February has been a HUGE month at SOAR Fitness for myself and a number of my clients. Here are just a few of the highlights of what has been happening.
1. Olentangy Boys Lacrosse has been going very strong since the 1st of the year. Next week will be their last week of preparation and I wish them luck with their upcoming season. Also, if you need some mulch for spring yard work, I hear they are the people to see!
2. Last Wednesday, I was lucky enough to attend National Signing Day at Olentangy High School. My long time client, Andrew Horstman, signed to play football with the Air Force Academy. In addition to that, Austin Schmidt signed to play football with Illinois and two of my female basketball clients, Gina Miccinilli and Katie Heath signed with Heidleberg and Otterbein.
3. On Tuesday, I attended the National Football Foundation Scholar Athlete Awards Ceremony for the Columbus Chapter. My long time client, Jay Grote, was recognized as one of the finalists. It was great to be in the same room with many former and current Buckeye legends as well as numerous scholar athletes. Jay is a kid who has worked his ass off for 5 years and he deserves every bit of recognition he has received.
4. My longest standing trainer Ricky Crawford will be attending the NFL Regional Combine at Cleveland Browns facility this coming Sunday. Good luck to him! This also signals the beginning of my combine season so my blogging will be few and far between for the next month.
5. I just got word that SOAR Fitness will be featured on the local Channel 6 show - Out N About Columbus. I will have more information on that next week. Time for some of my clients and myself to get TV ready.
6. The end of training for most spring sports athletes will be February 24th. As always, I encourage all athletes to get their in - season lifting in to maintain the strength and power they built over the winter. More importantly, keeping up with strength and mobility work will go a long way towards keeping you healthy during the season. As for my wrestlers and basketball players, its time time to start building strength in the spring. Don't wait until the fall to start preparing for next season!
Combine prep for high school football players will also begin in March. Call 614-306-9364 for more information.
Thursday, February 14, 2013
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
January Acceleration Program
The week of January 7th started a new jump and acceleration program for all of my athletes that play a spring a sport. I felt that it was time to shake things up from our normal flow of plyometric and speed and agility training. This new system of plyometric and speed training is modified version of the Xtreme Jumpsole program that myself and my business partner used religiously in the early years of my business. I credit that program for getting me the fastest I have ever been in all directions during my years of semi - pro football. However, years of research brought me to the realization that the original program had a few flaws:
1. It had an extreme amount of volume and would take too long in my current training schedule
2. It did not have progressions that were appropriate for beginner and intermediate level athletes.
3. There was not enough rest between sets of very intense jumping exercises.
4. Jumpsoles really were not necessary.
After a few weeks of tinkering and testing the program on myself, I was confident that I had a program that would address some of the concepts that most of my athletes really needed to work on. Here are some highlights of what the program entails:
1. 3 levels, 2 different workouts - Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced. This allows us to prescribe the right plyometric progressions for the right levels of athletes. There is also 1 day dedicated to linear plyometrics and acceleration and 1 day dedicated to lateral plyometrics and acceleration.
2. Our Intermediate and Advanced clients would be introduced to transitional plyometrics. These are a combination of very quick hops and explosive tuck jumps. I felt that a lot of our plyometric exercises had gone stale and this was a great way to shake things up. Plus I noticed that a lot of my athletes were not very explosive when asked to jump after some kind of athletic movement.
3. Acceleration -After watching my athletes sprint and push sleds for the last few weeks, I knew that we needed some specific technique work on sprinting and accelerating out of different positions. A lot of my athletes were making one or more of the following errors when sprinting: not picking feet up high enough, poor arm mechanics, not putting enough force into the ground and accelerating at a bad angle. After the plyometric training, the main focus become acceleration drills. On the linear day, the athletes perform drills such as high knees and butt kicks for 5 yards then accelerate into a 10 yard sprint. On the later day, athletes transition from shuffles and crossovers into sprints.
