009 Sprinting

my co-host Rob Malcerry. I'm going to talk about sprinting today. Now we were just planning

“how to approach this topic before we jumped on the podcast today and we're going to keep it”

really simple and really straightforward for this particular episode and what we'll do in the future is dive down into the more kind of interesting rabbit holes about various different biomechanical issues, strict shorting cycle and that kind of thing. But we're going to give the really kind of basic version of sprinting today. So my section on Physiology and Biomechanical Experimenting is going to be relatively short and now we'll discuss a little bit about the strength training

programs once I finish that. So starting at the beginning, like we talked about with vertical jumping. So if you've not listened to the vertical jumping podcast, it'd be great if you went back and did that now because a lot of one about same might not make as much sense if you haven't already. Listen to that. So like with vertical jumping, we can relatively easily determine the biomechanical

“kind of factor that's most important for sprinting with vertical jumping we want to get off the”

ground. So basically the vertical impulse relative to body weight is going to determine how much

jump height we get with sprinting is basically the same kind of thing but horizontally. So we're now throwing out the horizontal impulse in the direction you want to go. So ultimately like with vertical jumping we can actually boil sprinting down something relatively straightforward. So how do we create that horizontal force? Well essentially or impulse rather sorry. How do we create that horizontal impulse? Well obviously it's going to happen as the gate cycle occurs and we produce

force, integral and direct ourselves horizontally in the kind of direction that we want to go. Now in order to achieve that we're essentially going to perform a sequence of joint actions and it actually follows a proximal distance sequence exactly the same way as vertical jumping does and throwing us or throwing all the derivatives like punching as well. So essentially when we look at this sprinting gate cycle we're trying to create a horizontal impulse. We're doing that with

a sequence of joint actions that is actually following a proximal distance sequence that we can relatively easily map out. Now that proximal distance sequence is pretty much the same thing as we see with vertical jumping it starts with a head moves down to the name finishes at the ankle but in the the kind of the main difference between sprinting versus jumping is that the speed that we are achieving and sprinting is much much faster than we see with vertical jumping.

vertical jumping is actually quite a slow movement in comparison. So ultimately what that means

is that whereas vertical jumping has quite a force dominant hip movement, a relatively balanced force and velocity, knee movement and probably quite a velocity dominant ankle movement. In the case of sprinting we have actually quite a balanced hip movement where we've got balanced, force and velocity and then by the time we get to the knee and the ankle everything is just velocity which means that it's very very difficult to add any more kinetic energy onto the actual

kind of movement once we've left the hip joint. What that tells us is that the hip is essentially producing all of the kinetic energy that we can actually you know input into the sprinting gate cycle and is responsible for that horizontal impulse that I started this description with. So essentially what we've just done there very quickly is identify that the hip is the power, the engine of the movement and essentially what we're going to need to do is produce

large amounts of power output both in inflection and also in extension by means of having a high level of strength and also a high level of speed. So that tells us pretty much what the engine is behind the sprinting gate cycle and then just to kind of finish it off, finish this analysis off.

“We just have to remember that every gate cycle progresses into the next one and that's different”

from the other movements that we've talked about with law. The other moves we've talked about before are essentially single shot movements. They're just kind of like a vertical jump or a throw it's one and done whereas in the case of sprinting every single gate cycle transitions into the next one. One of our means is that as we reach the end for example if we each what's called terminal swing as the leg is or the hip is flexing forwards the knee is actually also extending at that point

and what that means is but the hamstrings are going to have to resist that flexion of the knee of the hip and that extension of the knee by flexing the producing a flexion torque the knee at the same time as an extension torque the hip and that means that the hamstrings producing enormous amount of eccentric force in order to make that pair of joint actions happen. The exact opposite happens when you get the opposite tend to the gate cycle. So in the knee

again but at the same time the knee is actually flexing you want to extend it. So you're producing

