Derrick Price

Christopher, this is really well done, a great place to start in a Deceleration Phase and I agree that a lot of unilateral deceleration is critical for the basketball player. You set up your acute variables perfectly as deceleration is very intense from an eccentric perspective so this is a good place to start to create tissue tolerance while building motor control. Great work!

Diann, your client must think you’re her saving grace during this challenging time. “Me time” is so critical during times of stress so I love how you’re creating an environment for her to have this time to herself so she can be the best mom and business owner for those that she serves.

Great modalities Zach, very useful and practical. I agree the mindfulness emphasis is a big bonus. Too often our athletes do “Recovery” and they spend a lot of time not being mindful and focusing on their phone and social media.

Bryce, love how you’re thinking beyond just the physical domain and looking at the social as well. Soooooo important, great work!!

Bryce, similar opinion that I gave to Zach. This would be a great session to do at the gym, I can really see it work well in a group dynamic if you have the equipment and space available.

To answer your question: Passive means something is acting upon you and you are not exerting physical effort. Active means you are acting upon it and are exerting physical effort. So with Walking barefoot on a battling rope, you are acting upon the rope which makes it an Active strategy.

Ivan, thanks for selecting Leisure Walk, looks like we made an error with that activity in regards to its Tagging. As you can imagine, walking is not Passive! It should be classified as GAR. If you refresh your session, it should be changed now.

Regardless, this is a nice little session and being out in nature is one of my personal faves!

Jamie this looks great on paper, love the structured recovery throughout the week.

I need some more context as to how you put this together. For example, you have Hypertrophy 1 day a week. Is that enough for someone looking to add size?

You have 3 days of strength training. what’s the focus overall? Why did you select these themes? Who would this work for? Understanding your rationale behind your program will help me give you more pointed feedback!

Janna, love how this in-season program has only 1 training day and the rest is recovery. So important for managing training load as in-season is not about fostering new adaptations, rather sustaining what you have and creating resilience.

Getting ahead of ourselves, we’ll probably want to modify the 3 LAR days in a row to include other recovery quadrants and I look forward to seeing you create a more expanded recovery day on your Chill and Chill day but I know that will come in time. Great work setting the foundation of this program, this will be gold for your athletes!

Zach, this is a great sequence of exercises for a LAR session. Active, but not sympathetic is key! I love the active meditation/mindfulness at the end, really smart and too often overlooked the benefits of mindfulness, especially for highly stimulated individuals!

Great work Audrey! I’m a big fan of Active strategies for sedentary clients. Helps to increase physical activity levels and mobility.

I like the duration of your flush cardio. More than 15 minutes and it most likely becomes too Sympathetic which is what we don’t want from a recovery session.

Jamie, great organization in your program and you nailed the exercise selection to the intent of each working block. Very clear that you’re looking to promote Dead Strength and Agile Strength with this session.

As a heads up, in your Agile Strength block, your third exercise has 2 min rest, and I think you wanted the rest to come at the end of the circuit correct?

Food for thought, with a Giant Set, you’ll sacrifice strength gains for metabolic gains because of the minimal rest period between exercises. I’m not saying someone won’t get stronger with this format, but the potential for adding strength is dampened as the metabolic cost of performing the exercises is greatly heightened. You can still circuit the exercises but I would allow at least 1 min of rest in between if you’re looking to maximize strength gains (we need to restore ATP to lift heavier loads to get stronger!). So again, not saying this is a “wrong” format, but it’s good to understand how the acute variable manipulation will lead to different outcomes!

I’m curious to know more about who you might use this type of session for. Make sure to save it in your library, I’m sure many clients will benefit from having this in their program at the right time. Great job putting this together!

Hey Adam, thanks for putting this together.

Looking at your program, I’m curious to learn more about how you went about selecting your exercises and which types of Strength you’re trying to develop…

I can see your first 3 exercises all improve Dead Strength (overcoming resting inertia).

Exercise 4 would be Odd-Position Strength because of the unique position you’re putting the body in. It’s not Dead Strength (not overcoming resting inertia) nor Agile Strength (Momentum-Based).

Exercise 5: Agile Strength

Exercise 6: Power – Acceleration. Not Agile Strength because you’re not sustaining momentum.

Learning more about your intentions will help you create more specific sessions, which gives us a better understanding of the expected adaptations of your program!

Proof is in the pudding! Great to hear your clients felt immediate benefits Doug.

Something to try: in your first SMUR exercise, lower the rep count to 1-2 per side, and add a forced exhalation at the end range of motion. This will add stability to lateral trunk flexion and potentially reduce the guarding that occurs when we’re feeling stiff in the trunk. Added stability will lead to potentially more mobility gained in the next exercises!

