Athletic Performance Toolbox

Mobility Exercises

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If your athletes are stiff, they are leaking performance.  Mobility exercises are an important component of a strength and conditioning program that can be addressed with these three exercises.

In the video clip below Reid Hall, a highly regarded volleyball strength and conditioning coach, demonstrates three mobility exercises that you could easily work in to your warm-up routine for your training sessions.

Coach Reid states, ” Stiff moving athletes are leaking performance. If you want to get closer to your genetic potential then you need to be fluid moving. Performing some high quality mobility exercises in your warm up before practice and workouts can often help save you from long list of potential injuries”

Each of the mobility exercises detailed in the clip below works multiple muscle groups. The fist exercise is called Inch Worm and should be performed for approximately 10-15 yards. The Inch Worm is a simple exercise that most are familiar with and may already utilize.  Coach Reid calls his second the Spiderman Lunge + Thoracic Opener and should be performed 5-8x per side. This is a great exercise as its many components provide mutltiple benefits for the athlete. The final multi-functional mobility exercise is the the Quad Stretch-Side Lunge-Overhead Reach which should be completed 6x per side.

Coach Reid has many great training ideas for volleyball players. To see more great training tips and to learn more about how Coach Reid can help improve your players check out his YouTube Channel or visit his site Reids Workouts

The YouTube video below has audio so please make sure your sound is turned on and that you have access to the site. . Click the arrow to play the video. Please note that some schools block access to YouTube. If you are having trouble viewing the clip from school, please contact your network administrator.

Training Female Athletes

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This article was provided by Training-Conditioning

 

High school female athletes want to train seriously, but many worry that strength training will lead to unwanted bulk. This author has found ways to alleviate those fears and teach girls that the weightroom can help them meet both performance and body goals.
By Ryan Johnson

Ryan Johnson is Head Strength and Conditioning Coach at Wayzata (Minn.) High School. He is also a frequent blogger at www.Training-Conditioning.com, where you can find his past work by typing “Wayzata” into the article search window. He can be reached at: Ryan.Johnson@wayzata.k12.mn.us.

One of the most positive trends in scholastic athletics over the past generation has been the increased emphasis on girls’ and women’s sports. As participation numbers rise, more and more females are taking sports just as seriously as their male counterparts, and we’ve seen vast improvements in everything from coaching to facilities to training programs.

As a result of this cultural shift, girls’ teams are more competitive than ever, and they’re paying greater attention to conditioning and strength training. While this has paid many dividends for females, the change hasn’t always come easily. Most of us in the high school setting know at least a few girls who don’t want to work hard in the weightroom or would rather avoid it altogether, and their reasoning is often the same: “I’m afraid of bulking up.”

Whether or not this fear is rational, there’s no doubt it’s real. While boys look forward to lifting weights so they can add impressive pounds of muscle to their frame, many girls think working in the weightroom means they’ll inevitably end up looking like the female bodybuilders they’ve seen on TV. For these girls, their fear is just part of being an image-conscious adolescent.

As strength coaches, it’s our job to help female athletes realize that strength training doesn’t mean they’ll start to resemble an offensive lineman or the governor of California. And it’s easier than you might think, if you begin with common-sense education and progress through a strength regimen that helps them meet their performance and body goals without the risk of adding unwanted mass. I’ve managed to do this successfully at Wayzata (Minn.) High School, and with a little planning, you can do the same in your program.

STRAIGHT TALK
Whenever a female athlete tells me she’s worried about adding bulk through strength training, I begin by laying out some basic facts. While I know the strength programs I design for our girls’ teams won’t create bulky athletes, I don’t talk about sets and reps until after we’ve discussed a little anatomy and biology.

First, I tell her that I understand her concern. She’s no doubt seen male athletes at our school “getting jacked” through strength training, so it’s logical to think that working out in the same weightroom would have a similar effect on her. But I inform her that even if she were performing the same kind of strength regimen as the football team (which of course she won’t be), she’s got two things working in her favor: hormones and body composition.

