We perform a lot of band resisted broad jumps to develop horizontal power. Recently we’ve been playing around with adding a little mini bounce to make it more reactive, placing it on days when we may be looking for shorter impulse times.

Give it a try and see how you like it!

Thursday thought 💭— Don’t over-coach med ball work.  

✅ Throw the ball as hard as you can

✅ Make it look athletic 

In an effort to try to get more 1-Leg Bridging variations into the program but also knowing very few people can perform a real 1-Leg Leg Curl,  we’ve turned to doing a few different Slideboard (hockey sock in our case) Leg Curl variations. Currently, the “1 Out 2 In” variation may be my favorite, creating a large eccentric single leg strength challenge but performing the concentric portion on two legs.  

Quick thought 💭➡️ Most athletes could benefit from more training in the frontal plane or just getting out of the sagittal plane. The Lateral Squat/Lunge is one of my favorite and an incredibly simple drill to improve both mobility and stability at the same time. Resist the urge to load too aggressively as it can turn ugly quick…quality over quantity.

Happy Monday! Here are a few thoughts bouncing around in my head after a week of reading, podcasts, cruising social media and any other continuing ed. Enjoy!

1. Current thoughts on the ratio of pulling to pressing – 3:1 Pull to Push, 2:1 Horizontal to Vertical. Might be overkill, but way too many shoulder injuries in sports these days.
2. If you want to be successful in this field you need to be willing to learn from anyone and everyone. Whether it is good or bad, we can learn from every other coach that we are exposed to – stay open minded.
3. If your core training consists of crunches, sit ups, Russian twists or anything else along those lines, your doing it wrong. Resist motion, don’t create it.
4. “I love trap bar jumps. They have become an intricate part of our programming. Very low barrier, super easy to teach. We use weight ranging from 55-95lbs.” – Daniel Flahie on Twitter the other day – and I 100% agree with this.

Another week, another group of podcasts and articles to read and listen to that I have dived into. Like every other week, there was a ton of content out there both in written form and through podcasts. Enjoy!

Podcasts

Lot of good listens this week. Pat Davidson is super smart and always great to listen to as he always makes you think. The Strength Coach Podcast is always a no-brainer and Jason Spray was great to listen to. Darcy Norman is one of those great coaches that not enough people know about. Best of the week was CVASP with Eric Renaghan – I am a sucker for anything that has anything to do with hockey.

Iron Game Chalk Talk with Dr. Pat Davidson

CVASP with Eric Renaghan

Pacey Performance with Darcy Norman

Strength Coach Podcast #250

Articles

Some good reading material this week. I don’t read a lot of T-Nation these days but Chris Shugart knocked his article out of the park. My favorite of the week was by Eric Cressey though, which wasn’t really an article and more of a video, but it was great. Without a doubt, I am going to be adding that bound into our bounding progression.

Tip: Your Tools Are Not Your Identity by Chris Shugart

Exercise of the Week: Heiden with Medicine Ball by Eric Cressey

Ladder Drills by Movement as Medicine

The 4 Most Common Barbell Hip Thrust Technique Mistakes by Eric Cressey

Most Popular Tweet of the Week

Most Popular Instagram Post of the Week

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I was asked the other day if I could explain our thought process when it comes to conditioning volleyball. – . . ✅ We run once per week. Volleyball athletes jump and land too much as it is, placing a ton of stress on their hip/knee/ankle/low back and adding a lot more via running is probably not a great idea. We typically start with tempo runs for 3-4 weeks then progress into shuttle runs and building up the distance (75 yard ➡️ 150 yard ➡️ 300 yard) over the course of the off-season. – . . ✅ We Slideboard a lot. It’s gets them into the frontal plane which everyone could use more of. It keeps their feet on the ground and adds very little wear and tear to their bodies. It trains the adductors/abductors (groin) in a functional manner. – . . ✅ Assault Bike Work. We do 20:10’s, 10:20’s, 2 Mile Ride for time and other protocols on the bike. Like the Slideboard, the bike adds very little wear and tear to the body — you can condition extremely hard on the bike with very little negatives (besides it being brutally hard). – . . ✅ Sleds. We perform some continuous sled work (2-4 minutes) for a couple sets sometimes for some added aerobic work. Lot harder then it looks. – . . Long story short. We try to keep their feet on the ground as much as possible. We get in the frontal plane. We take advantage of the bikes — they may be our #1 conditioning tool for a jumping athlete like 🏐

A post shared by Craig Edwards (@craig__edwards) on Mar 12, 2019 at 1:10pm PDT

Our Off-Season Day 2️⃣ (Wednesday) lift with volleyball, our ‘power’ or ‘contrast/complex day, where we place a large emphasis on developing a more explosive and powerful athlete.

Since we have an older group this year that has a higher training age, we are experimenting with placing more traditional strength work one day (Monday), speed-strength/contrast/complex one day (Wednesday), and then a work capacity day (Friday), all based off some of the work Anthony Donskov has been putting out.

✅ Band Resisted Kettlebell Swing

✅ Trap Bar Dead Lift paired with Seated Box Jump

✅ Strap Row paired with Overhead Slam

✅ 1-Leg RDL

✅ Alternating DB Bench Press

✅ Core and Corrective Work Sprinkled In

Another month, another post full of random thoughts that have been going through my head. Hope it sparks a little thought in people and you enjoy!

1. The basics are tried, tested and true yet they don’t get the love and ‘likes’ because they don’t have the same sizzle as the new stuff. Any good coach will realize that their program should still be based off of the basics.
2. A football player from Iowa Hang Cleaned 450×3 (maybe it was 4???) yet all anyone wanted to talk about was the fact he was using straps. One question…who cares?!?!
3. Good movers in the weight room = good movers in sport.
4. A lot of people have been doing more pulls with their Olympic work and not catching, which is fine. However, I feel there is a huge benefit to catching the weight, most notably the ability to absorb force and decelerate the weight.
5. Read for different reasons. Read to learn. Read to lift your spirits. Read for fun. Read for entertainment. But most importantly, read.
6. When you take care of yourself, physically and mentally, everything around you and in your life becomes better.
7. Always have a beginners mindset, in every single area of your life.
8. What are the best coaches in the world doing? You should probably do those same things.
9. Don’t forget that people want to be coached by people they know, by people they like, and by people they trust. If you aren’t checking those boxes don’t be surprised if the people you coach aren’t completely bought in.
10.  Pain never precedes function.

Our Off-Season Day 1️⃣ (Monday) lift with volleyball is our strength day where we place a large emphasis on simply developing a stronger athlete and focusing on more concentric based work.

Since we have an older group this year that has a higher training age, we are experimenting with placing more traditional concentric based strength work one day  as you see here, speed-strength/contrast/complex on our second day (Wednesday), and then a work capacity day (Friday) where we use a combination of eccentric and yielding isometric work, all based off some of the work Anthony Donskov has been putting out.

✅ Pause Trap Bar Jump Squat

✅ Safety Bar Split Squat

✅ Dumbbell Row

✅ Sled March

✅ Push Up

✅ Core and Corrective Work Sprinkled In  

If your core training consists of crunches, sit ups, Russian twists or anything else along those lines, your doing it wrong. Resist motion, don’t create it.