Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Strength Training for Speed and Power Athletes Cont.

Strength Training for Speed Athletes continued from the other day.

Rule #3: Stronger = Faster

Seems obvious right?

As you already know, greater speeds are determined, in large part, by an athlete's ability to apply greater amounts of force to the ground with each stride.

It makes sense that if an athlete wants to move faster, they must increase their physical strength.

At the same time, it is also dependent on increasing physical strength without significant increases in bodyweight.

Otherwise those gains in strength are neutralized by the fact that the athlete now has to carry that extra mass around with her.

The bottom line is this:

If you want your players to become faster they must lift in a way that maximizes strength gains without gaining a lot of extra mass.

You should have seen the other coaches when we maxed out in the weight room and I had a 17-year-old girl squat a legitimate 225 pounds.

By legit I mean she stayed back on her heels, kept her back flat and squatted BEYOND PARALLEL.

Anything else isn't a squat.

OK the truth is I was surprised too. But that is a true story.

By lifting this way, players will recruit and activate more motor units within the muscle with each rep. This develops greater degrees of applicable strength and power, making it much easier for players to move and control their bodies while competing.

Weight training isn't as complicated as it is made out to be. Simply follow the same teaching protocols, as far as technique and progressions that you do for every other speed training skill.

If you want to see exactly how we set up a strength-training program, the core lifts that we use and the specific rules we follow for creating huge gains in single rep max lifts in no time, you need to get your own copy of Complete Speed Training now...

Sunday, April 27, 2008

Strength Training for Athletes

So, what are the rules of the weight room as it relates to speed athletes?

*****************
Rule #1: Learn right....Start light

I know that it is very difficult, especially for boys, to go into the
weight room and put anything less than 45-pound plates on the bar.

That's why I have a motto that I have to repeat over and over and
over again: No Egos in the Weight room.

Most players' strength training technique is so bad in the weight room that they are rarely
more than a lapse in focus away from a career ending injury.

I can't stress how important it is, especially with football players brand new to weight training, that they start with very light weights and master the technique of the lift first.

At the beginning, complete forget about 'heavy' or 'light' and just go for good form. With your 'veteran' lifters, back them up and reteach them how to lift with perfect form.

As you'll see in a minute, effective weight training for sports is dependent on a player's ability to get the most out of the precious few reps they will be doing. So if their form is crap, then that's just what their workouts will be.

In this instance, I apply the 'graduation' game with their weights. I allow them to gradually increase the number of pounds on the bar once they prove to me that they can do it with good form.

I suggest you do the same. Of course, I'm assuming that you have learned how to teach, correct, and identify perfect form with the fundamental lifts.

And no, your experience as a high school or college athlete 15+ years
ago does not qualify you.

If you'd be 100% comfortable correcting and instructing your football team
in front of me, then you qualify.


*******************
Rule #2: Speed athletes are not bodybuilders

With very few exceptions, it isn't going to help an athlete's speed if
they are in the weight room doing lifts that are going to add useless
bulk to their bodies.

Players should only be doing multi-joint movements that address multiple muscle groups at once and can have a positive impact on athletic performance.

For example, there are certain core lifts that we use in all of our strength
training programs.

None of them involve a machine.

There are supplemental exercises that can be added to these core lifts, step-ups for example, but they must follow the multi-joint movement
philosophy.

Now, here are some popular weight room exercises that are great for getting players to look good at the beach, but have no athletic value:

Bicep curls
Hamstring curls
Leg extensions
Chest flies
Tricep extensions
Most machine exercises

On top of that, Smith Machine squats and leg press are what I consider leg exercises for athletes too lazy to do squats and dead lifts and coaches too lazy to teach them.


