Cal Dietz Virgina 2012

Here is the sequencing.  The password is seminar2012

Sequencing of exercise

Joel Jamieson-Managing the Training Process – CVASPS

Mike Robertson-Corrective Exercise: Fact vs Fiction

JD: Mike, thanks for taking the time out of your hectic  schedule at IFAST  to talk with us a bit about your presentation, “Corrective Exercise: Fact vs. Fiction” that you will be giving at the 2012 Seminar. I know you’re a busy dude, so let’s get right to it.

First off, Mike, what do you feel is the biggest mistake coaches make out there when implementing corrective exercises?

MR: Great question J!

I think the biggest issue most people make is not knowing what corrective exercise is in the first place. Most people assume that corrective work is just foam
rolling, stretching and/or core and glute activation drills.  Quite simply, corrective exercise determines what specifically is holding the client in front of you back. It could be mobility issues, stability issues, energy system development, or a host of other things.

People get too focused on the modalities, and don’t focus enough on the end result –getting our clients healthier, and/or improving their performance.

JD: With that in mind Mike, where and how would you change their approaches?

MR: This is a loaded question, because true corrective exercise is a holistic approach to training. If they aren’t assessing their clients and athletes it starts there. If you aren’t assessing, you’re guessing as to their needs and limitations. Once the assessment is concluded, it’s time to develop a program that addresses what you found in the assessment.

Where and how is hard to answer, because this is stuff that should be going on daily. Beyond the formal assessment and program design process, you also have to be flexible and willing to adapt based on how the athlete is responding to training.

Unfortunately, that’s probably vaguer than what you’d like to hear, but that’s just how it works.

JD: Mike thanks for taking the time to rap with us a bit today. We’re really excited to have you here on campus at the University of
Richmond for the 2012 Seminar. I’m sure our attendees are just as excited. We can’t wait to see the presentation. Any closing comments you’d like to add?

MR: Thanks J! I’m really just trying not to bring down the seminar too much. You’ve got an absolutely stacked line-up, and I can’t wait to learn from some of the best and brightest in the business!

JD: Cal, you’re known quite well for your ability to investigate research and find a useful and practical way of implementing it into your training.  As our attendees have seen over the past 2 years you are on the cutting edge of programming.  So the question is this: what are the latest and greatest changes to Coach Dietz’s programming?

CD: Well Jay, as we read and research here at the University of Minnesota, my staff and I keep coming up with the conclusion that if you can take all the aspects of the type of stress you’re providing and simplify it such that your stress becomes more specific, the organism has a tendency to adapt more quickly because you’re not wasting energy reserves or adaptation reserves on many different signals.  Now, where that will go eventually in the long run is that there are times in the year where there is generalized training (most likely at the beginning); ultimately, however, each stressor must become very specific as it has been said many times by Soviet researchers and Doctor Yessis.  The question is a matter of coming up with the methods to do that.

Understanding this fundamental principle of performance requires a grasp of biochemistry and bioenergetics (which basically go hand in hand), and the specificity of adaptation as it pertains to an individual or group of athletes in the context of their entire training program. This individualization in my program will ultimately be based on different leveling and how much stress can be handled based on the athlete’s work capacity. We may have 3 or 4 different levels with 5 or 6 different programs for a particular team. Those programs would not be recognizably much different for the general person to see but they will be different on many fronts. The next hope in the direction is that we find methods to identify where an athlete is at in his physical capabilities and make sure you train them to the level that they need at that moment.  Along with the physical capabilities, you have the physical needs of an athlete, such as which qualities or weaknesses does he or she possess that could potentially be hindering performance.  

JD: When looking at the idea of advanced principles, I’m sure the first question our attendees and readers will have is, “will this be useful for less advanced athletes?”  Can you talk about that briefly?

CD: The biggest question is will these advanced principles work for any athlete. I guess the best answer to that question comes in the form of a question. If you are not killing the organism, then the organism is going to adapt to the stress that is being applied. Now, I promise you unless we’re looking at extreme diseased cases, the organism will adapt to most stressors. Keeping this in mind, yes I think all components of very specific stress, for example eccentric type training, are useful for lower level athletes.  I find that if you do eccentrics throughout the entire body then they acquire eccentric strength better because the adaptations aren’t just specifically geared towards the movements themselves, but rather oriented systemically, especially when the nervous system is involved. It has been shown and demonstrated often that less advanced athletes adapt quickly because their nervous systems are becoming that much more efficient.  I know the Triphasic book has prompted many questions and I’m actually surprised because the quality of questions shows that people are doing some very creative work after they have read Triphasic Training. Triphasic training isn’t’ a specific system; rather, it’s a general concept that people are placing into their current system and achieving great results because essentially it addresses any weak links in the sequence of a movement pattern to attain a more functional and powerful result. Now I don’t mean “functional training”, but function of the muscle as it relates to sports performance.

JD:  Cal, thanks for taking the time to rap with us a bit today. We’re really excited to have you back here on campus at The University of Richmond for The Seminar for the third straight year.  I’m sure our attendees are just as excited for this presentation as they have been for the past three.  We can’t wait to see the presentation.

