Apple Pie Theory

I received a tweet (@CoachCarlisle) the other day that mentioned the “Apple Pie Theory”.  The “theory” was an explanation to the order of our weight room workouts.  The topic came up when I was going through our training progression and one of the coaches at the clinic argued that they did not believe in “wasting time to do body building work outs”.  So I developed this “theory” at that moment to help this coach understand why I design programs the way that I do.  From that point and still today when I go to speak at clinics I will always finish my talk with this idea.

Here it is: 

The most important day of a training program is …? No, it’s not today … today is your fault.  If your athletes came in and didn’t have a great workout … blame yourself.  They showed up, they did what you asked them.  If it wasn’t full of energy or you didn’t get done what you wanted to get done, then it is your fault. 

Tomorrow is the key to a great program.  How am I going to get them back to do my work out?  They probably won’t come back for your personality or the ten sets of ten you did on Back Squats.   As a high school coach this is a huge issue.  A personal trainer only gets paid if their clients come back tomorrow.  Even in some college settings getting the athletes to string together consecutive work outs can be a problem.  You need to find a way to make sure they will be back tomorrow.  As strength coaches we need to make sure that our work can be seen by the athlete.  If they can’t see it – they will not believe it. 

Can you show them that they got faster if you don’t time them every day?  Can you show them they are a better football player by doing cone drills?  Can you show them how the plyo’s you did today helped make them more explosive?  You need something that motivates them to come back.

This is why I dedicate the last 10 – 15 minutes of every workout to doing biceps and triceps.  What?  You don’t have time for this stuff?  Yeah, I know big arms never won a game.  But I also know that if I can’t get my athletes back into the weight room for another work out I probably won’t win many games. 

This is what I call my “Apple Pie Theory”.  Let me explain what I mean.

I love my mom … my mom is and always will be the greatest cook in the whole wide world.  Just look (as I stand in front of the audience with my arms extended from my body) … I am a product of my mom’s greatness!

But here is the problem … I remember my mom cooking chili, well that doesn’t seem so bad … but with spaghetti noodles in it … she also made liver and tuna casserole.  This is just some of the things but more times than not the meals were amazing.  But no matter what she cooked I always left the table knowing that my mom was the greatest cook in the entire universe!

I thought about it a while back and I finally figured it out.  You see when we finished our dinner mom always had great desserts for us.  Brownies, ice cream, apple pie and they were great.  So whatever she may have cooked for dinner we always left the table happy.

Why do I tell you this?  Mainly because I just want to brag about my mom, but also to make a point.  My mom used some great psychology on us whether she knew it or not.  She’s pretty smart, so I think she always knows what she is doing.  You see, she kept us coming back for more.

Professionally I took this approach (theory) to my workouts.  I ask my athletes to do things harder and longer than they ever thought they could.  I ask them to run, jump, crawl and lift tremendous weight.  And when they are done with that I ask them to run some more.  I feed them the meat and potatoes and unappealing workouts that I must do to ensure their progression to be successful athletes.  If I stopped at that point, they would be dragging their worn out bodies to the locker room, and they would complain about how tired and sore they were.  And then someone would throw out … “I’m not coming back tomorrow”. 

It only takes one.

Here is how I applied the psychology of the Apple Pie Theory.  I had the athletes do all the movement drills – all of the flexibility, mobility, stability and core exercises – all of the pulls, squats, presses – all of the back and shoulder work.  And then I would finish with bicep and tricep work.  Why at the end?  Because this is when dessert is served.  This is after they have eaten all of their meat, potatoes and vegetables.  All of the squats and pulls and running.  The things they NEED.  Now they get to do work which will give results they can appreciate off the field.  “Proof” of their hard work.  They get to pump their arms up.  Give them those mirror muscles.  This apple pie is actually “brain candy”.  It is more addictive than the most powerful drug.  It’s the incentive that makes them come back day after day. 

The athlete begins to notice when he is showering and he can feel the muscles and he washes the sweat off.  That’s “brain candy”.

It occurs when the athlete is walking down the hall at school and the girls are all oohing and ahhing about the big arms.  That’s “brain candy”. 

It happens when the football coach finally notices the kid, after a season where he didn’t even know the kids name.  This is the same coach who may not venture down to the weight room during the off season because of recruiting, or because they believe that it’s all about the X’s and O’s and not the Sammy and Joe’s.  He sees the skinny sapling is developing into an oak tree.  He can’t see that he is faster or more explosive but he sees the difference in how the athlete is physically developing.  That’s “brain candy”.

