The speech I’d prepared was equal parts rah-rah and duty to warn, but standing in front of 15 hungry, multisport soccer players on a misty, May-Gray evening I knew I’d have to crank through an abridged version to keep them sitting still. When the kids start pulling their sweatshirts down over their knees? The clock’s ticking. And by hungry, I mean literally—we had just blitzed through a fast-paced workout and, as the girls sat to discuss our season outline, team goals, and the culture and training environment we wanted to maintain as they enter their freshman and sophomore years of high schoo ..read more

Every now and then, a piece of training technology crosses my path that really catches my attention. When it comes to training technologies, their utility essentially falls into one of two brackets—either by filling a unique gap, enabling me to capture training benefits otherwise challenging to accomplish, or through making my workflow more efficient. Tsunami Bar has been an incredibly useful discovery that has helped add to my programming by checking off a few birds with one singular stone. For one, I can’t think of another implement that’s quite comparable (and that comparison is what you u ..read more

If you're familiar with the collegiate softball schedule, you know it's a year that spans an off-season from September to January, then ramps up from February to May with intense practices, games, and travel. The off-season prioritizes General Preparatory Phase training to boost the athletes' size, speed, and strength. As February approaches and schedules fill with practices and double-headers, maintaining a strategic programming structure becomes essential, despite challenges like missed lifts due to travel. Having grown up in the world of baseball, a few truths about ballplayers always stan ..read more

The debate between strength and speed has been ongoing for decades, just like strength vs. power. Both are needed for the best athletic performance, yet they serve different purposes and require different training approaches. Let's check out what each of these entails in sports, how to train for them, and the devices that can help achieve peak performance in both strength and speed! What Is Strength? Strength is the ability of a muscle or group of muscles to exert force against resistance. It’s foundational for nearly every athletic activity, whether you're lifting weights, sprinting, or even ..read more

SimpliFaster and Rude Rock Strength are excited to launch a new educational series that will feature specific athlete return to play (RTP) case studies. These modules will also cover our recent implementation of Hawkin Dynamics force plates into our RTP model and how this has influenced our programming and decision making. This series will run throughout the remainder of 2024 and cover a variety of specific injuries, athletes, and levels of sport. If you missed our preliminary article, be sure to check out “The Philosophy, Art, and Science of Return to Play for S&C,” which covers the gene ..read more

Training athletes often comes with its own set of constraints. Things like time, equipment, and space are often constraints to a coach, but they can also be opportunities if they are viewed that way. Time is our biggest asset and often a constraint in the college setting as athletes have other demands that pull on their time. Classes, technical practices, study halls, group meetings, and training are just some things that are asked of them daily. It’s important to take note of how much time a coach has with a group and how much time they can allocate to the segments of training that are plann ..read more

Do you want to jump higher and play better volleyball? Whether you’re spiking, blocking, or just trying to reach the ball, a higher vertical jump can make all the difference. This article will show you some great exercises for your warm-ups, flexibility, and strength that’ll help you increase your vertical jump for volleyball. Let’s jump in! Understanding the Vertical Jump in Volleyball In volleyball, jumping high is very important. It lets you get a better angle and more force behind the ball when spiking, gives you a more effective block, and allows you to serve higher up in the air. It’s a ..read more

I can’t tell you how many stories I’ve heard—and continue to hear—about strength and conditioning coaches struggling with sport coaching staffs or battling through conflicts with medical staffs. Often, these struggles lead to a strength and conditioning coach finding themselves out of a job. I always come back to the idea that, as strength and conditioning coaches, we are often our own worst enemies. Why is that? Because too often we look and act like meatheads, and when we do, we scare the coaches, trainers, and physical therapists we are supposed to be collaborating with. Am I stereotyping ..read more

The human performance industry has expanded rapidly, and this growth has precipitated an evolving versatility for S&C coaches and practitioners. Within just the last two decades, we’ve gone from timing gassers and hitting 1RM bench presses to sprinting on 1080s and having mobile, personal force plates. Things are different. These differences can primarily be attributed to the effects of technology and social platforms, which have benefited the human performance industry in many ways. To highlight a few: an expansion of work opportunities, increasingly sophisticated performance application ..read more

Being in-season is, literally, what we all train for. The early mornings, the heavy squats, and the sweaty shirts are all needed to finally let the hard work pay off under the game day lights. Training has now shifted from the previous focus of grinding and building to maintaining and maybe even peaking. However, the foot is still down on the training gas pedal, but the workouts start to look and feel a little different. The priority is to keep the main thing the main thing in-season: being as physically and mentally ready as possible for games. As training goals shift away from training itse ..read more