Just Fly 101 Series: Basic Training Principles

The following article is the first of a five part series of mine on training basics for speed/power athletes. If training is your passion, this series is going to be a must-read for you. This article is also featured on my new website: www.just-fly-sports.com, and is featured there with pictures for those of you who have ADD like I do. Without further ado I present to you the standard in strength/power theory for the modern athlete.

Just Fly 101 Training Basics for Speed/Power Athletes

PART I

This is the first article in a series dedicated to simplifying the training process. The reason I am writing this particular series is that many of those visiting my site or reading my articles might not be too familiar with some of the core concepts of training theory. My goal as a writer has always been to provide readers with training concepts that I feel are not well known that are important to developing a solid training program. These articles and concepts can get a little complicated, but in reality training is fairly simple. Some, and perhaps even most of the best athletes in the world today have reached their levels of athleticism with fairly primitive training schemes and setups. Hopefully through reading this article, you will become better acquainted with how simple becoming an amazing athlete really is!

Three years ago, I began teaching a course on sports performance development in the college I currently work at. The book I chose for the course was “Science and Practice of Strength Training” written by Vladimir Zatsiorsky and William Kraemer, two extremely intelligent sport scientists. I feel that teaching this class and becoming very familiar with the simple concepts of training in conjunction with actual training and coaching experiences has allowed me to provide a concise manuscript on basic training principles. Sometimes when we get caught up into all of the current research and dichotomies that exist in the field today, it is tough to really see though the fog and look at the groundwork that gets so many athletes so far in their given sport. With that said, let’s get to the basics of training theory!

I am going to divide this article into a five sections, and then finish with a few examples of how these training concepts can be combined to produce a serious athlete! The sections that we will deal with will be as follows:

Part 1

CNS training and structural training

Specificity in training

Part 2

Training the body as one piece

Arranging training

Part 3+4

Training progression

Part 5

Proficiency vs. Efficiency

Training environment

Once you have learned these sections, you will realize that 90% of applicable training theory is right here in this article. The first part of this four part series will talk about CNS vs. structural training and then the importance of specificity in training.

CNS and Structural Training:

Training the human body primarily has effects on two “systems”: The Central Nervous System and then the actual structure of the muscle-tendon complex. It is important to learn the difference between these two systems and the types of training that will influence each one. The Central Nervous System, or CNS for short represents the brain, spinal cord and all of the muscles that it innervates. It is the ultimate controller of all movements in the human body and is far more important in expressions of strength and power than the actual composition of the muscles themselves. Within your own body is the capability to produce amounts of force beyond what you ever thought possible, such as lifting a car off of a child to save a life.

We do have enough force capacity within our muscles to perform incredible feats, but the fact that we would all be in the hospital with strained backs if we went around lifting cars on a daily basis is a good reason for the body to put a severe limit on when we can perform these type of movements. The CNS will limit the power production ability of the muscles until it is trained to do otherwise. Training does two things really. The first is that it will teach the CNS to be more powerful by recruiting more nerves/motor neuron units each time that an exercise is performed. This is only true up to a point, however, and training needs to be very intense to reach high levels of CNS recruitment. The second thing that training does is strengthen the muscles and connective tissues to the point that they will be able to withstand the more intense signals given to the muscles by the CNS.

Training will always influence both the CNS and the muscular tissues of the body in some way, it is just that some training happens to stress one more than the other. Examples of training that will be more demanding on the CNS are heavy weightlifting, plyometrics, maximal jumping, maximal sprinting over short distances (less than 40 meters), and throwing objects with max power. If you didn’t notice, the word “maximal” is key when it comes to CNS training activities. You are going all out to attempt to increase the number of motor units that you are activating. Training that will enhance the structure of the body to a greater level tends to be of the more repetitive type. Although more repetitive training does not maximize the CNS and motor recruitment, it is still important in developing the total athlete. Examples of training that will emphasize the muscle-tendon structure in the body would be strength training for more than 15 seconds in each set (usually around 8-10 reps or more), repetitive jumps (such as skipping rope or cone hops), repeated submaximal sprints, long hill runs, and repeated multidirectional work (such as playing a sport where lateral movement is involved). Multidirectional work is important in training the structure of the body as it will assist the in the development of the stabilizing and supporting muscles of movement.

