009 Sprinting

Hello and welcome to the High Performance Physiology Podcast. I'm Chris Beardley, I'm here with my co-host Rob Mauseri and we're going to talk about sprinting today. Now we were just planning how to approach this topic before we jumped on the podcast today and we're going to keep it really simple and really straightforward for this particular episode and what we'll do in the future is dive down into the more interesting rabbit holes about various different biomechanical issues, straight-shortening cycle and that kind of thing. But we're going to give the really kind of basic version of sprinting today. So my section on physiology and biomechanical sprinting is going to be relatively short and then we'll discuss a little bit about the strength training programs once I finish that. So starting at the beginning, like we talked about with vertical jumping, so if you've not listened to the vertical jumping podcast, it'd be great if you went back and did that now because a lot of them about to say might not make as much sense if you haven't already listened to that. So like with vertical jumping, we can relatively easily determine the biomechanical kind of factor that's most important for sprinting with vertical jumping we want to get off the ground. So basically the vertical impulse relative to body weight is going to determine how much jump height we get with sprinting. It's basically the same kind of thing but horizontally. So we're now talking about the horizontal impulse in the direction that you want to go. So ultimately, like with vertical jumping, we can actually boil sprinting down to something relatively straightforward. So how do we create that horizontal force? Well essentially, or impulse rather, sorry. How do we create that horizontal impulse? Well, obviously it's going to happen as the gate cycle kind of occurs and we produce force, into the ground and direct ourselves horizontally in the kind of direction that we want to go. Now in order to achieve that, we're essentially going to perform a sequence of joint actions and it actually follows a proximal to this or sequence exactly the same way as vertical jumping does and throwing does or throwing on all the derivatives like punching as well. So essentially when we look at the sprinting gate cycle, we're trying to create a horizontal impulse and we're doing that with a sequence of joint actions that is actually following a proximal to this sequence that we can relatively easily map out. Now that proximal to this sequence is pretty much the same thing as we see with vertical jumping. It starts with the head, moves down to the knee, finishes at the ankle. But in the kind of the main difference between sprinting vertical jumping is that the speed that we are achieving in sprinting is much, much faster than we see with vertical jumping. Vertical jumping is actually quite a slow movement in comparison. So ultimately what that means is that whereas vertical jumping has quite a force dominant hip movement, a relatively balanced force and velocity knee movement and probably quite a velocity dominant ankle movement, in the case of sprinting, we have actually quite a balanced hip movement where we've got balanced force and velocity. And then by the time we get to the knee and the ankle, everything is just velocity which means that it's very, very difficult to add any more kinetic energy onto the actual kind of movement once we've left the hip joint. What that tells us is that the hip is essentially producing all of the kinetic energy that we can actually input into the sprinting cycle and is responsible for that horizontal impulse that I started this description with. So essentially what we've just done there very quickly is identify that the hip is the power, the engine of the movement and essentially what we're going to need to do is produce large amounts of power up both in inflection and also in extension by means of having a high level of strength and also a high level of speed. So that tells us pretty much what the engine is behind the sprinting gate cycle. And then just to kind of finish it off, finish this analysis off, we just have to remember that every gate cycle progresses into the next one. And that's different from the other movements that we've talked about with law. The other moves we've talked about before are essentially single shot movements. They're just kind of like a vertical jump or a throw. It's one and done. Whereas in the case of sprinting every single gate cycle transitions into the next one. What that means is that as we reach the end, for example, if we reach what's called terminal swing as the leg is, or the hip is flexing forwards, the knee is actually also extending at that point. What that means is, but the hamstrings are going to have to resist that flexion of the knee of the of the hip and that extension of the knee by flexing the producing a flexion talk at the knee at the same time as an extension talk at the hip. And that means that the hamstrings produce an enormous amount of eccentric force in order to make that pair of joint actions happen. The exact opposite happens when you get the opposite end of the gate cycle. So when the knee when the hip is behind the body, you extended the hip. Now you got to try and flex it again, but at the same time the knee is actually flexing. You want to extend it. So you're producing any extension force at the same time as you're producing a a hip flexion force or talk rather. And because you're actually breaking forces initially to create that to to to slow the original movement and bring yourself back to the movement you want to perform, you're actually doing those eccentricly. So you got a really, really big rack fem eccentric force production in that end of the gate cycle as well. So that really then leaves us with one final thing to mention, which is that we obviously are impacting on the ground. And that means that the ankle is again going to have an eccentric force absorption phase. So plantar flexion