B Sets & Reps

Cyclical sports like track and field require focused training on specific movements, while acyclical sports like team sports require a wide range of exercises to prepare for the diverse demands of the game. The number of exercises and sets needed in a training session will vary depending on the sport. It is important to find a balance between developing specific movement patterns and preparing for the demands of the sport. The context and goals of the training program should guide the selection of exercises and the allocation of sets and reps. Well, an important thing to discuss would be this idea of cyclical versus acyclical sports. One of the things about training for athletes is this idea that we're basing a lot of it off of cyclical sports, specifically track and field, where they're essentially doing one thing. And there is a lot of complexity to it in that they're doing it outside or they're doing it against other people and there's variables associated with it. I'm not saying that it's a very simple exercise, but the reality is when someone does sprinting or jumping or throwing, they're probably really, really focused on developing the biomechanic and physiological or biomechanic aspects of that sport. You can just get narrowed down to it, right? So from an exercise selection, anything associated with that movement pattern is going to be a lot easier to pick. You could argue there's a lot of need for isolation exercises or GPP, etc., etc., etc. But the truth is, if you know what you need to work in those patterns, it becomes very simple. But that gets again down to what we talked about in principles of, I don't have to do a certain amount of things for these athletes, sets and reps is incredibly dictated by that. There's a huge influence off of, if I only have to do really three exercises with an exercise in the weight room with an athlete that is cyclical in nature, why do I need to do a whole, why do I need to do high volume of it? I just need to do a lot of sets of that. Maybe it comes in a form of high volume, high sets, but the truth is, I just need to do a lot of sets of those three things. On the other end though, which is the majority of the people that we work with, is going to be the acyclical, the team sport athlete, the court or the field athlete. Those are the sports that need a really wide array of exercises. Their demands are so diverse from a biomechanic, biomotor, bioenergetic, the classic study looking at bioenergetics of walk, run, jog, or sprint, looking at football players and the positional demands, the biomechanical demands, the vast array of things that could happen in the course of a play. It's just nonstop. It's just never ending, the complexity of team sports. From an exercise selection standpoint, you can get into the extreme opposite end of the spectrum of, it's all just chaos. All we got to do is just stress them out as much as we possibly can on any given day with randomized, ad hoc type of things. We have continuums here between cyclical and acyclical. I'm going to get really, really redundant with, I don't know, say I'm working with a track athlete and I really associate their ability to sprint coming from knee dominant, anterior chain pushing, hip dominant, posterior chain pulling, and then let's just say I'm locked in on upper back strength, so upper body, shoulder, vertical pulling. All I'm going to do is squat, deadlift, and pull up, because I feel like those are the three things that are going to be most correlated to that. Maybe I take a greater force development component to it. We have some sort of effect of doing loaded jumps. We do some sort of clean pull or snatch or something that's a little bit more ballistic in terms of the hinge, and then vertical pull. Maybe we do some sort of flywheel pull down, straight arm pull down, or a skier pull down, whatever. We're just doing various degrees of it. Those three exercises until I'm blue in the face. Those are the three things that I think I need to do on a recurring basis. I break down my workout like, all right, I got 45 to 60-minute sessions a week with my sprinter, and I'm just going to do those three exercises. You can get pretty locked in on those three exercises. Let's say you follow the same set rep scheme, or let's say that you don't really take into consideration time and attention, and you're going to just occupy 60 minutes of time. You might miss out on doing enough sets to create the changes necessary, because we're talking about very small, very narrow margins with these athletes, right? These are milliseconds we're working with, and too much stress, too little stress could honestly leave that athlete in a very compromised state for performance. Again, we talked about this with our strength, that was an example, with eccentric. We're trying to create architectural changes to get a more robust shortening cycle. If I'm limited with the ability or the time spent stressing the connective tissues, whether it's inside the sarcomere, or in between sarcomeres, or connecting the entire muscle cell to ligaments and other things, well, then I'm not really going to get the outcome that I want, right? I'm just going to do these three exercises, and I'm going to stick to my five by five, or my three sets of 10, or my six sets of three at all times. That might not be enough either intensity, volume of intensity, or adequate exposure to get that person dialed in, or it might be too much exposure, right? I'm doing 10 barbell split squats with someone, that could just break them down, especially these super type 2X type muscle fiber folks, right? There's that example. Then we go into the other end of, all right, I'm working with a football guy, and I got to get all three planes of motion, all three vectors, right? If you're not familiar with those terms, the cardinal planes are sagittal, straight ahead, frontal, more side to side, and then transverse, more this rotational vector type of thing, and then the vectors are vertical, horizontal, and rotational, right? There's this element of chaos is always going to be at the top of everybody's