major means for squatting. I have done this in the past and I feel like it led to a reduction in reactive strength. In addition to our box squat, we do full front squats, overhead squats, full cleans, one leg squats, and lunges all during our cycles.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Training the Olympic Lifts
Until recently we followed a pretty standard approach to training the clean and snatch. I love 3 week waves with a 4th deload. It has been my experience that training results start to dimish after 4 weeks so we take a step back before that happens. So we have always started with working up to something like 79% for 2 sets of 4 the first week, 3 sets of 3 with 85% the 2nd week, and 4 sets of 1-2 with 91% the 3rd week. But I got sick and tired of seeing the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th rep looking horrible because of fatigue. There is a time and place for training under fatigue but not with the clean and snatch. We do the clean and snatch to be explosive and you can't be explosive after 2 or 3 reps. So what we did was change all our reps to singles. I'm sure that I'm not the first person to do this so I'm not claiming to be a brainiac. We switched to 4 sets of 2 the 1st week, 9 sets of 1 the second week, and 5-6 sets of 1 the 3rd week. I feel like this allows for more quality reps which is what we are always after. Our rest between sets is always around 45-60 seconds so it is comparable somewhat to conditioning for football although this is not our intent. Our intent is quality explosive reps.
Introduction
My name is Jay Floyd and I am the co-founder along with Clay Livingston of the Georgia Strength Coaches Association. I am going to start keeping a blog with a few ideas and notes from me and maybe some other strength coaches to help spread some knowledge around. First a little background on me. I have a BS in Exercise Science and a Masters in PE. I am a certified USAW Club Coach or whatever it is they call it now. I competed in powerlifting from 2002-2006 and totaled elite in the 275's in the American Powerlifting Federation. My best lifts were an 845 squat, 535 bench, 640 deadlift, and 2000 total. I made it into the Powerlifting USA top 100 in total and squat in the 308 division and into the top 39 and 50 in the squat and total respectively in the 275 class. I have also been a high school strength and conditioning coach and offensive line coach for 7 years. I feel like I have a unique perspective having competed in powerlifting yet believing in the Olympic Lifts. I still use many Westside principles in our training even though we base our program on the explosive lifts. As far as my family goes, I am married with two sets of twins, both being boys and girls. My first set were born on Dec 22nd 2008 and my second set were born on Dec 20th 2010. I like to brag that I am the only person in the history of the world to have squatted 800lbs, fathered 2 sets of fraternal twins, and caught a foul ball at a Braves game. I hope this blog can be useful for someone and in turn I can keep on stealing knowledge from other people in the industry.
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