Most athletes train their muscles. The smart ones train their nervous system. If you want to move faster, lift heavier, and feel more explosive than ever, it’s time to go beyond brute strength. Nervous system training targets the real source of athletic power—your brain’s ability to fire muscles efficiently and at high speed. Here’s how to tap into it.

Tap Into Your Inner Giant

Consider the following: pound for pound apes have double the strength of a human being.

They can also jump about 30-40% higher than top human jumpers, in addition to their superhuman leg power.

How is this possible given their similar amount of muscle mass?

Aside from longer, denser fibers, our simian friends also have an interesting piece of their brain and spinal cord that allows them stronger muscle contractions: less grey matter.

Having less grey matter (responsible for better motor control in humans, such as the ability to paint a painting or play guitar) allows apes to direct extremely powerful neural signals to their muscles, and thus allows their strength to be expressed.

What this anecdote goes to show is that a muscle is only as powerful as the signal sent to it from the brain.

This means that we are only as powerful as our brains allow us to be.

This goes, not only for squat 1-rep maxes, but also feats of muscular endurance.

In running a race such as a 400m dash, the brain has to organize which muscle fibers will contract, drop out, and contract again through the course of the race to achieve the greatest performance. There is a particular organization of muscle contraction that will allow for the highest performance in a specific event.

Aside from being a cool fact, this is also a really big reason why training endurance in one mode (say using squats, or the Olympic lifts for endurance training) doesn’t transfer that well to the endurance in things like swimming a 200m freestyle, or running a 400m dash.

The nervous system has its own distinct program for each type of muscle endurance feat.

The central nervous system can create high-powered, and yet skillful movements in athletes, but it will only do so as long as it considers the movement safe. When the brain senses damage, or injury may occur to the body, it will down-regulate power to the muscle. What things will shut down the rapid wiring of power to muscles?

• Instability
• Lack of high intensity contractions in training
• Weak mentality to training and adaptation

Let’s discuss these in more detail.

Train These to Mazimize Your Athletic Power

Unstable Joints

Instability in joints due to lack of proper muscle firing patterns is a red flag for the nervous system to produce force. Why would the body send full power to any joint when that joint is unstable?

This is a guaranteed recipe for injury, and the body will never allow it. Common areas for instability are the spine, and (especially for many athletes who do a lot of weightlifting) the feet. Instability of the spine will hurt things like lifting and throwing, and instability of the feet will hurt jumping and sprinting.

Explosive Movements

Lack of overloading high intensity muscle contractions makes it difficult for the body to “learn” how to produce massive forces. The only way to get fast and powerful is to specifically, and maximally practice those movements you wish to be better in.

By doing tons of excess conditioning, featuring less forceful strength and power movements, you’ll find it difficult to create power when you truly need it. If you are looking to lift heavy weights, at some point you must subject yourself to either very heavy, or very fast loads, and preferably a combination of both (more on this in a bit).

When it comes to specific movements, such as learning to sprint faster, it is really important to train at full speed frequently, and to do so in a manner that forces the body to come up with a new brain pattern, such as overspeed or “plyosoidal” training (again, more on this in a bit).

Your Brain

A weak mentality to training is an issue that could take volumes of books to properly describe, but let’s try and keep it as simple as possible.

People’s beliefs and attitudes towards things like training, competition, and life in general filter into each and every training repetition and exercise that they perform.

An athlete who has the mentality that “they are a failure”, or “they really aren’t that strong”, or “they won’t be able to accomplish their goals”, has already made this true in their mind, and their nervous system will gladly grant them their wish by down-regulating power to the muscles.

With all that said, we’ll get into four quick main points that will help you get more out of your nervous system:

1. Be sure to train specifically to your movement needs
2. Do more high velocity, reflexive training
3. Connect the body so the CNS can wire more power
4. Train your subconscious mind

Nervous System Training #1: Train Specific Overload in your Movement Needs

A whole book (or several) could be written about the idea of overloading the specific movements you are trying to improve in, but here is the key idea: The brain will generally wire movements towards efficiency rather than proficiency if allowed to do so.

What this means is that if the brain has to pick between power or endurance, it’ll pick endurance. By failing to perform enough specific, high velocity movement, athletes will never break the plateau that is holding them back. How do we break through the plateau? Simple, we need to train specifically more often, and then overload that specificity.

Here are some examples of some common movements athletes wish to improve, and their respective specific overloads:

• Sprinting: Overload with overspeed or “plyosoidal” sprinting
• Vertical Jump: Overload with depth jumps
• Barbell Squat: Overload with supramaximal repetitions
• Throwing: Overload with a lighter throwing implement (5-20% lighter)

Nervous System Training #2: Do More High Velocity Training

Piggybacking off of point #1, in order to improve the power and efficiency of the nervous system, you must train with very high velocity contractions.

Here is a quick quiz: what sporting movement recruits more muscle motor units? A vertical jump, or a 1-rep max barbell squat?

The answer is, by a wide margin, a vertical jump. The biggest difference between the two is that the jump has a higher peak contraction, and the squat sustains a lower level contraction over a longer period of time.

Simply put, the movements that create the highest recruitment of muscle motor units are those of a high velocity nature.

In order to hit bigger lifts, and get more athletic in the process, high velocity barbell training is an important concept.

Many lifters have ingrained in themselves a “speed limit” due to the high amount of slower, grinding lifts they perform. In order to break this, a time period focused around high velocity lifting is generally recommended.

Try moving lightning fast on every weight room repetition for several months, and see the results, not only in your lifting, but also your athletic performance.

Below is an example of a lift I’ll commonly use with athletes to improve their squat strength, acceleration, and vertical jump in a short time frame.

A final note here; it has often been said that the most impressive squats actually come from Olympic lifters (no belt or wraps, high bar squats). Remember that Olympic lifters are constantly catching barbells at high speed in the bottom of their squat position.

Powerlifters will perform high speed work in the form of dynamic effort, but the impulse and magnitude of this type of work isn’t as high as catching a few hundred pounds in the bucket a thousand times per month.

Nervous System Training #3: Connect Your Body with Primal Movement

“You can’t fire a cannon out of a canoe” is a very popular mantra for those coaches who propose better training of “the core”. Unfortunately, much of “the core” training out there is really watered down, and too low intensity to accomplish much in terms of building a better spinal support structure.

The best exercises to do to get more connected are of the crawling, crouching, carrying and gymnastic realm. You can read about how my friend Roger Nelson uses circuits featuring these movements to dramatically improve the lifting strength and athletic output of his clients here.

There have been strong case studies of powerlifters adding 20-30lbs on their deadlift in a short time period from spending 10 minutes of slow cross-crawls each day to connect their trunk and spine.

