Performance Nutrition: Caffeine Supplementation

Personally, coffee is my favorite supplement for both life and training. With the right amount of caffeine, both my brain and body feel sharp and ready in quick order. And a good, strong cup of joe has been the precursor to many important business ideas and breakthrough training sessions.

But, the research and individual reactions to ingesting it varies.

CAFFEINE: YES/NO/MAYBE

The Perfect Pour-Over

This stimulant can definitely help your workout, but it might not be for everyone. While it can increase power output and may modestly increase adrenaline frequent consumption will decrease these effects. To prevent this from happening, cycle caffeine usage or save it for special occasions like heavy workout days or for competitions. If you are a habitual coffee drinker I’m sorry to tell you that the adrenaline/power output boosting features of caffeine supplementation will be lost on you. However, it may still assist in keeping you alert.

PRO TIP – If you are an NCAA or professional athlete, there are limits to how much caffeine you are allowed to take. Check with your organization to make sure you aren’t overdoing it.

Some people do not respond well to caffeine, as it may cause them to feel jittery. If this happens you can try one of two things:

1 – If you’re really intent on trying caffeine, try taking it on a few more occasions to see if the jitters persist. (Note from Kelsey: or just take less caffeine; play around with your dosage so you know how much your body can actually handle.)

2 – Stop taking it. Some people just don’t feel well when taking caffeine. There are other options out there you can try for improving performance.

VERDICT: MAYBE

The above caffeine analysis snippet is pulled from a post with more excellent assessments of other supplements: A Yes/No/Maybe Guide to 6 Sports Performance Supplements.

Now, if you are a seasoned caffeine consumer and coffee lover like I am, please check back for the second part to this post. In it I will share instructions on how to make the Perfect Cup of Pour-Over Coffee.

Since you’re here: We have a small favor to ask! At SAPT, we are committed to sharing quality information that is both entertaining and compelling to help build better athletes. Please take a moment to share the articles on social media, engage us authors with questions and comments below, and link to articles when appropriate if you have a blog or participate on forums of related topics.

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Is Calf Training the Key to Jumping High?

Much like one of our most popular posts is: Is Direct Arm Work Necessary for Sculpted Arms? I wanted to bust some myths with the question: Is Calf Training the Key to Jumping High?

I’m not quite sure how the idea of calves being the one thing standing between you and throwing down a tomahawk style dunk became such a popular, ingrained, and accepted idea. So, I thought it would be a great idea to break down what it takes to get big air and how to prioritize.

The answer is a bit more complicated than just doing calf raises and jumping rope. 

I get such a chuckle out of this idea! The calf muscle is not the whole picture and to really get a comprehensive vertical jump training program you need to make sure you are addressing all aspects of what will help you jump higher.

If you want to test how high you can jump with just your calves, try a max effort pogo jump. Do not allow your hips or knees to bend when you load or land, just use your ankle. 

Now try test number two: a max effort vertical jump. Use your arms, your hips, knees, and ankles for the jump. This one will always be quite a bit higher.

To jump higher, we need to train all the muscles that are involved in a big jump.

Let’s break this down into priorities:

Priority #1 - Look at your Foundation

Are you following a well rounded strength training program? If you're not, you need to get on one. And even though we're training to jump higher, there are other parts of your body on the upper half that assist with jumping. 

As an athlete or coach, you have to be concerned with what's going to happen once you're in the air, right? For most athletes something is happening overhead, that’s kind of the point! 

What’s the end goal of jumping high? Scoring or blocking when in the air! I mean, even pole vaulters need to be pretty concerned with what's going on with their upper body as they go over the bar, but concerning basketball or volleyball, there's some big important stuff that's happening overhead once you are in the air! 

Therefore, making sure that you're training your upper body during any vertical jump training program is extremely important. A strong and powerful upper body with directly assist with getting into the air. In particular, the muscles in the back need to be focused on. 

Priority #2 - Core Strength

Are you training, with specific loading parameters, your core muscles? To attain effective core strength, you need to be training and focused on ALL of the core muscles. These include the hamstrings, glutes, lower back, and abdominal muscles. This area is called the core because it's central to everything that you do as a human and as an athlete. 

