Hey E-Man,
Thanks for your post; it's always good to get open-ended questions that make us evaluate and explain what we do! Personally, I have moved away from using the 'primary lifts' (squat, bench press, deadlift) as the core of my athletes' training. While those lifts are a great component of a complete program, they are not particularly applicable to what I need my athletes to do, so I use them infrequently.
By 'not applicable' I mean that, at no time in competition or practice are my athletes in a position where they are (a) standing still under load and driving straight up, (b) lying flat on their back, using the ground for leverage and pushing straight up, or (c) driving straight up off the ground, carrying load, from a stable position. Why commit substantial time to loading and strengthening these motion patterns?
Most of the athletes I've worked with have had major deficiencies in athletic ability. Most present with heavy feet, poor balance, and the inability to decelerate. Can they bench, squat, and deadlift? Sure - but what does that mean? It means I have strong kids who cannot accelerate, decelerate, or change direction quickly.
Now, our job descriptions are different, Emmanuel. You're a coach; your job is to create teams of better players. As an independent performance enhancement specialist, I'm not bound by those parameters. My job mission is to create better athletes. Regardless of the sport, there are essential qualities necessary for nearly all sports. We experimented with most of the modalities at API - agility, flexibility, acceleration, speed, deceleration, strength, and power. I assess each athlete in these areas, then design individual programs designed to balance the abilities. Traditional strength work is added along the way, but it rarely becomes a large piece of the puzzle.
I know that I haven't really answered your question, but perhaps it's helpful just to have different viewpoints. Hopefully, some of the other API team will offer up their input as well!
Best wishes, E!
The Professor
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Definately true, lifts like the bench press get way too much attention. Any football player and 90% of men that train want to have a big bench, that is pretty much a fact, hell I do to. Part of my goals are to move my athletes attention away from the non-funtional movements into the functional and power lifting movements like the clean and snatch. These lifts definately incorporate flexibility, mobility, and power. As a team we do plenty of mobility work, I use Gray Cook's and Verstegen's modalities all the time as part of our prehab or warm up routines. We get plenty of single leg squats, Mike Boyle would be happy. Making teams of better athletes is definately possible. We are all athletes baby, twisted steel, hard as concrete, spitting bullets!!!
However, am I understanding that you don't do any type of periodization for power for your clients that are athletes? Do you do corrective movement skills until they are mastered? Or do you switch periodization models for each client. I definately plan for my clients differantly than I do for my athletes. I'm wondering about schemes for volume and intensity, and any good recovery work you do... I think I saw a pretty brutal circuit you did some time back on youtube, looked good.
One more question, if you could go to IHP or API who would you go to? why?
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