Sarah Walls 9/3/19 Sarah Walls 9/3/19

Smart Circuit Training

Circuit training is the method of endless possibilities! Coach Sarah Walls shares a workout that checks all the boxes you want in an effective circuit: challenge, variety, effectiveness, and intelligent planning.

An athlete’s ability to repeatedly produce high amounts of power - and then recovery quickly to do it again (and again… and again…) is the definition of fitness for team sports.

Lately I’ve been working with an athlete rehabbing from a lower body injury who needs to keep her cardiovascular conditioning and fitness as high as possible. It’s been a great challenge and has gotten me utilizing some methods and equipment I don’t regularly utilize.

Circuit training, in particular, has been crucial.

It’s really important to keep training, even with an injury, you just have to be smart about it. Otherwise, the athlete will come back from injury only to find themselves woefully out of shape - which can lead to a new injury simply from fatigue when they try to pick up their sport again.

There are truly unlimited possibilities when it comes to circuit training. A basic understanding of what you want to get out of the session should help guide some decent decision making. Always be sure to factor in some rest time and/or active recovery.

I’m also a big supporter of self-regulation. If your body says it needs to go slower or rest, then give it what it needs! We always want to train with the intent to “live to fight another day”. There will be another workout to push to your limit.

Here is a circuit that I designed for myself that focused on repeated efforts of maximum power with active recovery. All active recovery exercises were chosen for my specific injury prevention needs:

Explosive Belt Squat x5

*Scap Pull-up x10

Explosive Lat Pulldown x5

*Heel Raise x10

MB Keg Toss x5

*Full cans/Empty cans x10

Explosive Push/Pull x2/way

*Elliptical x:60

Active recovery exercises indicated with the asterisk and italics.

I was able to monitor power output on a rep-by-rep basis throughout the session, but if you want to give this a try and do not have access to that type of feedback just simply do each of the main exercises with as much speed/force as you can generate for every single repetition.

Let me warn you: the above is not for the faint of heart. The repeated focus on power was a real difference maker. Be smart with the amount of total time you want to work. This session was done for 7 rounds and that took around 45-minutes. It was exhausting. Like impacts-the-rest-of-your-day exhausting. I suggest targeting 20-minutes or so for your first time.

Feel free to substitute your own exercises for the active recovery choices. If there’s a chink in your armour, this is the perfect opportunity to know your staying fit and pushing yourself with exercises that are safe for you, while also getting the extra reps on your prehab/rehab exercises.

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Thank you! SAPT

Sarah Walls 8/7/19 Sarah Walls 8/7/19

15-min Conditioning: Maximum Destruction

If you’re short on time in the gym, give this quick conditioning workout from Coach Sarah Walls a try. It’s hard, real hard - don’t say we didn’t warn you.

I’m not a fan of “one-off” workouts. I’m all about training in a well planned system for superior results. I mean, have you ever talked to me?

While training plans are always best, sometimes it’s fun and totally appropriate for you to test yourself with a really hard single workout. It can be used as a measuring stick for the future or a way to see who ends up in the bathroom first: you or your buddy.

Also, if you only have a short amount of time and want to smash yourself (ie, maximize your time), this will be a good option for that, too.

Equipment needed for maximum destruction… I mean, progress:

Assault Bike or Woodway Curve***

Do a solid warm-up (if you need ideas here’s How to Warm-up in a Hurry)

Once you’re ready to go, hop on your bike or treadmill and go…

:45 as hard as possible (watch your watts and/or speed to ensure maintaining your peak) combine with 90-sec Active Recovery (jogging or light-ish biking)

REPEAT 6 times

Alright, so I know the above workout looks pretty benign. It is NOT. Please use good judgement before deciding if this is a good workout match for you.

If you’ve tracked your output via speed or watts and maintained your peak output, you can effectively leave the gym knowing your body is well on it’s way to recovering to a state that is more healthy and useful than when you walked in!

Closing thought: if you’re not messed up the rest of the day, you didn’t actually give it your all and need to try again next week. Hey, sometimes we have to teach our body how to work. It’s okay, but just know this one is a killer.

***Lots of equipment can work like a traditional treadmill, spin bike or a VersaClimber. You want to be able to see some sort of measurable for your work and recovery periods. I would not recommend elliptical or stepper.