is going to have to do well plantar flexors are going to have to do some kind of eccentric force production there every time we bring the foot into contact with the ground. So essentially there's a little bit more going on with sprinting because of its gate cycle and the impacts through her experiencing. They make it a little bit more complicated than the throwing and the vertical jumping movements that we talked about before. But ultimately not that much more complicated because essentially we just have these two separate things to think about. We have what's essentially the engine of the hip which we've got to think about both in terms of extension and flexion. A lot of people ignore the flexion part. We've got both flexion and extension. And then separately we've then got these force absorption situations with the wreck fam, the hamstrings and the calf muscles as a separate issue that adds on top of the kind of basic proximal to the crystal sequence analysis that we started with. So that's basically it. That's how I break down sprinting in the simplest possible way working as I say from the very beginning of what we actually need to make the movement happen. Looking at the joint sequence is looking at proximal to the crystal sequence, looking at the eccentric elements of the movement. And that gives us I think pretty much almost everything we would need to know if not everything we would need to know in order to write strength training programs. It needs some sports specific training activities as well. So with that I want to ask Rob, Rob, what are you doing a moment in your strength training programs when you're working with people you need to whether their athletes are actually arch-expinters or whether their athletes who just sprint as part of their sport? What are you currently programming? So I'll start off by saying I don't typically work with sprinters most of the time it's more like field sport athletes and stuff like that that have to just be faster. So and Chris and I said before the podcast we're going to go into like spring mechanics and all that stuff now. Whatever I'm trying to get someone faster. So the big focus like Chris just said is going to be on the hip. So if we're going to start with maybe hip extension since that's going to be kind of the primary one. Really like to focus on exercises that are going to be very very high force. I'm at least if we're working from that end of things and corresponding to a bit shorter fiber lengths. So I'm generally not doing things like you know very long range, room A and deadlifts and stuff like that as much. A lot more focused on for the glutes hip thrusts for the glutes and hamstrings. Something like a more top or maybe mid-range stiff like deadlift from pins or blocks something like that. Hip thrusts probably being my prime everyone for the hip extensors. You do get a little bit of quads out of this as well. I get a little bit of out of your magnus in that. So it works really really nice and it's just not too much quad. I don't think Chris mentioned it but quad hypertrophy generally not correlated super well with improving sprint speed. Whereas glute hypertrophy definitely is hamstrings as well. So much much more of a focus on those terms of stuff I'm doing for the knee joint. Like you said definitely much more balance not really as much that you can do there. I definitely do a mix of things. Honestly a bit of heavy squat work sometimes. Sometimes more single leg stuff you know step-ups. I do like short range step-ups, par well step-ups things like that. In all of those keeping the rep ranges low, keeping far from failure. And again not placing like a huge emphasis growing quads or anything like that. For the ankle joint to really simple try to keep it as fast as I can. So it's usually just something some super easy like a calf hop. How people do some like quick switching drills that are going to be coming off the ground really fast and also bringing the hips up in the hip flexion very quickly. And then I guess moving on to the hip flexion portion of things. So people definitely neglected a ton. And if you watch a lot of elite sprinters train in that, you can see the exercises they're doing and they're usually really simple. And I don't tend to depart too much either. If I'm thinking of stuff that's going to train kind of all of the hip flexors. So maybe rep them. And so as major iliac is all those things. You know some of them like a cable hip flexion starting with the leg behind the body. is going to be nice. You can also do that with bands. Depending if someone's a little bit weaker maybe, they have a really straight train before I might do it. More for strength and more for a little bit of hypertrophy in the beginning and then go to something faster with a doing it maybe against just a light band or even just a drill with a brain like up as fast as possible. I know for hip function, we also mentioned I'm one of the prior podcasts doing some hip function isometrics. I like those as well. So we just kind of bent over on a bench, stay wiser with your hands and that. And then there's driving your knee into the bottom of the bench. You can do that in different degrees of hip flexion. You want to target a little bit more rect fan versus a little bit more. So as major iliac is those things. And then we mentioned that eccentric loading aspect. And let's kind of wrap up what you've said with the kind of every straight train stuff. Because otherwise it kind of people won't be able to remember what you said at the beginning by the time we get to the end. So let's kind of break the hip exercises. The hip strengthening exercises down. So obviously you've kind of got our favorite exercise in there, the hip thrust. Yeah, absolutely. And then a couple of other hip extension exercises. Because obviously the hip is going to be extending in situations where the knee is not also extending. So we're not in a situation where the hamstrings are going to be switched off in sprinting. So we can't