Youths Need Better Coaches

Youth athletes need better coaches in my opinion. What you often see is that these are the roles filled with volunteers but I think it is backwards and money should be invested in coaches for these younger age groups. It is much easier to start out the right way then it is to correct problems and injuries later on down the track.

The problem is that many clubs aren’t willing to invest money into professionals for these levels. They tend to hope that the kids will develop naturally, physically, and hope that they get by skill wise with their natural ability until later ages when they do get some more specialised coaching.

So, what I see happen a lot is that the gym is overseen by someone who has the most basic of requirements and is looking to post a few things on social media to try and use the role to build their business. The sad thing is they have no idea about program design or even correct technique for that matter, and the kids tend to either get injured or miss out on key development years, from both a technical stand point, and a physical one.

It would not take a lot of money to fix this problem. In doing so, you could also offer much more to the athletes. Programs would be individualised, they could have nutrition plans, they could be trained in smaller groups, which would mean they are coached through each rep, everything being monitored and updated regularly. By doing this, results would improve, injuries would be reduced, there would be accountability, the club would be looked at more professionally, and they would build a much better culture.

It is an investment, not a cost.

We have young kids on contracts but I think the money spent should be re-invested into their development. For example, you have a kid on a $5,000 contract. That amount of money is a lot for a 14-year-old who hasn’t proven himself yet, but it isn’t going to change his life. Why not use that money to pay a coach to train him privately, look after his nutrition, conditioning, rehab/prehab etc.? That way you can see exactly how they are progressing, they are accountable, and they have some buy in to the relationship. At the moment, most kids get a contract, do the minimum with the club, and then are back to park footy two years later. I feel more can be done to guide them through the process.

We do this privately and it has worked very well over the years with great success. If clubs invested more into the development of the athletes, we would see a much better game. Some clubs do it pretty well and are well ahead of the ones who don’t.

Progressive Overload

Progressive Overload

“I’ve been enjoying your advice about training with minimal equipment but I don’t have enough weights to overload effectively. What do you suggest?”

Without providing the muscles with progressive overload, continual adaptations in muscle strength and size would stop, so it is a valid concern. The thing is there are many ways in which you can overload a muscle instead of just increasing weight.

Ways to overload a muscle or lift:

• Add more weight (most common but not relative to your question)
• Perform more reps
• Perform more sets
• Decrease the rest period
• Improve technique
• Increase speed of the lift, plyo’s, use some Olympic lifting variations
• Use a slower eccentric tempo
• Use methods / techniques such as paused reps, 1 ¼ reps, drop sets, rest pause methods, functional isometrics, pre-fatigue or post fatigue, mechanical drop sets

As you can see you have many options as to how you can continually challenge yourself to make progress without adding more weight to the bar.

For example, if you only have 100kg of weight, and you can bench that for a comfortable 5 reps for 3 sets and you have been resting 2 minutes between sets, you could simply do 5 sets of 5 reps with that same weight to provide an overload.

Once this becomes easy you could drop your rest period by 15 seconds each workout. So instead of resting 2 mins you would rest 1:45, if you could bench 5 x 5 at 100kg with that rest then you have progressed, the next workout you would only rest 1:30 and then repeat the process.

At some point, fatigue will kick in and it will be very hard to continue to get the 5 x 5 for a while. If you had been grinding out your last 1 or 2 reps each set, you could leave all variables the same and just focus on keeping your technique really clean and working on being able to get the 5 x 5 without grinding out any reps, before you move on once again.

After following a process like this, you could then start over but this time using paused reps as an example. You lower the weight for 3 seconds, pause on the chest for 2 seconds, and then explode it up before beginning the next rep. Then you can follow the same pattern above about increasing sets, decreasing the rest period, etc.

This is far from extensive but I hope it gives you some ideas on how you can improve your training.

For most people, I think this is why they stagnate so much in the gym. I see them do the exact same workout day in day out, month after month, year after year. No wonder they struggle to get motivated. I would be as bored as hell. They have plateaued and are barely seeing results for their efforts. A change is probably all they need.

Our clients are with us for years and I doubt any of them have done the exact same workout. For me, the fun part is making small changes and experimenting a bit, I am excited with each new change.

Increase Overhead Strength to Improve Your Bench

There has been mass panic about training at the moment due to coronavirus. One of the concerns I am hearing most about is losing strength on the bench press. "I have a bar, some plates, and some dumbbells, so I can't bench, it's gonna go down massively".

You can use this time to work on your overhead strength. This will more than likely help you come back with a better bench then if you just kept hammering away on it at the gym as you normally do.

This is something that Ed Coan has spoken about for a long time. When his bench stalled, he said he would work on behind the neck presses as he felt the weakness in his shoulders were limiting his bench press.

