5 Key Exercises of the Dominate Athlete

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The world of athlete training can be, well, downright confusing.

There are so many training methods, exercises, pieces of equipment, etc. out there that it leaves one to wonder which is the optimal path for them.

Perhaps you have experienced similar thoughts.

For me, I am a simple man.

I like to break things down to the bare bone qualities and decipher what about each training implement and style is the core to it’s objectives.

When you approach training with this mindset, you are able to streamline the thought process and restore clarity to the muddy water.

There really are 3 areas that go into the development of an athlete.

Practicing the skills and techniques involved in the sport, to a point that their action is second nature and can be executed with speed when called upon during competition.
Preventing injury in training that isn’t the competition itself, and correcting adaptations that have arisen from frequent sport play. For example, a baseball pitcher will often develop imbalances in their throwing shoulder, presenting itself in adjusted posture and potentially pain. While, the body has adapted for a reason, to perform the action the most efficiently, if allowed to get too far to the extreme, injury could, and most likely will happen.
Strengthening and increasing the power capabilities of the muscles involved in the sport.

Today I want to focus on the third area, and namely, 5 key exercises that, when it comes down to it, are the most efficient at achieving the desired results that ultimately, all of the methods and training apparatus discussed in the beginning, are aimed at improving.

1. The Squat- The squat is an exercise which strengthens the entire body of an athlete, especially the areas involved in jumping, sprinting, throwing, and changing direction. With the squat, you are able to increase both the amount of force the athlete can put out, as well as the amount of force that they can absorb. The more force an athlete can absorb, the quicker they will be able to change direction, as well as avoid injury. When performing the squat, the athlete should stick with 2-5 reps of 2-5 sets, occasionally, when gaining muscle is the goal, venturing into the 8-10 rep area, but never during a period of a lot of sport practice and competition.

There are many types of squatting, thus to choose which is best, one must take into consideration the demands the type places on the body. First, let’s look at the traditional back squat. While this variation has the potential benefit for increased muscle mass, it places a great deal of stress on the athlete’s wrists, elbows, and shoulders, which obviously is something we wish to avoid.

Front Squat, High Bar Back Squat, and Low Bar Back Squat

I however prefer my athletes either squatting with a safety squat bar or front squatting. A safety squat bar is a bar which sits in the same area on the back as a back squat, but it he handles which extend from it to in front of the athlete’s chest, giving them a comfortable place to hold on to.

With the front squat, the athlete places the bar on the front of their shoulders, right up against their throat with their elbows up and arms crossed, preventing the bar from rolling off of the shoulders. This form of squatting takes the pressure off of the shoulders, wrists, and elbows, much like the safety squat bar, but also forces the athlete to be in a more upright posture, to prevent the bar from falling, and causes them to use their quadriceps, or the muscles on the front of the thigh, more during the lift.

2. The Deadlift- The deadlift is often called the ‘King of Exercises’ and rightfully so. Much like the squat, it trains practically every muscle in the body, and really strengthens the key muscles of sprinting, the lower back, glutes, and hamstrings.

An added benefit of the deadlift is that, in picking a weight from a dead stop off of the ground, you are required to develop as much force and tension within your body as fast as you can. This transfers over to the playing field in the ability to have ‘first-step quickness’ and produce explosive movements.

3. The Pull Up- If I were to name the one exercise that I believe all athletes should master, it would be hard to argue with the pull up as it requires a different kind of strength than the squat and deadlift. Rather than just hoisting an external load around, with the pull up, you must be strong at moving your entire body, much like you must do in sports.

If you are able to perform 15 or more pull ups you are far more advanced than most athletes you will ever come across. You also will be a pretty fast individual as well as there being a strong correlation to pull up strength and sprinting speed.

The pull up strengthens the grip, lats, arms, abs, and shoulders in varying degrees, is when conquered, will allow an athlete to powerfully transfer the force from the lower body though the hands to execute a sport task.

4. The Push Up- Most would assume that the bench press is the master exercise for strengthen the body in pushing movements, but I disagree, especially for an athlete. In the bench your arms and shoulder are locked into a dangerous position, preventing them from rotating naturally as they should. It should go without saying that this is not a recipe for success in avoiding injuring the athlete.

The push up reigns supreme for its ability to allow the shoulder to move naturally, strengthen the muscles of the shoulder girdle, chest, and arms, as well as the abs through an isometric contraction.

