Charles Poliquin and Vern Gambetta integrated some of the work by Lois Klatt into assessing. Vern pointed out in his plyometric article that you can use plyometrics as more than training, but to show the competence of what the athlete could do. Poliquin shared many ways of gaging the weak points of an athlete using Klatt's work. Note two very different coaches came up with similar conclusions wit [...]

Instead of being my normal negative self here are some great tips I learned from a few jumps coaches years ago. Not doing plyometrics in HS, my personal experience needed some mentoring. The question why are we learning plyometrics from strength coaches that are not good at strength and conditioning? I will say that more athletes are likely to get hurt doing plyos than lifting in the weightroom, [...]

Every year about this time (for those new to snow) or earlier (for those use to dealing with the cold), the northeast weather throws a big monkey wrench to "great on paper" programs. I have been in the lovely Tampa area for 6+ years and spent most of my life in Massachusetts and understand why Robert Frost sounds depressing. Snow on the ground changes everything but not as much as one has to bel [...]

I would like to congratulate Monica on her induction into the International Tennis Hall of Fame. I had the opportunity to work with Monica for a brief period in 1998 and 99. What a wonderful person, a terrific role model for the young female athlete. She was a great athlete, very quick and explosive. It was very interesting talking to her about her training with her father who was a triple jumper, [...]

Gilles Cometti and Wolfgang Ritzdorf have some great information on plyometrics (reactive training for the gurus) that I have used last summer with some athletes but not with any jumper this past year as I didn't have anyone with a good training history of proper jump work. Wolfgang argues that plyometrics should either redirect momentum (power) or minimize ground contact time (speed/stiffness). [...]

Those who follow my training log will know that I started Assisted Jump Training today. As this training method is not commonly used, I wanted to share my video from today and begin to discuss the training method in more detail. Assisted Jump training is taken from the concept of over-speed training for improving sprinting speed. Here, the athlete will sprint at maximal velocity down a slope of 3- [...]

A couple days ago it occurred to me that I had one more blog entry to reach 400 and figured it would only be appropriate if my 400th blog post was about the 400m (thanks to Nick for the suggestion). The 400m is one of the weird birds of track and field. Probably more so than any other event (other than the 800m) the 'Many Roads to Rome' concept seems to hold true. I'd like to take a look at why [...]

A common error in training with the clean is catching it incorrectly. During attempts for records it looks like someone's back in action! This is the guy that speaks on olympic lifting technique? This VIDEO is a clear example of common efforts to grab attention with the better athletes while forgetting that each athlete deserves care. Instead of being negative I will share some of my experiences [...]

While I was catching my breath on a rest interval during a tempo running workout at my local park yesterday, I gazed up at the hill that surrounded the large grass field I was running on like the sides of a bowl. The hill was about 30m up at an incline of about 30 degrees. I'd probably never have anyone do serious running workouts on a hill like that because the surface was too uneven and the inc [...]

Weight training is just a general stimulus? Everything works? Yes. Everything can work with someone at some point, but again perhaps not with you or your athletes. The real questions should be what works most often with most athletes and most effectively. Note the word efficiently doesn't come up as coaching and training is not very efficient in Track and Field. 48 weeks a year of training 3+ hou [...]