Why Template Workout Programs Don't Work

For some reason, it has been difficult for me to explain to some people why template workout programs are not beneficial and/or as effective as they should be. A template workout program is simply a workout program that is given to all athletes to promote strength and power. Template programs may have, for example, three workouts. Every week the same workouts are repeated with little difference - weights are increased or changed, repetitions lowered or raised, and maybe an exercise or two added or subtracted. The basic template of the program, however, stays the same.

What's wrong with this you might ask? There are two major issues with template programs: 1) they often don't reflect individual needs and 2) they become mundane, boring, and less effective over time.

The first issue is one I am extremely passionate about. We need to design programs based off of:

-Sport(s) played
-Gender
-Age
-Maturity level
-Body Shape Strengths/Weaknesses
-History of Injury

To demonstrate the complexity, let's look at one sport (Football), one gender (Male), one age (17), and one history of injury (none). So we are keeping everything constant besides body shape and maturity level.

We will need workouts that are specific to lineman and skilled positions. We can differentiate the skilled positions too between those who may need to sprint 60 yards (wide receivers or defensive backs) and those who may sprint 10 yards or less most of the time (running and full backs). We need to differentiate between those boys who have hit puberty and those who are lagging behind. We need to differentiate, especially now days, between those who are overweight and those who need to gain mass.

I haven't hit everything, but let's take this logic down to one exercise: the front plank. Lineman will have trouble holding their bodies up so we need to have them do the exercise for fewer seconds. They simply won't be able to hold it. The rest of the kids may be good for 1 minute so we can have them do that. But what about the 4-5 guys that have awesome cores!!? What should we do with them? Just like we don't want the 300lbs lineman doing a plank 1 minute when he can't yet, we don't want a ripped wide-receiver doing a 1 minute plank and being bored out of his mind. We want him doing it on a pseudo-ball or on one hand for 2 minutes or longer. We want to add in more instability to the exercise.

That's one exercise!! Within that one exercise we need at least 3 different variations to have an effective program.

Hopefully it is obvious that template programs don't work the best. If you're paying for them, I'm sorry. You might as well just learn the lifts and then do everything on your own. After a couple weeks you can do the whole program!

Early Specialization in Sports: God Help Us

So the idea lately has been to specialize in a given sport as early as possible and to only play that sport 24/7 for an entire year. There are obviously negative mental and emotional consequences of doing so. Players often lose the passion for the game they love because they're forced to work at it every day in the rink or field. Passion for the game is what takes guys to the next level, not coercion. Then there are the financial consequences for families. 24/7 sports training is hard for many families, especially in this economy. Many of the companies out there over-charge by doing some exceptional brand-marketing. The rich kids then get to train all year and the poorer families either suffer by reducing consumption elsewhere in the household budget or simply have to forego the opportunities.

There is another negative consequence of 24/7 specialization in one sport. To make this point vivid, let's think of a normal looking young athlete. Let's take that normal looking athlete and train their chest and the front of their shoulders only. Every day we take them in the weight room and they do chest work. Soon, as you can imagine, this person starts to get a giant chest. Everyone can see how big his chest is. Others start to think "I should start training like that guy! Look how big his chest is!"

Do you know what's wrong here? We've trained this athlete to have a big chest, but no one notices his weak back or inadequate leg strength. His chest is clearly visible and obviously bigger. But his overall athleticism and strength is terrible. The big chest/weak back will result in hunching over, his or her shoulders will rotate inward, and a host of issues can result.

This is exactly what happens with athletes that specialize in one sport. They train the same set of muscles and in the same set of movements. Over time, those muscles become disproportionally strong relative to the muscles which aren't worked. Athletic movements, however, require synergy between muscles. The abs have to be strong enough for an athlete to cut well, the back strong enough to support the shoulders, the legs built enough to leverage the upper body strength, etc.

By playing several different sports, and especially at a young age, athletes learn a host of movements. They work their hamstrings in soccer, their eye/hand coordination in baseball, their speed in track and field, their leg strength in hockey, and their footwork in basketball. At some point, a refinement of skills in each sport is required. But that refinement must have a strong foundation, one that is grounded in multi-sport play, and diverse sports training.

Unfortunately, the parents and players will confuse correlation and causation. Parents will see the best players going into year round athletics and sport specialization and they will think that it is because of specialization that the kids are so kid. They will not realize it's simply a correlation. And the kids obviously won't realize either.

A Counter-Cultural Revolution in Sports

Today, the cultural setting in which we play sports has been perverted by commercialization, gross acts of immoral behavior by professional and collegiate athletes, unacceptable parental actions, and irresponsible coaches. Sports are thought to help kids build character, but we can't possibly continue to think they are when increasingly we see signs to the contrary. (Research on this topic is showing similar results. Our athletes score lower on moral reasoning tests than non-athletes).

What we need today is a counter-cultural revolution. It needs to start with youth organizations in the community. From very young ages the framework for sports needs to shift from "me-first" to "team-first" and from "winning at all costs" to "winning with honor." For this shift to occur, youth associations will need to be at the forefront of change. That change will have to continue into high school and into collegiate athletics. This may be a dream, but seeing this in professional sports would be incredible.

What are the components of this counter-cultural revolution? I am not entirely sure, but I think these are the main components:

-All coaches at the youth level need to be trained and certified through a process which emphasizes the values above.

-Leadership and team training activities should be incorporated into every sport.

-Coaches should see themselves as teachers of character and strive to "win" at teaching character well.

-Youth associations should affirm the principles of good character and sportsmanship and then actively incorporate those principles. It's not enough to say you are for sportsmanship. Kids need to hear and know how to act out good sportsmanship. Its emphasis must permeate the organization.