CD: Thanks, J, I’m very excited about presenting this year. Looking at your line up I’m very excited about some particulars I’ve seen and heard that are going to take place with Natalia Verkhoshansky, Joel Jamison, and Val. I truly believe this clinic has been building and keeps getting better every year and if you can’t come out with tons of new ideas from this  you basically fell asleep and weren’t listening. I appreciate all of your efforts and am very excited to be there to listen and learn from some of the best clinicians in the country, if not the world.

As always, please post any comments in the space below!

JD: Joel, I appreciate your time in answering a few of our questions about your presentation, “Managing the Training Process”, which you will be giving at the 2012 Seminar. I know you’ve got guys to prep for fights so let’s not waste any time. First off Joel, when people talk about managing the training process, it has to start with some sort of system for monitoring the athlete, their readiness, and ultimately, progress. How do you personally monitor your athletes and what tools do you use?

JJ: You’re definitely right, everything starts with monitoring and there are a lot of different tools that can be used for this depending on the athlete’s sport, level, and needs. First, I use both the Omegawave Sport system and my own HRV system, BioForce HRV, to monitor training readiness on a daily basis. This helps me fine-tune the daily training load based on their individual responses to the previous days of training and lifestyle influences such as how much sleep they got, mental stress levels, diet, etc.

During the training session itself, I’ll monitor the athlete’s heart rates, keep track of the weights they use, speed/power numbers using the Tendo unit, rest intervals, and general measures of performance, such as sprint times or distances, depending on their sport. I like to monitor how many total sets the athlete performs above 90% of their 1RM as well as how many total sets are performed below 90%. I’ve also begun using Polar’s T2 Team system to monitor and analyze heart rate data of the training session, and it has proved to be a very useful tool.

Essentially, the most important thing is to keep track of what the athlete is doing in their training and develop markers that you want to track over time. These markers will be a bit different for each sport, but once a system is in place it’s usually relatively easy to monitor the training process and takes just a little extra time to do each day. In the long run,  this can pay huge dividends in achieving results.

JD: Where and how would you recommend coaches start monitoring their athletes and what benefits they could see from some type of a daily monitoring system?

JJ: The best place to start is simply to make sure that each athlete is keeping a detailed training log of exactly what they are doing each training session. From there, the coach just needs to figure out how they want to quantify things, what exactly they want to track over time, and how they are going to do it.

The easiest way to do this is to learn how to work with excel and build a spreadsheet that will do most of the work for you so that each day there are measures for each player that are being monitored and tracked. There’s definitely some up front time involved in putting together a daily monitoring system, but once it’s in place it really shouldn’t take that much time each day.

To get started, coaches should sit down and determine what the biggest training variables are that ultimately impact performance in the sport. If it’s strength and power, you’re obviously going to want to monitor and track measures of strength and power more so than if it’s a sport that relies heavily on endurance or other areas. I would suggest asking yourself what the objectives of the training program are and then work backwards from there.

JD: Joel, thanks for taking the time to discuss your presentation with us. We’re really excited to have you back on campus at the University of Richmond for the 2012 Seminar. I’m sure our attendees are just as excited. We can’t wait to see the presentation. Any final thoughts or comments you’d like to add?

JJ: No problem, I’m very much looking forward to coming back and presenting again and I have to say, the line up of presenters you’ve put together this year is world-class and I’m excited to hear them speak myself. Anyone that doesn’t make it down to Richmond this year is going to be seriously missing out on some cutting edge information.  It’s not every day that this group of speakers is together in one place and I’m grateful to be a part of it.

LE: I’m still working on trying to wrap my head around all of this too!

Our jobs in the physical preparation/strength & conditioning profession are to raise the level of preparedness in our athletes within our (unfortunate) scope of practice.  Within this scope, we have a multitude of training factors that can influence the level of  development. All of these factors have particular targets.  These targets, be it particular enzymatic systems, proteins that are involved in protein synthesis, or simply the suppleness and mobility of joint systems.  These targets can be influenced at various magnitudes depending on a host of factors that seem infinite at times.  The ultimate struggle is to use the appropriate training factor(s) to target the desired system(s), at the right times, in the right dosages, and keep the negative costs associated with the work down enough
to ensure a heightened biological power.  This is how I view a complementary approach.

What I will attempt to do in 75 minutes is to outline where my mind starts when I begin working with a team or individual here at the NCAA level within in my particular environment.  Address what governs my thinking process, then how that feeds into the assessment/screening, diagnosis of the problem(s), particular interventions, and the monitoring and evaluation domains.

The presentation is not only to simply elaborate on how I operate, but to spark conversation after the presentation.  All attendees have their particular lens they see things through.  My hope is that I can stimulate conversation afterwards so I can continue to grow.
This is selfish in a way, but at the end of the day, the only thing that matters if my athletes.  If I am enlightened from others, this will only help my athletes.  That is what is important.

JD: The conversations that spark after the presentations are concluded is exactly what we all are hoping for. The more interaction the better, and I feel that this is something that The Seminar has been great for since its inception a few years back. I can’t wait to be a fly on the wall and soak it all in. Landon, thanks for taking the time to give us the introduction to your presentation, I know that all our readers/attendees are just as excited as I am for it.