This is a really good sequence Adam. I like how you considered the athlete’s environment and selected appropriate exercises accordingly.

My only suggestion is being a bit nitpicky: I would reserve the World’s Greatest for a UMT Mobility drill and replace it with an MP SMUR exercise that challenges the T-Spine. Or better yet, keep the World’s Greatest and add a Forced Exhalation at the end range of motion to enhance stability and SMUR of the Trunk while in a rotated position!

Well done Jamie, you followed the logic of the 7 Steps well with your exercise selection!

Nice sequence Julio! I like how you snuck in some Hip mobility as well. I’ve learned that many baseball players’ shoulder/elbow injuries often have a strong correlation of immobility in the opposite hip as the throwing arm. Curious how it went with your client?!

Ivan I really like the blend of the different types of Strength you included in this program along with variable Metabolic Conditioning throughout the week.

One suggestion, on Day 1, you have a Dead Strength Block and a Jogging (SISS) block. The Dead Strength Block is most likely a HIIT Block because you’re allowing for 1 min of rest between sets and using mod-heavy loads with WBI exercise. Just make sure to factor that into the overall work your client is doing throughout the week as that now creates 3 days for High-Intensity exercise. Not wrong, but just make sure that is within the tolerance of the client’s abilities.  Nice work Ivan, as always!

Beata, what a pleasure to review your program. You shared a lot of great info which really help me understand your intent. I love that you incorporated a HIIPA day! I find it to be a clever strategy for someone to experience High-Intensity without attaching it to “exercise”. My only suggestion for this day is you’ll want to program how many times throughout this day you want your client to experience a High-Intensity activity. You have some great ideas, now you just need to let the client know how many times they need to do it throughout the day. You might start with 3 times per day and can progress as your client gets in better shape.

Excellent work putting this together. Realy like the variety of the program which maps well to health and human performance!

Zach, I’m pretty impressed with what you put together. Such a well-rounded program with a nice blend of various adaptations that are relevant for most athletes. This will act as a great template in case you want to make specific changes for any of the athletes you encounter. I really don’t see a need to make any changes to this!

I agree with your view on the Strength sessions being more of a HIIT response and that’s great that you recognize that. That’s a total of 4 days of High Intensity work when you include the Power day and HISS day, however it’s quite variable so most folks should be able to tolerate this well. If not, you can always scale back the total amount of High-Intensity work throughout the week and support with more recovery.

Regarding a screen for athletes, agreed with your POV. Johnny has put together a great process which is unveiled in Level 3!

Excellent work Zach!

Wayne excellent job putting this together. Love the use of the 4Q NM in your first circuit and using simple, linear drills for your Tabata. You should definitely get a HISS response from this workout, well done!

Sounds like a great session Beata. Love the use of Cold Water Immersion as part of your session. Way to use your environment to your advantage!!

Love the diversity of this session Diann. Agreed it would be ideal for an advanced client, especially the multiplanar work. If the client has poor coordination or the movement is too unknown, it will be tough to create a true HISS response.

For the dumbbell block, I would be curious to see how your clients respond if the weight was heavy for each exercise, switching exercises every 5 reps. Or at least making the upper body exercises heavy as they are so local to the upper extremity while the lower extremity drills are really whole body so they’ll have a greater metabolic effect in general. In other words, the upper extremity exercises are less taxing on the body as a whole compared to the squat and deadlift, so to create balance from a force perspective, make them heavy and the squat and deadlift moderate.

Regarding your side note, the drills were playing fine for me!

Wow Bryce, Ground-to-Standing for 10-20min straight, I can see how that can be brutal! While I certainly can understand the performance benefits, I’m wondering if there needs to be some more variability from a mechanical perspective, because as we learned in level 1, too much repetition can create some musculoskeletal issues. Always one of the challenges we face as the coach/programmer: how to balance health and performance! I’m curious how you would offset this highly repetitive session in the warm-up and cooldown.

Audrey, I’m tired just reading this session! I think you’ve packaged a great HISS session here and I like the blend of dynamic movements in your EMOM block with a simple loaded drill in the ASAP block. Lots of smarts here, nicely done!

Doug I can see why your clients are loving this little sequence! The nice thing about the 4Q is it will automatically make sure your client gets all of the dynamic movement to foster good mobility in whichever region you’re tackling. As your next progression to this T-Spine Mobility, try the coupling T-Spine movements. You can type in “Type 1″ or Type 2” as you search for your mobility drills and they add a great progression to the drills you’ve selected here. Keep it up!