look at hip extension. I mean, a variety of hip extension exercises will actually be appropriate here. I mean, I think really people can run the whole kind of range if they really wanted to. You can do bad extensions. Why do you do that? Absolutely. And 45. Everything can fit here really. It's just because the reality is the hip is going to be producing a hip extension talk over a range of joint angles. Not just the kind of-- I mean, people look at the stance phase. And they go, look, in the stance phase, the hip is relatively extended. So we would probably want the glute to be focused. Nothing. That's the right starting point. But we also have to remember the hip is extending from a relatively flexed position to start with. So it does go through a reasonable range of angles. And it's not just about the glute. We have got to recognize that the adducto-magazine and the hamstrings are going to be doing some hip extension at some point as well. So I think, honestly, I'm not going to argue with anybody who wants to run a bunch of different hip extensions exercises in there. I just think you're right. As you would do, I would always start with the hip first thing is probably the really valuable one there. In terms of the hip flexion one, I think this is worth really drilling into for people to understand the challenges here, because this is the same problem we've had with the throwing rotation, with torso rotation. Because ultimately, we don't have very many good hip flexion exercises in the gym that we can just throw people out. And I think one of the big challenges is the stability is generally pretty poor. I mean, like where you're using a cable, for example, at the opposite end of your leg. And you've got the other leg on the ground. You get straight away. I'm like, no, this is not going to be ideal. You make it more stable by bracing against the opposite end. Absolutely. They're like, yeah, and we just do it standing there. It's not going to be shit. It's really new. But we're bracing against the opposite end of a rack. So no, that to keep yourself silently in place. Totally. And I've seen some people use kind of attachments at just above the knee as well to try and minimize the problem of that kind of stability issue. And I think that's a really good way of doing it. What I really like there is this isometrics side of things, especially given that you've described how you're doing it with different joint angles. Because I think this is super important. A lot of people don't realize that we have a really big switch over in terms of hip flexion, where the starting point is definitely very, very wrecked fem. And after you leave that first 50 to 60 degrees, we really do move away from the rack fem and towards the other hip flexors instead. So I think there's a really, really nice kind of balanced program would have two very different hip angles, means close to full hip extension, and then much further away from full of hip extension. And I think those two would give a really nice balance of hip flexion movements. And I think you and I know this already, but I'll just repeat this for people who maybe are hearing this for the first time. There is nothing wrong with doing isometrics for high perchathy. No. Absolutely fine. No, they're not idealed to progressively overload, because you can't see what you're doing unless you've got some kind of device that can track forces. But ultimately, if you're stuck and you haven't got a really nice hip flexion strength machine dynamically, then isometrics, I would say, are pretty much the best option for you to make those kind of things happen. So I think it's really cool that you're describing that, really, really valuable for people. And everybody you got a bench. You know, if you don't have a bench, I don't know what you have around. Well, you're exact. So I think that's super, super important. It kind of like kind of clarify for people that, you know, the hip flexors definitely need training the same way that the hip extensors do for high levels of strength. And the same way that we've been describing how torsor rotation is critical for throwing. We need to have the force aspect of that, not just kind of play around in the middle of the force velocity spectrum by training power or waving moderate loads around. You know, actually the same issue applies to the hip flexion strengthening. It's like we need to go take this really seriously, the same way that we've taken hip extension strength training seriously for sprinting the exact mirror image needs to happen for the flexion. If I went to the gym and I looked at one most team sports and other kind of athletes, I don't know who sprint, I can guarantee that they would be doing a really quite decent hip extension strength training program. I might disagree with a couple of the exercise selections, but more or less it's going to be pretty good. If I looked at what they don't have the hip flexion, I'm going to be really disappointed. I mean, that is just almost a ubiquitous finding everywhere. People are just not doing the hip flexion stuff. So, you know, if you're out there working with athletes who need to get faster on the field or even attract winter, look at your program and see, have you got some decent hip flexion strength training in or you kind of just, you know, including something with a plastic bun somewhere that isn't really going to do the job. So, I think I've really, really cool that, you know, you've kind of got that simple basic option for people who don't have a really fancy set of equipment to do hip flexion strength training dynamically. So cool, you've got that option for them, I cementally, so cool. Then you were just about to go on to the eccentric stuff. So, let's hear that now. - Yeah, and with the eccentric, it's, I mean, we're going to say it again, relatively simple as well. So, focusing on like the knee-french and aspect of the hamstrings, you know, everyone knows Nordics. So, I do program Nordics. If I have access to a leg grow