I explain that males have higher levels of testosterone, making it much more likely their weightlifting will lead to visible muscle growth. In addition, females are biologically predisposed to a higher body fat percentage, which essentially insulates them from the sharp, angular “muscle-bound” look they want to avoid.

I go on to talk about what a female athlete can expect to see from strength training, and it’s all positive. The muscle tone she’ll develop in the weightroom means decreasing body fat and modestly increasing the size of her muscles. That won’t change her overall body size, but it will create a firmer, healthier look. As an example, I ask her if she thinks Michelle Obama would wear all those sleeveless blouses if she had arms that jiggled underneath.

Of course, there are many other benefits to strength training, and because I know the athlete is concerned about aesthetics, I frame the discussion in part around how it can make her look better. For instance, almost everyone has a grandmother or older relative who has struggled with osteoporosis and the “stooped over” appearance it may cause. I explain how some of the exercises we do will load the spine and promote a healthier bone structure, so she’ll be less likely to have that problem later in life.

Aside from the appearance-related concerns, another part of selling girls on strength training is establishing peer support. The fear of bulking up is, at its root, largely a fear of “sticking out” from others, so one of the surest ways to allay these worries and increase motivation is by conducting all training sessions in groups. Athletes working in teams are much more likely to stick to their programs, and they’ll be pleased to notice positive results–and the absence of unwanted ones–in themselves and their teammates.

BUILDING A FOUNDATION
So what exactly does our non-bulk-inducing program for female athletes look like? It starts with a series of staple lifts we call the Core of Four, and we introduce them in the following order: front squat, overhead squat, Romanian deadlift, and high jump shrug.

We chose these lifts because they provide a safe, basic foundation for a wide variety of training activities that we’ll introduce later on. For beginners, the Core of Four presents an opportunity to learn proper lifting technique, while for more advanced lifters, it serves as an effective dynamic warmup.

To begin, each lift is performed with a five-foot steel rod that’s one inch in diameter and weighs about 13 pounds. This lets us teach good form and basic mechanics of the lifts with a load that’s light enough to offer minimal resistance, and it also reinforces the idea that athletes can make meaningful progress in training without excessive loads.

Another benefit of this approach is that the Core of Four allows for an easy transition into the Olympic lifts and other progressions. Once the athletes have mastered the four exercises, we start to mix in the more tone-oriented lifts targeting the arms, chest, shoulders, and back, such as dumbbell curls and lunges, incline bench work, shoulder presses, and upright rows.

The girls love workouts with some core and abdominal work, or “tummy time” as they call it. We use a series of core exercises with and without weight, including planks, glute/ham movements, and lower back work combined with traditional abdominal strength exercises such as crunches.

Tummy time always leaves the girls feeling great about their workout. Practically all of them want flatter, firmer bellies, and this is a great motivational tool to support the concept that training without heavy loads will build functional strength and promote the healthy look they desire.

When setting goals for our female athletes in the weightroom, I also focus on injury prevention. Many of the girls, especially those who specialize in one sport, suffer from some degree of repetitive movement syndrome: They’ve developed certain muscle groups through sport-specific activities, but a lack of general strength training has created imbalances that increase injury risk.

In girls’ soccer, for example, it’s common for players to acquire very strong quads from all the starting and stopping they do on the field. If their hamstrings are weak by comparison, the resulting forces on the ACL leave them susceptible to non-contact injuries such as ligament tears. Hamstring exercises in the weightroom, such as glute/ham stands and single-leg hip raises (thrusters) with or without benches, can function as prehab, providing important performance and injury-reducing benefits while not adding any significant girth to the legs–something the girls typically want to avoid.

Using the Core of Four and our other high-priority lifts and exercises, the athletes get a solid introduction to strength training and make noticeable gains. Once they “get their feet wet” with this type of training, they begin to love the look and feel of being toned, they lose their concern over bulking up, and we can progress to greater challenges.

DESIGNING THE PROGRAM
The intro-level activities provide a base of general physical preparedness while assuring our girls that getting stronger doesn’t have to mean getting bigger. As the predictable effects of delayed-onset muscle fatigue and soreness that accompany the start of a strength program subside–with help from recovery methods such as stretching and foam rollers–we take our training to the next level.

