Today we are introducing our final speaker for the 2012 Seminar, Val Nasedkin.  Val will be translating for Dr. Natalia Verkhoshansky and also presenting at the seminar.  We are truly lucky and excited to have Val on board and cannot wait to hear what he has to say.

J: Val, thanks again for being part of the seminar and taking the time to answer a few questions about yourself to our readers/attendees.  Could you please give us a little background of your coaching/athletic career?

VN:I was a professional track athlete in the former Soviet Union where I competed on the national level. My career was over due to injury by the time I was 19 years old at which time I started to work as a coach. At first my job was coach selector- recruiting young talented children for the State School of Olympic Development.  After a few years I was coaching athletes for the Ukrainian and USSR National Teams. In 1988 I was selected as a coach of the Ukrainian Team that would compete in the USA. That was my first introduction to American training philosophy. I relocated to the US in 1990 where I worked as a coach in collegiate (UO) and post collegiate systems. My education is from Kiev State University of Physical Culture with a specialty in Track and Field.

J: You have been instrumental in our knowledge of the Omegawave and its features. Could you please give a brief description of what the technology is, why it is so important, and what it can provide for coaches?

VN:Omegawave technology provides coaches information about the ways their athletes adapt to training by analyzing the state of multiple biological systems. It identifies athletes’ physiological limiting factors and provides guidelines for training and recovery protocols to eliminate them.

J: Let’s talk coaching for a bit, Val.  Many coaches have been influenced by you and those you have learned under.  Could you please give an overview of your philosophy in developing athletes?

VN:My philosophy is very simple: every decision you make as a coach should be made based on facts rather than assumptions. The more facts you have the better decisions you’ll make.  The best training programs are based on individual biological markers and not on general empirical approaches.

J: To piggy back off of your philosophy, and since you have spent such a great amount of time in the states working with coaches, where do you see the key areas coaches are missing?  In other words, do you see some changes that would improve the way we handle our athletes and thus the sporting results we produce?

VN:There is a great gap between sport science as taught in US and applying the methodology in training. Very often I see coaches concentrate on details and completely miss the big picture. In my opinion there is a unifying philosophy of training that should be taken in consideration when the training program is built. But it does not mean that everybody should do the same thing. I believe there are many ways to reach an optimal performance and every coach should try to find their own way. Nevertheless certain things cannot be changed and should be followed to achieve the best possible outcomes.

J: Many of our readers are always looking for resources to help provide them with factual information that will improve how they train their athletes.  Could you provide any educational materials that you would say are “musts” for a coach of physical preparation?

VN: Every coach should be familiar with a work of Dr. Hans Selye on the principles of adaptation to stress.

J: Val, we’re really excited that you’ll be coming back to Richmond in April, and are sure that our readers and attendees are as well.  Thanks for taking the time to do this!

By: Yosef Johnson

Yosef johnson is the owner of Ultimate Athlete Concepts, a publishing company dedicated to providing the best resources for coaches of physical preparation

I am not an expert in the area of developing athletic performance and have never claimed to be. I do not have a degree in any relevant field or any other formal training. Also, my ego is not wrapped into my work in this field as I publish books of the truly brilliant minds and have no delusion of ever being one of them. With this in mind, you can share my amusement when I get calls and emails from strength and conditioning coaches who have master’s degrees and 19 certifications asking me how to perform their job better. What is most insane is that I find that they actually know very little when it comes to getting results i.e. better athletes. Notice I did not say athletes who are more flexible, stronger, bigger or can pass a functional movement screen. Those items have some relevance, but improving them is pretty easy even for the lay person. What is harder and more elusive is helping an athlete play his sport better. This is why I believe most coaches would rather talk about the aforementioned qualities as results of the latter would be embarrassing. This point was driven home at last year’s NFL combine. A young football player from my city was ranked as the number 2 cornerback in the country 5 years ago. At that time, he was clocked at 4.47 in the 40 yd dash. He went on to play 4 years at one of the top programs in the country without any major injury. He was invited to the 2011 NFL combine and ran a 4.47 40 yd dash. How could this be? He is with one of the elite strength conditioning programs, right? If anyone could get him faster, they would be one of the most qualified.  Sadly, this example is not unusual but status quo. Sure there are exceptions, although I would argue that most improvement in college is due to natural causes. Most will improve as their maturation completes during this time of life.

