Coach Bob King (00:31):
The front for show the backs for go, and you have to understand we're going to do as much pulling as we do pushing. And what happens is people want to do the bench press. Yes. People want to squat. Yes. And so what we have to do is make you understand that there is a bad word in sports that you'd never want to have attached to you. And that's the word imbalanced. If you are imbalanced left and right, if you're imbalanced front to back, then you have got a problem or a potentially bad problem. Evolving. Now I'm not being a stereotypical personality, try to scare people about that. But the deal is it's happened to where one side has been overpowered by the dominant side. So here's the way it breaks down. If you do a lot of beaches, a lot of inclined, a lot of front side stuff, you get the shoulders, pull it in.
Coach Bob King (01:17):
That's the most common error and the word that we're going to be talking about through all this is posture. And it's not just about your mother telling you to stand up straight. That's a big part of it, but in sports postures, everything. So if you're you know, take, let me give you an example in the weight room then in the Olympic lifts and in the squat, you have got to have strong posture in the spine to execute those moves. Now back to the squat, a lot of times, listen, but this way, your legs are generically, just strong. I mean, most people could bench. I mean leg press or even squat, 50 pounds. Well, here's the deal. You'll see somebody get under the bar and do a warmup in the beginning stage. And what's the problem. I can't handle it. It's their spine. It's their backside.
Coach Bob King (02:04):
They don't have the back strength in the torso to hold themselves up. Right through, the bar is crushing their spine and upper body. It's not leg strength at all their legs. Aren't moving. Cause their upper body is, is afraid. So that's an immediate clue that a lot of times squatting problems are from the back. So we want a strong spine there. What does that mean? Muscles run up and down the spine in several layers and the way the back muscles are constructed, they're woven. So they go up and down and they go across and they're diagonal in both directions. So they're layered across the back and there are lots of angles of movement there. So you've got to address those because again, that bench press is pulling your shoulders forward. But volleyball centers y'all want to. Everybody wants a good tall spine of tackling and football.
Coach Bob King (02:54):
You need to get your spine and shoulders up. It just goes on and on the examples of how the backside so important hamstring, we're going down a little bit hamstring pools because of so much quad. We had a football off-season program at squatted like crazy. Then when those guys went to track, we had hamstring pools. So I was like, look guys, you got a problem. The football coach is telling you to squat, like crazy on the track. Coach tried to tell you, we got to get your hamstrings going either flexible or strong or both and get them to catch up with the claws. So problems are there not my, or your imagination. Now with back to the upper body, there are so many angles of movement with the arms that you can pick, what you would like to do, whether it's back flies, lap pools, the rows, different types of rows, but give the BA the back the same number of sets as you give the front that I think the simplest way to do it.
Coach Bob King (03:48):
It's what our training program does. If there's a seven-set push in that workout with the incline and bench, we're going to do at least seven to eight sets in the back to balance that out. Same thing in the lower body. If we do four to six sets in the quads we're going to do about that same amount in the glutes, specifically in the hamstrings and the calves, we don't want those calves to be overpowered. Now it's a very powerful level lever in the ankle. Give the calves some, love as well, the backside of the body is critical. Is it important? You don't want that word imbalanced attached to you. All right.
Coach Bob King (04:32):
Correct. Change the angle, change the exercise. That's why you'll see the bench press flat. Well, it's supine is what the bench press is inclined to and decline different angles, different action of the muscle. So because the back is built in layers and has to do so many things with the shoulder, girdle the movement there in the arm when the lap pool is being used the last year engaged in a different way. When the row is being used, the shoulder blades are in last year being used in different ways, engaging more, and you get into the wrong boys and all the deeper layer muscles. So you're trying to change the angle to involve all the muscles through their activity or their range of motion. So nobody is left behind. To change the angle, change. The exercise is a movement truth, but it needs to be a training rule that if you are going to do the back, you need to change the angle. So you can get all the muscles going in the right direction and poster your deltoids as part of the deltoid muscle. But it's just a third of the fiber. So the back flies and different angles on that can be extremely useful as well. So
Coach Bob King (06:25):
You decide, well, it's funny when you said that when you started asking me that first thing I want to do is say, we're going to blame the Greeks, just look at her statutes. You know, the Olympics, the discus is throwers and all the Greeks, I mean, it's their fault. And the problem is the Greeks gave us both. They gave us the chiseled body with the statues and they gave us the Olympics. And so I guess that also is Greek mythology because the guy that's got the best bill is not the best athlete. And I'm, I hate to burst bubbles, but it's a genetic code, you know, believe it or not. You're a lot of times you're, you have to work your butt off to get to a certain level, to make it to the field or record that you want to make it on. But at the same time, some guys show up and they've got it.