Week 1 flowed very well. The progressions of plyometrics in all 3 levels timed up well so that all athletes were ready for the acceleration portion at the same time. However, there was one aspect of the training that I was not satisfied with at the end of the week. Even though the majority of athletes were doing a great job on the high knees and other form drills, they were not changing their angle of force production when it came time to accelerate. Basically, they were staying in high knees (vertical shin) instead of punching their knees forward and driving back into the ground (shin angled).
Here is a drill that I came up to help my athletes learn the angle of force production that I am looking for when they accelerate. At the start, it might look like something out of a Jane Fonda video, but oh well, it grooves a good pattern if they do it right.
As always, our athletes hit the weights after the speed and plyo portion of the workout.
1. It had an extreme amount of volume and would take too long in my current training schedule
2. It did not have progressions that were appropriate for beginner and intermediate level athletes.
3. There was not enough rest between sets of very intense jumping exercises.
4. Jumpsoles really were not necessary.
After a few weeks of tinkering and testing the program on myself, I was confident that I had a program that would address some of the concepts that most of my athletes really needed to work on. Here are some highlights of what the program entails:
1. 3 levels, 2 different workouts - Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced. This allows us to prescribe the right plyometric progressions for the right levels of athletes. There is also 1 day dedicated to linear plyometrics and acceleration and 1 day dedicated to lateral plyometrics and acceleration.
2. Our Intermediate and Advanced clients would be introduced to transitional plyometrics. These are a combination of very quick hops and explosive tuck jumps. I felt that a lot of our plyometric exercises had gone stale and this was a great way to shake things up. Plus I noticed that a lot of my athletes were not very explosive when asked to jump after some kind of athletic movement.
3. Acceleration -After watching my athletes sprint and push sleds for the last few weeks, I knew that we needed some specific technique work on sprinting and accelerating out of different positions. A lot of my athletes were making one or more of the following errors when sprinting: not picking feet up high enough, poor arm mechanics, not putting enough force into the ground and accelerating at a bad angle. After the plyometric training, the main focus become acceleration drills. On the linear day, the athletes perform drills such as high knees and butt kicks for 5 yards then accelerate into a 10 yard sprint. On the later day, athletes transition from shuffles and crossovers into sprints.
Week 1 flowed very well. The progressions of plyometrics in all 3 levels timed up well so that all athletes were ready for the acceleration portion at the same time. However, there was one aspect of the training that I was not satisfied with at the end of the week. Even though the majority of athletes were doing a great job on the high knees and other form drills, they were not changing their angle of force production when it came time to accelerate. Basically, they were staying in high knees (vertical shin) instead of punching their knees forward and driving back into the ground (shin angled).
Here is a drill that I came up to help my athletes learn the angle of force production that I am looking for when they accelerate. At the start, it might look like something out of a Jane Fonda video, but oh well, it grooves a good pattern if they do it right.
As always, our athletes hit the weights after the speed and plyo portion of the workout.
Thursday, December 13, 2012
What's Up for 2013 at Soar
I can't believe 2012 is coming to a close. It has been the best year yet at Soar Fitness I have more new clients than I ever dreamed of and my long term clients are moving on to play college sports on scholarship. Unrelated to Soar - I was lucky enough to marry my tremendous wife in 2012 and that has been nothing other than a blessing.......for me at least. But how are we going to make 2013 even better? Well......that process has already begun.
I have said before that the best piece of advice I ever received was to never be satisfied that you are doing the best job possible. With that in mind, I am constantly learning new ways to provide the BEST service possible to all of my clients.
Recently, I purchased a video seminar - Strength in Motion. It featured three of top names in Strength and Conditioning - Charlie Weingroff, Patrick Ward and Joel Jamieson. I was able to take valuable information from all three of them and it will shape how our training at Soar is designed in 2013. I am going to summarize what I learned in layman's terms to give you an idea of what my clients will expect.
