Strong Athlete, Zero Injuries?

[coldfire]

Hello Mark.

I know Mike Boyle has a good reputation as a strength coach, but his approach seems rather strange to me.

In his article "Strong Athlete, Zero Injuries" (on t-nation: http://www.t-nation.com/article/perf...o_injuries&cr= ), he has some suggestions for safer training:


1. Switch to Front Squats

Back pain has three root causes as it relates to lifting. Torque (forward lean), compression (high spinal loads), and flexion are what cause back injuries. Front squats lessen torque, compression, and flexion, and are therefore inherently safer.

6. Dump Conventional Deadlifts

I know this will piss off the powerlifters, but I don't like deadlifts. I'm a former powerlifter and I've written this numerous times.

Go to a powerlifting meet and watch the entire meet. You'll see lots of great squat technique, but you won't see lots of flat back deadlifts. Nothing is worse for a back than flexion. Flexion, torque, and compression, as mentioned above, are big back offenders. It isn't easy to deadlift well. It's much easier to deadlift heavy than to deadlift well. I know that every morning when I get up.

I do, however, love single-leg versions of the modified straight leg deadlift. (I hate the term Romanian Deadlift. A great strength coach once said, "I was doing those before I knew where Romania was.") With single-leg deadlifts, the hamstring gets all the load while the back gets half.

7. Clean from the Hang

Now I'm trying to piss off the Olympic lifters (if I didn't already with my RDL comment). I'm not trying to be popular; I'm trying to make people think. I like to describe it as a good swift kick in the comfort zone.

Bottom line: hang cleans are safer than cleans from the floor. Cleans from the floor are easier for short people. The diameter of a 20K plate is a constant. What makes someone a good athlete often makes him a bad Olympic lifter. Hang cleans are the great equalizer.


The paragraphs I skipped are those that I understand, but the ones I mentioned look very weird to me.

Looks like his athletes don't have a very strong posterior chain and his arguments are rather weak, in my opinion.

Care to share your thoughts?

Thanks in advance.

[Mark Rippetoe]

Coach Boyle has a good reputation as a coach of advanced athletes, whereas I primarily confine myself to dealing with novices. The differences in our approach may derive from that fact. If he seldom deals with novices and relies on the strength already possessed by better athletes, whether genetically or by the efforts of previous coaching, he may not appreciate the power of the basic primary exercises to build strength. The squat, deadlift, and full clean are simply the most important of the tools a strength coach uses to improve the force production capacities of the athletes he coaches.

Specifically, the front squat is a useful assistance exercise, and should be a part of an intermediate or advanced athlete's training, but it completely leaves out the hamstrings, and this is why the weights used are lighter. This is discussed at length in my rather long article in the May 2008 issue of the CrossFit Journal, and the subject is rather important, so I'd encourage you to read it there.

Deadlifts are a critically important part of any strength program, but they must obviously be done correctly. To say that they are hard to coach does not provide a sufficient reason to eliminate them from a program in which they actually belong. I sympathize with Mike's disapproval of most high school powerlifting's completely lack of concern for proper technique coaching, and I don't watch it for this reason. Just gives me the crawlies. But ANY limit effort on ANY lift will cause form to break down, whether at a high school meet or at the IPF Worlds. This is what made the attempt a limit. To criticize deadlifts because limit deadlifts look ugly ignores the fact that the deadlift is the best back strength exercise in the weight room. Coaching them correctly is sometimes time-consuming and difficult, and may not be feasible in a large group situation. But this is a logistical problem, not a reason to eliminate deadlifts. And one-legged deadlifts don't allow for the handling of enough weight to consider them a strength exercise when compared to the potential of the actual deadlift.

Hang cleans also leave out the important things that make cleans such a good basic exercise. Holding the back in position through a long range of motion while an acceleration takes place is a useful ability to have for lots of sports, and training is supposed to prepare the athlete for these kinds of things. Most importantly, full cleans allow the use of heavier weights, and this is why we train for strength.

Hang cleans may be safer (and that is quite arguable), but safer still would be not doing them at all. Safety cannot be the reason we choose not to do things when there are important benefits to doing them and the risks can be quite effectively managed by good coaching. If we don't do potentially dangerous things, we don't play sports at all, and training for sports CANNOT be made completely safe, nor should it be lest it leave out an important aspect of preparation. A strength program that leaves out the exercises we primarily rely on for posterior chain development and overall strength in favor of safety may be quite suitable for a DI college or professional sports team -- the members of which are already strong or they wouldn't be there -- but it is not useful for novices, or teams that do not have the luxury of high-level recruiting power.

[Tiburon]

Great comments, great thread. Thanks

[coldfire]

Thanks Mark. This explains a lot. I didn't know Boyle trains only advanced athletes.

I will definitely read May 2008 issue of the CrossFit Journal.

The only thing I still don't understand, is how (in this case) advanced athletes maintain their strength if they don't do any posterior chain related exercises.

[Mark Rippetoe]

I don't know for sure that he trains only advanced athletes. I just know that advanced athletes present a different set of problems to the strength coach than novices do. But in answer to your question about posterior chain strength, if you don't train it you don't keep it. The only thing I'd say for sure is that with his stated reservations about the squat, the deadlift, and the full clean, he is probably not training advanced athletes whose sport is primarily strength-dependent.

[Andy Baker (KSC)]

Several years ago, I took the advice to switch to front squats exclusively with my clients training as a result of coach boyle's advice. One interesting observation was that in those clients who switched over to front squats there was a net decrease in their deadlifting strength when we went through training phases where the deadlift was not trained directly. However, in those clients who continued to back squat throughout the non deadlifting phases of training, they lost no strength on their deadlifts. Just confirms Mark's assertion about the lack of involvement of the hams during the front squat.

On another note, one of the only "major'' injuries I've ever had came during heavy front squats, which up until my ME attempt had been executed in perfect form. But deep into the hole on my attempt, the weight caused a good degree of flexion in my thoracic spine, and the injury put me out of commission for a little while. This however did not cause me to say that front squats are now inherently bad or dangerous, they are not when in good form, but perfect form is not always possible under ME loads, and this is generally when injuries occur.