Athlete Performance: Try this for a New Level of Readiness

Have you ever experienced a “blah” feeling at the onset of a competition? Despite being completely recovered and ready by all other indicators? Have you wondered what the deal is with that?

If you choose to use strength or strength-speed lifts in your priming, make sure you get the volume and load dead-on! Not a lot of room for error with this technique.

Are you a coach and find your team to be flat the first 10-minutes or so?

Well it could be that you have missed out on an underutilized, but quick and easy, method of precompetition preparation. The strategy is called Priming.

It is simple and you can easily implement a priming workout to help you or your team pull out of the early competition slump.

Game day lifts have been used for a long time - especially by athletes in sports that have multiple competitions in one week. But, to execute a true pregame LIFT you really need to be certain that the athletes are extremely well trained so that you can garner the proper effects. If you go too far, you could add unnecessary fatigue that may impact performance.

Hey! Is this like Russian Roulette for game day prep?!? The stakes are high and we have no idea what will happen?

No, c’mon, I wouldn’t do you like that!

Staying true to my ultraconservative loading parameters, I suggest that if you’ve never used Priming techniques previously (or are working with a relatively untrained group of athletes - like high school athletes!) that you start off with body weight and medicine ball work.

And taking it one step further, you will also try to limit the eccentric load as much as possible.

The goal of priming is to fire up your central nervous system and get your body ready to GOOOOO for your next workout.

Here’s a sample program that is on the lighter end of the spectrum:

Be sure you/your athletes are thoroughly warmed up before starting and be sure to target similar movement patterns to the exercises you’ve chosen, too:

Box Jump 3x3 (rest :90)

Medicine Ball Chest Push with Step 3x3/leg (rest :90)

Partner Side Throw (light toss) 3x3/side (rest :90)

Set box height appropriately to ensure an easy, soft landing - we’re not trying to set any records.

Allow the ball land on the floor before resetting for the next rep.

A light partner toss is all that’s needed. Notice how the back hip is loaded as the ball is received.

To achieve the targeted benefits, each exercise needs to be done with focus, precision, and power! Avoid circuiting exercises and enjoy a leisurely rest to fully power-up before the next set.

Place this workout the morning of a night competition or the day before a midday game and enjoy a new feeling of readiness when it counts.

Since you’re here: We have a small favor to ask! At SAPT, we are committed to sharing quality information that is both entertaining and compelling to help build better athletes. Please take a moment to share the articles on social media, engage us authors with questions and comments below, and link to articles when appropriate if you have a blog or participate on forums of related topics.

Thank you! SAPT

How to Build High Performance Recovery Sessions (HPRT): Breathing and Mobilizations

I don’t play favorites. 

Except when it comes to recovery methods! 

We all know what it feels like the morning after a truly exhausting training session or competition: Super Garbage. Yes, that’s an actual term I use when checking in with athletes. That next day feeling can leave you feeling like it’s hard to just walk from the couch to the kitchen. In fact, it may take most of the day or longer to feel somewhat normal. 

As hard as it is, the best thing to do is go through some kind of warm-up via light movement and stretching. After this most people tend to feel much better and then can get through the rest of their day without an issue. Do they feel great? No. But can they “make it”? Yes. Okay, that’s not too bad.

But what if it were possible to tweak that time-tested formula and leave the session feeling loose, recovered, and ready to - dare I say it? - PERFORM again?!?!

It is possible.

My current favorite recovery method is called high performance recovery training. I got this directly from Joel Jamieson (coaches and trainers, check out his 8-weeks out certification), it involves taking an athlete in need of recovery and relaxing them, doing mobilizations, getting \ blood flow going via aerobic work, and finishing with an explosive movement or two. Magic.

What I like about keeping with the style Jamieson uses is that even with a typical recovery type session of stretching, athletes may feel better, but they are still not ready to do anything explosive. Or, you know, athletic. It’s like the recovery process isn't really complete so they would not be ready to go in and have a high quality practice. So adding in the explosive component at the end really gets them back as close to normal as we can. 

Some players that are seeing me individually will get a full session like this while the rest of the team comes in. Sometimes we are really pressed for time so we will do an abbreviated version. Either way the whole idea is to switch from that stressed out sympathetic state into a more relaxed and ready parasympathetic state where they focus on what’s going on in the moment. 

Really what that entails is giving them a whole bunch of mobilizations to try to attack the whole body. Generally we start with the feet, which is important for basketball players because of how restrictive the shoes are. Then we'll work on the ankle. Moving up the chain from there into the hips, t-spine, and shoulders. One or two mobilizations each area typically does the trick.

