Antonio Squillante | Masterclass on Velocity Based Training

a flexible of a tool that is and versatile. You can use it for program design and it gives you a lot of help in that respect because You you can be more in tune with little aspects of, like, you know, am I working on strength? Am I working on power? Am I monitoring for fatigue? It gives a lot of flexibility, but also it's a great assessment because.

When you start using V B T you start implementing that into your I don't wanna say daily routine because I doubt anyone does V B T every single day. It's maybe once or twice a week. But once you start doing that regularly enough to have a track record then it becomes uh almost like an embedded testing opportunity for your athlete. to look whether or not they're fatigued, uh look if they're getting better.

And if they are getting better, you can readjust the load just looking at the actual load that you're lifting and the velocity that the athletes are moving the weight at. So it's it's a built-in tool for program design and testing all in once, which I think it's As good as it gets in our field, you know?

My bias in coaching was do all the Olympic lifts from the hang, because that's initially what I was taught, right? Like so we're we all have bias with those things. I guess one of the questions that people probably have when it comes to VBT is

At what age should athletes start to actually use it before you're like You know, novice athletes just gotta train, right? Like it doesn't matter if they're on the speed, strength of the strength, speed curve, or does it? Like from somebody, you know, with with your extensive background, what are your thoughts on that?

They're sixteen, they're young. Uh maybe sixteen with eighty years of experience lifting. They may be better than a thirty two years old with less experience lifting, you know. So it's but nevertheless. velocity-based training is so specific with the adaptation that we need to look at Chronological age or biological age actually to see if the type of adaptation is actually worth chasing, but also training age, meaning can they perform less?

with a decent amount of load at a certain velocity, which is definitely faster than your average lift. keeping good technique and moving the bar correctly and not risking getting hurt or anything like that. And that always comes first because that's a safety manner. You you need to make sure that your athletes are safe lifting the weight. So if you look at safety I feel like as long as an athlete can Squat maybe like after body weight.

with decent technique and decent form with like keeping neutral spine, getting to full depth, moving at decent velocity, and they can do that without getting into any troubles. They can do VBT. They can start putting a linear position transducer on and maybe They can start learning how to accelerate that load at a higher velocity.

That doesn't necessarily mean that they have a target velocity to respect. Like if they're moving at zero point five or 0.8 that makes a huge difference, just giving them a target to reach so they start putting intent with every lift because you know lifting with intent is different than just lifting. Yeah. And that's something that needs to be somewhat learned and nurtured at a young age.

I I deal daily with a lot of adult athletes that have no idea whether or not they're pushing their reps or not.'Cause they've never been taught how to be

intentional with every repetition, you know? So that's a learning opportunity in and of itself. If we look at adaptation and again, might be biased on that, but um I think there's a degree of scientific evidence to support that. We know that younger athletes like This is very young for girls because that can be as young as like n nine, ten, eleven, maybe for boys a little little later down the line, maybe like thirteen, fourteen, fifteen.

They're right a lot like right before the spiking testosterone or hormones in general, where like you're not gonna see much hypertrophy, uh, you're not gonna get a lot of Like a raw strength gain. However, they're very responsive to all sorts of like explosive movements. That's why if you look at the most recent uh papers on long term attractive development, they usually recommend plyometrics at a young age because the load is less

has very little effect on muscle hypertrophy, but there's a lot of positive adaptation that comes from just more than uni recruitment and coding rate and and and just being explosive. And if you think about velocity based training. Now you have a tool that allows you to put load in the background. Like load is no longer your m main priority. Speed becomes your priority.

you can choose a speed that is closer to your peak power output for a certain lift, so it becomes even more dominant toward Radal Force Development Explosive, explosive strength. So it's a win win for younger athletes as well.

The downside is that that speed usually is pretty high. We're close like for a squat, that's about a meter per second, one meter per second. That's pretty fast. Yeah. So you need to make sure that they can move that way at that speed without getting hurt. So Bottom line, I don't think there's necessarily an age that is too young to do velocity based training.

It's just a matter of them being safe performing the lifts, having learned how to lift with intent, and then maybe kind of like ride along their natural Growing and developing phase? To target maybe Speed strength first and strength speed down the line when they're like fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, more experience, bigger muscle, maybe an actual need of developing strength. So it all comes in I I think in the right sequence.

You definitely just convinced me that younger athletes can use V B T'cause like you just said, there's something so important about intent and not even just like all right we're doing dynamic effort or we're pr like no like hey the prescribed is the prescribed weight even if we're doing a one by twenty and you're doing that number, but like can you be dialed in and intentful on all of those reps? So

The two things that I wrote down. Plios at a young age, like that would fly in the face of what a lot of people are like, oh, don't you have to have super strong like but I mean kids do plyos on the playground anyways and they sprint and they run. And then the other thing that I wrote was Where do you differentiate between should it be average, should it be peak when measuring on um your LVT with Vitrove?

research that is not necessarily applicable. And one of them is if you are I think the recommendation is hundred kilograms or two hundred and twenty pounds. You can't do high impact play metrics or you need to have a certain level of strength to do playometrics at a younger age. Those are all

Recommendations that are based on for sure evidence. I'm not contesting that. I'm not for sure there's evidence to support that. However, it needs to be put in perspective. Like, let's take an example of a thrower, for instance, or a weightlifter. Uh just to start from like easier example. Tell me that a 220 pounds weight lifter with a three times bodyweight squat can't do high impact playometrics. They totally can. It's a matter of a progression. You can start them off with

I impact player metrics or depth jumps or drop jumps or all that good stuff. You need to progress them to a higher level of intensity. You have to prepare the tendons, the joints Sometimes it's just a matter of like

As simple as that, teaching them how to jump. Uh jumping, which is the common ground of player metrics, is a skill. It needs to be learned. You need to learn how to land, how to revert that movement, how to be explosive. But once you develop that progression towards a more intense player metric, there shouldn't be any limitation and strength

is sort of a limitation because when you look at I impact polymetrics, well, there's greater eccentric overload, which means that you have to have greater concentric strength to be able to tolerate that. So your one max bottom line needs to be heav it needs to be higher. But guess what? That's part of your progression. If you start building that into your step by step approach too.

Playmetric training, you're gonna get stronger, your water max is gonna go up, and by the time it goes up, you'll be catch up with you'll be caught up with all things plummetrics, and you'll be able to do maybe like a depth jump from I don't know, fifty centimeters, sixty centimeters.

Three, four, five years later, then you go doing depth jumps from more than a meter high. And you shouldn't be hurt. You shouldn't get hurt. It should be part of a progression. And the same applies to kids, like you said. Find me a five, six, seven years old playing in a playground that doesn't do some sort of intro level to play metrics. They all up around, lips around

Like our daughter is fifteen months and she's already trying to like climb and jump and up and do all that stuff. It's it's part of it's called autogenesis, it's part of the normal development of like motor skills, you know. It it's gonna be part of their the way they cope with gravity at some point. It's just a matter how much emphasis you can put on volume and intensity. That that's what mm potentially create a damage. Like, okay.

they're hopping, it's body weight stuff, keep it that way, maybe start structuring some volume to it, some frequency to it, and then eventually build that intensity up because play metrics is one of those few situations where It's absolute situation. There are many situations. One of those situations where Structure precede function, you need to have a structure in place that is capable of tolerating a load before you can apply that load.

you have to have strong tendons, you have to have strong joints to be able to take that load. So that volume aspects that create that structure adaptation is actually very important. So I feel like it's it all comes it it's it's it's a very boring answer, I know that. But it all comes down to progressions. Are you progressing toward a goal? Are you scaling your training interventions based on the level of the athlete you're working with?

They're at that point, age and strength. It's not like they don't matter, they matter a lot, but they matter within that progression and it all should take care of itself at the end of the day.

that can't ever squat that, but like they have to do it in their sporting demands. Like who knows what the team USA, like who knows if Steph Curry can even squat that, right? Like maybe he can, I have no idea. But like he's clearly going to be doing that plyometric training and had been and blah, blah, blah. So we could we could talk forever on that one. But the average versus peak, where do you make the cutoff? What do you do with that?

