Building Better Athletes: Developing Essential Qualities in the Weight Room
When it comes to athletic development, the weight room plays a crucial role in building a foundation important for success in any sport. When I think about what my main goal is, I think about enhancing general athletic qualities such as speed, strength, impulse, mobility, and endurance. These qualities are building blocks for any athlete, regardless of their sport. Knowing that what I do in the weight room does not directly affect sports performance, rather than trying to replicate sport-specific movements, we aim to develop the physical capabilities to their fullest extend and thus support and enhance their ability to practice their sport.
Key Athletic Qualities and Best Practices for Development
Speed: Keep it Simple
I define speed as the ability to move quickly from one point to another. The rate at which you increase speed from rest to anywhere near top speed is called acceleration. Top speed is the fastest you are able to move. Agility is defined as the efficiency of changing direction, or how well do you decelerate completely to accelerate in a different direction. Being fast is a very important quality for many sports. Being agile might not be specific to a lot of sports but I do think it is an important general quality to have as a human being.
While this is quality is very sought out by many, there are a lot of common practices in strength and conditioning that could be slowing down your progress or plateauing you:
Ignoring a certain quality because is not specific enough to the sport. For instance, ignoring top speed because your sports only runs within “acceleration” distances or ignoring agility because your sports does not involve changing directions.
Trying to load up too much to the point that you are not moving fast enough to make speed adaptations.
Getting “too fancy” or “too sport specific” to the point where you are not moving fast enough for adaptations and there are too many confouding variables to measure
Here are the main assumptions I make when programming for a Kaizen Athlete:
You are a human being before you are an athlete. There are a lot of things that might not be sport specific, but that I consider useful and important for day-to-day life. Being able to sprint and change directions efficiently are some of them.
All these qualities will be bounded and specific to tests. speed or acceleration measurements are going to be specific to the test you choose. While this test might not be specific enough to say you or your athlete got fitter for the sport, it does not matter. The test you are using should be adequate (200m sprint to measure acceleration is not the best), reliable (low confounding variables) and replicable (can be done the same way over and over). They do not need to be specific or complex to test a general physical quality.
Speed adaptations occur at high intensities. It is hypothesized that 90-95+% of max speed training could be needed to elicit adaptations effectively (PMID36649725). If you think about this, acceleration training alone could be less efficient than exposing athletes to top speed training. It is unlikely that you hit 90-95% of max speed when accelerating through 10-20yards. It also brings up questions about resisted sprinting. I would say this: resisted sprinting can be a good tool for movement specific strength and technique work, supplementing high speed sprinting.
Strength: General Physical Preparedness
Strength can be defined as the ability to exert force against resistance. It forms the foundation of athletic qualities such as power (force x velocity), speed (strike length) acceleration (force / mass) or impulse (force x time). There are two main components to force: mass and acceleration. In our context, mass is weight lifted and acceleration is that rate of change of speed at which a weight is moved. Strength is also the integrity of your body as a whole to withstand resistance or force being applied to it.
Strength training is a controversial topic within the sports performance goal. Every coach likes to talk about getting stronger and I would hope that that is one of the goals inside the weight room. Here are a couple of missteps I see with strength training across the board:
Avoiding it completely for any number of reasons. Allegedly being too dangerous, not being similar to the sport enough, risk of injury, youth or joint strain are main areas of concern when talking about strength training.
Avoiding loading of certain ranges of motion or movements that are deemed too dangerous and higher risk of injury.
“Lifting lighter weight faster” as a solution to, not only the implication that heavy weight is dangerous, but also as a solution to the “moving slow” problem.
Percentage work and its inability to be adaptable to all the stressors that arise as an athlete, student and person.
