The mic is hot and the game is on. You're listening to News for the Nation podcast by Aces Nation, where we talk about nutrition, sports performance, the journey of a student athlete, and more. I'm Claire. I'm Zach. Time to level up. Welcome back sports fans. Today we have an awesome episode that's going to be kind of off the track of what we normally do where we're not picking a research topic or we're not talking about one sport or
one element in particular. Today, Tiana and I are gonna share questions back and forth about training and kind of put each other on the spot and let each other think a little bit about how we would train. an athlete or a team from a certain sport to get a certain result. It's going to be pretty interesting, I think, for the listener to hear two different professionals talk about how they would train teams for certain results. And then at the end, I'll do almost like a lightning
round type of thing, draw from a hat. and ask Tiana just a few questions about that at the end. So like I said, we're gonna go back and forth. And so this is gonna be pretty interesting here. Okay, so I'll take the first question. And so before I start, I just wanted to say that at ACEs with all of the interactions we get with coaches regularly, we do hear among any sport you throw out, we hear, you know, one to five things that coaches want to improve and they're
almost always the same within that sport. So with that said, let's go with soccer and change of direction or agility training first. Okay, so good question here. So just off of the two things I think we've already talked about in several other episodes. I know we've talked about what agility is versus what change of direction is. And recently we've covered research about change of direction and I believe we have a blog post up about it as well. So change of direction,
right? Research says you should be sprinting more and doing plyometrics more in order to enhance
change of direction. So for soccer, I would, I mean, most of the time people are going to do some type of fitness assessment like the beep test or a yo -yo intermittent recovery test so that that has an element of change of direction in it too especially if you use it for training you're going to get that hopefully you're doing both sides back and forth if i would improve change of direction ability i think one of the first things for soccer players overall is to
figure out where their athletic base is and to train from that and how to get back to that quickly. I think this is one of the things that's overlooked in youth sports is you teach them how to run and change direction or how to jump and change direction and stuff like that. And then they get into the sport and it's like they're running and then somebody else stops fast and it's like I've got to take a million steps and my body's all over the place. I know our podcast listeners
can't really see me. doing the visualization here. But I think to get to learn what your athletic base is and how to get back to it quickly, I think that allows you a platform to make multiple decisions out of like from a athletic or a physical standpoint, you can make those types of movement decisions. I think that's important. Honestly, to do some directional jumps, whether that be jumping off both feet laterally and then back to that same point. I think that's a good spot.
If you're doing like hurdle jumps forward continuously, that's good. So your feet are getting back to a similar position every time. Maybe if you're doing single leg jumps, your foot is getting back underneath, right? If you do a single leg jump forward and you land back in athletic position on that one leg, you're getting that kinesthetic awareness. so that your brain is kind of knowing where your body is in space and you're able to
find that. So I would do a lot of jumping. Sprinting I think is obviously great for kinesthetic awareness and just for your muscles to be used to contracting
at those types of speeds. Maybe throw some deceleration on the end of some of your sprints whether that's a coach saying stop or giving a reactional like visual cue like they are moving in a direction or they're putting one foot forward and so the kids are having to mirror that um whether kids are actually doing mirror or tag drills with each other those things can improve change of direction ability not a lot of like hey run to this cone and back i think uh just what that's
just what the research says however I do think you can do some of that. You should, right? You need to get people used to finding those change of direction angles quickly so that their body is used to doing that. So adding in the decelerations at the end of your sprints, doing a little bit of change of direction and doing some plyometrics, getting it starting double leg, but getting into