So that's why I want to ask you what is your opinion and what has any recent l uh research said about it? Taking a quick break from the show to talk to you about one of our sponsors, Team Builder. Team Builder has been my online software platform choice. Since 2019. Been using it at Towson, using it at Goldfinch, and use it with my online remote client.

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Let's call it velocity of release. You want to take off, you want to push off with the greatest velocity possible. Because that velocity at takeoff will dictate Well first of all how much power you're producing, but also if it's just a jump or a throw, how high you're jumping or how far you're throwing.

In in in track and field, if you're an expert on throwing events, you'll know that the velocity or release is the most predictable variable when it comes to the distance you're throwing the implementation. So it's a very important metric. And for that velocity to be the greatest possible, there needs to be the greatest acceleration possible with no deceleration whatsoever. You you want to fight against deceleration to be able to have that great velocity release.

And I say that because that kinds of that kind of creates an environment where yes, your peak velocity might be a more vulnerable and less predictable metric than the average. I agree with that. If you look at the regular studies in biomechanics, they all show that average loss is always more consistent over time.

But if you clear that by saying there is an intent of moving at the greatest velocity possible, no matter what, that kind of eliminates a lot of the background noise and makes that peak velocity actually reliable. But that would only be the case for ballistic movements, which is jump. throws, and I myself like to throw in Olympic lift as well.

'Cause it's true that you don't need to be leaving the ground when you do an Olympic pool. Your feet can stay could potentially stay on the ground as long as you're pushing and you're creating the ground reaction force. However

the loads that normally corresponds to greater peak power output, which have not maximal loads, if you move them with a great degree of velocity, your feet are going to leave the ground. It's a consequence of you pushing very hard against the ground. So there is a ballisting component to the movement. Uh on the other hand, all other lifts that are not meant to be ballistics, where like there's a greater load, um strength has a greater uh importance than velocity.

The bar pad is somewhere like more standard in in length and shape. For those movements I I just feel like it's more it's easier, it's more predictable to use average velocity because it's less sensitive to little deviations in bar pad or bar distance. So it makes it more consistent.

So that that's the difference between the two lifts. So if you look at all the traditional barbell lifts, like squatting, deadlifting, pressing and pushing and pulling, those will probably be average velocity. All the ballistics will be peak velocity. Now, with that being said, there's one thing I've learned in my experience I was taught and I've always found Useful or at least applicable. Well you can prescribe loads and

Training intensity based on these velocities. You can do that with a great degree of certainty if you look average, if you look at average velocity, you know that. If you're targeting your strength Just for lack of better words, a simple example, that point five meter per second can be a reliable metric to shoot for for a number of different like strength speed more than absolute strength. Uh for like uh

Grinders or normal barber lifts. Now I wouldn't be uncomfortable saying the exact same for pick velocity because pick velocity is very sensitive to the technique of the lift. The the bar path, the way you cope with that application of force through the movement. And if you look at a weightlifter, like Sometimes they can move at the same identical peak velocity.

But they can be handling different lifts because they're pulling higher, they're dropping lower more, or they're they're they're delaying more when they pull under the bar. So there there's way to go around it that makes that number a little bit less predictable. So I would prescribe

barbed lifts using average velocity, but then I would use on certain lift, ballistic lift, peak velocity when load is standardized. So when you're looking at the same load, the same movement, to look for progress. Because if on week one I am putting all my intent to snatch.

It read zero point zero nine. Like so it was less than a tenth of a exactly. Like that's how like I can still and and so what I was getting to is like I know that there's the certain Cut there's the ranges for accelerative strength, max strength, speed strength, strength speed, and dirt whatever words you want to use. And then there's the different speeds for height of the athlete. And then if it's a snatch, a clean, or a jerk.

My question that I'm starting to get to is How how do you respect the certain like okay This is what it is. But then like you just said, remembering that there's gonna be outliers, people like myself, where it's like, hey, if my squat was a point four, like, no, I s uh that that's moving pretty quick for me. Like I I still got a lot in the tank, like

Is it really just knowing your athletes? Is it profiling them at a certain point? Like, what is best practices, your thoughts on all?

physiology dependent because we can take two individuals of the same height, 100%. Their barpes should be the same. But the way the angular displacement within the joints get to that movement is different based on arthrokinematic. Insertion of the tendons and ligaments, like there's so much that goes into it that can affect the way the joints come. At the end of the day, we're looking at a summation of four.

is a bunch of angular movements that apply different joints and together they give you that l linear-ish looking barp. And there's a lot of variability in all those single joints and how those joints interact uh across across kinetic chains. So you need to be able to isolate that. And I would add one more variable which complicates things a lot, but is something that I'm utterly convinced makes a difference between doing V B T

and being great at doing VBT is are you profile and I learned that from many many many many many many years of mistakes. So I've learned it doing it wrong many many times. You need to profile the athlete, you need to profile the lift, and you have to make sure that when you do what is called as a let's call it like a baseline assessment.

Uh for baseline I mean you wanna do VBT you wanna find whatever weight the athlete can move at let's say 0.5 meter per second that's your target that's what you want to get at You need to make sure that at that specific moment in time that you're profiling your athlete. capable of giving you a hundred percent effort to move the weight and there's no lingering fatigue preventing him or her from getting to move the heaviest weight possible at that velocity. And I say that for one reason.

Because let's say that you do this test in a state of mild to moderate fatigue and now you have a number that you go by and that number becomes your go-to when you go about program design. Let's say a hundred kilograms or hundred pounds.

for at zero point five meter per second, if that number was collected, was tested in a state of fatigue Then when you go and do auto-regulation, which is something that normally happens when you do velocity-based training, when the athlete is getting less fatigue, now you're undershooting your loads big time, and you're starting from a lower point and you're racing. to incur eventually in under training your athlete. I don't think there's much of a risk of over training them.

Because you have red flags along the way that will prevent you from getting there. But under training becomes an issue and I've experienced that. mm, plenty of times because I I I do use velocity based training a whole lot.

And I realized that once you start looking at V B T as a source or a method for auto regulation, That difference in testing your athletes in a state of readiness, for lack of better words, makes a huge difference in the way you go about program design.

My second set would be three reps of forty five percent of wire max, then three reps at sixty percent of wire max, and then three reps at seventy five percent of wire max. And there are all reps that are done usually With a brief pause at the bottom, so mostly concentric. Usually, then if the if the athlete is very good at lifting and squatting, like if you're dealing with weight lifters, I let them bounce. But otherwise, I try to standardize as much as possible. And after those four sets,

In general, regardless of what velocity I got out of it, I give them one or two additional sets of one rep only. When I literally follow the guidelines from the NSCA, I go up by Fifteen to twenty pounds, depending on how the athletes feel. I give them one single rep. Check the velocity, write it down. If the velocity is still somewhere like around point four, high point three, I go up again, I let them do one more rep, and that's where I that's where I end my site.

And I use that so that I get at least one rep. For which I have a load and a velocity that is closer to that limit of the the lower limit of their velocity, so it becomes more predictive for their wire max. So I don't have to test on wire max. And that way I got down with that. I don't test water max unless I need to. Usually if if if I play my cards correctly by this point in time by the second single set.

They are somewhere around eighty eight, ninety two percent of wire max. So still pretty heavy, but not as heavy as they should go for an actual wire. And then I look at my data, I look at what I got in terms of terms of velocity. Let's say the example you just gave me, um I got them a 75% of warner max. I was hoping to see a point five meter per second because that was my target, and I didn't get to a 0.5 meter per second.

I have two rules and I kind of like and I hope Dr. Brian Man is not gonna call me back after this episode and say like you got it completely wrong, you said it wrong. I hope not. But that's something that I learned from him. But if I learn it wrong, I'm the first one to apologize as worked so far, so hopefully I got it right. Um I look at the velocity and let's say my target velocity was 0.5.