machine, like like a two up, one down leg grill, you can use a flywheel as well. Anything like that, that's going to overload that eccentric nice and just using, you know, control, but not like an ultra slow tempo. So, I usually like anywhere from maybe three to a maximum of five seconds. It's not some super extended eccentric that's very slow. Because really, I think I mentioned that I'm one of the other podcasts. You do something that you control for like eight to 10 seconds. It's probably something you can actually lift at that point. And so, it's not really doing the job. So, yeah, just making sure it's actually heavy enough. And occasionally I'll throw in some fast eccentric and some very rapid eccentric. So, maybe the same, you know, on a Nordic or on a back eccentric, I've even done single leg. So, then like a very rapid length and then you center there, but most often it's Nordics leg ovarations. And then for the eccentric loading of the quads, you mentioned the rec fem, of course. So, I just like to do just a knee extension. So, two up, one down, super easy. Get tons of rec fem out of that. And it tends to work really, really well. And, you know, almost any gym again, is gonna have a decent enough like extension machine. So, it doesn't require any fancy setup. So, we're not doing like an overloaded back squat, super max or something like that. Just fit T the hell out of yourself and not get anything extra out of it. Anyway, I'm not getting my stuff. - Yeah, take 20 minutes, oh yeah, exactly. Take 20 minutes to set the top and bottom up and kind of do, yeah, it doesn't even train the rec fem. So, yeah, now that's cool. So, I think it's really important for people to understand that again, we're describing very, very simple sort of setups here that can be done in most gyms. You know, it's literally just, as you say, using two legs to do the concentric phase and then one leg for the eccentric phase in what would be a fairly standard gym machine for the leg curl and the knee extension. I think that's really, really cool. So, have you, I mean, I guess it depends on the, I guess it depends on the machine, how easy that is to achieve. I can visualize it in the gyms that I go to. I can see in certain situations, it would be fairly straightforward and then other pieces of equipment probably not quite as straightforward. But again, you know, we've got other options as well. We've got the Nordic, you know, - Yeah, you know, reverse Nordic as well. - The first Nordic would be the, would be the kind of the opposing one for the rec fem. So, even if the gym equipment is really enclosed and it's really hard to get your legs out when you've kind of got the end of the concentric phase. So, you can't do, you know, sort of two legs concentric phase, one leg eccentric phase. Then there is the alternative version, [BLANK_AUDIO] of course, the Nordic and the reverse Nordic. And we can wait those if you've got people who are doing a concentric version of those exercises. So, you know, and again, with reverse Nordics, people complain a lot about those. It's just, I found the important thing is to make sure you've got something behind you that is outing as a safety kind of bench. - Yeah, you don't need to go all the way down to the floor with those. - Yeah, I know. - You're not, you're a mobile one, flexible. - That's the thing I think people kind of get really wound up about reverse Nordics because they're like, or how do I stop when I get to the point where I have I haven't got the mobility anymore? Like that's what the safety bench is for. It's like, don't try and do these free, you know, kind of like just in the middle of nowhere. Have something to stop you when you get to your mobility limit. Otherwise, you're going to be focusing too much on the controls of the exercise rather than actually producing the effort that you need to create the eccentric and kind of, or the level of equipment in that eccentric. - Exactly. - Yeah. - Cool. So I remember that I didn't ask you the key question that I keep asking you every week for the, so let's do it now for both of these. Sets, reps, frequencies, volumes, all that kind of stuff for both the heavy concentric stuff and also the eccentric stuff. - Yeah, the heavy concentric stuff. I mean, there's a little pen if I'm working with someone who's in field sports and stuff like that. Like, no more time of the season. It is, if you're not playing a lot of games, things like that. Generally, especially with contracted position focus to help you hit thrust, two to three sets, low to moderate reps. Usually, I'm lower end for those, you know, worried about producing as much force as possible and then leaving, you know, very likely, two, three or several reps in reserve. Again, avoiding like to failure, avoiding those fiber types shifts, you're not going to want stuff like that. For the quad work, you know, whether it's a step up, squat variation, same thing, usually anywhere from one to three sets, quad aren't as, you know, important, of course. They don't really want a ton of hypertrophy and the quad's necessarily. So keep the volumes even lower, low to moderate reps. Again, if you're a rep should have failure. For the hip function stuff, it's, you know, generally important. Most people either are not currently doing it or haven't done it in a long time so it tends to need a lot of work. So usually keep a few sets, a few times a week for those, two to three sets, two times a week. Usually don't have people training lower body, you know, more often than two and maybe at a maximum three. So some of that, two to three sets, and if you're replacing that with our semetricks, how would your semetricks work? Yeah. So for the ice, I was generally chucked those in at the beginning as part of the warmup. And then I just do a few reps, max effort. I'll usually do anywhere from like three to five max effort reps per leg, maybe like a five second duration. So it's not very warm again for increasing recruitment, one of my hypertrophy in