If you want to learn how to teach and perform explosive weight training lifts that will make faster athletes go to:

Complete Olympic Lifting

Friday, April 25, 2008

How to Run a 4.2 40 Yard Dash

In the NFL Draft, where potential is prized above all, objective measurements like 40-yard dash times can count as much as stacks of game tapes. Times like East Carolina's Chris Johnson's have a special power because they were taken at the combine, the annual gathering where NFL teams put top college prospects through their paces -- and where 40-yard times are measured indoors with an automated system. (The legendary 4.17-second 40 Deion Sanders ran at Florida State in 1989 was measured by stopwatch.) Jeffrey Foster of National Invitational Camp Inc., the firm that runs the combine, says Mr. Johnson's mark is the fastest at the combine since records have been kept.

Despite being one of the NCAA's active leaders in career all-purpose yardage and the MVP of the Hawaii Bowl, Mr. Johnson knew pro scouts were wary of him because he hadn't played at a powerhouse school. He figured his only chance to crack the draft's upper echelon was to run a scorching 40. "If I had run a 4.30, I would have been upset," he says. It all comes down to speed training.

Only days after his college career ended, Mr. Johnson packed his bags to spend eight weeks with NFL speed guru Tom Shaw, who runs an independent combine-preparation camp near Orlando, Fla. Mr. Shaw's clinics consist of two-a-day training sessions and cost about $750 a week, plus room and board. He has trained 94 first-round NFL picks, and in 2007, his trainees ran four of the top five 40 times at the combine.

Click here for the rest of the story>>

Thursday, April 24, 2008

Strength Training for Speed and Power Athletes



Today I'm going to talk to you about the importance of strength training.

For some reason, the majority of programs simply do not consider this important enough to make it a regular part of their preseason and in season training.

The only sport that I see using weight training with any regularity is American football and most of the time they're not doing it right.

It's true.

For some reason, in the United States, we have adopted a 'bodybuilder' mentality when it comes to strength training for sport.

Let me give you another example:

I used to coach at a high school. Whenever I'd be in the weight room with my athletes, I would obviously watch all the athletes lift.

OK, the only other athletes in the weight room besides mine were the football team. Literally no other team in the school used the weight room.

Shameful, but not surprising.

Anyway, it became a running joke with my athletes because whenever we'd be in the weight room, the football players would be doing some crazy stuff!

What do I mean?

I can count the number of times on one hand that I saw a workout that consisted primarily of leg exercises and contained rep schemes that were less than 8-10 reps.

On top of that, coaches didn't instruct anyone on how to do the lifts correctly (the football team started coming to me for that - and their coaches would just give me dirty looks).

Plus, many of the lifts they did were, well, useless for sports.

Next time I will go into some weight room rules.

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Warm-up Drills and Protocols for Athletes

OK, let's get to the basic principles behind the warm up. But I will warn you - once you read this you have no excuse for using static stretching or a sloppy, unorganized dynamic warm up with your team. Your warm-up should be done before you perform and speed or agility drills.

**************
1. Progress from slow, simple movements to faster, more complex movements.

Think back to my 'cold car' analogy. Your players have to start with movements that aren't going to put muscles in a position to pull or tear because they aren't fully warmed up.

****************
2. A good warm-up will have your players slightly out of breath and lightly sweating.

Anything less than this and they aren't ready to go at full speed. This means that on a speed day, the warmup should take a good 20 minutes.

Remember, our goal is to make your team faster. You can't cheat the warm up and expect your team to achieve their goals.

How you decide those numbers depends, again, on your training goals for that day.

**************
3. Make sure your players do the drills with perfect form every time!

You'd think this was a no-brainer, but in my experience that couldn't be further from the truth. The majority of the time, even in programs that claim to use a dynamic warm-up, the player's technique is so sloppy that it is almost counter-productive.

I'm serious!

In addition to being a great warmup, these drills also work on running mechanics, coordination, and flexibility. If your team just goes through the motions by doing the drills half-assed, then they're only setting themselves up to become injured.

Show your team how to do each drill correctly and get on them when they're not putting in the effort. I've kicked kids out of practice on more than one occasion because they didn't focus on their drills. If that takes too much effort to do correctly, then how can I expect them to properly execute in the workout or the competition?

There is no excuse for telling your athletes to do a certain type of drill if they don't know how to do it right and you can't tell them how to fix any mechanical problems.