If it's anywhere between 0.45 or 0.55, so plus or minus 0.05 meter per second, I'm happy with that, I'll take it. I don't bother. That's what it is, that's what I use. Either uh higher or lower, more than zero point zero five. I take every zero point zero five meter per second increment and I count them how far off I am and I just multiply or add five percent to the load that I was using and that way

Again, maybe I learned this a little wrong. I'm not the greatest of math and stats and astronomics, whatever whatever the science is, but so far I've been pretty damn close to be accurate in the sense that Let's say I take my goal was 0.5 And moved two hundred pounds at zero point six. I didn't get zero point five. That's two jumps or zero point zero five. So I take the load, I add ten percent to it, and usually that load brings me pretty close to zero point five.

I feel fairly comfortable in teaching this in class too because I've done it long enough that I know it works pretty well. I think he's also backed up by science. Don't quote me on that, but he should be.

you know, two hundred pounds point zero five, but like now understanding that shoot, tomorrow I could be smoked based on practice or for whatever reason. Like How do you deal with that?

And I just tweak it a little bit to be able to apply that with my own measurements. So I don't take credit for anything. I just applied using a different metric. That's it. Um So Natalia Berkoshanski told told me this little story that back in the days when she was she first started helping his her dad, uh working with athletes, they used to have a

quote unquote portable device, which wasn't that portable. Was a struggle to carry it around, but she was carrying it around. And it was nothing than nothing different than

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They would only do that in the volume that Uliver Kushanski used to prescribe the fourth set of ten or whatever the case may be, if their level of readiness for the day was significantly above average. So they would do that isometric test, they would have a baseline level for let's say η αυρήγη ήταν 200 νεύτρα. Ήταν σχεδιασμένοι. Ήταν σχεδιασμένοι. Ήταν σχεδιασμένοι. Ήταν σχεδιασμένοι. Ήταν σχεδιασμένοι. Ήταν σχεδιασμένοι. Ήταν σχεδιασμένοι. Ήταν σχεδιασμένοι.

the the range of confidence would be two twenty, one hundred, above and below. If it was above that two twenty for them was a green light, we're in a good place. There might be some variability, but at least I'm assuming I'm I'm protecting I'm covering my back by saying the athletes is in his or her best

condition to be tested or to be trained. And I do the same thing with V B T and I profile and that's part of my system. So it's not something that I have to deviate from my day to day routine to do it. It's part of my day to day routine anyway. We always test for readiness and we do that with standard counter movement jumps. We have a backlog of data so for every athlete we know uh a mean and a standard deviation above and below and we uh update that on a weekly basis by doing a rolling average.

So when I have them walk in the way room they say okay today Date zero of your new program. I want to test you and I want to profile, let's say, a back squat, put you on the force plates, I ask you to jump. If your best is your average is 40 centimeters and your confidence interval is 44 to 36, if you're not at 44 or above, I don't even bother about profiling.

I want to wait for the day when I know I I I I have you in the best condition possible for me to test you. Is that gonna eliminate that degree of variability? Absolutely not. That degree of variability is gonna be there. I pick a method that gives me a consistency in the way I go about testing my athletes over a prolonged period of time.

'Cause at the end of the day, yes, we can complicate things as much as we want, but the more we complicate them, the more difficult is to implement all these cool things. We need to come to a middle like uh meet halfway where it Scientifically robust enough to give us good data, but is not so cumbersome that we can't possibly work a way around to to be able to use it and apply it. You know, so it's a little bit of a balance.

be able to have more people on staff. So we as a profession, we working with the N SCA help continue to put I mean, our field is still in the infancy, but that's how you can actually do right by the athletes. So that way you can do it instead of Collecting false data because or like bad data. No data is better than no data is better than bad data, is what I've been told. And I pr I believe that.

But you really can only do that with the athletes that you know and trust and have been around you for a while. And with them, it's like, no, no, no, we're not pr I'm not prescribing you um, you know, eighty percent for five sets of five. Like, no, I'm gonna prescribe five sets of five.

in that quality that we want to train. But for you, Antonio, that speed, strength, is higher'cause hey, Lima, he's a grinder, so his reps they can be at point zero three, but Antonio, if you start dipping in the point four fives, like, no, no, no. And so that's where

and start getting more familiar with the concept of that's something that like I I really struggle to present in either way because when when when we talked to the to the Bosco family and we translated this book There were certain things that simply did not translate in English. So we had to come with a term or a terminology to address some of those topics. And one thing that would that Caramelo Bosco didn't even name. So it was very difficult to to to to reproduce a different language.

was the way he used to use velocity based training. the way he created that was not to figure it out your target only, but was to figure it out how many sets how many reps and how long the rest periods was supposed to be for every exercise, for every day of the week, for every training cycle. And that was exclusively based on average velocity and velocity loss. And when I had to put this into like a more understandable way because you know like

In in in Italy we like to write with long complicated sentences that don't translate well in English. So I had to come with a shorter nickname, if you will, for this approach. And we agreed on this nickname being open sets, which means that You don't know how many sets you're doing, you don't know how many reps you're doing, everything is based on the velocity target.

A load that corresponds to that velocity and that comes from profiling, and a controllable variable, which is your rest periods between set. Everything else is up to the athlete after that day. Whatever the athlete can do based on his or her level of fatigue, that's the volume you're gonna get. So it gets extremely down to the individual athlete in the very specific day what they can tolerate. And that makes training a whole lot more complicated.

Complex, cumbersome, but also extremely rewarding in the end. So I'm not here to recommend everyone to do it. It's a very advanced approach to VBT. But it's something to keep in the back of your mind and just maybe start thinking about.

Multiplied by 80%, divided by two, versus team builder. Now you can just set, hey, your dumbbell max, dumbbell bench max, you can actually have a number because it's pulling from a database. you can do the exact same thing with your VBT on the input of it too. So now it is easier to actually individualize and when you start, you know, wanting to put in those things because

Again, that's where you do it. You have the bigger staffs. You have like anybody that's working in American football, w if you're division one or the NFL, like The average NFL strength and conditioning staff size is five or six. So with that number of people, like you can do a really, really you can do right by the athletes, is what I'm trying to say.

it it's time consuming. Your head is exploding by the time you're done with the session, but it can be done. So on a bigger team with a bigger salary, with a bigger um sorry, budget, with more staff members on board Paid members, interns, assistants, whatever the case might be, there shouldn't be a reason why you can't have this level of control over your training session.

Power clean into a jerk. Yes, great movements, different barpath. So you expect different outcomes when it comes to but the load is the same. You have the same bar on you. Like that's that body's not gonna change. So the way you cope with that velocity depends on exclusively bar path at that point. You change your technique or you change the way you go about the lift. So make sure that whatever velocity you're looking at has to be associated with the way you perform that lift.

Like the depth of your dip, the extension that you get, the rebound, the the the the the dry the drop below the bar underneath the bar when you catch that bar, all those little things can skew the results a lot when you look at velocity. So make sure that you that's not that much of a problem when you're doing a squat because the end of the movement is the end of the movement unless you're jumping and the bottom of the movement is a deep squat. Power requires a lot of jerky, quick.

deep and drive type movements. So there's a lot that an athlete needs to be able to manage and keep keep in mind. where it gets very difficult to standardize things. So the the coach eye really makes a huge difference when it comes to this lift to make sure that the data you're collecting are actually actionable. Like you can do something with it, you know? They're not dependent on the degree of availability between one app and the other.

Um, because I wanted to make sure that like, because again, we you were like, hey, I really want to like talk about this topic. Was there something that you're like, hey, we didn't discuss yet? Like, bring it up right now.

I'm a huge fan of EBT. Be using a long time. Love every second of it. I think it's a great tool. However, I've noticed that I said that with no sense of... There's no negative connotation to it, it's just an observation.