that, but not doing it long enough so that you're just getting fatigued. And you know, the next ones are not good. It's really interesting. Yeah, I find the ice semetricks really interesting. So I've shared this before on the podcast I do with Jake. And I played around a lot with ice semetricks this last summer. And this is just my, I'm not saying, I mean, I know I have this unfortunate kind of situation whereby when I say something, people kind of run away with it. And it's like, it goes half way, because the industry before I can finish the sentence. But this is literally me describing my personal experience. Do not, I hopefully, you know, if you're listening to this, don't take this seriously. This is just me sharing how it felt. I found ice semetricks to be really mentally tough. So I would do, yeah. So I would do a couple of, maybe I was, I mean, again, maybe I was kind of starting out doing something that was probably a bit silly because I was doing a pulling ice semetrick. And that's probably not a good idea because obviously my kind of one long chin background means that I do tend to kind of have quite a strong kind of pull. So my kind of, I've got the tractivation is really high. And I can probably get to a very, very high level of motine accruing in that muscle compared to many of the other muscles in my body, the similar size. So maybe I kind of just went in a bit hard, but like doing a couple of reps max effort. And I'm even my second rep. I can't get close to what it feels like on the first rep. Maybe that's just, I haven't got the mental kind of sort of, you know, capacity anymore at my age, but, you know, it just feels brutal. And I think that's is not anything obviously related to the kind of peripheral of deep mechanisms. It just feels really, really difficult. So I think it's really interesting if in the future, there's kind of like we get some better, more accessible, isometric kind of load cell type devices. They're actually measures some of these forms, because it will be so cool for me, especially if I could literally just get a standard kind of idea of what my pulling force is when it's absolutely maximal. And then I could play around with like 90% of that, 95%. That will be absolutely brilliant, because that would just bring me down to the level where it's not, I don't feel like my cerebral cortex. Yeah, just a bit more towerable. Yeah, it would be really cool. But you know, thing is, is, no, anyway, sorry. So you were describing there how you're currently, and I generally have kind of explained to people how before how isometric fit brilliantly into a warm up, because they kind of, you know, very low fatigue for that point of view, not describing what I was doing a minute ago, but just like the kind of high effort, isometric, not trying to kind of root the machine apart. But essentially, I think, again, you know, if you were programming that I personally, I guess you would probably, you know, kind of want to help the number of efforts in that particular situation. Yeah, definitely you can push it to the higher end if you're using it to actually grow more muscle. And you, of course, then you want to be sure you're getting enough stimulus as well. You know, for women purposes and that, we said, plenty of times you don't need a lot of contractions. May every channel really grow your head flexors, probably on the top, under that and in each position free time. You'll do some for the sole as major in that. So you can just change that up a little bit. Yeah, exactly. I think that is, as you said before, you know, most people's programs are going to have a decent amount of head flex tension strength training in. They will have already developed their picks, done as well as do well. You know, when they come to you or they come to anybody else who's been listening to his podcast and wants to move forward with their sprinting, they're probably going to be, you know, it's probably going to be a weakness of theirs. The head flexors are probably going to be on the smaller side. So, you know, and if equipment is limited and there isn't a good dynamic machine, then they are going to be essentially limited to doing, you know, some kind of isometric training for that. So I think it's going to be one of those things that people have to feel the way through a little bit, but, you know, definitely, if I think really if people go, you know, a strength training set to failure is approximately 15 seconds of concentric activity related to, you know, high levels of equipment. So if you want to bring that down to three five second isometric or five three second isometric that's probably going to be a decent set. Now, given that most of the time in dynamics we're leaving a repotum reserve anyway, it probably is going to be about two sets is going to be about sort of three five second isometric or five three second isometric. So I'd say that's probably ballpark territory. Is that sound about right? Yeah, you're definitely cool. And in terms of the eccentric stuff, I'm guessing obviously, you know, positioning this at the end of the workout and being aware of course of the other stuff the athlete has to do in the week. I'm kind of set some reps you're doing this. I'm actually really interested to hear what you're doing at home. A lot of times it's, you know, maybe start if someone's again far the way from like a season or games and that with still only a few sets like two to three sets of maybe one or two reps. And then I do really taper it off a lot. I think we mentioned before on the podcast, but a lot of times when people are playing a bunch of games and things like that, it's just one set of one rep. Twice a week on each one for the knee flexors, one for the quad's rep film. And I mean, I've seen at least that it seems to make a good bit of difference, you know, generally people aren't getting hamstring injuries and stuff like that. You know, they're feeling good sprinting. And then I didn't mention for a kind of a maintenance volume for hip