The Importance of Grip Strength

Why do our athletes perform weighted carry variations on a weekly basis? Why do we preach strong grip on every exercise? Watch the video to find out.

Hip Mobility

This weeks video blog focuses on the importance of hip mobility. Whether you are a sprinting, squatting or jumping, if your hip mobility stinks, your performance will suffer.

The Importance of Ankle Moblity

There is a reason why we start every session at Soar with ankle mobility drills - the ankle is the last link in the chain between the body and the ground. If you lack ankle mobility, you lack the ability to put force into the ground. Watch the video to listen to me discuss this topic further.

A Look at this Summer's Training

Its been a busy summer as usual at Soar Fitness. Lots of college athletes preparing to go back to school, high school athletes preparing for college camps and junior high athletes working their asses off to get better. More clients means less blogs and newsletters from me - so here are some short videos of what we have been doing this summer. For 3 weeks, we focused on horizontal power with a mix of broad jumps, sled pushes and sprints.

Of course, we are always working on lateral acceleration and deceleration. In this video, we are mixing it up with a tennis ball drill in one of our general strength and conditioning classes.

The 4th of July holiday week always throws a wrench in our college training schedule, so it always a great time to bust out a circuit of non - traditional exercises. In this video, you will see a pro lax player, a variety of college football and lax players and a high school football player getting after it.

Prior to the circuit, we mixed in some acceleration and deceleration work with quick feet plyometrics.


And last but certainly not least - we are always working on power!

5 Things the Average Athlete Program is Lacking

5 Things The Average Athlete Program is Lacking

I have seen hundreds of high school and college lifting programs over the last 10 years.   90 % seem to consist of the usual blend of speed, strength and power exercises.  The same 90% of programs also seem to lack some concepts that I feel are very necessary for the team sport athlete.  Below are 5 things the average athlete  program is lacking.

1. Ankle Mobility

If you lack mobility in the ankle joint, then you are leaving yourself open  to non – contact  knee injuries.  This is exactly why I am not a big fan of the healthy athlete bracing and taping their ankles.  In addition, improving your ankle mobility will make you a better squatter and dead lifter.  At Soar, we start every warm – up with ankle mobilizations over the middle toe, big toe and little toe.   Keep your heel on the ground and push your knee towards the wall.  It is so simple, but very few athletes do it.

2. Lateral Plyometrics

If you play any team sport, you are going to  move in all directions  - not just straight forward.   But, the average high school lifting program consists of only vertical and horizontal power exercises such as broad jumps, box jumps and power cleans.   These are all great exercises, but what about creating power in the frontal plane?   Aside from the benefits to your speed and power on the field, lateral plyometrics will help keep the ankles, knees and hips healthy.  

Here are a few examples of 2 and 1 leg Lateral plyometrics we use at Soar:

-          Lateral quick feet plyos in an agility ladder

-          Lateral bounds

-          Lateral hurdle jump and hops

-          Lateral broad jumps

  

3. Bent Leg Hip Extension Exercises

The glute is the king muscle when it comes to speed, but very few programs utilize exercises that specifically target it.   Glute ham raises and RDL variations are great for the hamstrings, but do not recruit the glutes in the same manner that a lot of bent leg hip extension exercises do.   The best thing about them is all you need is a bench or box to do them.  

Here are a few examples of Bent Leg Hip Extension exercises we use at Soar:

-  Back on Bench  (BOB)  1  and 2 leg hip extensions.     We weight single leg ones with chains and 2 leg ones with a barbell.

-  Forward sled marches

- Half get ups with hip lift

-BOB glute bridges

In addition to the speed benefits you will get from adding these to your program, they will go a long way towards preventing nagging hamstring injuries, back pain and knee pain.   The average high school kid that has knee pain or “glute amnesia” will benefit greatly from a few sets per week of these exercises.   Consult the Bret Contreras, aka “The Glute Guy” for an in depth look at glute training.

