What are the biggest questions in speed and power development? When asked, some typical inquiries are those below:
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How do I manage heavy weightlifting sessions?
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What is the best way to recover optimally from training?
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How do I get my glutes to hit harder during sprinting and jumping?
These are just some of the things that athletes want to know about building their body to its highest level. It’s always fun to see what peoples biggest questions are regarding matters of speed and power development in athletics. With that said, I recently posed the question, “What do you want to know more about”, on our Just Fly Sports Facebook Page.
I got some great responses, all of which are highly relevant for any athlete or coach, and reflect situations that we all deal with on a fairly regular basis. There were well over a dozen questions posted on the social media page, and with my tendency to be a bit long-winded, I’ll be breaking my answers up into sections.
Let’s start with the first two questions, which both revolve around the mental side of training, and are very important and useful for aspiring coaches and athletes alike.
Question: How do you come back (mentally/physically) after failing on a heavy load with squats?
Answer:
Before I get any farther (and many of you already know exactly what I am going to say in response to this question), I’ll be the first to tell you that a traditional heavy deep squat is a beautiful thing. The idea of going down to the depths with a heavy load (not a fearful, timid, halfway depth, but all-out ass to grass position), and then overcoming it is a metaphor for success in life in general.
The squat is a practice that draws with it maddening devotion, and is a clear staple in most strength programming. That being said, let’s get into some of the finer mental points of the squat itself.
An important concept in training is that of not only physical stress, but mental stress involved. Heavy, limit based strength training is a mentally taxing venture. Hefty barbell loading, where physical danger is present (such as a heavy squat, bench, or even clean) and a missed effort could mean mortal repercussions, is even more mentally taxing then something with limited danger present (such as a leg press, or even a deadlift). That being said, and I’ll repeat myself here, a maximal squat attempt is a very mentally and physiologically demanding effort.
When the body hits a point of over-reaching, speed and elastic measures are the first things to drop, but athletes can still get fired up to grind out good lifts. To do this, athletes will need to go above the “emotional threshold”, tapping into their muscle motor units that the body had previously shut down, due to stress buildup, for the sake of preventing further “beatdowns” (as far as the body is concerned).
Chances are, if they are in a team environment, they’ll have their team-mates yelling and cheering for them, which certainly isn’t a bad thing, but that also can take an athlete above the emotional threshold. Athletes training for powerlifting in a high frequency setup (the same lift 3-4x a week or more) usually take fiery emotion out of each set, as going above the stress response threshold causes a big increase in the time that it takes to recover from each particular workout session. A “Bulgarian max” is not a true, balls-to-the-wall daily max-out.
For powerlifting, getting mentally fired up for a lift is a mixed bag. Those on lower frequency, West-side style programs can afford to get fired up with pre-workout and death metal routines, as they have a whole week until they go heavy again in that exact same lift, and the main form of the exercise switches over every two weeks or so.
For team sport, track and field, swimming, and similar individual sport ventures, getting mentally fired up to hit a maximal barbell lift is generally, not the best idea, and a guaranteed way to cost the athlete training time. Any team sport athlete is on a “high-frequency” training program, whether they like it or not, based on the repeated forces that occur within their sport. A football player is on a high frequency acceleration and deceleration program. A volleyball player is on a high frequency jumping program. A basketball player is on a combination of both high frequency programs.
Although sports like track, swimming, or training for another singular goal, such as jump training, may have different specific training programs, getting too far into a head-banging state for barbell lifting can have really negative consequences on subsequent specific performance, due to the dis-coordination of muscle groups, and down-regulation of the nervous system based on these heavy attempts.
As some great strength and powerlifting coaches have said, missing attempts doesn’t make you stronger, just making them. Team sport and speed-strength athletes shouldn’t ever have to worry about whether or not they are going to hit a particular lift. This added mental stress is guaranteed to take away from more important adaptations elsewhere.
With that in mind, unless you are training specifically for powerlifting, and on a West-side based system, there is nothing to be gained in attempting squat weights that you aren’t sure whether or not you can hit. The associated mental stress is going to compromise the rest of your training.
Avoid falling into the “I jumped higher when I first started squatting, so I must seek to improve it for my entire training career” mentality. Yes, lifting gains will show up in speed and power measures, but there is a limit, and inducing extra, unnecessary stress into the training environment from excessive or heavy barbell efforts is one of the best ways to stall your speed and power training progress.