It is the glutes, In particular, that are going to give you the lift off the ground. If you are not training to get those muscles as strong as possible, you will be missing out on inches. 

You can try any kind of training for this that you like, just be sure you are qualified to do so. Ideally, hire somebody that knows what they're doing to give you a custom program and coach you. 

Everything from medicine ball throws to dynamic effort strength work, to maximum effort strength work, to repetition effort strength work, to single leg strength work will all be fair game and effective. Squat and deadlift variations are both critical to include, in some form or another.

There should also be included a wide variety of intensities and volumes, you want to be utilizing. A well planned structured program will move you forward, step by step. 

Priority #3 - Develop Explosive Hip Extension

To start to bring things together, is the triple extension. The hip extension is concerned with the hips extending (this and knee extension happen most during priority #2); triple extension is when the ankle, knee and hip all extend simultaneously. That's what actually happens when you're jumping. 

Exercises to include are snatch and clean variations. For inexperienced or young lifters, utilizing the medicine ball is a perfect solution.

Priority #4 - Productive Jump Practice

The training of actual jumping is going to be on the much lighter end of the weight spectrum. Most people are going to be using bodyweight only. Very advanced athletes who are quite strong and have done a lot of strength training, as a prerequisite, may be qualified to do weighted jumps. But you can get a ton of mileage off of just practicing moving your own body. 

Exercises to include for this priority would be bounding, double leg and single leg bounding, all kinds of box jumps, depth drops, etc. Sprinting short distances (starts up to 10yd) should also be included.

Unlike the strength work, the total volume of jumps should be fairly low and should not vary quite so broadly. The focus is primarily on low volume and high intensity jumping. When our main concern is jumping higher, getting in just a few very intense and high quality reps are more than sufficient for development and progress.

On the low end for one exercise you might do 5 total jumps, and on the high end, that might be a total of 15 jumps for someone well conditioned and depending on where they are within their training cycle.

It’s important to remember the goal is a higher maximum effort jump. When you are trying to squeeze out another inch or two, it logically does not make any sense to jump 100 times in a row. And yet, this is how many people think they should train to increase their vertical jump.

Priority #5 - Training Robustness

Finally, we get to the calves! Or more specifically, the Achilles tendon. The goal is to train the Achilles so that it is capable of being as spring-like as possible.  

Conditioning of the lower leg requires a high volume of repetitions accumulated over a very long period of time (years). Many exercises are appropriate for this, but a few examples include: jump rope, sprinting, skipping, and practically any low amplitude repeated jumps. 

One of my favorite drills to use is called aerobic plyometrics. This is for lower leg conditioning, in particular. It will help prepare the joints and tendons and get them sturdiness and resilience capable of handling the impact that comes from jumping.

While the high quality jumps are going to be max effort, or close to max effort, and low in volume, to train robustness you will be using a higher of lower amplitude jumps. It’s always best to start conservatively, but once all is going well you can work your way up to pretty high volume. To progress aerobic plyometrics, I'll usually start people at three minutes, see how they react, and then move up to a continuous 10-12 minutes. This allows the athlete to accumulate hundreds of low amplitude jumps during that time.

Even though this is broken down into five different priorities, this is really the blueprint for what could become an extremely detailed jump training program. 

To determine what you or an athlete will get the most benefit from you need to do testing of some sort to understand basics about where they need to spend the most time training. One athlete will often have different needs than the other.

Since you’re here: We have a small favor to ask! At SAPT, we are committed to sharing quality information that is both entertaining and compelling to help build better athletes. Please take a moment to share the articles on social media, engage us authors with questions and comments below, and link to articles when appropriate if you have a blog or participate on forums of related topics.

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Importance of Deceleration in Athletics

This is an excerpt from the recordings I do regularly to capture and share my ideas around performance, nutrition, and strength. It sounds conversational because it is. Enjoy!

“Importance of Deceleration

I’m really excited about the conditioning that we will be implementing this season, the heart rate monitors we are using are very advanced, giving me a lot of information during practice and weight training sessions. Outside of heart rate (HR) and different zones that we’re targeting I can see speed (mph), accelerations, decelerations, and time in each HR zone. Our goal for this season is to be as fit as possible, so having this information at my disposal is invaluable.