I've noticed that the younger generation of practitioners, and in particular those who learned about velocity based training in school, because I learned it at at work. I didn't learn about VBT in school. I learned it by doing there's a new generation now that is learning that is cool, you know, because we have a lot of papers, some textbooks, part of manuals and whatnot.

they they get very excited and that excitement is is genuine because they want to do good at their job, they want to be good practitioners and they've learned all these good things about V B T. They think V B T is the next big thing and that's all they want to do. And they're so like laser focused on V B T that they lose sight of all the other important things that need to go in a program. Like V B T I always teach my students that's your

80 20. I I think that's the way you say it. It's 20% of your volume that gives you 80% of the result. It's a great tool. It's a wonderful tool. Extremely powerful tool in the weight room. But it can't be all you worry about when you do your program. You need to keep the heavy lift. you need to keep those grinders, you need to keep the plyometrics, you need to keep the Olympic lifts, speed power and agility.

DBT, if that's all you do, is only gonna get bet get get get you better at VBT. Specific adaptation to impose demand. If you want to like cover a broader spectrum of adaptation where you see improvements in strength, in power, in speed, in vertical jump height, in linear speed, acceleration, then you need to implement all these elements in your program. You can forget about the foundation.

You need to continue lift heavy every now and again. You need to continue with your extensive player metrics as as boring as it may be, still part of what you need to do. You need to have your intensive player metrics, your shock method if you need to. You have to have room for Olympic lift to really work on that radar force development, longer ground contact time. All those good things you need to have them in your program. You can't just focus on VBT and that's all you do.

best week of the year when I have all the time that I want to work with the athletes I work. I maybe do squats with V B T twice out of four workouts. It's not all I do. It's two sessions and one exercise per session. That's it. But I know that if I do that well and if it's supported by everything else the athlete needs Then those two days of squatting are gonna give me a whole lot of return of investment because they're exactly what the athletes need.

to bring their power power production to the next level. So just look at the bigger picture. Look at the bigger picture. VBT alone doesn't doesn't suffice. You need to have everything in place for VBT to give you the results that it's supposed to give you.

And that person was a representative for a company that back then used to sell VBT device, I'm not gonna name it, that just came to Villanova and dropped six units for the team to use it. And the coach looked at me and he said, I have no clue how to use it. He told me everything about it, I forgot. So here it is. Enjoy, learn how to use it. It's your responsibility from now on. So that's how I learned how to do V B T and I took it one step at a time.

And now they're so well versed, like soon after college. It's it's very good. It's awesome. I'm I I'm I'm I'm happy to see that. That makes me feel very, very good about the future of our profession. But at the same time It can a it can be a little bit a little bit too much enthusiasm before they get enough experience to support their their decisions, you know?

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Uh which is is is huge because we take it for granted here in the States. It's not in Europe. Uh so we had like round table and discussions and presentations and whatnot. Um it was great. NSCA had a strong presence, uh we had seven or eight foreign affiliates coming to attend um Japan with Korea Spain, well Germany of course, Italy. Um we did some talking, uh we did some meetings too. Um lots of good things are happening in Europe.

Um we're actually working on an extension of the CSCS certification now would be called the CSCS P. Which is a distinction that is created just for Europe, that means And that includes a end zone component, the certified practitioner in Europe's to be competent in not just prescribing resistant training but also coaching resistant training and all things training conditioning. So lots of things are happening and are all very excited.

My I'm first born here in the States. Like my dad is an immigrant. His entire family immigrated from the Azores to the United States when he was ten years old. So like It's super interesting to me because I have that European background. Like my dad like we've gone to the Azores before. We're going again next year. So like I'm curious, A, to help make the profession better, but I'm also curious as somebody who has that international aspect in my own life.

The process of making strength and conditioning a profession was the endorsement that strength and conditioning practitioner received from, let's say, professional football, like American football, which is one of the biggest ports. It's not the only determining factor, but was one of the determining factors.

In Europe, if you look at the main professional sports, uh soccer, basketball, volleyball, um, they hardly ever have a strength conditioning coach and if they do, it's not necessarily a dedicated uh practitioner is more someone in the team that takes on the responsibility as well that does some starting conditions.

So if you think about the top down progression, like if the top teams don't endorse training conditioning, it's very unlikely that minor teams would, even even less universities where there's no organized sports like in the state. So the entire system is a little bit different and it lacks that depth of practice that we have in the States. Yeah, yeah. Part of what I do is teaching a research too. If I were to compare research and science in Europe in our field, is that

I would never say they're beh some people make the claim they're ten years behind. They're not. When it comes to research and science, they're just as good as we're in the States, if not sometimes better. Because their uh ability and access to athletes is For research is better than here. What they lack is the practical component because again, there's no endorsement. So there's no way for people to actually practice this job.

Um for a student to graduate from university and think like I am going to be a strength and conditioning coach, it's not even an option. There's not there's not a career path built for that. They can become like a physical education teacher, they can become a personal trainer, uh, they can maybe become professors, and on the side, if they're lucky, get into a team that

for a minimum wage allows them to do some strength and conditioning and that's the extent of it. So it's a pretty significant difference in culture that then translates and carries on on like The way the educational system is built around it, or lack of educational system, if you will, and all the consequences for practitioners.

They they they know the sport very well. They might not understand certain conditioning, they might not understand physiology and all that good stuff. So on our end, it's a matter of developing those soft skills to communicate with them. Um and I feel like I don't want to get into an obit hole, but sometimes In the pursuit for like authority or accretation. in the in the industry we tend to complicate things a little bit too much in the way we communicate with others. We really want to showcase

That we went to school, we actually have a degree, maybe a master, maybe a PhD or why not. And we and we tend to complicate things a lot in the way we communicate. Um guess maybe it's a little bit of lack of confidence that comes with the territory of like not being not having been recognized for a long time as professionals in our industry. Um And that makes it even more difficult to communicate with coaches. So

I think developing the soft skills of delivering messages that have to do with strength and conditioning and sport science in a very simple manner and a practical one, uh, goes a long way goes a long way in our industry. So that's kind of our side here in the States. In Europe it's kind of like the same same tools, same soft skills, but on the opposite end. building value for what we have to do because

There's no demand for us. There's no demand for practitioners in our field because there's no appreciation and understanding of what our role is. And I love the way you uh Made an introduction for the for the podcast? Our job is awesome. Our job is wonderful. Plenty to recommend about our profession with all the ups and downs that come with it, like the year spent, interning, not making money, being overworked.

It's all great. It's plenty to recommend in terms of life experience and work experience and personal growth. But when we step foot in a weight room and we're there to make those athletes healthier, better, performing at their best, exploiting their capabilities as humans, w what else could you want? Like I we do what we love. We're paid more or less adequately for that, but we can make a living for it.

In other places, people can make a living doing our job, so we need to consider ourselves very lucky. And if we want to give back to our profession, we need to make sure that other people can enjoy the same worldwide, you know? Like I want everyone if my daughter one day wants to become a strength and conditioning coach

And she wants to do that in Italy, Spain, Germany, whatever the case may be. I want her, I want for her to have the same opportunity that I had in the States. And I think it's it's a fair app.

It is not easy. Can you talk about that? Because you clearly have a better experience with it than I do.

One thing is to carry on a study that uh that's actually advanced in the field. Uh two completely different things. Yep. Um different magnitude of effort and budget involved. So on one hand we're extremely lucky because Research is part of what academic institutions do in the States. And as such, we've we we as PhD students or even master students, we have constant exposure to research. We can learn how to do research.

Uh but then again the downside of it is that sometimes their research is diluted to the point that it's not necessarily meaningful. Yep. Um in Europe. We don't have the same access to research. We don't. Uh it's not common for an institution to have people doing research, uh, even less having funds to support research. But on the other hand, when research does happen, it's a little bit more

Or should I say task-oriented or goal-oriented? We're like, okay, now we're investing some time and resources. Let's actually find an answer to this question. Let's not just get data just for the sake of getting data. Let's make it as applicable as possible. So sometimes ends up being a little bit more meaningful and impactful in the actual findings.

