The Update! Part 3

As you can tell, I’ve been slacking here.  Things have been really busy, and unfortunately, this fell to the bottom of the list. I’ve been swamped with new things going on- weightlifting, weights for ETSU Women’s tennis, my thesis, and a couple of side projects I may speak on at a later date.  

My first competition was in February, where I totaled a meager 227 kilograms (92 snatch, 135 C&J).  Terrible for a super heavy-weight, but not bad for a first meet I suppose.  I competed again a couple of weeks ago in Shreveport, LA at the Collegiate National Championships.  I totaled an improved 237kg (100 snatch, 137 C&J).  I still have a lot of work to do, but it is good to see I had a 10 kilo PR in a little bit less than a month and a half.  Onward progress!

This semester I took on the venture of co-training the women’s tennis team.  One of the other master’s students and I started writing and implementing their weight program.  I’ve not been able to coach since Cal Poly, so it is nice to be able to work with a team again.  This is probably a good time to brag about their recent success at the A-Sun Conference Championship where they took first this past weekend (even if the weight training programs have probably not had a significant effect as of yet, haha).  We will be doing testing with them next week before NCAAs to see what improvements to see where they are at.

My thesis has been unfortunately slow going.  I may elucidate further on it in the future, but I can say this- venturing into a relatively un-researched field is a double edged sword: there are many research opportunities, but the literature review will be a pain!  I would rather be blazing a trail however; it is more exciting this way!

I’m going to do my best to continue updating with further posts and articles.  I will have more time this summer to do some writing, so you can expect some new articles soon!

Methods for Athlete Tracking, Part 2

Here is part 2 of Methods for Record Keeping:

Others:

1.      Medicine Ball/Weight Throws for Distance: There are many variations of throws you can do here, such as behind the back, forward push toss, granny toss, and side tosses.

2.      Jumping Movements: Standing Broad Jump, Vertical Jump (Vertec or Jump Mats).

Source:http://www.examiner.com/images/blog/replicate/EXID58202/images/StandBroadJump(1).jpg

3.      Body Mass and Body Composition: This can be especially important for sports that adhere to weight classes, but is still an important measure for any sport.

4.      Short Sprints: Most sports require short bursts of explosiveness, so 20 meter and shorter linear sprints can be a good performance marker.

5.      Agility Tests: Some agility tests are better than others, but an agility drill specific to the athlete’s sport can be a good indicator of agility improvement.

6.      Sport Specific Testing: One baseball test I learned of recently is to track initial ball velocity when hit off of a tee.  You can’t get much more specific to a sport than a test like that.

Source: http://s7ondemand1.scene7.com/is/image/TeamExpress/EZTEE

7.      Statistical Process Control: This is a method of establishing “normal” values of a variable for a specific athlete.  For example, one method might be to track daily waking heart rate.  Heart rates that are seen outside of about 1 standard deviation of the average may indicate something worth looking at. One company has a system for this up and running: Sportably.com


References:
Principles and Practice of Resistance Training by Michael H Stone, Meg Stone, and Williams A. Sands

The Update! Part 2

It has been a breath of fresh air here at ETSU in the Sport Science program.  I finished up my bachelor’s degree last year in a program that was mostly geared toward health and wellness.  Unfortunately, this is far from my interests, and I found myself in a place that was not an ideal fit for me.  This is not to say that my previous program isn’t up to par.  That is far from the case.  I built a solid platform of scientific understanding of the body that has paved the way for my future studies and I was lucky enough to study under some incredible professors.  I didn’t fit well simply because my interests were different.  A Sport Science degree is much better attuned to what I feel drawn to.

Here is an example of a class I am currently taking:  This class is designed completely around the scientifically-backed process of enhancing sport performance.  Yesterday we spent the class discussing the specific bioenergetic needs (what the body has to do to provide the fuel for specific performance) of various track and field events, and how to elicit specific training adaptations for those needs.  This type of discussion is what I had been yearning for throughout my undergraduate degree.  I am in a great place now.

Despite my motivation and love of the material, it is far from easy.  The demands of the program are pretty extensive.  It is pretty uncommon that I get to go home before dark. I am on campus somewhere around 7:15AM, and don’t leave until somewhere between 6-8pm.  It is busy, and stressful, and pretty hectic at times.  I love every second of it, which makes the workload significantly easier.  Speaking of which, I need to get back on it!

Stay tuned for more updates!

Methods for Athlete Tracking, Part 1

In my last blog post, I gave you strong reasons why you should be keeping records.  In this post, I will give you a slew of ways that you can keep track of records.  Hopefully you can use a few of them!  Keep in mind this is far from exhaustive.  These are but a few of seemingly infinite ways you can track training.