Coach Bob King (07:12):
The most unfair thing on the planet. I worked my butt off and look at this guy, he just walked in out of shape. Yep. He did. And that's not the rule. So the rule is you work hard, you get better at you to improve and practice, et cetera. The exception to the rule is the guy that just shows up. And he's good. So I want to make sure you understand how this works. So I'm having some don't and most of us are in between that we have athletic ability, but we have to develop it. It has to be a developed constraint. You have to have speed agility, quickness. So you've got to be able to train and get better because we all have a certain amount of genetic ability, genetic potential. And here's the thing I want to make this clear. If you are born with it, or you have X genetic potential, your job is to go find half how much that is.
Coach Bob King (08:00):
You don't have the manual with uses. You can only achieve high school. You can only achieve division two college. It doesn't go like that. You have to work your butt off to find out where is my genetic potential tapped out, more importantly, I think if I sum it up like this, you get what you train for. So if you train bodybuilding and you have the ability to have that physique, then that's what you're going to get does not mean you're going to be a better jump shooter, a better receiver, a better a S a setter in volleyball. So don't, don't misunderstand me. You get what you pay for. So if, if you do hundred-meter sprints all the time, that might not help you in a 3,200-meter run or a 5,000-meter run it'll make you faster, but it might not give you the endurance. So you get what you train for. That's the overriding principle here.
Coach Bob King (09:29):
That's that is a really loaded question. Yeah. They're splitting hairs maybe. Well, you are, and you are, but it's important that you do nowhere. Here's the thing in the early stages. If I get middle school, even sophomore, junior in high school, athletic developments, the name of the game. So we're going to lift weights. And if your body responds aesthetically, that's a bonus. We want number one to make you stronger. And so if you are stronger, chances are really good. You're going to jump higher, run faster. If you run faster, you're probably going to jump higher and it just all works together. So make sure that you understand what athletic development is. It's getting it all in place, somewhere in there. You got to get in shape. If you do not look, if you're a competitive athlete, fatigue, neutralizes, everything, your physique is just still there, but your strength, your agility, your speed, power, all gone.
Coach Bob King (10:20):
If you get tired and diminish rapidly. So athletic development tries to get all the components you need into you physically in the training program. Once you accomplish a certain level of fluidity and accomplishment in your skill, then you can probably go lean towards more of the kind of bodybuilding type of thing. A lot of that has to do with maturity. More like into college, high school, I'd stay broad-spectrum and get a big sample of everything. Speed, agility, conditioning, strength, conditioning, again, more conditioning and get in shape. Oh, conditioning. So make sure you understand the need of what you're going to do is the most important was if you are playing soccer, you need to be in phenomenal shape. If you're playing football, you need to be in phenomenal shape. Well, there's a theme here, right? So make sure you're fit strong. And then you can worry about the aesthetics. All right. So now
Coach Bob King (12:10):
Well, this is the beauty of what we say about everything is connected because w the pro I think probably the most mistaken common phrase I hear from coaches is we do a lot of, that's always a red light red flag for me. We do a lot of, and it's like, wait a minute. Because when some, when a lot of coaches say that they are literally saying they do a lot of, and I'm just let me make up something. We do a lot of sit-ups, oh my gosh. You know, sooner or later, your, your low back is just going to give, give out on you or sooner or later, you're just going to neglect other things because you're doing a lot of, and I have that too, but I say we do a lot of everything. And so that doesn't mean we're a Jack of all trades master of none, because the blend is there because here's the deal.
