Derrick Price

Yep, it’s about using the ground to pin the knuckles of your toes so they can splay which may activate foot musculature and also strengthen fascia along new lines of stress.

Lance, great work and glad to hear your client was experiencing immediate benefit. Always makes us coaches feel good right!? I like how “isolated” your first two drills were and then how “integrated” the final two are. That’s a smart progression through the circuit to enhance mobility. I’ll give you the same feedback I gave Liz above regarding the SL Squat Touchdown: “I would look to add more stability with the exercise (i.e. allow the floating leg to touch the ground, or anchor the upper body to a wall or chair or something stable) because if we are off balance (on one leg), this typically increases muscle recruitment around a joint to stabilize the joint. The problem is with increased recruitment and co-contraction around a joint comes less range of motion (mobility) of the joint so make sure to add stability to exercises that have a mobility intent.”.

Wendy glad you’re finding value in the curriculum, even as such an experienced veteran in the industry!

I like your progression through the block, starting with more subtle, less load-based exercise to more force and comprehensive motions. Even though the Forced Exhalation is also an Activation exercise, it also plays well as a Mobility drill as Greater Stability allows for More Mobility. This should be a very useful block for many of your clients, well done!

You are most welcome Hansel and glad you saw some benefit from it.

Here are a few thoughts that came to mind as I reviewed your block:

• I love the specificity of your Mobility Block and it’s evident you understand the mechanics of the sport.
• I am not opposed to your logic of using more of the Multi-planar quadrants to accommodate your athletes.
• I like the Time-based approach to your Sets/Reps. Makes it much easier to manage!
• Suggestion 1: I would probably place your LLT exercise first in the circuit as it is less demanding from a movement perspective (Subtle motion and in a half kneeling position compared to the larger more comprehensive patterns you have). In a circuit like this, I like to start with “easier”, more subtle, less force based exercises and progress with each exercise.
• Suggestion 2: Because your athlete is seated, I might challenge their Type 1 and 2 Motions in a Kneeling or Seated posture to place extra demand on the T-Spine to move and remove/lessen the hips ability to contribute. Not always of course but this is a great way to emphasize the T-Spine if your athlete needs it.

Again, these are just suggestions and you’ve put together a nice plan with strong intent. Well done!

Savannah, very thorough, excellent work. I will review it in depth in the webinar this week!

Welcome Josh!

Savannah, such a great question and a much needed one as the ability to be able to regress and progress these concepts is the first step to mastery.

In the next module, you’re going to learn our 7-Step Prep which is a logical flow of Activation and Mobility strategies that we use for individuals who have movement impairments. 4Q Activation and Mobility alone may be too general or the strategies are too systemic when more local strategies with less force may be needed.

Regardless, I’ll show you some techniques in this week’s webinar to inspire your thinking. Stay tuned!

Welcome Brittany and Aly!

Hansel, thank you for your submission, I will review your block in this week’s webinar, stay tuned!

Excellent write-up Alex, I will review your block in this week’s webinar, stay tuned and great work!

A big welcome to Lance, Liz D., Lynne, Vivien, and Lee!

Keith, great to have you and your team join us once again. Johnny had such a great time in his recent visit with you (Sans the covid of course).

Barbara this paints a great picture, thank you for sharing. Here are a few thoughts I had while reviewing your submission:

1) Looks like you got some great information from your onboarding experience with her. Seems like you two really connected and you’ve motivated her even more by showcasing strategies that she values (such as Work-ins!)

2) I like the repetition, giving your client the opportunity to develop mastery and familiarity with new movements and strategies. Very important, especially the start of a new program and new relationship.

3) Because she is just starting out, be careful with the amount of high intensity exercise. We usually recommend high intensity work for individuals who have built a baseline aerobic foundation (usually 2-3 months of conditioning). More on this in Level 2!

4) It’s great you have every day structured. Makes your program more valuable. You’re creating a need for your service!