Bottom line, be a capable athlete through your trunk to allow your nervous system to wire maximal power to muscles.

Nervous System Training #4: Train Your Subconscious Mind

The first three ideas on training the nervous system were nice, practical ideas, but this last concept has more power in improving results than the others combined.

This final area to improve the contribution of the nervous system to human performance is found in the subconscious mind.

Improving power output is not just a physical training venture, but also a mental one. When most people think of the mental side of things like lifting weights, they usually picture someone sniffing ammonia caps and banging their head into the wall.

In reality, there are four big ways that the mind can directly influence improvement in performance:

1. Encouragement
2. Motivation/Inspiration
3. Positive Self-Talk (Psychic Driving)
4. Hypnosis
5. Visualization

This article will be a bit too long if we cover these in depth, but I’ll summarize this all with a quick drill for you to try at home.

Perform a standing vertical jump, and record your best mark.

Now, before you try the second time, yell as loud as you can “I am the greatest!!!”, and immediately after, perform a second jump (Hint, this only works well with athletes who take it seriously, I’ve learned from experience).

Did you jump higher? A lot higher? Maybe you even set an all-time best? OK! Now you know that on any day, your body has more (sometimes much more) to give in a particular movement.

This is just the tip of the iceberg, and a multi-lateral mental training program can make all the difference in wiring more power to your muscles, electrifying your athletic performance.

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Have you ever wanted to train like an Olympic weightlifter? In this article, Coach Mike Dewar shares a basic template for beginner and intermediate athletes on how to build an Olympic weightlifting program.

This is THE best free guide to Olympic weighlifting available, so whether you’re looking for a sample program or just a new strength program to try, save this post and keep it handy as you start your training!

How To Build An Olympic Weightlifting Program

One of the great things about being a coach is the ability to impact the lives of your athletes and clients.

After the initial meet and greet with a new athlete, you are often bombarded with questions like:

– How does your system work?
– Is it OK for beginners?
– What are some things a beginner needs to do to get started?

In this article, I wanted to share a basic “free template” on how to build an olympic weightlifting program geared toward the beginner and intermediate athlete looking to become more fluent in the lifts, gain strength, and set a strong foundation for years to come.

Who Are the Beginners In Weightlifting?

When meeting a new athlete, I find it best to assume that they are a beginner, and go from there. Often, this is the case with most individuals, despite having some experience performing power cleans or snatches in sports training or other fitness classes.

There are instances where someone will let you know their history with olympic weightlifting, and they may fall outside the “beginner” constructs, which I have loosely listed below.

In the event that you have someone who is past the beginner stages, I have also found that the below plan is still effective and can be used to set the outline for their training.

Beginner athletes are often anyone with less than 6 months of formalized Olympic weightlifting programming.

This may include individuals who transition from sports training or CrossFit. It’s important to recognize that a basic understanding of the movements and basic athleticism, while necessary, may not allow someone to surpass this beginner phase.

Too often coaches assume since an athlete is strong (squats heavy, can press a lot, and moves well) that he/she can begin training in a more rigorous cycle.

Be careful not to make this mistake. I find it best to include these athletes, and everyone else with under 6 months of formal lifting experience, in the beginner bin.

As athletes train more you will be able to quickly progress lifters based on performance.

Defining Olympic Weightlifting Classes

Another way to classify lifters (which I like to combine with the above loose guidelines) is to compare them with the standards found in “Weightlifting Programming: A Winning Coach’s Guide” by USA Weightlifting coach and author, Bob Takano.

Classifying athletes based on their abilities (in this case their snatch and clean and jerk total) allows you to look at the athlete from a 100% sport-specific lens.

For example, if you had a novice weightlifter come to you with a 400lb squat, but could only snatch 135 lbs, you would have to quickly assume their technique, mobility, and Olympic weightlifting experience is not correlated with their strength.

By using the below guidelines, you can take a more sport-specific approach to classifying athletes specific to the sport of Olympic weightlifting. In these charts, you will find the exact classification system used to rank and access an athlete based on performance.

For the nature of this article, we will only be concerned with athletes who fall within the Class 3 and 2 (III and II). Note that Class 3 is the lower level athlete. As an athlete progresses, they will move down the list.

Class III

NOVICE (This classification of lifters includes anyone with a total – snatch + clean and jerk – equal to or below the standards in the table below.)

CLASS II

NOVICE – INTERMEDIATE (This classification of lifter is still considered a beginner, but will have some basic understanding of the movements, some skill and technique, and basic strength. Often, beginner athletes lack speed and timing, and therefore, should still fall within a “beginner” classification.)

CLASS I

Candidate for Master of Sport Training (CMS)
Master of Sport Training (MS)
International Master of Sport Training (IMS)

The 8 Goals Of An Olympic Weightlifting Program

In this section we will discuss the primary goals of the beginner Olympic weightlifting program, which should help coaches understand the long-term approach that should occur when working with a beginner lifter.

In this section we will discuss the primary goals of the beginner Olympic weightlifting program, which should help coaches understand the long-term approach that should occur when working with a beginner lifter.

1. GENERAL PHYSICAL PREPAREDNESS (GPP)

Building a basic level of fitness is key for long-term growth and injury prevention.

Adding some basic plyometrics, strength, and corrective/accessory exercises within each session can really help to diversify a beginner athlete’s movement and health.

2. MOBILITY AND FLEXIBILITY

Addressing any mobility and flexibility issues is key when starting out.

While many beginners may lack control and basic flexibility in some positions, most of them can actually increase mobility by simply doing the movement. With that said, if there are structural blocks in movement, such as bone on bone or scar tissue, more advanced care should be given.

Be sure to team up with a qualified sports physical therapist and doctor to best diagnose and assess new athletes.

3. TECHNIQUE AND TIMING OF THE LIFTS

The need for proper timing and technique is paramount during this stage. Many lifters will want to lift heavier than they should (and some coaches are too eager as well).

Skill development is key in this phase, so learn heavier lifts – the squats, presses, and deadlifts (which should still be done with great form to best transition to the Olympic lifts).

4. MUSCLE HYPERTROPHY

Building more muscle tissue is so important during this phase (and throughout an athlete’s lifting career) to give them the raw material they need to become more powerful and stronger.

Without proper muscle hypertrophy training, many athletes will lack long-term growth in strength and performance.

5. NEURAL ADAPTATIONS

Weightlifting is a very neurologically challenging sport, in which the new lifter must become adapted to moving with high motor control under high amounts of loading during velocity-based movements.

The need for speed and strength, while moving in very precise patterning, requires a beginner athlete to develop better neurological connections and impulses throughout their careers as weightlifters.