Uh it's not uncommon in Europe to see research being done on elite level athletes. It's way more uncommon in the States for many constrictions and limitations that come with professional sport. Um if we look at certain countries that are somewhat a little bit more advanced, if you will, when it comes to research, like the UK, Australia There's more of an appreciation for

the need to include elite athletes in research and student conditioning. Let's put it that way. Cause you know, like I'm a huge motor sport fan and yes, if you want to become a good mechanics, you can learn how to fix your Two thousand fifteen Toyota Corolla, that will work just fine.

But if you want to become an excellent mechanic or an engineer, you probably want to learn how to work with an IndyCar or an F1 or an Asker, because that will show you what the system does when you push the boundaries, when you push the limits. And that exposed exposed the weaknesses of the system, but also its ability to adapt to a different level.

If you want to practice trend and conditioning, no matter if you practice that in a high school environment or setting or with athletes working at Olympics, You need to know what the top of the pyramid is to be able to downscale your interventions to whatever situation you're working with. And we like that. Very much so in research in the States at this moment in time like

For look at papers, I know you do just as much as I do. And when we claim we make evidence-based practice or we we pursue evidence-based practice. We n probably know how to train the average twenty-one to twenty-five year old white man that goes to college. That's what we know. They're not necessarily athletes, there's not a diverse population, let alone we we know pretty much nothing about the female athlete, or very little. There's a massive bias in research.

Even less interest in diversity and equity, which is a big problem. So we have a lot of issues to address when it comes to research. one of them being also looking at elite level athletes and having access to these athletes to learn what the process involves when we're working with the top ten percent of the population.

Teams are so obsessively just like, oh, we don't want you to t like no, like privacy. And it's just like we're not do like none of this is gonna reveal who it was. Like it in anything, we're just trying to, you know, push the field forward, but it's

The New England Patriots used to be. It's not as simple as just keep doing what you've always been doing. It ain't that. Like so I I do agree with you where it's like, man, can we How can we start pushing it forward and and doing things but realistically it's tied to people that have nothing to do with strength and conditioning? It's the owners, it's the GMs that will or won't allow.

students that are currently working and struggling doing research will be in a position where they will make research accessible at a higher level too. That's my hope. I really have a lot of hope in the future generations. Um and I think we're doing We're doing very good in fostering personal and professional development in our industry nowadays, more than we used to do ten, fifteen years ago. So I'm very confident in the future, I think. I think our future is bright as practitioners.

legendary coaches. Like I I wanna hear your opinion about some of these coaches and some of these texts that some of our listeners are are young. Like you said, maybe they're eighteen to twenty one year old as strength coaches. They don't even know some of these names. Like I kinda wanna sit back and let you kind of take these coaches to school and, you know, educate myself as well.

Uh especially for the younger generations. Um a few years ago, maybe like three or four years ago. I was involved with the uh NSCA with Lifting SIG, the special interest group.

withlifting enthusiast or powerlifting enthusiast. So very often where we were having discussions in f on Facebook or sharing content or articles or or books or whatnot I was always going back to either some of the good research from the past, like the work that Joseph is doing with translating some of even preserving some of the original work from the likes of Verkohansky, Bosko, Bonderchu.

all those big names or I was referring to some of the coaches that are pretty much I want to say like almost influencers or old school influencers if you will in our field, like Mark Ripto or Louis Simmons. Guys that never did research, but they did a lot of work in pioneering our field. And the answer I was constantly getting from this younger practitioner or younger researcher was like, What do you care about them? Ripto never published a paper. Verkohanski did studies in the sixties.

Um Louis Simons never even walked in on a high school or something. I was getting all these sorts of comments. From people with PhDs and people that publish I said Dude, stop a second. We have a job, we have a career because of these people. We wouldn't be where we are, we wouldn't be who we are without the Louis Simmons, the Mark Crypto, the Verkochansky, the Dzachowski.

We know better now. Verkochowski didn't even believe in muscle hypertrophy. I get that. We know better now. But we can't just dismiss their work because it's updated outdated. Like we still need to respect that and there's still plenty to learn from their work. The most influential book I've ever read and that's why um I I actually offer it Joseph to translate it besides super training because I think super training is like a milestone. Everyone needs to read that book.

Um I've read Super Tony Garner, maybe like 20 times. I cried a few times reading it. It's it's a tough book. It's it's not an easy reading.

Um the guy had three PhDs, no one, three. It was like as deep in research as he possibly can be. And when I first read his book, which was written the first time in nineteen eighty six.

Second edition was nineteen ninety four. It's called Mascular Strength. It's a very simple title, very simple book, very thick. I was expecting to be Well, of course it was avian physiology, avion biomechanics, avian on endocrinology, but I was expecting to be like one of those books that normally like researchers write, very academic, very like science evident.

But as I was reading through it, if if it felt like I was talking to a coach. Like this guy was Deep in research, was working with some of the best athletes in Europe in track and field and team sports in the 70s and 80s, athletes that At the bare minimum, won the Olympics. So some of the best athletes in the world. It was doing research with some of the best researchers in Europe at that time. But yet it always kept a very down to her

applied side to things that he was explaining in his books. And I feel like that's something that we've lost over time. Like more modern textbooks and and and articles and papers are great when it comes to the science. But they're very weak swing w weak when it comes to the practical application. Whereas if you read Verkojanski, if you read Bosko, if you read Bondachuk, Dzacharski.

Yes, there's a lot of very good science, but they're always very easy to apply. At the at the end. Yes, they talk about physiology, yes, they talk about uh bio energetics, they talk about endocrinology, all these complex things, but at the end They list set reps, loads, exercise, rest periods. You can turn that knowledge into a program. You can design a program based on what you're learning in that book.

One piece of advice I give to all the young students, don't ever dismiss old textbooks just because they're old. And sometimes not even like necessarily like university textbooks, like starting strength. Read it. Louis Simons. Read it. Read this. Read this box. They might not be your...

traditional college textbook, but there's a lot to learn from the experience that these people went through when our field, our science, was a very young one, an an experienced one. Like they lived it, they they they lived through it. They pioneered. They survived. Uh to be able to tell the tal tell tell the story and and share their knowledge. So it's always there's always plenty to recommend in learning from this old school classic readings in in our field, for sure.

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Even like white papers that were published ten, twenty, thirty years ago, um it's about the quality of the research intervention and the method more than the actual tools used to do research. Um They're like I I always use this analogy and and and and people seem to resonate pretty well with it. Like one of the oddest topics now in research, m maybe not at the present moment, but in the last five years or so is post activation potential.

Um, you know, like like every other topic you research, you first start you you first see a few papers and then over the years you see maybe the first meta-analysis and now you see, okay, now this is becoming like evidence based. Now we have a enough understanding of it to be able to like teach it and use it. And it's it's so fascinating how they go about like explaining the physiological aspects related to

why we see a potentiation effect when we do certain protocols. And I don't wanna go into details. It's complicated stuff, but it's fascinating. It has to do with physiology and and and neuranatomy, neurophysiology. It's very complicated stuff. But then you go back to like 1964, Vrkushowski was talking about post-activation potentiation in his textbooks without a shred of evidence to support why it was working, but showing that he was working.

And those protocols were nowhere different than the one that we use today. Yes, the evidence were there to begin with. Um maybe they were not as sound and as strong as they are nowadays, but they were there. It would be wonderful if instead of dismissing that old all those old papers and articles, we would just try to bring them back to life and refresh them with more modern methods of doing research to support their claim claims. support their findings and maybe use that

our core backbone of knowledge to advance our industry today and our field today. Look at V B T. VBT is one of the oddest topics now auto regulation and all that stuff that comes with it. V BT has been done since the where they had to go frame by frame to measure velocity of each lift. Like extensive work done by Anne, where like research was at at like it's a very in a very primordial thing.

But the information they found back then are nowhere different than the one that we have today. When it looks at target velocity, velocity loss, effect in terms of adaptation, they got to the same findings with very little resources compared to what we have nowadays. So we need to respect research when it's when it's done well and when it brings home some sort of practical practical application.