really big problem with programming, right? Anything that's based off progressive overload or progression is off the pretense that we have an idea of what's going to happen. You could argue very easily that all of that is leading into a chaotic environment, there's no predictability to it. That might not be that far-fetched, but the other aspect of it is with every iteration, every training program, you're getting a little bit closer to finding a more unified theory of training. It could be far-fetched, it could be unrealistic, it could be just a very poor, poor idea of what is actual training. Another note, if you just randomly do things, you could get to a certain outcome, you could get the same outcome. But I would argue people are flawed, and people have bias, and people have issues no matter what, so they're always going to make these poor decisions when they're left to their own devices. I think it's better to have some sort of objectivity, and in between that objectivity, have KPIs that universally need to be accepted. So people can run fast, they can jump far or high, or they can throw something far or high. They're probably going to be better served, right? And if I'm having to hit a multi-planar, multi-vector type program, and we'll go through what that might actually look like, and go back to our progression module, you might have this opportunity to see if that had a positive or negative impact on these what we call KPIs, right? So if they're sprinting faster, and we did a lot of frontal plane and transverse plane stuff, chances are maybe that was an underserved area, or it didn't really limit us that much, right? So this idea of it's all about just getting strong. And strong is a very, very relative term. Squatting more isn't necessarily universally as accepted as being stronger as it should be, or it's not as indicative of being overall exerting more force, right? Planar and vector forces are happening eccentrically, isometrically, and concentrically at all times. And there's actually an internal environment and external environment. So external forces combined with internal management of our forces is almost too complex to really fully appreciate or understand. But the other end of it, it's you just test, and you do a lot of exercises, and you do a lot of multi-planar, multi-vector type exercises, right? So then you get a little bit more encouraged to do rotational chops and lifts, or maybe you get a little bit more encouraged to do lateral squats and posterior lateral squats, or a certain reach or tweak with a foot, with a hand or foot. And maybe you use a different element, like a med ball or a kettlebell or a mace or a club or a different table attachment. And you see the cause and effect relationship, and you see that there are different recruitment patterns. And then it gets a different aspect, but you maybe develop some sort of synergist or some sort of stabilizer, or maybe you actually directly work the muscle fiber more directly, because more muscle fibers are more oblique and transverse than they are sagittal or vertical. And then you think about it from the other end of, well, if I have to do so many exercises, and I apologize for the long setup for this, but if I have to do so many exercises in a training session to adequately prepare for them, prepare them for what they have to do in the sport, that's going to come at the expense of a certain amount of sets. If I have to, so let's say that the three exercises I'm doing in the cyclical sport is inverted, I have to do nine exercises with an acyclical sport, and we both have 16 minutes, what's it going to give? If I can do normally 20 total sets in a 16 minute session, give or take, accumulation blocks you're probably going to get 16 to 18, and then I think intensification blocks maybe 22 to 24, so let's just say the average is going to be somewhere in the middle. But you're going to get 20 sets, but I've got to get nine exercises versus I've got to get three. I can probably get an average of six sets per exercise in our, maybe even upwards of eight sets in our intensification, or for our cyclical sport, probably going to get the best two, maybe three sets of a certain exercise for an acyclical or a team sport. There's a line there that we have to figure out, and are you going to compromise time spent towards planes and vectors at the expense of developing a couple predetermined value based exercises like a squat or bench? I'm not saying that squat and bench aren't valuable exercises, and they're not, they're still going to be very important to the process, but if I don't have as much time because I have to prepare for so many different planes and vectors off this chaotic and team sport like environment, that's going to come at the expense of certain sets, and it's going to come at the expense of potential performance in that said exercise. That might come off as sacrilegious, but the truth is, is what is more important? Reducing the rate of injury, improving performance, improving the bandwidth to handle the environment that's chaotic and random, or is it developing squat, bench, and clean? Or should we keep the example consistent of squat, hinge, and vertical pull? Right, so I have a track athlete where I really only have to do three things over and over and over again and get them as good as possible with those three things, because there's a game of milliseconds in that world, versus in a football environment where they're going to have to go straight ahead, side to side, they're going to have to turn and run, they're going to have to rotate, they're going to have to do so many different things. So instead of just squat, hinge, and vertical pull, I'm going to have to add in a horizontal press, and I'm going to have to add in multi-plane or multi-vector versions of those exercises, right? So an example would be, like I said before, a split squat, lateral squat, posterior lateral squat, right? That's very generic, but you can do the same thing for lunge. You can even add in an anti, right, so the term of anti-rotation or anti-lateral flexion or anti-flexion extension