Having this data allows me to better mimic the demands of the sport in our conditioning sessions, without actually playing more basketball. I know what heart rate zones each player stays within during games, so I can adjust our training for that.

One of the really interesting things I’ve seen lately is looking at accelerations and decelerations. The acceleration and decelerations values fit into 4 categories based on if they are high or low threshold. I thought this was super telling, as none of my players went into the highest threshold of acceleration, which was 3 meters per second squared. On the other hand, everyone was decelerating at three meters per second squared or faster. This is so important and so fascinating.

This is not new information, just not a mainstream topic. What that means is that our players cant accelerate nearly as fast as they can decelerate. What I found last year was that one of our players with the most significant knee issues, that wasn’t necessarily the fastest, was the one that had the highest deceleration values! She was not even close to the fastest on the team in terms of acceleration, but would be able to and required to decelerate the fastest on the team.

That’s a very important information for us to know about this athlete. We have to learn to decelerate our bodies safely, and the best way to learn it is in the weight room. The best way I’ve found is with very controlled depth landings and depth drops. With these movements you are teaching the body to absorb force or decelerate in a controlled manner.

Another important point to discuss is that the majority of injuries in athletics happen during some sort of deceleration phase. These athletes have to control their body through these enormous forces, and we have to train for that. Just playing the sport doesn’t make you strong enough or fit enough to absorb these forces safely.

This is where overuse injuries come up, too. Typically when these things happen we say the glutes weren’t strong enough or the hamstrings weren’t strong enough to absorb that force. That may be true, but we also may not have given that athlete enough opportunities to practice high speed deceleration. Again the weight training is the base, but we have to give the athletes the opportunity to practice full speed deceleration in a controlled manner.

One of the easiest ways to do this is again just landing jumps. Step off of a box and stick the landing. It seems simple, but that’s usually the solution. The solution often isn’t doing lunge jumps in a sand pit, it’s the simple basic things that the athlete can work on. When looking at these kind of issues, the answer is generally a lot more simple than people think.
”

— Sarah Walls

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Building Armor: Strength is Corrective

This is an excerpt from the recordings I do regularly to capture and share my ideas around performance, nutrition, and strength. It sounds conversational because it is. Enjoy!

Recently I did a presentation for the team on some pretty massive changes to training that I have been thinking about for the past year. I felt like now we could truly start to condition for the sport, we’ve had 2 years of working on the fundamentals and the team was beginning to get a good understanding of the basics.

What I really had to communicate to the team before we started using some more advanced methods was to remind them that strength is always our foundation, that’s what’s going to protect their bodies from getting hurt.

So, when we start doing the more advanced conditioning and somebody gets hurt (during a game… not in the weight room), or I see something I don’t like, they will immediately get pulled off of conditioning and back to strength.

If someone gets hurt, the first thing that we need to get done is get stronger in the area that was injured, as soon as we possibly can once the doctor or trainer says they are ready. But that's not four weeks, that's not even two weeks of inactivity, it's a few days, and then we quickly transition into building strength.

The touchstone in sports and athletics is always strength. As a foundation, we always have to come back to building strength. Your back hurts, let's get stronger. Your shoulder hurts, let's get stronger. Your knees hurt, let's get stronger, and let’s get stronger through a full range of motion. That is how your body stays healthy and safe. Of course, this is under the understanding that more major issues have already been ruled out and we can identify a strength deficit.

I like to think of strength training as building armor for the body. This doesn’t equate to growing huge muscles, especially for females. I’ve been strength training for the last 20 years, and by no means do I have tons of muscle mass. Yes, you will build some muscle, but there is a limit to that. So again, for women reading, you can trust your body to get as strong as possible, and not get enormous.

Another reason we lift weights is because it has an incredible effect on your tendons and your ligaments, making them thicker and stronger. It's not just the muscular strength that can help us reduce injury. It’s the other effects as well, such as thicker ligaments and tendons as well as bone density. This isn’t something we should start thinking about in our 40s and 50s, lets build these dense bones and thicker ligaments now. Let your children start to build those as young athletes. 

Another method that I see a lot of people using is they'll condition their athletes very hard. They then typically only use corrective exercises, the ones that you typically see during physical therapy. They're very targeted exercises designed to strengthen a very specific part of the body.