The young man goes home and his parents, who rarely talk to their kid except to tell him how he screwed up, notice.  But they put their work aside, take their head out of their iPhone and notice his hard work.  That’s “brain candy”

With all this positive reinforcement, all this “brain candy”, the athlete can’t wait to go back and do the hard work, eat the liver and onions, which will lead to the apple pie … biceps and triceps.

You keep the dessert at the end as the carrot to the workout.  They will have excuses why they can’t do the running.  They will sneak away if you leave the core work to the end.  But they will stay after hours to get their arm work in.  “Buy their ticket to the ‘gun’ show”.  Mirrors become important, not as technique guides but as visual measurement tools.

As a strength coach during the off season at the high school and college level there is so much time to work.  During these periods of time the athletes can, and need, to develop as much as possible.  Because of the long periods of time (8 – 12 weeks) that the athletes are working you’ve got to find ways to keep them motivated in non-maximal efforts.  So how important is developing an athlete’s biceps and triceps?  On the field – maybe not a lot – but in the development of the athlete through a training progression I believe it is the most important tool that I have.

Teaching hierarchy: Part 2

How To: This deals with a wide range of thoughts.  How To is teaching great technique.  How To is progressing along a string of variations to obtain the greatness that you have always dreamed about.  It is the mainstay of the program.  Without great technique you are looking at increased injuries and a reduction in the optimum speed of movement because without the How To power and speed will be dissipated through improper angles.  Once this happens your athletes will continue to be less than they should because their free movement will take on the aspects of your technically flawed training process.

·         Technique:  Technique is the key to gaining any quality be it Speed / Agility / Strength / Power / Endurance / Flexibility / Mobility or Stability.  When we are working with athlete’s the How To is the primary factor that we are watching.  If an athlete is doing a movement incorrectly it could hinder improvement or lead to an injury.

·         Compete:  I believe that competitiveness is a teachable behavior.  When you teach athletes How To compete they will show faster improvement because the athlete is not just “doing work” – there is a cause to their labor – when they learn how to pull that desire from down deep they can become an unstoppable force.

·         Work Ethic: Every year I am given a new group of athletes whether they are incoming 9^th graders – freshman in college – rookies in the league or new additions I cannot just assume that they know how to work to the level that will be expected by their sport or position coaches.  It is my job to teach them to give great effort and the benefits of giving their all in the pursuit of their dreams.

·         Respect: As athlete’s come into work I must instill in them a pride within themselves and towards the program, their teammates and people outside the program.  They must see the role that they play in the large picture and how important it is to train to their highest level.  This inner confidence will help them to have self-respect.  It is well known that before a person will or can respect anyone else they must respect themselves.  This respect begins with the application of two simple rules – Be Early & Communicate.  When they begin to understand these they will understand how important the training is towards the

·         Communicate: This is my 2^nd rule of the weight room (the first of my two rules is to be early) – so that tells you how important this area to me.  But athletes need to learn how to communicate.  Oh they can talk – but it’s the way they need to talk that is important to me and the success of the program.  Also they need to learn the most important part of communication – to listen.  When you getting them to talk the right way and to listen to the people that matter you now have a chance.

How Fast: This progression looks not only at how fast an athlete, a bar or any other implement is being moved but also How Fast the program progresses.  Progressions are the key to everything.  As you develop your training plan you will find where the How Fast fits in to the big picture.  You will see when you are moving too fast because things will become sloppy.  Before this happens slow your progression to ensure that the technique is set so the speed is happening like it should.

·         Speed of Movement: With movement being the key to my philosophy you know how important this is.  But if you are not moving with great technique then all the speed that one athlete can develop is wasted, because of increased chance of an injury and power dissipation because of poor angles.  I watch programs where coaches have a series of lifts that are based in slow “power” movements.  When I watch these teams play they mimic their strength programs.  They are slow – sure they are strong – but they are not able to bring this strength to bear because of they lack the ability to move into a position to utilize that strength that positively affects the play.

·         Speed of Bar: As a coach you will need to ensure that your lifts will reach the type of speed that you are going to be asking for in practice and in games.  I use Clean Pulls – Olympic Lifts – Box Step-ups and other ballistic movements to ensure that they athletes are moving with great speed.  I realize there are several programs that will use the speed of bar with pressing and squatting exercises.  I have used some “compensatory acceleration” work in the past but the risk / reward issue limits this.  To get max velocity training involved with a pressing movement I will use Med Balls – yes the weight is limited but the athlete still can get great speed of movement to help with punching and extension.  Bear Squats / Pit Shark and other lower body machines can be used to get speed into your lower body movements.  I don’t like doing acceleration movements with a bar on the athlete’s back because of the chance that the bar will become unseated and will cause an injury either in contact or when the bar lands incorrectly on the shoulder.  This is a personal issue – I’ve seen many successful coaches use ballistic training without issues.