The average athlete who plays a team sport is going to be getting both types of this training in their system, as most sports have explosive, repetitive, and multidirectional components. The key in training is to develop the CNS and structure of the body in a balance that is appropriate to your sport. Training only one system can have potentially negative side effects. Performing only CNS work will tend to make athletes prone to injury or overtraining. Highly trained and genetically superior athletes can tend to handle a greater amount of CNS training as opposed to genetically weaker athletes, and those with little training experience. On the other hand, performing only structural based training is going to severely limit the upper power potential of the body. It is a bit safer form of training (as long as ridiculous volumes are not performed), but it will tend to limit the explosive performance of the athlete in tasks such as jumping and sprinting.

Specificity of Training:

This is a pretty simple concept that most people are familiar with. If you want to be better at a given movement, you need to practice that movement, or at least movements very similar to it, on a regular basis. There are essentially three methods of improvement in any sporting movement:

Primary: Performing the movement itself (The fastest way to improve)

Secondary: Performing the movement with resistance (A stronger training stimulus and the second fastest way to improve)

Tertiary: Strength Training (Supports the primary movement and are processes that improve over time)

Practicing the primary sport movement is always the fastest way to improve performance. Let’s take for example, jumping. If you do not have a lot of training experience, the fastest way to jump higher is simply to practice jumping a lot. When you practice, of course, you need to practice jumping as high as you possibly can, because after all, you don’t want to practice jumping low (unless your goal is to jump low)! Your training results will tend to be quite specific to the training that you put in! The big reason that many streetball style dunkers can jump so high is mostly just because they practice jumping all the time, and have decent levels of general fitness that they gain from simply playing basketball. For another example, look at the training of Michael Johnson, the world record holder in the 400m dash, and former world record holder in the 200m dash. Johnson did not do many squats or Olympic lifts in his training regimen. Plyometrics were nowhere to be found. What Michael Johnson did do to become great was practice his primary movement, which was running very often. He also did this in a very organized and systematic manner under one of the greatest track coaches of all time, Clyde Hart. Fancy training regimens are not nearly as important as practicing the sport movement you want to improve often, especially performing it in a competitive environment!

Along with the primary movement being vital to the training process, it also need to be trained with the proper technique. Performing your primary sporting movement under the eye of an experienced coach, or at least a video camera can be one of the best ways to increase your performance. This aspect of training is more important in more complex movements, such as the field events in track and field, or sport movements, such as a golf swing or tennis serve. In terms of basic motor movements, such as running and jumping, repeated practice of these from a young age often allows athletes to form a good working technique, although there will always be room for improvement. Various forms of these movements can be implemented to teach proper technique, such as performing scissor bounds to assist a sprinting athlete in learning the motor pattern of recruiting the glute and hamstring muscles to a greater degree in the ground phase of the sprint.

The second fastest way to make performance gains is to practice a movement with resistance. Using the vertical jump example, to add resistance, one could perform maximal jumping attempts with a weight vest or ankle weights on. Depth jumps would also offer a form of this primary training method with a degree of resistance. When training only the specific sport movement, the body will eventually adapt to just jumping with ones own bodyweight, so an athlete will need to try either jumping with a vest or doing depth jumps to continue to make performance gains. If you were working on improving your sprint speed, an example here would be making the use of an incline like a hill in your training.

The third method of improvement is that of strength training. Strength training by itself will not typically yield direct gains in performance in a short period of time. In reality though, strength training is almost never performed in isolation, especially with team sport athletes. If you are playing a sport and lifting weights, you are getting the primary pieces of training you need to become a great athlete. The most important thing to realize about strength training is that it is typically not the fastest way to improve athleticism, but in the long term development of an athlete, it is possibly the most important method of the three that I have listed.

Strength training is very important in the total development of an athlete because it raises the potential of that athlete’s force production. Performing training methods such as sprinting, throwing and plyometrics are nice, but they do very little to increase the total amount of contractile proteins/size of the muscle past a fixed level. Training without using weights or strength can be very effective up to a certain point, but there will come a point in the training of many athletes where progress will no longer be possible unless some sort of strength training is performed. This is due to the fact that the body is recruiting the majority of available muscle fibers, and there simply is not any more muscle for the CNS to recruit in a given movement! In this case, creating more muscle cross sectional area will be necessary for further gains. Science has shown that performance gains that are made as the result of increased muscular/myofibril size and density will last for a longer period of time than gains that are made because of improvements to the nervous system. This leads to a tangible example that gains which are made from months of strength training will last longer in terms of performance improvement than gains made from months of plyometric training.