Even a training program as foolish as Air Alert will give most novice trainees good results for 3-4 weeks, but does that mean that they should focus hard on increasing the Air Alert reps for their whole training career? Probably not.
With that said, I’ll give my final answer, is to respect the ritual of the squat, but at the same time, not to try to hit squat weights you don’t know you’ll hit, especially if you are training for improved speed or power performance. Then you won’t need to worry about how to come back from missing a particular weight.
Keep your mental training momentum going in a positive, or even neutral direction, but don’t let missed lifts send you backwards. If you already missed a heavy weight, and lifting isn’t your primary training outcome, then just don’t worry about it. Disconnect your self-value and self-worth with the weight on the bar, or what your peers, or even what your sporting heros can lift, and just get on with doing what you do, and do it well.
What are the Best Sports Psychology Books You Have Read?
Answer:
What is in the mind is in the body, and what is in the body, is in the mind. Sports psychology is very important for maximal performance.
This is a great question, and I’ll go ahead and mention just a few books quickly. Sports psychology is something I took in a few different courses in college and graduate school, but tucked away once I got out into the real world of coaching. Once I moved across the country to begin working at Cal, I started a train of sports psychology reads at the suggestions of various co-workers, and realized many truths and ideals I had been missing the last 5 years. I’ve read some of the more popular books, such as “Mind Gym”, but for me personally, I enjoy books that go a little (or a lot) deeper into things, without sounding like (or being) a textbook. I’ll start my recommendations by chatting about the book that re-kindled my passion for sport psychology topics.
Bounce: Matthew Syed
The first book that really turned me on more to the mental side of athletics was a book named “Bounce”, by Matthew Syed. Bounce was a great book that really turned my attention to the subconscious mind, choking, talent vs. growth mindsets, motor learning, reaction time, and much more. It was a great read, and I would recommend it to anyone.
My favorite anecdotes out of this book were actually more in the realm of motor learning, which is a cousin to sport psychology. For example, the author of the book (who is a pro table tennis player) played tennis extraordinaire, Roger Federer in an ancient game of tennis on a much smaller court and different ball, perhaps a mix between the two worlds. Result = they both sucked at that particular game; the visual cues were just so different. Just because you are a legendary tennis or table tennis player doesn’t mean that your general reaction times are any better. A baseball batter isn’t any “quicker” in the general sense than anyone else, on average (although he likely has much better eyesight). No, a baseball batter’s brain has just learned to decipher the subtle cues that a pitcher demonstrates as he winds up and releases the ball.
A similar story existed in one of the “fastest” table tennis players Britain had ever seen. This guy, who was lightning on the table, was far slower than average in a computerized general reaction test, compared to his peers. Even the facility janitor destroyed him in the particular test! This guy got so fast in table tennis because he grew up playing table tennis in a cramped room, with his back so close to a wall, that he was literally forced to respond to the opposing player’s shot faster. The same story exists with Brazilian soccer players, who grow up playing futsol a version of soccer that forces faster passing than the longer, expanded version you see in standard play. The beautiful lesson is that the human brain can adapt to nearly any situation, becoming faster and more powerful. Many of us compete in an environment that yields too much room for error, which doesn’t force us to become faster, and better than we currently are.
Perhaps, my recollections of Bounce were more in the motor learning world, but there were powerful mindset and sport psychology lessons as well. It was there that my first exposure to the idea of the growth vs. talent mindset, and its empowering or devastating effect on sport success.
The Inner Game of Tennis: Timothy Gallwey
The book that was literally the game changer for me was “The Inner game of tennis”, as this work improved my awareness of the interaction between the conscious mind and subconscious mind. As a high school basketball player, I was the king of inconsistent performance, scoring 16 points one game, and 0 the next. I could never understand or control why I might have a good or bad performance, but after reading The Inner game of Tennis, it all makes perfect sense.
The Inner Game of Tennis isn’t just for tennis players, it is for absolutely any sport. The main premise of the book that I’ll always take with me is that the body, and particularly the sub-conscious mind, is incredibly proficient at building a pattern for ultimate performance. A point in the book draws one’s attention to the continuous soundtrack that is running in a person’s mind as they are playing a sport. It is as if the conscious mind is scolding the subconscious mind during the whole ordeal. The key for any good performance is to let the conscious mind get out of the way so that the subconscious mind can allow a peak performance to occur.
