B Exercise Selection (Practical)

Exercise selection should be based on the specific needs of an individual or a group. In cyclical sports, exercises should focus on improving speed, power, and energy system capacity relevant to the sport. However, athletes in these sports often downplay the importance of strength and conditioning programs. On the other hand, acyclical sports require a wider range of exercises to prepare for the unpredictable nature of the sport. Exercise selection can also be focused on performance enhancement or injury reduction. In team sports, exercises can be selected based on specific positions or sport needs. Ultimately, the goal is to serve the athletes and their goals, rather than following a coach's random assessment. Communication with athletes is important to understand their needs and provide the best support. We just discussed the premise of exercise selection regardless of our environment, right? We need to think about, it has to be good. Now, in regards to our environment, what do we have? Do we have a general program that we're trying to fit a large group into, or are we doing a specific program that we're trying to form based off an individual's needs? There's really no right or wrong. There's just a lot of circumstance that we need to appreciate. The premise of practical is going to go really far into this idea of cyclical versus asyclical sports. So, for example, a cyclical sport is something we're going to do redundantly, right? We're going to just sprint forward for 100 meters or 200 meters or 400 meters all the way up to 1,600 meters, et cetera. A biceps race or something we're going to do, a row, a crew athlete, a row athlete, something we're just doing the same activity over and over. And for that, what you'll find is a lot of that gets centered on bimotor or bioenergetic, meaning how fast, how far, how heavy can I do something, or what is my capacity of the energy system relevant to my sport? So, if I'm running 100 meter, what is my electric power? If I'm running a 400 meter, what's my more glycolytic or lactic energy system power? If I'm running a 1,600, what's my aerobic or oxidative power, right? And then you start to think about exercises in that world almost take this connotation of less important, right? And anyone who's ever worked with track and field or a crew or any bicyclist or triathlete, like they look at exercises as like this generic template of just, I don't know, just arbitrarily going through this prerequisite thing, like, oh, I got to work knee-dominant, anterior chain work, so I'm going to do a quarterback step-up three times a week. And they almost downsize the significance of a good strength and conditioning program because it's either more work that they have to do on top of the hours and hours of work they're already doing, or on the other end, it's not that really complicated. That the best in the world have really kind of zeroed in on what exercises actually matter that are relevant to their acyclical nature or cyclical nature of the sport they're doing. So what does it really concern them that they have a whole dialed-in program that's catered towards their specific needs? And I think that creates a lot of friction in most team settings, that track and field or crew, or if you do have a cycling program, you know, become extremely myopically focused on like a very limited number of things to be doing, and anything outside of that is a waste of energy, a distraction, and potentially a risk to them being able to get a better time in their event. Versus an acyclical sport, these are your more routine sports, these are the less predictable environments, these are the environments that need to be appreciated that there's no predicting what's going to happen, there's no certainty of the planes or the vectors that athlete's going to be in, and the times they're going to be in, or sequence they're going to be in. It's just chaos on top of chaos. And this group, historically speaking, is going to be a lot more open to transitioning because they need assistance with this preparation for a very chaotic world. And one of the things that we've done as a field is leverage models that are, in a sense, like acyclically oriented, right? So if you look at weightlifting as a model, you know, all you're going to do is snatch and clean a jerk. They're great exercises, but they're pretty specific to getting more weight overhead with a stoppage either on the shoulders or directly overhead. Then you look at powerlifting, it's essentially just three movements, squat, push, and hinge. And that has its, I guess, second order connotation of it's taken on its own life, it's not necessarily driven by classic biomechanics, it's driven by output metrics of how do I get higher tolls, of how do I squat more, bench more, deadlift more. Then you can look at even track and field, a very linear approach to sprinting, and you can apply that methodology to a team setting. The problem is, is when we think about these exercises that are associated with it, or we think about the training programs that are associated with these entities, it's very sagittal oriented, it's very horizontal and vertical vectors. It has very limited frontal transverse plane or rotational vector work. And is that adequate in its preparation? And I think that's a process we need to all evaluate here. Exercise selection is either going through this funnel of how do I not deter from getting more time running or cycling or swimming or whatever else that I'm doing redundantly, or how do I leverage models that are more easily understood with an entity that we have very little understanding what's going to happen. I know that's a really heavy thought, and I know that's something that as we break down, we need to have a moment to look at it from why do I like certain exercises and why do I default to doing certain things. As I talked about principles, I can take this very generalistic approach of, all I'm going to do is push, pull, hinge, and squat. And I'm going to have vertical and