The last point in this section is as follows: The sport specific movement looking to be improved needs to be practiced on a regular basis through all levels of training. A positive aspect of team sports is that participating regularly in games and practices will help to ensure a regular diet of functional sports movements. This is only positive so long as the practices and games are not extremely taxing on the lactic and aerobic pathways of the body (excess conditioning). Many people get very caught up with secondary and tertiary methods at high levels of training, and will forget the training mode that got them there in the first place, which is actually practicing the main movement. To continue to improve your results, the primary sporting movement must be present on a regular basis.

SUMMARY

· If you are a speed/power athlete, limit the time over the course of the year that you are performing general/conditioning based training. Focus your training of profiency/power, and less on efficiency/conditioning.

· Try and emphasize the specific movement you are trying to improve in your training. If you want to run faster, than sprint fast in practice! If you want to throw faster, throw a lot! If you want to jump higher, jump as high as you can a lot!

· Perform the sport specific movement in a competitive environment for the best possible results.

REFERENCES

Baechle, Thomas R., and Roger W. Earle. Essentials of Strength Training and Conditioning. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics, 2000. Print.

Gambetta, Vern. Athletic Development: the Art & Science of Functional Sports Conditioning. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics, 2007. Print.

Moore et al. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. In Press.

Moura, Nelio A. "Training Principles for Jumpers." Training Principles for Jumpers. CoachR, May-June 2001. Web. 31 Oct. 2011.http://www.coachr.org/tpjrs.htm

Verkhoshansky, Yuri Vitalievitch., and Mel Cunningham. Siff. Supertraining. Rome, Italy: Verkhoshansky, 2009. Print.

Zatsiorski, V. & Kraemer, W. (2006) Science and Practice of Strength Training, 2nd Edition, Human Kinetics Publishing, Champaign IL.

Part II Coming Soon!

New Post

Hello,

Just wanted to let everyone know, I will be having new posts every several days on my new blog: www.justflyperformance.blogspot.com

This blog is featured on my new website: www.just-fly-sports.com

Check us out! We are updating the site rapidly and aim to be the best out there in terms of helping you become a better athlete.

Joel

Moving into the future

Hi!

I haven't posted in quite a while! I just wanted to let everyone know that a GREAT new series is coming up and I am getting ready to release it on this blog and several websites. It is going to be the flagship article series for my new website (www.just-fly-sports.com) and will be called JUSTFLY101. This will feature articles that talk about the solid facts of training theory, periodization, vertical jumping, sprinting and strength training. It will form the ground work for what we base our training programs and help to weed out the mud of the internet training world.

The first 4 part series of this upcoming information will be released in the next couple days.

Also, my new blog which will be updated much more frequently and that will complement my new website is located at http://justflyperformance.blogspot.com/

The first post will be coming tomorrow as soon as I can film a new exercise I need for the series. Hope to see you there!

Joel Smith, MS, CSCS

CNS Series Part III: Tuning the Nervous System for Maximal Power

Editors Note: My new site is now at www.just-fly-sports.com Check it out for a wealth of information on jumping higher and running faster, all backed by research and practical experience!

CNS Series, Part IIIA: Tuning the CNS for max performance (weightlifting method)


Welcome to the last article(s) in this series on the Central Nervous System. I am really aiming for this to be the most practical and easily applicable of the three. The first two articles in the series spoke a lot about the general theory behind some aspects of training. This article is going to deal with the practical ways of teaching the central nervous system to be as powerful as humanly possible. In a nutshell, you will learn the most powerful training techniques available for increasing speed and explosiveness.

There are basically three training systems when it comes to maximal nervous system recruitment. These would include weightlifting, plyometrics, and complex training. Part A of the third part of this series will deal with weightlifting, while part B will involve plyometric and complex training methods.

The most common method of improving strength and power of the human organism is that of resistance training. Today we have entire college degrees focused on this area of performance improvement, which would indicate that it probably plays an important role in training. Resistnce training is very effective for several reasons: increased cross-sectional area of muscle, neuro-muscular efficiency and strength to bodyweight ratio to name a few. If performed correctly it can also improve neuro-muscular patterns in the body such as triple-extension of the hips, knees, and ankles (with Olympic lifts). Resistance training has many forms and varieties, so a common question is which type of lifting will help transfer to dynamic ability (running/jumping) in the best way?


Here are a few simple answers to the question:

1. Use primarily ground based movements (Squat, Deadlift, Olympic lifts)
2. Use less reps and more sets (most lifts at 1-4 reps per set)
3. Train with both heavy and light weights for strength and speed
4. Make sure to train using movements that emphasize hip extension

I think it would be a safe assumption that most of the people reading this are pretty familiar with the above recommendations. In this article, I would like to discuss the strength training methods that I use to create a high nervous system output through resistance training methods. First, I would like to talk about the lifts that I like to use. I will then discuss the sets and reps for each specific lift that I feel tend to work the best for training goals and phases.


