ADVANCED TRAINING STUDY GUIDE Complex training is a workout system that combines strength work and speed work for an optimal training effect. The athlete must train the nervous system as well. Complex training allows athletes to work the muscles, in conjunction with the nervous system, in such a way that the slow muscle fibers behave like the fast fibers. Muscle fiber types cannot be changed; they can only be trained to act in a different way. With complex training the athlete combines weight training and plyometrics into the same workout session. The athlete will perform plyometrics between sets or even as part of a weight training set. Complex training consists of four components: resistance training, plyometrics training, sprint training, and sport-specific training. Resistance Training: Weight training is one form of resistance training; however, anything that makes a muscle work harder can be classified as resistance training. Using your own body weight for resistance in calisthenics, surgical tubing, medicine balls, etc are all forms of resistance training. Using free weights over machines is a better choice, because machines do not involve the stability required of free weight training, hence there is less strength transfer to athletics. Strength training accomplishes the first half of the complex training equation, with plyo, sprint, and sport-specific training completing it. Strength training will produce results, but not to the same level as complex training. Quality is always more important than quantity. Low repetitions of moderate to heavy loads will be used, as they produce the greatest amount of motoneuron firing and preparation for plyometrics. Example: do three sets of chest press followed by a medicine ball chest pass exercise. Plyometrics: Plyometrics follows the theory that the body has an arousal mechanism that enables an athlete to take advantage of the body’s capacity for physical output. Performing various hopping, skipping, jumping, and throwing exercises designed to stimulate this arousal mechanism is most effective for taking athletes to a higher level of performance. You must train at maximum speeds: sub maximal efforts will only produce submaximal results. This is the law of specificity. If you want to compete at higher speeds, you must train at higher speeds. If you train at slower velocities, you will teach your muscles to perform at these slower velocities. Going from slow muscles to fast muscles requires performing quick, explosive movements. These activities must allow for minimal contact with the ground (lower body) or the hand contact surface (upper body). Plyometrics is the best answer for these types of exercise needs.

Sprint Training: Speed of movement in running depends on two factors: stride length and stride frequency. Stride frequency is generally considered to be largely dependent on the type of muscle fiber the athlete has. Fast-twitch fibers give an athlete an advantage in the quality and speed of muscle contraction (anaerobic). Slow-twitch fibers provide an advantage in maintaining work over prolonged periods (aerobic). If improving stride frequency by pushing harder and faster off the ground cannot make significant improvements, the athlete looks toward improving stride length. It is estimated that you can increase a muscle’s strength by 300 percent; you can only increase its speed by approximately 10 percent. Increasing stride length allows athletes to cover the same distance as athletes with greater stride frequency in the same amount of time. Quality, not quantity is the key. Short workouts with long rest periods are used, as these workouts are stressful on the nervous system. Sport-Specific Training: The idea is to stimulate the fibers you want with resistance training, and then perform sport-specific movements. Example: a basketball player could do a heavy set of leg presses followed by repeated rim jumps. The essence of complex training is that the athlete must do more than just build muscle to increase strength. They need to train the nervous system as well. COMPLEX TRAINING PHYSIOLOGY The Muscular System: The body has both fast and slow-twitch muscle fiber types. Slow-twitch are capable of producing submaximal force over extended periods. They are used in aerobic or endurance activities. Slow-twitch fibers are responsible for the stabilization and posture the athlete needs when performing any movement. Fast-twitch fibers are capable of producing maximal force for brief periods. They are used in anaerobic activities where power and speed are characteristics. Fast-twitch fibers give the athlete the ability to move quickly and explosively. Training Muscle Fibers: While you cannot change the muscle fiber type, the athlete can train a fast-twitch fiber to behave like a slow-twitch fiber and vice versa. This is called motor learning. The muscular system works like a computer system in that whatever an athlete puts into it is what the athlete gets out of it. If an athlete only teaches the muscles to complete the task slowly, that’s what the athlete will get back. If an athlete needs to compete at higher speeds they need to train the muscles to function optimally at these higher speeds. Training at lower speeds will not be effective for developing power. Example: A tennis player would not make a six-mile run a regular part of their workout; it serves little purpose in a sport with such a large anaerobic demand. The Nervous System: If the muscular system is the computer, the nervous system is the software. The nervous system triggers a muscle’s response to a stimulus, telling it what to do. The neurons also tell a muscle fiber whether it could behave like a fast or slow-twitch fiber. Physically training an area of the body calls on that area’s motor unit. A motor unit consist of three elements: motoneuron which tells the muscles to contract; its motor axon, which takes the information from the central nervous system and gives it to the muscle fiber; and the muscles that are told to contract. To capitalize on a muscle’s potential to gain strength and speed, an athlete must raise the level of excitement in the muscle fibers