horizontal vector for the push and pull, and then I'm going to get a unilateral, bilateral, so maybe a little transverse and frontal plane in there, but not really the point of that. And then a knee, diamond, and hip dominant type of a progression or utilization for lower body pull exercises. And then start to break down, all right, I'm going to regress those exercises to what they can be successful with today, whether it's in a large group or one-on-one. And I'm just going to do that redundantly until it blows the pace. And then say that the stresses that they're going to need to adapt to in their environment, whether it's cyclical or acyclical, are more of the problem or the priority of the sport coach or them as individual athletes. All I've done is just accentuate these movement patterns that have a high transferability to a lot of things. And generally speaking, they do, right? Like, that is the truth. Like, if someone can squat more, hinge more, push more, pull more, then they're going to have a much larger bandwidth than a person who can't. So there's a legitimacy to this, right? But I'm not trying to go into this, like, direction to say that this is all bad. But I do think there's a point we need to question the logic. Because if we don't at least evaluate, is my programming incomplete or complete? Is my program as holistic and as effective as it should be? These are all really great questions. And these are all something that we have to look at in terms of why you came to that conclusion. And I think the other part, anyone who works in the team setting can appreciate, is when you get with these cyclical sports, they're always going to want to mirror and mimic the actions they're doing within their sport. You'll see it quite a bit. And you're wondering, like, they do so much loading of the tissues and the patterns. Is it beneficial to load that pattern or that tissue even more? That we're getting altered lung-tissue relationships. We're getting tendinopathies and other things that relate to overuse of the tissues associated with that. Like, when you start to see cyclists on a repeat basis and they start to get this superior patella tendinopathy, not even just patella tendinopathies in the lower part of that tendon, like, you start to see the part that attaches to the top of the knee to the quad start to get inflamed. You know you've got some lung tension issues going on. You do. Like, you're doing too much in that area. You know, rowers and this SI problem. Like, if they're going to do it, she's there. You start to see track and field athletes and whatever event they're doing, they're just loading and loading and loading. And all of a sudden, strength is just like a small degree. They compartmentalize certain aspects of the movement. Like, well, here's the drive phase of my jump, so I'm just going to overload this three-inch step-up to like 500 pounds. Like, great. Yeah, that's awesome. It's a lot of weight for sure. My question would be is, you're probably already pretty good at that and you're probably already doing that a lot, so why do we need to keep doing it? On the other end, you can go to the team setting and kind of do that a lot by default of like, well, you know, like, granted, they need to be really good in all three planes of motion. They need to be able to adapt to an ever-changing environment, but I'm more familiar with this methodology of snatch, clean, and jerk, or squat, bench, and deadlift, or sprinting straight ahead, so I'm just going to kind of lean in on that. And I'm going to start to overload that. And we start to see stress-related things from overloading that too often or too much. As we break down good exercise selection, I think it really is simple of, if we work with a cyclical sport, we probably don't need as wide of an exercise selection, meaning that we probably need a couple key correlate exercises. And that could go in two directions, which we're going to, but from a performance enhancement or injury reduction stance. And then the same logic can be applied just in opposite for acyclical sports of, if they're an acyclical sport, meaning they're a team sport like football, basketball, that we'll need to have a wider exercise selection to accommodate their greater variance in movement profile during competition. And we could go from that from a performance enhancement standpoint or an injury reduction standpoint. So let's break down the performance enhancement standpoint, right? A performance enhancement is saying that we believe that there are stronger correlated exercises than others. So if I look at it from the stance of I want them to be able to run faster, jump higher or further, or throw something further or faster, I believe that certain exercises correlate to that more strongly than others. So for instance, you know, classic line is strength is the mother of all qualities. So I want them to be able to back squat two and a half times their body weight. That would be an example of a performance enhancement strategy, right? So if I look at it from that stance, it's pretty linear. It's pretty direct in terms of vector. It's nice. It's convenient. It helps. For cyclical sports, that's not a bad way to go about it. That you look at it from a correlation to, all right, they need to sprint faster. So they need to improve certain exercises. We're going to go from long to short, short to long. We're going to go from a body type oriented of this person to push, push person. So they're a little bit shorter squatty or mesomorph type of body, wider thorax, maybe more of a pole person. So they have a little bit longer, more ectomorph body type. Maybe they become more reliant on these lower gear muscle fibers. So they can develop this like high, high pination angle. And it's like more sarcomere overlap or versus their more parallel muscle fiber. And they're going to be more of this efficiency person. We go all of these directions. It's awesome. It's fun. It's blessed. But that's centered on the central theme of I believe that this singular