extension work as well when people are playing a lot. I don't think I said just like one set of a couple reps twice a week. And I think you mentioned not here, but when you're an average chatting, then a lot of people then lose sprint speed pretty quickly. But a lot of times it's because they just stopped raining. Anything that's going to maintain size and the hip extensors and hip flexors and they just kind of go about playing games and stuff like that and remove heavy strength training entirely, thinking it's going to be just too fatiguing in that. What if you keep it low-rabbing to keep it farther from failure? Really I've never seen anyone having issues with twice a week strength work. So I'm going to repeat what you said to me so that people are completely clear what you said. You said you're doing single repetitions of Nordics and reverse Nordics twice a week. Yeah. And there's a lot of cases. That is awesome. So that's really interesting because I have another contact who is working quite well up in a sports team in another country. And he again completely without actually me volunteering any information to him. He reached out to me and she said, "I'm going to do it." to know a while back and said that he had started doing single reps about two or three times a week with his athletes for eccentric training exercises. And he said that I was working really, really well. I think it's really interesting, you know, because just for people who maybe aren't aware of how the stimulating rep model works with eccentric, super max weight eccentric efforts, where you're lowering a weight that you can't lift, which is all of what this eccentric training is about. The stimulating rep model works backwards not forwards. So your first rep is your most stimulating, because that's when you've got the highest level of motor unit, you've got no fatigue mechanisms and you get the maximum level of mechanical tension and and recoverments simultaneously. So ultimately, that first rep is the most variable rep. Anything after that is pretty much downhill from there. And it's just such a far cry from if you go back five, ten years and look at the early Nordic curl literature, and you've got people doing kind of five sets of 12 reps. If I've done five sets of 12 reps of Nordics at some point in my life, I probably still not be recovered. I'd be traumatized. So yeah, I think we've come a long way since then, but yeah, absolutely, you know, I think you can absolutely get to where with a really, really tiny volume of reps of these super max, really eccentric efforts. I think realistically, I think one rep sets are really cool because they are the most variable rep. So I would probably say rather than doing, and if somebody said to me, well, can I do three reps in this? Honestly, I'd rather you did three separate singles rather than the kind of the three kind of reps, because everything just tapes down to a worse stimulus as you go on and on and on in the eccentric set. So I'd rather have two singles or three singles, if people really want to do more, rather than have multiple kind of reps in inside a set. But again, in that scenario, I think three, four, five is probably getting to the top end of what I would ever do. Yeah. Yeah. And that's really, yeah, five reps total for the training and muscle eccentric, I think, is and that would be if I knew that I had nothing else going on in the rest of the week, you know, other than the strength. Yeah, you're not going to do that. I'm going to play. Absolutely. Now, you know, I think I think, you know, one to three is probably a really good ballpark for most people most time. And then no, that sounds really low to a lot of people. So literally, I'm going to repeat it. We're talking about two workouts a week and one to three repetitions, probably with rest between those reps. So they're going to look more like, you know, kind of single rep sets. Yeah. So three individual single up to three individual singles. But again, you know, what Rob is describing here is that he is currently mainly programming single repetitions, rather than pushing it all the way up to three. So it absolutely is doable with those singles. It doesn't have to be three. I'm just kind of giving people a little bit of leeway. If they really feel like they need to do a few more reps, but I mean, once you start hitting five, I think it's really top end. I would never really want to go much higher than that. Yeah, and especially in a single set of you who did five. Oh, yeah. I mean, again, it much better to do that as like, you know, sort of two or three doubles or something like that. But again, I think we've changed a lot how we think about e-centric training in the last kind of 10 years. And again, at the beginning, it was like, you know, just treat it like normal strength training. And now we're like respecting it to a bit more. And anyone who had done those protocols, like you do them and then you can't do anything normal for it. And you're like, wow, I don't think that was very youthful. That was not very youthful, no. Absolutely madness. But again, like as you said, really important to have a protocol that is possible to maintain throughout the season, because like you were saying, as soon as you start losing muscle mass from the hips, you're going to lose your engine. And muscle mass does dissipate really fast. I know that historically, strength conditioning has really fought the idea. But it really does. What's the mass really does dissipate very fast once you stop strength training. And the same thing applies to e-centric training. In fact, I would argue it actually happens even faster. There's some really interesting data showing that, you know, fast calencts, especially go back to baseline. Yeah, Nordic, you know, strength training programs of six weeks. And then within two weeks of Nordic, Nordics is all gone. You know, sometimes I joke that, you know, the benefits of Nordics are gone by the time you go home from the gym. I mean, they really do