Latest / The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast / #24: Gill1918 presents Jonmarc Rasberry "Using VBT in the Weight Room"
Transcript
- 0:00Welcome to the Gill 1918 Project, a podcast series by
- 0:03coaches, for coaches, powered by Gill Athletics.
- 0:06Think of this as the Ted Talks of track and field coaching.
- 0:09Short, insightful, and packed with valuable strategies to help
- 0:12you grow as a coach. We're bringing the once a year
- 0:15track clinic straight to your ears daily.
- 0:17Interested in creating your own episode?
- 0:19Everyone's welcome to participate.
- 0:21Check out the show notes below For more information.
- 0:23Now let's get into today's topic.
- 0:27Hey everyone, my name is Coach John Mark Raspberry.
- 0:30I am the Director of Strength Conditioning over at Jackson
- 0:34Christian School, currently here in Jackson, TN, and I'm diving
- 0:39down into some different topics here on this podcast.
- 0:42One of them being about how do we use jumps, sprints, and
- 0:48velocity based training to drive our strength program.
- 0:53We're basically turning our weight room into a science lab.
- 0:57So if you're a high school coach with a budget or you got laser
- 1:02timers, a jump mat, or even got some tape in a wall, a free wall
- 1:08that you can, this episode is for you.
- 1:12So first and foremost, why do we need to assess jumps, sprints
- 1:19and our velocity based training? First and foremost, I fully
- 1:25believe that if you're not recording your sprints, you're
- 1:28not recording your jumps. And if you're not really looking
- 1:32or recording the weight that's done at your velocity based
- 1:36training, regardless of the zone that you're looking at, OK, that
- 1:42needs to be a priority for every coach that's running any sort of
- 1:46athletic performance really. And truly it's because we do not
- 1:52need the guesswork and athletic performance.
- 1:56We have so much resource and technology and knowledge out
- 2:00there that we the the time of guessing is over.
- 2:07OK, so how do we know where we are getting faster?
- 2:11How do we know that our kids are ready to play sports?
- 2:15How do we know that they are neurologically ready for the
- 2:20demands of training, demands of sports?
- 2:23I full heart wholeheartedly believe that looking at these
- 2:28big three metrics right jump sprints and bar speed tell us
- 2:31more about athlete than anything else really could and gives us a
- 2:37short snap like a snapshot of our kids in the present moment
- 2:42that they are with us. So it's having a data-driven and
- 2:51data informed program to your athlete performance, right?
- 2:57So let's talk about jumps, vertical jump, or you can do the
- 3:00car movement jump. It's actually really easy to
- 3:03track. We use Pilemat here at JCS and
- 3:09we look at things like averages of their sprints, averages of
- 3:13their jumps obviously, what's 90 or 95% of their jumps and what's
- 3:22their Max jump, What's the highest average jump, What's 95%
- 3:25of that, What's 90% of that and what's the average?
- 3:29Because that tells me indicator of a lot, right?
- 3:32And it's kind of the same process for bar speed and
- 3:34sprints, OK. If we are let's say averaging a
- 3:3925 inch vert like that is our average for all the jumps
- 3:44highest is ever 28 and I think 95% of that somewhere in 26.8 or
- 3:50something like that. And then our kid jumps 21 and
- 3:542220 and then lower than that maybe 19.
- 3:59What does that say about that kid in that moment?
- 4:03To me as a coach, it tells me one or two things.
- 4:06Either it tells me that the kids not trying and you get on to
- 4:12them because they're not trying inside your athletic
- 4:16performance, or it tells me the opposite.
- 4:20It tells me that there was something, there's a high stress
- 4:23going on with this kid before they stepped into your weight
- 4:27room, your athletic performance center, and they're seeing this
- 4:31as fraud. Now.
- 4:33That could be from close sports. I work in high school study.
- 4:36That could be from close sports. That could be from sport coaches
- 4:39running them the day before. There are so many factors.
- 4:43The kids could've only have one hours sleep.
- 4:46They could've been watching their brother or sister.
- 4:50OK that tells me a lot. It gives me kind of a red flag
- 4:55when I see a significant decrease in a jump, sprints and
- 5:00even our bar speed too. To me, that jumps out as saying
- 5:05something's wrong. Either the kids not trying,
- 5:07which is a very good possibility, I've had it happen
- 5:10before, or the kid is neurologically not there.