those. directional like 45 degree bounds or lateral bounds or single leg bounding or something like that even if it's like single leg jumps going lateral over cones or something just getting your body used to absorbing force slowing down momentum from where you just came from and then reapplying it you know so i think those things are important for helping somebody change direction better, which would give them a great foundation to help them be more agile when they have to
make a decision in sport. Now that that all addresses that change of direction kind of on the field. What do you think or are there things that come to mind when somebody says they want to improve change of direction when it comes to the weight room? Resistance training. So again, Referencing back to the podcast where I covered all that research resistance training added into speed and plyometrics was also the best option to improve
change of direction. So if your lower body is getting stronger at that point, or if you're focusing on multi joint lower body movements, you're squatting or lunging, you're hinging of some sort. Maybe doing bridging as well, like all of these things. globally or generally are going to help you. So if you have a stronger lower body, you're going to be able to slow yourself down better. So going full range of motion and like lunges, squats, working up to not necessarily
like the heaviest weight you can do. But once you're getting movements down, you're building up some tolerance to the stress. So you've been training consistently for a while. And then just continuing to push yourself, you know, not necessarily so far past the limit, but just going a little bit past the limit every once in a while so that you're creating a better resiliency towards those higher forces that you would experience in trying
to slow down. Yeah, and then sometimes, you know, doing continuous jumps to build up a little capacity or doing some light weighted jumps can also help you. And those are all things you can do in the weight room as well. So just get strong with your lower body, and that'll help you with everything that you're going to do on the field. All right, my turn. Another one that we get a lot from coaches is in the sport of volleyball. And of course, play volleyball, you want to increase your vertical
jump. So Tiana, what would you do to increase vertical jump in volleyball players? Yeah, so. When it comes to vertical jump, I would say, you know, some of the same things in terms of plyometrics or single jumps applies here. So learning how to transfer force vertically in the most efficient way is going to help with vertical jump and then weighting the body in
an explosive manner. So things like we program cleans a lot now there is a learning curve when it comes to movements like the clean and you know there's different variations of that whether you start from the floor you're starting from the knees but learning how to use triple extension in a way that's effective is going to help you improve jumping vertically because that is essentially what you're doing when you are gaining height off the ground so you know, anything to do with
with box jumps in the gym, as long as they're being used properly. And by that, I mean, you're landing in a proper manner on top of the box where you're not just trying to jump as high as humanly possible and landing in some kind of strange position that you wouldn't be utilizing off the ground to make a jump up for a ball.
And then, you know, any sort of explosive movements in the weight room, as well as your, you know, foundational strength for the lower body, same as you mentioned in soccer in terms of just becoming stronger in your entire lower body. Now, I know you and I obviously know how to coach Olympic
movements and the benefits of them. But what if what if someone or if a volleyball coach doesn't necessarily have the skill set to coach them or doesn't believe in coaching Olympic weightlifting movements, what alternatives could they have? I think there's a range, you know, you can do something as simple as a jump squat to kind of
mimic that type of movement. Or you could do a quarter squat where you're waiting a bar and then you're, you know, you're not necessarily getting into the full squat position you're utilizing that upper portion of the squat to be able to move weight um quickly and work on speed on the bar um for yeah those are two things that come to mind all right are we ready for our next sport let's go all right um i hear this one a lot And usually, well, you know, whether what this means
exactly to the coaches, I'm not it usually varies, but we'll hear from football coaches a lot of time that they're looking for explosive power. Yeah, yeah, I've heard that as well, right? Honestly, what I think it comes to is acceleration in some manner, whether that's taking off and sprinting.
reaccelerating or it's accelerating their body out of bilateral stance or out of two feet into somebody right like I think it comes down to acceleration so really in my head we're gonna train sprinting there's gonna be probably more of a speed emphasis in your resistance training I think that when training this it's more seasonal It's not like I'm doing this for the entire year. You're probably doing elements of it here and there, but it's not like the sole focus for the
entirety of your program. I think definitely for football, you need to have a strong strength base. I think a lot of teams and coaches do a pretty good job of developing a good strength
base. And then at that point, it's really about velocity if you're in the weight room it's about moving the barbell at certain speeds whether that is utilizing Olympic weightlifting movements or they any of their derivatives having an emphasis on squat where if you're going full range of motion half range of motion quarter like to have an emphasis to drive up as fast as possible if you've got some type of feedback from a velocity tracking device, whether that's camera or it's
tethered to the bar. I think that's super helpful to give that immediate feedback to athletes, which in turn creates internal competition and competition with those around them. So internal and external there. Yeah, I think the plyometric element as well right being able to control your body weight redirect force on impact That's essentially what sprinting is at full speed so I think Those
elements right there. So we talked about honestly kind of some similar things that I mentioned in soccer But to be able to re -accelerate, apply as much force as possible in a short amount of time, right? I think that is how you would get someone to be more explosive, if you will. Have a lot more sprinting. You could probably... I think you might find some benefit to the athlete themselves if you... Change starting position. Maybe that takes some monotony out of it for
them. That's I'm in push -up position, which I've seen a lot I'm seated seated facing a different direction standing facing a different direction You know one hand on the ground two hands on the ground, whatever whatever it is changing position like that might help them to Find positions that they might be in during a game or practice and then be able to apply And maybe a more practical element, but yeah, I think bar velocity in the weight room needs to be an emphasis So finding
the sweet spot between what how much weight you can have on there and move pretty fast but also Going into I need to have lighter weights and move the bar a lot faster So I think the balance between those two maybe that's having different emphasis on different days of the week that you're training. Definitely having a sprint element at least once a week in there and having a plyometric element at least once a week in there as well.
Whether that's in the weight room with like many hurdles or it's out on the field with bounding or more hurdles out on the field, you know, whatever that is. That's how I think you could train someone to be explosive for football. Yeah, and I think you know explosiveness and speed are synonymous a lot and One of the kind of age -old debates is the difference between football fast and track fast like sprint fast What comes to mind when you you know hear that brought up or what is
the difference to you between? Football speed what's effective there versus maybe what a hundred meter sprinter speed would have to be well So what's what's interesting I think is There's a lot of GPS data out about how far the average football play is right and how long that lasts Well a hundred meter sprint is always a hundred meters every single play quote -unquote if you will right so the average distance is a hundred meters the average time that varies based on
the the heat right and the level of that heat so Honestly, I don't think it needs to be very
far. I think the average is like way less than 40 yards, but So I think that those shorter distances probably it's probably acceleration like pure acceleration that needs to be focused on not necessarily top -end speed all the time right there are players like defensive backs, wide receivers, they may reach top in speed on a play because they're running a route and they're trying to get open even if the ball doesn't come to
them at that point, right? So, and then running backs if they break free obviously, but I think really what it comes down to besides how far you may actually run in a play is also two different elements here. Football sprinting is like weighted sprinting in the game and It's also elusive sprinting for the most part either you're trying not to get Try not to be in contact with somebody like
on the offensive or defensive side, right? And then at some point there's contact gonna happen But really it's it's not straight line or around the turn It's it's moving around bodies and moving
in space trying to take different angles. So Those are probably I listed three things right there three things that I think make it different Yeah, I agree with all of those and and also thinking about kind of like the angle that that speed has to be carried So, you know not always around bodies sometimes into bodies So, you know the difference there and how you have to accelerate in order to actually hit your target versus just to get in a you know Ideal position to be fast,
