Training: A Programming

The speaker discusses the importance of flexibility and adaptation in programming. They emphasize the need to consider individual needs and limitations, as well as the resources available. They also highlight the importance of prioritizing goals and focusing on exercises that will facilitate those goals. The speaker advocates for a willingness to evolve and change in programming, rather than sticking to rigid methodologies. They caution against overvaluing specific exercises and emphasize the importance of a well-rounded approach. So we're going to talk about programming, and we've talked a lot about this already between sets, reps, tempo, frequency. Go through the other modules. They're going to be a huge part of unpacking this. But what I want to do is in this one, obviously, the principle is going through the foundation of programming, you know, is establish this important concept of, okay, what frequency am I working with? Do I even have a choice of it? And then what splits are the best based off of the frequency I'm allotted? And I want to preface this with, let's start to establish that when we look at a training program and we lock ourselves into, hey, I do this style or methodology, we're going to be absolutely screwed in a situation where we're not allowed to do that amount of frequency or we have to amend certain aspects because you get stronger and better as a coach and a programmer based off of diversifying your portfolio, right? And this is a good as any opportunity to talk about when someone asks me about a potential candidate and I start to talk about what their needs analysis are. I start to talk about, well, what do you want to accomplish with this hire? And it's a tough question, right? It's not something that's very easily answered. And a lot of times people don't really, head coaches, don't really process this, right? They want to fill that role. They want to get in a person that is very complimentary or very supportive, availability or enthusiastic. So filling in this archetype that is going to hopefully give them some sort of improvement, maybe that's not even the case, right? I just got to fill the role. I got to get someone in here. You know, and I look at it from whenever we make a hire, you know, the best case scenario is you get someone in that is catalytic to your environment, that they are an absolute asset from start to finish. And you start to look at, well, how do I determine that? How do I determine that beforehand, right? Like, and you look at where our weaknesses are, right? So maybe it's programming. Maybe it's speed development. Maybe it's return to play. Maybe it's nutrition. Maybe it's analytics. Maybe it's psychology and motivation. Maybe it's a whole host of everything, right? You get a lot of areas to improve. You can always, you feel like you have to improve systemically. Okay, well, that's awesome. That's a good inventory of yourself, and you need to have that bandwidth and comfortability of talking about that. And I'll get into why this is related to programming here, but when you're thinking about it from the context of, all right, I'm applying for a position or I'm hiring for a position. We do this really well or I do this really well. Do I complement or bring incredible level of value to that environment based off my skill set or filling a need to address a deficiency within that department or that organization or team? That's an important thing to kind of process, because as I talk to coaches and they're like, oh, you know, do you got anybody? I've got plenty of people, and I've got an endless list of people, and I have a number of people that have volunteered for me, have worked for me, that have gone on to incredibly prominent roles. And for anyone out there listening, I think the unfortunate aspect about strength conditioning is a lot of it is a who-you-know-asked game, and if you just happen to know the right person and you happen to do right by them and they're willing to go out and put themselves out there to help you get a job, that's a big part of it, so that's why there's so much pressure to get good internships or get in with good network or this like upstart, uptick program that's going to have an upward trajectory for your career, right? There's a dynamic at play that overly influences that and doesn't really reward skill or ability, right? Just as you knew the right person and they said the right things and you're hired, which is, I don't think it's that uncommon for a lot of industries, but it's an unfortunate aspect about ours. But what I mean in terms of programming, right, so let's say that I hire a person that is extremely similar with beliefs and approach, right? So I strongly believe in a high-low or a conjugate or a hit or a hybrid, and I hire folks from a circle or network that I know understand that and can perpetuate that, and it's fine. Maybe you get a high-level success where you're at, and it could be alternative reasons, but where you really start to see the value of an assistance-trained coach in your staff is when you hit this proverbial inflection point or fork and you have to amend, right? So a good example of this would be I was working at Georgia Tech and come from a staff that came primarily from the University of Tennessee, and they have a weight room attached to an indoor. They have a pretty much open and completely autonomous schedule. They can decide when the football players did anything. So there were four-day push-pull programming, right, so if you're familiar with like the Gale Hatch, Tommy Moffitt, Johnny Long, Stucky type of tree, you can see this idea of like this push-pull programming, and you do speed on certain days, you do multidirectional speed on other days, but for the most part, it's pretty much this push-pull-centric program. Well, go to a place like Georgia Tech, and if you're familiar with the geography, the football field is, the weight room's