4. Weighted carries

A strong athlete has a strong grip  - and weighted carries are some of the best ways to improve your grip strength. Don’t have farmers walking handles?   KB’s DB’s or anything heavy will work.   The key is to mix up the kind of carries that you have your athletes do.  At Soar, we have a “Weighted Carry of the Week”.   We rotate through a variety of carries with heavy handles or KBs.  Here is a list of carries we rotate through:

-Heavy carry  - same weight in each arem

- Offset carry   - load is heavier in one arm

- Suitcase carry  - weight is only in one arm

- Heartbeat carry  - hold KB at chest height and press is out as you walk   - Thanks Dan John!

- Bottoms up carry  - Hold the KB upside down and keep elbow bent at 90.

-Suicide walks  - any of the above carries but changing directions  - like a basketball suicide.

  

5. Rotational Training

The term “functional training” has become a fire starter for many arguments in online forums.   Some trainers have taken it way too far by having their clients do everything with a wobble board.  Then there is the coach who thinks that anything that doesn’t involve a bar is for pussies.   I would say I fall somewhere in between.   This is where diagonal chops come in.  A lot of sports are played in the transverse plane and this is why rotational training is ‘functional” for most team sport athletes.  The problem is that most coaches fail to understand that rotational training is NOT explosive twisting of the lumbar spine.   It is learning how to rotate the hips and upper back while the center of the body stays relatively stable.

A sound rotational training progression begins with learning how to resist rotation.   We start all our athletes with chops in Half Kneeling position where the goal is to brace the core and resist the forces that the cable is putting on them.  We then progress to rotational MB throws and standing chops where the hips and upper back produce the power.   Two sets of 10 reps in each direction 1 – 2 times per week serves as sufficient rotational training in my experience.

Linear Speed Training from 4/15

Early in the training week, most of our movement training is geared towards linear speed development. We use a progression of jumps, technique drills, resisted sprints and unresisted sprints to help our athletes maximize their ability to run faster. We always focus on one, maybe two cues during each session. Last week it was "body angle" and "knee punch". The wall drill we used allowed the athletes to support themselves in the body angle that we are always trying to coach. While they held the position, they "punched" their knees forward and then back into the ground in a piston like motion. That was the goal anyways! As you will see in the video, some do it better than others.


 

After a couple wall drills, it was time to get the kids moving at full speed. I decided to go with a complex of sled pushes and unresisted sprints. The sled push allowed the athlete to perform the same exact motion as the wall drill, but move forward. About 15 seconds later, the goal is to recreate the exact same body angle in a true sprint.

 

Basketball Training Has Started

I am very excited to say that I have had more basketball players  (especially females) get started in my program this spring then in the last 6 years.   As I have stated over and over, if you want to jump higher and improve your speed and quickness, you MUST do more than attend open gyms and play AAU.   The body needs trained, and in a manner in which the right dose of exercises are being applied.

At this point in the season, the vast majority of my basketball clients are attending open gyms or practicing AAU 2 - 3 times per week.  On top of that, they could be playing anywhere from 3 - 6 games per weekend.   I would be doing these clients a major disservice if I ran them through countless ladder and cone drills for the sake of saying  - "We do speed and agility".   I prefer to say that we do some necessary movement training  after our 15 - 20 minute flexibility and mobility routine.   Our movement training focuses on improving acceleration and deceleration mechanics in all planes of movement as well as small doses of vertical and lateral jumping exericses.   The focus is always quality of movement, not quantity of work.   On top of that, if some of the athletes are experiencing knee pain or some other form of pain from overuse, the movement training is the first thing that we take out of the workout.   The lifting portion is then tailored to improve strength in areas that will help alleviate the pain eventually.

The main bulk of spring training for basketball players is the strength portion.   This is where we are improving weaknesses, building lean mass, increasing power and strengthening the foundation.   It is amazing how quickly my female athletes go from not being able to do a good body weight squat to squatting with a 44lb KB.   All it takes is a properly designed program and a tremendous amount of attention to detail.  The athletes that are here now are the ones who are going to be ready for very intense training come late summer and early fall.  This is because they took the time to build their foundation in the spring.

So basketball players, WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR!