Today’s episode features sports performance coaches Jake Jensen and Jeff Moyer.  Jake and Jeff are unique in that they are in-the-trenches coaches who are personally familiar with the work of two legendary coaches and researchers in the field, Dr. Michael Yessis and Dr. Anatoliy Bondarchuk.  Jeff is the owner of DC Sports Training while Jake works as the head strength coach for a professional hockey team in Berlin, Germany.

The training methodology of Anatoliy Bondarchuk in particular has caused some waves in the field in the last few years, but the issue with his system is really the fact that Dr. Bondarchuk coached track and field throwers, where team sports have a lot more complexity in terms of the progression of different skills within that sport, let alone team tactics, strategy, and winning!

If you listen to this podcast, there is a good chance that you care much more than simply getting athletes stronger in some familiar barbell lifts and saying you did your job.  As sports performance coaches, we strive to get athletes better at , well, sports! By blending the ideals of Dr. Bondarchuk in terms of training organization and adaptation, and looking at the special exercise battery of Dr. Yessis, we have some formidable weapons in helping athletes reach their highest potential.  This is where Jake and Jeff have done tremendous work in pushing the field forward (check out their recent article on the topic for Just Fly Sports)in regards to maximizing training transfer for a spectrum of athletes.

On today’s episode, Jake and Jeff cover the role of general strength development within the scopes of the Bondarchuk and Yessis systems, and then go in detail on how the “SDE” category of the Bondarchuk system can be adapted for team sport performance.   This is a forward thinking episode that is setting a precedent for the impact of a sports performance coach, as well as thought provoking for coaches of any sport.

Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, supplier of high-end athletic development tools, such as the Freelap timing system, kBox, Sprint 1080, and more.  

View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage.

Key Points:

Jake and Jeff’s backgrounds

The role of general strength development and 1-rep maxes in the Bondarchuk and Yessis training systems

What to make of the “things in the middle” of the Bondarchuk pyramid, such as special strength, and if it could possibly be done without

How to track key performance indicators (or SDE’s) for team sport performance

How many workouts Jake and Jeff put in a training cycle given the Bondarchuk principles and adaptation types

How to monitor when an athlete adapts to a training cycle and when to change exercises for non-throwing/track athletes

Quotes:

“There is a lot of technique that goes into being able to lift heavy weight for a single.  For an athlete who plays a team sport, as a strength coach, I have to ask myself, how much time do I want to spend teaching this guy how to brace through an 8 second grinder for a squat”

“Dealing with Doc, we never did anything under 8 reps (in the weightroom) but those 8 reps were as heavy as you can get”

“The thing people have to remember about Anatoli Bondarchuk is he’s done everything.   There are a lot of instances where he uses max effort, 110% squats”

“In some applications, super heavy-ass squatting… nasty, raw strength is very important”

“It’s hard to learn with max intensity lifting”

“By the time we get down to the 8’s, (in the 1x20 system) we are doing some heavy isometrics as well”

“What’s wrong with powerlifting today…. too many of these kids won’t lift over 10 reps”

“Anything that is special developmental (in the Bondarchuk system) has to involve tactics for team sports”

“We are doing some kind of jumping (to track adaptation and what type of adapter the athlete is)”

“If you are going to get to know your athletes better,