or anti-side, I guess lateral flexion, but side bending. Then you look at it from the context of, all right, I'm going to hold a dumbbell asymmetrical position, or I'm going to hold a med ball or a aqua bag. I'm going to load in the more horizontal vector with a cable. I'm going to load in the more vertical with gravity-based stuff, like with a dumbbell. I'm going to load in a perpendicular stance as opposed to a straight ahead stance. I'm going to do a split stance or a single leg stance, an infinite number of possibilities. But the point being is I can add various planes of motion and vectors with any of those core exercises, push, pull, hinge, and squat. I can create another category of rotational chops and lifts. The whole other element behind team sports is you have to dabble in all these other planes and vectors. You have to vary up the direction and position all the time in order to adequately prepare the tissues and the patterns associated with that sport. But it's going to come at the expense of a certain amount of sets you can do something, and it's going to come at the expense of how much you can develop a singular movement pattern. And I guess the point being is when you get into this realm of adjusting sets and reps, it's off the pretense that certain exercises are simply more important than the other. The context matters. It's not in certain settings. And ironically, in most settings that's really highly prioritized, it's probably not as important. And understanding a cyclical sport, it is going to do a lot of redundant activities. Like if I got a cyclist and they're just pushing on a pedal for hours on end every single day, and it's an overused thing, so they're going to have a lot of tendinopathies or a lot of low back pain, and I need to strengthen them in other ways. If I have a golfer that is just swinging a golf club from their right shoulder to their left foot over and over and over, if I have a swimmer that's just doing freestyle for hours and hours and hours, that's different than a soccer player or a lacrosse player or a football player or a basketball player. There's just a, it's not saying there's not an infinite number of possibilities of these very redundant patterns based off of the environment. But it is saying that it's a little bit more predictable about what they need from either an injury reduction or a direct performance aspect, relatively speaking, to a cyclical. You have no idea what's going to happen. You have no idea why it happens. You can't, it'll never happen again, and it's constant. So I see track athletes always pull their hamstring when they start to play football again. So anyone who's coached college football or high school football, and you have your athletes that run track all spring but are doing spring ball during that period, you are on high alert for hamstring. They just don't hit that frontal or transverse plane as much as they should, and they usually get their adductor mangas, or they get some sort of lower leg injury, and it could be footwear, it could be the surface, but the reality is you're just not stressing in the amount of vectors and planes to be prepared for that team sport-like environment. But then again, too, if you take a football player and ask them to run straight ahead, they can't handle that much stress over time repeatedly, so you need to titrate up. They need to increase their upper limit of what they can hit with running straight ahead. And everything has that absolute truth to it, that risk is going to be more associated with novelty or the nuance associated with it, and you need to train and plan and utilize certain amount of stress accordingly. And I think that's the part that most really don't ever grasp or appreciate when they're pulling from certain models, like models-based thinking, like I'm going to use Olympic lifts or track and field or power lifting or strongman to associate modalities and methods with this team sport athlete or this other very cyclical athlete, right? Like, I can use power lifting or track and field. It might not be adequate in terms of developing them, and you can say, oh, well, it's all about getting them stronger. Well, until they get hurt, and then you realize it's not all about getting stronger. Or on the other end, you know, you look at it from the other context of, you have a football player that's definitely not physically prepared, so you didn't spend enough time developing certain qualities, then they are maybe at risk as well, or they're not performing as well as they should be. But the fascinating thing about all of it is it's so simple when you really break it down. We talked about loss of frequency. A lot of it's just actually dictated to you, right? You really don't have as much free will in deciding this as you think you do. It's pretty ruled and governed by certain parameters that are really out of your control, right? So much like frequency, it's like we could talk about eight sessions a day, and we could talk about, you know, maybe a two-a-day training for, you know, four days a week. Chances are you probably couldn't do that if you wanted to. It's kind of a mute discussion. But the same thing in sets and reps, you have 60 minutes, and you either have to work a high force or high velocity or high work type of input to get to this outcome of either increasing someone's speed or strength or body mass or cross-sectional muscle area, and you go, okay, these are the things that are going to be the most linear path to doing that, and I have to choose a certain time under tension to do that, and that comes with an inverted relationship to how many sets. That's pretty much, like, done. You know, there's not much thought that you have to go into that. You can get a little creative with how you allocate reps, relatively speaking, to time under tension. You can get really creative with trying to allocate time spent towards eccentric, isometric, or concentric based off of something like an increasing or decreasing the deficit type of goal. But what really, really you've got to flex your creative muscles is how you're going to allocate