Citing SS in another book

[Steve Hill]

I've found a couple of papers online talking about how weighted baseball bats can interfere with a normal baseball bat swing and you infer an interference between front and back squats (at least in the context of learning the motor pattern). Do you know of any papers that investigate this? Anecdote suggests it and one of the best cycling sprint coaches here has his squad doing westside programming with significant success (one of the guys is current keirin world cup leader, not bad ...) but do you know of any studies I can cite?

Question: Are the weighted bats being used properly? Has anyone investigated exactly how they should be used, or are we simply assigning an outcome that we wish to a situation that is really out-of-control?

Statement: One of AIS's most successful S&C coaches (as defined by the sprint cycling athletes he has helped produce) uses very specific replications of pedal-stroke in his S&C programs for sprint cyclists. How does this jive with your theory?

Perhaps we are all just individuals, and in general while the SS program is excellent for beginners (novices), more advanced athletes need not only to account for longer rest periods for recovery in their programming, but also require both more and more specific exercises to eek out what is left of their genetic potential, and that needs to be assessed individually. This would be the essence of being a coach vs being a trainer.

If you train 1st year "sprint" cyclists like, say, Chris Hoy, they aren't going to make progress at the same rate as they would with a programme that is geared towards a novice cyclist. The converse is also true: Training Hoy like an absolute novice would be folly.

[Bleve]

Interestingly, cycling (track sprint) is a strength sport, unlike endurance cycling, and we do a lot of overgeared starts etc to build strength on the bike - or rather, teach the body to use the muscle we've built in the gym, on the bike. That's what I think is going on anyway. I don't think that, discounting novice effects, you can sufficiently overload the body on a bike to force any significant muscle gains. That's where squats and deadlifts come in to play, and I *think* that using the gym for general strength and then doing OTB strength and power work is the most effective way to train.

The hard part is finding *any* studies to support any particular methods (that agree or disagree!) that aren't so deeply flawed that to cite them is laughable. It's all done on gut feeling, experience, hunches and anecdotes, as far as I can tell anyway.

[Bleve]

Question: Are the weighted bats being used properly? Has anyone investigated exactly how they should be used, or are we simply assigning an outcome that we wish to a situation that is really out-of-control?

Statement: One of AIS's most successful S&C coaches (as defined by the sprint cycling athletes he has helped produce) uses very specific replications of pedal-stroke in his S&C programs for sprint cyclists. How does this jive with your theory?

I've met Craig Colduck, and we had a good talk last year over in Adelaide, I've also spent time with Martin Barras (who was head sprint coach at the time, Colduck's boss, if you like) and had a bit of a talk about his methods too. He's (Colduck) definatly a proponent of specifics, but I also had a good look at his programs, and what comes through is that while he did a *bit* of funky ballistic legpress work, the bread and butter of his program was (he's not there anymore ... when Marv got pushed out he went too) squats, clean pulls and plyos. What it looks like he did (because that's what his oft-quoted post on FGF talks about the most, or at least is quoted the most in reference to) is a somewhat misleading thing.

Another very successful track sprint coach here in Melbourne, John Beasley, who coaches the Malaysian squad, who are doing extraordinarily well, uses a strength coach who does no specific work at all, it's all westside-inspired programming. I also have tie-ins with the VIS (Victorian Institute of Sport) and know what they're doing with the guys in our squad as well as coaching my own sprint squad outside of that group.

At the end of the day my quest isn't to prove what is believed right, it's to discover what is rightly to be believed. I have a gut feeling that the general off the bike, specific on the bike approach is optimal, but if there's any good evidence to suggest that that's wrong, I want to know about it and I'll change my approach accordingly. I'm not trying to push any barrow, I'm trying to write the best book I can for beginner sprint cyclists and also to improve the service we provide to our sprinters in our squad. I think Rip's approach is the best available, but if and when anything comes along that says his style of programming isn't the most optimal way to strengthen sprinters and is well backed up, I'll change how I do things.

Perhaps we are all just individuals, and in general while the SS program is excellent for beginners (novices), more advanced athletes need not only to account for longer rest periods for recovery in their programming, but also require both more and more specific exercises to eek out what is left of their genetic potential, and that needs to be assessed individually. This would be the essence of being a coach vs being a trainer.

At the risk of being rude. "well, duh"
I'm not talking about periodisation and so on, I'm talking about whether or not specific off the bike work, eg one leg stuff and ballistic leg press etc is worth doing. I think that for a novice (which is the target of the book anyway) it's most likely to be that general off the bike strength and power work is the most effective way to train. If you know of any evidence that suggests otherwise, I want to see it.