In most cases, they're not large multiple joint exercises but again more specific single joint exercise. There’s nothing wrong with corrective exercises, but they are a supplement not a staple. It’d be like your only nutrition being a protein shake, definitely not a long term plan that covers all of your bases.

First we squat, we deadlift, we do glute bridges, and we do lunges. Then let's add in some targeted correctives, some lateral side steps, deadbugs, clams… things that are used to build a little bit of strength and bring up what's very weak, but only if it's part of the larger performance program.

Since you’re here: We have a small favor to ask! At SAPT, we are committed to sharing quality information that is both entertaining and compelling to help build better athletes. Please take a moment to share the articles on social media, engage us authors with questions and comments below, and link to articles when appropriate if you have a blog or participate on forums of related topics.

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Feeding the Family: Battlefield in the Kitchen 2019 Edition

We did a couple posts back in 2014 called The Battlefield is in the Kitchen: Part 1 and The Battlefield is in the Kitchen: Part 2. I thought it would be nice to throwback to those and expand on them with more of a family focus.

If you’ve been visiting the blog lately, you’ll have noticed a new series I’ve been doing called Feeding the Family. Compared to 5-years ago when the first Battlefield posts went up and my kids were 2 and 4, their needs were not very aligned to the way I chose to eat. That was the applesauce and halved grapes stage. 

But, we’ve now entered a different stage of their lives and our lives as a family and as I reread the Battlefield tips, through my mom lens, I felt like they really were not very helpful for applying to my family! I’m willing to bet that if you have a family with children, you would agree.

Here is the updated 2019 version:

Plan Ahead: the original recommendation was to plan on cooking in bulk 1 or 2 days per week. While adults intent on maximizing their time in the kitchen may be just fine with eating the same 2 or 3 meals for a whole week, kids are not!

Okay, so if you’ve seen many of the mommy-style food blogs, you’ll see elaborate meals prepared for children, that are (in my experience) not realistic. We’re approaching this battlefield-style, so we’re not going to have time to “plan ahead” and make turkey-cucumber pinwheels with homemade mayonnaise and black bean brownie animal cutouts. We’re going to get real. Real practical.

Planning ahead for family meals if you are working during the day and/or are a single parent is a super challenge. But here are some of the things I have found that work:

• If you prepare food in bulk, do so judiciously. Pick things that keep well for several days. For example, a properly seasoned hamburger will stay delicious for a couple days. Just reheat it, and stick it on a fresh bun with some salad. The whole family will enjoy this.

• Have staples on hand that hit your targeted family nutrition goals.

• Draft a few meals to make during the week and shop for them ahead of time. I say “draft” because...

• Be willing to be flexible and you’ll live to fight another day! My best plans for meals during the week - even with ingredients on hand - are often no match for our schedule! Sometimes, you’re going to need to pull that pizza out of the freezer.

Purge Your Pantry: again the original recommendation may be a bit too extreme for families. As much as I personally would never miss Oreos or potato chips in my pantry, the other 75% of my family definitely would! 

I’ve tried to find a reasonable middle-ground here. I do adhere to the principle of “If it is in your house eventually you or someone you love will eventually eat it.” 

Under that guideline I don’t want too much junk in the house. So, we generally keep only one dessert in the house at any given time. It might be ice cream OR cookies OR pie. But never all of those at one time. We also rarely ever have more than one type of chip. In terms of staples we keep plenty of (that the kids love) here’s what I always have on hand in the pantry or refrigerator:

• High protein pasta: Barilla makes a delicious high protein pasta. My kids aren’t quite ready for meat sauce, so this gets them the protein and carbs they need. Again, pairing it with a salad makes for a quick, easy, and realistically healthy meal.

• No sugar added Applesauce

• Soup - I do not consider this healthy, but rather a somewhat neutral food. The main advantage is the kids love soup and it’s crazy fast.

• Dried fruits (no sugar added, which is sadly limiting, but if you get the stuff with sugar you may as well just buy candy)

• Nuts 

• Nut butters

• Canned plain tomato sauce (no sugar added) & canned diced tomatoes - it’s shocking how often tomato can be used as a base for many meals

• Tortilla chips

• Shredded cheese and tortillas (quesadillas)

• Bread, yes, bread.