right? Right. That's completely different. But you see those when you get those track athletes who come to play football, when you put them in the right positions, in the right situations, you can really tell it's different, right? If you get them around the corner, you know, and they're able to break free and just go sprint and not have to worry about making a move on somebody, they're elite, you know, and you can
tell it's different. Yeah, you see that same crossover to with, you know, more of the indoor track version because it's shorter. of a distance is not 100 meters. But you see it in that in that field, too, because you can have football players that just come fresh off of playing their sport and hop right in and can be elite there. So that's awesome. Yeah. All right. Moving into the next one. Going into baseball or softball, obviously, the sport's a lot different. I want
you to talk about developing power. That's another
loose term, you know. um because this is a rotational sport there's not as much running uh involved in it so how would you develop power um for baseball or softball yeah um you know the I think in terms of baseball and softball like you said with rotational movement there's a lot you can do there in terms of isometric training you can utilize resistance bands to kind of mimic some of that rotational movement that the athletes are going to be doing and a lot of times with those sports there's
so much potential for overuse. That training kind of just to prevent injury and strengthen joints is a big part of that as well. So, you know, you just want to keep your players healthy and recovering quickly. So with baseball and softball, I think a lot of the training for strength and power the way you would traditionally do it with squats, but also including single limb movements. So you know, your dumbbell training with single arm presses or military presses,
single leg movement on the lower body. So whether that's single leg squatting or Romanian deadlifts, but anything you're doing that's going to help with stabilizing joint movement and preventing that rotational or overuse injury around joints is a good place to start in terms of just overall strength and like we were talking about before, athleticism for that particular application for their sport. Yeah, I agree. Lower body is a very
important part. even for rotational sports because all of that rotation starts of how you're applying force into the ground. And I don't know, sometimes it gets lost on people. It's like I got to train. I don't know, train my upper body rotation or what have you. But one thing I wanted to add there just because I was one of the authors on this publication was utilizing landmine rotations
or variations of landmine rotations. for rotational athletes is definitely beneficial because of the I guess more transferable forces that you may be able to create by using that type of exercise selection. Yeah and that core stability as well is a big factor in that rotational movement so the landmines are yeah perfect. We have one more. Yeah, but it's my turn to ask you again. This
is a back -to -back for you. I think training track for speed Track for speed I feel like when you ask a track coach that question that's very loaded. There's just that's the whole thing So
it is everything it's everything. Yeah, we could go on forever on this subject, but um initially what I would say would be you know the plyometrics that we've brought up on almost everything that involves speed so you're going to need the plyometric aspect and in this sense you're going to need the multi -jump movement whether that's with double leg contact or single because of course you're pushing off in a double leg fashion at the beginning of a sprint when you're coming
out of the starting box or even if you're standing it's not going to be quite as explosive as from the box position but you still need to be proficient in that and then you're going to need the single leg abilities because obviously each foot contact in the sprint is going to be one at a time. As far as speed itself you need to train sprinting fast to be fast. So one thing we see a lot outside of kind of the college range when it comes to track and field is people are afraid to move
quickly too soon. And I think that's a big mistake because if you want to be fast, you need to be sprinting. So the earlier you can start working on sprinting at top end speed, the better. But that comes with the caveat of programming it properly. So you want to start with those shorter sprints, full recoveries, working on just that foot contact and accelerative speed in the beginning and then you can work up to those longer distances where you're trying to carry that acceleration
out into your main portion of your sprints. The other drill that comes to mind that gets utilized
often is the wicket drill. I'm not sure if you've used wickets where they're measured out in a certain pattern but this is something that most sprint coaches will do and there's there's all kinds of uh theories on what the exact stride length should be and the foot contact should look like but most coaches will measure this out and it's going to start out in a way that each stride length and frequency is a little bit shorter and closer together as your kids
are untrained. And then those wicket distances are going to move apart as kids are more trained and stronger and more explosive. And by wicket, I mean, you can do them with those little mini
hurdles. that sit on the track or the field surface or you can tape out the marks or chalk them whatever you want to do but working on stride length and stride frequency and giving people a visual understanding of what that looks like to be as fast as they possibly can especially in the acceleration zone Super important because a lot of kids naturally will just when they first start sprinting They'll take some tiny steps in the very beginning just
