Olympic Lifting is an extraordinary tool most sports performance coaches use to develop power within their athletes. Many of us know, sports are chaotic and unpredictable. Nothing is ever played in just a straight line, just like movements and training are never as simple as it seems. In many circumstances, coaches have to make adjustments to the olympic lifts based on athlete’s sport, season, flexibility, mobility and anatomical makeup. The best coaches are able to adapt and make these adjustments in order to optimize an athlete’s training.

One of the most common misconceptions among Olympic Lifting is the danger of its complexity and speed of a loaded bar. Surprisingly enough, Olympic Lifting has one of the lowest injury rates in sports across the world. Let’s dig a little deeper into why olympic lifting is one of the safest competitive sports, and as a training tool for athletes.

Linear speed training is a hot topic in all sports. After all, no matter what sport you play it is beneficial to be fast. As simple of a movement as running is, there are many factors within it that must be taken into account. This is referred to as the kinematics of running. These kinematics include measures of stride length, stride frequency, range of motion measurements at each joint, and ground contact time to name a few.

In my last article I covered the importance of hydration and its effects on the body. (Check it out HERE) Now, I’d like to go into how we can put that into practice. As mentioned before, the guidelines may seem daunting at first, but after awhile it becomes second-nature.

There are many factors to speed training that are nonnegotiable and typically covered by most or all speed coaches: body position, stride, arm movement. These aspects are common and unimpressive. Any “coach” who has read a book or received a weekend certification can recite these same lines. The coaches that impress me and leave me asking for more are the individuals that act more like technicians. The professionals that are able to breakdown grand movement patterns into finite pieces and analyze the specific movements, and consequences of these movements.

When addressing speed, agility, and quickness it is important to take movement quality into account. Moving fast relies on that fact that athletes are able to get into an effective and efficient position. However, there are times when this position is unattainable due to structural or functional deficits.

The world around us is changing faster than we can keep up. As a society we are all aware of the COVID-19 outbreak and what it has done to our everyday life and routine. We can’t go to the mall with friends, we can’t go out to dinner as a family, we can’t go workout at our favorite gym and we cannot attend school or even our jobs. Although, there are a lot of things we cannot do, we want to use this time to focus on the things you can be doing.

Many of the athletes that I begin working with will have similar, if not, the same goal. They want to be faster. I can understand this goal. Who wouldn’t want to be faster? With a goal so simple and straight-forward, you would think the answer would be the same, simple and straight forward. Sadly, it is not.

With the current public health issue a lot of people are spending more time at home. This likely also means most people are experiencing a decrease in their daily activity. We should not allow this to throw off or affect our ability to hydrate properly, though. If anything, now is a great time to ensure we are properly hydrating.