Fundamental not Fun
Chasing Clout
I’ve seen an alarming trend in strength and conditioning and in coaching more broadly in the last few years: a contingent of coaches eschewing fundamental principles of training in pursuit of popular methods.
My hypothesis is that fundamental principles are just too boring to take the time to understand but also too boring to apply for many coaches. The analogy I use to describe training to athletes is a train on tracks, it’s the same train cars over and over, rarely changing in size, shape or color. It moves relatively slowly but almost without fail reaches its destination.
Within strength and conditioning, there needs to be a pendulum swing back toward fundamentals on every level. Here are some of those principles.
Biological + Physiological Principles
Biological principles are the structure of organisms: cells, tissues, organs, systems. Physiological principles are how those living organisms function. From a biological perspective, we need to view training from the cellular level all the way through the organism level.
When we apply a stressor (the training session) to the organism (the athlete), the goal is to stimulate an acute adaptation as part of a series of chronic adaptations starting at the cellular level. The goal of any training program is to make cells more efficient at replenishing ATP, remodeling tissue to make it more resilient to forces, improve organ function to utilize fuel sources more efficiently, and help systems function more cohesively together.
The effects of maximizing biological function are exponential and far-reaching, but they can’t be ignored in favor of the seductive pull of high output training methods.
Movement Principles
As complex as biological processes can be, biomechanical processes can be equally complex. The physics of human movement involving joint angles, angular velocities, length-tension relationships, classes of levers and forces can be mind-numbing. However, that’s not an excuse to not understand the principles.
Joint angles of various movements affect the length and tension of muscle tissue. Joint range of motion affects how an athlete can apply adequate force in the appropriate direction. Angular velocities dictate how forceful that application will be, controlling for force production.
Speed Principles
Speaking of movement principles, there isn’t a more fundamental movement in sport than sprinting. It’s become popular in the “Feed the Cats” era of speed development to ONLY train at maximal velocities and to time every repetition so athletes get immediate feedback.
However, improvement ≠ development. Developing sprint mechanics by improving the gait cycle, posture, pelvic position and foot strike must come before pursuing high outputs like maximal velocity.
Power Principles
The ongoing debate on whether or not to use Olympic weightlifting as a method for developing power has gone on for almost a decade now and I’ve wade into it my fair share. However as I’ve zoomed out on what rate of force development actually is, I’ve found that every method of developing power has a place in a program.
What I’ve come to accept more recently is that many coaches who don’t use Olympic weightlifting might not actually understand these fundamentals. As I’ve reintroduced them into my programs, I’ve seen the effects of all the other power development methods improve.
On a fundamental level, power is the fast application of force but at varying degrees of velocity and ground contact times. Olympic weightlifting is irreplaceable to me now as affecting the largest space on the force-velocity curve but it’s not the only method I use.
The evidence base for using Olympic weightlifting for power development is so broad that you can build all the other methods on top of it.
Conditioning Principles
Conditioning is where training has gone awry the most and is related to poor understanding of the biological and physiological principles above. The idea that conditioning for a sport needs to look and feel like that sport is totally wrong.
Fundamentally, athletes condition to improve their recovery between harder efforts. The efforts could be rallies, fast breaks, plays, high-speed runs, or sequences of all of these. The difference between being able to maximize the outputs repeatedly during these efforts has to do with how quickly the cells replenish ATP (fundamental physiology).
The outputs are force-oriented and can be improved through strength, power, and speed development. Recovery from those outputs is dependent on aerobic function.
How to Right the Ship
Correcting this disturbing trend starts with coaches being willing to recognize that they don’t know what they don’t know. Social media tends to make experts out of amateurs and strength and conditioning exemplifies that dynamic.
In some ways, coaches seem addicted to the outputs because it gives them self-satisfaction, and it can’t be discounted that what seem like consistently high outputs can make kids feel good about themselves.
But again, that’s a fundamental misunderstanding of the difference between improvement and development. Improvement is fun, development is not.
I would encourage coaches to zoom as far out as they can and be humble enough to ask for feedback on how they can improve their knowledge base of fundamental principles.
Principles > Methods > Trends