Every athlete should be able to at least perform 25 full range of motion pull-ups in under 30 seconds. Sadly most can’t. Though fortunately, this mean an opportunity for you to rise above them.

5. Triple Broad Jump- For developing explosive power, many like to use the olympic lifts, the ‘clean and jerk’ and the ‘snatch, along with their variations. I however feel that the time to learn those lifts is too long for a non olympic athlete.

I also feel that there is a better way that transfers over more to the demands of field/court sports. That way is the triple broad jump.

It’s execution is simple. Jump forward 3 times consecutively.

The reasons for its awesomeness are three-fold. First, it has a very low learning curve. Second, every sport requires the ability to jump, so why would you not train it. Finally, the consecutive jumps require the athlete to display great reactive, or ‘ploymetric’, strength as well as balance and cooridnation, just as seen in competition.

A good number for the average athlete to aspire for is over 20 feet.

However, we are not after average, we are after excellence. 25+ feet should be the objective for all, with an elite eye towards 30 feet.

So there you have it. The 5 Key Exercises of the Dominate Athlete. If you improve in each of those areas. I guarantee that your performance will DRAMATICALLY improve.

Best Wishes,

Kyle

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The Truth About Hand and Foot Speed

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The following is a response to a question posed to me by the, father of a Strive Athlete, asking how to improve his daughter’s foot and hand speed on the tennis court.

“As far as increasing foot and hand speed, when discussing carry over to tennis, we must first look at what produces the actions of foot and hand speed, which is the nervous system.

Thus in order to improve the speed of the feet and hand for the sport actions of tennis, the nervous system must be taught how to be more efficient at sending a high frequency of impulses as well as creating a high degree of synchronization of movement.

Efficiency is the key word there, which is trainable to a limit of the athlete’s genetic potential. Some athletes are just better “wired” to be efficient in their movements. Think a guy like Barry Sanders.

So in order to improve efficiency of movement, the nervous system must have the movement ingrained, or hard-wired, within in its process so well that producing the action is second nature.

The answer to this is in drilling the proper technique, repetitively and exactly the same, over and over again.

The nervous system needs to have zero thought in what to do, only react effortlessly.

So my recommendation would be to drill more tennis.

Now this doesn’t mean to practice hard for hours on end, as this will lead to injuries but rather, segment the movements down to their basic parts and then ingrain those parts into Nicole’s system repetitively. This reminds me of Bruce Lee and the countless kicks and punches he would drill every day, so that when it came time for a fight, the body would simply react with no thought or effort of him.

So you might have her work lateral shuffles and net approaches in their separate parts, for 10-20 seconds (the duration of a normal point), followed by complete rest, so as to keep the nervous system fresh and ready to learn.

For hand speed, break it down into reps of forehands, back hands, and volleys. Again focus on repetition of QUALITY movement, over the quantity performed. Obviously you want good form ingrained.

Again the training the nervous system is the goal. It is the conductor of movement.

Now as far as things outside of drilling the skill, which is going to obviously have the highest degree of carry over, rotational medicine ball throws, “frequency jumps”, and change of direction drills will help, which I have already begun to implement with her.

However, with all of that said, the thing that will give her the most bang for her buck at the moment, considering her current stage of development, is increasing her strength, and drilling the movements of tennis like I talked about earlier.

At home, to further the development of strength, it wouldn’t hurt to work on some lateral lunges, to develop lateral hip strength for strong rotation and quick change of direction abilities.

Finally, in regards to arm strength, obviously there is going to be some lag between her dominate arm and non-dominate arm, so a disparity is always going to exist. That said, as far as what I see in the gym, I don’t see a significant difference.

If you are talking about arm strength in the regards of her swing being stronger on the right then left, the answer in decreasing the disparity is in her hips.

She displays a good ability to properly engage her hips in rotation before her shoulder on her right side, but on the left, the hips don’t rotate well, and when they do, often move at the same time as her shoulders, which leaves a lot of power on the table. Going back to the message of my answer on foot and hand speed, this goes back to the nervous system not being efficient, due to a lack of exposure to proper hip action from that side.

I’m currently working with her on some drills that will teach her to properly rotate her hips from the left side, as well as create a separation between her hips and shoulders, to increase the stretch placed on her mid-section during rotation, allowing her muscles of the mid-section to act like rubber bands being pulled back and then snapping the shoulders forward with great velocity and power.”