Why is this the case? It is apparent that there is a very strong belief that athletic ability is innate and cannot be dramatically improved. My entry into the field was spurred by lack of athletic ability and the hope that I could figure it out.  As a below average athlete I wondered if there was a way to make up for this deficiency so that I could play basketball at a level higher than high school. I am an eternal optimist and have always believed that more things are possible than we can imagine. As I began to search out ways to improve my athletic ability, I read a number of books and bought a few of the “programs” found in many popular magazines to get “lightning quickness” and “sick hops”. Needless to say,  I was not getting very far with some these programs.  I did not understand any of the science or lack thereof in what I read and tried. As a competitor, all I cared about were results. Finally, I bought a book called “Secrets of Soviet Sports Fitness and Training” by Dr. Michael Yessis. I had heard plyometrics were a very effective way of developing jumping ability and quickness and this book seemed to provide the best information on it. Further, after reading the book, I realized I had seen the author on TV with Todd Marinovich, who had recently broken most high school QB records and was the number one recruit his senior year. I found that Dr. Yessis had worked with Todd from age 13-18. Todd was an average athlete despite all of the crazy doings of his father, Marv. Nonetheless, in 5 short years, Dr. Yessis had created an absolute beast. His personal life notwithstanding, Todd had raised his physical abilities to a very high level. Had he continued with Dr. Yessis and not been swallowed up by his addictions, I believe he could have easily been the best QB in history.

At this point, I realized that Dr. Yessis was the only person I had read who had actually created a great athlete from very little. I had no idea what he did or did not know. My only concern was how he could help me.  In short order, I flew to California and began to work under his tutelage. Despite having a herniated disc in my low back and being diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, I saw significant improvement in my quickness and jumping ability in less than 6 months. While my long term progress was thwarted by my physical ailments, I was certain I was on to something. In fact, I had no idea the improvement that could be achieved with a healthy and willing athlete.

As time passed and our relationship took shape as a master/apprentice, I began to test this out on athletes. When I reported my results to Dr. Yessis, he was not impressed but expected at least as much. Not knowing anything else, I also expected the results I got. It was not until quite a few years later when I became acquainted with many professionals in the field that I realized that what we were doing was an absolute anomaly. Rather than talk “theory”, I began to ask coaches as to what concrete results they expected and was completely amazed that they never produced results like I was getting. More stunning was that they had read several of Dr. Yessis’ books, as well as those from the former USSR. I did not know it at the time, but the reality is that those I spoke with did not understand what they were reading and had no background to apply it correctly. They could talk ad nauseum on a plethora of ideas and concepts, but were at a loss when it came to simply producing great results. Further, I realize they never posted the results for all to see. They would simply say, “We have seen great improvement using this or that method.” Improvement in what? Bench press? Power Clean?  How about the functional movement screen?  All of these are red herrings to the real question: can they perform much better?! Sadly many coaches are driven by the warning from higher ups to “not mess them up” in the hope that their injury rate is lower than their peers.

While I have learned a decent amount in the last 18 years, I am still learning all the time. Not about a bunch of useless scientific information, but relevant data that will help create a better result than I am currently getting. I have no shame in asking anyone what they are doing and what kind of improvement are they creating. In the end, this is the whole point of working in the field. I want to get a better result than everyone else. If I think someone else is producing a better one, I want to know what they are actually doing and why.

As time passes, it gets harder to produce the same results. Ironically, as I have adopted an approach that is based on precision and efficiency, I have seen larger marginal results in year three than in year two. The reason for this is twofold. One is that I better understand how to apply the correct volume and intensity to the right situation. More importantly, as I confer with Dr. Yessis on my plans, I use exercises that have higher correlation to the skills needed. This allows for me to apply lower intensity and volume and get a superior result.

