Less is more

[altius]

My good friend Tom McNab - one of the very few people to have been a team coach at both the Summer and Winter Olympic games - and one of even fewer to also write world class sports stories - sent me this piece. While it is primarily aimed at the British scene, coaches from elsewhere may find it interesting. It certainly confirms my concern about an obsession with weight training on the part of some of our younger readers and the view that others seem to have, that cross country running is a good and necessary base for pole vaulting. Finally it suggests that we need to look carefully at the relationship between training exercises and drills and the actual event of pole vaulting.

Less is more by Tom McNab
One of the more fanciful suggestions following last year’s World Championships was that there should be some sort of formal inquiry into injuries. For that would have been a task to puzzle the cleverest, a pointless exercise. Because each injury has its own specific history and histology . Attempting to locate some common thread would be like trying to find a needle in a haystack.

But in recently reflecting on Roger Bannister’s breaking of the four minute mile, I also reflected on the low volume of training by which he had achieved it, and how relatively injury-free he had been. And all of this without sports medicine, biomechanics, sports psychology, indeed anything remotely resembling a modern support-system.

This in turn caused me to look back upon the injury-rate in the many athletes whom I had coached over the past forty odd years. It was surprisingly small, and most of it centred on two all-rounders, confirming to me that a decathlete is simply a series of injuries held together by ligaments and a desire for points. The injury-rate amongst the others was miniscule.

Now I possess no special skill, no special knowledge, which guided me in this regard. But when I reflected on my experience, one word came up, and that was minimalism. Bannister was an extreme example of this, that minimalism being driven by the demands of his studies. His sessions were thus brief and intense, worlds away from a hundred miles a week, probably closer to ten. Most sessions were short, interval-based, often lasting less than an hour.

Now there was of course an aerobic base, but it was by modern standards a modest one. But in 1954, Bannister followed his four minute mile with victories at the Europeans and Commonwealth Games, in effect achieving all of his aims. These events apart, he hardly raced at all. I would doubt if Roger trained for much more than 250 hours in the 1953-4 period.

Now I am not for a moment suggesting that a modern athlete could possibly succeed on such a slim training-base. What I am suggesting is that we should try to do as little as possible to achieve a given result. To do what is necessary, rather than what is possible .

Part of what I have said relates to my firm belief that many injuries are simply the result of over-use. That of course excludes out of line javelins, aberrant high jump take-offs, bad triple jump ground-contacts, all of which are technical errors. Alas, only one study provides any support to my theory. That is one on distance runners, showing that there is a steady, flattish rise in injuries up to 50 miles a week. But beyond that the rise is very steep indeed. Training-volumes are more difficult to estimate in speed/ power events, but I suspect that the injury-rate may follow the same path.

And it is my firm belief that the increase in the number of full-time athletes, and the increase in drills and generic exercises has only served to add to the volume of injuries. I call this, for want of a better term, “junk exercise”, drills and exercises which rarely have any basis in science and which may also predispose to injury.

Let’s have a look at two of these. The first is passive stretching, which was until recently absolutely obligatory. Indeed, one of our top hurdlers pursued over an hour of passive stretching most days. Now, my objection to it was simply that it did not replicate what muscles actually did, which is to act synergistically, in a reciprocal fashion. My view was that the central nervous system “learnt” to “fire” by regular practice, with muscles on one side of a joint responding eccentrically to concentric movement on the other.

But we now know that passive stretching actually damages muscle. This being said, simple observation would have told us that ballet dancers( who can at least say that they are replicating in slow-stretch what the actually do in dancing) are invariably beset by muscle-pulls and all manner of other injuries. This is almost certainly caused by a mix of fatigue and over-use as well as slow-stretch work.

But a few years back, it would have been absolute heresy to question passive stretching. It was the conventional wisdom, and not to be questioned. But all science is provisional, and sports science ( which rarely matches conventional science in peer review) even more provisional.

