Resilient Performance

Caleb Downs text book open field tackle on Malachi Toney

We can talk about this and other things. Here are my thoughts on your post: "The ability to hold perfect position, technique, and max speed/power longer than your opponent." You can say that there is never perfect position and therefore working with athletes to still make the best out of bad position is key. "Once you lose the capacity to maintain technique and position, your advantage is gone." You can say this is exactly why it needs to be trained at lower levels to make the skill automatic - much like referenced in Supertraining by Mel and Yuri "Sub maximal "conditioning" doesn't build that." Why not? You can work on it in practice and training - and then go let it rip in games. Athletes don't hit full speed every single play/snap in practice - yet they perform on gameday. "In fact, it works against it. It detrains the CNS and makes you slower, less powerful, and more prone to injury when it matters." How so? Where is the data to back that up. Detrains the CNS - again now? The nervous system can recover from the hard training (a game) with lower level work - but can still get work done during the week, and thus perform on gameday, "If being a high performer is king, then by its very nature "conditioning" will always be my sworn enemy!!" Again, why? Conditioning is the ability to recover from play to play, series to series, game to game, week to week, season to season, etc...why would that be your sworn enemy (with 2 exclimation marks none the less)? This ability to recover and keep performing helps make athletes higher performers. "Train to stay fast and dominant under real duress, not just to "not get tired."" 100% train to stay fast and dominant under real duress - which is game duress. Nothing in practice simulates the pressure of fans/TV/etc...nothing I said was advocating to train athletes to only not get tired. Not getting tired and being fast don't have to be something to choose between. It is a false dichotomy. Thanks again for considering!

Division 1 football players training in a compensatory acceleration style (CAT) upper body strength regimen were compared to a traditional regimen in their off-season. The CAT group was instructed to perform the positive rep as explosively as possible. The traditional group performed repetitions at a traditional tempo. At the end of both off-season training programs, both power and strength were assessed. Power was tested with a seated medicine ball throw and a force platform plyometric push-up test. Strength was assessed by a one rep max in the bench press. Both groups increased strength and power. The group that trained in a Compensatory Acceleration Training (CAT) style improved their bench press by nearly double the amount of the traditional group. Average power, as expected, increased significantly more in the group that trained explosively. Jones, K. K., Hunter, G. G., Fleisig, G. G., Escamilla, R. R., & Lemak, L. L. (1999). The effects of compensatory acceleration on upper-body strength and power in collegiate football players. Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research (Allen Press Publishing Services Inc.), 13(2), 99-105. Practical Application Fred Hatfield was ahead of his time advocating Compensatory Acceleration Training. It is simply superior! Training adaptations are not just a result of weight on the bar. Adaptations from training are a byproduct of tension and duration. You respond to how much force produced, how fast the force was produced, how long you produced it, and how many times you produced it. Force=mass x acceleration. More tension is result of greater bar speed. Maximal strength training and power adaptations can result from lifting weights with maximal force; one more reason to compensatorily accelerate weights.