The Inner Game of Tennis is all about methods that allow athletes to tune into the power of their subconscious mind. A great example (that helps me personally) is, when you get in a slump, or a funk, to control your breathing, clear your mind, and focus on something externally that literally distracts your conscious brain from messing with what your subconscious can do. This would be something like focusing on the way that the lines on the tennis ball spin as it approaches you, rather than consciously focusing on some aspect of your swing. With basketball, if your shooting is suffering, you could focus on how your last finger that leaves the ball feels, rather than what your hand is supposed to do. In things like track and field, you could focus on how your feet feel leaving the ground in the high jump, or how your glutes feel sprinting down the track.
Sometimes distracting the conscious mind is one’s best bet to optimal performance. This is just one example of how the book allows the user to interact with their inner athlete in a productive and helpful manner. I have been able to use this book in several scenarios since reading it. The most powerful method to me was my mental attitude towards playing in an alumni basketball game when I was 30 years old. Since I hadn’t played basketball competitively in over 3 years, I was extremely rusty in all my skills, but through using the mental techniques, I was able to play effectively and competitively, and come back extremely well from my own missed shots, or turnovers, where I would have struggled immensely in the past in those situations. I also have a greater awareness of my own internal dialogue and reactions when my play takes a downward turn in tennis, and how to control my breath and focus to break a slump. Overall, any athlete who wants to compete better needs to read The Inner Game of Tennis.
The Genie Within: Harry Carpenter
As a very analytical person, I always used to discount any sort of mental factors in training, in favor of exercises, sets and reps. Like many, I was disgusted by coaches who would give themselves an “out” in their faulty preparation by blaming poor performances on athletes, saying that “it’s all in their head today”, or “they didn’t want it bad enough today”. Although these excuses are often poor substitutions for faulty programming and preparation, there are many cases where an athlete wasn’t mentally prepared for the competition (which is also in the realm of the coach’s preparation of the athlete, so there really is no excuse!!).
If there was one over-arching theme of The Genie Within, is was on the ability to connect and communicate with one’s subconscious mind. The subconscious mind controls 92% of one’s brain, and only 8% of the brain is controlled by the conscious mind. The human body is capable of so much more than we think it is, and the key to these achievements is better communication with the parts of our brain that are responsible for unlocking them.
A great example given in the book was the body’s miraculous ability to fight disease, even cancer. A story of a patient who was given a placebo medicine, only to find his tumors immediately and dramatically decrease in size, was a powerful evidence of the fact that the body can do much more than we are often aware of.
The subconscious mind is very goal oriented, and incredibly responsive to mindset. If you talk like you have the goal you want to achieve, then you can attain it. Think of the legendary Muhammad Ali, who literally talked his subconscious mind into greatness. Of course, positive self-talk and thinking are very well known, and common sense to many (but clearly not all) athletes and coaches. This being said, The Genie Within gave some awesome ways to further your relationship with your subconscious mind.
The brain works in four basic states: “Beta, Alpha, Theta, and Delta”. Alpha and Theta are meditative states where communication with the subconscious is the most possible. This is part of the reason that a working knowledge of visualization and meditation are important for any athlete, and particularly those who have a strong desire for mastery over their body and mind. The Genie Within is a particularly great resource for teaching athletes to enter “Alpha State” at will, as well as how to maximize the effectiveness of visualizations. I have found that my post-workout meditations and visualizations designed to improve the transition to recovery, and activation of my parasympathetic nervous system have improved significantly through these visualizations.
(On a side note, one of the coolest phenomena related to the subconscious mind and athletic performance is loud verbal affirmations prior to performance. After hearing the Chris Korfist’s athletes averaged a 1” all time vertical jump PR by yelling, out loud “I am the greatest!” immediate prior to jumping, I had to try it myself. Aside from turning many heads in the weightroom, I averaged a 3” boost on my first vertical jump test, jumping higher than I had in the whole past year, and not specifically training for vertical jump at the time.)
Honorable Mention, “Psych”: Judd Biascotto
Psyche, a book written by powerlifter Judd Biascotto, isn’t a book that I think is that useful, and the author rambles a lot, but it is a fantastic overview of a lot of sport psychology topics. If you want a general explanation of many areas of the field, without a textbook vibe, Psyche is a nice read.
Conclusion:
As you can see, my responses to various questions tend to be long-winded, so I couldn’t have a 15 answer article, and keep it in any sort of normal range, but I hope that the answers to these two questions will help you in your future training, and mental preparation. If you enjoyed the answers, leave me a comment below, and I’ll try and get a lot more of these articles out in the near future.
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