“an extension force at the same time as you're producing a hip flexion force or torque rather”

and because you're actually breaking forces initially to create that to slow the average normal movement and bring yourself back to the movement you want to perform you're actually doing those eccentrically. So you have a really really big rec fem eccentric force production in that end of the gate cycle as well. So that really then leaves us with one final thing to mention which is that we obviously are impacting on the ground and that means that the ankle is again

going to have an eccentric force absorption phase so plantar flexion is going to have to do well plantar flexors are going to have to do some kind of eccentric force production there every time we bring the foot into contact with the ground. So essentially there's a little bit more going on with sprinting because of its gate cycle and the impacts through her experiencing that makes it a little bit more complicated than the throwing and the vertical jumping movements

through the talk about before but ultimately not that much more complicated because essentially

we just have these two separate things to think about. We have what's essentially the engine of the hip which we've got to think about both in terms of extension and flexion a lot to people ignore the flexion part. We've got both flexion and extension and then separately we've then got these four absorption situations with the rec fem hamstrings and the calf muscles as a separate issue that adds on top of the kind of basic proximity to the still sequence analysis that we start to with.

“So that's basically it that's how I break down sprinting in the simplest possible way”

working as a safe from the very beginning of what we're actually need to make the movement happen looking at the joint sequences looking at approximately the distance sequence looking at the eccentric elements of the movement and that gives us I think pretty much almost everything we would need to know if not everything we would need to know in order to write strength training programs and even some sports specific training activities as well. So with that, I want to ask Rob

Rob what are you doing at a moment in your strength training programs when you're working with people who need to whether they're athletes who are actually our trexpentes or whether they're athletes who just sprint as part of this sport. What do you currently programming? So I'll start off by saying I don't typically work with sprinters, most of the time it's more like fieldsboard athletes that's stuff like that that have to just be faster. So and Chris and I said

before the podcast we're going to go into like sprint mechanics and all that stuff now. Whenever I'm trying to get someone faster so the big focus like Chris just said is going to be on the hip. So if we're going to start with maybe hip extension since that's going to be kind of the primary one, really like to focus on exercises that are going to be very, very high force. I'm the least of a worker from that and of things and corresponding to a bit shorter or five

lengths. So I'm generally not doing things like you know very long range, roommate, deadlift and stuff like that as much. A lot more focused on for the glutes hip thrusts, for the glutes and hamstrings, something like a more top or maybe mid range stiff like deadlift from pins or blocks under like that. Hip thrusts probably be my primary one for the hip extensors. You do get a little bit of quads out of as well. I get a little bit of out of tremendous in that. So we're

really, really nice and it's just not too much quads. I don't think Chris mentioned it, but quad hypertrophy generally not correlated super well with improving sprint speed whereas glute hypertrophy definitely is hamstrings as well. So much much more of a focus those terms of stuff I'm doing

for the knee joint like you said definitely much more balance not always much that you can do there.

I definitely do a mix of things honestly a bit of heavy squat work sometimes sometimes more single leg stuff you know step ups. I do like short range step ups, part of all step ups things like that. You know those keeping the rep range is low, keeping far failure and again not placing like a huge emphasis growing quads or anything like that for the ankle joint to really simple try to keep it as fast as I can. So it's usually just something super easy like a calf hop.

How people do some like quick switching drills that are going to be coming off the ground really fast and also bringing the hips up in the hip flexion very quickly and then I guess moving on to the hip

“flexion portion of things. So people definitely neglected a ton and if you want to a lot of”

elite sprinters trained in that you can see the exercises they're doing and they're usually really simple and I don't tend to depart too much either. If I'm thinking of stuff that's going to train kind of all of the hip flexors so maybe rep them and so as major aliac is all those things you know some like a cable hip flexion starting with the leg behind the body is going to be nice you can also do that with bands. Depending if someone's a little bit weaker maybe they have

hypertrophy in the beginning and then go to something faster with a durian maybe against just a light band or even just a drill with a ring like up as fast as possible. I know for hip flexion we'd also mention I'm one of the prior podcasts doing some hip flexion isometrics I like those as well so just kind of bent over on a bench, stay wise with your hands in that and then just driving your knee into the bottom of the bench you can do that in different

degrees of hip flexion you want to target a little bit more rough fan versus a little bit more so as major aliac is those things and then we'll mention that eccentric holding us but let's kind of wrap up what you've said with the kind of heavy straight training stuff because otherwise it could kind of people won't be able to remember what you said at the beginning by the time we at the end. Let's kind of break the hip exercises down so obviously you've kind of got our

favorite exercise in there the hip thrust yeah absolutely and then a couple of other hip extension exercises obviously the hip is going to be extending you know in situations where the knee is not also extending so you know we're not in a situation where the hamstrings are going to be switched off in sprinting so we can look at hip extension I mean a variety of hip extension exercises will

