I’ve known Mark McLaughlin for about two years and he was one of the first coaches that I talked to when I arrived at EFS. Mark is the owner of Performance Training Center in Milwaukie, Oregon and is truly one of the smartest coaches that I’ve met. No, he’s not a guru. He won’t be on any infomercials anytime soon. But he does get results, both in his own training and with his athletes. Mark is the perfect blend of using science and practical knowledge. He is a true Darksider. There are a lot of questions that I’ve wanted to ask Mark- and here are the answers.
EFS: First of all, give us the basics on the Performance Training Center. Size, location, contact phone number, etc. Pimp yourself.
Mark: Our gym area is 800 square feet. We have 3 EFS squat racks, 1 Reverse Hyperextension, 1 GHR, 1 45 degree back raise, all of the bars (SSB, CSB, Buffalo bar), bands, chains, weight releasers, Jump Stretch platform, belt squat machine and we have Swedish boxes for all of our gymnastic and plyo movements. I know this really pissed my friend James Smith off, as we also have gymnast stall bars. We are located 10 minutes from downtown Portland, Oregon. My phone number is 503.496.1032 and I can be reached by e-mail at ptc@integraonline.com. My web address is www.ptconline.net.
EFS: You are more than welcome to tell us about the kind of athletes you’ve been working with and the results. You don’t have to be modest.
Mark: I work with both male and female athletes ranging in age from 12-21. I have worked with volleyball, basketball, football, baseball and track and field (high jumpers to javelin). The thing people have to remember is, we are producing athletes not power lifters or Olympic lifters. The training methods we utilize are heavily influenced from the old Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc countries as well from people like yourself, Louie Simmons, James Smith, Val Nasedkin of OmegaWave, Coach X, 62, Coach H, Christian Thibaudeau, Charlie Francis and Landon Evans. Some of the success I have had is the fact that I have trained over 150 athletes in the last three years and have had NO INJURIES in either the weight room or in a sporting event. Lowering one of our athletes 40yd dash times from 4.8 to 4.44 and increasing his VJ from 28” to 36” in only four months. He currently plays cornerback at a D-II school. Increasing another D-II college athletes’ standing long jump from 9’ 7” to 10’ 6” in only 5 weeks, taking his 225 rep max from 19 to 27, squat from 465lbs to 525 and VJ from 34” to 38”; all of this in seven weeks. He is currently leading the league in rushing, averaging 93.5yds per game and has four straight 100 yd rushing games. We also have the number three high school rusher in Oregon at all levels with 945 yds in six games. This kid box squats 455, deadlifts 485, and benches 275 at a body weight of 195. We currently have three athletes with box jumps over 50” the best being 52.5”. I have twelve athletes with box jumps of 40” or better, the highest being 48.5” (he’s only 16 yrs old) and two at 47”. Three of those athletes are only 14 years old (the highest being 45”). I recently had a twelve year old girl jump 35”. When she started four months ago she could only jump 16”. What’s so impressive about this is she lifts no weights at all and performs all body weight exercises (box jumps, skips, hops, push ups, jump rope, v-ups, reverse hyper’s, hyper complex, 45 degree back raises, single response jumps) and she can now perform 3 sets of 6 on the GHR.
EFS: What role do you think bodyweight exercises have with athletes, especially beginners or younger kids?
Mark: They play a huge role for several reasons. If an athlete cannot handle his or her own body weight is it smart to have them lift barbell weights? No. We want to develop athletes and having them be able to perform push ups, pull ups, rope climbs, jump rope, walking lunges, wheel barrow walks, step ups, box jumps, body weight reverse hypers and medicine ball work is the first step. Swimming and gymnastics are other fabulous means to develop young athletes. I have based our methods on talking a lot with Val from OmegaWave. He has said that growing up in Russia; gymnastics was a big part of training young athletes. Why the rush for coaches to pile on weights with young kids? We have markers set up to determine if our kids are ready to progress to barbell weights and they include 50 quality push ups, 60 body weight squats in 2 minutes, 10 quality pull ups and 100 sit ups. We ruin more athletes in this country then we develop and it starts when they are young.
EFS: What are the first things that you do with a new athlete? Do you put them through any kind of assessments? What are you looking for?
Mark: The first thing we do with a new athlete is get their money. Just kidding. The first thing I do is take an injury history of both sport and life, past training history with weights and speed work and aerobic conditioning. Many of the athletes that we see are so over trained that a simple reduction in training volume will yield positive results. After this we hook them up to the OmegaWave, this tests how their system (cardiac activity, energy metabolism, central nervous system, gas exchange/cardiopulmonary system, detoxification system, hormonal system) are adapting to non-specific stress and gives us a baseline on these systems. From here, we then go test the neuromuscular system, we do this by testing the athletes standing long jump. This will be important down the road because on lower body days we use the baseline to gauge readiness. Even though their physiology may be ready, the muscle itself may not be. So then I need to adjust volume accordingly if they jump below their baseline levels. Val Nasedkin from OmegaWave instructed me on this method.
EFS: When you reduce volume in a workout, what are some of the things that you are doing? For example, are you eliminating max effort work or accessory work? What are some of the variables you are using to deload?
Mark: Jim it is all dependent on the athlete. Let me give you an example. The kid whose 225 rep max went up was scheduled for a 3RM 3-board press session, the OmegaWave test said his cardiac system was not ready for “high volume/high intensity,” so we stayed with 3-BP but lowered his percent down to 65% of his previous best, and did 4 x 6 (24reps) based off of Prilepins chart. Also we cut all accessory movements in half so he did 2 x 8 of rope tricep push downs, 2 x 12 on lat pull downs and 2 x 8 plate raises. Once you have the results, the “art” of coaching comes into play. Just because you are scheduled to perform max effort work does not mean your systems are ready.