And I know maybe you're f I'm sure you're familiar with Dr. Paul Comfort. When when he read uh Carmelo Bosco's book that I translated with Joseph, it was so Impressed with the quality of this research, although it was done in the 70s and 80s, that he actually asked Joseph and myself to rewrite the book together, expanding on all those old topics in research with current evidence. just to show how good that research originally was.

Yes, we know better now. We know better now, but it hasn't changed the shape of what we we do. Like we still do strength and conditioning the same way. We just know a little bit better that allows us to be a little bit more accurate and precise with our intervention and more accurate and predictable with our outcome. But it's still very good research and it should still be considered, very much so, even by younger professionals.

lot of people fight or argue on who has more articles published, more citations, more awards or words of appreciation from other practitioners for how well their research is done and how much they publish. And I think that has a lot to do with the fact that to push newer research, well you kind of have to like Forget about what has been there in the past to show how good the stuff that we do now is. So

If if if you put your ego aside aside, your personal agenda aside, you might find a place as a as a researcher and as a practitioner without having to dismiss the quality of the work that has been done by people before you. Because again, we stand on the shoulders of giants. This is... feel that has been walked before and has been explored before. There's very little new to find in strength and conditioning.

We can just advance it. And we can advance it organically together. There's no need to discredit all research just to make a name for ourselves. We can do that in a much more constructive and inclusive manner.

But there so few things are purely new and organic and never had been done before. Like just give credit to where credit's due and then eventually people will still recognize it as like maybe your own thought. And like

The reason I'm saying this is I've talked a lot about the power complex being a way to train power instead of doing Olympic lifts or mainly the clean. I tons of time be like Jeff Jones taught But I think a lot of people because I so much will talk about it, like people talked about unilateral training before Mike Boyle talked about.

He quoted people, but nowadays it'll be like, hey, Mike Boyle was the single leg training guy. And he'll be like, I wasn't the like, I just talked about it more than anybody else. You know what I mean?

Let me let me give you a simple example. Like, um It's a great test. I love it. Great test. Very applicable. Very easy to do. Gives you a lot of insights on you know masculine performance and so forth and so forth. People fight over it, people want to be people want to claim who invented it, who created it, who pioneered it, and so far and so forth. It's one of many isometric tests that have been done for generations of practitioners.

And the same type of information you access with an isometric middle pool used to be accessed with different types of isometric testing, uh done with different exercises, looking at the same rate of force slash rate of torque development curves over time is nothing new. You might have come with a better way of doing it, different way of doing, great. But that doesn't make you the guy that invented the isometric midi pole. You exploited it, you use in a different way.

You you spin a little bit of the the way you go about like angles and and positions and sampling sampling frequency or whatever the case may be, but you haven't created anything new. Has been there, has been done that before. But that becomes a a topic. claim a place at the table where probably y you don't deserve one because you're just Taking credits where credit is not due. Whereas if you If you're nicer about it, uh you just present your own way of doing things.

citing and referencing people that have done that twenty thirty years before you you look just as good as a practitioner and maybe a little bit of a better person when it comes to having less of an ego and more of an open minded in discussing topics that are public domain and have been used for generations and generations and generations. Again, I hope I don't get anyone upset, but I've seen way too many people

arguing over these topics over the years and it's kind of like I'm fed up with that. Like, come on guys, this we we can do better than this.

for that individual um in a controlled setting. They're like, nope, that's not the they're just kinda like they just said it and we're like, wait a minute, what are you talking about? Like look at this research. And it was one of the most frustrating things we ever had to deal with.

And that was at the forefront of a generation of researchers investing their money, time and energy in researching velocity based training. So I think there's a lot of egos in our industry and when you when you're faced with them, um You have to be very, very, very careful very careful in the way you process their their their inputs and feedback.

I I grew up in a in a generation where like Bumpa was the godfather of periodization. So everyone was learning linear periodization in school and we were reading the same textbooks and what have you. Um nothing wrong with that.

I grew up in that generation where like, okay, this is everything you need to know about periodization. This is your linear approach, this is your hypertrophy block, this is your strength block, this is your power block. That's how you uh program set steps and loads But then there was nowhere to find a

way to learn how to take that knowledge and apply that into practice. Like, okay, now I know everything about it. What does that look in terms of like how many exercises? What exercises should I choose? Like how do I manage those acute training variables over time?

uh to to create that linear model that you're preaching about. And and that m even more confusion came about when like people started talking about like nonlinear periodization, daily undulated periodization and and block periodization. And then again egos got involved and people start making the claim that there's such a thing as a the best way of doing prioritization, which is blasphemy. There's not such a thing as the best way of doing prioritization.

For Christ's sake, we have tools nowadays that don't even require periodization anymore. Like if you if you monitor your athletes well and you just apply the basic principles of progressive overload and fatigue management. You don't even have to worry about them much of a periodization approach to training. But that alone My my idea behind the book was to put in a manual more than a textbook format.

notions of periodization, so looking at science, but always taking that notion and apply that into a practical program. So every model discussed in the book is followed up by a description of what a program looks like. In terms of sets, reps, load, exercise selection, and so far and so forth, to kind of like bridge that gap and show that there's more than one way to skin a cat.

work in theory, right? Like the whole point of, I mean, even the basketball mechanics book here, it's like, hey, how can we talk about the things that actually happen doing the action, not like, oh, all this just hypothetical stuff, because that is where I think younger strength coaches will throw out the older and like, Oh, they didn't it's like, No, they were actually they did the thing and they're like they're writing down like their text is

This is what they did. Like, um, I think it was Joseph was talking about when Hank's book Like he saw like Hank's book, Need for Speed. He's like, literally, I went and watched what they did at the track. He's like, and Hank's book was what they did. Like

That's like, I don't think coaches understand like young coaches understand. Like those old textbooks was literally coaches just be like, okay, let me put a nice version of all the stuff I did into this little spiral-bound thing and give to people.

So brief sh very short history lesson. Uh when Yuri Verkozyansky left Russia, he moved to Italy and he was hired by the Italian Olympic Committee to work with Italian athletes, but even more so with Italian coaches. So Verkoshanski did not speak Italian, but it was supported by other Italian students or PhD students back in the eighties.

To write manuals for the Italian Olympic Committee on how to coach athletes better. So there's a line of manuals that Verkochansky wrote in Italian that have never been published. And it's his original work. It's work that he did to teach Italian coaches how to become better coaches. It's I think I have Close to like nine or ten manuals that he wrote. And this is nothing you find in Super Training or any other book that Verkochowski has ever written.

Very good quality stuff. And like you said, is precisely what he was doing with his athletes in Russia. And the stuff that he has learned from his own research applied in a way that it was literally a plug-in and play for the coaches. Read the textbook, go to the field, put this exercise in this order, and you're gonna get a better athlete. It's as simple as that.

And the funny thing is that this is what Univer Koschowski wrote. Natalia First Natalia kind of like shadowed him a bit, but her interests were in a different uh field. She was more into tennis and other sports. So she never really had a full grasp of what like her dad was doing in terms of coaching. So when she sent me these original books, she asked me to look through them.

and try to create some s put some order in the way Judy Verkozowski was creating the programs, like how many sets, what's the volume, what's the average intensity? So I pretty much reverse engineered his programming through this textbook. And and and and then I show her the results that she was she was pretty much she was pretty amazed with that. So we figured out that The way Virkoze was doing strength and conditioning back in the days was

Quite the opposite of what people expect from the Soviet system. Like when we think about the Soviet system, we think about high volume, high frequency, high tonnage.

I didn't even consider a working set below eighty-five percent on water max, whether you were a cross uh cross country runner or a sprinter. So when it was strength training, it was very heavy strength training. A lot of plyometrics. A lot of plometrics, not just the depth jumps. We we all think about Virkozyansky as being the godfather of a high impact plymatic and a shock method. True. But he was doing stuff like cluster sets when he was doing plummetry training, he was doing

Different ways of going about extensive play metrics as well. Unilateral work. They were extremely effective. Also in extremely high volume compared to what we consider to be the guidelines for plummetric training. Uh, we normally refer to like the NSA textbook, and we see like, oh, 120, 180 contacts per session. Yeah, as a starting point.