In my experience, working with female athletes is easier than working with males in some respects, because if properly educated about the goals of a program, females tend to care more about total-body conditioning. Males want to focus on what they see in the mirror, and on one-upping each other in single-rep max during lifts.

With this in mind, we design a typical strength training program for our girls’ teams around an eight-week cycle, with every week emphasizing a different priority. Since the athletes know the focus for each week, they understand that our primary goal is to give them an opportunity to improve fitness in all key areas of sport performance.

The eight weeks usually break down as follows:
Week One: Core of Four, basic lifting
Week Two: Olympic progressions
Week Three: Speed/agility/quickness (SAQ) training and plyometrics
Week Four: Dynamic and explosive lifting
Week Five: Metabolic requirements
Week Six: Contrast training (pairing lifts and plyos)
Week Seven: Advanced plyometrics (shock plyos)
Week Eight: Testing and estimating of one-rep max.

Our school terms are eight weeks long, so progressing through this schedule takes us through one complete term.

Some teams and groups of athletes progress more quickly than others, so we make adjustments when needed, but I have found this general framework extremely effective in training female athletes. The progressive nature allows them to master each level and build on the new strength and skills they develop from week to week, so they’re never overwhelmed. They feel a sense of accomplishment along the way as they move from one focus area to the next, and the workouts never get stale.

Saving testing for the final week of the cycle keeps them from worrying too much about one-rep max, which I’ve found scares many girls more than anything else we do in the weightroom. The combination of a heavy load and the fear of failure is very intimidating to some, so we don’t want them to become preoccupied with it throughout the training cycle. By the time we test at the end of a cycle, they’ve made great progress and are at their most confident, so rather than being intimidated, they usually come to see the test as a powerful motivator.

I certainly don’t claim to have all the answers when it comes to optimal training methods for female athletes. But I do have a system that’s been very successful for the girls in our setting, and one that addresses some of the biggest obstacles in working with teenage female student-athletes. An approach rooted in education, gradual adaptation, and carefully chosen training goals can put your girls’ teams on the road to better and better performance–and more importantly, help them become confident and self-assured in the weightroom and beyond.

Sidebar: ROLE OF NUTRITION
When female athletes express fear of the weightroom because they don’t want to “bulk up,” part of the problem is that they don’t understand the large role nutrition plays in muscle growth. The big, rippling muscles they see on male athletes and female bodybuilders are achieved not just through strength training, but often through ultra-high-protein diets and various types of supplements. If my female athletes are eating a balanced diet, that’s one more reason they don’t have to fear becoming muscle-bound.

When talking to female athletes about nutrition, it’s especially important to send a positive message and avoid statements that can be misunderstood. Anytime you’re discussing body fat, tone, and body image, there’s a chance they’ll interpret your words as subtle pressure to engage in unhealthy eating habits, which can start them down a dangerous path.

The best way to avoid this problem and strike the right tone when addressing nutrition is to couch your advice in terms of specific health and performance benefits. For example, I love to recommend chocolate milk to our female athletes as a recovery beverage–it allows me to talk about the value of replenishing carbohydrates and protein immediately after workouts, and also to bring up the importance of calcium for protecting bone density.

It’s critical to watch for indicators that suggest an athlete has developed unhealthy eating habits, an unrealistic sense of body image, or a desire to overwork herself to change her body size. Besides undermining performance goals, these signs may indicate a serious mental health issue, such as an eating disorder, that requires medical attention.

Sidebar: FIVE PROGRESSIONS
In our training program for female athletes at Wayzata (Minn.) High School, we frequently use planned progressions for specific categories of exercises and lifts. This approach allows the athletes to benefit from several variations of a movement in close succession, moving from basic activities to more advanced challenges.

Five examples of our progression plans are listed below. The sets, reps, and resistance vary based on individual needs, time of year, conditioning level, and each athlete’s sport.