right next to the game field, but we're not allowed to use the game field. We have to run at the practice field, which is probably over a half a mile away. So from a logistics standpoint, you've got to choose one or the other. Either you're running or you're lifting. That creates some problems if you are a four-day program, because you're going to basically eat 30 to 45 minutes of transition time for the guys getting their cleats off and getting over into the weight room and trying to get set up for a lift or vice versa. And another systemic element of doing lifting and running on the same day is, as always, you're facilitating the person that you're going first who likes to lift or likes to run, right? So let's say we open with lift and then we run, or vice versa. The person that likes to lift, loves that lift and run. Person that likes to run hates it, and vice versa. But we had to go, okay, well, logistics-wise, we're just hemorrhaging too much time to try to do both on the same day. So why not just go to a three-day total body program and do Tuesday, Thursday speed and conditioning? And there's a really, like, it might seem obvious, but, man, I've seen so many programs stick to their guns and refuse to let up on that style. I'm just being real. And I look at that from a programming perspective, and I look at that from a highly successful doing a certain style, and then you get met with a certain logistics that you have no control over, right? Anyone who's ever worked in high school, worked in private, worked in FCS, Ivy League, Division III or Division II, NAIA, understands that programming is contingent upon what I have and when I have them. And that's a big thing. It's a really big thing in terms of your diversified ability to program in any situation. Work D3, work high school. Work JUCO, work NAIA. It's embarrassing how easy it is to program at a higher level. Now, the thing that most people don't understand or appreciate is time doesn't change. You're still putting in 50, 60-hour work weeks. You're still working five, six days a week. You're just spending your time in different ways, right? So if I have 15 teams at a high school and I have one team who's still working the same amount, arguably probably more, you're just filling your day with either more groups or more things that you have to do for that smaller group. So it's the same time. Time doesn't change. It's transitioning. It's a universal truth that you're going to work 4 a.m. to 8 p.m. and you just accept it. However, where it really gets down into it is you start to look at it from a programming aspect, right? And you got a couple different things that you can look at. And we can look at upper-low, we can look at total body, we can look at a push-pull, we can look at a more speed-oriented thing, like we're a long to short, short to long, we can build that out into high-low, we can build that out into a GPP, SPP. We can go a lot of different directions, and they're all great. I mean, from a periodization standpoint, you already know, like we can go concurrent, conjugate, nonlinear, block, we can go linear, like endless. But all that has is an influence on the way you program each day, each week, right? And if I'm a conjugate periodized person, you're probably not immediately thinking about Olympic lifts. If I'm a HIIT person, you're probably not thinking about compound multi-joint movements. If I'm a high-low person, you're probably not thinking about time in the weight room as much as you are stuff on the field. You are going to be influenced and biased by what your style and what your philosophy is. But we need to go a little bit higher than that, and you can see through the module, like when I'm looking through this, and I'm trying to decide, hey, how am I going to articulate programming to you? It really comes down to what are the exercises we collectively need to hit? From an OKR perspective, what do we need to be good at? I should reverse that order. From an OKR perspective or KPI perspective, whatever way you want to term it, what do we need to be good at? What exercises facilitate that? And then what set, rep, tempo, rest, and intensity schemes allow for those exercises to give us that outcome? That's it. Right, so I really want to be, I don't want to get hurt, and I want to run really fast. Well, how do I do that? What exercises facilitate that? Does developing lower body power or velocity or strength matter? Yes, OK, so I should do exercises that facilitate that. Does a certain set, rep, and tempo, and intensity, and rest scheme or protocol facilitate that? Then I should do that. So if I look at it from, OK, the shortest, most fastest, most linear path to making someone run faster and not get hurt is facilitated by this four-day, high-low, working high central nervous system, high-threshold things every 48 to 72 hours, utilizing these exercises like sprint work, plyos, Olympic lifts, maximal intensity, compound multi-joint movements like squat and deadlift, and that's it. That is the 80-20 Pareto principle of what's going to allow me to have someone run faster. And it's funny because people will try to pigeonhole me and try to tell me, oh, with strength deficit or with what you did at Army or what you did at Georgia Tech or USC that you're this person. What I'm doing with my membership-based gym, and I just made a pretty systemic change with the programming, I can do that because I'm not type-tested. I know I have certain things. You know, the joke is like, what is your signature with our staff? And, you know, I program a lot of things, so people definitely know my little stamp on programming. But when in doubt, you know, and like, I hate this question, but what are your two, three favorite exercises? Like, if you ask me, like, and I got really no context as to what to do, I'm probably going to open up with some neutral grip pull-up and front foot elevated split squat until I know. And