sets and subsequently time based off of demands they have from a movement profile during competition. And if I have to train a cyclical athlete doing redundant patterns within training as well as performing, I have to think about overuse, I have to think about redundancy and point of diminishing returns. I have to think about developing similar coordinated skills, like a GPP to SPP, right? So let's say that I train a high jumper, which is a very horizontal approach, but it's a very vertical displacement, and I have a very horizontal approach, and when I squat, like I push my butt back and drop my chest, that might not have the same congruence with what you're trying to do during competition, aside from the point. Conversely, if I have to get an offensive lineman prepared and they have to get retro or backward stepping, they have to develop a crossover step or a open step, they have to develop linear mechanics, they have to develop all these other simultaneous skills with their upper body in conjunction with their lower body, they got to develop flexibility and mobility because that's a huge piece of either individuals or just what they hope for most of these guys to do, well then you have a lot of things that you're responsible for. And it could come in the form of, hey, our movement prep needs to be more triplanar and multivector. It could come in the form of our exercise selection needs to be more triplanar and multivector. It come in the form of, I'm going to do these very on paper sagittal vertically oriented movement patterns with various components that stress the transverse and the frontal plane or the rotational vectors simultaneously. But the other aspect is we need to spend a certain amount of time in certain areas. Over the course of a calendar year, you'll spend more time in certain areas like off-season lower body and certain mechanics versus in-season, you'll probably develop a little bit more upper body and less teaching mechanic driven things and more about maintenance of qualities or maintenance of tissue. But the point being is that's where the creativity really lies. That's where your outlet really is, is, hey, I know I'm going to do this much time and attention to get me to this point and that basically tells me how many sets I can do and there's only so much time I can do this in, so I only have so many sets I can do anyway. All right, with a cyclical based sport, it's about just going to work and pounding the rock and doing these very, very limited exercises in a highly high output type of manner versus a cyclical sport, it's, okay, I need to adequately prepare all the patterns and all the potential vectors and planes that could be associated with that equally and often, okay, well, then I can only do so many sets there. And maybe you're an expert, maybe we have all these tracking things and have all these like KPIs that we can really test the quality of that but as I said with frequency, as I've been saying with a lot of this, in the team setting, a lot of that's out of our hands. You know, we get dictated what we get dictated and what I'm saying in this regard is it doesn't necessarily be the disagreed thing, like, hey, like you should just squat bench and clean and you should never do any lateral squats or posterior lateral squats or single leg squats. You should never do sandbag or med ball or aqua bag cleans because it's not the pattern. You should never do crossover step or open step, you should just sprint straight ahead, you should never do rotational jumps or hops or bounds, you should never do these things because you have to get them jumping high and squatting a lot and cleaning a lot and running really fast straight ahead. I would say that's a very antiquated and very misguided thought process to performance and how I allocate sets to these like very pre-dictated scripted things is going to be lessened. I'm just not going to have as much time to squat bench and clean if I have to focus on all these different planes and all these different vectors but I can still get incredible results in those areas. You just got to be focused and locked in and that's where the art of coaching comes in and that's where you have to really be dialed in to the needs that your athlete has as well as the expectations of training. Nowhere in there just because you're doing a let's say a Cossack squat with a kettlebell and a contralateral to that squat side leg. So I'm holding a kettlebell on my left in a front rack position and I'm going in a Cossack squat to my right and people just kind of check a box on that right like I can it's a hard exercise I'm just trying to plow through it like no I'm going to put some stipulations on this. I'm going to do some tempo. I'm going to do a five second eccentric and a five second hold on the bottom. I'm going to choose a really adequate weight. I'm going to control the transverse plane of the torso while I'm going in the frontal plane with my lower body and hips. I'm going to really coach this hard because I programmed it and it's really important and I want this to help. That is what I'm talking about. That's the idea. It's I can and I can get that transfer and like if I'm a betting man if I get maximal effort and all this you know quote unquote supplemental work which is now should be your primary work I can get the same input especially with these more experienced veteran athletes that have gone through the gauntlet of a traditional strength training program and they've reached their upper limits with some of these exercises I can probably add to their ability to do that by accentuating other areas but the point of this module is to go through how that impacts your sets and reps and it's going to limit the number of sets you can do for quote unquote primary exercises but I don't think it comes at the expense of performing in those exercises especially if you have a very strong foundation in that. Okay let's wrap up there. That's a really good stop point. Make sure you check out the case study. This is just great great module here so hope this is helping guys and we'll see you guys next week.