5) Good work leveraging much of the pre-made content already in the Program Builder libraries! Now you just need to fine tune it, modify the titles, etc so it becomes more specific to your client.

Excellent participation throughout Barbara and it’s been a pleasure to work with you!

Chuck I love the story here. Really paints a vivid picture of your athlete and the intent of your program.

Your athlete is lucky to be working with you. I agree that more exposure to Movement Strength (as opposed to Muscle) and Acceleration will be important themes within his program as well as the Active Recovery sessions.

The biggest challenge I see is managing stress and overall training load (a topic we dive into in Level 3). Aside from the practices, he’s also lifting 3 times a week with his team. Then you add 2 Strength Days, a Power Day and a Cardio Day, with your program, that’s a total 7 Conditioning Sessions, not inclusive of the 2 hour practices which I’m not sure how often is being done throughout the week.

So if I understood the scenario correctly (and perhaps I didn’t), the training load is incredibly high which would mean your athlete would need perfect nutrition and about 10-12 hours of sleep a day to tolerate such a demand (https://triathlontraining-coach.com/sleep-why-roger-federer-gets-12-hours-of-sleep-a-day/). If he’s not doing that well, then he’s an injury waiting to happen, let alone his performance may be impaired.

With that said, I would recommend removing the Cardio day (probably the least needed adaptation of all in this case), and adding the Acceleration Block to your Strength Days. That removes 2 days of training and you can insert more recovery and stress-reducing strategies. You can also reduce the overall volume of the workouts (fewer total sets).

While we didn’t discuss training load in this course, you still demonstrated a great understanding of how to integrate many of the concepts discussed in this course into your program. So for that, I commend you on your efforts and I’m excited to see how this translates into your work with Fencers going forward. Been a pleasure to work with you Chuck and thank you for sharing such an interesting perspective!

Liz, excellent rationale for your program. Very clear and great demonstration of how you grasped many of the concepts discussed in Level 1 and made them applicable. Here’s some thoughts I had in your review:

1) A great thing about a Program is it makes it easy for the client to “feel” like they are doing a lot. So even though you have only 2 Lifting days planned, you’ve scheduled other activities in which keeps their mind occupied and focused on their goal. Win-Win!

2) Big fan of incorporating the social activities like family bike rides etc. That’s next level programming 🙂

3) Consider Physical Activity objectives for the “off days”. Program specific step counts or other ways to get the person to be physically active on those days. It’s not Exercise, it’s about building habits of movement everyday which can be done, even with a newbie.

4) With beginners, I like to use Peripheral Heart Action circuits where you alternate between Upper and Lower body exercises. When you clump all lower and upper body together, they may lack the muscle endurance to sustain the circuit. Something to consider! Otherwise I like your strength days.

5) Great micro progressions throughout

You’ve got a great template here Liz and it will make programming fast and easy with this type of clientele. Great work throughout the entire course, really appreciate your engagement throughout. It’s been a pleasure to work with you!

I love it Lisa. Think of this as “Month 2” or Phase 2 where you’ve progressed your client to include some Power Training. Keep this up and you’ll have multiple 12-Week programs ready to sell to your clients which will differentiate you from many other coaches as most trainers exercise people on the fly without much thought given to an overall program or the inclusion of Recovery. Well done!

Liz, great rationale! Kids are so elastic that Power training can be a great introduction to a conditioning program whereas many Strength exercises require a lot of motor learning which can be difficult in a group setting. I like the use of the Landmine for the Clean and Jerk as it’s safer and arguably more effective because of the position.

One thought for a swimmer when it comes to on-land conditioning is they probably don’t need as many high-impact (ground reaction force) exercises compared to a land athlete so you might want to consider some Power exercises that lessen GRF. Example: Think of holding on to a suspension trainer or the use of a resistance band when performing these drills. Explosive movements can still be performed with less impact on their joints promoting the longevity of the athlete. Or even consider a Water session that is Power-based. Some food for thought!

