How to build an athlete
“What’s different about it?” One of the most common questions we are asked by athletes who are new to RedPill coaching. Front and centre to the answer to this question is to explain HOW we do what we do, and that’s what this article is about. HOW we figure out what an athlete needs, regardless of their starting point, level, sporting history or indeed sport and then HOW we deliver that in our programming and coaching.
At RedPill we are known for being very detail oriented (some might even say obsessed by the details!). Ask anyone who has come to see one of our coaches for a movement assessment and they will tell you how many times they’ve heard “move your toes 10 degrees to the left” or “reach your hand here rather than there” when “there” is just 2cm away!
Why do those details matter? Because we know that every degree or centimetre in a movement impacts how the bones move, which muscles are involved and how they load in the three planes of motion and therefore we want the most accurate assessment and prescription possible for that athlete.
What you might not know about us is that how we do anything is how we do EVERYTHING; so this attention to detail applies to every single element of our coaching, not just biomechanics. Every decision we make when coaching an athlete impacts her/his development so the detail we apply to biomechanics is just one example of the detailed approach we take to building our athletes.
Know every inch of the sport
The first port of call is an assessment. Not the assessment of the athlete but of the athlete’s sport.
To be able to develop and train your athlete for a sport you need to first understand and identify the different skills and physical attributes the considered sport is made up of and requires your athlete to be competent in their sport.
These will differ greatly between, say, CrossFit and football, or tennis and rugby and they need to be broken down in great detail, as these requirements dictate the long term direction of the athlete’s development and training.This breakdown is singular to the sport or activity; there is no one size fits all here. Some skills or components will be common to many sports, but even where sports have common elements it is very likely that the level and circumstances in which they are to be performed will vary, between sports and even within the same sport depending on the position played by the athlete. Components like Cardiovascular fitness, power or strength, for example, will be physical attributes that are common across pretty much all sports but the nature and level at which they need to be expressed at may change drastically from one sport to the other (for some further considerations on this, I would highly recommend listening to the Strength and Power podcast). This is a key step as it will guide your training strategies and provide the requirements against which you evaluate your athletes.
The Development Pyramids
Now that we have established what the finish line looks like, how do we get there? Enter what we call here at RedPill, the Development Pyramids.
The pyramids describe the five successive phases of an athlete’s development for every single component identified in her/his sport. Those 5 phases are the following:
Biomechanics: capacity to perform the motions required by the considered component efficiently (is the athlete mechanically capable of the movement?)
Skill: capacity to coordinate the motions to perform the skill element of the component efficiently (where the athlete is mechanically capable of the movement, is he or she efficient technically to perform the movement?)
Threshold: capacity to perform the Skill element of the component at a required level (can the athlete perform the Skill at the level required by their goal?)
Blend: capacity to perform a given Skill at required Threshold while combined with one or multiple other components of the sport (can the athlete perform a given Skill at Threshold in combination with other components of the sport?)
Compete: capacity to perform or express a Blend of components, at their required Threshold, under the pressure of competition and, if relevant, the need to make strategic decisions (can the athlete blend multiple components under the pressure of competition?)
Each phase is a prerequisite to the next to ensure the athlete will reach their maximum potential for any given component of the chosen sport.
Let’s come back to the example of CrossFit to explore this in more detail. For these purposes let’s consider the phases of the weightlifting component in CrossFit:
The Biomechanics phase is focused on developing the positions and joint motions relevant to the Snatch and Clean and Jerk. A particular focus is often the bottom or catch position to make sure the athlete has the range and stability at the ankles, hips and thoracic spine to get into the bottom position to receive the bar during a Snatch or a Clean.
Once that is in place, the Skill phase consists in focusing and developing the technique for the different weightlifting and barbell cycling movements.
Once this is achieved, the main focus is then moved to build the Threshold and increase the athlete’s maxes as well as other Weightlifting measures within the sport of CrossFit (barbell cycling workout like Grace, Isabel, DT, their respective heavy versions, etc.) to get the performance at a level in line with the level the athlete is targeting.
Next up, we develop the capacity of the athlete to be able to Snatch or Clean and Jerk or cycle the barbell at a certain level when Blended with other components. Aside from the pure Weightlifting tests, the Weightlifting component is indeed very often tested in combination with one or more additional components (Gymnastics, CV etc).
The last phase in the athlete development is improve its capacity to Compete: to be able to reach this level of blended performance under pressure on the competition floor and his or her capacity to make the right decisions when competing and racing (execution of a pre planned pacing strategy or weight selection as well as being able to adjust on the go when needed, awareness of the environment and other competitors, etc.).
It’s periodisation, Jim, but not as we know it
So we know the logical order of progress but training doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Competitive season won’t wait whilst we perfect biomechanics, and this protocol doesn’t mean that whilst you are in the Skill phase of your development you are never building your Threshold.
The phase is used to define the order of priority and therefore the proportion of your training dedicated to developing the qualities of the phase. Some prioritisation is simple, even obvious; in the example of weightlifting in CrossFit, it’s a waste of time to put your athlete through a big training protocol with high % work aimed at getting his or her 1RM Snatch up if he or she lacks the required range in their squat or doesn’t have enough thoracic extension to receive the bar over his or her centre of mass with a nice upright torso. Any additional kilogram lifted they will gain through a high % work training protocol will cost them exponentially more energy and training time (even potentially lead to an injury) than addressing the Biomechanics first. All other things being equal, improving the Biomechanics will increase the 1RM snatch because a better bar path and better positions in turn lead to better leverage and reduced force on the joints applied by the same load. Don’t spend your time snatching for max load until you are blue in the face if you can’t break parallel when you get under the bar.
What is more complex is how to adapt training to balance an athlete’s short, medium and long term goals, particularly because the focus will need to shift in line with the competitive season. One key consideration in coaching competitive athletes is how to plan and adjust training priorities to ensure long term development AS WELL AS meet the need for performance in the short term.
This is what training periodisation is. It is about managing those sometimes opposing constraints, this dynamic process of balancing the long term development phase the athlete is in with the short term need to temporarily move up or give additional training time to more advanced phases to prepare for competitions or peak for an event. This is what dictates the sequencing of the training phases our RedPill athletes go through and what the key element of the individualisation of programme design really is. It’s not picking one technique or one training tool over another, prescribing 6 sets rather than 4, or 8 reps rather than 5. Those are relevant elements and training variables dictated by the specific needs of the athlete or sport but they are of second order.
Follow the steps and don’t take shortcuts
Building an athlete and designing her or his training programme is having a clear map of the demands of her or his sport, and applying these from the biomechanics building blocks all the way to the mental and physical qualities needed in competition, understanding where exactly your athlete is in her or his development and what she or he needs to progress towards their short, medium and long term goal. The techniques or exercises, the protocol, the volume or the intensity are just the tools used to move your athlete along those pyramids.
So there you have it. That’s the HOW of the RedPill approach to building an athlete; apply the science and attention to details we know to our athletes’ time investment in their training to produce optimum results as they only have so much time and energy to dedicate to training, and - of course - want the best return on that investment.