5 Mistakes I Made as a Strength Coach

5 Mistakes I made as a Strength Coach

Not being objective with performance testing
One of the biggest mistakes strength coaches make is allowing personal biases intercede objective data. After interviewing coaches over the last few months one factor stands out with all of them. Technology is an undeniable driving force when it comes to assessment, readiness, and performance of an athlete. There are less excuses for not eliminating subjectivity out of evaluating athletes. There were times where I forgot the two fundamental questions of performance testing; reliability and validity.

Is the test reliable?
Is it consistent between tests (test-retest)?
Is it consistent between testers (inter-rater)?
Is the test consistent between testers?

For example, when testing the vertical jump, all factors should be the same when administering the test. The surface, the equipment (Vertec, etc.) the coach, all athletes at the time of day (before training, in the AM, etc.) in order to conduct the most reliable tests.

Is the test valid?
Is the test measuring what you say it is measuring?
The common culprit with this type of validity criticism is the NFL 224 bench test. Most coaches agree that this particular skill set has little to do with success on the field. Although, I may be in the minority in thinking that there is still value with this test. There will be a correlation to Maximal strength with the 225 numbers in it may just come down to practicality. Baseball measures the 60 yard dash for an example. Home to first is 90 feet (30 yards). Common Baseball tests choose the 60 which is the distance from home to 2nd (or 2nd to home). But, it is not a straight line. So is this test really valid? Again, there is going to be a correlation.

Another issue that come into play to the face validity. Some examples I like to use are testing the 40yd dash vs a 30 or testing the 5-10-5 v a 3 cone L drill. The latter of each scenario do not necessarily have benchmark numbers to compare to. Everyone on the planet knows that a 4.4 forty is good and a 4.7 could be average depending on a position. That may not be cut & dry with a 3 Cone drill or a military press when comparing to a bench press.

Not addressing density in training sessions
Density is something that all strength & Conditioning programs need. This is the difference between lifting weights to get better at lifting weights and lifting weights to get better at sports. The total time allotted combined with the increased number of skill acquisition (the sport itself) leaves athletes with limited time. In addition, the mere fact of an athlete waiting around for their next set (let alone sitting) would drive me insane. So here are a few things I learned to alleviate this.

1. Circuits at the beginning to address mobility, soft tissue quality, prehab, and movement prep. Keeping athletes constantly moving without log jams was key. One of my go to circuits were:

Hurdle Drill (lateral step-over, duck-under rotate to lunge)
T-Spine & External Rotation
Hurdle Drill
Couch Stretch & Hip ABduction
Hurdle Drill
Face Pulls & Sleeper Stretch
Hudle Drill
Pallof Press & Band TKEs

That is just an example. This helped with a large team waiting for the hurdles.

2. Superset will we Die
After the DE work and ME movement, everything else was in a super, tri-set or circuit fashion. We would often give our athletes a rep goal with antagonistic moments. Such as:
GHR - 50 reps
Blast Strap Rows - 100 reps
Wall Walks - 20 reps
Fall Outs - 20 reps

Athletes could perform in as many sets as needed but they could not rest in between.

3. Pit Crew Rack Pods
I desised splitting a team up and having a portion start with one exercises and some start with another. I would much rather have 5-6 per rack. At first it seems like a lot of rest in between, but with the complex training we did, it actually was optimal. Now I will admit, this took a week or two for our guys to comprehend this, but once they knew what to expect, it work out well and we never went back. Lets take a ME Squat day for example.

1. Organize pods by rack height and then weight used.

2. Order the lifter by work set weight

3. Make sure all lifters know A.) the next weight they need and B.) Who they follow.

So here how it goes:
Lifter A squats and immediately after:
i.) Performs a set of Box Jumps
ii.) Performs a set of Face pulls
iii.) does anlke mobility.

Then jumps in as a side spotter.
Side spotters will load weighs like a NASCAR pit crew.
When the lifter approaches that bar that Lifter A follows, he/she now spots.
As soon as that lifter racks the weight lifter A announces what weight he needs on the bar and waits for "the bar is loaded".
Then sqauts again.

This system can run smoothly even with 6-7 lifters.

4 lifters - no additional exrcises
5 lifters - add jumps
6 lifters - jumps + 1 prehad
etc.

Not addressing speed components of training during the off-season.
The true nature of the concurrent periodization system is to address all components of athletic development year-round. Conjugated would have the connotation that one component would be emphasized while all are addressed. This system works well if you think globally about the athlete's training. For example, In-season training would require much more time devoted to the technical and tactical side of training i.e. practice. But, let's just talk about the physical aspect. We coaches often neglect certain components during different times of the year. Speed training in the post and early off-seasons are sometimes ignored. One misconception is the amount of time it takes for training adaptation between speed, strength, and conditioning. Conditioning levels can adapt very quickly in comparison to speed and strength. Any coach that understand training understanding how hard and long athletes need to fight for a 5lb PR or 2 tenths of their time depending on the training age. Conditioning levels come back very quickly. Because of this adaptation with speed training, addressing it year long may be a piece I foolishly neglected for part of my career. Here are a few quick reasons I feel doing speed training year round makes sense.