1. Charlie Weingroff is my go to guy for information related to blending physical therapy with strength and conditioning. Since I see tons of injured athletes per year, it is a no brainer for me to look to him for the latest in rehab and training. I have some of his other products, so I had already heard a lot of what he presented in Strength in Motion. However, I took one very major piece of information - The Functional Movement Screen is a must if you are training anyone! I have used FMS for years and a lot of my long term clients have already been screened by me. However, I somehow got a away from it just like you get away from flossing your teeth a few times per week. I just simply decided I didn't have enough time to do it - and that is BS! All it took was Charlie to say, "If you are not using FMS, you are on the B team."
That's all I needed to hear! The FMS is simply a screen that gives a trainer an idea of what is appropriate for each individual client and what is not. It ensures that you will not hurt a client by putting them in a position that their body is not ready to be in. This is exactly what is wrong with many school lifting programs. Many kids are asked to perform exercises such as deadlifts but do not possess the functional movement to do the exercise correctly. The result is adding strength to dysfunction which ultimately leads to injury. All new clients at Soar are given the FMS on their first day now.
If you train people and have not listened to Charlie before, I highly recommend it.
2. Patrick Ward and Joel Jamieson both spoke in different ways about how to manage your training programs in terms of how the stress of training affects them. Overtraining is something that I have always been very aware of and this seminar reiterated to me that I am on the right track. The overlying theme of their presentations was that everything (sport practice, school, training, games, ect) an athlete does during the course of a week takes a mental and physical toll on their bodies. It is completely unrealistic to expect any athlete to train at 100% intensity day in and day out on a weekly and monthly basis. Volume and intensity must be adjusted, even on the fly and recovery must be built in to the training model.
One topic that was completely new to me was Heart Rate Variability - HRV. I learned that HRV is the biggest indicator of if an athlete is ready to train at a high intensity or not. Joel Jamieson has a product that measures HRV and I will be purchasing that very soon. I will begin to implement HRV testing before workouts for a variety of my athletes - especially when we are in pre-season conditioning.
Remember, this is just a summary of what I learned from the seminar. If you are new to training seminars and these presenters, you will learn a ton. I guarantee that if you are looking to improve the quality of training you provide to your athletes and clients, you will not be disappointed.
I have said before that the best piece of advice I ever received was to never be satisfied that you are doing the best job possible. With that in mind, I am constantly learning new ways to provide the BEST service possible to all of my clients.
Recently, I purchased a video seminar - Strength in Motion. It featured three of top names in Strength and Conditioning - Charlie Weingroff, Patrick Ward and Joel Jamieson. I was able to take valuable information from all three of them and it will shape how our training at Soar is designed in 2013. I am going to summarize what I learned in layman's terms to give you an idea of what my clients will expect.
1. Charlie Weingroff is my go to guy for information related to blending physical therapy with strength and conditioning. Since I see tons of injured athletes per year, it is a no brainer for me to look to him for the latest in rehab and training. I have some of his other products, so I had already heard a lot of what he presented in Strength in Motion. However, I took one very major piece of information - The Functional Movement Screen is a must if you are training anyone! I have used FMS for years and a lot of my long term clients have already been screened by me. However, I somehow got a away from it just like you get away from flossing your teeth a few times per week. I just simply decided I didn't have enough time to do it - and that is BS! All it took was Charlie to say, "If you are not using FMS, you are on the B team."
That's all I needed to hear! The FMS is simply a screen that gives a trainer an idea of what is appropriate for each individual client and what is not. It ensures that you will not hurt a client by putting them in a position that their body is not ready to be in. This is exactly what is wrong with many school lifting programs. Many kids are asked to perform exercises such as deadlifts but do not possess the functional movement to do the exercise correctly. The result is adding strength to dysfunction which ultimately leads to injury. All new clients at Soar are given the FMS on their first day now.
If you train people and have not listened to Charlie before, I highly recommend it.
2. Patrick Ward and Joel Jamieson both spoke in different ways about how to manage your training programs in terms of how the stress of training affects them. Overtraining is something that I have always been very aware of and this seminar reiterated to me that I am on the right track. The overlying theme of their presentations was that everything (sport practice, school, training, games, ect) an athlete does during the course of a week takes a mental and physical toll on their bodies. It is completely unrealistic to expect any athlete to train at 100% intensity day in and day out on a weekly and monthly basis. Volume and intensity must be adjusted, even on the fly and recovery must be built in to the training model.