·         Tempo: When we are in the weight room we don’t have a rule that says athletes can’t sit.  They don’t sit because of the pace of the work out does not allow them the time between sets to sit down.  The rule in the weight room is; THE BAR NEVER RESTS.  This means that as soon as one athlete finishes their set – the next athlete steps in and will begin their set.  I like to have 3 athletes in a group with similar strength levels so that there are very small weight changes.  The system of 3 athletes will have one athlete working / one athlete spotting / one athlete is getting ready for their next lift.  If you have more than three then add a mobility movement for the other athletes who are in the group so that everyone stays busy.  During the Movement Program – the tempo of work is very similar to what will be asked for in practice and in games.  You will find that once you have taught this tempo during the off season it will bleed onto the practice field and your players will be very efficient in their work as well.

·         Speed of Progression: This is one of those things that they can’t teach – this is all about feel.  You need to “feel” when the transitions need to be made.  Each off season I would go back to square one on the teaching process of intricate movements.  Reminding the athletes to focus on landing right in their plyometric movements. As the athletes show that they are ready for the next progression the transition needs to be smooth and almost unnoticed in the big picture.  Too many programs will “schedule” transitions and progressions.  This would assume that every athlete and every off-season / season are the same.  A coach needs to be so tied into his athlete that they know when the progression is appropriate.

How Much:  The bad part of How Much is that too many coaches become obsessed with How Much – all they care about is How Much are the players lifting – How Much are they running – How Much time did it take that player to run 40 yards.  To me this thinking is the last thing one should focus on.  When the How Much becomes the main emphasis you have stopped developing athletes and are now focused on the maximal results.  When this happens you have lost the key to how to train your athletes to the best of their ability.  You have stopped doing what is right and have become lost in what is flashy.  While at USC we only had 5 athletes that could bench 500 pounds or more … each one of these guys were natural benchers they would have become 500 pound benchers in any system.  The important thing is that the teams that these 5 guys played on would routinely go out and beat to dust teams that bragged about having 20 – 25 500 pound benchers.

Coaches who are more worried about their record board are more worried about their ego and less concerned about training the athlete.  Their training hierarchy is How Much / How Much / How Much.  Max lifts and other numbers must be built up to – as a program wastes time to get to these numbers they will sacrifice the athleticism of their team.  Beware of the program that brags too much about How Much they are doing because in the end More is actually Less!

·         Weight: The amount of weight that your athletes lift should be challenging but should not break their Technique (How To) or their Speed (How Fast).  When the Weight (How Much) begins to reduce the other two parts of the hierarch it’s got to be pulled back.  I watch athlete’s lift in other programs and I see that the How To and The How Fast are thrown out the window in pursuit of the How Much.  Keep your athletes strong enough to play at the highest level but make sure they are safe and that the weight they are lifting benefits the total program not just a coaches ego.

·         Reps / Sets: The way that you plan the reps and sets can be the safety check that keeps the program from plateauing.  When things have been hard during the movement portion don’t continue to grind the athlete because your schedule says you are supposed to do a certain number of reps and sets.  Maybe it was hot – maybe it was cold – maybe it was one of those days that the athletes really had a great day of movement – or it was a terrible day of movement because they were tired because of school wide test date.  Don’t penalize your athletes – re-charge them with by lower either your reps or your sets or your weights so that the rest of the week doesn’t suffer.

·         Workload: This is the total amount of work that you are planning on doing for that day or that week.  Make sure that the amount of work you are expecting to do is balanced with everything else that you are wanting to get done.  Don’t do a huge Tuesday Squat day knowing that you are going to do a lot of speed work on the Thursday workout. 

·         Information / New Movements / Gimmicks: This is a constant battle.  As you study your program, talk to other programs, read books, articles and watch videos, you are inundated by “new” ideas and new tools.  I have one hard and solid rule about adding things to my programs.  One upper body and one lower body movement each training period.  When you start doing numerous changes and you begin to have a rash of injuries you have no idea which one it may be.  When you control your additions you can pinpoint a technique issue – a timing issue or maybe all of the hype is wrong about the movement that you added into your program.  I believe strongly in variation but I stay away from gimmicks.  Variation is training what needs to be trained by using different tools and movements to obtain your goals.  These variations are what keeps a program fresh while still obtaining great gains.  Gimmicks on the other hand are those things that are supposed to get you somewhere without doing the work … something for nothing … that doesn’t happen in this business.  You get better and become the best because you are willing to do the little things.  These gimmicks are taking money out of your budget, not adding improved ability to your athlete.  Don’t look for short cuts – look for ways to do what is needed to be done more efficiently and more effectively. 