6. BUILD A BROAD EXERCISE AND SKILL TOOLBOX

While you do not want to overwhelm the lifter with a million exercise variations, you do want to expose them to a good amount of exercises so they can build out their movement patterning, coordination, and understanding of the lifts.

This can be done by adding more training days (as long as you drop the overall volume across the week…see below video and sections), adding complexes, or simply having a more long-term beginner phase timeline.

7. DEVELOP WORK CAPACITY

Work capacity, or conditioning, is a term that describes an athlete’s ability (cardiovascular and muscle endurance) to train with increasing amounts of load and volume without diminished quality of work and excess fatigue. Some beginners will be better at this than others.

By increasing training volume, moderating rest periods, and adding in accessory and fitness movements, you can work to increase their basic fitness so they can participate and progress in more rigorous training cycles.

8. POSITIVE TRAINING OUTLOOK / ENJOYMENT

The coach must understand that most beginners that come to you are also looking to participate in weightlifting for the mental and fitness benefits.

Making sure to monitor fatigue, building a strong relationship, and staying positive (even when your athletes are beat) is key to helping beginners transition into long-term lifters.

Example 4 Week Olympic Weightlifting Program

The easiest way to start this conversation is to first lay out a sample program for beginners that focuses on the most important training outcomes discussed above.

In the below video I demonstrate how quick and easy it is to use software like TrainHeroic to create, share, store, and sell online training programs for your athletes, clubs, and team.

Below is the complete first week of a sample 4-week program, which is walked through in the above video.

Note that this is geared for entry level lifters who still have some basic understanding of body movement and mobility.

Simple progressions from week to week can be made by increasing intensities by 2-3% each week, or simply allowing lifters to master a given load week after week (for the first 3-4 week cycle).

DAY 1

• Squat Jump 3×8 at 20% squat RM
• Block Power Snatch 5×3
• BTN Snatch Push Press 3×5
• Squat 3×5 at 70% squat RM
• Strict Pull Up 4×8
• Seated Overhead Press 4×8

DAY 2

• Box Jump 3×8
• Muscle Clean 5×3
• Power Jerk 3×5
• Block Snatch Pull 3×5
• Belt Squat 3×12
• Single Leg RDL 3×12

DAY 3

• Split Squat Jumps 3×5/leg (10 total)
• Snatch High Pull + Muscle Snatch + Overhead Squat 5×2+2+1
• Drop Snatch 3×5
• Front Squat 3×5
• Single Arm Dumbbell Row 4×8
• Dips / Push Ups 4×8

DAY 4

• Box Jump 3×8
• Block Power Clean 5×3
• Push Press 3×5
• Clean Deadlift 3×5
• Walking Lunge 3×20 steps
• Waiters Carry 3×20 steps

5 Key Variables In Olympic Weightlifting

Below are some of the key ones coaches should monitor and manipulate, with recommendations on how to specifically do so for beginner Olympic weightlifters.

FREQUENCY

Frequency simply refers to the amount of training sessions in a given week.

While elite athletes are often seen doing 8-10 training sessions per week (often as two-a-day sessions), most beginners will not need, nor should participate in programs like this. Rather, shooting for 3-5 training sessions per week is most likely the ideal frequency to allow for skill development, strength and muscle mass acquisition, and adequate recovery.

By adding in active recovery days or rest days, you help an athlete also learn about the keys of rest, sleep, stretching, and nutrition, which are extremely critical once they become more advanced in the sport (CMS and higher).

INTENSITY

Intensity refers to the amount of loading (weights used) relative to an athlete’s maximum (1RM).

In beginners, you may not necessarily have a good grasp on their taxes (especially in more skill-based movements like the snatch and jerk) and therefore may need to use other methods for assessing exertion, such as your level of coaching experience, subjective rating systems (RPE, Rate of Perceived Exertion), or simply playing it safe.

In beginner stages the focus should not be on moving heavy weights slowly, even for strength work, but rather moving with integrity, positional awareness, and control.

For the skilled movement like snatch, clean, and jerk, it is vital that lifters develop a sense of timing and precision with the barbell at increasingly faster velocities.

Be sure to watch lifters who add loads to the barbell and have a chronic issue of slow barbell accelerations. This could be a sign that they are not developing the power tendencies or skill necessary for intermediate and advanced stages.

If this is the case, simply drop the load to a weight in which they can do satisfactory lifts, and work there for however long it takes to be consistent.

VOLUME

Training volume can simply be described as the total amount of loading across the entire session, week, and cycle.

This is often roughly calculated by multiplying the amount of sets and repetitions together, sometimes reflected into a “k-value,” which was introduced in American weightlifting by Carl Miller in 1974. Many weightlifting manuals have given recommendations on how to use this value. You can read more about how to calculate and use the k-value in Bob Takano’s article published in the National Strength and Conditioning Association Journal.

With that said, using “k-values” has its limitations (it’s time consuming, can be hard to use with beginners, and was established in Bulgarian systems where other performance variables also may have influenced recovery, training, etc., like large homogeneous gene pool to choose from, performance training centres for all athletes, performance enhancing drugs, etc).

Therefore, I find it best to follow general guidelines in the beginning phases similar to most progressive overloading models that increase volume at constant intensities, then drop volume to allow for increased intensities over time, followed by a short-term drop in volume and intensity to allow for supercompensation prior to a new cycle.

The key to remember is that most athletes in the beginning stages will not have too many issues recovering (compared to the more advanced athlete).

Due to the total training loads and weights lifted by more advanced athletes, the neurological and physiological stimuli (even though they are more trained) can make fatigue much longer, making proper balancing of volume and intensity critical as a lifter progresses.

EXERCISE SELECTION

Exercise selection is key for beginner athletes so they can establish proper technique/movement skill and develop a wide skill set for years to come.

Depending on the school of thought, coaches often opt to teach the lift from the top down (blocks, hangs, powers, the full lifts, etc.) or from the bottom up (pulls, high pulls, muscles, powers, fulls, etc.).

Regardless, coaches must find what method works best for their philosophy and athletes and stick to a key set of movements that are the foundation for more advanced training.

As a lifter progresses, many of these variations and foundational movements are slowly removed so that the lifter snatches, cleans, jerks, power snatches/cleans, and presses on an almost regular basis (this is specific to CMS and above levels).

EXERCISE ORDER

Generally speaking, more skill- and power-based movements are placed earlier in a training session to allow an athlete to recruit muscle units in the least fatigued start as possible.

After skill and power work (including plyometrics), strength and accessory can then be performed. This will help to ensure proper form, technique, and neurological function since peak power output is the key.

With that said, in more advanced athletes (CMS and above) you will often see squats and heavy strength work done prior to the Olympic lifts, those helping the nerves improve stimulation of individual motor units.