to get them in and feel like they're moving their body quickly So that means they're going faster when in reality they need the power and the foot contact Time to be able to push off the ground and move themselves more quickly. So The wicket drill is one of them the main ones I would say along with the plyometric training and just sprinting itself Awesome quickly before we need to move to the lightning round here What maybe a couple of things you would use in the weight room to
supplement? speed for track Yeah, this is a big one here where Um, I would say that Olympic lifting is applicable So if it's something that you haven't started yet I think taking the time and energy to go through teaching it properly is important because The amount of explosive training that you can get through doing proper power cleans or clean and jerk or snatch or whatever that may be Uh is is going to help you in the long run all the way through your career and track
um, so That type of training and then any of those weighted jumping movements So, you know, even if you're using some mini hurdles in in the weight room or something and you have a weighted fast Working on ground contact and overcoming ground contact that's weighted is A good way to train that explosive power for sprinting So
question I wanted to ask you here. I want you to define athleticism define it in whatever terms that you can think of simplest terms most expanded terms define athleticism um okay well for one it's the ability to adapt to sport movement um that's outside of what you your skill set or what you've already learned just based on the
physicality of your body already. Like that's what comes to mind when I think about you know who's an athlete because you might not be like super skillful at whatever particular sport so say you're say you're a track athlete and then you walk out there and you attempt jiu -jitsu but you know nothing about the skill set Can you still hang enough to participate in a way just using your own internal? And you're like current physicality to compete so you're able
to adapt quickly to whatever kind of. Situation that that. Sport course. Trying to think of other examples of people like you know you'll see I don't know like a Michael Jordan like somebody that can. as high as they can possibly be in one sport and then can switch over and still, you know, be an elite athlete in another sport. What about you? I think that. I think there's a difference between being athletic and being a skilled sports player. I think there's a difference
between the two. So I'm not going to even attempt the skilled sports player definition, but in simplest terms, I think being athletic is it comes down to force expression in the shortest amount of time. I can see that, especially when you remove the skill sets. Right. Right. If you're an athlete, you're typically able to jump high, run fast, your very good at change of direction. A popular term is twitchy, like a fast twitch or quick twitch guy or girl, you know, I think
a lot of coaches say that use those terms. But essentially that comes to now comes down to force expression in the shortest amount of time, whether that's a very large amount. And it typically is it's like how much force can you exert in
the shortest amount of time? I would say that you say that someone who maybe is a cyclist and then competes in triathlons when they've never swam or uh run then goes out there and does that they're not twitchy but maybe they adapt really well and they're elite in that area are they not athletic is that an athletic event or is that an endurance event in my opinion it's an endurance event i think athleticism includes
endurance in some respects. I would never say that a triathlete, an Olympic triathlete is not athletic. I would never, that would never come to mind to me. Interesting. I would not say that.
I wouldn't say they're athletic. I would say that they're You know, I would say that they would just excel in endurance events like maybe you could put the Qualifier endurance athlete on there if you want But when I think about athletic I think about sports that require Reactions to the body to other external bodies or external things or they require, like I said, force expressions in a short amount of time. So a multi -event athlete in track, I think that person's athletic,
right? They have to jump, they're gonna have to throw, they're gonna have to sprint. I think that person's an athlete. They're doing multiple things at a high level. Yeah, well, and since the beginning of time, that was the definition of athlete. So that would make sense. But I don't know, I think I'd boil it down to saying physically adaptable at the highest degree is an athlete or athleticism expression of athleticism. So I don't know. That's interesting. That's a hot
take. We should put that one out there. Yeah. I can get behind the adaptation thing, right? Because then I think you get into different levels of athletes. So typically, elite athletes adapt better to training, to stimulus they get from competition. So I agree with that statement that if you can adapt faster, You're going to be a better Performer, let's say not necessarily.
Let's not say necessarily athlete or Skilled sports player you're going to perform better if you can adapt more quickly So I definitely agree with that addition there's also the like kind of genetically born gifted athlete situation and then the Athlete who has in them the ability to learn quickly but may not Instantly be athletic.