When it comes to lifting, there are two types of lifts that can be done for performance:


Traditional and Dynamic.


I consider traditional weightlifting to include: squats, deadlifts, lunges, step-ups, presses, calf raises, and similar types of slower tempo lifts. Dynamic lifts are the explosive lifts: Olympic lifts, jump squats, and barbell skips….basically anything that involves a high level of explosiveness and the where the feet tend to leave the ground. All these lifts are standing-ground based, so for the main part of my workouts, I don't use leg-presses, lying hip extensions, or anything like that, although sometimes I will put these in as supplements.

When it comes to the traditional lifts, there are a lot of possibilities that are available. In terms of vertical jump development (all forms) I like the following: backsquats to parallel, partial squats, front squats, squats with a 3 second pause at the bottom, tempo squats, deadlifts, deadlifts standing on a plate, barbell step ups on 12-18” high boxes, Romanian deadlifts and calf raises.

Here are a couple of those lifts you might not be too familiar with:

Plate Deadlift: A must-do lift for sprinters



Barbell Step-up: A must-do lift for jumpers



For most of my experienced athletes, I tend to put about 15-25 reps of Olympic lifts in one workout. After that we usually do around 30-40 reps of traditional lifting. The sets for the Olympic lifts are almost always 3 reps per set or less. 5 sets of 5 is definitely not the best way to go when it comes to the Olympic lifts! In order to really get the best recruitment out of the CNS, the reps must be lower! Some of the typical sets and reps that we use for OL’s look like this: 6x3 (2’ rest), 8x2 (90”), 15x1 (1’). Even in the early season, I still like to use lower reps for the Olympic lifts…but I will make the rest between sets a bit shorter, say 20x1 with 60% max and only 30” rest between reps. I think that putting the same mentality we have in the traditional lifts into the Olympic lifts is a mistake. In my own lifting, I can feel the loss in hip extension and explosiveness after 3 or 4 reps, so I really think that keeping those reps low is pretty important, unless you are using very light weight.




Regarding the Olympic lifts, I find that using a large range of weights in respect to the 1RM tends to work well. The lower %RM ranges will allow for greater speed, and the higher %RM range will allow for more power. Both are necessary for the best results. I have had some good success with using 20x1, starting at around 70% of the 1RM at the opening sets, and then slowly building up to 90% after set 10. I have also noticed great results doing a 20x1 or 8x3 with only around 60% of the 1RM and just working on speed of movement. There is really no magic % point in the Olympic lifts (or lifts in general) but I feel that the most important thing is to work hard at all ends of the speed and strength spectrum. Even when the weight is light, you can't take it easy on the bar, maximal hip extension is a must. Just watch some videos of olympic lifters training, and watch the hip power they put into the bar on every lift. It is one of the keys to their high level of athleticism.

I am not really huge into jump squats as a replacement of olympic lifts because I think that clean pulls and related lifts can match the dynamics and simplicity of jump squats with less strain on the back. I will use jump squats from time to time, however. A dynamic lift that I really do like that is not an olympic lift is the barbell skip. I think that it is really invaluable for single leg jumpers.

Barbell Skip: An important dynamic lift for single leg jumping




In a yearly training plan, max strength can be touched on, but I don’t really use anything below 4 reps for heavy sets more than 3-4 weeks out of the year. Now I do think that people can and do make pretty good jumping gains by using max effort squats, but I feel that if your program also has a lot of speed lifting and plyos in it, you just don’t really need to go max effort on your traditional lifts. In my own opinion, the programs that do well including max effort lifts are either combine programs or fairly low frequency training programs. If you are training on a high frequency program (6-8+ sessions a week), I think it is important, for the sake of recovery, not to spend much time going over 90%. I do think though, that you should spend a lot of time in the 80-90% range in those lifts, but above that percentage is pretty taxing.

Some studies have shown that doing depth jumps alone following a period of resistance training will increase the back squat, even when the weights have ceased. What this means is that the high CNS power in the plyometrics can fill your "max effort" lifting needs in a sense. Remember you are an athlete and not necessarily a powerlifter.

For most squatting movements, I like to go for about 20 total reps. 4 sets of 5 is my typical prescription, but early in the season I might choose 3-4x8, or 5x6. When going for power in the squats I’ll go for something like 6 sets of 4, but I don’t usually go below 4 reps in squat, simply because I choose other exercises for my power development, such as Olympic lifts and plyometrics. I feel that traditional weightlifting exercises should mainly be used for developing your motor neuron and muscle pool and not so much for max strength (some may disagree with me here).