“actually be appropriate here I mean I think really people can run the whole kind of range if they”

really wanted to. You know bag extensions? Yeah absolutely. I mean like everything can fit here really

it's just because the reality is the hip is going to be producing a hip extension talk

over a range of joint angles not just the kind of I mean people look at the stance phase and they go look in the stance phase you know the hip is relatively extended you know so we kind of would probably want the glute to be focused nothing that's the right starting point but we'll also to remember the hip is extending from you know a relatively flexed position to start with so you know it does go through a reasonable range of angles and it's not just about the glute we

have got to recognize that the adult magazine and the hamstrings are going to be doing some hip extension so I think honestly I'm not going to argue with anybody who wants to run a bunch of different hip extension exercises in there I just think you right as you would do I would

always start with hip first thing is it's probably the really valuable one there. In terms of the

“hip flexion one you know I think this is worth really drilling into for people to understand”

the challenges here because this is the same problem we've had with the throwing rotation with torso rotation because ultimately we don't have very many good hip flexion exercises in the gym that we can just throw people out and I think one of the big challenges is the stability is generally pretty poor I mean like where you're using a cable for example at the opposite end of your leg and you got the other leg on ground I mean straight away I'm like no this is not going to be ideal

you make it you make it more stable by bracing against the opposite end. I've seen some people use you know kind of attachments at the just above the knee as well to try and you know minimize the problem of that kind of stability issue and I think that's a really good way of doing what I really like there is this isometrics side of things especially given that you've described how you're

“doing it with different joint angles because I think it's a super important a lot of people don't”

realize that we have a really big switch over in terms of hip flexion where the starting point is

definitely very very rectum and after you leave that kind of first sort of 50 to 60 degrees we kind of

really do move away from the rectum and towards the other hip flexors instead so I think there's a really really nice kind of balanced program would have two very different kind of hip hip angles means sort of you know close to full hip extension and then much further away from sort of hip extension you know and I think those two would give a really nice kind of sort of balance of hip flexion movements you know and as you know I think you know you and I know this already

but I just repeat this for people who maybe are hearing this for the first time there is nothing wrong with doing isometrics for hypertrophy no they absolutely fine no they're not ideal to possibly overload because you can't see what you're doing unless you got some kind of a device that can track forces but ultimately if you're stuck and you haven't got a really nice hip flexion strength machine dynamically then isometrics I would say are pretty much the best option for you

to make those kind of things happen so I think it's really cool that you're describing that in us really really valuable for people and everybody's got a bench you know if you don't have

kind of clarify for people that you know hip flexors definitely need training the same way that the hip extensions do for high levels of strength and the same way that we've been describing

how torso rotation is critical for throwing we need to force aspect of that

not just kind of play around in the middle of the force philosophy spectrum by training power waving moderate loads around you know actually the same issue applies to hip flexion strengthening it's like we need to go take this really seriously the same way that we're we've taken hip extension strength training seriously for sprinting the exact mirror image needs to happen for hip flexion if I went into gym and I looked at one most team sports and other kind of

athlete so do a huge sprint I can guarantee that they would be doing a really quite decent hip extension strength training program I might disagree with a couple of the exercise selections but more or less it's going to be pretty good if I looked at what they don't hip flexion I'm going to be

really disappointed I mean that's just almost a ubiquitous finding everywhere people are just not

“doing the hip flexion stuff so you know if if you're out they're working with athletes you need to”

get faster on the field or even a track sprinter look at your program and see have you got some decent hip flexion strength training in or you kind of just you know including something with a plastic band somewhere that isn't really going to do the job so I think I've really really cool that you know you've kind of got that that simple basic option for people who don't have a really fancy set of equipment to do hip flexion strength training dynamically that's so cool

you've got that option for them I cemented me so cool then you were just about to go on to the eccentric stuff so let's let's hear that now yeah with the eccentric it's I mean