Coach Bob King (12:59):
Everything is connected. So we do cuff and stuff on our weight days. We don't do it every day because we do it on the days when that joint or that shoulder girl is, is stress that we do. The rotator cuff stuff is a lot of different things, whether it's wrist and forearms with the roll-up because you're gripping bars and doing things. If we do the risk roll or any other risks that forearm activity once or twice a week, we're fine. Because if you do all the stuff involving a grip, for example here, then you're getting grip strength. But you'll find if you do a forearm isolated movement, you'll feel like man, my, my forearms are weak. They're not weak. They just have not had that isolated attention because they've had help. Anytime you're doing anything else, therefore, any attention once or twice a week is going to help the rotator cuff the wrist and forearms the small areas.
Coach Bob King (13:53):
So not to like, well, I can't do everything, coach. The list is too long. Not at all. We just don't do everything every day. So if you can spread it out and benefit, it's not, you're diluting it. So don't misunderstand what I'm saying, which is common. You're not diluting your program by spreading it out and making it non every day. There are only a few things you're going to do every day, warm-up, you're going to stretch. Then you're going to do the core workout. So you had the core workout and in the ancillary on the side and the ancillaries can rotate. Your stretching routine can go between static and dynamic. You've got all kinds of options. So if you were to whiteboard this thing and put all your elements on there, it's strengthened and we'll rotator cuff and attendant circumstances, which is before arm and, and maybe some ankle work. We have an ankle program. We do it once, once every week or so. And so you start lining those up and you start blending your program and find out I can do everything during the week in the appropriate mats at the appropriate time.
Coach Bob King (15:27):
Well, I keep saying all the time, everything is connected. Well, I'm going to say everything is important as well. Everything is important that isolated movement with the forearms, I mentioned even some of the ankle and calf work we do. That's important. What you're talking about, the myofascial is important. So it becomes part of the program where, all right, if you have a structure and your program is limited to X number of minutes or whatever minutes a day or hours a week, and however you divide that up, it is highly smart to at least encourage your athletes, that you have taught them and show them, taught them what the movements and activities are shown them, where the gear is if they need it. So that it's like, look, when we finish up foam roll, when you get here 10 minutes early cuff and stuff, stuff is all of the things that different athletes think they need to do, whether it's foam roll every day, or do whatever there has to be a certain amount of ownership and self-guidance.
Coach Bob King (16:23):
Once you have coached them and taught them, and then you're there for reference and referrals, and reminders. So those things are incredibly important. Cause again, we're all different, right? And so you know, somebody with hamstring problems probably needs to be shown two or three different ways to stretch the hamstrings wishers, plenty of different methods same thing with any other, you know, athletes uniqueness or coming off of an injury, whether it's, I don't care what it is, growing quad, anything, show them how to self manage. Because as I tell people, especially in my, my work where I train athletes, who, you know, go off to school or go off to meets and things like that, especially you know, this baseball tends to be a really big one where they go off to showcases and a lot of teams have them like even soccer and so forth have showcases. Well, I always tell him, look, I am not going to be there at the showcase. You need to understand how to do all this stuff. You got it, let me see it. And that way they are owning the program. It's great to have a coach, right? They're doing everything for you. As far as instructions someday, you're going to be on your own and it's inevitable. So you've got to learn it, own it, and be a good enough coach to teach it and make sure the athletes are good enough students to learn it. Yeah.
Coach Bob King (18:37):
We shorten our warmup in Texas, in June that utilized you halfway warmed up walking in from the parking lot. Cause it's 120 on the parking lot. So we'll shorten the warmup and maintain our stretch or whatever's on the menu that day dynamic mobility or a static stretch or both we blend. And so if it's you know, for us, if it's 35 degrees, which don't laugh the rest of you up north, but it's a, it's a problem where, you know, you're just cold. You just are always cold in the house or whatever. We warm up an extended amount of time. So there are set rules, but there's, you know, there's room. So if you look at certain measurements, blood work done, where they test all your components of your blood there's ranges, you know, everything's a range, you know, like a healthy range is 10 to 40.