- 5:15If they're neurologically not there, they're more sensible to
- 5:19being injured and that allows me to modify their program inside
- 5:25the weight room. I said this, the old days of
- 5:28just tough it out. Well, what if they tough it out
- 5:31and they get hurt inside the weight room, right?
- 5:34The best ability for all our athletes is availability and us
- 5:39not adjusting to this one athlete, whatever's there going
- 5:44on. Like there's imagine this is the
- 5:46star wide receiver of your team and his average is like a 35 and
- 5:51comes in as 21. And you know, the kids trying or
- 5:55their average like 25, whatever, it's significantly below of
- 6:01their Max jump or even the 90% of their jump, instead of
- 6:06telling that kid, hey, tough it out, you'll be better for it.
- 6:09Why not give kid, let's let's enjoy, let's adjust your load
- 6:14for what we're doing. Maybe instead of back squats, we
- 6:18go safety squat bar, let's go 50%, Let's try, let's just go
- 6:22fast. Like let's produce a little bit
- 6:24force and then let's get out rather than just grinding it
- 6:29out, right? The grind is something that I
- 6:32think every athlete needs to experience.
- 6:34It's just the time and place in which we experience it.
- 6:38So that's jumps, right? So sprints is kind of the same
- 6:41deal for me. We look at that horizontal
- 6:45displacement for our sprints and even more, I think sprints is a
- 6:50way better indicator of athleticism and where we are
- 6:55neurologically then jump is right.
- 6:58So for our sprints for example, let's just use a 10 yard fly
- 7:05with a 5 yard build, right? That 5 yard build, we are solely
- 7:08looking at acceleration. And for me, if I look at like
- 7:12someone that runs a 1359795 percent of that is roughly about
- 7:18the one fours 142, I think 139 if you're looking at 97% of it,
- 7:24if there are times are like a 15-A16, again, that that is a
- 7:29huge red flag. Either one or two things are
- 7:30happening. Either you're not trying or you
- 7:35may have something going on that I don't know about this coach.
- 7:38And that's also a really good possibility.
- 7:40You know, some of our kids want to please our coaches, right?
- 7:44They want tough doubt. They don't want to be pulled out
- 7:47of a training session because something happened over the
- 7:52weekend, right? They worked on a farm.
- 7:53They were hooping and twist their ankle.
- 7:56You know what, Not things happen.
- 8:00Sprints tell me that, right? It's a huge indicator of
- 8:04something's not happening or something's not neurologically
- 8:09sharp with some of our kids. And to me, I can't just my
- 8:15training when that happens. And that's kind of a new
- 8:20schoolish way of doing it. But I do think it's it's
- 8:26helpful, right? Again, time and place to push a
- 8:31kid, maybe not in that moment is not ready to push that kid.
- 8:37Maybe we pivot to something else, right?
- 8:39We drop the intensity, we focus on on movement quality.
- 8:43So instead of, you know, doing sprints, maybe do Sprint
- 8:47technique work, right? We still get something out of
- 8:50it, mobility, isometrics, things of that nature.
- 8:56And I'll just be honest with you, if we track them over time,
- 9:00they're going to get better at those movements.
- 9:03But also if you could say, hey, in July we were averaging a 26
- 9:12inch vert and now we're averaging 29 inch vert to
- 9:15stakeholders, right? That is huge.
- 9:19Being dead informed doesn't mean we have to have technology
- 9:23everywhere, but it does mean that we take a look at where our
- 9:28kids at are AT currently and we listen to their bodies and what
- 9:31their bodies are telling us, right?
- 9:34And going to bar speed, right? So .9 is roughly about power,
- 9:39power development, .3 give or take .25 depending on which lift
- 9:44you're looking at. That's, that is a, that's for
- 9:49absolute strength or just a, a strength metric for our, our
- 9:54measurements here. If we're looking at serving the
- 9:58curve right, we're looking at for that force velocity curve.
- 10:01If we're lifting significantly less weight at the same speed,
- 10:09again, red flag. But here's the other part of
- 10:11that, right. Here's the beautiful thing about
- 10:14velocity based training, VBT and tracking your numbers.