-High schools need to incorporate leadership training.

-Coaches need to re-orient to a different coaching model. Right now, many coaches are anti-democratic in how they view coaching. They are the dictator that delegates orders to the troops. This needs to change. Good character and leadership needs to be trained and allowed to flourish! That requires a level of autonomy that is not compatible with anti-democratic coaching model.

Banff Film Festival: Mental Toughness

My wonderful fiance and I recently went to the Banff Film Festival together here at Princeton. For those who don't know what the Banff Film Festival is, you can check it out here. The films show people doing amazing things like climbing up steep mountains or mountain biking from Alaska to Argentina. The one film that I really found amazing was of two Australian men who decided they were going to kayak across the Tasman sea from Australia to New Zealand. To put this quickly into perspective: they kayaked over 3,300 km and it took them 62 days. They accomplished this feat unassisted. You can read more about their trip at their website Crossing the Ditch.

The story is amazing but the lesson behind it is even greater. The idea of kayaking over 3,300 km in the open sea, with huge wave, sharks, and other dangers is just crazy. It seems impossible. But we know that it isn't. Throughout this journey, the two Australians encountered a lot of physical and mental fatigue. They persevered through it which is a testament to their mental toughness and strength.

If two guys from Australia can kayak across the Tasman sea, then it certainly is possible for any high school hockey or football team to beat any other high school team. It is possible for the underdogs to go all the way to top.

Everyone seems to start out the season with the belief that they'll win a state championship - or at least that is how I was raised to start out my seasons. But after a few loses and discouraging performances, most teams decide they won't win the championship. They re-adjust to more "ascertainable goals" like winning the next three games or going .500. Only a minority of teams stay the course through the tests and trials. Some teams lose and get back up with the same determination to win, others don't. Why is this?

We can talk about winning all we want and how badly we want to see it happen. That's the easy part. If you really want to find out the true answer, ask someone in the middle of a conditioning workout. Only in the dumps do you really find out if the team has what it takes. And even then, it is hard to mimic the mental toll losing can take.

Mental strength > physical strength.....plain and simple.

So why don't we train that?

Constant Variation Enables Constant Results

Creating a standard program where the change or variation is simply a few exercises and a change in repetition schemes is easy to put together. There is change and this does help, but I would argue that constant variation of a more extreme type not only avoids plateaus, but also helps facilitate muscle growth, strength gains, speed gains, athleticism gains, etc. Below is a graphical representation of what I'm talking about:


Without variation, our muscles become accustomed to the same movements. Sometimes, athletes may actually experience a decrease in strength because the monotonous program has left its toll on the psychology of the athlete. When formulating your training modules, remember to incorporate variety. It will be tempting to constantly re-use the same workouts, but try to think outside the box and incorporate radically different approaches to training. Go to Yoga or try Russian Kettlebell training. Maybe even try doing some Mixed Martial Arts training. All have benefits for all types of athletes.

Calisthenics: Important Exercises, Often Overlooked

What looks cooler: bench pressing 185lbs or doing 10 pull-ups? Well, bench pressing of course. The weights make noise, look really big, and make us look tough. Pull-ups are cool too, but they don't convey the same sense of strength and power. These perceptions have led many young athletes down a dangerous path. They have resorted to simply trying to lift the most weight on a predictable set of exercises: bench, squat, dead-lift, hang clean, etc. This is good to an extent. In many sports, we want athletes that can lift heavy weights. But we also want functional strength. That is, strength that optimizes performance on the field in all the dynamic ways in which strength can be applied. Imagine a wide receiver sprinting 20 meters, cutting, jumping into the air 2 feet, twisting his body to catch the ball, planting his feet, cutting to avoid a tackle, dropping his shoulder to break another one, etc. The movements in this sequence occur all the time on the field, but aren't even closely touched in the weight room (I don't think you really can, but we can at least attempt to make more dynamic movements and less stationary ones).

Calisthenics are good because they require stabilization of the body. For example, a tough pull-up workout will often cause athletes to get sore in their core. Why? Well, in order to move the body up and down without shaking requires a level of stabilization. After doing push-ups, the same can be said. The body must stay linear and so while the chest and shoulders are pushing the body up off the ground, the core must be activated and keeping the legs linear with the torso. The ability to keep one's body linear or to control it when working with another muscle group (the back and arms in this case) is enormously beneficial. In fact, learning to do this is exactly what a wide receiver must do in order to jump, maintain body control, and catch a ball!!

Besides the added dynamic of stabilization - which is a huge asset in contact sports - calisthenics are also good for younger athletes. Many young athletes come into the weight room wanting to lift huge weights because the older boys or girls are doing so. The older kids have gone through puberty and have the testosterone, however, to make significant strength gains. Younger kids often don't. They can get stronger, but the gains are minimal relative to the gains they will experience later. For example, if we gave a 8th, 10th, and 12th grade boy (let's say the same boy, same genetics, just three different ages) the same workout program, the 12th grade boy would get stronger and bigger. Often the 10th grade boy will lose his baby fat and gain some muscle, but often he will not be ready for much muscle gain. The 8th grade boy will get stronger, and will learn the lifts well, but he won't pack muscle on at all (generally).

This is where calisthenics are extremely helpful. They are safe exercises, they help young athletes become more coordinated, and more in tune with their bodies. Coupled with learning how to lift, calisthenics provide a great way to build strength and lay a good foundation for future growth.

Unfortunately, they stay overlooked and under appreciated. The fancy shiny weights are just too glamorous.

Being Wrong

I just watched a great Ted Talk about being wrong. Being wrong is not bad; in fact, we should embrace our fallibility and learn from it.