Lastly, I would like to mention a quick point about hip extension, and strength training. Traditional weightlifting is very important, but I feel that if it is overemphasized, the athlete can lose hip extension because of the neural pattern involved in slower lifting. In order to counter this, the creative coach can come up with a few variations that can combine both time-under-tension, and explosiveness. There are a couple of variations that I personally like.

The first is the clap-back squat:



The second is the slow-eccentric, fast concentric back squat:



(you don't need the hanging devices on the bar to do this, but it is a nice tool)

As a conclusion to this first section, I will include a few example lifting programs that myself and my athletes might use during the training year.

Pre-Season Phase III, Strength and Power
Jon Doe: Bodyweight. 168, Squat 1RM. 300, Clean 1RM. 235, Standing Vertical. 31”, 3 Step VJ. 38.5”.
Dynamic Warmup
2x10 Overhead Squats with 45lb bar
20x1 Cleans: 165lb, 30” rest (last 5 reps increase up to 205)
4x5 Barbell Step Ups, 18” box: 135, 145, 155, 165lb (3’ rest)
4x5 Glute Ham Raise
3x10 Barbell Calf Raise
3x10 Renegade Rows: 40lb dumbbells
3x20s weighted sprinters stretch

In-Season Phase II, Strength and Power
Jill White: Bodyweight. 124, Squat 1RM. 165, Clean 1RM. 130, Standing Vertical. 25”, 3 Step VJ. 29”.
Dynamic Warmup
2x10 Overhead Squats with 45lb bar
12x1 Power Snatch: 75lb, 1' rest
4x3 Split Jerk:85lb, 2' rest
5x3 Clap Back Squat: 105lb, 2' rest
3x5 Pullups
3x20s weighted sprinters stretch

German Volume Training

Editors Note: My new site is now at www.just-fly-sports.com Check it out for a wealth of information on jumping higher and running faster, all backed by research and practical experience!

I just did my first session of what is known at "German Volume Training" yesterday. It involved 10 sets of 10 front squats with a fairly slow tempo past parallel with 135lb. I took 2 minutes rest between sets. This is not a lot of weight, but it got really tough by the end! My goal this year is to get a little more cross-sectional area in my legs, so I am pretty sure doing this workout over a few months will help do the trick. My legs haven't hurt like this in quite a while.

On another note, I'll be done with my next installment in the CNS series within the next 24 hours.

Joel

Structural and CNS Training Systems

Editors Note: My new site is now at www.just-fly-sports.com Check it out for a wealth of information on jumping higher and running faster, all backed by research and practical experience!

THE YING AND YANG OF TRAINING:
CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM TRAINING AND STRUCTURAL TRAINING

In my last post, I talked about how the CNS (Central Nervous System) is of prime importance in athletic improvements, and how to avoid its overtraining. In this post I would like to talk a little bit about the two sides of the training coin in athletics. These would include training the structure of the body and then the central nervous system. Here is a quick overview of both types of training before I go into greater detail.

Structural Training: Training that focuses on the muscle-tendon structure of the body, the energy systems which support movement, as well as the endocrine and cardio-vascular systems that support the general well-being of the body as a whole.

CNS Training: In a nutshell, this is explosive strength and power training…plyometrics, olympic lifts and heavy squats…you get the idea. CNS training works the neural pathways from the brain and spinal cord to the muscles that they innervate. This training stimulates the central nervous system to become more proficient, as opposed to more efficient.

To acheive the best results in your training, what needs to happen is an optimal training frequency of both types of training. The overload that tends to happen, and cause training regression, is in CNS training. This particularly will occur when too much CNS specific training is undertaken and too little structural training has occurred. To give you a picture of what this is like, imagine what would happen if an overweight, untrained, 50 year old individual suddenly had the nervous system output of a professional level athlete. What would happen would be a high count of injuries, because that untrained persons muscles and connective tissues could not take the high force output of an amped up nervous system. Likewise, their body could not sustain that type of training for very long, because they wouldn't have the endocrine and cardiovascular support that would help them recover from the intense CNS output that they now had. Needless to say, it is important to do a good job with both aspects of training.