I'm going to say it again relatively simple as well so focusing on like the knee flexion aspect

of the hamstrings you know everyone knows Nordics how do you program Nordics if I have access to a leg curl machine like like a two-up one down leg curl you can use a flywheel as well anything like that that's going to overload that eccentric nice and just using you know control but not like an ultra slow tempo so I usually like anywhere from maybe three to a maximum of five seconds it's not some super extended eccentric that's

“very slow really I think I mentioned on one of the other podcasts you do something that you can”

control for like eight to ten seconds it's probably something you can actually lift at that point and so it's not really doing the job so yeah just making sure it's actually heavy enough and occasionally I'll fill in some fast eccentric some very rapid eccentric so maybe the same you know on a Nordic or on a back eccentric I've even done single leg something like a very rapid length and an eccentric there but most often it's the Nordics like overations and then

for the eccentric loading of the quads you mentioned the rectum of course so I just like to do just a knee extension so two up one down super easy get tons of rectum out of that and it tends to work really really well and you know almost had a gym again is going to have a decent enough like extension machine so it doesn't require any fancy setup so we're not doing like an overloaded back squats super max or something like that just 50 the whole out of yourself and not getting

anything extra than anyway not getting extra yeah take 20 more yeah exactly take 20 minutes to set to top and bottom and kind of yeah it doesn't even train the rectum so yeah no that's cool so

“I think it's really important for people to understand that again we're describing very very simple”

sort of setups here that can be done in most gyms you know it's literally just as you say using two legs to do the content trick phase and then one leg for the eccentric phase in what would be a fairly standard gym machine for the curl and the knee extension I think that's really really cool um so have you I mean I guess it depends on the um I guess it depends on the machine how easy that is to to achieve I can visualize it in the gyms that I go to I can see in certain

situations it would be fairly fairly straightforward and then other other pieces of equipment to probably not quite straightforward but again you know we've got other options as well we've got the Nordic you know reverse Nordic as well and that would be the kind of the the opposing one for the rectum so even if the gym equipment is not really enclosed and it's really hard to get your legs out when you've kind of got the end of the concentrate phase as you can't do you know

sort of two legs concentrate phase one leg eccentric phase then there is the alternative version which is of course the Nordic and the reverse Nordic and we can wait to those if you've got people who you know what we're doing you know um a concentric version of those exercises so you know

thing is to make sure you've got something behind you that is acting as a safety uh kind of bench

year you don't need to go like all the way down to the floor of those that's the thing I think people kind of get really wound up a bar of those Nordics because the light or how do I stop when I get to the point where I haven't got the mobility anymore like that that's what the safety bench is for you so you don't try and do these free you know kind of light just in the middle of nowhere have something to stop you when you get to your mobility limit otherwise you're going to be

focusing too much on the control of the exercise rather than actually producing the effort that you need to create the eccentric and I kind of or the level of equipment in my eccentric. Exactly

“yeah cool so um I remember that I didn't ask you the key question um I keep asking you”

every week for the so let's do it now for both of these um sets reps frequencies volumes all that kind of stuff for both the hobby concentric stuff and also the eccentric stuff. Yeah the heavy concentric stuff I mean it was a little pain if I'm working on someone who's in field sports and stuff like that like no time of the season it is if it's if you're not playing all the games things like that generally especially with contractive position focus stuff like

hip thrust um two to three sets load of moderate reps usually I'm a lower end for those you know worried about producing as much force as possible and then we've been you know very likely two through your cell reps reserve um again avoiding like to failure avoiding those five type shifts you're not going to want stuff like that for the quad work you know whether it's a step up squat variation same thing usually anywhere from one to three sets quad joint as you know

