Let’s say I have a recreational athlete come through the doors and they want to get stronger for their sport. The person in question is a running back who also dabbles on special teams for kick returns and the occasional stint on defense. What kind of program should I give them to get them as strong as possible?

A Powerlifting program? No doubt they would get rediculously strong, as the program focuses solely on max weight lifted.

A bodybuilding program? This is the typical program given to everyone, with the thought process being adding more muscle will equate to bigger strength, and therefore the best transfer into sport strength.

Crossfit? The cross-training method would produce general adaptations, but may not result in specific ones. They’ll definitely lift more weight though.

Bosu Bootcamp? Please.

The major drawback to a lot of conventional gym programs is their reliance on closed-chain movements that don’t provide a rich proprioceptive environment to build a strong athlete. Sure, they may help the person lift more weight, increase muscle size, and transfer some of that strength into their sport, but that would be more of a shotgun approach to training, where you throw everything at the person and cross your fingers hoping some of it sticks.

For sport performance qualities, gym strength is an accessory, not a defining criteria.

Sure, a strong deadlift is fantastic, but it won’t make a running back cut to the left any sharper. Likewise, it won’t make a basketball player shoot more consistently, or have a volleyball player jump higher to spike the ball, or result in a greater throwing accuracy in a baseball player.

The best program to use with this specific player was a combination of all of the above. Except for the Bosu Bootcamp part. That should just never happen. We wenth through a periodized plan that allowed him to work on hypertrophy, strength, speed, reaction, quickness, explosive power, and decision-making capabilities, all while in the confines of a commercial gym setting.

This is where a lot of trainers come up short, when they’re given a specific goal outcome, and they don’t understand what it takes to get the person there within their confines in a commercial gym, private studio, or whatever. To say the only way to train qualities like speed, reaction time, agility, quickness, and acceleration can only be trained in big sport performance facilities, fields, or whatever is completely incorrect and limited. Look at someone like Joe DeFranco, who trained pretty much half the NFL players on the eastern seaboard while operating out of a 5,000 square foot industrial space and a parking lot. Look at Cressey Performance, that trains a butt load of amateurs and college players and probably somewhere in the hundreds of million dollar range of player contracts for pros, and only recently expanded to 7,000 square feet.

Let’s look back at that client I was telling you about, the football player. He first came into me with a right ACL reconstruction from a few years earlier and wanted to get back into the game. He hadn’t worked out since it was injured, but had the drive to do the work. We started with basic corrective exercises to get him moving and improve his muscle control, then went into a strength-based program, and occasionally dabbled in some light speed and agility work to get his motor patterning up to speed. Once he was strong enough and stable enough to begin more advanced drills, we started to step outside of the mould of what a typical weight training program would look like.

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This drill is entirely about reaction time and first step quickness. While he’s in the air, I point in one direction and he has to register the direction, program his body to cut in that direction, and then make the move as hard as possible. Sure, he has to have the strength there to do it, which is where the previous weight training programs have come in handy, but this is a completely different type of strength than a back squat or a 1-foot squat.

Top it off with the fact that he has to absorb the impact of landing, then produce a powerful concentric contraction to get him going onto his first step, and you have the elastic potential that is so difficult to get into a reconstructed joint, as the muscle down-regulation also affects the muscle spindles and golgi tendon organs necessary to properly relay the stretch-tension information about the joint into an action. He also has to trust his leg enough to make it work as hard as it’s capable of, a hidden challenge a lot of people won’t tell you about unless they’ve been through a major injury.

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This drill is essentially an advanced agility drill and acceleration drill. He has to begin moving from a dead start, hit the corner with his re-built leg absorbing all the impact, decelerate and accelerate out of it, hit the next corner in the same way, and cross the finish line. Ideally, I would have laser gated timing, but a hand-held stop-watch gives a fair approximation, and seeing as how his spot in the combine isn’t going to be anytime soon, I can get away with less than precise measurements here. One bout of this would take less than 5 seconds, to which he would get 1-2 minutes rest, which would allow full recovery before the next bout, for a total of 10 bouts.

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Normally, I’m not a big fan of box jumps for plyometrics, as most people do them completely wrong. A plyometric movement would involve a stretch-shortening cycle, not simply an explosive jump onto an elevated srface, so a more appropriate box jump would involve jumping off of an elevated surface to the floor, and immediately springing up onto another elevated surface.

This variation also works well. The transition time from prone to vertical absolutely must be kept to bare minimum to get that stretch-shortening cycle of the tendons and become a true plyometric movement. This particular movement also involves spinal flexion/extension and upper body pushing strength involvement, which makes it a much more complete exercise. Sure, his technique was breaking down like crazy towards the end of the set, so we stopped after this one and wen’t on to something less technical to finish the day. I didn’t want to keep hammering him with poor movement quality, so the first set that showed a technical breakdown was his last set. This was the third set of these box jumps that he did, so it was completely understandable to be tired.

I’ve always believed “Training” involved teaching someone how to do something better, and to get the necessary physical and physiological adaptations to make that happen. If I’m working with an athlete, an office worker, a gardening grandmother, or whoever, I want to find out what they need, why they need it, and the most effective way of delivering that to them. In many cases, it may mean stepping outside of the typical training programs and throwing something new at them, or it might mean the tried and true, with lots of repetition and a little bit of vomit in the back of their throats.

In this instance, training involved getting stronger and leaner, but also involved getting faster, more elastic, and confident in the capability of the knee injury to the point where it wasn’t considered an obstacle anymore, and to get the most cross-over to the field as possible. After a year of consistent training, he was able to suit up for his first game in 5 years, and this year was his second season, with absolutely no issues, or feelings of weakness or doubt about the leg.