I Bet You Never Thought Of This...

I recently did a tele-seminar on program design for multi-directional speed training. It made a lot of people think. I basically described 5 concepts that must be considered when designing your strength and conditioning program.

By no means am I discounting the importance of the commonly thought of components of program design like; rest periods, cycles and phases, tempo, intensity... I simply wanted to bring to light the importance of not so commonly thought of components.

I am not able to go into great depth here but let me share with you what they are:

1. Compartmentalized training versus non-compartmentalized training- basically, you need to consider if you are going to breakdown all the biomotor abilities into separate training sections or combine them into free flowing training. There is a time to do both, but most coaches never consider using non-compartmentalized training. They always break the sections apart and train independently of one another.

2. Building from a Needs Analysis- When you learn how to use this tool you can take your program to higher levels. You need to look at what your sport demands in regards to biomotor abilities (speed, quickness, balance, flexibility, strength...) and train them in a priority. And with different attention. You even need to be able to break down certain positions within the sport. An example of this is; How much speed training does a wrestler need versus explosive power training and balance training? Now how much speed training does a forward in soccer need versus the wrestler? If you go through all the area of athleticism you can clearly understand what you need to put into your training.

3. Planned skill versus Unplanned skill training- Far too often we spend time on training our athletes with drills that are pre-planned and easily rehearsed. There is a time and place for this, but athlete need to learn to move in random settings. This is how we as coaches can evaluate true movement, plus it prepares the athlete for sport situations better.

4. Sets and Reps- This seems simple enough-but it really isn't utilized correctly. I feel you need to understand if your focus is skill based training or if it is metabolic training. In skill based training I am not as concerned with exact sets and rep schemes because I am simple trying to grove a motor program pattern in which the athlete becomes more efficient. It might take me 3 reps or 15 reps in a session to accomplish my goal. However, when we are performing metabolic training in which the goal is to push beyond comfort to attain a higher endurance capacity I need to be more exact with my number of sets, reps, tempos and rest periods. I always separate my program design when dealing with these 2 entities.

5. Include actual game speed performance when training athletic speed. In other words, you need to schedule in times when your athletes learn to move at a pace that allows them to be under control and perform the sport skill well. So not always do we want to train at 100% speed. I want to see my athletes be efficient and under control when positioning themselves to make plays. Example; A tennis player attacking the net should not be sprinting- they should move under control but quickly to prepare to hit a volley or stop and chase down a lob.

Hopefully this kind of gives you an understanding of the not so common areas of program design that must be considered. Love to hear you comments.

Yours in Speed,

Lee

PS: I will have more indepth information on this topic in my Speed Insiders monthly packages. To try it out for 2 months FREE go to http://www.speedinsiders.com/.