“important of course you don't really want a ton of hypertrophy and the quad's necessarily”

so keep the volumes even lower um load of moderate reps again if you're a reptile failure for the hip flexion stuff it's you know generally important and most people either are not currently doing it or haven't done it in a long time so it tends to need a lot of work so usually keep a few sets a few times a week for those two to three sets two times a week usually don't have people training lower body you know more often than two and maybe

you had a maximum three so some of that two different sets of effects and if you're replacing not with all of some metrics how to roll some metrics well yeah so for the other those generally check those in after the beginning as part of the warm up and then I just do a few few reps max effort I'll usually do anywhere from like three to five max effort reps

per leg maybe like a five second duration so it's not very long again for increasing recruitment

one of the hyper hypertrophy in that but not doing it long enough so that you're just getting fatigued and you know the next ones are not good um you want to get really interesting yeah I find the isometrics really interesting so I've shared this before on the podcast I do a take and um I played around a lot with isometrics this this last summer and um this is just my I'm not saying I mean I now have this unfortunate kind of situation whereby when I say something

people kind of run away with it and it's like goes halfway because the industry before I can finish the sentence but this is literally me describing my person experience do not I hopefully you know if you're listening to this don't take this seriously this is just me sharing how it felt I found isometrics to be really mentally tough so I would do yeah so I would do a couple I mean I mean again maybe I was kind of starting out doing something that was probably a bit silly

because um I was doing a pulling isometric and that's probably not a good idea because obviously my kind of one arm chin background means that I do tend to kind of have quite a strong kind of pull so my kind of a bone tractivation is really high and I can probably get to a very very high level of the protein equivalent in that muscle compared to many of the other muscles in my body this of the size so maybe I kind of just went in a bit hard but like doing a couple of reps max effort

and I'm even my second rep I can't get close to what it feels like on the first rep maybe that's

just they haven't got the mental kind of you know capacity anymore at my age but you know it

“just feels brutal and I think that's is not anything obviously related to the kind of peripheral”

of deep mechanisms it just feels really really difficult so I think it's really interesting if in the future there's kind of like we get some better more accessible isometric kind of load cell type devices that actually measures some of these forces because it will be so cool for me especially if I could literally just get a standard kind of idea of what my pulling force is when it's absolutely

that would just bring me down to the level where it's not I don't feel like my cerebral cortex

yeah just a bit more terrible yeah it would be really cool but you know thing is is no anyway sorry so you were describing there how you you're currently and I generally you know kind of explained to people how before how ice metrics fit brilliantly into a warm-up because they kind of you know very low fatigue for that point to be not describe what I was doing in minago but you know just like the kind of high effort ice metric not trying to kind of root the machine apart but essentially

“I think again you know if you were if you were programming that if I personally I guess you would”

probably you know kind of want to help the number of of of efforts in that particular situation yeah I definitely could push it to the the higher end if you're using it to actually grow more muscle and you of course then you want to be sure you're getting enough stimulus as well

you know from when purposes in that I've always said pointing times you don't need a lot of

contractions may every channel really grow your hip flexors probably probably on the top under that and in each position for each thing yeah you'll do some for the soil as major in that so you can just change that up a little bit yeah exactly I think that is as you said before you know most people's programs are going to have a decent amount of hip extension strength training in they will have already developed their victims as well you know when they

come to you or they come to anybody else who's been listening to these podcasts and wants to move forward with their sprinting they're probably going to be you know it's probably going to be a weakness of theirs their hip flexors are probably going beyond the smaller side so you know and if equipment is limited and there isn't a good dynamic machine then they are going to be essentially limited to doing you know some kind of isometric training for that so I think it's going to be

one of those things that people have to feel the way through a little bit but you know definitely if I think really if people go you know a strengthening set to failure is approximately 15 seconds

“of concentric activity related to you know high levels of recruitment so if you want to bring”

that down to three five secondised metrics or five three secondised metrics that's probably going to be a decent set now given that most of the time in dynamics we're leaving a report to and reserve anyway it probably is going to be about two sets it's going to be about sort of three five secondised metrics or five three secondised metrics so it's a that's probably ballpark territories that sound about right yeah yeah definitely cool and in terms of the eccentric stuff I'm

guessing obviously you know positioning this at the end of the workout and being aware of course of the other stuff the earthy has to do in the week um it kind of sets some reps and you're doing this I'm actually really interested to hear what you're doing and I'm a lot of times it's you know I may be starting if someone's again far away from like a season or games in that with still only a few sets like two to three sets of maybe one or two reps and then I do really taper it off a lot