This is what I think about when I am programming Strength Training for my athletes:
Lifting weights is not dangerous at its core. “the injury incidence in weightlifting was 2.4-3.3 injuries/1000 hours of training and 1.0-4.4 injuries/1000 hours of training in powerlifting” (PMID27707741). Weight room work is far less “dangerous” and more controlled than common team sports and is very beneficial for your body to adapt and become capable of withstanding what you throw at it (for more detailed, researched explanation, read my blog on absolute strength).
Again, you are a human being before you are an athlete. Strength training is an amazing tool for you to get exposed to different movements and ranges of motion that might help you move through life without any fear of movement. It is a great tool for you to conquer any movement limitation in a controlled place full of regressions you can start to try.
Strength will be specific to the test of your choice. Strength will be specific to your test. Not only that, but any strength test in the low repetition maximum requires a very specific skill. Skill that might not be similar to the sport, but again, this does not matter when trying to measure a general quality. The test has to be adequate (anywhere between that 1-5 rep range maximum), reliable (same method, same repetition maximum, no predicted) and replicable.
Strength adaptations happen at relatively high intensities. Performing working sets of 1-5 repetitions each week with loads above 80% 1RM or at an RPE of 7.5-9.5 over 6-12 weeks can elicit meaningful strength gains (PMID34527944, PMID33671664). Working sets at this rep ranges and intensities truly are a skill that is worth building for athletes: internal coordination as a unit to produce as much force as possible.
Impulse Training: Product of Force Production and Time
Impulse is defined as the ability to generate force within a certain timeframe. Improving impulse would result in an athlete generating more force in a given period of time, or the same force for a longer period of time. When programming for athletes I like the term impulse more than power, which emphasizes rapid force application (high velocity) but may overlook the benefits of optimizing force duration.
I disagree with the common view of training all aspects of the force-velocity curve. Experience and research suggest that 90+% of maximum power output is necessary to make necessary adaptations on jumping, an important test of impulse (Vanderka et al., PMID27803628). Training in the middle of the curve is inefficient because it lacks the intensity specificity needed for significant strength or speed adaptations. In that regard, plyometric training ensures 90+% power output and as such it is my go to for impulse training.
Coordination: The Weightlifting Debate
I will controversially add weightlifting to the mix of exercises and qualities you should add to your program, also known as olympic weightlifting. Weightlifting Programming involves any snatch, clean and jerk variations, and it is a vast topic of discussion in the strength and conditioning world. Here are some points made:
Complexity and Learning Curve: highly technical movements that require significant time and coaching to learn properly. This can take away from time that could be spent on “sport-specific” training or other exercises.
Risk of Injury: due to the high technical demands and the need for “precise execution”, there is a higher risk of injury if performed incorrectly. Coaches may prefer safer alternatives that still build power and strength.
Lack of Specificity: the lifts are general power exercises that may not directly translate to sport. Coaches may choose exercises that more closely mimic the movements and demands of the athlete’s sport.
Alternative Methods: There are many other effective ways to reap the benefits of the olympic lifts which can be easier to teach and carry a lower risk of injury.
90%+ Power Output: due to the technicality of the olympic lifts and the weight you have to move, you might not hit that threshold of intensity to create speed, impulse or power adaptations.
I think weightlifting allows for an simple observable progress in strength, power or impulse. You have a certain “time parameter”, the time it takes to get the barbell to the ground to the shoulders or overhead in one movement (or shoulder to overhead for the jerk) and as the weight you can lift increases, the higher the output. But you can say this about any weighted plyometric or “light weight fast lift” that I just called inefficient. This is not my main argument for their addition and here is where the concept of coordination comes in. I divide coordination is two parts: internal, or the body’s ability to sequence contractions, co-contractions, relax and brace through your full body to produce or absorb as much force as possible; and external, an athletes ability to interact with a body of mass or an external resistance in an athletic way. I believe that, while weightlifting IS NOT necessary, IT IS one of the best weapons to tackle the many concepts that make up coordination within every rep of one exercise.
Weightlifting, along with other barbell sports, have a very low rate of injury per 1000 hours compared to more common team sports.