and challenge them when they reach their highest levels. Once the motoneurons are fired up (through resistance training), it’s time to teach the muscles to function at their highest possible speeds. The second half of the workout will be a plyometrics exercise, matched to stimulate the muscles awakened during the resistance training exercise by performing a related or specific explosive movement similar to the resistance exercise. The Neuromuscular Connection: Complex training matches pairs of exercises from two sources: a resistance training pool and a plyometrics pool. The more varied the workout the less chance the body has to adapt to any one way of training. This is the key in building speed and thus power. The Cardiovascular System: Aerobic training may help an athlete recover from highintensity exercise, but it does so at the expense of speed and power and increases the risk of overuse injuries and overtraining. Endurance training is important but do only as much as absolutely necessary and be sure that the type of endurance developed is specific to the sport. Supercompensation: Supercompensation is the body’s ability to take on stress, recover, and then proceed to a higher level. If the athlete is challenged at the end of the recovery phase, they will respond with a level of performance even greater than previously possible. It is at this time, after the body recovers past the zero level, that the plyometrics portion of the coupling becomes crucial. In complex training, an athlete can make the greatest gains within the window of supercompensation. For that short period, the athlete can take advantage of a system that is maximally aroused and able to face greater challenges. Because the complex training workout is so intense, appropriate rest interval between pairs of exercises and sets are essential. Periodization: The training schedule is divided into as many as four or more periods with the workouts changing in each period so that the athlete is prepared to give peak performance when they need it most. The four phases of periodization are: Preparation: To prepare the body for the more rigorous training to follow; this period ranges from two to six weeks. High-volume and low-intensity workouts are used. Plyometrics are in simple forms. Resistance training is 60-70% of 1RM doing 2-4 sets of 10-15 reps, and plyometrics level 1 doing 2-3 sets of 10-12 reps. Precompetition: This is the longest cycle in the player’s schedule. It last from 812 weeks. Early phase resistance training at 70-80% of 1RM doing 3sets of 6-10 reps. Early phase plyometrics (level 1) 3 sets of 10-15 reps. Late phase resistance training at 70-85% of 1RM doing 4 sets of 4-6 reps. Late phase plyometrics (level 2) doing 4 sets of 5-10 reps. Competition: Resistance training at 80-100% of 1RM doing 3-5 sets of 1-3 reps. Plyometrics (level 2) doing 3-5 sets of 5-6 reps. The emphasis during the competition stage is toward peaking during a championship season, which is generally a time widow of about four weeks. Transition: As athletes enter the active rest phase, they return to activities in other sports, leaving the intensities of complex training behind. The transition phase is also a time for cross training.