The same applies to core strength. This, like passive stretching, went from being a requirement to being something close to an industry. But the experimental evidence of the value of specific core strength exercises was always slender. Recent research has gone further to suggest that such core strength exercises may be of little or no value, indeed to question the need for core strength itself. So not a cause of injury, but perhaps simply a waste of time

But simple observation might well have told us this. Almost half a century ago, Mary Rand leapt 6m. 76 on cinders into a 1.6 breeze without pursuing a single specific core strength exercise . Similarly, Lyn Davies leapt 8m.o7 off mud in Tokyo without performing a single such exercise. Core strength was not around when Hemery and Thompson did their stuff, with marks that would still lead this year’s rankings.

But perhaps all of these athletes and world-ranked sprinters such as Cathy Cooke and Andrea Lynch were simply freaks, already somehow endowed with the essential core strength. Perhaps. Or that conventional weight training had
done the trick. Possibly, though Andrea Lynch never lifted a weight in her life.

But let me go back now to minimalism and to my own direct experience. Thirty seven years ago, Andrea Lynch (1.55 and 50g.) ranked world no.2 in Track and Field News world rankings. A bank clerk, she at no time trained for much more than five hours per week. Thirty years later, Greg Rutherford, an 18 year old footballer, reached 8.17 to lead world junior long jump rankings and ran 10.38 in 100m., on a similar volume of training, and (in sprints) using almost identical methods. More recently, a 15 year old triple jumper, Bradley Pike, went from complete novice to world’s top ten in the 1994 cohort in less than a year, on 3-4 hours per week.

For less is more. Because our task as coaches (and this relates particularly to the young) must surely be to cut to the chase, to do what is necessary, rather than what is possible. This means stripping down each event to its absolute basics, its core elements. And it means avoiding like the plague the junk exercise which has clogged the arteries of almost every event. For the heart of all athletics coaching is specificity, and with it the focus on deep learning, high percentages of good-quality repetitions.

This is not simply an injury- issue. For I would happily practice drills and exercises for hours if performance were to clearly improve as a result. But the facts are there for all to see. No British girl can remotely approach Rand’s leap, Lynch’s ranking or Cathy Cooke’s marks, all achieved on modest volumes of training, and without a plethora of drills and supplementary exercises.

And these were not full-time athletes, training in plush indoor facilities, with sports science backing. I would have expected British performances to follow what statisticians call an asymptotic curve, improving but flattening out over the years as long as no positive variables were inserted. But hold on. Those positive variables HAVE been inserted, particularly in the area of sports science. Yet in no other sport would it be possible for the marks of 30-40 years back to reach top ten, let alone lead national rankings.

What has happened over the past twenty years is that coaches have got lost in a blizzard of information. Now if information were the sure route to success, then I would be the best coach of all time, for I am the world’s top geek, bar none. And I’m not sure if I am even the best coach in my street.

Because, though information has exponentially increased, this has not been matched by the capacity to deploy it, and to transfer the fruits of that knowledge to others. Thus every cockamamy drill and exercise deployed by a champion or advocated by a sports scientist is incorporated into what might best be called Robo-Coaching. This means that for everyone October means circuit training and April means warm weather training. And it means that a motley collection of drills and exercises ( and this particularly applies to sprints) somehow constitutes coaching.

My aim in this article is not to paint a picture of some past Golden Age, for such Golden Ages are merely evidence of bad memory. It is to say that everything that comes to us must be carefully assessed, and related not only to theory but to good practice, and indeed to common sense, so rare that it is frequently mistaken for genius. To look at what works, because what we all in the end seek is performance. That is the business that we are in, from the moment that a child first enters a club. And to remember that it is possible to have all the necessary systems in place and produce virtually nothing. For the people, not the walls, make the city. And-in case I forget- less is more.


Tom McNab November, 2010

[dj]

hey

good article alan..

my philosophy for 40 years.. very little or no hurdle stretches.. little or no lead leg/trail leg stretches… just hurdles at different heights, at different speeds etc…

every event should follow this advice… vault included..

do not leave your best vault in practice… “under train” use correct technique in the weight room, sets and reps are better than “maxing” everything on a daily basis…

dj

[Barefoot]

Great Article...