·         Time: Make sure that you are not spending too much time in any one area.  If you look at what are your trainable attributes which you are going to have to continue to improve upon, you will find out how much time needs to be spent in each area.  If movement is truly important than the bulk of your time needs to be spent moving.  Stop asking me about how you can make your team faster when you only work on movement once a week.  If it was all about being the strongest team than anybody could do this profession.  This profession is 10% knowing what to do 90% knowing when and how to apply it.

·         Calendar: When I set up my long term training plan, I will go to the last week of training and work backward.  This way I know where I would like to end and then see where things need to implemented to get to where I want to be.  I set up this plan knowing that I probably will have to re-write it several times during the cycle in order to take in account the way the process has gone.  Don’t become too rigid with your plan, yet work to stay on schedule.  There have been some years where I ended way short of my goals – while at other times the athletes have exceeded my plan.  Both scenarios were adapted to.  I pulled back and I added some.  Now the next training cycle I didn’t get all caught up in where we got last cycle – I went back to fundamentals and adjusted to where the athletes allowed me to go. 

When you follow this hierarchy you will always begin with great technique.  Once the athlete has the proper technique you can build on the speed of the movement once the technique and the speed are appropriate then you can begin to add weight, time or reps to the overall program.  The safety nets are built into this process.  Once an athlete shows great technique and speed is added to the routine you will know when to pull back when the technique breaks down.  This also goes along with the How Much portion – that once the technique and the speed of the movement is consistent with the need of the training the How Much is increased.  If the load whether load or reps or time breaks down the speed or the technique then the load/reps/time can be reduced until the technique and speed are obtained.

Developing a Teaching Hierarchy

My last entry asked you if you have a philosophy and I talked about how I developed mine.  Along with your philosophy you need to also have a mechanism in place to apply the teaching principles of your philosophy.

This mechanism is called a teaching hierarchy.  You may have one without knowing it; if you don’t have one you might have an issue with the implementation of your philosophy to your coaches and your team.

For my teaching hierarchy I go back to Dr. George Morgan.  Dr. Morgan was one of my professors who had a great impact upon me personally and on the development of my philosophy.  Dr. Morgan was a professor at Chadron State College in Nebraska. He taught Anthropology, and he loved teaching so much he actually passed away while teaching in the class room.  During lectures dealing with Social Anthropology, Dr. Morgan talked about Abraham Maslow and his work in developing his theory on the hierarchy of needs. 

As I continued through my educational path and started taking my teaching block classes (my undergrad degree is a BS in Education) I found more and more references to hierarchies.  So as I developed my teaching philosophy I began to develop my own thoughts as to my teaching hierarchies using the philosophies of the great thinkers and teachers before me.

When I left the football coaching profession and entered the strength and conditioning profession full time, after the 1997 season, I began to focus on the needs required to develop the type of athlete’s that could win – not just once in a while – but consistently.  As I developed my philosophy I was working through the process that would allow me to bring about the greatest results.

I developed a natural hierarchy that I followed from the time I started coaching at the high school level all the way through my coaching career.  This process still continues today.  My teaching hierarchy when training athletes is: HOW TO / HOW FAST / HOW MUCH.

The progression flows very easily and is quickly assimilated into any training program.  I actually have proof of this.  I was looking over a college summer program that a son of one my friends had obtained from the school he had received a scholarship.  Within the book was my teaching hierarchy.  Out of curiosity I called to talk to this Division I college strength coach and see how it became part of his training manual.  He told me he had always used it ever since he started as a strength coach.  As we talked I found that the hierarchy had been given to him by a coach he had worked for, and who had been an assistant of mine several years before.

I was very excited that an idea that I saw so clearly could become part of other coaches’ teaching and training vernacular.  Being a strength coach can seem sometimes that you are living in an isolated world.  Because of the schedule that I have at this level I miss all of the major national strength coaches conventions so I have to rely on the product that we are turning out each season to measure our progress and my phone calls and visits to other training professionals.

How To: This deals with a wide range of thoughts.  How To is much more than just teaching great technique.  How To is progressing along a string of variations to obtain the greatness that you have always dreamed about.  Making sure that your athletes understand the intricacies of each movement, drill and being part of the program.