There were athletes doing five hundred contacts per session when it comes to plyometric training because these were jumpers and sprinters and runners, so plyometric was very much embedded into their daily training. So they were used to it.

so one thing that Strong and evidence from this textbook is just There's not such a thing as like too much training as long as you stay within of course Physiological common sense, if you will, is just a matter of developing over time that capacity to tolerate that load and adapt to it. If you s if you look at some of Verkozy's original work They were training twice a week for maybe forty five minutes, doing

Five, six sets of back squat and an endful of sets of depths. That was their starting point. But then you would see these programs in a five year, six year, ten years trajectory where they were doing four times a week in the wheelroom, squatting heavy, doing plymetrics four times a week for three, four hundred, five hundred contacts aside. So it's about that repeated body effect when when you expose your system to systemic training.

And you allowed adequate time to recuperate and regenerate from a training session, well you develop that work capacity that brings you to be able to tolerate more work without the need for performance enhancing drugs. Everything is there in this original textbook. It's it's amazing. to see how simple they were and there's there's plenty to recommend. So I'm sorry I took you to a long, long journey away from your question, but like that to me was a massive learning experience and

It it did change a lot the way I go about program design with my own athletes uh in in my day-to-day job. So plenty to recommend. Joseph and I will get to a point where we can make these manuals available in English because they're absolutely all

But like there's so so everybody like you're getting a little bit of a tease everybody, but Ultimate Athlete Concepts and Strength Coach Network, like you're gonna see something coming uh from the two of us just because of Again, we put our money where our mouth is. Like I believe in those texts. I have th like literally looking at them in my office right here. Um

But one of the things that I wrote down as you were talking was this whole notion of the contacts. And to me, like I'll start with the first How do you handle the notion of like, okay, within the context context Foot contacts during a training session, plyometric. Running is plyometric too. Do you take that into account like each of their steps when they're sprinting within the warm up? Like

Get into the weeds here because I'm gonna hop in the weeds with you too. And our listeners, hop in. Like, let's figure this out. Let's talk about this from somebody with your level of expertise and knowledge because I want to be educated.

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This is my approach, and it's my my way of looking at things. Not sure it's the best way, uh, as the one that worked for me so far. Um, let's give you an example. Um Let's take... I've done a lot of work with throwers, but let's take a sprinter for instance, just to keep it as pertinent as to your example as possible. So sprinters, guess what? They sprint. That's their sport. That's what they do. They do that for technical reasons. So part of their training is technique based.

Part of their training is to drive actual adaptation. So they train for speed, they train for power, they train for explosive. Um, some of that is for running mechanics and what have you. And on top of that, there's gonna be a component of strength training that needs to be implemented as well. Well, okay, what is the one thing that these athletes can't cannot get away from? Spending time sprinting, running and doing speed related tasks and drill. So we can

Count all the steps and turn that into a very structured approach to okay, every sprinting is plurimetric and we can count every single foot contact and count that into the equation. We could do that. But even if we did, unless we're also coaching them on the track, we w we will have very little control of what's happening what's happening when they go out and rain and run and sprint. Like is their coach.

Uh job to take care of that. But we we can acknowledge what they do, see what they don't do, and fit our intervention into context in that sense. Meaning, yes, what they do is plummetic. But is it the same type of playometrics that we can do in the wheel room to promote a higher level of structure and functional adaptation? No, because it's always a playometric done at speed, is always extensive, is always like Multiple efforts. They don't really do much of like dep jumps.

On the field, they don't do much about heavy lifting on the field. So let's start focusing on what we can give them that their coaches don't give them. Let's see what we can do where we can tap into to raise the ceiling and build even more strength and more power than then they can use on the field where they have to sprint, run and what whatever they have to do.

Instead of like factoring in everything that they do, which would be excruciating pain to chase after all different types of drills and exercise they do when they practice. Let's look at what they don't do in their day to day practice and let's try to give them that in the wear room. So sprinters don't do that jumps. Let's program that jump in the wear room. Sprinters don't do a lot of heavy lifting on the field. Let's give them heavy, heavy, heavy squats.

And that's exactly what Verkoyaski was doing. Like When you and Bondachuk for them matters, and and Bosco, like all the researchers and practitioners of the same generations, like they knew what the athletes were getting on the field, where they were throwers, jumpers, sprinters, team sports athletes. They knew what they needed, so they knew what they...

Physiologically speaking, what the c what what were the characteristics they needed to perform at their best in their sports? They were just giving them in the wear room whatever they were not getting on the field in a way that was very easy to quantify and manage. Because yes, we can be as creative as we we want in creating in designing a program, but if we can control it, measure it

and take corrective actions where things are not going the way we want, we're pretty much probably making more damage than anything. So I think a good idea is to Always, always look at what they do when they practice, whatever sport we're dealing with. Always try to find a way to quantify that load in a way that is meaningful for us. Whether it's like hours on the field, contacts. Like if you're wearing like a wearable device, strain levels, whatever the case may be

But then take that as a whole like as a big piece of information, factor that in into our training intervention and focus on what we can give them that they don't get to make them better. I hope that answered your question somehow.

that he and I had where he's like how he wanted to with his PhD and then eventually come up with some sort of like a tool for coaches is like Uh, if there's these, you know, 200 to 300 per foot context, it's like, all right, how can you quantify different, you know, a box jump versus a depth drop? versus a drop jump versus, you know, rudiments, single leg, unilateral uh single leg, bilateral.

you know split stance, rotational, lateral, like all of those different factors obviously weight it because okay if I do a a depth drop from a depth drop depth jump from 60 inches My goodness, the magnitude of GRF versus a rudiment double leg. Like, it can't be that. So is there is there value in your opinion of coming up with some sort of a nominal scale? to the value of those different types of jumps.

deceiving to look at one of these exercises in isolation and try to focus too much on the intensity we're generating. I think there's more practical value in looking at the systemic effect of a training intervention based on this exercise on the athletes. And for what I mean for that, I'll give you a very practical example. Like the the way I fine tune my own way of Going about program design or coaching is like

Like you said, I have my buckets. I know that I have my Olympic lift, I have my core lift, I have my plyometrics, intensive plyometrics, extensive plyometrics, and I have my own style of putting exercise together for a training program. I put together my training programme. I I I fit in the volume and the intensity I I deem appropriate for each athlete.

And then I just look at the effect of it. I look at how much fatigue I generated and how quickly the athlete could recu could recuperate from that fatigue and come back to a higher level of performance. And that happens by monitoring athletes over time. That's something I constantly do. If there's one thing I do when it comes to sports science, it's simply monitoring fatigue. I think if you can.

Because what is fatigue? When you measure fatigue, you're measuring the effect of your training intervention as a whole, the totality of it. Yes, you might have done one exercise that was more intense than the other, but the effect is still systemic. So if you can see okay, you have a single bar of training and that bout of training is Represented by a number of different exercises, and the total effect led to a decrease in performance that lasted for 36, 48 hours, and a rebound that was

Uh persistent for another twenty four to forty eight hours. And when I came back to the weight room, I was actually in a better place. Then the first time I went to the weight room, so that actually improved my performance. That tells me that whatever I did in that intervention was was well suited to the athlete. And that brings brings me to a point where like I think it's very difficult to standardize uh plurimetric training because every athlete is different.

Every athlete has a different scening when it comes to eccentric load and overload, uh rate of force development, reactive training, the coordination, like all those elements that contribute to performance in parameter type exercises. So Standardizing a way to measure intensity might be tricky, would be great, but just tricky. I feel like looking at the systemic effect on a one by one cases will give you more insights on on your training tool.