CLEAN
Front squat
Muscle clean
Muscle clean drop to front squat
High jump shrugs
Quick clean
Hang clean
Power clean
Clean and jerk

LOWER-BODY PLYOMETRICS
Squat jump
Tuck jump
Pike jump
Box jump
Vertical power jump
Split squat jump
Cycled split squat jump
Squat jump with pause
Speed skater for distance
Power step-up
Single-leg vertical power jump
Single-leg tuck jump
Referee start box jump
Depth drop
Depth drop box jump

SHOCK PLYOMETRICS
Rebound ready hold
Rebound ready bounce
Jump squat with pause
Box jump
Box squat
Counter-movement jump squat
Reactive jump squat
Drop jumps

UPPER-BODY PLYOMETRICS
Med ball push-up
Alternate-arm med ball push-up
Clap push-up
Med ball pass
Balance board push-up
Single-arm med ball push-up
Drop push-up

ADVANCED SHOCK PLYOMETRICS
Push-up with pause
Box drop push-up
Box drop and pop push-up
Floor bench press
Bench drop
Bench drop and press
Bench throw

Final Hurdle

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This article was provided by Training-Conditioning

Could your athletes’ nutrition be the final piece to the puzzle for success? As the Texas A&M University track and field team found out, time spent creating individualized diet plans was well worth it.

By Amy Bragg

Amy Bragg, RD, CSSD, LD, was recently appointed Director of Performance Nutrition at the University of Alabama. She previously held the same position at Texas A&M University and can be reached at: abragg@ia.ua.edu.

The pieces are in place: A highly decorated and successful coaching staff, beautiful facilities, and most importantly, an outstanding group of elite athletes. When a team is already poised for success, what can you add to make it even better?

Not long ago, the Texas A&M University track and field coaches asked themselves this question, and the answer they arrived at was an emphasis on sports nutrition. “Paying attention to nutrition enhances our student-athletes’ opportunities to be successful, and when integrated with coaching, it leads to greater achievements,” says Head Men’s and Women’s Coach Pat Henry. “We have great coordination between the coaching staff’s and nutrition staff’s educational message, and we position nutrition as a lifestyle commitment.”

Of course, the main challenge in providing nutrition guidance for track and field is the sport’s great diversity–sprinters, distance runners, throwers, and jumpers all have different needs and goals. It may seem impossible to provide customized advice for so many different types of athletes, but that is exactly what we strive for every day. Doing so means evaluating the demands of each type of athlete, optimizing their eating environment, and formulating nutrition goals that individuals can work toward throughout the year.

FUELING WITH PURPOSE
In our program, we want to link daily food choices with performance outcomes. We tell athletes that they train a certain way to achieve a desired result, and they should eat a certain way for the same reason. They need to understand that lifestyle and nutrition habits have a cumulative effect that produce tangible changes in performance, energy level, body composition, and injury recovery.

Body comp testing provides a nutritional scorecard we can analyze and interpret along with nutritional habits. We use it regularly along with 24-hour food logs as a starting point for talking with an athlete about making changes.

Most track athletes at Texas A&M undergo body comp testing four or five times per year. During a couple of those testing periods, we will also record the student athlete’s nutritional intake over the 24 hours prior to the testing appointment. Accuracy is stressed since a nutrition professional is taking this information directly from the athlete while prepping the body comp exam. Timing, recovery choices, and sleep and wake time are included along with the quantity and quality of food items. Simply holding this discussion in tandem with the body comp testing is educational, but there’s a wealth of information taken in during those appointments.

For instance, if a body comp test reveals that dropping fat would help an athlete improve performance, we’ll look at one or more 24-hour logs to see if there’s an especially problematic time of day or a poor choice in food quantity or quality that needs addressing. Other times, an athlete will tell us that they eat healthy most days, but an occasional “off day” of high fat and calorie consumption throws them off track.