“I think we mentioned before on the podcast but a lot of times when people are playing a bunch of”

games and things like that it's just one set of one rep towards the week on each one for the knee flexors one for the quads rep and I mean I've seen at least that it seems to make you get a bit of difference you know generally people aren't getting to have string injuries and stuff of that you know they're feeling good sprinting and then I didn't mention but for a kind of a maintenance volume for hip extension work as well when people are playing a lot I don't think

I said just like one set of a couple reps twice a week and I think you mentioned not here but when you were not just chatting and a lot of people then lose sprint speed pretty quickly but a lot of times it's because they just stopped raining anything that's going to maintain size and the hip extensors and hip flexors and they just kind of go about playing games and stuff like that and remove heavy strength training entirely thinking it's going to be just too

fatiguing in that move you keep it low rev and you keep it farther from failure really I've

never seen anyone having issues with twice a week strength work so I'm going to repeat what

you said to me so that people are completely clear what you said you said you're doing single repetitions of Nordics and reverse Nordics twice a week yeah and all out of gases that is awesome so that's really interesting because I have another contact who is working quite high up in with a sports team and in another country and he again completely without actually me volunteering any information to him he reached out to me injecting a wireback and said that

he had started doing single reps about two or three times a week with his athletes for eccentric training exercises and he said that I was working really really well I think it's really interesting yeah because just for people who maybe aren't aware of how the stimulating rep model works with

lift which is all of what this eccentric training is about the stimulating rep model works backwards

not forwards so your first rep is your most stimulating because that's when you've got the highest

level of protein you've got nofty mechanisms and you get the maximum level of mechanical tension and recurrence simultaneously so ultimately that first rep is the most reliable rep anything after that is pretty much downhill from there and it's just such a far cry from if you go back five ten years and look at the early Nordic girl literature and you've got people doing kind of five sets of 12 reps and you can't look at me if I don't five sets of 12 reps or Nordics at some

“point in my life I've probably still not be recovered I'd be traumatized so yeah I think we've”

come a long way since then but yeah absolutely you know I think you can absolutely get to where

with a really really tiny volume of reps of these super max with these centric efforts I think

realistically I think one rep sets are really cool because they are the most valuable rep so I would probably say rather than doing and if somebody said to me what can I do three reps in a set I'd be honestly I'd rather you did three separate singles rather than the kind of the three kind of reps because everything just tapers down to a worse stimulus as you go on and on and on in the eccentric set so I'd rather have two singles or three singles people really want to do more rather than have

multiple kind of reps in in so set but again in that scenario I think you know three four five is probably getting to the top end of what I would ever do yeah yes really yeah five reps total

“30 for the for the for training a muscle eccentric I think is and that would be if I knew that”

I had nothing else going on in the rest of the week you know other than those strength you know

I'm gonna do that I'm gonna put it up so you know you know I think I think you know one to three is probably a really good ballpark for for most people most I and I know that sounds really low to a lot of people so literally I'm gonna repeat it we're talking about two workouts a week and one to three repetitions probably with rest between those reps so they're gonna look I'm more like you know kind of single rep sets so three individual single up to three individual

singles but again you know what Rob is describing here is that he is currently mainly programming single repetitions rather than pushing it all the way up to three so it absolutely is doable with those singles it doesn't have to be three I'm just kind of giving people a little bit of leeway if they really feel like they need to do a few more reps but I mean once you start hitting

“five I think it's really top end I would never really want to go much higher than that yeah”

I mean especially in a single set of you you did five yeah I mean again it much better do that as like you know sort of two or three doubles or something like that but again I think we've we've changed a lot how we think about eccentric training in the last kind of 10 years and again at the beginning it was like you know just treated like normal strength training and now we're like respecting it to a bit more and then you can't do anything normal for like

