A Few Thoughts on Explosive Sports Training
Alex Carnall
In my opinion, one of the most
challenging parts of sport performance coaching is being able to induce timely
training effects. The first thing you have to do is know your athlete. This
will dictate your exercise selection, how aggressive you can be with progressions,
how fast they recover and regenerate between competition and training sessions,
and a myriad of other things that govern your ability to be effective.
Once you’ve got all of this more
or less figured out you can set a framework of reasonable time in which you can
expect to see appreciable gains or adaptations as a result of your athlete’s
efforts. This will be referred to as periodization in your textbook. In this
particular instance, I want to shed light on a few things related to explosive
sports training.
In Block Periodization (which I
discuss here: http://gamedaystrength.blogspot.ca/2012/02/post-15-block-periodization-why-its.html,)
the conversion or realization phase is the one which precedes Major
competitions. Although I could say that this is the time for all of
your explosive work to take place, I’d be wrong. While there is definitely a
time and place for everything, it doesn’t all disappear or reappear at once.
All year, there is room for your bodybuilding methods, powerlifting methods,
and Olympic lifting methods. The difference is that the proportions and
assignments of exercises to each methodology will be consistently in flux
depending on where you are in relationship to the competitive calendar.
Hopefully that makes sense.
In this particular instance, with
explosive sports training, we’re talking about a shift from intensification to
realization (2nd to 3rd block in your cycles.) I would
deem anything with an exceptionally fast concentric action as explosive,
whether or not it is preceded by a stretch or “loading” component will depend
on the exercise in question. For example a depth jump has an inherently greater
pre-stretch than a clean pull from the floor. This is not to say that one is
more effective than the other, because they both serve different purposes and
elicit different adaptations.
Now that we’ve started getting
into certain types of explosive training like Olympic lifts, depth jumps, box
jumps, pulls, etc. We notice a pattern in the nature of these exercises. They
all occur (and consequently develop power) in the saggital plane. Eric Cressey
comes to mind immediately when I recall from a few of his blog posts that power
development is plane specific. Saggital plane power is great for sprinters, mid
distance runners, jumpers, etc. but not so much for rotational athletes. That’s
a whole other can of worms, and he touches on this over and again on his blog
at http://www.ericcressey.com/blog.
Following that, I’m feeling vain enough to include another one of my own
earlier blog posts about speed training where I talk a little bit about
plyometrics and the three phases of the stretch cycle here: http://gamedaystrength.blogspot.ca/2012/02/post-12-speed-training.html.
Explosive strength training is a
slippery slope in its own right. This is what I was talking about earlier when
I made a big deal about timing. We could burn out and overtrain on a
bodybuilding (accumulation) style program just as easily as we could a
powerlifting (intensification) style program, but it would take much longer due
to the relatively more dissipated CNS fatigue – depending on volume and whether
or not you’re doing 20-30 sets per day 5 days a week. However, the realization
or Olympic style program is the granddaddy for reaching the end of your rope
the soonest. You have to find the sweet spot for each athlete and tailor their
pre-competition blocks just right. Maybe they will hit their peak preparedness 2
weeks into their conversion/realization phase, or maybe they need all 3 or 4
depending on what you’ve budgeted for time-wise and the density of your
training program during this phase. This is why you can use less important competitions to
experiment with your timing and find out how the athlete responds to training
when game day comes along.
In addition to creating saggital plane power for
track & field, and other sports, it also applies greatly to strength
athletes. Powerlifters and Olympic Lifters use explosive training to help them
move bigger weights at faster speeds ultimately resulting in achieving greater
totals and better competitions. Westside Barbell and EliteFTS are probably the
main places you’re going to find evidence of and more thorough articles on how
this is done for those athletes. Remember, if you ARE working with athletes on
tracks etc. that rely specifically (or “general-specifically” - inside block periodization
joke) on saggital plane power, your ultimate goal as the strength coach is to
boost these lifts as well so they can get out into practice and competition
with newly “realized” (another block periodization pun) strength to utilize in
their actual sport training.
Hopefully this is of some use to you, just in terms
of food for thought so you can see how your own ideas stack up against mine.
The purpose of this article wasn’t to give you a copy-paste program for
training explosive athletes, but to provide a couple notions that might help
you improve or validate the things that you’re already doing. I’ll leave the
exercise science and physiology to the experts.
Alex
Carnall – B.Sc., CSCS.
Alex is
a graduate of the University of Texas – Pan American (NCAA, D1 – Texas) and
Cisco College (NJCAA, D1 – Texas). A two-time All-American selection for
baseball and Dean’s List Kinesiology student; Alex demonstrates strong
commitment to both sport performance and academia. He has formerly interned
with the Strength & Conditioning Coordinator at his alma mater working with
Division 1 athletes and currently works as a strength coach at a sports
performance facility in Oakville, ON. More recently, he is training to
powerlift competitively and aspires to obtain his Masters degree. More
articles by Alex can be found on his blog www.gamedaystrength.blogspot.com,
website www.gamedaystrength.com, or followed on
twitter @Gamedaystrength.