I can't emphasize the importance of this fact strongly enough!

******************
4. Don't do the same warm-up every single day.

Your team will quickly get bored doing the same old warmup. That means the drills will be sloppy, they won't be warmed up correctly, and they set themselves up for injury. Variety is one of the keys to getting the most out of your team.

If the warmup gets monotonous, kids will go through the motions. So you should switch up your warm up routines a few times every season so that athletes don't get bored and lazy before practice even starts.

If they're lethargic from a warmup they've been doing every day for the past two months, what do you really expect to get out of them in their speed workout?

My experience tells me not a whole lot.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

I hope this gives you some ideas on how, where and when to modify your warmup. You can't get more out of your players without making this the first issue you address.

If you are looking for more warm-up exercises to go along with your speed training drills you can see more at Warm up Drills for Athletes

Sunday, April 20, 2008

Warm-up for Sports

Many coaches claim to use a dynamic warm-up, but in fact, it's just a series of poorly taught, poorly executed drills that aren't set up with any rhyme or reason. Although better than only using the static stretch warm-up, this is still a terrible way to prepare your team to run as hard and fast as they can.

Here are some of the many benefits to the athletes I train, that I attribute to our implementation of a dynamic warm up:

- Muscle strains and pulls have been almost completely eliminated because entire muscle groups have been activated through various progressive movements.

- More points and better marks are being scored earlier in competitions because the players aren't spending the early part of the game or meet trying to get loose.

- Players are running at faster speeds, making sharper cuts and exploding off the line with ease, again, because they're fully warmed up before they have to start moving at full speed.

- Late-season and post-season productivity has increased significantly. Players aren't getting burnt out at the end of the season because, among other things, they're avoiding the muscular and cellular trauma that comes with forcing cold muscles to move at speeds they aren't ready for.

Here's a quick analogy to prove my point...

When you start your vehicle on a cold morning, what do you do?

You let it warm up for a few minutes before trying to drive it. Otherwise, acceleration is terrible and you risk seriously damaging your engine because oil and other fluids haven't had the chance to heat up parts that make your car run efficiently.

Well, think of your football players like a car.

If you try to get them to run at full speed before they are properly warmed up, their acceleration will be terrible and you risk a serious muscle pull or tears because blood hasn't had a chance to heat up the muscles that allow the athlete to run quickly and efficiently.

Does that make sense?

The most glaring evidence I have in support of a good warmup is the behavior of the athletes that I coach.

They'll come to me from their sports having primarily used static stretching to warm up. If they did do some type of movement based, dynamic warm up, it was sloppy and followed no particular pattern.

After working with me, not only do they run much faster and feel better, but they couldn't imagine warming up any other way! When I go watch their competitions, I see them out there with their teammates using my warm-up!

Listen, the warm up doesn't have to be complicated. It just has to follow a few basic premises.

But before I list them I will say this...

In my experience, if you've been using static stretching at the beginning of practice, you shouldn't just stop cold turkey. Most players have been doing this at the start of every practice, for their entire lives.

It's hardwired into their heads that they need to do it to warmup properly, even though it is not true. Therefore, I don't cut it out completely. Instead, I'll give them 5 minutes to stretch out alone before own before we start our full warm up. This way they feel like they got a 'pre-stretch' and it gives them a chance to see what their tight spots are.

For more sports training information, on audio, go now to:

Sports Training Interviews

Thursday, April 17, 2008

Sports Training - Warm-up Speed Drills

If you really want to make your team faster, the first step you must take concerns the very first thing that they do each day at practice - The Warm Up!

I know it doesn't sound too glorious, but if you don't show your athletes an effective dynamic warm-up, you're asking for some serious problems!

What do I mean?

I still know A LOT of programs that are using static stretching as the primary form of warming up. You know what I'm talking about. Players will jog a lap or two around the field, get together in a circle and do those stretches where you hold one position for 8 or 10 counts.

I know YOU wouldn't use that as your primary method of warming up, but sadly some of your colleagues and competitors still do it.