Lisa I appreciate the specificity of mapping the exercises to your young client’s values and movements they may be familiar with. Great way to create buy-in and make the session valuable and even enjoyable.

So from a semantics perspective, this entire session is an Agility session. Agility is defined as start (Accel), stop (Decel) and Change Direction so if you look at most of your exercises, that’s what’s occurring. If you remove the change of direction component to your exercise, it becomes an Acceleration or Deceleration exercise depending on your emphasis of Starting or Stopping.

With that said, you have Unloaded Agility in your 1st block and Loaded Agility in your 2nd bock. That’s great! I would probably label each block accordingly. The only exercise that is not really agility is the ViPR Bound Cylinder lift and Catch. That’s a Deceleration exercise (emphasis on the Stopping mechanics) and I recommend you put that in the Warm-Up. This will help with the Agility exercises to come.

Lastly, I recommend including rest periods with each exercise instead of circuiting with minimal rest. True Power and Agility training requires high intensity efforts to gain their benefit which means the movements become quite anaerobic. Rest will be needed to perform each exercise to their maximum potential. Otherwise, you’ll gain less Agility benefits and it becomes more of a Cardio session.

Well done Barbara, I will review in this week’s webinar. Thanks!

Chuck I like the heavy dose of recovery within your program. As a parent myself of two young kids, I can tell you firsthand how beneficial this (focusing on more recovery and less working out) has been for my own health and performance. I also like the repeating Strength sessions, especially for the parent that needs to keep it simple and doesn’t have the bandwidth to try and learn many exercises. I resonated a lot with this program, great work Chuck!

Orlando, I really like the simplicity of your program which sounds like it matches the wants/desires of your client. After learning about the 4Q, we often try to “force” someone to train in all 4Q because of the many benefits. However, it is perfectly ok and within reason to spend more time in certain quadrants than others based on the client’s needs and capabilities so I just wanted to voice that for you and others and give you that permission. It’s a really smart decision!

The only thing I might try to add, with the client’s permission of course, are some activation and mobility strategies on their off days as part of a Self-Care program. So not only are they being informed on how to exercise, you can also inform them on how to take better care of themselves, which elevates your value as a coach and programmer tremendously!

Hey Barbara, the link for your Program is not showing up. Can you paste the link here?

Nicely done Chuck! You can even classify your first Block as Dead Strength as Ground-to-Standing exercises require the ability to overcome your own (bodyweight) resting inertia. I love the specificity of your exercise selection to the sport of fencing. While I’m no expert in the sport, I can easily see your train of logic and recognize the development of muscular and fascial strength specific to the postures found in the sport. Really well done!

Lisa, I like your Relative Strength block as a foundation to prepare the body for a more demanding and dynamic strength routine later in the session. I would probably classify it as Fundamental Strength as these are whole-body integrated patterns fundamental to human movement.

With your selection of a Barbell Flow, you’ll primarily gain the benefit of Agile Strength as any Flow demands a seamless transition from one position to the next requiring the need to harness momentum. As you watch Shawn in the video, you’ll notice he “cheats” from one movement to the next and that is critical to the success of a Flow and truly differentiates it from Muscle Strength training where we remove Momentum to execute the exercise.

I agree this is a big bang for your buck exercise as it is also very metabolically taxing. I typically recommend Flows be done for time instead of reps so you can control the Work to Rest Ratios better and ensure the Flow stays clean from an execution perspective as fatigue will disrupt the technique significantly! Not to mention you may need to break each component of the flow down individually before you integrate them all in one movement. Maybe try a light load for long duration (2-3 min/set) so a person can learn/practice the flow for a couple of sets. And then moderate load for shorter durations (1 min sets) to challenge their ability to be agile with heavier loads.

Orlando, thank you for your thorough response. I will review your session in this week’s webinar!