that's just a foundation. And then from there, I build out, and I start to get a little bit more variance in my exercises, a little bit more variance in my set rep, tempo rest, and intensity schemes. I get a lot of different aspects built into it. But the willingness to change starts from what do I want to accomplish for the time that I have, what time do I have, and then what exercises facilitate that most linearly, right? And not all exercises are created equal in terms of program design, right? So like we said, with conjugate, you're going to be heavily influenced by squat bench deadlift. If you're weightlifting, you're going to be heavily influenced by snatch clean and jerk. And if you are a track and field influence, you're going to be heavily influenced by linear sprints. And then you start to reverse engineer everything based off of that, and that becomes where it becomes the center of the universe, and everything revolves around it, which is fine until it's not. That if I'm at a Power 5 school with unlimited resources, time, budget, et cetera, and I can pick when they want, I can pick anything that I want to do based off, I can buy any piece of equipment, right? Like if I'm at a Power 5 school with a million dollar annual budget from sports nutrition and performance tools, like you best believe I'm getting 10 tanks, 10 run rockets, 10, 10 ADPs. I'm doing anything I can to help get an edge to facilitate my program, but none of us are working in that situation or have that control. There's under a hundred, I would say there's probably 50 people in the world who have that freedom. And it's not as free as you think. They're kissing some rings and they're getting what they, I've been there, I know what it's like. They have to go through some hoops to get what it ever is. They're not playing with their own money, not all write-offs. So from the context of what's going to happen, if you have a very strong belief or bias or agenda, your programming gets influenced in that way. And that could really restrict you if you were in a situation where you really couldn't do that program at a high level, like if you're half a mile away from the field or you can only see him twice a week in season, or you don't have the tools or the space or the staff, right? You're at a power five school with five coaches and 10 interns. Then you go to a FCS or non-power five school and then you're hit with, it's me, 125 guys. I have five racks and I can only go at this time on these days. How the hell am I going to do this? You're not going to do what you did previously did. We see it all the time at Springfield College when I was a GA there. Everyone comes back from the summer, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, seeing the world's best training, coming back and saying, damn, we're going to do this because this is the way it should be. We don't have the staff, we don't have the horses, we definitely don't have the equipment or the time. It's a vision through football, so how do we get as close as possible to that without compromising or sacrificing or putting it at the expense of the athlete's experience because simply we just don't have the bandwidth or the resources or the time or the actual physical ability to do some of this programming. That's where it comes down to. Obviously, trial and error and learning and growing, but if we have a true north, I mean an absolute true north of I just want them to get them to run faster and not get hurt or I want them big as hell and I think it's okay to prioritize certain things at certain times and change. I mean, I think everyone will say, okay, definitively, like if I was going to pull the entire Division I sports across the board, everyone's going to say, okay, injury reduction speed. That seems to be the most logical, intuitive thing, right, and then you get offensive line that's averaging 240 pounds and you go, okay, well, I don't care if I'm running, getting all my offensive line, I'm going to run a 4.640. We're going to get destroyed against three techniques and D lines that are 340 across the board. We don't have that luxury. We have to get bigger. That's our priority and that matters and there's a different programming, right? I remember the first time I programmed barbell curls and tricep pushdowns and an actual training card was with offensive line at Army West Point where average offensive line was 237 when I got there. The reality is, it was like, wow, this is, it feels unnatural, but I had to get out past myself, right? Because we are, here's the thing that really sucks about college football is you have very small windows to get people really big if they need to get bigger and man, it crushes kids, crushes their digestive system, it crushes their physiology, crushes their everything. You can see where it really comes out of their confidence. They back up with self-deprecating humor and they start to really embrace this like, now morbidly obese, I'm constantly fatigued and tired, I don't feel good, I don't like the way I feel, but I want to help the team and have a better chance of monetizing the sport if I'm at a certain weight. No one ever said it was the best thing for their health. No one ever said it was the best thing for their psychological happiness. So as you're starting to change body masses, there's a model out there that you can leverage and understand in terms of bodybuilding for symmetry and proportions that facilitate growth in less than running fast, jumping higher, or reducing injury areas like the upper arm. I mean, we're seeing this renaissance in these isolation exercises between forearm work or lower leg work. I mean, I've been doing this for 20 years now and I can't tell you since the late 90s as much love and fascination with table anterior raises. It's great. It's a good exercise. It's fine. But it's not the panacea. The pendulum will swing back, but it's good because it addresses an underserved, underdeveloped