Do you know what I mean? So like there's that guy that's just built You know super tall already has great musculature Already can move well or there's that guy that maybe is a little bit smaller but like extremely quick to learn in terms of Like mental understanding of what's going on and adapt physically quickly so that's interesting too because it's like Can athleticism only be
born into you or is athleticism learned? That's an interesting concept as well because When I think of learned skills, but when I think of learning I think of that as a cognitive ability To retain information and make a decision off of a new problem with that information To me that moves into the skill side and not the athletic
side. I think of training not learning as the Let's say the brains response to that adept or the brains adaptation to that stimulus is as you train the brain teaches the body to be a little more efficient, I guess you could say and the body, the body's the learner at that point, not you the individual or like the brain is not the learner at that point, if that makes sense. Yeah, I think so. But there's some people
that have that already, like naturally. And then there's some that adapt or pick that up quickly. You know, there's those kids that we see that have that are very raw, if you will, in the skill area. And well, you know, you immediately look at them as a coach and you're like, No, but that's an athlete, like they can learn the skill side, because it's already in them to be an athlete, versus the kid that, you know, you see some potential and may already have some skills, but you know,
you can build on them. So interesting. Yeah, I've heard I've heard football coaches say this before, like, this person's really fast and like you know you can't coach that you can't coach speed right there like that you know it's just naturally in them um versus you know this kid's really good at you know adapting to film but they're not the fastest person you know on the team that type of thing yeah i i agree there's that those two types of uh individuals that you
have in sports as well that they start at different levels but have They have different ceilings in different areas of what they need to achieve to be a little more elite or just be better than they are currently. Aces Nation is a team of former college athletes and coaches on a mission to improve the sports culture experience and
change today's expectations. We do this by helping every player maximize their athletic potential with professional programs to improve strength, speed, nutrition, and mental toughness, and by using sports to create a direct pathway to college with a guaranteed college scholarship program for all student -athletes. Visit acesnation .org to learn more and schedule a demo. Let's go! All right, so getting to lightning round here so I can draw these out of a cup here. These
are all for you, Tiana, right? This is great. No! So staying in the track realm here, track for hypertrophy. When would you train it and maybe a couple of movements that you think were great for hypertrophy? I would keep that in your early training, off -season training leading up into your season. So that's going to be obviously your higher volume training. I would stick to the basics and not get too crazy here. I'm thinking squats, deadlifts, bench press, that type of
stuff. Yeah, nice. Next, football conditioning. What would you do? Oh, all those suicide runs and gassers are the most common, I would say. Yeah. Yeah, those work well. All right. Last one here. Last one. Championship view of this here, jumps in track for off season. How would you train jumpers off season? All the plyometrics, we train them in every respect you can think of from high volume, small jumps with like low amplitude. We talked about what amplitude meant
last time. to anywhere from full on bounding and single leg cycling and all the pieces of triple jump and things like that. So all the playoffs. Well, lightning round for me. Here we go. OK, here we go. How would you get the most out of training in the weight room for athletes in sports like cheer and dance? Oh, general strength. I think they're going to get better if they just learn how to Move, weight, if they just become stronger, move better. So like move better, get
stronger. That's it. Okay. Upper body improvements for strength and injury prevention for swimmers. Wow. That's actually really tough. I do more pec work for breaststroke. For all of them, I probably back off a little bit during the season because that's a heavy thing. Peck work, this is going to be controversial, but I would probably do a lot of pullovers with dumbbells or something. You know, like I think people call them lat pullovers
or something like that. Research says it's more peck than lat, so it's not really a lat pullover at that point. But I think that's great. Different variations of push ups would be good, I think, as well. No need to go into like heavy bench press or anything like that. I think you can.
Stay away from traditional movements in that range because they're going to be using those muscles a lot because training and competition is work in swimming and You're just basically adding on more stress at that point So it's kind of finding the balance between like what's the most important and how do I not add extra fatigue to these people? Yeah, good stuff. Yeah Well,
thanks everybody for listening. We just wanted to give you some insights to what we think about training for different sports and kind of throw scenarios out there that we've been asked about in particular and then obviously a little fun lightning round that we did at the end there. So if you have any questions about any type of programming for your sport at any time of year, please reach out to us. We'd love to help give you some insights to that and help you along
the way. You can find us on YouTube, Instagram, Check out all the information about our connect app. We've got some great blogs out there on our website In any way that we can help we'd love to so just reach out to us. We will catch you on the next one See you next time