At this point we’ve relaxed into the parasympathetic state, and we have now mobilized the entire body. Then we'll go into some LIGHT blood flow work, which would be some type of aerobic activity. I'll generally break it up into five minute chunks, just to keep it from being too monotonous. We typically would do 2-4 round of 5 minute chunks, so we may get anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes of light aerobic activity. One important thing to note is that we typically stick to non-impact activities with these such as VersaClimber, bike, carries, and light throws. Remember these sessions are typically for when the players are fatigued or banged up, so less impact on their joints is a must. After the blood flow work the next series will typically be some kind of unilateral work and a carry. So for example we would do a sled push and a goblet carry. We use the sled push because it can be a little bit of strength work and it is concentric only, so it will be easier on them to recover from. 

After this blood flow work we move into the explosive part of the session, which we will talk about in part two of this article.

Since you’re here: We have a small favor to ask! At SAPT, we are committed to sharing quality information that is both entertaining and compelling to help build better athletes. Please take a moment to share the articles on social media, engage us authors with questions and comments below, and link to articles when appropriate if you have a blog or participate on forums of related topics.

Thank you! SAPT

2012 USAPL Richmond Open: Meet Results

I competed in the 2012 USAPL Richmond Open this past weekend and it was a huge success for me.  I hit a PR in the squat and deadlift as well as my meet total!  I competed at 181 and weighed in Saturday morning at 180.9 after cutting about 10lbs (first time I’ve had to cut weight).  For anyone who read my post last week you know that I was very unsure going into the meet so for me to come out with PRs and meeting my goal of an 1100lbs total (finished with 1136lbs)is a huge deal for me.  So without wasting any more time here is the video compilation of my attempts...

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The only thing that even remotely ruffled my feathers as far as judging went was on my squat.  On my first attempt I got red lighted for my depth even though I felt I was below parallel.  Then on my second I got a white light but the judge still told me I was almost high.  So for good measure on my third attempt I decided to hang out in the bottom so there wouldn’t be any question.

Bench press went alright.  I was hoping to get around 325 but after my second attempt I only took a little jump.  After all the trouble I’d been having with my shirt I was just glad to get on the board.  After watching the videos I noticed a bunch of problems.  My arch wasn’t as big as it could have been, I tucked my elbows too much then I didn’t flare them on the way up (this causes a loss in leverage), and for the position I started in I hit to low on my chest which threw off my whole stroke.

My deadlift went a lot better than expected.  I actually feel like I could have gone much heavier on my last one but whatever I got the weight and the total. I still need to sit back into my heels more and pull back more as opposed to standing straight up which is very evident on my last attempt.

Right now my upcoming goals are to get stronger and continue to refine my technique on my lifts.  I don’t like saying that I have to work on my weak points because as far as I’m concerned everything is weak and it all needs to be worked on.  Is this the wrong attitude to have? Absolutely not, as I’ve stated before I don’t like feeling content.  The moment I feel content and that I’m strong is the moment that I stop working hard and I don’t ever want to stop working hard.

I want to congratulate Carson on his first meet, he did a great job and we are all very proud of him.  I also want to thank everyone who came out to support me and who helped me out with my training and everything else.  Thanks to Gabe Naspinski who did my programming and also congratulations to him as well for totaling 2100 pounds at his meet in Tampa! Sean was a great training partner and it was a shame he couldn’t attend but he had some very important things to do in New York but thanks again man!  My friend and current SAPT intern Tadashi was my handler for the whole thing and did an awesome job taking the stress off me, wrapping my knees, picking weights, etc. so thanks a lot man I couldn’t have done it without you.  Steve was there to handle Carson but helped me out as well, he is a great friend and I’m glad he came down.

Tim Henriques was in attendance with his powerlifting team as well.  Tim is someone that I look up to in this industry and for him to help out and lend his support like he did was a huge deal for me so thanks Tim!

SAPT’s longtime client and friend Ron came down, which was awesome that he would take a whole Saturday to support Carson and I, thanks Ron!  Two of my buddies who I’ve been friends with for as long as I can remember came out as well which was cool for me to share this experience with them, thanks guys.  Part of my family made the trek to Richmond too.  This meant the world to me so thanks to my sisters, Sissy and Stephanie and to my nephew Trevor who is one of my best friends so that was doubly awesome that he came out.

Last but certainly not least I really want to thank my girlfriend Shannon for everything she did, has done, and will do.  She learned very quickly how important competing in powerlifting is for me and she jumped right on board. Without any hint of boredom or annoyance she listens to me day in and day out talk about my training successes and struggles which very few people can pull off.  She watches my videos and reads my articles and doesn’t think twice about it.  She made the trip with me to Philadelphia to spend two days watching a powerlifting meet that I wasn’t even in!  She even drove Tadashi and me to this meet and spent 7 hours waiting to film me and support me for only the 3 total minutes that I was on the platform.  I am truly lucky to have her in my life so thank you Shannon, I love you very much!