30 Olympic Weightlifting Exercises For Beginners

Below is a list of the main movements that should be included into most beginner Olympic weightlifting programs. (Developed by Bob Takano, and can be found in his book, “Weightlifting Programming: A Winning Coach’s Guide”

• Snatch
• Clean & Jerk
• Clean
• Jerk Off Rack
• Hang Snatch (from off the floor, below the knee, above the knee)
• Hang Clean (from off the floor, below the knee, above the knee)
• Power Snatch
• Power Clean
• Power Jerk (Snatch and Clean grip, in front of and back of the neck)
• Snatch Pull (or Extension)
• Clean Pull (or Extension)
• Back Squat
• Front Squat
• Romanian Deadlift
• Snatch Deadlift
• Clean Deadlift
• Overhead Squat
• Good Morning
• Presses (Jerk and Snatch Grips, in front of and back of the neck)
• Push Press (Jerk and Snatch Grips, in front of and back of the neck)
• Bench Press
• Seated Press
• Squat Snatch Press
• Jerk Balance
• Jerk Recovery
• Jerk Lockout
• Jerk Support
• Abdominal Work
• Hyperextensions
• Pull-ups

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We all want that golden ticket. The one-size-fits-all exercise and perfect program. You know – the one that makes us look like the Hulk as long as we follow that program to the T.

Well folks, that all sounds great. But in reality, we know there is no one-size-fits-all exercise, program, food, or supplement… PERIOD.

However, I have a secret weapon exercise that will get us really close; it has a lot of bang for its buck. It builds massive quads, big glutes, a wide back, and some awesome biceps. Exactly what every athlete needs.

Meet the Zercher Squat

What an exercise! It almost sounds mythical. I would say that outside of most strength and conditioning coaches and the athletes we implemented it with, very few people have heard of a Zercher Squat or know what is.

The Zercher Squat is a heck of an exercise: you hold a barbell in the crease of your arms and squat up and down. What makes it so great? This movement has a lot of details hidden in it for athletes to make major gains:

1. Tension: It creates and teaches you to generate a lot of tension throughout your body. We need to learn how to brace and squeeze. Due to the bar’s placement, we subconsciously, or naturally, must contract all the right places.

2. Toughness/Grit: I’m not going to lie – this movement doesn’t always feel great. Many athletes may need to wrap some form of padding around the bar for a while. That’s just the cost of admission though. The mental fortitude you need to perform the exercise will pay off.

3. Safety: It is very hard to load this exercise to the point of increasing an athlete’s risk of injury. Also, if the athlete gets in trouble, they can just bail by dumping the bar out in front of them. No spotters needed.

4. Mobility: We struggle with many lifting movements due to not being mobile enough to access the correct positions. The Zercher doesn’t require much mobility, and mimics natural movement, making it a good fit for the majority of the athletic population.

Any drawbacks? It can be awkward, but it’s well worth it.

How to Perform a Zercher Squat

1. Set the rack up just below your elbow

2. Put the bar in the crease of your elbows and keep them tight to your sides

4. Squeeze your hands together or have palms facing the ceiling

5. Get your hips under the bar, grab a big belly breath and stand it up from the rack

6. Take a couple steps back, settle the bar, and grab more air if you can to brace

7. Squat down until your elbows touch your thighs or fall in between

8. Stand up. Repeat and get massively athletic.

No Rack? No problem. You can perform a Zercher deadlift with the bar resting on the floor. You can also do a conventional deadlift it, then let the bar rest on your knees, scoop it up at the elbow crease, and go right into your squats. Don’t forget to try Zercher carries for some serious core work.

Zercher Squat From Rack

Deadlift to Zercher Squat

Zercher Deadlift to Zercher Squat

When to Program the Zercher Squat

Add Zerchers as an alternative to any of your current main squat movements. They’re relatively interchangeable for volume and intensity as well. Try changing your program’s back squat to Zercher squats for the next block and see what kind of weight you can handle.

Train strong!

– Ryan

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Previously in this Performance Psychology 2.0 series, we explored the applied training of self-awareness (deeply understanding what your own default coaching tendencies happen to be, especially when triggered by pressure). Additionally, in Part 2, we explored the applied training of self-regulation (the ability to adapt your behavior due to context-specificity, intended outcomes, and the interplay between the two). Put simply, self-awareness gives us insight, while self-regulation helps us to take appropriate action. In this third post in the series, we’re advancing to the final stage of our logical progression in performance psychology: self-reflection. This topic might conjure an image of Auguste Rodin’s statue The Thinker which is probably the most famous artistic manifestation of the concept. It also brings to mind the Latin phrase cogito, ergo sum, which René Descartes proposed in his book Discourse on the Method and is commonly translated as “I think, therefore I am.” 

Yet self-reflection doesn’t just apply to French sculptors or philosophers – it’s also a powerful tool for coaches, athletes, and anyone looking to improve their performance. Before we begin to look at how to apply self-reflection alongside the concepts previously discussed in this series, let’s first define it.

Self-reflection is the filtering process through which you make meaning out of what has occurred by assessing, evaluating, interpreting, and then eventually organizing your thoughts and feelings in an integrative way.

Like breathing, self-reflection is happening all the time unconsciously. Our brains are wired to assign causality to make sense out of what you experience as a means of influencing your future behavior. However, it’s by bringing a higher degree of consciousness and intentionality to how we derive meaning from our experiences that we can increase the probability that we will have significant performance improvements. In As a Man Thinketh, James Allen says it best: “You will be what you WILL to be.” A self-reflection practice helps you to act with more agency. 

Carol Dweck’s work on mindset, specifically whether you have a fixed or growth-oriented one, can prove useful in framing any discussion on self-reflection. First, let’s be clear about what mindset is referring to: It’s a combination of what one believes, how one focuses on tasks, and how one attributes traits and causes to what one experiences. We’re going to concentrate primarily on the latter. At its essence, attribution is the filtering process of what has occurred. But while it does consider the past, attribution also looks to the future because how we think about a particular event, its outcomes, and what these circumstances say about ourselves has more impact on the next occurrence than we might assume.

How you make meaning out of what has occurred is going to influence your beliefs and your focus during the next iteration of an experience.

A growth mindset has more of a mastery orientation than a fixed mindset, and is more concerned about the long-term process than individual results along the way. Someone who is dedicated to the pursuit of mastery views each event as merely a blip in time, rather than the reflection of an infinite reality. In contrast, the fixed mindset can be thought of as more of an outcome or ego orientation, where it’s not about the journey as much as each event’s tangible results. Someone who has a mastery orientation would likely be pleased about their effort in spite of an undesirable outcome, whereas the person with an ego orientation would probably catastrophize a loss and view it as a negative referendum on their character and/or skill level. 