·         Technique: 

·         Compete: 

·         Work Ethic:

·         Respect:

·         Communicate:

How Fast: This progression looks not only at how fast an athlete runs, but more importantly making sure that the athlete moves in a specific speed for each movement.  Some movements must be done at “game speed” while others are faster or slower.  The How Fast also focuses on the way that the athlete or the team works.  Maybe most importantly How Fast is all about how different movements are introduced throughout the training period.

·         Speed of Movement

·         Speed of Bar

·         Tempo

·         Speed of Progression

How Much:  The bad part of How Much is that too many coaches become obsessed with How Much – all they care about is How Much are the players lifting – How Much are they running – How Much time did it take that player to run 40 yards.  To me this thinking is the last thing one should focus on.  When the How Much becomes the main emphasis you have stopped developing athletes and are now focused on the end results.  When this happens you have lost the key to how to train your athletes to the best of their ability.  You have stopped doing what is right and have become lost in what is flashy.   

·         Weight

·         Reps / Sets

·         Workload

·         Information

·         Time

·         Calendar

Developing a Philosophy

I had a great talk with a former intern.  He came in and informed me that he was working as the athletic trainer and strength coach of a team where he was now working.  This is a great kid.  While he was an intern he was constantly asking questions – good solid observations.

My first question to him was right out of Coach Carroll’s “Win Forever” book; “What’s your philosophy?”  He looked at me with a blank look and said, I don’t really have a philosophy.  I said, “How will you know where you’re going and if you’re ever going to get there if you have no destination or a map?”  It was more rhetorical than an actual question in its nature. 

So I started into my foundation of discovering my philosophy.  Go ahead follow along and see where this takes you.  I asked him to shut his eyes and run a video clip of the sport (rugby) he was working with, and run it through his head.  I asked him to describe what each athlete was doing during the match.  After listening to him talk about what he was seeing for a couple of minutes I stopped him and asked; “What do all of these athletes have in common?”  He paused and looked at me with a questioning look on his face … he didn’t see the answer though he had described it so vividly to me.  I think he was looking for a bigger answer, maybe something deeper than the simple answer that was at hand.  I said, “They are all moving.”  He broke into a smile and said, “You’re right, they all are moving – but how is that the answer?”  Simple - the game he was preparing athletes for was based in movement – so his training philosophy must follow the needs of his sport.

This “de-construction” of his game is a simple way to find what you need to do to best approach your training.  Remember as a strength coach or a performance coach you do not make baseball players better baseball players or football players better football players that is their sport coach responsibility.  Our job is to increase the athleticism of the player’s; it is the sports coaches’ job to improve their playing ability.  I know some of you are going to bristle at that last comment but there is truth to it.  Unless you are teaching the athlete how to run their routes or what play to convert your route to when you have man-to-man coverage then you are not making them better football players directly.  Indirectly, a better athlete has the potential ability to take these movement skills to the field so that they can play better.  Conversely, in 30 years of coaching I have seen some great athletes who couldn’t play dead in a John Wayne cowboy movie.

My philosophy is simple: The game of football is based in movement.  In order to be more successful one must move faster, more powerfully and more efficiently than your opponent.  This philosophy came through breaking down the basic elements of the game.  After doing that I rebuilt my program around this philosophy by looking at how each part of my program could mimic the needs of the player on the field.

In order to understand what I needed to train I took a look at the trainable attributes that are needed to be a better athlete in football.  We need SPEED / AGILITY / POWER / ENDURANCE and STRENGTH.  The elements that hold all of this together are FLEXIBILITY – MOBILITY and STABILITY. 

If you look at the trainable attributes you will find that four of the five, or eighty percent are based in movement (Speed / Agility / Power (plyos-med ball throws-Olympic lifts) / Endurance) and only 20% of your needs are focused on pure strength movements (Pressing / Squatting / Auxiliary Lifts). 

With this philosophy, strength becomes a facilitator of movement.  The athlete needs only to be strong enough to play at the highest level, not lifting all the weight in the gym.  Too much strength training will turn the athlete into a refrigerator (you know the big thing that sits in the corner and doesn’t move).  This doesn’t mean that you don’t lift need to lift heavy with your big athletes you just don’t need to spend your valuable time trying to get your athletes to bench press 500 lbs and squat 700. 

But you must lift with the intent of being as strong as possible … as strong as needed.   When you look at the amount of time spent recovering between sets to accomplish these goals you will see where you can now use this time improving your player’s athleticism. 

With the limited time that we have for training it is essential that we do not waste time doing gimmick movements that are not going to allow our athletes to move as powerfully, as fast and as efficiently as possible.

Starting Your Program

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