One topic that was completely new to me was Heart Rate Variability - HRV. I learned that HRV is the biggest indicator of if an athlete is ready to train at a high intensity or not. Joel Jamieson has a product that measures HRV and I will be purchasing that very soon. I will begin to implement HRV testing before workouts for a variety of my athletes - especially when we are in pre-season conditioning.
Remember, this is just a summary of what I learned from the seminar. If you are new to training seminars and these presenters, you will learn a ton. I guarantee that if you are looking to improve the quality of training you provide to your athletes and clients, you will not be disappointed.
Friday, November 30, 2012
Preparation for Winter Football Training
Before we get into the videos, I want to congratulate three of my clients - Jason Grote, Andrew Horstman and Austin Schmidt. All three of them received All - Ohio honors this week. Jason and Andrew have been clients of mine since they were in junior high and it is great to see that all the years of hard work had paid off for them. FYI - Jason was a slow, flat - footed, knee brace wearing kid at one time. He made 2nd Team All Ohio at Guard - at a 195lbs! Andrew made 2nd Team All- Ohio at Punter and is also one of the best athletes to ever walk through the doors of my gym. He has a chance to punt or play a variety of other positions at the college level. Austin has only been at Soar for 1 year and made outstanding progress this spring. He is heading to Illinois on full scholarship. Congrats again to all three guys.
So what are we doing right now to get our football players ready for intense winter training? Boring old GPP - building a base. Remember, these guys just came out of 4 months of collisions. The last thing they need one week into training is a heavy bar on their back or tons of mindless agility training. Here are some videos our GPP
.
After 2 - 4 weeks of GPP - its time to move on to getting jacked up and fast!
So what are we doing right now to get our football players ready for intense winter training? Boring old GPP - building a base. Remember, these guys just came out of 4 months of collisions. The last thing they need one week into training is a heavy bar on their back or tons of mindless agility training. Here are some videos our GPP
.
After 2 - 4 weeks of GPP - its time to move on to getting jacked up and fast!
Thursday, November 1, 2012
Assessing Proper Squat Depth
Squatting is without question one of the best ways to develop lower body strength in athletes and the general fitness population. Its benefits are almost unlimited. Need to burn fat - squat. Need to jump higher - squat. Need to run fast - squat. Need bigger legs - squat. All of my athletes and adult clients squat. They front squat, back squat, KB golbet squat, high rep squat, max effort squat and dynamic squat. It all depends on who they are, what part of their off- season they are in and what their goals are.
One often overlooked or taken for granted part of squatting is the depth. Different strength coaches and trainers have different opinions on what the depth of a squat should be. There are those people who believe that Ass to Grass Squatting (femurs below parallel) is the only way to go.
This kind of squat is accepted in some circles. Not in my circle. Ever. Yes she is low - but in my opinion the knees are too far forward and her back in flexion. Keep in mind that is the bar only.
There are others who only believe in box squats and there are those who think that squatting to a box is for pussies. To me, it is finding the best depth of squat to for each individual client. To ensure proper depth of squats at Soar, we use various heights of boxes . Plus I have found it is way easier to get someone to sit back in their squat confidently when there is a box behind them.
My goal is to always to get my clients to get as strong as they can to the lowest depth that is appropriate for them. Keep in mind that I am not training power lifters. Whether or not their squat will qualify in a meet is irrelevant to me. Making sure they are at their strongest and healthiest to play their sport is my only concern.
The video below shows what I look for when determining the box height for a new client.
Remember - the purpose of the video was finding the proper depth. Breathing, sitting back, keeping the chest up and pushing the knees out are techniques that we are constantly working on as well.
One often overlooked or taken for granted part of squatting is the depth. Different strength coaches and trainers have different opinions on what the depth of a squat should be. There are those people who believe that Ass to Grass Squatting (femurs below parallel) is the only way to go.