So I would like to now go into a bit of detail with structural training. Most of what I am concerned about when it comes to the structural training of an athlete is that of their muscle-tendon complex. In human movement, it is not just the muscles that bring about the movement, it is also the tendons. Our tendons act as speed and force amplifiers for the muscles in the body. Think of them as giant rubber bands, lets actually use a slingshot as an example. When you shoot a sling shot, your front hand is on a forked apparatus, while your back hand pulls back a band which usually contains a rock/bb/paintball/whatever you can come up with when you are 8 years old. Think of your front arm putting pressure on the fork as the work your muscles do….then think of the band being pulled back as your tendon action. The end result? A projectile being shot much faster than you could throw it. The mechanical and elastic elements work together to produce an enhanced reaction.

Back a few years ago, I did a large amount of research on tendon structure in athletes, and how it changes through training. To cut a long story short, tendons play an incredibly important part in human movement, and to neglect the fact that running and jumping is a dynamic interaction between the muscle fibers and the tendon units can really hurt your athletic performance. Now, when training volume is cut low to the point where one is only doing CNS type training (you can only do so much CNS work) you are going to start to neglect the "springyness" of the muscle-tendon structure. This will especially happen when the majority of your CNS style work is done in the weightroom. In fact, what most athletes will typically find if most of their training is done in the weightroom is that...their standing vertical jumps, and maybe 10m dashes will go up, but running jumps and top end sprint speed will go down. Bottom line…..the faster the movement…..the more the elasticity of the tendons will play a role. Sprints and running jumps rely a lot on tendon spring.

If you are not training your body structure to run fast or jump high, CNS training will not pick up the slack, even if you are doing a decent amount of plyometrics. I will say though that a fairly intensive plyometric training program certainly helps, but you can't sustain it all year long. So what exactly are some methods that are used to train the structure of an athletes? Its really a lot simpler than you might think.

The best exercises to train the structure of an athlete are simply repeated jumping or running exercises. If you are involved in a team sport, such as basketball or football, you are probably getting plenty of structural training in. If you don’t really play a team sport, or play a team sport, but don’t really practice the sport much in the offseason then you might need to do a little extra work in regards to your muscle-tendon structure. Some training methods that some elite track coaches use to remedy in-elasticity are called “rudimentary jump circuits". These jump circuits involve multiple jumps over a distance of around 20-30 meters. The jumps are low intensity, however, and instead of shooting for max distance, each jump only covers between one and three feet. In each jump, the aim is for minimal flexion of the knees and also low ground time. Biomechanically speaking, the tendon units will come into play to a greater extent when the ground time is minimized.

From my understanding and experience, changes in tendon stiffness are the result of repetitive efforts (100+ contacts/session). Research has shown that distance running has a positive effect on increasing the stiffness of the Achilles tendon. Now I don’t think that aspiring strength/power athletes should spend a lot of time running distance, but I think that repetitive efforts are important to optimize the tendon function of the body. So, take home message of this section, you are not going to get a whole lot of elasticity by only doing 4 sets of 5 depth jumps a week for jumping work. The elastic changes are the result of prolonged stretch-shortening cycle work. Flash back to discussions about the "training" of guys like team-flight-brothers (they don't train in the traditional sense, they just play basketball and practice dunking) these guys get a great mix of structural and CNS work, from just playing ball all the time, and then practicing dunks.

So what exactly would constitute a “structural” type workout for an athlete? Well, for a team –sport athlete, just playing your sport usually is a pretty good structural workout, as there are many ground contacts, jumps, cuts, etc. For non-team sport athletes, such as track, structural work includes warmup and general strength work, mobility, tempo sprints and repeated jumps, hops and skips and med ball throws. For those of you familiar with track, I am sure you are also familiar with many of these exercises. Here is an example of a typical non-CNS, pro structure and fitness based training day.

Jog 800m
General Strength (squats/lunges/inchworms,etc) and Light Accelerations
Hurdle mobility work
Sprint Drills, A-Skips, B-Skips, C-Skips, etc.
Repeated Skips: 3x20m for distance, 3x20m for height, 3x20m double arm
3x200m at submax pace
10 minute medicine ball circuit
Abdominal/Core work and stretch

So that would be a structure based training day. The opposite of this would be a CNS training day. A CNS training day might look something like this.

