Article recommendations week #23 2016

We have searched the net and sorted some of the most interesting and valuable articles of week 23

Strength Training Articles

Lift Big Eat Big published two great articles, one The Importance of Filming your Lifts one thing we do all the time and I have found as a really valuable resource for my coaching and athletes can adjust immediately when they see the visual feedback. A good example of how quickly an athlete can adjust in the following video

The other article discusses Complexity versus Simplicity in programming and that at times a simplistic training program might be more beneficial than a complex program. A thought I can fully align with.

Girls gone strong explained very well Why Every Endurance Athlete Needs to Strength Train and the benefits strength training can have for endurance athletes and improve endurance performances.

T-Nation published a great article on how Breathing can help to Regain Focus and the application to strength training, in my opinion, they purely focused on the breathing technique that activates the parasympathetic system (which aids relaxation) and it could have been added the breathing technique that activates the sympathetic system, which can help prior to big lifts. Their article on 5 Things Big & Strong Boys do give a few good and quick to implement tips for long term training success. The article  How I Added 100 Pounds to My Deadlift in 2 Weeks shows how the implementation of a few basic strength training principles can drive big results. When I first read the headline of the article The Holy Grail of Sports Training: EMOM Sets I was a bit hesitant to reading, since I don’t believe in the holy grail (unless I find the holy grail at some point myself), but I definitely like (and see) the point of improving technical efficiency.

Breaking Muscle explained How to Combat Poor Movement in Your Upper Body Training via the use of mobility training. That’s why we have mobility training as a fixed component, the good thing is if you do it regularly, you don’t need to spend hours on mobility work and sacrifice the real training. The article Lower Stress to Increase Fitness explains well how often the lifestyle choices we make have a much bigger influence on the recovery than the training program. In their article The 4 Virtues of a Master Coach they share their ideas of what the virtues of a master coach are.

Catalystathletics shared ideas of how to adjust a training session if things aren’t going the way they were planned. As a coach you are faced with this scenario all the time and you can’t just call off the training, you need to find ways to continue the training process. I am a big believer in the concept of winning the workout.

While winning the workout doesn’t mean setting a new PB in every training, it basically means to do the best that is possible on that day.

Stack offered 6 Ways to Bounce Back From Workouts Faster showing how to speed up recovery after training. The article How Energy Systems Training Can Help You Be Better at Your Sport shows the importance of incorporating energy system training in the overall training plan.

Science for Sport gave a good overview of 1RM testing from the scientific literature and how it can be applied into the training practice. From a practitioners point of view, I would cut out a few tests / exercises that are represented in the scientific literature (mainly the single-joint movements). You won’t get good useable results from that, as a practitioner, I would suggest doing multiple RM’s and the predict the 1RM.

Mike Robertson offers his 5 Top Coaching Cues and I do like the analogy with the arrow.

Rock and Ice shows how rock climbers integrate strength training to improve climbing performance and Building a Better Climber. One thing to point out, a few of the exercises are prescribed at a rep range of 6 – 8, which is a typical range for hypertrophy (muscle growth), which might result in additional body weight. Additional body weight might not be in the interest of a climber since he or she has to carry that additional body weight.

Plyometric Training Articles

DSM strength described in their article Plyometrics During Warm-up For Performance Benefit, how the incorporation of plyometrics into a warm-up can help to improve the subsequent training session.

 

Back Squat, Front Squat and Overhead Squat Articles

Elite FTS published a good article about hip-dominant Back Squat and knee-dominant Back Squat titled Hip Squatters vs Back Squatters — What is the Proper Way to Squat? which is mainly targeted to the sport of Powerlifting, but also offers a few good takeaways for everyone that Back Squats.

Mike Boyle asked the question Do Rear Foot Elevated Split Squats Cause Back Pain? and concluded, that none of his athletes ever had problems that originated from the rear-foot elevated Split Squat. I can align with Boyle’s opinion, we have some guys being able to lift quite a bit of load on the Rear-foot elevated Split Squat (or Bulgarian Split Squat) and seem to have no problems from the exercise.

But I do agree with Mike Boyle’s point to monitor the weekly volume carefully on the Bulgarian Split Squat (as much as any other main exercise).

Ryan J. Faer  demonstrated the 4 Benefits of the Front Squat for Baseball I like the concept of progressions and regressions, something I use all the time and is often overlooked in my opinion.

The Athletic Build showed useful squat variations in their article 4 Squat Variations That Are Hard as Hell I would only challenge the title, just because something is heavy doesn’t always mean it will lead to adaptations…

The Poliquin group discussed the question if the knees should go past the toes in a squat while this seems to be an evergreen discussion, the Poliquin group demonstrated solid data from research to support the argument, that the knees can safely travel past the toes.