Athletic Performance Toolbox

Squat Progression and Mobility Drills

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Improving mobility and teaching proper squat technique should be key components to every strength and conditioning program. In the video clip below. Micah Kurtz, Strength and Conditioning Coach at Oak Hill Academy, explains how his program is designed to do both and how he feels this has helped to reduce injuries. Coach Kurtz is quite proud of the fact that over a 3 1/2 year period the athletes that started with him as 8th graders have had zero back injuries and only 1 ACL injury.

In the clip below he details his daily mobility program as well as the squat progression that he uses to safely transition athletes to back squats. The video  is from Coach Kurtz’s presentation at a recent Glazier Athletic Performance Clinic. To gain access to Coach Kutz’s entire presentation entitled Building a Strength and Conditioning Program as well as access to hundreds of other high quality presentations from respected strength and conditioning coaches from around the country, click the link Glazier Clinics Vault.  If you are interested in attending a Glazier Athletic Performance Clinic click here to find one near you.

The video below has sound so please make sure that your sound is turned on.

Here is a quick summary of Coach Kurtz’s Mobility Exercises and Squat Progression:

Daily Mobility Work – completed prior to every lift

1. Wall Squats (facing the wall) – for technique and mobility
2. Hurdle Work
3. Cossack Squats
4. PVC Overhaed Squats
5. Foam Rolling

Squat Progression

1. Squats on Air
2. Dumbbell or Goblet Squats
3. Front Squats – Athletes must be able to do these properly before progressing to back squats. The athlete faces the wall. Toes are touching the wall. Arms are up. Hips move back and knees move out as the athlete moves down.
5. Back Squats – no one back squats until Feb. of their 9th grade year. It is at coaches discretion as to which athletes are ready for this exercise.

Fundamental Movement Patterns

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This article was provided by Training and Conditioning

By Tim Crowley

Tim Crowley, CSCS, PES, is the Head Strength and Conditioning Coach at Montverde (Fla.) Academy. He holds elite coaching licenses with USA Cycling and USA Triathlon, and he has been named Development Coach of the Year and Elite Coach of the Year by the latter organization. He is also the owner of TC2 Coaching, LLC.

Many young athletes, especially males, have a bodybuilding mentality when it comes to weight training, focusing solely on muscle size and hypertrophy. Not only can this approach lead to injuries, but it can decrease their speed, power, explosiveness, and mobility, as well. Since these traits are important for any collegiate athlete to have, this mindset isn’t ideal.

Instead, we reinforce that strength training goes beyond pumping iron. Creating good weightroom habits in high school athletes will pay off in the years to come.

To maximize our athletes’ chances of making an impact in college, we focus on developing total athleticism in the weightroom. Specifically, we target movement skills, proper lifting skills, core stability, muscle balance, and Olympic lifting techniques.

For movement and lifting skills, we teach athletes to be “brilliant at the basics.” Included in this are fundamental movement patterns, such as squatting, hinging, pressing, pulling, and rotating.

Every exercise we choose for these movement patterns is thought out in terms of skill progression and risk-benefit. Our goal is to use efficient exercises that have a low risk of injury. For instance, we rarely bench press, since it is time-consuming, and athletes can get more benefit out of chest pressing with dumbbells, cables, or TRX. We also clean and snatch from a hang position. This exercise is very productive for power development but doesn’t have the increased risk of pulling from the floor.

Below are some of our favorite exercises for each fundamental movement pattern we focus on:

  • Horizontal pushing: Dumbbell chest presses, one-arm dumbbell chest presses, standing cable one-arm presses, TRX chest presses, and push-up combinations
  • Vertical pushing: Barbell push presses; push jerks; split jerks; and one-arm overhead pressing dumbbell, cable, and kettlebell
  • Vertical pulling: Pull-ups, chin-ups, band-assisted pull-ups, and one-arm vertical cable rows from plank position
  • Horizontal pulling: TRX inverted rows, one-arm cable rows, face pulls
  • Squat: Front squats, goblet squats, hex bar squats, rear foot elevated split-squats, TRX one-leg squats, and sideboard with squat
  • Ham-glute hinge: Kettlebell swings, hex bar dead lifts, barbell dead lifts, and single-leg dead lifts (bar, dumbbell, kettlebell, and cable)
  • Core: Cable lift/chop/anti-rotational presses (progressing from kneeling to half-kneel to standing), kettlebell quarter get-ups, TRX knee-to-chest/body saws, and medicine ball throws
  • Power development: Olympic lifting progression and transitional exercises, box jumps, and hurdle hops.

Front Squats

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Building lower body strength and stability is a key in any training program. The squat is, without doubt, one of the most important exercises in helping develop lower body strength and stability and is a key exercise of most training programs. Gary Calcagno, strength coach at Oklahoma State University, prefers the Front Squat to the Back Squat. Coach Calcagno feels strongly that the front squat is more effective, comfortable and safer than the traditional front squat. He feels that the upright position of the elbows in the front squat naturally help to keep the back flatter and the athlete in a more upright position.