- 10:19If you are lifting heavier weight at the same speed, are
- 10:26you getting stronger? Yes.
- 10:29And now we treat our VBT like our sprints in our jumps.
- 10:33We PR on our squats, we PR on our bench, and it all depends on
- 10:39what the kid feels right So, and that's part of my gimmick here
- 10:44too, right I, I track a lot of numbers here.
- 10:47There's a lot of numbers that flow through our weight room
- 10:50here from barbell movements to accessory movements to sprints
- 10:55to jumps, RSI, broad jumps. There's a lot of numbers here
- 11:01being well organized and having some form of AMS, whether that's
- 11:07companies out there or Google Sheets.
- 11:10I do my Google Sheets. But something out there that can
- 11:13track and inform us what's the best that we did in the given
- 11:19time frame, right? I usually look about two or
- 11:22three months. So from let's just say January
- 11:25to March, what is the best that you have done so far?
- 11:31And our kids love it, right? It's a little bit of gamifying
- 11:34that training saying, alright, well you bitched 245 at .4 last
- 11:39time, let's try 25255. And kids want to do that, right?
- 11:46Kids want to be able to do things like beat their OPRS, be
- 11:51stronger, be faster, be more powerful.
- 11:54And I think having things like these metrics, right, our jumps,
- 11:59our sprints, the velocity based training, it's building a dead
- 12:05informed strength program, right?
- 12:07All the numbers are flowing through.
- 12:09It makes sense. And it, if we, if we're looking
- 12:13at or we're working at a place where you're answering the
- 12:16stakeholders, right? So admin, parents, donors,
- 12:20things of that nature, this is concrete evidence that what we
- 12:24do in the weight room or what you're doing in your athletic
- 12:26performance center, it's working, right?
- 12:29We could say from point A this kid started at this Sprint at
- 12:36this time, they ran this miles per an hour.
- 12:39They were lifting this much and these lifts and here's where
- 12:42they are at now. Or if you're answering the sport
- 12:45coaches, this is what we lifted as a team average.
- 12:49Here's our Sprint average on different, you know, buildings.
- 12:54Here's our jumping numbers from back whenever you first tested.
- 13:00Here are, here's where we're at currently.
- 13:03And the beautiful thing about this kind of system building,
- 13:06this kind of dev for system is you don't necessarily have to
- 13:10take a week out to do PR's or or do Max out weeks or anything
- 13:17like that. It's kind of built into the
- 13:19system, which is nice for a strength coach perspective,
- 13:23right, 'cause we're already PR in honor sprints, right?
- 13:26We're not taking that a week so we can run a Sprint and then
- 13:30say, Oh well, you did significantly better.
- 13:32We're always striving 52 weeks out of the year to get better,
- 13:38to be stronger, to be faster, to be more powerful.
- 13:44And again, having this data informed system does not mean
- 13:49you need tech everywhere. If you got a stopwatch, a wall
- 13:52with some tape or even just having your coach's eye right,
- 14:00you're moving £150 on bench press faster than what you were
- 14:04last time. You're moving, you know, 315,
- 14:07like 135 on bat squats, stuff like that.
- 14:11That is stuff that we can take into consideration as coaches,
- 14:16not even strain coaches. If you are running your team's
- 14:18athletic performance for for your squad, or if you're running
- 14:23your own strain condition program from for your team,
- 14:26that's stuff that can that can really influence and impact your
- 14:30impact your program. So track jumps, sprints, far
- 14:34speed, look at trends, adjust with the purpose, right?
- 14:38There's a time to place for everything and that's basically
- 14:41how you can train with such a high level data informed system.
- 14:48Hey gang, Mike Cunningham here. Hey, I hope you enjoyed this
- 14:51episode of the Guild 1918 Project series.
- 14:55It's really my mission, my passion to bring you massive
- 14:58amounts of value and I hope this one hit the mark.
- 15:01The Gill 1918 Project is really dependent on you if for you to
- 15:06build your own episode, to hear your voice, to have your voice
- 15:09heard you have something to say and teach other coaches out
- 15:13there. So please get a hold of me,
- 15:15E-mail, text message, Twitter, smoke signals, get a hold of me
- 15:20and let's help create your episode of the Guild 1918
- 15:23Project. Hope you enjoy the day, they
- 15:25will see you tomorrow.