I've always been concerned I don't do enough "working out" with my vaulters, and almost everything I do with our limited time is vault specific... I watch the other coaches "drilling" their kids through a vast array of exercises, and have wondered If I am missing the boat. I have never wanted to spend the limited practice time we have in high school that was not doing something directly vault related.

The kids I have who do suffer injuries are almost always 3 and 4 event kids... hmmm.

[CowtownPV]

Along that line, I think many go to too many meets these day. I just can't belive that its good for a HS kid to jump in 30 meets a year.

[ADTF Academy]

Along that line, I think many go to too many meets these day. I just can't belive that its good for a HS kid to jump in 30 meets a year.

Or is it the TOO Many Meets and TOO Much Attempting to Practice as well.


So many clubs popping up all over the country with Sunday practice the day after a competition on Saturday. Wonder why so many get hurt and burned out. Are we over competing or over practicing..... If you jump more than 3 times a week for more than 1.5 hours each session during the season you are over training. (just rough numbers depending on exactly what your doing drill and jump wise). The steroid era of over training with High Volume and see who comes out the back side are past us.


Less is more............. Ask Litchfield....... If anyone can help he is a prime example. I hope he PR's I think it will show the fact that less is more perfectly.

[baggettpv]

Less and accurate is the key.

Rick Baggett
WSTC

[charlie]

I hate to put a glitch, in to the less factor, but do not ask a WORLD CLASS gymnast that does his or her SKILL 6 days a week and about 4 hrs. a day, if LESS is better!! The vault technique that i teach is a gymnastic skill and we train 5 days a week and compete 12 months of the year and in the 4 years i have had our club we have had O injuries!!!

[ADTF Academy]

I hate to put a glitch, in to the less factor, but do not ask a WORLD CLASS gymnast that does his or her SKILL 6 days a week and about 4 hrs. a day, if LESS is better!! The vault technique that i teach is a gymnastic skill and we train 5 days a week and compete 12 months of the year and in the 4 years i have had our club we have had O injuries!!!

Charlie I hate to say it is not the same. It's like swimming. Swimmers can train hours on end in the pool doing thousands of meters of training and their bodies be ok. The impact forces are less. The impact on the body is not nearly the same as it is in track and field. Majority of the Gymnastics training is on body control and preparation to perform skills. Isolated movements using momentum and strength. Except for on implements where extreme pounding is done on the body upon landing on a hard surfaces (balance beam and not landing on mats or into foam pits). Am I saying one sport is harder than the other. NO WAY!!!! Any athlete that works to elite status works their butt off and stresses their bodies in a manner applicable to their sport. However, I would say Gymnastics has one of the highest burn out rates of young athletes in America per percent of participates. Maybe I'm wrong, but most of the ex gymnast I have talked to said they loved it just got burned out. Old school Gymnastics coaches I'm sure will just say they didn't have the heart to be a champion. This is the same mind set that in our sport gets many athletes hurt.

To match Gymnastics with Track/Pole Vault the real question would be how many hours a day and in a week do you practice the full floor exercise or better yet the full approach on the horse? Do you do the horse 6 days a week for 4 hours a day? I'd guess you don't and need to spread time out amongst all the events which each use and focus a different set of muscles. Plus gymnast are not hitting the speeds elite vaulters are on the runways. Maybe I'm wrong? The pounding effects on the body from all out sprinting at over 9 m/s for the guys and over 8 m/s for the ladies is tremendous. Not to mention looking at some of the other events like LJ's hitting 10.5 m/s or sprinters over 11 m/s. To run at those speeds the body begins to break down and it needs time to recovery. There is no way we can do our skill every day and expect the body to survive. The impact forces along at a takeoff for a LJ, TJ, HJ and PV have been seen to be roughly 3 to 5 times or greater of someones body weight is being exerted onto their bodies against a cement like surfaces that has no give.