In the video clip below Coach Calcagno explains and demonstrates how to properly execute the front squat. The clip is from his training DVD devoted to developing power and explosiveness. For more information about that DVD click the link Training for Power and Explosiveness and learn six series of movements that include over 40 exercises.

The YouTube video below has sound, so please make sure that your sound is turned on and that you have access to the site. (Some schools block access to YouTube. If you are viewing in a schools setting and cannot view the clip, please contact your network administrator)

Here are Coach Calcagno’s key coaching points with regards to the front squat.

1.Roll the ball in the finger tips
2.Elbows should be upright like you were catching the bar on a clean
3.The bar should be resting on a shelf created by the front of the delt and upper chest
4.Feet should be between shoulder width and hip width apart
5.Toes should be pointed slightly outward
6.The first movement is for the hips to move back
7.The eyes should be ahead
8.The chin should be level
8.Weight on heels
10.Go down slightly past parallel(hamstrings to the Achilles)

Competitive Training Program

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Micah Kurtz, Strength and Conditioning Coach at Oak Hill Academy, states that his desire is to create a competitive culture of training in which athletes are constantly challenged. His philosophy is based on Olympic movements with an emphasis on explosive power development and functional strength as it pertains to their specific sport.

In the video clip below Coach Kurtz discusses how he divides up his three/day a week year around program for his athletes. He discusses how he sets up his workouts so that he can minimize “down time” and create an intense, competitive, safe training environment. He breaks down what he emphasize on Day 1, Day 2 and Day 3 in terms of strength training and speed and agility training.

The clip is from a presentation at a Glazier Coaching Clinic. To gain access to Coach Kurtz entire presentation as well as hundreds of other sports performance presentations clink the link Glazier Clinic Vault. If you are interested in attending a clinic in person, you may click Glazier Athletic Performance Clinics

The video below has sound so please make sure that your sound is turned on.

The following is a summary of Coach Kurtz Program.

Coach Kurtz places athletes in groups of three in order to maximize the amount of work done. Typically on athlete will be lifting, one spotting and one doing an auxiliary lift. He simply rotates the three athletes through those three stations before moving to the next exercise. If the main left does not require a spotter, he will have the athletes doing three different exercises. The recovery time is adjusted depending on the exercise.

Strength Training Day 1

Day 1 – Upper body.
Two arm movements
Day 2 – Lower body
Two leg movements
Shoulder stability
Day 3 – Combo Day
Single leg movements
Single arm movements

Speed and Agility

Day 1 – Linear Speed
Loaded sprints
overspeed training
straight line sprints
Day 2 – Agility/Plyometrics
Pro Agility Drill
Agility Ladder
T-Drill
L-Drill
Jump Rope
Stair Hops
Reaction Drills
Dot Drills
Day 3 – Competitive Game Like Drills
Drills, reps and recovery times designed to mimic game conditions

Vertical Jumping

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By Chris Beardsley

Chris Beardsley  graduated from Durham University with a Masters Degree in 2001. He since contributed to the fields of sports science and sports medicine by working alongside researchers from Team GB boxing, the School of Sport and Recreation at Auckland University of Technology, the Faculty of Sport at the University of Ljubljana, the Department of Sport at Staffordshire University, and the College of Health Solutions at Arizona State University. He is also a Director at Strength and Conditioning Research Limited

For more great information regarding strength and conditioning follow Chris on Twitter and Instagram

For any athlete, we can establish a force-velocity (FV) profile in the vertical jump. This FV profile can be found by measuring mean force exerted into the ground and the mean velocity of the center of mass in jump squats with a range of loads.

Plotting all of these values on a graph provides a line. The gradient of this line is the FV profile.

Since strength is velocity-specific, not everyone automatically has an optimal FV profile for producing peak power output in a vertical jump. The difference between the optimal and the actual FV profile can be expressed by the FV imbalance.

Having a FV imbalance means either that high-velocity strength is small compared with low-velocity strength, or that low-velocity strength is small compared with high-velocity strength. This is important, because having a FV imbalance means that the athlete is more likely to perform poorly at the vertical jump.

Since strength is velocity-specific, training with a light load and a faster bar speed leads to preferentially greater gains in high-velocity strength. In contrast, training with a heavy load and a slower bar speed leads to preferentially greater gains in low-velocity strength.

This suggests that training to reduce a FV imbalance could be a very effective way of improving vertical jump performance in athletes.

Indeed, this very recent long-term study showed that training specifically using either high-velocity (ballistic) exercises or low-velocity (strength) exercises according to the individual FV needs was superior to a general training program.

Interestingly, the data reported in these studies showed that athletes from different sports tended to center around different FV profiles for the vertical jump.

Soccer players seem to have a force-deficit, sprinters seem to have a fairly optimum profile, and rugby players seem to have a velocity-deficit. It would be interesting to see a large cross-sectional study performed in this area, as it would reinforce the need for strength training for high-level soccer athletes, and power training for high-level rugby players.

Even so, it is important to bear in mind that the FV profiling relates to the vertical jump, and not to sprinting or change of direction, which may be quite different.