When taking on athletes who are high-level in one area, most notably their sport/skill, what is your timeline for the inclusion of higher level programming that will not interfere with further developments in their sport/skill? Do you immediately “round” their program out or would you advise them primarily on their immediate needs related to their sport/skill?
It’s obvious, I think, that developing basic skills in one area would have virtually no impact on advanced skill in another area until that basic skill is developed to a level that goes beyond the athlete’s current ability, which in some cases may never happen (the world-class sprinter learning olympic lifts/variations for instance). So obviously this becomes a long-term planning issue but when you are consulting for the short term, or facing the fact that other qualities may never rival their current abilities in the long-term, where is your energy best focused?
I’m thinking mostly in relation to the dominant quality in sport, and not to other factors (eg power in volleyball vs work capacity). I’ve got 1000 more questions related to this topic so please everyone feel free to rant, tangent, etc. I’d very much like to make this a long, long thread and I plan on being very, very annoying.
My experience has shown that at the higher levels, changes – if necessary – must occur at a very subtle level, with slight shifts and overlaps taking place. Particularly if the athletes has been successful in their sport. The Asafa Powell bench press issue seems to be a good example of how not to change your program (if all the stories I’ve been hearing are true).
I think it is always an assessment of the net effect of changes to a program. More work on a power clean (technically and program-wise) will elicit improvements in the power clean, but how will it impact the bigger picture? What are the costs vs. benefits. And, of course, we must assume every individual will respond differently to specific changes.
When working with a new athlete, the most important conversation is asking them “where they came from” before you start making decisions on “where you are going to take them.” This is probably one of the most important points I’ve learned from Charlie when transitioning athletes into new programs and protocols. The whole concept of “Context” is critical when looking at program changes.
Does dealing with a new athlete who is significantly de-trained change how much of the “old” training is retained? As the length of the layoff increases, is there more of a “clean slate” to work with? Can the transition be less gradual, or is this a process which must be respected regardless of current training status?
Certainly - I think a detrained individual would be closer to a “beginner” in that sense. There would be longer preparatory phases working on overall training capacity and technical instruction. For example, a lot more work may be spent on training good sprint drill technique, olympic lifting technique and working on flexibility.
With a beginner or person with a long layoff, I’d say you are working with larger margins. Anything you do will elicit an adaptative response. However, this does not mean you pick just anything to do. This is why even crappy coaches can think they are on the right track with beginners. Simply increasing the workload linearly will elicit a short term improvement.
This is common with track athletes who come to the university I work at (I don’t work with the track team - long story). These athletes are accustomed to only training 2 to 3 times per week in high school, and when given more work (5-6 times per week, mostly medium intensity) in the university program, they typically improve. Most of the improvement is with 400m athletes and up. The short sprinters (100m and 200m) always get trashed as per Charlie’s explanation - too much medium intensity work.
Conversely, with a higher level athlete transitioning to a new coach, the margins are much smaller and changes are made in a subtle, calculated fashion.
One more thing - with the athlete with the long lay-off, it is always important to find out what happened previous to the long lay-off. It can typically be a significant injury or overtraining syndrome that lead to the long lay-off. So, it is important to reverse-engineer the athlete to make sure these problems don’t re-occur.
I think with team sport athletes you need to generally just work on basics they haven’t been doing. Sometimes this is really simple stuff - usually flexibility, recovery, co-ordination. If you have no control over what they do in other areas then you have to look where the drain is and what systems and counterbalance them. For example they may need high intensity explosive work but they are nackered from other training. What do you do? For me with field hockey it was upper body and abdominal areas with stretching and myofascial release. We also introduced contrast showers and drills to work on running mechanics though I rarely was able to do any high intensity sprints.