Jog 800m
Sprint Drills/Accelerations
2x20m, 2x30m, 2x40m sprints @ 97%
10x jump attempts/dunk attempts
2x5 depth jumps over hurdle
4x4 hurdle hops

So I am sure you get the idea, and it is a pretty simple concept really. I feel that the more difficult aspect of this comes in the split of the weekly workload and deciding what workouts to do. I think early in the season, aka preparatory period, structural workouts will dominate the training of the athlete. A preseason schedule could look something like this:

Monday: Structural
Tuesday: Structural
Wednesday: Rest
Thursday: CNS
Friday: Structural
Saturday: Structural

Once the season is a little farther along, the training will shift to a little more CNS intense work. The week might then look something like this:

Monday: CNS
Tuesday: Structural
Wednesday: Rest
Thursday: CNS
Friday: Structural
Saturday: Competition (CNS)

The last training setup listed above is a more traditional program, but works well. My favorite training setup for jumps actually wouldn’t really fall into a clean-cut version of dividing CNS and structure work, but I’ll try to divide it up below.

So here is my favorite training split for jumping events.

Monday: Weightlifting and Structure (50%CNS/50%Structure)
Tuesday: Track Work and Plyometrics (heavy CNS demand)
Wednesday: Structure, non-impact focus…med ball, hurdles, core circuits, etc.
Thursday: Weightlifting and Structure (50%CNS/50% Structure)
Friday: Track Work and Plyos (heavy CNS again)
Saturday: Long jog or tempo sprints (structure and fitness)

The reason that this setup will work is because of the principle of workload spacing. Olympic lifters will lift over 10 times a week, and sometimes more than that. The reason that they can handle it is because the space out the lifting sessions, and have a lot of recovery sessions. In the 4-day CNS training setup, each CNS session is fairly short (45 min) so the heavy fatigue from a big lifting/plyo session is not there. I will say though, that this type of block, over time, will bring about some serious CNS fatigue so it is important to schedule rest/structure weeks.

The main goal of this article was to show a little bit about how it is important to balance training the CNS and the structure of the body. I covered the structural training aspect of things a bit more in this particular article, so in the next one, I am going to cover how to maximize gains in the training of the Central Nervous System. Hope this is helpful to you! If you have any questions, the best way to get them answered is to email me at joel.smith.7@gmail.com

Joel

Final Note: This past weekend, Chaunte Howard Lowe broke the American Record in high jump, with a leap of 2.05m! This jump is also currently #1 in the world!

Central Nervous System Series: Part 1

Editors Note: My new site is now at www.just-fly-sports.com Check it out for a wealth of information on jumping higher and running faster, all backed by research and practical experience!

So I am dedicating myself this summer to writing some more articles, and fortunately, I think I have learned just enough in the last year to put some new fresh information out. My summer vacation is underway, and right now it is the first time in 8 years that I haven't spent the months of June, July and August slaving for the man to make some extra change. So basically, this should give me an opportunity to write just a bit more than I have been in the past year.

So right now I would like to talk a little bit about the Central Nervous System (CNS). I think that this is a buzzword and popular topic in strength training today (as it should be), so lets get into it shall we? In a nutshell, the CNS is the primary controller of strength and power gains in athletic pursuits. Most of the gains that you make early in a strength training program are not the result of your muscle-tendon unit becoming stronger, but that of your CNS working more powerfully and efficiently. A simple way of looking at this is in terms of fiber recruitment. In any movement, a certain number of muscle fibers are involved. In a state of de-training, however, there will be a lot of muscle fibers that are left out in a given movement. When you train though, your body will turn on more of these fibers. You can't turn on 100% of your fibers though, except for in life/death situations (lifting a car off a baby, etc.). I beleive the maximal number you can turn on in normal situations is around 80-90%, but you get the idea.

For speed/power type work, training emphasis is usually on "recruiting the fast twitch muscle fibers/fast twitch motor neurons", which is theoretically done by doing explosive work with all out effort (to recruit all available fibers). This is why doing 3 sets of 5 depth jumps with 5 minutes rest between sets beats doing 2 sets of 100 squat jumps with a minute rest (the sets of 5 will allow each jump to be much more explosive, and thus have higher recruitment, then the 2 sets of 100).

Now eventually, in any strength program, the gains that your CNS will pick up will max out, so to speak (can't recruit any more fibers/all available fibers are now recruited), and now the only way to keep gaining strength will be for the muscle to increase in size. This is not a completely fine line (pure neuro gains for certain time/then all muscle size), but a small muscle can only produce so much power. Also, an interesting and important fact is that performance gains that are acheived by muscle size gain will last longer than those gains which are brought about by CNS recruitment gains. Part of the reason that this is true is the "soon ripe-soon rotten" principle. An athlete who does high powered CNS training for 6 weeks prior to basketball season will probably make some great gains in that 6 weeks, but will also lose it pretty quickly once the season is underway, unless he/she is somehow able to maintain that training.

Before I get onto the next section of this article, let me quickly get into what I would consider "CNS" training. I have ranked these in order of the CNS demand of these exercises.