attribute is more important than another. I believe that certain exercises are more correlated to that singular attribute than others. And I want to lean in on developing those exercises at their highest functioning level from a biomotor output standpoint, so force, velocity, or work, than others. That I'm prioritizing something. That there's a Pareto principle to this, meaning that 80% of our results are going to come from 20% of the things that we do. And I'm going to go to work on that. And I've talked a lot about this in all of our training modules. Is that once you realize what you do, you should do it extensively. That is a theory. It's a strong theory. I believe a lot in that theory. But it's a theory. It is. Now, for team sports or acyclical sports, what is more correlated than others, especially if they have so much diversity in what they're doing? Well, a lot of times they have positions. A lot of times they have specific sport needs. Right? So if you're in rugby and there's this person that's scrumming quite a bit, do they need to be bigger and stronger and higher body mass? Yeah. Do they have a higher cross-sectional muscle area? Yeah. Okay. That's something. If they play football and they have to come out of a three-point stance and drive block someone, yeah, that's pretty specific. Like, we know what they need to do. You know, if they're a center in basketball, like, okay, maybe they need a strong lower body to be able to play really well closer to the rim. We know all these things. They're powerful indicators. They have a really big impact on the bottom line. And I can develop correlated exercises off of that. Now, on the other hand, from both the cyclical and asyclical, I can easily go injury reduction. I can go from this level of my best way to serve these athletes is to reduce the rate of injury. So an example I talk a lot about would be my time working with swimming and diving. And I worked with a coach that was very specific oriented. Right? He really wanted a lot of his programming for weight room work to mimic and pantomime the things that they're doing in the water. Right? So I really want bowel rolls. Or I really want, you know, an athlete to get on this free motion trainer and work breaststroke. Like, I think there's a lot of things missing in terms of the idea of, like, water-based resistance versus gravity-based resistance. But either way, even bioenergetically, too. Like, I want them to only do loading in the weight room relevant to the time they're trying to get in the pool. So if they're 100-meter freestyles, he wanted, like, 10 seconds or under for every single set. And the goal is to get more work done on that set. That was the theory. Now, my thought, best way to serve these athletes is looking at where is the biggest limiting factor or where is the bottleneck. And if you take a quick look or inventory of our injury report every week, majority of the issues came from just general athleticism type of things. Or general things that normal people could do who are functioning on the land that don't get hurt. They'd be, honestly, 8 out of 10 to some sort of activity of daily living related injury. Tripped over a curb. Fell off my skateboard. Nonstop issues related to balance, proprioception, being a land animal, so to speak. And when you break down your impact on the program, you're like, well, do I double down on these movement patterns or these vectors or these things that they're doing all the time that is way different than the resistance profile of the water? Or do I make them, generally speaking, more capable of not getting hurt as they transition to the pool from the weight room or from class? I sided with the idea of what could I do to benefit this program was probably more along the lines of making them less risked as they're walking around. The other element, in which case the psychological aspect, and it was something I got from a lot more male swimmers, was you have no idea how it feels when you feel physically smaller and imposed upon by other teams. Especially if they got your number for getting to a meet, for getting to a championship, and you have a bigger, more developed team across from you. Whether a lot of that's genetic or a lot of that's just recruiting, and they're constantly winning, coming in first place. That's a psychological edge on you. So the males really wanted to work hypertrophy. They wanted to add muscle to be able to say, at least we looked the part. And I get it. But that was the big feedback I got from our athletes was we felt physically smaller than our counterparts that were superior in terms of performance. Isn't that interesting? And my theory of, okay, I need to get them better on land. So we're going to do ground-based, compound, multi-joint movements. We're going to do a lot of balance and proprioception. We're going to do a lot of fundamental drill work in all three planes of motion. So we're doing a tri-planer 3D map. We're doing different vector med ball tosses and throws. We're doing different low-amplitude, extensive plyos. We're doing ground-based, multi-joint movements. So like squat and hinge, split squat, and single-leg RDL. And then, honestly, we're developing upper body hypertrophy for our male swimmers. So they feel confident. So we're going to do some ab adduction of the shoulder. We're going to do some flexion extension of the elbow. We're going to develop tissue in the pecs, the lats, the shoulders, the biceps, and triceps. Hopefully we're getting a majority of that from our meat and potato exercises, pushes and pulls. And on the other end, we're going to leverage some isolation exercises in there. And this is, I think that's the part where I think a lot of transitioning coaches really lose sight of. Not serving the coaches, we're serving the athletes. To put it frank, a crazy coach that has no idea what is needed, relevant to the goal? Just talk to the athletes. I mean, shoot, like, I've worked with Track and Field. And I know there's some better than others. But the majority of it is they're