Charles Poliquin said that based on the normative data he collected over the years there was a strong correlation between shoulder pain and a lack of overhead strength. He also explained that training only the bench press pathway often causes the subscapularis muscle to shorten and unbalance the shoulder joint.

Charles would often say that the ability to be able to behind the neck press was a sign of a healthy shoulder. To perform the behind the neck press we start the weight from a deadstop on the traps, using a full range of motion. This is how you would assess your shoulder integrity using that lift, not a little half rep lockout type thing barely reaching the top of your head, that I see in most commercial gyms.

So, spending some time focusing on your overhead strength may also help reduce your risk of injury as you may correct some imbalances that you would not have otherwise addressed.

Overhead presses will also increase the strength of the long head of your triceps which will also help carry over to a stronger bench when you get back to it.

Pair your pressing work with a chin up variation, then move on to some form of row, and external rotator work and you will keep, if not increase, the strength on the bench press. Remember to vary the type of press and chin up every 4 -6 workouts and do the same for your assistance work.

The change will more than likely help you break a few plateaus.

Related:

Bench press tip - grip width

Bench press tip - elbow position

Bench press - arch or no arch?

Bench Press PR - 140kg x 2

Pretty happy with my session today ending my 6th set of bench with 140kg for 2 reps.

My session went like this: 115kg x 4, 120kg x 4, 125kg x 4, 130kg x 4, 135kg x 3, 140kg x 2

I had the goal of benching 140kg for a single back in 2013 and it has taken me this long to achieve. It isn’t because I am lazy, inconsistent, or changed goals, nothing like that. It is simply because I kept getting injured (in league and then jiujitsu) and every time I got close would almost have to start from scratch.

In that time, some of the bigger injuries I had:

* Broke my back (L3 transverse process). Finished the last 20 minutes of the game and played two weeks post doing this.

* Broken wrist

* Broken collar bone (I played the whole season with the broken wrist and collar bone, so that set me back a long way. I spent 12 weeks in a cast post season)

* Tore my pec off the ribs, done my A.C, tore my infrasprinatus, and tore my delt (semi-final, finished the game out after doing it in the first half)

* Tore my pec off the ribs again the following season (finished my career due to this)

* Had 3 screws put in my hand

* Had a few disc bulges flair up

* Tore a right quad muscle off

* Ruptured my top left ab

* Tore my hamstring

* Ruptured my adductor and conjoint tendon

This is on top of an injury list twice as long as this one prior to 2013.

So, while it is far from being a world class bench, I am happy for sticking in there and achieving my goal.

As bad as the injuries have been, they have given me a lot of practical experience about program design, rehab, and technique. Shit you can’t learn from a book. Most people will never experience this type of learning and for our young athletes, and clients, thankfully so.

What are the main reasons for this amount of injuries? I’d say the extreme over training and weaknesses never addressed early in my career. From that, the 30 plus cortisone shots I have had, and then also all the compensations I have made over the years training around and playing with all the injuries.

At the end of the day, what happened, happened. I am just trying to be as good as I can be.

From this, I have learnt many lessons, ones that I can use to help prevent my clients from going through the same types of things, and help them reach their full potential.

You aren’t done until you decide you are.

Two Years Post Pec Surgery - Andrew Thornton

Andrew Thornton has been training with me for about 18 months now after coming to see me following pec surgery. He has made great progress, losing over 30kg, and also getting back into lifting pain, and injury free.

Andrew Post Pec Surgery

He wrote a nice post on Facebook the other day, so I thought I would share it as it is good to show that you are never done until you decide you are. He could have made excuses and decided to take it easy, but he chose to get back into training and improve his health.

"It’s been 2 years to the day that I had surgery repairing my ruptured pec tendon.

I had been weight training for quite a few years and not seeing the results I wanted and still putting on weight gradually each year. I decided it was time to seek some expert advice with the rehab on my pec and also to start trying to get the results I was after in the gym.

I had a chat with Nathan from THP (and after chatting and finding out he had suffered a similar injury and was still lifting weights) I was keen to learn more about there training program.

Since beginning with THP 18 months ago I have realised there is so much I didn’t know about weight training and diet (that I thought I knew). The variety in the training programs and the accountability that comes with weighing in and the skin folds each fortnight keeps you focused on your goals.The varying programs and the constant guidance and correction in technique and making the required changes in eating have been crucial.

I would recommend anyone that has had an injury or is having issues with weight loss or if they are not seeing the results they are after in the gym, come and speak to Nathan and Gemma and they will get you on the right track. #TotalHealthPerformaceCentre #THP #TeamTHP #TotalHealthPerformance"

Andrew before starting with THP

Andrew getting back into lifting post pec tear