Having said all of the above, I want to encourage everyone to compile the useful data from their work and share it with peers. I believe many adopt a CYA attitude to protect their job. Because of this, the athlete suffers. We should spend our time critiquing what we do instead of defending it.  Lay out what you do with your athletes and let other competent professionals scrutinize it. Find those who get a better result than you and discover why. Look outside convention and find methods and exercises that have a high degree of transfer to the skill. Incidental results won’t do i.e. a stronger athlete is a better one.  Lastly, always remember that only three things matter when working with an athlete: what will get them a scholarship, a paycheck, and/or an Olympic medal. Everything else is irrelevant.

By Jason DeMayo

As I’ve been traveling around the country this year I’ve seen quite a few different things.  In the past few months I’ve seen and heard of teams using a variety of methods to improve performance, from warm ups ( pre-competition and training), to new recovery modalities. While I, in no way shape or form, am saying I have the answer to what IS the right way to do things, I have come to a few important conclusions. Early on in my career all I cared about was the “whats”.  What is this team doing? How did they get their squat up? What does that coach do for conditioning? What restorative means are they using?  I’d ask those questions all the time.  Since I have had the fortune of adding an Omegawave to my tool box, my questions have shifted to the “whys”.  Maybe it’s because we have been pushed back towards the research aspect due to the new information on HRV and omegometry are not in simple programming books. Or maybe it’s just that we see drastic changes in how their bodies “are” before the athletes do and we want to know why. Maybe its just the addition of a new staff member that has sparked that in me a heightened desire to “know”.  No matter what the reasoning is, I think that just asking “what” leaves the door open for issues, but if you follow the “what” with the “why” and you understand and can justify (legitimately) what you’re doing, improvement seems to fall into place better.

I think that this is something that we are missing in all aspects of sports performance.  Strength coaches, athletic trainers, physical therapists, even sport coaches, could all be doing more of this. We need to establish the “what” and the “why” with everything we do. I think that this list of questions  should lead you to your “why’s”, but I feel everyone needs to take a step back and look at what they’re doing and answer these questions.  I did it, and trust me, it really opened my eyes as to what we actually were doing.

• What is your goal?
  • Basically, what are you training for?  If you’re training athletes and your answer is anything other than improve performance, I need to ask you one question. Why?
• What are your deficiencies?
  • What may or may not limit you or your athletes in reaching this goal?  What things need assistance or correction?  What things can they not/should not do?
• What steps are there to reach your goal?
  • Where are you trying to get and how can you get there?  Maybe you look at what are the most extensive training means you would implement to reach your goal and work your way back to get there, as an example.
• What requirements are there to reach your goal?
  • What are the requirements of the sport?  How are the people you deal with at these requirements?  Can requirements of the sport even be separated from the sport itself?  How much (volume and intensity) is required to improve these requirements?

Once you answer those questions you need to evaluate your answers and figure out not just what to do, but why you’re doing it. The theory of “changing to change” or “athletes needing change to stay motivated” are absolute garbage.  I’m sorry but that’s the honest truth.  I’ve witnessed it day in and day out watching our program build from 8 wins to 29 in five short years. Were there some changes? Sure, but not in every day structure, and minimal, at most, in practice.  Some tactical changes are always required in sports, and yes you need to “update” your training program every year, but to tell me a kid needs to do something completely different every day is a mistake.  As Dan John said in his “A Philosophy of Strength Training” DVD, “the goal is to keep the goal, the goal” and “the plan is to keep the plan, the plan.”

So with that in mind, let’s look at some of the “why’s” I ask myself and the people who work with me:

1. Why are we doing that exercise?
2. Why are we using that volume/intensity?
3. Why is that method better than this?
4. Why is that actually important and will it make our kids better at what they do?
5. Why do we need this progression/change?

Think about those for a second.  If you can use precision in your training, know why you are implementing the means selected and what their purpose is, do you really need 100 different things?  If you take a step back I think that you’ll look at what you’re doing and realize that there’s a lot of “fluff.” I sure did.  So just take a step back and look at what you’re programming and see what you need to do, versus what you want to do, and watch how the sporting results improve.