The former filters mistakes as opportunities to do better the next time and improve in the meantime,  while the latter tries to gloss over or ignore any flaws that came to light. Because they’re unwilling to draw attention to their deficiencies, they’re less likely to take risks that might reveal their shortcomings again during subsequent experiences, and they also don’t take the opportunity to improve their skillset. Meanwhile, the person pursuing mastery will not have such fears, will continue to take risks, and will resolve to relentlessly minimize their limiting factors by becoming more skilled and/or extending their work capacity.

// Problem or Opportunity?

When you have a growth mindset, you consider setbacks as potential wake-up calls, sources of more information, and motivators. If you look at an objectively negative or less than ideal result as a way to gain greater feedback about your craft, then it leads right into self-efficacy, which we covered in the post on self-regulation. However, when you have a fixed mindset, you look at that same setback as a label. In this case, in every situation you’re desperately seeking reassurance about your character, skill level, and capability. And when the result isn’t what you’ve hoped for, it’s a threat, a defeat, or an indication that you’re unworthy. This is much different to the person with a growth mindset, who considers the event to be a worthy challenge and vows to be better prepared the next time. 

Think about the aftermath of a tough training session that leaves you huffing and puffing. Do you despair, curse your lack of conditioning, and question whether the effort was worth it? Or do you recognize that while it was a hard workout, it gave you the opportunity to test yourself and showed that you need further work on your cardiovascular fitness? If you’re a coach, do you avoid seeking out such positives and get defensive every time someone offers constructive criticism? Or are you open to your players, your athletes, and fellow coaches giving you feedback on your performance, and then go away and work on your weaknesses? Both are simple but telling examples that illustrate the difference in outlook between fixed and growth mindsets.

// Stability and Instability

Bernard Weiner was one of the pioneers of Attributional Theory. One of his key concepts involved stable and unstable causes for events and how we process these. Here’s a helpful graphical summary:

For our purposes in this article, the difference between a fixed and growth mindset comes into play when making an internally stable or unstable attribution. If someone is constantly seeing things from an internal stable perspective, he or she might always view their performance and potential as fixed. This means they’re unlikely to actively look for ways to improve. On the contrary, someone who has a growth mindset recognizes that results will inevitably fluctuate, acknowledges that competition is inherently chaotic, and tries to find clues for how to build their skillset no matter whether they win or lose. 

There are also two different ways to look at external stability and instability. The person with a growth mindset may identify external stability and recognize the need to work harder or smarter to create positive change. Whereas the individual with a fixed mindset might think that because the external conditions are never going to change, their goal is unachievable. If you’re quick to discount positives and merely believe you just got lucky, then your outlook is fixed. Conversely, if you celebrate your hard work and skill development before getting back to work, then your outlook is indicative of a growth mindset. Similarly, we need to consider how you view potential negatives. Are they an indictment of your character and confirmation that you’ll never be good enough, or merely acceptable bumps in the road that allow you to redouble your efforts? It’s all a matter of perspective. 

If you get to the point of throwing up your hands and saying, “What’s the point in even trying anymore?” it can lead to a feeling of learned helplessness that will inevitably become a self-fulfilling prophecy for your next event. If your mindset is fixed, you’re more likely to blame external factors like the weather, surface conditions, and refereeing decisions. But if you have a growth mindset, you take ownership of your mistakes, consider your effort level and preparations, and use the outcome as fuel to up your game.

// No Use Crying Over Spilled Nails

When evaluating your own attribution or explanatory style (or those of our athletes), context is a crucial component of finding better ways to make meaning from your experiences. This isn’t just a theoretical matter, but has a direct impact on your confidence, the technical aspects of your skillset, and how your beliefs impact your future performances.

In her book Mindset, Carol Dweck gives a great example of causality. Imagine you’re working on a home improvement project and spill a bucket of nails. Would you think, “Gosh, I’m so clumsy/such an idiot” or chuckle to yourself, think, “Oh well,” pick up the nails, and move on? The former is an indicator of a fixed mindset and someone who magnifies their flaws. They’re describing a trait rather than a state. In contrast, the latter demonstrates a growth mindset of a person who considers situations more objectively and responds with the appropriate action. Assigning causality might seem like an instinctive reaction, but it can actually be trained. So if you’re likely to consider yourself a clumsy idiot the next time you make a minor mistake, try to catch yourself, make no self-judgment, and just get on with putting those nails back in the bucket.

The more you’re able to avoid confusing a temporary state for a permanent trait, the more you’ll be able to change a fixed mindset into a growth one.

Locus of Control is another concept related to Attributional Theory that’s worth mentioning. First introduced by psychologist Julian Rotter in the mid-1950s, this concerns how responsive and controllable we view our environment to be. Being able to accurately identify what you can and cannot control is a critical piece of self-reflection. If you have a growth mindset, you’ll probably be better at distinguishing between the two, which will allow you to take ownership of those factors you can impact and not waste mental energy on the factors you can’t. A fixed mindset often confuses controllables and uncontrollables, and so is likely to make errors in attribution that not only distort their impressions of past events, but also negatively impact future ones.

// The Power Of The 3 Ps

So what are you supposed to do if you have trouble objectively assessing what has happened and often let your faulty assumptions set you up for failure? One of the simplest and most useful filters to deploy is the 3 Ps, which comes from Martin Seligman, the father of positive psychology. Consider whether or not you’re considering the outcome of an experience to be:

The 3 Ps explanatory styles can help you more objectively and accurately assess your past experiences, which in turn has a positive knock-on effect. A study conducted by Jordan Peterson and Victor Swift and published in PLOS One investigated the impact of false negative feedback on how participants performed their next task, and they found that undue negativity was directly related to higher levels of anxiety, lower expectations, and poorer achievement. How we reflect impacts how we act through either positive or negative feedback loops.

If you consider permanence, pervasiveness, and personalization through a constructive lens, then a breakdown can actually become a breakthrough – but only if you let it.

There’s an ongoing interaction between our beliefs, and how we assign causality to our experiences that affects our actions and beliefs during the next go-round. It sometimes isn’t enough to merely have a positive outlook and growth mindset from the get-go – we need to work at rigorously protecting these and maintaining a mastery orientation. Say you started out with such a posture and focused on your next competition in a task-centric way. Then, for whatever reason, you didn’t achieve the results you’d hoped for. This will likely shake your beliefs to their core, and prevent you from having a growth mindset going forward. Then you have another poor performance, and reinforce a more negative and fixed mindset, as well as lowering your future expectations of success.

My point here is that every moment of self-reflection matters because it feeds into either positive or negative loops that then self-perpetuate for good or ill.