disappear really fast. So we've got to kind of keep them in the program. So again, like, I don't know, I kind of criticize team sports quite a lot for the way that they run things. But I've seen a lot of team sports strength training programs where they do a load of e-centric work in the off season. As soon as the athletes hit season, they just take it all out the program. All that hard work that you put your athletes through, two weeks later, so gone. Yeah, I mean, my sisters worked for a bunch of high-level collidia program. We still talk all the time about what the coaches are doing and these things. And some of the stuff you see is just so crazy. And then like you said, the volumes are huge off season. And then give it to you at these center. Yeah. The volume of everything in season is just crazy. And they'll have guys training like five days a week, tons of lifting. And I had her as we were about a few people the other day that she's working with as well. And their coaches having them lift. It was like five or six times in a week on top of sports training. That's a lot. That's a lot. That's a lot. So I think, yeah, but in terms of the detraining effect, you know, we want to keep these low volumes in the program all the way through the year as much as possible. Because as soon as we take them out, there is doesn't. There's stimulus for the muscles to retain those adaptions. And within, as I say, two weeks, all the eccentric related peripheral adaptions are probably gone. And probably within four weeks, most of the concentric related peripheral adaptions are pretty much back to zero as well or baseline levels anyway. Yeah. And I do. I definitely have people ask about like, because they're like, oh, well, what if I can only lift once a week? And it's like, well, I'd rather than that for sure. But, you know, because the problem there and I've told a bunch of people, I've consulted with this, like you lift once a week, yeah, technically you can do in a volume and a session to be maintaining on that. When you do that session, you do like four sets per exercise, per muscle group, whatever might be when your week is going to be 10, but anything after that is not going to be as productive. Whereas you can do two sessions and then all of a sudden you need one or two sets and your file. Two sessions is a magical number. It really is. It's like, and I keep saying to this pit to people, every time I do Instagram questions every time I do anything else, I say to people, look, if you can just get the two of the most basic workouts in your week, you'll just be able to not only keep everything you've got, but also move forward very slowly, even if you're actually in season training and playing all of the other stuff, you can probably make some very slow, gradual progress on some stuff. And also not worry about losing stuff that you've worked hard to gain in the off season. Two is a really magical number in that respect. I recommend two tons a week for pretty much every athletic situation all the time. Well, she's like younger guys, you get high school or college athletes like they're, they're going to grow and progress so much anyway. They don't need a ton. They have this minimal volume and you'll see them make crazy gains out out of season as well as it's a little tight, it's no minimal. Absolutely. So, so we've described, hopefully, rather to be clearly what's going on in the hip, what's going on in the knee, and you've mentioned that you do a little bit of dynamic, type of biometric work for the calf muscles. And that's probably, you know, kind of all you're doing at the moment for the, for the calf complex. Yeah, I mean, like you said, like competitive vertical jumping and all those things like sprinting is so much faster. So, I generally, you know, rely more on the actual sprint work to be the, just need end of things. Exactly. That's super super super super super. I mean, speed is really difficult to train in the gym when, I mean, I know some people look at jumps, some things like that. If people are looking at jumps to try and improve, say for example, hip extension velocity, obviously horizontal jumps are going to be a lot better than vertical ones because the hips are more involved. But I would stick with two legs, even though that, you know, some people go, well, you want to do single leg because it's more specific. Yeah, but force velocity relationship. I know pushes it to a really forced, dominant situation if you're using, you know, kind of single leg versions, rather than two leg versions. I've never seen anyone play around with assistance on horizontal jumps. I'd be really nervous about it because it's kind of like you have the risk of like catapulting someone into the next state if you're going to. Yeah, I have not played with that person. No, I think that's probably off the end of what I would describe as my safety limit of what is sensible to do. But, you know, obviously, everyone's got their own setups and situations. And if someone got a really cool, you know, bungee system allows them to do that safely, then fantastic. But generally speaking, I think as you say sprinting is going to be the main source of high velocity stimulus for the sprinting action. You know, we're just trying to provide strength training in a targeted way that does useful stuff rather than not so useful stuff. Yeah. So, probably not a lot of time to go through silly things that you've seen people doing regarding sprint training, but just give us one or two examples to finish today's. episode. I mean, definitely, definitely all over the place. You see plenty. I think the worst ones I see so much are the people that are trying to mimic using strength training exercises to like mimic the the gate cycle and the various, you know, segments of the gate cycle. And they use all these goofy low-wown exercises, sometimes moving very slowly, but not against, you know, high level resistance or in any kind of stable way. Stuff that's not going to work. It's not anywhere near