I mean it's any like well I don't think that was very youth well there's not very useful now absolute madness but again like as you said really important to have a protocol that is is possible to maintain throughout the season because like you were saying as soon as you start losing muscle mass from the hips you're going to lose your engine and muscle mass does dissipate really fast I know the historically strengthening conditioning is really

forth the idea but it really does well some of us really does dissipate very fast once you stop strengthening and the same thing applies to eccentric training in fact I would argue actually happens even faster there's some really interesting dates showing the you know fast collect especially go back to based line up yeah Nordic hill strength champion is six weeks and then within two weeks of a few Nordics is all gone you know sometimes I joke that you know the benefits of Nordics are

gone by the time you go home from the gym I mean they really do disappear really fast so we've got to kind of keep them in the program so again like I know I kind of criticized team sports quite a lot further way that they run things but I've seen a lot of team sports strength training programs where they do a load of eccentric working out season as soon as the athletes hit season they just take to a lot of the program I'm like all that hard work you put your athletes through

two weeks later it's all gone yeah I mean my sisters worked for a bunch of high-level collegiate

some of the stuff you see is just so crazy and then like you know these are the volumes are

“are huge off season and then you have to take out these metrics we're volume of everything in season”

it's just crazy and they'll have guys training like five days a week tons of lifting and I had her as we've had a few people there the day that she's working with as well and the coaches have in the lift it was like five or six times and a week on top of sports training so I think yeah but in terms of the retraining effect you know we want to keep these low volumes in the program all the way through the year as much as possible because as soon as we take them out there is

just isn't a stimulus for the muscles to retain those adaptions and within as I say two weeks all these and it related the peripheral adaptions have probably gone and probably within four

weeks most of the concentric related peripheral adaptions are pretty much back to zero as well

or baseline levels anyway yeah I do definitely have people ask about like because like oh well

“what if I can only lift once a week and it's like well I'd rather than that for sure”

but you know because the problem there and I've told a bunch of people I've consulted with this like you lift once a week yeah technically you can do an evaluation and a session to be maintaining on that would you do that session you do like four sets per exercise per muscle group whatever might be when you're weak is going to be 10 but anything after that is not going to be as productive whereas you can do two sessions and then all of a sudden you need one or two sets

anywhere two sessions is a magical number it really is like and I keep saying to this pit to people every time I do Instagram questions every time I do anything else I say to people look if you can just get to the most basic workouts in your week you will just be able to not only keep everything you've got but also move forward very slowly even if you're actually in season training and then all of the other stuff you can probably make some very slow gradual progress on on some stuff and

also not worry about losing stuff that you've worked hard to gain in the off season this two is a really magical number in that respect I recommend two times a week for pretty much every athletic situation all the time well she's like younger guys like high school college athletes like they're they're going to grow and progress so much anyway they don't need a time they have this minimal volume and you'll see them make crazy gains out of season as well as it's a lot like

yeah it's no minimal absolutely so so we've described hopefully relatively clearly what's going on at the hip what's going on knee and you've mentioned that you do a little bit of dynamic type plyometric work for the calf muscles and that's probably you know kind of all you're doing at the moment for the calf complex yeah I mean like you said like competitive vertical jumping and all those things like sprinting is so much faster so I generally you know rely more on the actual

sprint work to be there just meet end of things exactly absolutely I mean speed is really difficult to train in the gym when I mean I know some people look at jumps somethings like that if people are looking at jumps to try and improve safe for example hip extension velocity and obviously horizontal jumps are going to be a lot better than vertical ones because they have so lot more involved but I would stick with two legs even though that you know some people

go where you want to do single leg because it's most specific a year but forceful osteo relationship I'd appreciate it if it was done in a situation if you're using you know kind of a single leg

versions rather than two leg versions I've never seen anyone play around with assistance on horizontal

jumps I'd be really nervous about it because it's kind of like you have the risk of like catapulting someone into the next state if you're going to. I have not played with that first

“idea of that. I think that's probably off the end of what I would describe as my safety limit”

of what is sensible to do but you know obviously everyone's got their own setups and and situations and if someone got a really cool you know bungee system that allows them to do that safely then fantastic but generally speaking I think as you say sprinting is going to be the main source of high velocity stimulus for the sprinting action you know where just trying to provide strength training and a targeted way that does useful stuff rather than not so useful stuff. So probably not a

lot of time to go through silly things that you've seen people doing regarding sprint training but just give us one or two examples to finish today's episode. I mean definitely definitely all over the place you see plenty. I think the worst ones I see so much are the people that are trying to mimic using strength training exercises to mimic the the gates cycle and the various you know segments of the gates cycle and they use all these goofy low-load exercises sometimes moving

stuff that's not going to work. It's not anywhere near close to the proximal that does the

sequencing you're going to see in a sprint or anything athletic and you're just just kind of moving around twisting moving, not doing anything, seeing people really try hard to program again. I mentioned it with jumping in that there's a weird idea of the doing just like deep deep range sort of split squats and things like that is going to be some magical exercise for moving running because it's single leg and all these things again nothing you know really close

to the muscle lengths and the joint angles and that that you need you know yeah you get some like adapters yet a lot more quad than you probably want you get some boots so it's not like it's