// Bottom-Up and Top-Down Thinking

Daniel Kahneman is another psychologist whose work is relevant to self-reflection. In his book Thinking, Fast and Slow, he looks at the neuroscience of two different modes and speeds of thinking. The faster, more involuntary, automatic, and impulsive modes occur in the sub-cortical regions of the brain, and can also be referred to as “bottom-up” functions. The slower, more effortful, deliberative, and ruminative modes occur in the cerebral brain regions and can be thought of as “top-down” functions. Bottom-up thinking is vitally important during competition, when stimuli are bombarding you at such a rapid rate that you don’t have time to ponder your reaction. During practice you will have a greater opportunity to consider your response a bit more carefully as you engage in deep learning. 

Self-reflection comes into play here because when you set aside time to think slowly and assign meaning to events, such analysis is less likely to begin when you least want it to – i.e. when you’re in the heat of competition. Bottom-up processing is what’s needed to tap into intuitive flow and the unhindered execution of behavior that is required for peak performance. Yet if you are living most of your life in this way, you can get stuck in a fixed mindset and can be much more pessimistically swayed in an explanatory style of attribution. Your perception is largely based on bottom-up mental models, and if you don’t challenge your immediate assumptions, consider your instinctive reactions and the resulting emotions in depth, and develop more organized ways of understanding how the brain is making meaning, then you really don’t have an entryway to improving performance.

Deliberate self-reflection is the manner in which you improve upon these bottom-up processes and also build a more communicative bridge between the top-down and bottom-up modes of thought, feelings, and, ultimately, behavior. The book Opening Up by Writing It Down by James Pennebaker and Joshua Smyth gives you an easy way to incorporate meaningful self-reflection into your daily routine: journaling. “An efficient way to understand something is to translate it into words,” Pennebaker and Smyth write. “Our constant rumination, which is inevitable, is using up mental resources. The act of disclosure forces a rethinking of events, and it allows us to understand and assimilate that event in a more integrated way.” 

Simply spending five to 10 minutes a day considering events and looking at them with the 3 Ps filter can go a long way to becoming more self-aware and self-regulating your thought life and the actions and habits it drives more effectively.

Also consider experiences in a reflective manner through the questions of what was good, what could have been better, and then (behaviorally), how would I go about making those things better?

Remember, whether you want to or not, you’re reflecting and assigning causality, meaning, and significance to every experience. You can either let it happen in more of a bottom-up way that can be detrimental to your thinking and future performance, or take ownership over it with intentional self-reflection, and use it in your favor.

If a coach is going to have his or her athletes do plyometrics and lifting alongside sprinting, what sequence should these activities go in?

What technique cues do you give to athletes who’ve never had any formal sprint coaching?

When thinking about sprinting we obviously need to consider intensity because of the speed involved, but how important is volume?

What are the warning signs that an athlete is doing too much?

If an athlete does fall short in competition or start lagging consistently during training, how do you rectify the situation?

I’ll often encourage the athlete to get a massage or get in the sauna – not just for the sake of the recovery these activities encourage, but also to distract them and keep them from over-training more. We also look at the sleep component and make sure that’s dialed in, as well as their nutrition. I frequently say in presentations that you need to be your own Swiss Army knife – coach, psychologist, nutritionist, etc.

// Want to Build Strength, Power, and Endurance? Fix Your Feet First.

“The human foot is a masterpiece of engineering and a work of art.”- Leonardo da Vinci

You’ve got to love the quotability of those clever Renaissance artists, haven’t you? Particularly a multi-discipline savant like da Vinci whose exploration of human anatomy was every bit as progressive as his paintings and sculptures. Yet as memorable as his quote about the foot is, when many of us take off our shoes and socks we don’t see a Louvre-worthy piece of art, but rather a sore, gnarly mess that betrays years of hard training and little in the way of self-care. 

Yet to da Vinci’s point, our feet are indeed an engineering marvel, with 26 bones, 33 joints (20 of which are articulated), and over 100 tendons, ligaments, and muscles. To paraphrase the Biblical story, when our feet are strong and supple they’re like the house built on the rock – able to withstand any storm that competition or life can hurl at us. But when they’re weak, stiff, and immobile, they’re more like the house built on sand, liable to betray us when conditions get stormy. 

In learning from Dr. Kelly Starrett, founder of MobilityWOD and my co-author of Waterman 2.0 for several years, I’ve come to appreciate just how vital healthy feet are to athletic performance and living as a fully-functioning human being. And yet how many of us struggle with conditions like plantar fasciitis, stress fractures, hammer toes, bunions, and the rest? Apparently these problems are pervasive, given that Americans will spend $3.5 billion on orthotics each year by 2020 – not to mention much more on visits to podiatrists and, in extreme cases, on foot surgeries. As with many other areas of healthcare in this country, the more we spend and the fancier the gadgets designed to fix us, the worse our issues seem to become. This also extends to the consumer space, with shoe companies hawking air bags, arch supports, stability plates, and other technologies that supposedly help our feet, but actually leave them more coddled and weaker than ever before. 

Fortunately, all is not lost and there are some tried and true ways to fix your feet without forking over wads of bills. Here goes…

Running is one of the most elemental things we can do as athletes or, for that matter, as human beings. But just because the instinct is hard-wired into our DNA, it doesn’t mean that it’s something you can just put into your programming willy-nilly, particularly when it comes to sprinting. This is because it’s a highly skilled activity that, if done incorrectly, can lead to injury and, if combined with too much Olympic lifting or other high-intensity work, contribute to overload and burnout. 

That said, sprint work properly dosed can increase speed and power for every athlete, as well as reducing ground contact time, improving locomotion, and delivering a whole host of other benefits. To find out how to add sprint work to your coaching toolbox, we called in Derek M. Hansen, a Vancouver-based international sports performance consultant who apprenticed under legendary sprint coach Charlie Francis and works with pro athletes and teams in everything from the NBA to the NFL to, logically enough, track and field. In this first of two installments, Derek shares his pointers on technique, identifies common pitfalls to avoid, and offers suggestions on the choice of running surface and shoes.

Outside of simply getting faster, what advantages can sprinting offer non-track athletes?

When I work with NFL, NBA, or MLS teams, I make them think about the times when they have to sprint in their sport to show them how applicable it is. For football players, that might be running to catch a pass or prevent a reception. So what we do on the track obviously transfers directly to their actual performance. We see that their locomotion usually improves, and so does their jumping, elasticity, and running economy. There’s a crossover effect to anything that requires high CNS activity. Sprinting seems to transfer more than other training activities. Often we see coaches focus on trying to get someone’s squat max up, say from 400 to 500 pounds. But while being stronger is beneficial, it can sometimes have drawbacks, like getting stiffer. Whereas with sprinting, unless you’re doing too much, there’s generally positive lateralization. 