Subjective and Self-Reported Measures:

1.       Regular Surveys: (i.e. Ask about sleep duration, sleep quality, soreness, stress, mental state, readiness to train)

2.       Regular Tracking of RPE: (My friend Howard is doing something like this with his soccer players).

Found at: http://www.plusoneactive.com/images/rpe_tall_chart.gif

3.      Utilizing RPE to track relative training volume: (i.e. RPE X Minutes= rough workload).

4.      Relative Intensity of Movement: Sprints at 100% effort might be a 10 out of 10 difficulty, while sprints at 50% effort might be a 5 out of 10 difficulty.  You could also multiply the difficulty rating by reps to get a training volume).

5.      Your assessment of their training: (how well they performed, how they looked, how they acted before/during/after training).

Weight Training Measures:

6.      Total Volume: Sets X Reps X Intensity (Keep in mind that you can track volume for a single exercise, for a training session, for a week, for a block, etc etc).

7.      Volume (Broken into categories): Training session volume for a “class” of exercises (i.e. explosive exercises, compound exercises, single joint exercises, unilateral exercises).

8.      Weight Lifted: 1-RM, 3-RM etc. 

9.      Bar Velocity: An interesting device called a Tendo Unit will track bar speed.  I am told that the device is not very good for much beyond that, but I don’t know for sure.

10.  Force Plate Analysis: Movements on force plates can give a multitude of information about the training state of the athlete, such as Peak Force, Peak Power, Rate of Force Development and others.

Stay Tuned for Part 2!

On Record Keeping

One of the most important things you can do as a coach is keep records. You can keep track of attendance, RPE (rate of perceived exertion), training load, bat speed, playing minutes, the list goes on and on. Even something like writing daily comments about how the team and/or players are looking can serve an important purpose. Tracking these pieces of data can serve a few vitally important functions:

•Accurate view of the team’s and/or athlete’s status:
Without prior data on athletes, it is hard to put your current perception of their state into context. Suppose you have a female soccer player that is looking tired at practice. Is she tired because she is sick? Didn’t get enough sleep? Overtrained? Overworked? Distracted? You take a look at the playing minutes for your last three games and notice she has yet to be subbed out. There is a good chance that she is tired because of that. Without that record, it would be nearly impossible to guess why she is tired.

• Training program evaluation:
How do you know how your team and athletes are responding to your program? Is the program causing excessive fatigue? Did a combination of training sessions lead to an epidemic of rolled ankles? Is the program actually causing progress? Without records, it is nearly impossible to figure this out.

• Liability and Training Justification:
Your records can show to the coach/athlete/parent that your athlete(s) are improving. Those records of improved performance are a strong justification for your job and training program. You might also suppose that an athlete gets hurt and wants to sue you. If your records show that you were doing exactly what you should be as a good coach, and you didn’t impose an unreasonable risk for injury on the athlete, you are going to have a much stronger case with which to defend yourself.

For a coach, these three reasons are by far the most important when it comes to justifying record keeping. There are definitely more, but these three should easily be enough reason to start. If you already keep records, hopefully this will help remind you why you keep records. If you don’t, it is time to get started.

We're on the same team

A conversation I had with one my fellow grad students got me thinking.
It is very easy some times to be frustrated with the training decisions of sport coaches. Coaches may train their athletes with a frighteningly high volume of plyometrics, or run mile repeats the day before a competition. These training decisions run contrary to what we believe are prudent training decisions, based upon the physiological and biomechanical schooling that we have received.

Many sports coaches have not had the opportunity to receive the same scientific background that we have. For example, I realized today that I am in the beginning of my 6th year of college-level physical science. The past 5 years have had a huge effect on my ideas about training. How can I expect that a sport coach be on the exact same page that I am if she or he has not received the equivalent training? I would imagine if I were to instruct a soccer team on tactics, other soccer coaches would probably assume I’m an idiot. I have many strengths, but game tactics on the soccer field are not one of them. I can make smart training decisions that would shape them into the type of athletes that excel on the soccer field, but would not be able to properly train them tactically.

It is a very similar situation with S&C coaches and sport coaches. In many cases, S&C coaches have a better science background than sport coaches. It is not our place to write off the sport coaches as idiots because of lack of science knowledge. Instead, we should use and grow our influence on the sport coaches in order to help them out in areas that they do not have the same training we do. S&C coaches and sport coaches have the same goals: improve our athletes so that we can win. Complaining does nothing to further those goals.

The Update!

Well, this has been a long time coming. I have been extremely busy over the last few months, with the big move and all. For those who don't know, I moved across the country from California to Johnson City, Tennessee to get my master's degree. "Why in the world would he move to Tennessee?" you might ask. I chose to move here to join a program that is centered around Sports Science. When I was doing research on the schools I might want to be a part of, I asked around, looked for the authors in research articles, and did everything I could to find a source for mentors who had both elite coaching and quality research experience. Tough criteria, I know. Two names kept coming up, and I decided to follow them to the other side of the country. Now, I am part of the graduate student population at East Tennessee State University, and I couldn't be happier. More to come in later posts.