1. Speed is a skill which needs to have time allotted for that skill to be acquired.

2. Speed is difficult to improve. Reducing speed training to a small 6-8 week block may be insufficient training time.

3. As athletes increase lean muscle mass, gain bodyweight, and their body composition changes; so do their biomechanical advantages. An athlete who gains 20 pound will literally have to relearn how to sprint to use these leverages to acquire the most efficient technique.

4. The realization of new-found strength must be utilized in a more sports-specific manner. We cannot wonder about how strength will translate to speed if we are not requiring the athlete to perform the most fundamental skill in that process... sprinting.

A few guidelines for speed training.
1. Keep volume around 200 yards total per speed session.

2. At least 2 but no more than 3 sessions per week.

3. Start with short sprints and gradually increase distance over the course of the training cycle.

4. At minimum, 30 seconds of rest for every 1 second of sprint time. For example 40d dash = at least 2.5 minutes.

5. Address speed mechanics in appropriate position i.e. forward lean or resistance

Being too sport-specific
Now, I learned early that we should train athletes to be generally athletic and not sports specific. Train for athleticism regardless of sport. So, I don't think that I was having athletes pass-blocking with dumbbells and going through the wind-up with a barbell on their backs. But the mistakes I made and see others making have more to do with the exercise selection and the carryover it has (or doesn't have). Here are a few.

1. Prescribing Olympic lifts that are too heavy. It is nice to hear guys like Bryan Mann and Cam Davidson reinforce this. Because the clean was on the record board, we were worried about the max numbers and not the training effect Olympic lifts could have. Listen if you are competing on the platform in weightlifting or competing in CrossFit then yes, you should be used to taking heavier weights toward your max. But for sports- performance, this exercise is the epitome of putting the outcome peform the process. The clean and snatch are tools to develop explosive power, not just to display it. That should happen on the field or court.

2. Box Jumps
I really would like to see more dude jumping on stacks of bumpers because I really don't see it enough on my newsfeed. Listen, I got it. These look cool and they have the "danger factor", but are we really testing lower body power production on how high we can bring our knees up to our face and land on an unstable, narrow surface? I never really tested box jumps and nor should anyone. It is a measure somewhat of power, mobility, and coordination. Problem, is what component is the inhibiting factor. You will need all three to be YouTube worthy, but you may only need to improve one to land on that extra bumper.

3. Emphasizing finishing. No other athletic endeavor measures success like some fitness methodologies do. No one runs the 800 thinking I just want to finish. No one plays a game hoping they just get through without getting hurt. No one hopes that make it through the end of the game without quitting. But, when we train athletes, that is sometimes the case. We often prescribe a workout to see IF the athlete can do it and not HOW the athlete does it. This is why I will say to the day I die that Burpees are the most idiotic exercise ever created. Not just the act of doing them (although laying down, standing up, and clapping the most popular form of displaying fitness now-a-days), but the outcome, the intention, the result. I just prescribed 14 minutes of burpees just to see how many you can do. I can also tell my throwers to run a 5k just to see if they can finish and thereby making them worse throwers. Listen, if you are competing in an event where you are measure on your ability to do burpees, I get it. But, in sports performance, even conditioning has to have goals, standards and a training effect that coincides with the activity they need to do on the field.

Being controlled by record board weight room numbers
There is a difference between training for a positive adaptation and displaying a skill for a numerical value. Sport coaches want to see numbers. These numbers motivate athletes and provide benchmarks for the athletes within the program. But, theses record board should highlight your training, not drive it. There are a few obstacles that were especially frustrating and here;s the changes that were made:

1. Only test what the sport coach wants tested. Most coaches will have an idea of where their athletes are at at any given time. Emphasis lifts were often tracked weekly as the athletes were constantly trying to push the limits and break personal records. Some teams would perform vertical jump test every 3 weeks in season to measure power output (I should have been more consistent with this). But, these numbers were for me and my staff. I used to give the sport coach a report with over a dozen tests and rankings of each athlete to find out they weren't even looked at. Finding out what the coach wanted to know was a step I started taking that made things better for all involved.

2. Understanding what weeks you are responsible for. If you have an team for 608 weeks at a time, pre-testing may not be in your best interest. There are two reasons for this. A.) It reduces your training be an additional week. and B.) The athletes are rarely ready to perform the test on week one of a cycle especially after a break or the season.

In some cases, testing was only done once per year. We would love to have 2-3, but those sometime were unreliable, Take football for example. If I don't have them all summer then I am not testing a 40yd dash in Fall camp. I am also not testing them when they get back from Winter break in January. So that leaves immediately after the season, after winter training before spring break, and at the end of Spring ball. Comparing those tests will not get you the best data. And comparing results from one year to the next has a lot of weeks in that time frame where the athletes are either playing or not under your supervision. Still not reliable.

There are a lot of mistakes I made as a strength coach and hopefully some of this resonates with you and make give you some insight.

TUESDAY
Snatch
60kg for 3 doubles

Log Press
210 x 3
190 x 5

Trap bar Deadlift
505 (80%) for 3 singles

supersetted with

Box Jumps
4 doubles