Coach Bob King (19:36):
And so we warm up what, eight to 12 minutes, 12 to 15 minutes. What are the circumstances that require more time or less time? We have the ladder, but we also have in summer, we do a lot of half ladder as an extended warmup. We use that just to get the feet going and get going. But if you want to use half the ladder, and so there are all kinds of adjustments we make to fit the timeframe. Cause we're not going to be there all day. I'm more, we go our workouts and we go. So what w what we do is fit the circumstance. And that way the athletes know that they know they're getting work in there. Know they're not wasting time and doing stuff like, are we going to work out? Are we going to sit around and stretch all day? Well, we're going to get what we need. If you want more, if you need more flexibility, we have straps and bands and show you how to do that outside the program. So a lot of components, a lot of latitudes as we narrow the focus to get what we came for.
Explain high speed 110’s?
Coach Bob King (20:55):
That's one thing we do in our program is we learn and we keep learning. And it's like in my early days as an assistant coach and then running a program myself it was very common, especially in my early track days as a coach, we'd always talk, well, what are we doing today? What are we going to do? XYZ. We're going to run about 75 to 80%. And then we, and then percentages would change. Just go about 60, 70% right here. Well, if I'm tired, 70% is full speed. If I'm, you know what it all never made a lot of sense. So to answer your question, what we started doing is like, we have two speeds, warmup and fast, that's it. We just go warm-up and then we go fast. High speed is, is faster. Now let me make sure everybody follows this.
Coach Bob King (21:47):
We go fast. We put, we like to say a 95% effort cap on it because we just were kind of a safety net. We don't want to go full speed a hundred percent and pull something because you get tired and you might not be paying attention to your technique. But when we say go fast, we go as fast as the drill will allow you or the exercise will allow you to go, if you are running as we do in the summer, especially with our or outdoor work, we have what we call high speed, one-tens, and high-speed sixties. And what that is is we run 95%, which is fast in 110, 110 yards, a hundred meters. We run at 95% effort, and we only do five or six of those because we're, we're just not used to running that distance. That fast, it conditions, the body we found.
Coach Bob King (22:41):
This is one of those things where we did them. And in the early days, we knew what we were doing, but then we don't, we did not know the full benefit of the outcome. And so let me review that we would run four to six high speed, one-tens. We timed them. If the time started dropping more than two tents, we would quit because we're not, we're not trying to condition and push through. We want to go 95% of our, our good effort, our full effort. If we go two-tenths faster, we want to slow down because we've created a baseline and we run six because we found that that's a good cutoff number. And then the following week, we just come back and do our normal stuff. And what we discovered is we would run one-tens as a conditioning tool at a certain pace.
Coach Bob King (23:26):
Those were instantly faster. Why your body remembers what it did last and it's built for it. Another thing we learned is if somebody came into our program that has not done high speed, one-tens. When they jumped in with our veteran group, they were sucking eggs and die. And while the guys that had done it before were like, what's wrong. Are you okay? Because the conditioning adaptive effect was remarkable. We, you expect to adapt when you run fast and you train, but it was remarkably different. So the high-speed, one-tens gets you ready for what you're going to do next, which is high-speed competition.
Well, you had that foot strike when you're sprinting. So the hamstrings and the hips and the backside of the body, you're going to be required to do their job. And if you have excessive soreness, we never have anybody pull because we had that 95% cap. And will you instruct them, you know, just run your speed? So if you've got a guy flying down the track, because he's that guy, don't try to keep up with him, run at 95% of your perceived effort. And just, we always run the first one. We always say, the first one's freebie, just, just go fast and see how your hams and quads and everybody's feeling. Then we go ahead and pick up the pace. But that way, the hams, once they do that, that foot strike fly away, tearaway, wherever you want to call it in this, in the stride cycle, they can tell what their hamstrings are up to. And so if there's a problem between quad hip hamstring, it's going to show up in that training.