Thank you! SAPT

Sarah Walls 6/12/19 Sarah Walls 6/12/19

Conditioning for Team Sports: Common Faults in Conditioning

In our multipart Team Sport Conditioning series, Sarah Walls goes in-depth on the various factors impacting team sports' fitness and conditioning. This week: Common Faults in Conditioning.

I want to talk about conditioning. In particular conditioning for athletes that are playing team sports. I’m going to be speaking from my own experiences with many sports, but most notably, basketball. This has been on my mind lately because, if conditioning is done correctly, that's one of the solutions to better performance that I’m supposed to deliver to my team.

But the big, BIG caveat with that is, most of my players in the WNBA are playing basketball year round, whereas in the NBA, those guys get a bit more time off. Rest is important for a team’s performance, as this allows the body to recover from a brutal season and gives us time to increase strength. See our earlier blog post on the importance of strength for why this is one of the most important times of year for my players.

When looking at training in the college setting, it is most common that the sports coach maintains some control of the training program depending on their experience. Typically these college coaches were on a successful team in the late 90s or early 2000s that may have won a conference championship or had a semi-successful NCAA Tournament run. Unsurprisingly, that tends to mean they have a lot of experience with conditioning and not very much experience in the weight room.The conditioning while on this team was their coaches ran them into the ground and then ran them some more. This creates a positive association between extreme running based conditioning workouts and success. And the thing they all have in common is just the the unbelievable volume, and pounding on the athletes bodies, with very, very little rest.

And that's what I really want to focus on today: talking about is that a reasonable approach? Or is there a better way?

What all of these programs/coaches were asking for was the best of both worlds. Both worlds in that they want volume, because of the high mileage seen during the sports of soccer and lacrosse in particular, with basketball also having considerable mileage as well. But they also want to be fast, because there are all these bursts of speed within all this mileage on the field of play. So then they take those two concepts and say, well, we have to be fast, and we have to get a ton of mileage so logically, the only way to do that is to do those things every single day and combine them.

And this is where you get those 300 yards shuttles tests that you have to do 10 sets of in :60 with a brief recovery come from. Another favorite is the full field 110-yard sprint that must be completed in 16-17 seconds, you have a minute to jog back and rest then go again for around 10-12 sets.Those are just a few of the standard examples.

And the result is: a lot of overuse injuries. An inability of the athlete to recover. Not because these drills are difficult, but because they are unrealistic and we now know better ways to safely and effectively train athletes.This is problematic, because, if we have a pain point in one area of the body, the athlete starts to compensate, to try to lessen the pain as much as possible. Then a new pattern develops, a pattern that is weakening one area of the body, while over using a completely different part of the body. And that is how we effectively perpetuate this injury risk cycle.

These coaches do not typically have a notion of the effect different surfaces have on the injury risk of their athletes either. When coaches decide to condition athletes that are accustomed to being on grass or turf on a track, this can cause major problems. Field athletes are used to running on soft ground, in their cleats. They're not track athletes, they're not accustomed to that difference in joint stress. And these are things that you have to take into consideration. If you're going to do that with your team, or an athlete, or you want to do that yourself, you must respect the surface and you have to respect the volume that you're asking your athlete’s bodies to do.

One of the things that typically happens to these coaches when they want to start a conditioning program for their team is that they just throw them in the deep end. If this happens and the athlete struggles with the program, I recommend backing off a week from the real program and maybe reducing that workload, give it your best, and then see how you feel those next couple of days. This will give you a real sense on if you need to work yourself into the program or if you can just go ahead and get it started.

For example, if you do half the volume of the program, and you're crazy sore for two, three days afterwards, or you can't even really make it through at the times that you're supposed to hit, then that's a real clue that some things need to be adjusted for you. If you're overseeing athletes, you have got to make that adjustment, that is the smart, sensible thing to do. If you don’t you’re just begging for injuries down the road.

Thank you! SAPT

Sarah Walls 6/5/19 Sarah Walls 6/5/19

Conditioning for Team Sports: Strength as the Foundation

In our multipart Team Sport Conditioning series, Sarah Walls goes in-depth on the various factors impacting team sports' fitness and conditioning.

My career began and grew in the college strength and conditioning setting, where I was very fortunate with the strength coaches that I worked with and under. The structures and procedures I use today as well as my coaching philosophy were taught to me by these coaches, and I believe that is a big part of what has moved my career forward. I am thankful everyday for the mentors I had early on in my career, what I learned from them has helped me become the coach I am today.

