Blending New Skills to Increased Power Levels (Part 12)

Last Updated on February 16, 2015 by Jimson Lee

We are back with the series on Force, Ground Contact and Sprinting.

• Part 1 Plyometrics, Ground Contact Time, and Sprinting was simply to demonstrate the faster the movement, the shorter the ground contact time.
• Part 2 covered How to Weight Train without Weights and it focused on speed strength.
• Part 3 was Driving Resistance Band Training with a video from Remi Korchemny.
• Part 4 discussed the 5 different types of “strength training”
• Part 5 was a presentation by Tim Egerton on Explosive Strength Training [video broken]
• Part 6 was Dynamic Isometrics & Sprinting: Explosive Strength Training
• Part 7 , 8, 9 was Advanced Plyometrics for Jump and Sprint Training and Ballistic Power for Better Athletic Performance and a video on How to Teach Bounding written by Kenta’ Bell, a two time Olympian in the Triple Jump.
• Part 10 was Eccentric Strength with Bobsled coach & former UKA Sprint coach Stuart McMillan
• Part 11 was Significance of Force Application in Max Velocity Sprinting with Kenta’s bell (again)

Blending New Skills to Increased Power Levels

This article is guest blogged by Ryan Banta, who previously wrote Sprint Drills and Cues.

When looking at power training, people tend to be in the extreme ends of the spectrum:

• some are faithful followers of Charlie Francis
• some are all about functional movement
• others just do core training
• and finally, some people just pull sleds or do Plyometrics.

Personally I believe you need to do a little bit of everything with an emphasis at different points of the year.

Recently, on the Elitetrack forum, we had a very long debate on the usefulness of general strength for an athlete like Galen Rupp.

And meanwhile on Letsrun.com, I had to argue the importance of power training.

It is a failure of wisdom to be married to a limited schemes to acquire power. Each and every athlete comes with baggage that must be broken down, rearranged, or even emphasized.

A few years ago I picked up Frans Bosch’s book titled Running: Biomechanics and Exercise Physiology in Practice.  It was amazing and I loved the creative ways he was trying to attack our sport. Not just with endless drills on the track but creative methods in the weight room. As a coach we have adopted some of his methods and we have had a lot of success in blasting through power plateaus.

Below is a video on YouTube of our work in the apex of our season in the weight room.

WARNING:  you must watch the video with an open mind.

I understand that some of these methods might seem goofy but in the end we have achieved some very strong results.

The young man featured in this video went on to break the Army All American combined results for Bench press. He recently while at Stanford hit 34 reps on the bench at 225. Not bad for who has yet to reach his junior year in college and I believe would be a NFL combine record.

In addition the young lady in the video went from having her leg broken in three places to making it back to her nations national championships after a year and half without real training due to recovery or repeated injury.

The point is once your kids have mastered some of the basics and they are starting to level off, then it becomes time to change things up. Hit them with a complex lift or skill and then give them another dose of the basics you will find they will break through and climb to even higher numbers when it matters.

[JIMSON’S NOTE:  Prior to the first 4 minute mile, a “stale” Roger Banister was stuck at 61 seconds for his classic 10x400m workout, took a weekend off hiking in the Swiss Alps using entirely different muscles, then later returned to the same workouts in 59 seconds!]

About the Author

Ryan Banta is an assistant coach at the Ladue/St. Louis Lightning Track & Feld club, where the club has assisted athletes in achieving 6 national titles, 31 All American performances, and 61 national qualifiers.   He has earned a USATF level II certification in sprints, hurdles, relays, and endurance as well as a USTFCCCA track and field technical coaching certification.

He has a new book coming out (Summer 2013) titled Sprinter’s Compendium, a “one stop shop” for theory and practical information for any coach looking for real world strategies to improve sprint training for any type of athlete.