Even endurance athletes need speed more than they might imagine. The world’s best marathon runners are getting close to breaking the two hour barrier, which means they’re doing 26 miles around 4:40. So they must be able to run one mile in 3:50, sub-50 seconds in the 400, and even a fast final 100 or 200. So a distance runner adding in some sprint work can feed into other things. And if you have an athlete who needs to strip off a little fat, nobody has ever faulted sprinters for their body composition. Getting them out on the track to run some sprints twice a week can help reduce their body fat.

When a team brings you in to consult, what’s the first thing you do?

I’ve got to sit down with the coaching staff and differentiate between a true sprint and merely running. Often you find athletes going longer or slower and this being called “sprinting,” when it isn’t really. So we need to delineate between sprinting and running, acceleration and deceleration, and so on, so we can all agree on what we’re talking about and use the same language with the athletes. From there, I like to focus on some basic technical elements by doing a series of drills. These focus on arm and leg action and posture. I usually start people sprinting at only 80 or 85 percent, even once they think they’ve got the technique down, because they still need to focus on the technical aspect. This could continue for three or four weeks. Just like in weightlifting, how you wouldn’t load someone up with what you thought was their max from the get-go. Instead, you’d do plenty of technique work first and build a technical model. Then you’d have a progression and begin to add weight when they were ready.

For coaches who don’t come from a track and field background, what are some common mistakes you see, and how do you correct these?

One of the things I see a lot is coaches believing that more resistance is better. So you see them having their athletes push or pull heavy sleds and using parachutes, and that’s their focus. They seem to think if they use a band that’s good, and if they could add in a chute, sled, and weight belt they’d really be onto something. But that can have adverse effects, because with resistance, you’re staying on the ground loading and taking longer for your muscles to contract. You also see athletes starting to alter their posture and biomechanics. Sometimes I’ll add in a little resistance, but only after an athlete has got the basics down and can move their body efficiently. And if we do add some load, it will never exceed five to 10 percent on top of their bodyweight. 

The same is true of hill work. Some coaches assume that the higher the hill or the steeper the gradient, the better. But when I worked with the Minnesota Vikings to help them build a hill, we ended up with a very mild grade because that’s all the players needed to challenge themselves.

Jamaican sprinters seem to do a lot of their sessions on grass. What are your thoughts on that versus
using a track?

Grass is certainly more forgiving on the joints. But with a track, you can work on speeding reaction times and reducing ground contact because you’re maximizing energy return. One NFL team I work with does a lot on artificial turf, and you can feel it dampening your response time. That can make your tendons stiffen up. So it helps to mix things up. Sometimes you can vary the surface as you move through a periodized plan. Jamaican sprint coaches have their sprinters do most of their volume work on grass early on in the season, and then as they move into the competitive calendar, they start doing more on the track. I have a friend – Mike Hurst – who coaches in Australia. He changes up the surface depending on the time of year because the ground can be baked hard.

If you keep switching up the surfaces, you can emphasize certain traits and vary the stimulus of each session. Planned variability is important because the body adapts to the same stimulus very quickly. If you don’t regularly introduce change, you’ll start to detrain. Choice of surface is just one example of doing a gap analysis, which you need to use continually in coaching. What are your athletes getting too much of? What aren’t they getting enough of? How can you eliminate redundancy? I have to frequently ask myself these questions and then alter my programming based on the answers.

What footwear do you typically recommend for sprinting?

When you’re working on mobility after sprinting, what areas do you target?

We do a lot of work around the hips, adductors, and glutes and make sure our athletes are mobile in the lower back. Most restrictions we find on the periphery can usually be traced back to these areas. It’s also a matter of making your strength work dynamic. Isometric holds like planks have a place, but sprinting requires hip and midsection mobility, so you need to introduce range of motion and stability into exercises. Strength and mobility must be interrelated or you’re going to get issues with stiffness, lack of coordination and activation, and so on. Just as with training itself, we try out lots of different stimuli – sending athletes to a PT, massage, static stretches, using rollers, balls, bands, and other tools. It’s best to have variability in your recovery techniques and, as with every other element of coaching, determine what each situation requires.

Check back soon for Part 2.

I recently happened upon a question in another forum where the reader was concerned that learning the technique of the Olympic lifts might cause him to lose all the strength he’d gained in the previous year or so of strength training. I guess this is a reasonable concern, but it does show that this person has not been talking to anyone who’s coached a number of lifters. This, however, brought to mind the topic for this blog post.

It sounds like the community made up of people interested in learning the technique of the Olympic lifts has just been sadly misinformed about learning technique and motor learning in general.

These statements are coming from people who are involved in activities that don’t involve the motor learning of complex, coordinated activities, and are used to dealing with mediocre to poor athletes.

So many coaches in the strength and conditioning, and physical training community have for many years involved in teaching movements that don’t require much athleticism. Furthermore they’ve often taught them to subjects that were not elite level athletes or were not selected for their motor learning aptitudes.

Not surprisingly, these coaches think that teaching and learning the snatch and clean & jerk are daunting tasks, and have exaggerated the amount of time and coaching needed to master them.

My experience has been that teaching the snatch and clean & jerk to high level gymnasts, divers and dancers is a piece of cake. I’ve done it with a couple of these types of athletes in about a half an hour. Now keep in mind that I’m a weightlifting coach, and I’ve developed a set of strategies for coaching the lifts through years of experience, but I’m not teaching anything near the complexities of some of the tricks that high level divers and gymnasts perform on a fairly common basis.

If this is what your proprioception looks like, learning the Olympic Lifts is a cakewalk. The lesson here is that there is no “one size fits all” answer to this question.

After considering the coaching skills of many of the instructors and coaches, the second issue is the motor learning ability of the trainees in question.

People lacking in motor learning skills, and that have never done anything to improve their kinesthesia are going to need a lot of coaching and a long time to learn the lifts, if they can learn them at all. Some of them simply can’t learn to proficiently snatch and clean & jerk, no matter how much time they take and with the best of coaching. I worked with one such person who decided that at 37 years of age and with no prior athletic experience they wanted to learn the olympic lifts.

At the end of two years we were no further along than we were on the first day.

This taught me to cut my losses and at present I’ve gotten pretty good at identifying subjects who will never learn the lifts well enough to use them as efficient training tools. There are simply better modes of training suited to their needs. These tools don’t need to be for everybody.

So to get back to the original proposition of this article. The amount of time that should be devoted to learning the lifts should depend on the fatigability of the nervous system. This should be somewhere around a half hour to 45 minutes for most people, and only then if working with a competent coach. This should leave plenty of time to maintain previously gained strength.