And then at double leg rudiment s you know, lateral is worth two, rotational is worth two. But if it was single leg it went up from, you know, forward is two to lateral is a three and a f and you just you start coming up with these scores and then you're like, Okay, if you're gonna do a box jump from this height to this height, it's worth this num and you just kinda come up with something, but it's just like

Now you start to assign the value. And the reason that I ask this all is pertaining to the fact of working in high performance where Let's say somebody is an athletic trainer that is or a physio or they had a s they had a C S C S and they're like, wait a minute, we're not supposed to do more or hey, that's not enough foot contacts. We need more foot contacts. It's like, okay, but we're

We we got like twelve depth drops from s fifty inches. Like you see some of those videos from back in the day of like people stepping off the top of the bleachers and jumping over like five feet hurdles. It's like, yeah, you're not gonna do two hundred of those. You know what I mean? So it's just finding a way to communicate it best in this new high performance world where People don't understand the value of a rudiment as extensive before we get into extensive before we get into our intensive.

Hãy subscribe cho kênh lalaschool Để không bỏ lỡ những video hấp dẫn What do you do that instead of doing, I don't know, a clean or a loaded jump or some some other alternative exercise? As long as I can psho I c as long as I can measure progress and that progress is real and tangible, why would I change what I do? I will question it when I don't see progress anymore. When I stop seeing progress, then I will question what I do. My pursuit of progress is is twofold. First

By default, I go back to the bare minimum. I I'm a huge fan of the minimum effective dose across the board for everything. Start for the bare minimum. Because you know that that's the bare minimum that anyone needs. You get stronger, get smor get more explosive, get faster. work on a well-rounded training program that includes all elements of strength and power. Put it put it on paper, execute it and start measuring progress.

As long as you see a change in performance, what you're doing is working. Don't complicate things, don't increase volume, don't increase complexity. Complexity and volume must be earned. You have to use them when the athletes need them. There's no need to complicate things. They don't need to change things if things are working.

Just we we try to do evidence based in the sense that we do evidence to show was the bare minimum to promote adaptation, was the best practice when it comes to designing a training program. Put that on paper, let it run for a little bit, like three, four, six weeks, whatever the case may be. Measure progress or lack of progress, and then decide if you need to do something about it. Don't just assume things need to change.

Because we're all gonna be looking at the same program in different ways. An athletic trainer will look through his own or own lenses. Physical therapy is the same, strength coach the same. And even across if if you were to pick five different strength and conditioning coaches in the same room.

they would go about program design in completely different ways because of their backgrounds. Some people are more into Olympic lift, some people are more into biometric, some people are more into bodybuilding or powerlifting. There's no the best way to go about program design is the is the effect that we get. We have to keep that pragmatic aspect of our profession. Are we creating a positive? Are we making the athletes better?

And that brings me to a different topic that I hope you have a minute to discuss.

And then you come to me and say, Yeah, but if you look at this one random metric out of two hundred and sixty metrics the first place are showing, and that one metric improved, that means they were doing something right. Then you're forcing, you're forcing results, your your bias, your skewing perspective. Like you need to be pragmatic. There's an endful of metrics that matter in performance. It's about power, radar force development.

symmetry that's also very important and strength and speed if you're doing speed testing if you're not improving those core variables those core metrics you're not really doing your job you're not getting the job done looking for a way to prove that what you're doing works somehow, but probably doesn't.

'Cause then those athletes will need that power, will need that radical force development. And if you can't measure a positive change on a force plate, how do you expect to see a change in performance on the field of play? It's not going to happen. So we need to be extremely We need to keep our feet to the ground and be very much task oriented and pragmatic. Like that's what I love about sports like track and field, or even motorsport for that matter.

The stopwatch is always right. If the athlete is not going faster, it's not going faster, there's no way around it. And if we can show that there's a progress happening that is getting that athlete faster All those other metrics are just background noise. We need to focus with the essentials on the essentials. Some of the researchers, like Bishop, has done a phenomenal job in saying, Okay, guys, we get three hundred metrics out of a counter movement jump on a force play, but probably

The metrics that really matters are like five or six. Let's focus on those. Let's make sure that our training programs are affecting those metrics. Sorry, that was a long answer.

Like you can never remove the individual in a field where we work with people and not to measure the fact that it's a human being that's giving you those numbers. Like it you're a researcher, I'm a researcher. It it It's mixed methods. It's not just quantitative in the numbers. It's not just qualitative in what they're telling you. It's a mixed method and you can't have one without the other because without that context, it means nothing.

So they're eliminating that. But what makes me even more upset is that is eliminating the subjective component on our end of the job. We are the software. We are the brain power behind our training program. We can't rely on a$5,000 software to tell us how to do our job. We can't rely on artificial intelligence to tell us how to do our job. We are the software. We we make the calls, we run the show.

It's gonna have that long-term effect on performance. It's gonna have that effect on like risk of injury. We can quantify the effect of our intervention. But we create the interventions and we do that talking and listening to our athletes. They are the main characters in our show. We are a supportive role. We are the catalyst for them to express their potentials. We can eliminate that from the equation. Like it's not quantifiable. It comes down to it it's a it's a people be

We work with people, we work with human beings, with their problems and their limitations, complex systems, chaotic system where there's very little predictability. Very little is predictable about what we do. Sports science fills that gap where it makes it that much more predictable that makes our life a little bit easier. That's the extent of it. I'm not expecting anyone With all the due respect, anyone with a degree in statistics or in astrophysics, or whatever the case may be

To come and tell me how to do my job. I am the practitioner. I run the show. Maybe tell me what I can do better, but it's my job, it's my show, I run it. You tag along if you want and we work together to make the process better. Don't let them tell you what to do. We are the coaches, they are the allies.

Physical therapies has a lot to have a lot to offer as well because return to sport, injury management, pain management is a huge component of what we do in performance. And sport science as well has a lot to offer because again, like we just said. It's important to have those metrics available when we need them. What's lacking now is that integration, and the integration comes with communication. We need to be able to know enough.

And that's that's that's uh that's a thing I am constantly when I go, especially over season. We need to know enough about the other people's job to be able to communicate with them. We need to know what physical therapists see and understand. And and think to be able to think their way and communicate with them. They need to know what we see and we understand so that they communicate, they can communicate with us.

And that comes with and I'll say that over and over again, with respecting each other's professional skills. If we respect each other's profession and upbringing in terms of like schoolwork and academics and work experience and internship,

Then we can have this integrated approach. If we keep looking at each other's like, oh I'm better than you because I went to this school, that school, I went I have my PhD, you don't, I have my doctor in physical therapy, you don't. Well, we're not going anywhere. We need to respect each other's job.

From the undergraduate level, from the assistant coach to the end of sports medicine, respect each other's job and place at the table and have a true integrated approach that is ultimately looking after the athletes, because that's what we're here for.

If we can bridge that gap in communications, then we can truly create an integrated system. And that integrated system builds on strengths that ultimately benefit our athletes. And that's I think that's a game change.

Please stop calling that a back squat. And then they were like, Well, we we should like collect all the data from all the different athletes and be able to compare like uh the field hockey athletes squat versus the volleyball player. I was like, one Massive difference. Two, you don't squat your athletes to parallel. Three, you're putting your hands on the bar. Like what wh why would we do that? We ha like, can we please start calling the thing the thing that it is, you know?

Because it's creating effort doesn't mean it's heavy. There's effort, there's load, there's adaptation. They're all different aspects of the same process, but they're different. And if we don't even agree on that, like how can we really communicate? Like you can't tell me that a bodybuilding type of exercise is as heavy as a power lift. It's different type of metabolic stress, it's different type of mechanical tension involved.

It's not better or worse. They're different. They're simply different. We just need to agree that they're different and call them for what they are. I'm not talking about better or worse. I'm just talking about different. But being aware of that difference and how that difference comes into play when it comes to program design. Because that creates that eliminates a lot of confusion and background noise.

that a lot of young practitioners struggle with because when they think about Ivy strain training and then they come to you with a Set of step ups for twenty reps with a ten pounds double. For a two hundred and twenty pounds lineman, it's not heavy strength training. It's not gonna get the effect that you expect to get, therefore it's not going anywhere. If we agree on terminology and we agree on on good practice, we'll we're gonna do a much better job.