***With a proper stock of the basics, you can throw something quick together when the Plan Ahead technique occasionally falls apart!

Eat Real Food - this is a great principle, but I think being flexible and setting your mind on the 80/20 rule is best. Avoid overly processed foods 80% of the time. This will leave room for the desserts and chips I mentioned we have in our house!

Eat in Moderation - this is what parents need to live by! Eat to 80% full. For the kids, allow their natural appetites to guide them. When they are smashing food, let them! It means they are probably growing or about to. If they’re not hunger, don’t push the issue, get a few bites in and let them move on.

Make Small Changes - Yes! I wrote a post recently on this. Here’s the main key: you do not need to announce small changes! Just do them! I always cringe when I hear one or both adults in the family has decided everyone will now be eating Paleo. Please don’t, just don’t. 

• First of all, kids don’t need to eat that strictly.

• Second of all, neither do you!!! Start slowing with reasonable, sustainable changes. Hey, read my 80% rule - seriously, this is life changing. 

While you’re navigating this and trying to imagine a world where Twinkies don’t live in your pantry, please remember highly processed and prepackaged foods are literally engineered to be highly addictive. It’s worth it to break the cycle.

How the Food Industry Helps Engineer Our Cravings

The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food

Since you’re here: We have a small favor to ask! At SAPT, we are committed to sharing quality information that is both entertaining and compelling to help build better athletes. Please take a moment to share the articles on social media, engage us authors with questions and comments below, and link to articles when appropriate if you have a blog or participate on forums of related topics.

Thank you! SAPT

Athlete Performance: Try this for a New Level of Readiness

Have you ever experienced a “blah” feeling at the onset of a competition? Despite being completely recovered and ready by all other indicators? Have you wondered what the deal is with that?

If you choose to use strength or strength-speed lifts in your priming, make sure you get the volume and load dead-on! Not a lot of room for error with this technique.

Are you a coach and find your team to be flat the first 10-minutes or so?

Well it could be that you have missed out on an underutilized, but quick and easy, method of precompetition preparation. The strategy is called Priming.

It is simple and you can easily implement a priming workout to help you or your team pull out of the early competition slump.

Game day lifts have been used for a long time - especially by athletes in sports that have multiple competitions in one week. But, to execute a true pregame LIFT you really need to be certain that the athletes are extremely well trained so that you can garner the proper effects. If you go too far, you could add unnecessary fatigue that may impact performance.

Hey! Is this like Russian Roulette for game day prep?!? The stakes are high and we have no idea what will happen?

No, c’mon, I wouldn’t do you like that!

Staying true to my ultraconservative loading parameters, I suggest that if you’ve never used Priming techniques previously (or are working with a relatively untrained group of athletes - like high school athletes!) that you start off with body weight and medicine ball work.

And taking it one step further, you will also try to limit the eccentric load as much as possible.

The goal of priming is to fire up your central nervous system and get your body ready to GOOOOO for your next workout.

Here’s a sample program that is on the lighter end of the spectrum:

Be sure you/your athletes are thoroughly warmed up before starting and be sure to target similar movement patterns to the exercises you’ve chosen, too:

Box Jump 3x3 (rest :90)

Medicine Ball Chest Push with Step 3x3/leg (rest :90)

Partner Side Throw (light toss) 3x3/side (rest :90)

Set box height appropriately to ensure an easy, soft landing - we’re not trying to set any records.

Allow the ball land on the floor before resetting for the next rep.

A light partner toss is all that’s needed. Notice how the back hip is loaded as the ball is received.

To achieve the targeted benefits, each exercise needs to be done with focus, precision, and power! Avoid circuiting exercises and enjoy a leisurely rest to fully power-up before the next set.

Place this workout the morning of a night competition or the day before a midday game and enjoy a new feeling of readiness when it counts.

Since you’re here: We have a small favor to ask! At SAPT, we are committed to sharing quality information that is both entertaining and compelling to help build better athletes. Please take a moment to share the articles on social media, engage us authors with questions and comments below, and link to articles when appropriate if you have a blog or participate on forums of related topics.

Thank you! SAPT