1. True Plyometrics: Depth Jumps, Hurdle Hops, Bounding....Basically any type of max-effort rebound style exercise. These are very high demand exercises!

2. Heavy Weightlifting: Anything 80% or greater definitely falls in this category, but explosive lifts in the 50% and above range could fall in this category as well.

3. Short Sprint Work: The shorter the sprint, the higher than CNS strain. Sometimes sprint coaches will actually steer athletes with weak nervous systems towards towards longer distances in their sprint workouts to avoid overstraining the CNS. I would say sprint work that falls into this category would be any sort of max effort sprinting that is 100m or less. Hill work also falls into this category.

3. Jump and Dunk attempts: Any sort of high jump/dunk attempts would be considered a high CNS effort, but not so much as something like a depth jump. I would put this in a similar CNS category as short and intense sprint work, so I labeled them both #3.

4. Medicine Ball and Shot Throws: Any all out full body overhead or underhanded shot or med ball throw. Not talking about chest passes or ab twists here. This is more of a track and field specific exercise.

Alright, so there are some way to train the Central Nervous system.....so whats the point? Well, the point is that too much CNS specific training, or too much sequential training with an emphasis on the CNS will lead to overtraining and greater likelihood of injury. Also, although CNS training gains come the soonest, overtraining of the CNS will also last the longest (as opposed to overtraining other systems in the body). Overtrain the CNS of an athlete and they will be functioning submaximally for weeks, or sometimes even months if you did it bad enough. This alone is a very important reason to pay attention to the amount of CNS in training. I am assuming most people reading this article have, at some point in their training reached a point where they were very worn out because of this type of burnout.

Now I am not one for babying training, and only going hard once in a great while, in fact, I think that you can train hard every single day. The catch though is, that you can't train the CNS hard every day, you have to rotate the trainable facets of the human organism. A great DVD I bought in the last couple years is on the 5 biomotor abilities in athletics. They include speed, stength, endurance, flexibility, and coordination.

You can find a link giving a greater rundown of these abilities HERE: http://www.coachr.org/fitness.htm

Now really, you can divide these qualities up into CNS and non-CNS demand abilities. The CNS demand abilities would be Speed and Strength. The non-CNS demand abilities would be endurance, flexibility and coordination. I don't really recommend training the CNS hard more than 2 days a week in most situations, so a weekly setup involving the training of the different motor abilities for a team sport such as basketball could look something like this:

Monday: CNS Speed-Strength (Plyos and Weights)

Tuesday: Specific Endurance (maybe something like 10x45 second sprints)
Wednesday: Coordination and Flexibility (this could be as simple as game drills and stretching)

Thursday: Upper Body Submaximal Lifting (under 80% max)

Friday: CNS Speed-Strength (Speed and Weights)

Saturday: Endurance and Flexibility (2 mile jog and stretch)

Ok, so this is a weekly setup with 2 intense CNS training days a week. An average trainee will be able to make some decent gains off something like this for a month or two, but after that a plateau will occur because of the CNS stress. This will happen even with a switch of exercises and format. I will mention that some athletes have stronger nervous systems than others. There are a few things you can do to reduce the total CNS stress of the training system. Probably the best thing you can do to combat CNS overtraining is have an easy training week every 3rd or 4th week. This is one of the most important, but overlooked principles in sport training. In an easy training week, you could have one or zero CNS intensive days, but still train the other qualities throughout the week. The following is an example for a low CNS stress week.

Monday: Endurance/Flexibility

Tuesday: Coordination/General Strength Training

Wednesday: CNS-Weightlifting (the one intense day, but no plyos...the #1 stressor)

Thursday: Endurance/Flexibility

Friday: Coordination/General Strength Training

*General Strength Training would be bodyweight style circuit training and possibly low intensity repeated jumping drills.

So over the long haul, say 3 months time, a training set up designed to reduce CNS burnout could look like this:

Week 1: CNS 2 day

Week 2: CNS 2 day

Week 3: CNS 0 day

Week 4: CNS 2 day

Week 5: CNS 2 day

Week 6: CNS 1 day

Week 7: CNS 2 day

Week 8: CNS 2 day

Week 9: CNS 2 day

Week 10: CNS 0 day

Week 11: CNS 2 day

Week 12: CNS 3 day (shock week)

Week 13: active rest

Week 14: active rest

Week 15: start over again (bump up the volume 5-10% next time around)

So this concludes the first part of this series. The next article will talk about training the structure of the musculo-skeletal system in conjunction with the nervous system for optimal results!