Brad speaks about 10 principles that need to be considered when addressing your athletic development program:
1.) Build From The Ground Up: Implementing ground based movements such as squats, deadlifts, hang cleans, hang snatch, push jerk, lunges are great ways to simulate sport skills such as running, jumping, or throwing due to the initiation of movement being applied against the ground. The more force an athlete or individual can apply through the ground the faster they can run, jump, and be more effective in their specific sport.
2.) Train Compound Movements Rather Than Individual Muscle Groups: Involving multiple joints and muscle groups in your programming more similarly reflects the synergies that are needed from a neuromuscular standpoint when trying to simulate athletic movements. Focusing on compound movements allow for the utilization of multi-planar exercises that can address the sagittal, frontal, and transverse planes. All three of these planes are in need of being trained as they are found in every athletic movement in all arenas of sport. Avoid machine work and focus on free weights (barbell, dumbbell, kettlebell, medicine ball) to help encourage stabilization and fixation of muscle groups as you are moving through several different degrees of freedom.
3.) Train Fast: Acceleration= the change in velocity/the change in time. There are two types of muscle fiber types: slow twitch and fast twitch muscle fibers. Based upon the demand of the sport, training should focus around increasing the fiber type that is most needed to perform at a high level. For example, a long distance runner will train for more of the slow twitch environment as they are relying more on the aerobic energy system while short burst athletes like sprinters, football players, basketball players, volleyball players will rely more on the fast twitch muscle fiber and ATP-PC system. Fast twitch muscle fibers have shown to innervate more vastly into more muscle fibers and are larger in nature. Due to this, they have almost 4 times the contractile force production of a slow twitch muscle fiber.
4.) Periodization Principle: A good athletic development program involves good planning to address overload, accommodation, adaptation, reversibility, specificity, individuality. The periodization itself will involve a combination of different volumes and intensity at each different phase. In general, most periodizations will include a base phase, a strength phase, and a peak phase. The highest volume and lowest intensity is in the base phase while the lowest volume and highest intensity is in the peak phase.
5.) Specificity of Sport: Athlete's should train and perform lifts that are most correlative to movements they will perform on their field of sport. Along with training similar movements you also need to consider energy systems and muscle fiber type as I addressed in bullet point 3.
6.) Split Training: Implementing split routines throughout the week (Monday/Thursday Lower Extremity or Tuesday Friday Upper Extremity) can help with allowing time for recovery.
7.) Variety Principle: Overload happens when the body responds to training loads that are more than they are used to. The overload causes the muscle to break down and go into a catabolic state. The body then adapt and through recovery strategies, rest, and nutrition to gain more development of strength and endurance.
8.) Injury Reduction Focus: Force reduction training, conditioning, adapting against injury incident rates specific to Sport.
9.) Restore Postural and Mobility Restrictions: Not addressing postural and mobility restrictions can lead to compensatory movement patterns that can increase stress on soft tissue and lead to injury.
10.) Diet and Recovery: Improving through nourishment of carbs, fats, proteins, vitamins/minerals, and water.