So let me ask you a couple of questions...

How many sports can you think of that involve, at any point, holding a stretch for 10 seconds in order to be successful?

That's right, none. So is that an effective way to get ready to compete or practice?

In fact, studies show that static stretching can reduce power output by up to 20%. Don't you think that might have a negative effect on the speed and performance of your players?

Here is a quick warm-up presentation:



Complete Speed Training is a great source for speed drills for warming-up and more importantly how all these exercises go together.

Sunday, April 13, 2008

Static stretching impairs sprint performance in collegiate track and field athletes

The purpose of this study was to establish whether the deleterious effects of static stretching (SS) would wash out the performance enhancements obtained from the dynamic warm-up (DW). Eleven males and 11 females, who were athletes of a NCAA Division I track team, performed a DW followed with either a SS or rest (NS) condition. After warm-up was completed, speed training was performed, three 40 m sprints were performed to investigate the effects of the SS condition on sprint performance when preceded by DW. Time for the NS versus the SS group was significantly faster.

The results of this study suggest that performing a static stretching protocol following a dynamic warm-up will inhibit sprint performance in collegiate athletes.

Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 2008, 22(1), 13-9

Winchester JB, Nelson AG, Landin D, Young MA, Schexnayder IC

Click Here for the rest of the study >>

Friday, April 11, 2008

Athletic Speed Formula Seminar

Have you been looking for a speed training seminar that will tell you everything you want to know about developing athletes and making them faster?

If you answered yes, then you must attend Lee Taft's Athletic Speed Formula.

The Athletic Speed Formula is set up to be a tell-all seminar that will give you a proven system to help your athletes succeed. Coach Taft is going to spill the beans about everything he have learned on developing better athletes over the past twenty years.

In the seminar Lee Taft will take you through:
  • The real goal of any program is to set your athletes up for success. I have a proven system that will do just that.
  • How to assess athletes in order to gain an optimal training environment.
  • An efficient warm-up system to prepare athletes for performance and reduce injury potential.
  • How to develop proper landing and foot placements through repeating balance and stability training.
  • How to properly teach, as well as, not over teach deceleration and acceleration.
  • How to correctly teach lateral acceleration and quickness skills.
  • How to teach cutting techniques to instantly improve your athletes' speed and quickness.
  • How to teach jumping and landing skills to protect from injury and achieve an explosive body position.
  • A fool-proof way to evaluate your athletes' agility and movement instinct.
  • How to analyze and beak down faulty sprinting mechanics.
  • Teaching progressions and cues to produce great multi-directional speed athletes.
  • How to trick athletes into proper movement patterns that will be engrained into their motor programs.
  • How athletes strength train at Lee Taft Speed Academy.
  • Believe it or not, much more!

For more information on the seminar and a personal video of Lee Taft letting you all about what's happening at the seminar go to:

Lee Taft Athletic Speed Formula Seminar

Wednesday, April 09, 2008

Nike SPARQ Training Promos

Nike Sparq campaign broke on American Idol and started gaining traction during the NCAA Final Four men's basketball tournament; two new TV spots will debut this week. The current commercials begin with a taunt, a bully haiku, really: "My better is better than your better."

In partnering with Sparq, Nike is selling the weird-looking tools, too, like hurdles and a ladder. A slew of "better"-talkin' Nike pro athletes -- soccer stars Landon Donovan, Hope Solo and Abby Wambach; lacrosse players Kyle Harrison and Ryan Powell; basketballers Kevin Durant, Steve Nash, Brandon Roy and Diana Taurasi; major leaguer Matt Holliday; NFL running back Adrian Peterson -- populate the spots. They're captured at practice, and sometimes in slow motion, using the tools and doing the drills, which do indeed look strange. The weirdest is the parachute, which comes in sizes M, L and XL. ("What size is your parachute?" would seem to be the resulting question.) Apparently, running with it increases resistance for strength and speed training, and allows some kind of unique brain connection to the body that also boosts speed.

Continue to news story >>