FUNCTIONAL TRAINING Functional training is more accurately represented as sports-general training. It is training with a purpose. How many sports are played sitting down? Not many, hence training muscles in a seated position is not functional for most sports. Second, how many sports are played in a rigid environment where stability is provided by outside sources? None. Most sports are contested on fields or courts. The athlete provides the stability, not some outside source. Reasoning again tells us that most machine-based training systems are not by definition functional, because the load is stabilized for the lifter by the machine. Although machine-based training may result in fewer injuries in training, the lack of proprioceptive input (internal sensory feedback about position and movement) and the lack of stabilization, will more than likely lead to a greater number of injuries during competition. How many sport skills are performed by one joint acting in isolation? Again, the answer is zero. Functional training attempts to focus on multi-joint movements as much as possible. In it’s simplest form, functional training teaches athletes how to handle their own body weight. It incorporates balance and proprioception (body awareness) into training. Functional training programs need to introduce controlled amounts of instability so that the athlete must react in order to regain their own stability. It is a system that encourages the training of balance and the balancing of training. It is best described as a continuum of exercises that teach athletes to handle their own body weight in all planes of movements. Functional training trains movement, not muscles. The Functional Continuum: You must always combine some basic strength exercises that are less functional with exercises that are higher on the functional continuum. The program is never an either/or program, but rather an integrated approach of developing strength and making that strength more relevant to sport. DESIGNING A PROGRAM 1. Know what you want from your program, and know how far you are from your goals. 2. Determine the periodization schedule for your training. Do this by counting backwards from the date you wish to peak. 3. Create complex training workouts for each phase of your program. For each body part trained, the athlete should choose one exercise from the resistance portion and one to match it from the plyometrics portion. As power improves, progress from level 1 to level 2 exercises. 4. Work, work, work THE COMPLEX TRAINING COUPLING SYSTEM RESISTANCE EXERCISES Shoulders

Chest

Upper back

Lower back

high pull push press alt. dumbbell press upright row front raise lateral raise shrug pull

bench press incline bench press lateral chest fly pullover

seated cable pull bent-over row single-arm row lat pulldown incline row

dead lift good morning back machine

PLYOMETRICS: LEVEL 1 Shoulders overhead throw underhand throw vertical toss

Chest chest pass pullover pass incline chest pass

Upper back underhand throw seated backward throw overhead pass

Lower back seated backward throw glut-ham pulse reverse hyper

PLYOMETRICS: LEVEL 2 Shoulders incline push-up depth jump handstand depth jump power drop neider press

Chest drop & catch push-up power drop plyo push-up push-up depth jump neider press

Upper back standing backward throw superman toss power drop

Lower back backward throw with jump to box standing backward throw glut-ham medicine ball throw

RESISTANCE EXERCISES Lower Extremities back squat front squat split squat lunge toe raise inverted leg press

Trunk abdominal curl with pulley straight-arm lat pull hip crunch hip rotator side bend glute-ham machine

Total Body overhead squat power clean power snatch

PLYOMETRICS: LEVEL 1 Lower Extremities standing long jump barrier jump lateral barrier jump jump from box jump to box vertical jump

Trunk side throw trunk rotator sit-up pass pullover pass incline chest pass

Total Body cone hop with 180-degree turn front tuck jump depth jump

PLYOMETRICS: LEVEL 2 Lower Extremities standing triple jump depth jump hurdle hop multiple jumps multidirectional barrier hop bounding single-leg hop

Trunk throw downs V-ups chinnies

Total Body depth jump with 180-degree turn multiple box-tobox squat jumps pike jump depth jump with barriers

UNDERSTANDING THE POWER TRAINING WORKOUTS In power training, you will want to train multi-joint exercises as much as possible. Examples will be shown for a full body sequence and a push pull sequence. You will note that you should train a bilateral exercise one day and a unilateral one the next workout. It is important to regularly change exercises, not only to fight boredom and plateaus, but also to improve muscle balance and strength. Don’t get stuck in a particular routine. FULL BODY: Workout A Workout B 1. Explosive movement 1. Explosive movement 2. Knee dominant (bi) 2. Knee dominant (uni) 3. Hip dominant (uni) 3. Hip dominant (bi) 4. Horizontal push (bi) 4. Horizontal push (uni) 5. Horizontal pull (uni) 5. Horizontal pull (bi) 6. Vertical push (bi) 6. Vertical push (uni) 7. Vertical pull (uni) 7. Vertical pull (bi) 8. Rotational/bridge core 8. Rotational/bridge core PUSH-PULL: Workout A1 (push) 1. Explosive movements 2. Knee dominant (bi) 3. Horizontal push (uni) 4. Vertical push (bi) 5. Rotational/bridge core Workout A2 (Push) 1. Explosive movement 2. Knee dominant (uni) 3. Horizontal push (bi) 4. Vertical push (uni) 5. Rotational/bridge core