In today’s podcast Mike Robertson discusses his latest article “What is Corrective Exercise?”  Mike dives into his definition of corrective exercise and how he came up with it.  He also discusses the role of corrective exercise in programming, assessment, utilizing assessment and corrective exercise in a group setting along with reviewing some different methods of corrective work.  We can’t thank Mike enough for taking the time to talk with us and really hope you enjoy.

Mike Robertson Podcast

Following up on his latest article Yosef talks with us about what precision is to him and how important it truly is in the program. He also gives his insite on some of my idea’s about it and gives us a sneak peak as to what’s to come from Ultimate Athlete Concepts in 2012.

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By: Cal Dietz

Coach Cal Dietz, head strength coach for olympic sports at Minnesota

Biometrics are variations of cybernetic programming, which were first invented in the Soviet Union. It essentially is a regulatory process used to figure out how much training and stress an organism should use on that particular day.

Parametric biometrics is the use of another motor skill to regulate how much training should take place for a different task. Traditional biometrics, for example, could be using plyometrics (or any exercise) and measuring its parameters with some type of tool (i.e. a v-scope, Tendo, and/or force plates) to regulate how much speed, force, etc. is taking place. This allows you to gauge when the drop off is of a certain percentage, wherein you would stop training on that particular exercise for that day.

When using isometrics and eccentrics, however, you are unable to use biometrics for those particular exercises because obviously you are changing the tempo such that it is no longer a concentric based movement. What we use here is a separate measuring aspect of the same motor skill to regulate how many sets and reps should be done in an isometric or eccentric lifting exercise. I will give you the following examples: in using the back squat or leg press in the isometric or eccentric phases of training, you would perform an eccentric or isometric back squat and then rest 3-4 minutes (or whatever is prescribed). You’d then perform the motor tasks that you are regulating. For example, this could be a squat jump with a measurement tool; every time the athlete starts to drop off from their best effort you would essentially stop squatting or doing the leg press isometrics. I often start with the parametric using the best results I can get for that particular day. For example, if the athlete jumps 30 inches and then goes over and does the back squat, as long as the athlete can keep repeating the 30 or 29-inch mark, I will have that athlete keep performing the squat.

One of the ways I usually have my athletes perform a parametric motor task for the lower body is using Vertimax belts hooked to Tendos such that so that I can measure the percentage of their best squat jump. The key to many of these parametric measurements that we are using is that you take all the dynamics and variables out of the motor tasks. For example, in the squat jump I often have them put their hands at their hips, don’t swing their arms, and I will try to have them jump straight up and down. What can happen if they start to jump more horizontally is that they will actually pull more wire out of the Tendo unit and thus get a higher reading. By taking away as many variables as possible you get a more accurate parametric reading. One suggestion may even be to constantly set their depth with a high box at the right level and go from a pause so that you can get a more accurate reading on the parametric relationship exercise.

Another example is the bench press. We take a very lightened load, 45 – 65 lbs with female athletes, and 95lb with males. Usually we do 2 reps; I rarely have found to get much after the second repetition as far as max speed. The third can be the same usually but anything after 3 will often result in a decline on any particular motor skill dealing with max effort. Again I usually do the plyometric exercise first and then perform an isometric bench press for 6 seconds; do one rep, then follow that with a few prehab exercises. Right before going to the bench press again, I will do the plyometric exercise to regulate and see if the athlete can get within 1-4% depending on the training frequencies and how often we will train.

Many times people ask me where the drop off percentage comes from. I found this through basic trial and error experiments with many athletes and observing  how much they could perform one day with a certain percent drop off, and then how long it took them to heal so they could perform at the same level again. Essentially, it started with an article on cybernetics which has not been found in the English language (I only found it in the Russian language), which noted that an athlete’s best effort should be within 1.5-2% of that at any given time. Now this 1.5-2% was done on the sports skill and not necessarily the training skill so I believe you can expand the training skill to the point where there are a bit larger margins for error. The sporting skills in this sense were done every day so within 1-2% of training every day, whatever your training focus was, should have been 1-2% of the main sports skill. With lifting and strength training this would be a greater percentage just because of the fact that the frequency isn’t completed every day. You train one day and take a few days off, which is why I saw an increase in the percentage and margins for drop off in this biometric training method.