Education is another essential part of our approach, so we use team presentations to help convince athletes of the value of optimal nutrition. Food logs might tell us that only 40 percent of the team is getting adequate nutrition at breakfast and lunch. There’s a target message for a quick team presentation: importance of breakfast in energy level, weight maintenance, and performance, along with 10 easy breakfast options so the athletes can see how simple it is to make an improvement.

On other occasions, we may administer a poll over the course of a full day of team body comp tests. This leads to customized team presentations, and allows student-athletes’ interests to drive a portion of the content.

For example, armed with that information, I can go to the coaching staff and report that 70 percent of the team members are dining at campus eateries for the majority of their meals and 68 percent of their athletes are interested in learning more about using nutrition to boost immunity, while only 12 percent feel they need guidance in the grocery store. To me, it sounds like this team needs a mini nutrition talk at the start of flu season and a nutritionist to visit a couple of campus dining facilities to show them optimal menu options.

The questions that arise from these sessions are always encouraging, because they show us the athletes are taking our message seriously and are truly interested in finding ways to better fuel themselves. Some recent examples include:

• Each year at the same time, I seem to struggle with fatigue–why does it happen and what can I do?

• I’m focusing on a certain aspect of my performance right now. How can nutrition help me with it?

• I had an injury last season. Is there anything I can do with my nutrition to help prevent a recurrence?

Fueling for performance means different things to different athletes at different stages of development. So once they’re armed with a foundation of knowledge, we delve into specifics through individual consultation. And if the athletes follow our advice, we let the results speak for themselves.

CASE STUDIES
The examples below illustrate how I’ve been able to convert broad sports nutrition concepts into targeted advice for different types of track and field athletes dealing with various challenges. Each case is unique, and I find that one-on-one counseling is by far the best way to achieve success.

Tired jumper. In the middle of last season, one of our jumpers came to the nutrition staff complaining of low energy levels. His food logs revealed that his meal selections were consistently very good, but the overall quantity of food was too low, leaving him with inadequate amounts of total calories, carbohydrates, protein, and fat. In addition, he kept pre-activity nutrition very light due to a preference for feeling “weightless” at practices and meets. His body comp history evidenced a tendency to lose weight and lean mass toward the end of the season, and the lower quantity of food was the likely culprit.

Our first intervention strategy focused on increasing food intake and calorie density throughout the day. After discussing the times of day when he didn’t want to eat (particularly before practices), we decided to target breakfast, the recovery period after workouts, and the evening.

He added more calorie-dense foods to his breakfast, such as peanut butter and granola. After working out, he had a snack consisting of other calorie-dense options, such as whole grain breads, guacamole, and peanuts to kick-start his recovery. (This was in addition to his normal lunch and dinner.) At night, I encouraged him to eat a snack such as frozen yogurt with toppings. Foods like these support weight maintenance without requiring large portion sizes, which was important for someone who wasn’t interested in adding a lot of food to his diet.

It seemed like we had solved the problem, but before long, the athlete came to me again and reported “never feeling good” on this new eating pattern. The breakfast changes weren’t a problem, but he told me that snacks didn’t “sit well” for him. After more discussion, we determined that frequent eating made him feel undisciplined, as if his intake was excessive. The issue was as much mental as it was physical.

Because he understood that he still needed more calories to improve his energy level and prevent unwanted weight loss, we decided to try other options besides the calorie-dense ones he had been using. He started snacking on fruit frequently throughout the day. Because it was whole food and not something out of a package, he could snack on things like apples, oranges, and bananas and still feel like a “disciplined” eater. We also increased the amount of 1% chocolate milk he drank after workouts, which boosted his intake of calories, carbs, protein, and fat. As a result, he’s been able to maintain his weight, particularly near the height of his competitive season.

This case was a great learning experience for both sides of the consultation. Sometimes the assessment and advice is totally on point, but it just doesn’t work in practice for the athlete. Just as a coach continues to develop the athlete’s workouts, so does the sports nutritionist adjust the nutritional plan. This athlete needed several touch points with the dietitian to build trust and try alternative strategies. His nutritionist needed knowledge of body comp history at her fingertips, a rapport with the athlete, and an appreciation for the psychological aspects of nutrition and performance.