This kind of squat is accepted in some circles. Not in my circle. Ever. Yes she is low - but in my opinion the knees are too far forward and her back in flexion. Keep in mind that is the bar only.
My goal is to always to get my clients to get as strong as they can to the lowest depth that is appropriate for them. Keep in mind that I am not training power lifters. Whether or not their squat will qualify in a meet is irrelevant to me. Making sure they are at their strongest and healthiest to play their sport is my only concern.
The video below shows what I look for when determining the box height for a new client.
Remember - the purpose of the video was finding the proper depth. Breathing, sitting back, keeping the chest up and pushing the knees out are techniques that we are constantly working on as well.
Thursday, October 18, 2012
Training the Athlete that Trains at School Revisited
As a strength coach in the private sector, the majority of my clients are required to train with their teams at school to some degree. This is something I have dealt with for 10 years and I wrote a blog about it a few years back.
Click here to read.
Like any other solid strength coach, my program has evolved since I last wrote that. Even though there is nothing in the old article that I don't do, there are many other things I now do more of and some things I do less of. I have also found that more and more athletes other than football players are required to lift at school. As a result, I am seeing even more eyebrow raising workouts being put into play and as a result I have gotten more creative with my program design.
Just like wrote before, I must know what my athletes are doing on each day at school. Sprinting? Long distance running? P90X? Insanity? Benching? Squatting? I need to know all of the particulars and I usually wait to make a program until the athlete fully informs me of their weekly training regimen. Once I have all the information I need, I make a program that usually contains exercises from the categories listed below.
1. Sled training. We push sleds and drag them in all imaginable directions. For one, I know it is not being done at school. For two, it eliminates eccentric stress so my athletes will not be sore for their school workouts.
2. Bent leg hip extension. Google that term and you will see many of the top coaches talking about how that movement directly influences speed. However, very few coaches have their athletes perform bent leg hip extension exercises. Various forms of bent leg bridges and extensions are performed at Soar on a weekly basis.
3. Shoulder and Hip Prehab movements. Again, very little of this is done at school so they are an easy add in to our program at Soar.
4. Horizontal pulling - In my experience, the push to pull ratio of my athletes that lift at school is at least 2 to 1. This means that twice the amount of pressing is being done in comparison to pulling. Usually they mix in Lat Pull Downs and Chin ups, so I add lots of rowing and suspended horizontal pull ups to offset all the benching.
5. Submaximal Work on the Big Lifts - This has become a staple for me. So you say you can squat 315 for 3 at school? Show me 185. 98% of the time, their technique is mediocre at best. Since their already doing max effort work at school (with incorrect load), the submaximal lifting just serves as technique practice. You can squat and dead lift a few times a week if you do it correctly!
6. Warming Up - This one is laughable. It shocks me how many teams do not go through a proper dynamic warmup before their workouts at school. Since most of my high school clients have terrible mobility and flexibility, its a no brainer to have multiple warm- ups in place.
7. Lateral Plyometrics - I wrote a blog on this topic a few weeks ago. Lateral plyometrics are often neglected and very necessary for the any team sport athlete. Like anything else, volume and progression is key.
I will acknowledge that supervising a weight room full of 40 high school kids of various sizes and strengths is a daunting task. Even the best strength coach in the world would struggle to give individual attention to every kid in the program. But, the reality is that most high school weight rooms are supervised by the sport coaches. I give credit to them for trying to implement a program, but if quality work is not being performed - are the kids really getting stronger? Or are they adding strength to dysfunctional movement?
Click here to read.
Like any other solid strength coach, my program has evolved since I last wrote that. Even though there is nothing in the old article that I don't do, there are many other things I now do more of and some things I do less of. I have also found that more and more athletes other than football players are required to lift at school. As a result, I am seeing even more eyebrow raising workouts being put into play and as a result I have gotten more creative with my program design.
Just like wrote before, I must know what my athletes are doing on each day at school. Sprinting? Long distance running? P90X? Insanity? Benching? Squatting? I need to know all of the particulars and I usually wait to make a program until the athlete fully informs me of their weekly training regimen. Once I have all the information I need, I make a program that usually contains exercises from the categories listed below.