Coach Dietz is the Head Strength and Conditioning Coach for Olympics sports at the University of Minnesota. For more information on his methods and programming, check out www.xlathlete.com. Please post comments and questions in the space below, and we’ll be sure to cover them in our podcast with Coach Dietz.

In today’s podcast Danny Raimondi talks with us about his article review on Post-Activation Potentation.  Danny discusses why he selected the topic, where he see’s it’s relevance and how we can incorporate it in the physical preparation of our athlete’s.  A special thanks to Danny for taking the time to do this.  Enjoy.

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By Yosef Johnson

Yosef Johnson is the owner of Ultimate Athlete Concepts, a publishing company dedicated to providing the best resources for coaches of physical preparation

In my time interacting with strength and conditioning coaches from all over the country, it has become apparent to me that many take their job title quite literally. It seems that their role is viewed as peripheral in the athlete’s development. The thought is that a “stronger” and more “conditioned” athlete will perform better and be less prone to injury.  Further, it is widely believed that tough workouts will produce tough athletes. This is what every head coach can’t get enough of. While in very loose terms these things may be true, there is far more that can be accomplished by those in the profession.

 In my own work with athletes, my approach has continually evolved and improved as seen with the results produced. When I first began to work in the field under my mentor, Dr Michael Yessis, I was certain that you simply kept pushing the intensity and worked harder than everybody else. Against his teaching, I kept this temperament for a while. I have an intense personality and my attitude toward athletic development mirrored that. As time passed and I became less hard headed, the light bulb started going on in my head. I began to realize that my intensity was misplaced. Instead of applying it to the training, I needed to apply it to learning my craft. This led me to become far more efficient and effective. I learned that properly managing intensity, volume, and technique rendered a much better result than previously seen.

 I concentrated on having my athletes master excellent technique in their general and specialized exercises. I also honed in on proper performance of plyometrics and other jump exercises. I was surprised to find that all of my athlete’s marginal improvements actually increased over previous off seasons. This isn’t supposed to happen, right? I was further amazed to find that my athletes went into their preseasons in far better shape than their counterparts who had been run into the ground. It turns out that whole “whatever doesn’t destroy me makes me stronger” idea does not apply to developing athletes, especially ones that are not high level. So what did I actually do?  I nitpicked on technique at low intensity levels (60-70%) for months. I did this with only one set per exercise. After laying this base, I only added one more strength set per exercise and never exceeded 80%. In later phases, I integrated low intensity plyo’s that observed the rules of ground contact time and good technique. At first glance, this does not look like it’s enough to elicit a great response from the athlete’s body. Nothing could be further from the truth.

 I am not a scientist so the language I am most conversant in is results. After all, this is what we are all pursuing; quantifiable, relevant results.

In the past 2.5 years one athlete has dropped his 40 time from a 5.1 to a 4.4 and increased his VJ by over 21 inches to 36+. The best news? He is only 16. Another athlete in the same time frame gained 60 pounds while dropping a full second from his 40 time from 6.1 to 5.1 and increasing his squat well over 200lbs and nearly 100lbs on his bench. While I do not focus on lift numbers, it gives perspective on this approach and how it affects strength. I have also had one of my quarterbacks increase his throwing distance from 30yds to just under 70yds at a bodyweight of 160lbs.  In a similar time, one of our athletes went from unrecruited at a division 8 high school to being on the team at Western Michigan University. This was done in a little over two years. More remarkable, was that he was the number one athlete in the annual combine at WMU. He went from a 5.15 40yd to a mid 4.4 and increased his VJ from 23” to 36”.  Most impressive was his 20yd shuttle time of 4.10; .23 seconds better than second place and good enough to be in the top five at that year’s NFL combine. There are many other examples but this gives some perspective on this approach.

So what is most important in our approach to training? Being precise. Precise technique, precise intensity, and precise volume.  More is not better, but being precise is. The results will speak for themselves.

Yosef Johnson is the owner of Ultimate Athlete Concepts, a Michigan based company dedicated to providing top quality information from the world’s leading coaches, scientists, and researchers