just shooting from the hip and then making us adjust to whatever it is they're deciding to do in that moment. You know, they're the most extreme cybernetic type of programming you can imagine. For instance, I have a whole dialed in periodized program with a very narrow exercise high correlate program to peak for certain qualities. For indoor championships and then outdoor championships. Get to a point where we're four weeks out from an indoor Track and Field Division III championship. And I have this whole progression out and we have the whole taper built out. Communicating with the athletes, constantly getting feedback. And then we're looking at having our last big CNS intensive day going into Thanksgiving break and all this other stuff we're doing. And athletes come in and they're just completely gassed. Like, they're just done. Ask them what they did. Like, oh, we're at the track today. And the coach decided to do 800 meters of broad jumps and then 400 meters of split squat jumps around the track. What does that, what do you mean? And they broad jumped or horizontal jumped or I think they called it bunny hop around the track for 800 meters. And then they decided to do the same thing for split scissor jumps around the track. When we're trying to hit a 90% and above hang snatch, front squat, pull up. And you get that. Just these programs now no longer valid and relevant. Why? This exercise selection, this progression to getting a high output from those exercises that hopefully transmutes into them running faster or jumping further or higher is now deemed obsolete. My best way to serve them is to hopefully put some tread back in the tire. Hopefully get the CNS back down. We're just going to do a bunch of general physical preparation stuff. We're going to do some soft tissue. We're going to do some passive and active range stuff. We're going to do some stationary isometric base core. That's it. Was I happy about that? Absolutely not. Was I disappointed? For sure. But that's the reality of the situation. I'm not serving that coach in their random assessment of what they need on that day to build physical character and toughness. Who cares? I'm serving those athletes. Hey, how can I best serve you? How can I help you perform at a high level? You know your body. You know what's going on. Let me help you. Hey, I think this protocol or I think this exercise selection is going to be really beneficial to that and here's why. Explain that. Another great story I've had is I work with a professional baseball player and he's like I really want to work on becoming a better base runner. And I can never turn a single into a double because I just don't come around the base that well and I don't feel like I have top end speed. Awesome. Let's work on some front side mechanics. Let's work on some curvilinear running. Let's work on some things that are more conducive to being a better base runner. And in that note, we had a whole progression and we're working on all these cool things and we're even working the strength training prospect who's an experienced high degree of force output type athlete. And he comes down to it and he's like ah man, I just decided to run 300 yard shuttles and do Metcons every time. And it got to a point where it's like why would you do that? It's disrupting your CNS. It's disrupting your biomechanics. It's all this stuff that I think is interrupted to it. And he's like well the truth is I'm captain of the team and then we have a 300 yard shuttle test at the beginning of every single spring training and I need to be the first in that test in order to show that I'm a leader of the group. I'm like psychologically I think there's some flaws in that but on the other end, can you blame the guy? Is that that bad of a logic to say I'm the highest paid person on the team? I'm the leader of the team that I want to show that I value what our organization values? Yeah, I get it but that's going to become, if you're going to run through 300 yard shuttles, you're going to run with this very, very thick cyclical type of movement pattern. That's not going to lead you to be able to turn a single into a double. So what is the cost of that? Not to mention too of like the preparation for that. It's almost the exact opposite bioenergetically than what we need. I'm not serving that coach. I don't care. But he does. He did. That's where we got to really find this like exercise selection that meets the needs of that. And then we go to this next level. Regardless of what we're doing, there needs to be some sort of discussion on, okay well how do I make this crappy thing look better? This regression or lateralization type of conversation. It could be, hey I'm just going to make this very simple for the athlete and give them success right now. It could be I'm going to find a variation that doesn't hurt. Maybe a joint's bothering them during a certain movement like front squat and wrist. Okay, find a better solution. The point being is we're trying to figure out solutions in the moment that fit the needs of that athlete based off of what we decided from an injury prevention or performance enhancement and trying to make the best program possible in that given moment. There's always going to be this dynamic that exercise selection, regardless of why we did what we did, whether it's a specific vector or a general vector, whether it's a performance enhancement or injury prevention, still needs to come down to I need to be able to execute on that movement, yes or no. And if I can't, what is the contingency? It's an important thing to think about. All right, let me pause right here. We'll go through the case study next week. But a lot to unpack on this, guys. There's a lot to think about in terms of exercise selection and what is a good program versus a bad program. So dive into this module. Spend some time on it. Look at your programs. Think about where you come to conclusions and why you came to that conclusion. And let's get better at programming because I think that's a big part of all of what we do.