Combo platter. Combined-event athletes train and compete in a wide variety of venues. The decathlon, heptathlon, and pentathlon comprise a mix of running, jumping, and throwing events such as the 100 meters, long jump, shot put, high jump, 400 meters, 110-meter hurdles, discus, pole vault, javelin, and 1,500 meters. The athletes compete in multiple events on consecutive days, and in many ways, it is the ultimate test of strength, speed, agility, and endurance.

Recently, a young woman joined Aggie track for combined events. She had previously competed exclusively as an endurance athlete, burning a massive amount of calories due to the prolonged aerobic nature of the sport. When she switched to track and field, the lower overall energy requirements meant she was eating too much.

In her first year in our program, she was able to maintain her muscle mass but also experienced an increase in fat mass and body fat percentage. The pattern continued the following year, so we scheduled a meeting.

Early in the discussion, it was clear that food and weight were sensitive subjects for this athlete. Based on her food log, I observed that she was overusing energy bars, eating three to four each day in addition to breakfast, lunch, dinner, and pre-training and recovery snacks.

“But I’m doing what I’ve been told: fueling frequently throughout the day to maximize my energy,” she said. She obviously understood the basics of nutrient timing and consistency, but her eating habits weren’t tailored to her actual energy needs–a common problem for athletes who switch sports but don’t change their diet accordingly.

With this athlete, I offered a lot of positive feedback on the good food choices she was making at mealtimes, and focused on the bars as the source of unwanted extra calories. Because she was used to those frequent energy boosts, we talked about spreading out her calories by eating a little less at breakfast, lunch, and dinner, while adding healthy snacks throughout the day in place of the bars.

For instance, instead of having fruit salad as part of her lunch, she would save it for an afternoon snack in place of her usual pre-workout energy bar. At breakfast, she would eat a slightly smaller meal, then have a muffin or bagel with cream cheese in mid-morning instead of a bar. I threw out suggestions, and let her preferences determine the strategies she pursued. Using this approach, we were able to decrease her overall calorie intake without creating periods of the day when she felt tired or hungry.

In time, she realized that she ate the same portion sizes at meals whether she had an energy bar or not. For this athlete, the bars didn’t give her any satisfaction, and with her mastery of meal timing, they really weren’t serving any purpose. “I’m just eating them because they’re here,” she realized.

MUCH TO GAIN
How far-reaching is nutrition’s role in performance? Texas A&M athletes who sharpened their focus on quality and consistency of nutrition choices have seen benefits including improved energy level, better management of inflammation, higher peaks in training, faster rehab, and even a reduction in injuries.

And besides all that, a great nutrition regimen feeds their confidence in competition. When athletes see nutrition as a performance optimizer and know they’ve done all they can to fuel themselves for competition, they get a valuable mental boost that complements all the physical effects. They also start to take pride in their smart decision making.

In the words of longtime Assistant Coach Vince Anderson: “The longer I coach, the more I believe it’s impossible to measure how critical nutrition is. I’m fascinated by the fact that it’s so often the ‘last frontier’ for athletes who are struggling to push their limits. So many athletes will do everything else before they truly focus on their nutrition, but once they do and they experience all the benefits, they never go back.”

Sidebar: OPPORTUNITY THROUGH INJURY
Injuries happen. And for a determined sports nutritionist, they could be a blessing in disguise. Even the most noncommittal athlete may finally become receptive to nutrition coaching during rehab or injury downtime. The
I-can-eat-whatever-I-want-and-never-gain-too-much-weight guy and the fast-food-got-me-here-so-fast-food-will-fuel-me-here girl may suddenly feel a need to change their nutrition habits.

Connecting with the athlete during rehab is not only ideal for a speedy return to play, but also provides a touch point with those athletes who may have viewed nutrition too narrowly in the past. Simply working with an athlete through an injury recovery process offers them support, both psychologically and medically, and in many instances I have found it’s a great entry into working with a resistant athlete. The support you offer during that process will always be remembered, and can completely change the dynamic of how nutrition’s role is integrated in the athlete’s overall performance.