area that we really need to appreciate. And that is a symbol of willingness to grow and evolve with programming to facilitate a better experience and better outcome. If you have just diehard performance coaches that just look at it from how heavy, how fast, how long, and quantify everything and try to get the super cerebral approach from exercise selection and exercise execution into, yeah, we're going to do some curls, we're going to do some pushdowns, we're going to do some calf raises, it's a paradigm shift for a lot of folks. But it's a good shift. It means that we're evolving and growing. I don't claim to have everything figured out, but I would say this, is I am very willing to evolve and change. And there's probably no one better in the history of our profession than Mike Boyle. And that can go easily the other way of being so open to change. You never really have a clear identity and there's a continuum there, right? There's the never change rigid archetype. There is the constant change because they have no real foundation or backbone or philosophy. And then there's the change based off necessity, or I call it the Darwinian method of coaching. So you're just evolving constantly. You find something better, you figure out how to implement it, you have your foundation or your base principles, and you adjust. And hopefully that we're all striving to be more like that. And who gives a shit about the haters and back squat? It doesn't matter. No one exercise determines the true value of a coach. In fact, the ones that do overvalue one exercise over another are probably the ones you should avoid. Same thing across the board. Just myopically focusing on singular aspects of a program like one exercise is extremely limiting. That's why I don't love the question of don't ask me about what my three favorite exercises are. I will never answer that. I will call you out if you ask me about that at a conference. I've kicked staff members out when they ask that question to interviewees. I don't want to be associated with that mindset. I don't want to be associated with that philosophy or that approach of saying, distill down training into three things, and I want to know if I agree with you. It's not critical thinking. I know that. That's not being aware and conscious of your surroundings. It's not saying, hey, what's in front of me is a person that needs to do something, and I need to prioritize what that is. Now, I apologize if you got to this and you're like, I'm just going to start spitting out a bunch of programs and all that. To be honest, too, I got a lot of that out there. If you go to the strength deficit landing page, you can see all the programs that I have for strength deficit. I've not withheld any of that. But sometimes people are like, oh, that's it. All I see here is four exercises and a workout, and that's a part that most people are blown away by me. It's like, once I know what I need to do, I don't mess around. If you're going to tell me one exercise, and I know that probably seems contrarian to what I just said, has more value in a certain situation than others, I think you need to focus on that. The difference between me and that other person is I'm open to change on that. I will change that in a heartbeat. Areas like bounding, or hang Olympic lifts, or complexes, or weight release hooks, or bamboo, or flywheel, or inertial-based stuff, or different strongmen, or just traditional squat patterns, and deadlift patterns, and pushing and pulling patterns, and working triplanar movement, and working different implements, like maces, clubs, med balls, and kettlebells. All these things in my mind, I'm like, once I realize, wow, that exercise actually has a lot more value, and it's always a cluster of exercises, I'm going to do that until we get what we want, until they're running faster, jumping higher, throwing something further, and just resilient as hell. That's my programming philosophy. Find out what they need, and then do it until you get what you want. Difference is, I've got a lot of confidence in myself, because I've been doing this for 20 years, and I've been fortunate. I've been really fortunate, and I don't think this is luck, but I've been really fortunate that I've had really high-level programming responsibility for a long time. I've been programming for Division I football and professional athletes now for 15 years. I mean, that's a pretty extensive background in programming, and I was never afraid to take risks. I had some really good mentors and really good facilitators that allowed me to program, but also, too, gave me some really good, direct, and honest, and fair appraisal and feedback of, don't get too nuanced, because you can't implement it. It's not really going to be effective. There's a balance. There's a good and bad, or a diminishing returns aspect from excessive nuance of the program, because one of the things that most people really never appreciate when they're programming, it's not just you implementing. Quite frankly, you probably couldn't even implement it to that level that you think you could anyway. There's a diminishing appreciation for, okay, there's got to be enough, enough nuance and enough specific vector-oriented things that is going to facilitate the outcome in a most linear fashion, but not at the expense of the ability to apply it or practically understand it. We'll pause there. We'll get going on practical here next week. Look through this module, because I'm telling you right now, this one is going to be probably one you're going to be surprised on. It's split. It's frequency, but truth is, it really just comes down to what do you need to do, what exercises facilitate that, and then what sets rep, tempo, rest, and intensity are going to be the best and most linear path to optimizing those exercises and that split. All right. Pause there. Hope you guys are digging this, and yeah, check out practical next week.