I monitor everything that happens during a single heartbeat. It’s that important.

One of the things I quickly learned from these mentors was that strength is the foundation for performance on any level and of any type. No matter the sport and the dominant motor ability, strength is the base that affects all other qualities. This can be taken to the extremes of endurance by looking at cross country or marathon runners, where likely the most successful ones are stronger in the very specific ways they need to be stronger. Obviously strength is not the dominant motor ability in the case of a largely aerobic sport, but once those dominant qualities are evened out like they are at the top level, it is the stronger athlete who wins.

The same can be said for team sports as well.

If we are to believe that strength is the foundation of any performance training program, then you have to make sure that your athletes are strong in appropriate ways for the sport. Louie Simmons says “It does no good to be strong in the wrong exercises.” Applied to more endurance based sports we could say it does no good to be strong in a way that does not benefit sport performance.

Supporting the development of strength in all athletes, regardless of the sport, doesn't mean that we're trying to build everybody into powerlifters or olympic weightlifters. We are, in fact, trying to make them pretty darn strong, just not to the extremes. So with that said, there's still a lot of room to develop an enormous amount of strength that is appropriate for the sport. The bottom line is make yourself of your athletes as strong as you can, without it negatively affecting the sport performance.

Sarah Walls 10/1/18 Sarah Walls 10/1/18

Upper Body Blowout: Push-up Negatives

BlowOUT and BlowUP your upper body at the end of your next training session with this push-up variation that improves work capacity, conditioning, and strength.

Finishers are a great way to complete your training on any given day. Depending on what you select, you can bring up weak points by improving work capacity.

One of the keys about conditioning is that we are generally pushing the body pretty hard. So, you expect to see some break in form, but you need to know what is acceptable failure in form and what isn’t.

For example, if I were having an athlete perform a shuttle run, unacceptable failure would be when we reach ANY biomechanical failure - we can only condition as long as we’re being safe - acceptable failure would be from the standpoint of the aerobic system (times get a bit slower) or because the muscles start “burning” and times slow.

Once failure of form is reached - and this applies to conditioning scenarios as much as lifting - the set must stop immediately.

The other rule is that we don’t want to burn in movement patterns that - while they may be highly unlikely to cause injury - are an incorrect pattern we are working on correcting through other parts of our training. A great example is the push-up. Push-ups are often butchered resulting in way too much strain on the lower back and shoulder than they should when done with “perfect” form.

If your push-ups don’t look like the ones in the video, then you are probably not ready for Depletion Push-ups. To get some tips on how to troubleshoot your push-up, check out SAPT’s guide to Diagnosing the Push-up.

Depletion Push-ups + 90-Second Negatives

This sweet little combo of Depletion Push-ups + 90-Second Negatives are best used for areas of the body that are already fairly strong. If you’re just learning to keep your hips elevated and hold a brace, this would not be a recommended finisher.

Negative only push-ups are a great way to develop upper body and core bracing strength.

I think this is a perfect variation for athletes who may lack work capacity in the upper body, but can solidly hold a brace for… well, close to forever. Since it’s easier to control the body as it’s lowered to the ground, we can still accumulate a ton of volume to improve work capacity if the upper body.

Progressions

Add more sets: starting with one set of :90 is often plenty, but you can add another 1-2 sets to get even more volume. Keep rest times minimal.
Add weight to the back to increase difficulty: using a plate, chains, weight vest, or even making these band resisted will ramp up the challenge.
Full Depletion Push-ups: once you’ve maxed out progress on the negatives and are certain your form is excellent, go ahead and remove the emphasis on the slow negative to knock out as many push-ups as possible with PERFECT form for 1-3 sets of 90-seconds.

Give these a shot if you feel like you’re ready! I bet you will be surprised with all the muscles that get involved and get sore the next day.

Sarah Walls 4/3/18 Sarah Walls 4/3/18

WOW: Week of Workouts 4/3/18

This week's WOW is a very challenging Victory Lap of exercises. Test the limits of your strength, fitness and conditioning with these workouts.

WOW: Victory Lap (aka Whatever Doesn't Kill You...)

In complete contrast to last week's WOW that was focused on injury prevention, we present three workouts designed to push your limits.

As you go through these three workouts, you'll either feel like you are celebrating a well deserved victory lap from the hard work you've put in over the last 8-weeks OR the whole experience may feel like a punch in the face as you careen from one exercise to the next.