Focusing interventions on relevant nutrients is a great way to start, with a more global assessment of calorie and protein needs falling in behind. Are you getting enough vitamin C and calcium? What about protein? Knowledge of weight history easily segues into recommendations for limiting calorie and protein intake, which may even need to be higher to support the recovery process for an injured athlete. In short, the time to improve nutrition is always now, and in whatever mode most resonates with the athlete.

Plyometric Routine

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Would you like to help your athletes be technically efficient jumpers? Of course you would. In this post your will see a set of 5 exercises that make up  plyometric routine, that will make your athletes better jumpers and help them to take stress off their bodies.

In the video clip below Reid Hall, a highly regarded volleyball strength and conditioning coach, takes you through a volleyball plyometric routine that he uses to train players of all levels.

Here are the exercises:

Drop to Load – 1 x12 with a 5-10 second rest between reps

The athlete begins on a plyometric box and drops to the ground. The athlete should land softly with the toes first followed by the heels. They should descend into a semi-squat position with the knees angles slightly outward. The hands should be back and their back should be angled slightly more that 45-degrees. This is called the loaded position.

Load to Extend  – 3 x 10 with a 30 second rest between sets

The focus of this drill is to move powerfully our of the loaded position. The athlete will begin on the ground in the loaded position with their hands back and in a semi-squat position. They will begin the movement with a powerful arm swing upward followed by a powerful extension of the ankle, knee and hips. The athlete will remain on the ground (do not jump)

Jump Pause   – 3 x 8 with a 45 second rest between sets

This drill is essentially connecting the dots between exercises 1 and 2. Here the athlete will begin in the loaded position. The athlete will and explode up out of the loaded position by powerfully swinging his arms and extending the ankle, knee and hips. They should land softly in the power position and pause for a few seconds.

Continuous Jumps – 4 x 8 with a 30 second rest between sets

The athlete begins in the power position and explodes up, lands in the power position and the explodes up again quickly. The focus should be landing correctly and exploding up as quickly as possible.

Drop to  Box – 6 x 4 with 1 minute rest between sets

This is the final exercise in the volleyball plyometric routine.  It is important that the athletes is not fatigued during this exercise. They will drop off of a short box and land in the loaded position and the quickly explode up and land on a taller box ( at least 6 inches lower than their max height). The athlete will step off the taller box and repeat 4 times to complete a set. This can be done without the second box. Just have the athlete jump up as high as possible after dropping off the shorter box. They should land in the power position.

Coach Reid has many great training ideas for volleyball players. To see more great training tips and to learn more about how Coach Reid can help improve your players check out his YouTube Channel or visit his site Reids Workouts

The YouTube video below has audio, so please make sure that your sound is turned on. Note some schools block access to YouTube

 

Walking the Talk: How Self-Reflection Can Make You a Better Coach

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by Cory Dobbs, Ed.D., The Academy for Sport Leadership

 

In 1953 New Zealand mountaineer Sir Edmund Hillary and his Nepalese Sherpa Tenzing Norgay reached the summit of Mount Everest—the first to do so.  Conquering Everest was and is one of man’s greatest challenges.  The grinding mental, emotional, and physical aspects of the climb along with intellectual problem-solving are the heart of the challenge.

In 1996, Rob Hall and Scott Fischer led a commercial expedition team attempting to climb Everest.  Hall and Fischer were considered expert climbers, both having scaled the summit of Everest.  The two highly talented climbers were hired by a motley crew of inexperienced hikers who made the trek to Nepal to attempt the climb under the guidance of the esteemed Hall and Fischer.

Jon Krakauer, a journalist, was a member of the climbers joining Hall’s team.  As it turned out, Krakauer ended up chronicling a tragic expedition in which five people lost their lives, including Hall and Fischer.

The two leaders, very experienced and somewhat arrogant, “rightfully” behaved authoritatively.  Both Hall and Fischer issued and demanded adherence to their rules for a safe and successful climb.  Krakauer recorded a self-confident Hall reminding his team “I will tolerate no dissension up there.  My word will be absolute law, beyond appeal.”