Weightlifting movements present a powerful triple extension and the practice of power sequencing from ground up.
These lifts also practice active air-time reduction. An important concept that gets very little attention. When you are sprinting, split-stepping in tennis, changing directions, you want to minimize time in the air, as that is time you are not able to accelerate or produce force. Actively seeking to strike the ground fast and hard is an amazing skill.
Active triple flexion is also present as you are trying to pull yourself under the bar. The body’s ability to relax into triple flexion and then contract to receive the bar.
Elasticity through deep ranges of motion at the knee, hips and ankles to bounce out of the bottom.
Overhead strength to stabilize the bar in the receiving of a snatch or a jerk.
Unilateral deceleration upon receiving in a split jerk.
Mobility: Not Just Chasing Flexibility
Mobility is defined as the product of range of motion and strength. As per this formula, being mobile does not only mean having or gaining a maximum range of motion possible, but also being strong and confident under such. Mobility training has been bastardized throughout time until becoming a alternative to hard work, a “unload” method, an active rest, something relaxing. When chasing mobility, you are chasing strength as defined above. When I approach mobility training, and the reason why it is not in the same category as strength training, is because I am chasing exposure and strength through different ranges of motion that are not explored often, or that are limitations.
Big trends in this industry regarding mobility are the following:
Confusing flexibility, or achieving a certain range of motion passively, and mobility training
Forgetting about the strength component of mobility
Using it as a method of de-loading or de-intensifying a training session or block.
Lets consider the following formula: mobility = range x strength. Range is an important factor to consider in this product. Increasing range increases mobility. Increasing the range passively with no strain or resistance (strength = 0) does not increase mobility. Here is how I approach mobility training to stay everfit:
To increase range you might need some flexibility work. Although there is quality evidence to suggest that weight training through a full range of motion has the same effects as flexibility in achieving range of motion progress (PMID36622555), athletes with no confidence under load through some ranges of motion might be better suited to passively get comfortable in those, with the goal of trying to progress over time in terms of loading, strength and control.
Explore different ranges of motions or movements that you do not normally do. Spinal flexion, hyperextension, side bending, rotating, shoulder extension, shoulder adduction, shoulder rotations, hip rotations, hip add and abduction.
Start with passive stretching, move to assisted movement, then body weight movement and finally start loading it little by little.
Endurance: Building a Base for the Long Haul
Endurance is the ability to sustain prolonged physical activity, crucial for sports requiring long-duration efforts. When it comes to athletes, most of the endurance and conditioning will come from the practice of the sport. Yet, there are some sports in which technique work sometimes takes priority and thus the need for a little extra endurance work. We have also established that cardiovascular work is a good predictor of health and longevity (cardio blog here).
It is common to see strength and conditioning coaches take the fancy route and make conditioning look like the sports of the athletes they are coaching. While this might be somehow beneficial to see a progression in output within an average playing time, it does not have to be this complex. Here is how I think about endurance training:
“Cyclical” sports get all their conditioning from their practices.
“Technical” sports might need some conditioning. My rule of thumb is that they accumulate 150min of moderate activity, including practice (that might be high intensity, but you get it). For these I normally program 30-90 min of non-impact zone 2 work or tempo runs anywhere between 2 sets of 6-12 reps of 10-40s of work. For all these I progress weekly from the lower end of the bracket to the upper end and then maintain at the upper end for the rest of season.
CONCLUSION: COACH JO’S 80% RULE
When it comes to training my athletes I like to think of one main thing: I want to derive adaptations every time they enter the weight room. I think this is where the 80% rule applies. This rule suggests that training at 80+% of an athlete's maximum ability is needed for creating meaningful adaptations. This changes a little based on the physical quality we are trying to achieve as we have seen. For the sake of time and efficiency, always seek exercises that will derive adaptations for the quality you choose to work on. These exercises will allow you to hit 80+% of max load/speed/intensity and therefore create change.
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