1. Sled training. We push sleds and drag them in all imaginable directions. For one, I know it is not being done at school. For two, it eliminates eccentric stress so my athletes will not be sore for their school workouts.
2. Bent leg hip extension. Google that term and you will see many of the top coaches talking about how that movement directly influences speed. However, very few coaches have their athletes perform bent leg hip extension exercises. Various forms of bent leg bridges and extensions are performed at Soar on a weekly basis.
3. Shoulder and Hip Prehab movements. Again, very little of this is done at school so they are an easy add in to our program at Soar.
4. Horizontal pulling - In my experience, the push to pull ratio of my athletes that lift at school is at least 2 to 1. This means that twice the amount of pressing is being done in comparison to pulling. Usually they mix in Lat Pull Downs and Chin ups, so I add lots of rowing and suspended horizontal pull ups to offset all the benching.
5. Submaximal Work on the Big Lifts - This has become a staple for me. So you say you can squat 315 for 3 at school? Show me 185. 98% of the time, their technique is mediocre at best. Since their already doing max effort work at school (with incorrect load), the submaximal lifting just serves as technique practice. You can squat and dead lift a few times a week if you do it correctly!
6. Warming Up - This one is laughable. It shocks me how many teams do not go through a proper dynamic warmup before their workouts at school. Since most of my high school clients have terrible mobility and flexibility, its a no brainer to have multiple warm- ups in place.
7. Lateral Plyometrics - I wrote a blog on this topic a few weeks ago. Lateral plyometrics are often neglected and very necessary for the any team sport athlete. Like anything else, volume and progression is key.
I will acknowledge that supervising a weight room full of 40 high school kids of various sizes and strengths is a daunting task. Even the best strength coach in the world would struggle to give individual attention to every kid in the program. But, the reality is that most high school weight rooms are supervised by the sport coaches. I give credit to them for trying to implement a program, but if quality work is not being performed - are the kids really getting stronger? Or are they adding strength to dysfunctional movement?
Friday, October 5, 2012
Introducing Lateral Movements to New Clients
During any training week, most of our clients will participate in some form of lateral movement training at least once. Our sessions are approximately 90 minutes in length and the way the sessions break down goes like this:
10 minutes - foam rolling, static stretching
15 minutes - Dynamic Warm up
15 minutes - Early in week - Linear/Vertical plyometrics, Linear speed work
Later in week - agility ladder drills, lateral plyometrics, lateral movement training
50 minutes - strength and power work
This is just a template we follow for our average 12 - 15 year old client that comes to the gym 2x per week. For our more advanced athletes that train 3 - 4x per week, their regimen might be different depending on their training cycle.
I feel that lateral movement training is one of the most neglected aspects of strength and conditioning by a lot of coaches. As you can see by the template above, we are not spending hours running around cones for the sake of calling it SAQ, Performance Training or whatever BS term is popular to use now. We are giving kids the right dose of what they need to be well - rounded healthy, strong and fast athletes. At Soar, we have a progression of lateral plyometrics that we use to improve lateral explosiveness and deceleration. Our lateral movements (agility) from week to week could focus on resisted movements, reaction, deceleration or a combination of all. Typically a lateral day will consist of a few sets of lateral plyos and then 8 - 12 reps of agility work with each rep being 3 - 8 seconds long.
What about our new clients? Do we just throw them into a class and expect them to keep up in some of our more advanced movement drills? Absolutely not. We make sure that the new athlete is first assessed and then prepped with some foundational lateral drills.
This first video is a clip of our two most basic lateral single leg hops.
This next video shows our basic progression for teaching lateral deceleration.
If you are training young athletes as a coach of a team or in the private sector, make sure you are introducing them to all the necessary concepts that will make them a well rounded athlete. The key is using the right progressions and applying the right dose. Remember, less is usually more! Nobody needs 30 minutes of agility ladder training.
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