“the worst thing in the world to blast with you but it's not very good either at the same time”

yeah like really just like long stance driving a neighborhood or tail stuff like that. I've seen everyone talk about training the low back to improve jumping in sprint. I see that all the time and I think people still think the low back is a muscle which is a funny one to me they're like they just talk about just you know they use this to build your low back, use this to train the low back and it's like it's more you know more often but not just like a back extension or something

and again you're training your hamstrings, training your glutes, your outdoors, I mean yeah you get some spotter outdoors but it's not like you're not just training your cold and cold lower back with that and I've seen a lot of people mention that that is you know some key to

athletic performance and like I'm never going to say you don't need a strong back but you're also

just not going to just train the lower back as like it's on thing so it's a very, very slow one.

“I think the the one that I've probably seen I mean I've seen a couple and I'll kind of”

I go into more detail on on some of the issues with them in the future podcast episode because they're actually relate to very technical elements of the sprinting movement that we haven't covered today but the one that I think is worth mentioning from my perspective is pretty much the same as the one that you mentioned regarding throwing because essentially it's isometrics for the calf muscles which is essentially the same issue that you mentioned with punching or having

an isometric in the extended elbow extension, elbow position at the end of the of the punching movement, bite to create force production at the end of the of kind of punch. I'm seeing that with a lot of people using that for sprinting because they think that they want to produce big forces into the ground they think themselves are. The calf muscle is producing big forces and think like that. The energy is coming from all the way from the hip all the way down.

I mean sequence again you're training opposite end of the proximate distance sequence in

“that situation it's not doing what you think it's doing. And I think people get a little bit”

twisted too because the calves are important and like long distance running like endurance running you know calf strength and that is you see really give distance runners like maintain calf power better through races and stuff like that and they're absorbing you know really high forces but it's not I think people try to apply that to sprinting as well. It's a very different gaze like that. It is so kind of go to carve it off and treat it, treat it separately. But yeah I think

that's the one that I think I can mention this time there's a few others that I could mention I'm not going to because they just aren't it wouldn't make sense in the context of what we've done today because they're kind of specific. Well that's in you know when they're I've seen people doing those asymmetrics saying that it's going to improve you know Achilles tendon stiffness I think there are people who are just confusing tendon stiffness with like just overall ankle stiffness.

Again it's like people mistake the fact that the stiffness has been provided by yeast

injury strength not by attendance and the reality is and again we can do a whole episode on this

later on but sprinters don't actually have stiffer tendons than normal people. No it's wild but you know people got this image in the heads of the sprinter having this really stiff tendon again it's like I think this goes all the way back to plyometrics kind of history where people thought that the stiffness that was kind of being exhibited by athletes in plyometric activities that was being created by tendon being really stiff and it's not. It's a dream muscle force that's

doing that and the same thing the sprinter has the high eccentric force capacity at the plantar flexor it's not the tendon that's doing that tendon actually is pretty much the same as a normal person's a normal person and untrained person and not well so that is our normal you know it's like an untrained person is going to have a similar tendon stiffness and you know people look I've let's to be say that I'm going to know Chris has completely lost the plot okay

go look at literature and and and report back because I guarantee you find guarantee you find

isometrics calf dynamic heavy strength training really really overrated for spring yeah I wouldn't

“do that for a number of reasons but again hopefully all we've described today will be a good”

replacement for all of those silly things that you know we just described so let's stop there

and call it today and I'll say we will do future episodes on sprinting because there's a lot

“more we can say we're just trying to give a fairly simple overview today even now we've ever”

run by about 10 minutes beyond what we know I do but that is because sprinting is complicated

and as I say we'll come back to it and do more again in the future so with that leave it for today and we will be back with another episode next week.