EFS: You mentioned some of the fun games you played with your own child, (example: Flood!) Can you give us some examples of these games or a book to reference them? And why do you do them?
Mark: Training young children (ages 6-10) has got to be fun and games are the best way to achieve this. The children develop speed, strength, endurance, coordination and technique and do not even realize it. Flood can be played by having objects set up around the gym area or outside. Have the kids walk/jog/run around, then you yell “Flood” and everyone has to jump or climb up onto something which is off of the floor to get away from the flood. “Day and Night” is another good one. A group of kids are “Day” and one is “Night”. I will yell, “Day chases night!” and visa versa. We perform a lot of gymnastic type movements as well, like tumbling, jumping, hand stands, hand stand walks, back flips, front flips. We will also do broad jumps with left/right skips and fly and grab our stall bars. These teach the kids great coordination and build confidence. The two books I recommend to learn more about training children and learning how to perform proper exercise technique are “Children and Sports Training” by Jozef Drabik, Ph.D. and “The World Atlas Of Exercises For Track and Field.” By Andrzej Lasocki.
EFS: I know you are big on the Tendo Unit and the OmegaWave. Can you tell us a little bit about (how about a lot!) of each and why they are important?
Mark: The Tendo is important for coaches to ensure that you, as the coach, are achieving the particular training objective for that given session with your athletes, quality over quantity. If I am trying to develop speed strength with a football player who is performing dynamic box squats, how do I know he is moving the weight at the proper velocity? Is he too fast or not fast enough? 62 said percentages on DE/days are just a guide, bar speed is key and I could not agree more. With the Tendo, we can track speeds and see how it correlates with our training methods. The kid I spoke about earlier that performed 27 reps on the 225 bench test, his first DE/bench day with 225lbs on the bar the average was .68 m/s. 7 weeks later after increasing his absolute strength through max effort work the average jumped to .86. We knew he was ready. Read Coach H’s recent post on his own training and how his absolute strength correlated with speed strength and how the Tendo unit showed this. Speed training gets a bad rap in my opinion. One of the reasons is people say they do not get a lot out of it. My theory is they are probably using too heavy of a weight, thus the speed of the movement is compromised and no explosive strength is developed. The OmegaWave system is the future of training in the USA. It has improved our athletes training considerably. Athletes who are not adapting or who are over trained do not train or adjust their training so they can recover and improve their personal records. Also if you get the chance to listen to Val Nasedkin, director of technology training for OmegaWave speak on the topic of sports physiology and training, take it. His knowledge is incredible.
EFS: You and I have been talking a lot about training 90% and above and increasing the number of sets. In fact, you were the first person that I talked to about this. You’ve been playing around with this for awhile. What can you tell us about it and what kind of results have you seen?
Mark: Over the first seven weeks on the program, I used four different core exercises for SQ-DL (CSB low box squats, SSB parallel squat, #2 pin pulls, lightened band DL). For bench I used 3 board press, 2 board press, 1 board press and regular bench press. In a single workout, I broke my previous PR by 5 lbs, and then continued on at 2-4 lifts at 95%, then 2-6 lifts at 90% (a total of 4-10 lifts in one session). Intensity is the key to this program. For seven straight weeks I continued to break PRs in all ME sessions. I went from lifting 585 lbs on #2 pin pulls on July 6 to lifting 625lbs on August 8th. On 3 board presses I went from lifting 385lbs on June 30 to lifting 420lbs on September 3rd. The OmegaWave has shown that I have adapted without problems when I used this method twice a week on ME days. The results speak for themselves. The Bulgarian method shows results.
EFS: How does your accessory and supplemental training look when doing this?
Mark: I did all assistance work pre-workout (so I wouldn’t run out of energy at the end) which consisted of GHR, ab work, Iso-lunges and mobility work on ME-SQ/DL. On ME-Bench my assistance work was low intensity with med/low volume and I only used 2-3 exercises. I completed most of my workouts, including warm ups in 1 hour.
EFS: Do you use a de-load week?
Mark: Yes I do. When I first started I wanted to see how long I could go without de-loading, seven weeks was tops. Currently I am working on three weeks hard, one week de-load, three weeks hard, one week de-load. This is taken from Charlie Francis.
EFS: You mention Charlie Francis and James Smith has mentioned him several times on the EFS Q/A. What kind of speed work are you doing with your athletes? You don’t have to be too specific, but just some general guidelines.
Mark: First off, I have a lot of respect for Charlie. I have learned a tremendous amount about taking care of athletes from him. Treat them like Ferraris not plow horses. That is the approach we take. We perform pure acceleration work 2 times a week on Mondays and Wednesdays after max effort work in the weight room. Always allow 48 hours of recovery between sessions and keep all high CNS stressors on the same day. Total volume per session never exceeds 360 meters for our football players. The distances we run are between 10-40 meters and allow full recovery between sets and reps (i.e. if you sprint 40 yards allow 4-5 minutes rest between reps, 5 minutes between sets).
EFS: Is the sun cold at night?
Mark: Only if you don’t wear your pajamas.
EFS: Who the hell wears pajamas?
Mark: I don’t know where you are going with this one.
EFS: Who knows? Anyway, thanks for doing this Mark, and continued success in the future. And just so people know Mark and I are never this formal when talking or e-mailing.
Mark: Very true.
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