Workout B1 (pull) 1. Explosive movements 2. Hip dominant (uni) 3. Horizontal pull (bi) 4. Vertical pull (uni) 5. Rotational/bridge core Workout B2 (pull) 1. Explosive movement 2. Hip dominant (bi) 3. Horizontal pull (uni) 4. Vertical pull (bi) 5. Rotational/bridge core

KNEE DOMINANT EXERCISES (PUSH) Bilateral Unilateral Front squat Forward lunge Reverse lunge Back squat Side lunge Drop lunge Overhead squat Step-up Lateral step-up Split squat Bulgarian split squat Side squat Bulgarian split deadlift Clean-grip deadlift Single-leg bench get-up Crouching single-leg squat Partial single-leg squat using a bench or box Partial single-leg squat standing on a bench Single-leg squat standing on a bench Single-leg squat (lateral) Full pistol squat Knee dominant exercises work: quads, hamstrings, and gluteals HIP DOMINANT EXERCISES (PULL) Bilateral Unilateral Good morning Single-leg good morning Seated good morning Split good morning Zercher good morning Single-leg Romanian deadlift Romanian deadlift Single-leg Romanian deadlift (dumbbell) Supine hip extension Single-leg supine hip extension Swiss ball glute-hamstring Single-leg supine hip extension Reverse hyperextension Single-leg swiss ball glute-hamstring Hip dominant exercises work: hamstrings, glutes, lower back VERTICAL PUSH EXERCISES Bilateral Shoulder press Push press Push jerk Split jerk Jackknife push-up

Unilateral Dumbbell shoulder press Dumbbell push press Dumbbell push jerk Dumbbell split jerk Dumbbell one-arm press and bend Dumbbell alternating press Supported dumbbell one-arm press Side to side jackknife push-up

Vertical push exercises work: deltoids and triceps VERTICAL PULL EXERCISES Bilateral Chin-up Pull-up Mixed-grip pull-up Lat pull down

Unilateral Single-arm pull-up Single-arm pull down Side-to-side pull-up

Vertical pull exercises work: lats, rear deltoids, trapezius, rhomboids, biceps HORIZONTAL PUSH EXERCISES Bilateral Unilateral Bench press Dumbbell bench press Incline bench press Dumbbell incline bench press Close grip bench-press Alternating bench-press Close grip incline press One- arm dumbbell bench press Reverse-grip bench press One- arm dumbbell incline bench press Push-up (floor, ball, chair) Side-to-side push-up Dip Standing cable chest press Horizontal push exercises work: pectorals, anterior deltoids, and triceps HORZONTAL PULL EXERCISES Bilateral Unilateral Bent-over rows Bent-over dumbbell alternating row Modified T-bar row Bent-over two-point dumbbell row Horizontal pull-up Two-point dumbbell row with twist Standing cable row to ribcage One-arm standing cable row Standing cable row to neck Horizontal side to side pull-up Cable face pull One-arm horizontal pull-up Horizontal pull exercises work: lats, rear deltoids, rhomboids, trapezius, biceps ROTATIONAL CORE EXERCISES Seated Russian twist Corkscrew Swiss ball weight ball Barbell torque Windshield wiper Cable rotation Cable rotation Cable wood chop Cable reverse wood chop Cable rotating crunch Cable rotating extension Cable push-pull rotation Medicine ball standing wall throw Medicine ball over the shoulder throw and catch Medicine ball 1-2-3 throw Rotational core exercises work: rectus abdomis, internal and external obliques, transverse abdominis, and spinal erectors BRIDGING AND CORE STABILIZATION EXERCISES Four point plank Three point plank Two point plank Side bridge Dynamic plank Plank walk-up Four point supine bridge Core row T-push and hold Three point supine bridge Barbell rollout Side bridge and reach Plank with elbow to knee Plank with weight transfer

Bridging and core stabilization exercises work: transverse abdominis

Sources: Boyle, Michael, Functional Training for Sports. Champaign, IL; Human Kinetics, 2004. Chu, Donald A,, Explosive Power & Strength. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics, 1996. McFarlane, Brent, The Sciences of Speed Agility Conditioning. Remedios, Robert dos, Power Training. New York: Rodale Inc, 2007.