Personally we can go into the gym and spend hours doing gymnastic drills (strap bar, rings and parallel bars), strength and core exercises and it will never match the forces the vaulters are hit with when they perform the pole vault or all out sprinting. Will they be a little sore of course but they could go into the gym every day and do this things. Is there always more random things that could be done to use up time during the day to say and feel like you are doing something? Of course, but the bottom line is no drill, gadget or alternative exercise will match actually vaulting. And the body can only handle the skill of sprinting, jumping and pole vaulting so much before it breaks down. After a hard jump session the athlete legs are shot for a period of time. This is not the case after doing Giants on the Strap Bar.

Its like telling a pitcher they should be able to throw 50+ 90 mph fastballs every day and never expect their arm to blow out. I'm sorry its gonna happen no matter how many other drills, exercises or activities they do if they perform their skill to much their bodies will fall apart.

Sorry Charlie the Sport of Track and Field and Gymnastics when it comes to time spent in the gym actually working on their skill is not the same. I admire Gymnast, but that mindset does not match our sport. In our sport you take an attempt and unless your the only one left you get full recovery and at worst 3 to 5 minutes rest. Unless you plan on taking 14+ attempts on the day what is the cardio needed to sustain for that long. Most vaulters want and take about 5 to 9 jumps in a meet. The average jump session is between 8 to 20 jumps (long approaches). As long as you are training at a level greater than that of a competition anything greatly above and beyond 2 to 3 times the number of jumps you tend to take in a meet will typically lead to one thing..... INJURY from overuse.

On a given day the time warming up, working out, lifting, doing auxillary drills, cooling down and performing rehab does take 4+ hours. I think the initial conversation was in line with time spent performing the actual skills and all heavy impact based activities. The notion of doing countless hours of activities they really has never been proven to help except from wise tails of athletes from the past.

The internet has been amazing, but leads to an abundance of blah....... Can the activity being perform directly link to a potential improvement in performance? If the answer to the question for the athlete you are working with is no or not sure than you probably shouldn't do it or ask someone else for help.

[VaultPurple]

I like what Altius used to always say. It's not about any magical drills or anything. It is about doing little important things a billion times until you can do them perfect.

There is a time for everything but the vault can be broken down into the most important parts that need to be done over and over again until you are doing them in your sleep, and then there are things you have to do but you have to do them in moderation like hard running work outs, full vaults, and strength training.

But in my opinion there is always something you can be doing to get better at every hour of the day.

What I get out of this article is the key statement that I try and tell everyone.... It is better to under train than over train!

This is because a not quite as conditioned or fast of pole vaulter as he could be is still usually better than a broken pole vaulter.

[dj]

good morning,

to add to my "note' from above..

follow two principles...

1. the SAID principle.. "Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demands"..

if you want the body to do something well… teach it to do the exact move/technique through a "whole – part - whole" methodology. 100's of reps..

without over training

2. Progressive overload.

dj

[altius]

"It's not about any magical drills or anything. It is about doing little important things a billion times until you can do them perfect." Yes indeed. "Perfection does not come from doing extraordinary things, it comes from doing simple things extraordinarily well" is a quote that should be on every vaulters wall. These simple things are almost invariably low impact activities compared to the full vault - which is in fact a very high demand neuromuscular activity. Unfortunately doing repetitive simple drills does not meet the macho needs of many young male vaulters and so they often get missed out in the rush to grip it and rip it.

Fortunately there are a growing number of coaches around the USA who have developed a culture of serious training that replicate the methods of Petrov and Parnov.

[rainbowgirl28]

I agree with ADTF, you can't directly compare gymnastics and pole vaulting. Elite gymnasts do not practice the vault every single day, and when they do, they are landing on softer mats than competition, same thing for dismounts from beam and bars and tumbling on floor.

I don't think there is anything wrong with competing year round if some of those months are from a short run and as long as the kids are healthy and having fun.

I do find it awfully hard to believe that you haven't had a single case of shin splints, pulled muscles, etc in 4 years of training kids year round. I've been around enough to know that some kids are more prone to overuse injuries than others, and if you're working with as many kids as you claim, you'd end up with some minor injuries no matter how much or how little you trained.