close to the proximal that does the sequencing. You're going to see in a sprint or anything athletic. And you're just you're just kind of moving around twisting, moving, not doing anything. Seemed people who really try hard to program. Again, I mentioned it with jumping in that. There's a weird idea of the doing just like deep, deep range split squats and things like that is going to be some magical exercise for improving running because it's single-way and all these things. Again, nothing, you know, really close to the muscle lengths and the joint angles and that that you need. You know, yeah, you get some like, adductors yet a lot more quad than you probably want. You get to blutes. So it's not like it's the worst thing in the world to possibly do, but it's not very good either at the same time. Yeah, like really just like long stance, driving the knee over the toe, stuff like that. I've seen everyone talk about training the low back to improve jumping in sprint. I see that all the time. And I think people still think the low back is a muscle which is funny. One of the people are like, they just talk about just, you know, use this to build your low back. Use this to train the low back. And it's like it's more, you know, more often than not just like a back extension or something. And again, you're training your hamstrings, training the glutes, your adductors. I mean, yeah, you get some spotter actors, but it's not like you're not just training your quote unquote lower back with that. And I've seen a lot of people mention that that is, you know, some key to athletic performance. I'm like, I'm never going to say you don't need a strong back, but you're also just not going to just train the lower back in a as like its own thing. So it's a very, very slow one. I think the the one that I've probably seen, I mean, I've seen a couple and I'll kind of go into more detail on on some of the issues with them in a future podcast episode because they actually relate to very technical elements of the sprinting movement that we haven't covered today. But the one that I think is worth mentioning from my perspective is pretty much the same as the one that you mentioned regarding throwing. Because essentially it's isometrics for the calf muscles. Oh, yeah, I've seen those. Which is essentially the same issue that you mentioned with punching or having an isometric in the extended elbow, extended elbow position at the end of the punching movement, like to create force production at the end of the of kind of punch. I'm seeing that with a lot of people using that for sprinting because they think that they want to produce big forces into the ground. They think to themselves, ah, the calf muscle is producing big forces into the ground. It's like, yeah, the energy's coming for all the way from the hip all the way down. I mean, sequence, you're again, you're training opposite end of the proximal distance sequence in that situation. It's not doing what you think it's doing. And I think people get a little bit twisted too because the calves are important in like long, long distance running, like endurance running, you know, calf strength than that is you see really good distance runners like maintain calf power better through races and stuff like that. And they're absorbing, you know, really high forces, but it's not, I think people try to apply that to sprinting as well. It's a very different gaze like it is. So can I go to carve off and treat it separately? But yeah, I think that's the one that I think I can mention this time. There's a few others that I could mention I'm not going to because they just aren't. It wouldn't make sense in the context to what we've done today because they're kind of specific. Well, that's in, you know, one that I've seen people doing those isometrics saying that it's going to improve, you know, Achilles tendon stiffness. I think there are people who are just confusing tendon stiffness with like just overall ankle stiffness. Again, it's like people mistake the fact that the stiffness has been provided by yeast and just strength, not by attendance. And the reality is, and again, we can do a whole episode on this later on, but sprinters don't actually have stiffer tendons than normal people. No, it's wild, but you know, people got this image in their heads of the sprinter having this really stiff tendon again. It's like, I think this goes all the way back to plyometrics, kind of history, where people thought that the stiffness that was kind of being exhibited by athletes in plyometric activities, that was being created by tendon being really stiff. And it's not. It's a muscle force that's doing that. And the same thing, the sprinter has the high yeast and drink force capacity of the plantar flex. It's not the tendon that's doing that. Tendon actually is pretty much the same as the normal persons, a normal person. And untrained person. Not what's happening. He's not normal. You know, it's just like an untrained person is going to have a similar tendons stiffness. And, you know, people look kind of, listen to me say that and go, no, no, no, no, Chris has completely lost the plot. Okay, go look at the literature and report back because I'll guarantee you find that I'm right. So that's a really interesting one. But yeah, I think calf high semestrics calf dynamic heavy strength training really, really overrated for spring. I wouldn't do that for a number of reasons. But again, hopefully, or we've described today will be a good replacement for all of those silly things that, you know, we just described. So let's stop there and call it today. I'll say we will do future episodes on sprinting because there's a lot more we can say. We just tried to give a fairly simple overview today, even now we've overrun by about 10 minutes beyond what we know I do. That is because sprinting is complicated. And as I say, we'll come back to it and do more again in the future. So with that, leave it for today. And we will be back with another episode next week.