One team member recalled, “Rob had lectured us repeatedly about the importance of having a predetermined turnaround time on summit day…and abiding by it no matter how close we were to the top.”

Knowing the descent from the summit to be perilous, the leaders invoked a two o’clock rule.  The Sherpa’s, guides and clients all understood that if a climber had not reached the top by two o’clock in the afternoon of “summit day” they were to obey the order and turn around and abandon their bid for the summit. Yet Hall and Fischer would go on to ignore the safe-guard and not retreat down the slopes upon the clock hitting two.


Fischer kept climbing, though exhausted and suffering tremendously, touching the top at 3:45.  He continued to climb, every step perilous to his declining health, though he would never let any of his team to do so under similar conditions.

Krakauer’s book of the expedition, Into Thin Air, exposes the autocratic nature of Hall’s leadership.  Hall had a pecking order and no one was to question his decisions.  As Krakauer recorded, “Passivity on the part of the clients had thus been encouraged throughout the expedition.”  And the Sherpas and guides too were afraid of Hall’s rebuke, unsure of the consequences of displeasing him.

The Idiosyncratic knowledge and unique skills of Hall and Fisher were not enough to overcome the blizzard they encountered on their way back to Camp IV. Having scaled Everest they were in grave trouble.

The vulnerabilities inherent in self-reflection lead us to develop mechanisms to bypass or minimize the embarrassment or threat that we might experience when we scrutinize our thoughts, feelings, and actions.  My sense is that both Hall and Fischer never really had to answer to anybody but themselves, believing self-reflection to be something for the other guy.  After all, why do you need to question your assumptions and behaviors if you’re successful? And the more successful, the less likely you are to self-reflect.  Bragging of their conquests and boasting about their track records led them to believe they were above their own rules—those were for the novice.

I’ve seen it time and time again, coaches that dismiss the practice of self-reflection tend to create cultures that turn out to have unintended and unpredicted side effects that degrade the environment.  These coaches fail to recognize or respond to value conflicts, often violating their own standards.  It is striking that many coaches choose to overlook the practice of self-reflection.

Thankfully what you do is not a matter of life and death.  However, deep inside your coaching bubble you might just find walking your talk difficult at times.  Contrary to the popular thought that all coaches are grounded in reality, it ain’t always so.  Like Hall and Fischer we all have times we simply ignore our rules.

Here’s where the rubber meets the road: the following seven questions require you to turn off the noise for fifteen minutes daily and sink your mind into your walk and your talk for the day.  If you are serious about self improvement, just like you ask your student-athletes to be serious about improvement, then adopt this process as a daily routine.  Learning to lead ourselves, just like leading others, is a truly a life-time project—our own Mt. Everest.  My guess is that after a solid month of performing this after action reflection you’ll seamlessly work your way into doing reflection-in-action.  Remember, reflection is all about growth and development—yours and your players.

Daily Self-Reflection Questions

 

What did I say I would do today that I didn’t do?

What did I do today that will affect team cohesion?  (positive and / or negative)

How did I relate to the players today?

What did I do today that is not something I’m proud of doing?

How did I lead the players today?  Coaches?

How did I follow the players today?  Coaches?

Based on what I learned today, what will I do tomorrow?

 

To find out more about and order Sport Leadership Books authored by Dr. Dobbs including Coaching for Leadership, click this link: The Academy for Sport Leadership Books

About the Author

Dr. Cory Dobbs is a national expert on sport leadership and teambuilding and the founder of The Academy for Sport Leadership.  A teacher, speaker, consultant, and writer, Dr. Dobbs has worked with professional, collegiate, and high school athletes and coaches teaching leadership as a part of the sports experience.  He facilitates workshops, seminars, and consults with a wide-range of professional organizations and teams.  Dr. Dobbs previously taught in the graduate colleges of business and education at Northern Arizona University, Sport Management and Leadership at Ohio University, and the Jerry Colangelo College of Sports Business at Grand Canyon University.

 

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