The more frequently these sessions take place, the faster the technique can be learned. Training five days a week for four to six weeks should be enough for a decent athlete to learn proficient technique, and to begin balancing the development of the body to make use of the Olympic lifts as effective training tools or to consider entering a competition and achieving a satisfactory performance.

In conclusion, the snatch and clean & jerk require a certain degree of athletic proficiency. They are best learned by talented athletes, and they are best coached by experienced knowledgeable individuals. The best results will take place when these two factors are brought together.

On the other hand, there are individuals who have watched weightlifters and taught themselves the technique. In the days before there were any coaches in this country, almost all competitive lifters taught themselves the proper technique.

If you are an individual in good health, with some history of athletic participation, and reasonable range of motion at all the relevant joints, you can learn to snatch and clean & jerk proficiently, if you are willing to take the proper steps of remediating technical weaknesses and practicing proper technique under the supervision of a knowledgeable coach.

I hope you find this information helpful. Find out more at www.takanoathletics.com.

Look at this dude…training with percentages!

During the 1980’s there were 2 common thoughts or beliefs when it came to training. The first was that lifting weights over 90% of a person’s 1 rep maximum weight (1RM) was thought to be dangerous. The second was that the greatest training adaptations occurred between 90-100% of that 1RM. Now I know what you’re thinking, these are 2 completely contradictory thoughts/facts. Can they both be right and if they are, how do we set up our training programs today?

Training with Percentages: The History

Well, we were not the only people to question this thinking. A.S. Prilepin, who was the head coach of the USSR weightlifting team from 1980-1985 (arguably the most successful weight lifting coach in USSR history) had those exact same thoughts. The only difference was, he did something about it, and now we benefit from his work.

Prilepin began to study thousands of Soviet sportsmen during this time. He kept training diaries on all of them, and it is through these diaries that he not only validated training at 90%+ of 1RM, but established a foundation for training at different intensities. It is these guidelines, that he developed, that give you the precise sets, reps, and intensities with which to train that have proven to maximize strength gains.

So how did the Russians do it? I’m glad you asked. First, they took a percentage of the 1RM. Then they assigned reps and sets to this percentage and would have a lifter perform the lifts. They looked at what happened to the speed of the bar, the lifter’s form, and the lifter’s next max. From this research, they determined what sets and rep schemes would work with a given percentage.

For instance, if they had a lifter perform 85 percent of his max, they found that if the lifter did 2–4 reps per set, he would get a positive training result. I.E. he had good form, his bar speed was good, and his max went up. This also showed that if they did 1 rep, then the stimulus wasn’t enough to increase power and strength, and that anything over 4 reps, the bar speed slowed, technique/form broke down and future training sessions were less successful.

After testing, observing and tracking thousands of athletes, Prilepin then developed a table to use as a guideline for training.

Training with Percentages: Prilepin’s Chart

Now, as we take a closer look at the table I want you to notice the Optimal Number of Reps as well as the Optimal Rep Range for each given percentage. Keeping that in mind, let’s look at 85%.

At 85%, the optimal number of reps is 12, with the rep range being 2-4 reps. What that means is that you can do 6 sets of 2, 3 sets of 4, 4 sets of 3, etc, any set and rep range that keeps the total number of reps to 12, within that exercise.

Why the broad rep range? Because everyone reacts to training differently. You are going to need to know yourself as well as the athletes you are training well, in order to maximize the table. You are going to need to know if they react better to higher or lower rep ranges. If it’s higher, do 4 reps per set. If it’s lower, you would do sets of 2.

The sliding rep range also takes into account good vs bad lifting days. If you are having a great day, you can keep going until you hit the higher number of reps within the range. If you are having a bad day, you can hit the lower number.

This also works great for the in-season, off-season and pre-season time periods. Typically, I program using the higher rep guidelines in the Off-Season, the optimal rep ranges during the pre-season and the lower rep ranges in-season, knowing that we will continue to make gains year round, while keeping the intensities high, and manipulating the volume.

Training with Percentages: Sample Programs

Training with percentages…success story!

I’ve used this programming successfully throughout my career. And here’s a hint for you: I’ve always noticed that females respond better to the higher rep ranges, while males respond better to the lower reps ranges. When training with percentages don’t be afraid to play around with sets and reps, while staying within the guidelines. Find your programming groove, and you’ll ensure continued progress of your athletes throughout the year, and throughout their careers.

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The 4-man team, headed by Steve Langton, takes on the competition on Feb 22nd, while the 2-man team just claimed America’s first medal in the event’s history by clinging onto 3rd place and taking the Bronze back to the Land of the Free.

While their feats are no doubt impressive, keep reading to see what it takes to become one of these daredevil Adonises.

Steve Langton demos the incredible powers of Bobsled training. After a month on our Explosive Athlete program, you’ll be able to navigate 3 mobile devices at once…and have gigantic, vascular biceps.

// US Bobsled Team: What it Takes

The chart at the bottom outlines the US Bobsled Team’s combine tryout standards. When you dig into the table, you’ll see some impressive numbers for sure. To be competitive for a spot on the team, you’ll need to have NFL running back worthy speed and power.

What it breaks down to is that athletes will need to be EXPLOSIVE, with heavy Olympic Lifts, solid 3RM Back Squats, and track caliber sprint times in short distance events.

// US Bobsled Team: How to Train

Hit the BIG Lifts Hard

• Olympic Lifts: Snatches and Cleans (Power and Full)
• Deadlifts
• Squats
• Presses (Shoulder Press, Push Press, Bench Press)

Build Burst Speed

You’ll need to have standout start times, burst capacity, and speed up to 60M to be competitive for a spot. With the times necessary to claim a spot, you’ll also have to be a bit of a technician and optimize your running form so you wipe out inefficiencies in your stride and make sure every step counts. To do so, practice speed skill-work just as much as you would practice shooting free throws if you were a basketball player.

If you’re looking for all-around training support, fantastic daily coaching, and a killer program to follow, use Train Heroic’s Explosive Athlete Program, where a major focus is on developing the powerful hip drive, fast turn-over, and punishing strength you’ll need to contend. The program is 4 days of strength and power training per week and has a steady dose of speed and conditioning as well. You can start today for FREE, get daily coaching from top pros, and have all of your results tracked so you can see your progress toward your goals along the way.

// US Bobsled Team: Where to Test

You can’t make the team if you don’t know where to try out. Below are the four locations hosting this year’s combine. Train hard. Show up. Test out.

June 10-12, 2014 (Lake Placid, NY)

July 8-10, 2014 (Lake Placid, NY)

August 2, 2014 (Greenville, SC)

August 26-28, 2014 (Lake Placid, NY)