The Big Red Machine

We are awakening the beast within the Big Red Machine, aka Ryan. TBRM posted an 11 kg PR total this past weekend in Springfield and just busted out a 95 kg front squat PR. His goals are to have fun lifting and training with his father while still in high school, competing on the varsity swim and water polo teams. And let's not forget marching band. Oh yeah, it might be fun for the swimmer to break a few of the football team lifting records next year too--with outstanding technique.

We are going to experiment with some of Vern Gambetta's Spectrum SquatsTM and see if we can add a little explosiveness to his 100 free and 100 backstroke starts. TBRM hasn't demonstrated a tremendous amount of natural explosive speed/strength, but I think we are tapping into his natural development at a good time and will be able to get things really firing on all cylinders over the next 18 months.

And lest I forget, TBRM is "old school" in that he lowers the barbell after each lift, as we are training mostly on a mezzanine level at CrossFit Des Peres. He knows how to control and safely lower the barbell, dropping it only for a rare miss.

Comments

Sean said…
Those overhead pistols with KB were sick. The Big Red Machine is now my hero. I was lucky to see that in person.
2:59 AM
Anonymous said…
I will say that qauts will definately help with backstroke starts. BUt try jumping squats too withthe bar. I always knew when training started getting hard and i'd have to drop squats so my legs could recover between practices, and then my back stroke starts would strats to go down hill.

Pistols work great too because the rounded back postin in the bottom is very siilar to the start.

Jest don't sacrifice leg endurance for strength because backstroke is all about the legs
7:15 AM
Anonymous said…
I love it. TBRM. Funny. Ryan is a great athlete and it's a blast to watch him train. I'll get a vid. up of those pistols. Hard to believe he is a swimmer and water polo player. He looks more like a linebacker! I feel kinda bad that he has to lower the bars. I hate doing it myself, only because my elbows start to ache. Keep it up Ryan! Strong work.
9:17 AM
Tracy Fober said…
Dan,

Lowering the bar sure didn't hurt or limit the abilities of Schemansky, Kono or any of the past World and Olympic champions. It also helps keep the equipment nicer, longer. Thanks for letting us use it.

Tracy

P.S. The varsity fb coaches are trying to get him to play nose tackle next year. Not gonna happen.
11:41 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Form and Function

Image
Way back in 2002, I scanned these images by Howard Schatz from Sports Illustrated (October 14, 2002). A fascinating array of elite female athlete physiques, heights and weights, eh? These are some of the women featured in his book Athlete --a very cool pictorial essay that celebrates athletic form and function.
Read more

It's About Preparing People, not Preventing Injuries

ACL injuries do not happen in a void. People sustain injuries when their infrastructure is unable to manage a specific set of physical circumstances. To describe the mechanism of the injury without the context of the person and their level/type of sport, is to miss valuable insight. In sport, we prepare the person, to the best of our understanding, to meet the physical demands of that sport. We do not just work to prevent one particular injury; we prepare athletes to navigate the total sport physical environment. By "we" I mean the coaching and support staff -- specifically the athletic development staff.  Athletic development (AD) coaches prepare athletes through the development of physical literacy and movement competencies via movement progressions. It is more than strength, power, agility; it is the acquisition of knowledge, skills, abilities and behaviors to manage themselves within the entire sporting environment. At the higher levels of sport, AD coaches coordinate wit...
Read more

Strength: Overcoming Tradition & Assumptions

Image
The term "strength" comes with many images and stereotypes. The most common stereotype usually includes intimidating men who look like action figures, in spaces that look like iron jungles. Strength is associated with mass gain, limb girth increases, muscle hypertrophy and maximal force production against an external load. With regard to lower body strength, we speak in terms of multiples of bodyweight (BW), with the ratio of 2x BW historically viewed as necessary and desirable. We have historically trained in terms of 1 RM. There has been a trend recently to adopt a VBT (velocity based training) approach, as we know 1 RM changes on a daily basis and technology now allows us to more finely tune things with velocity as the target within each set. These things can be helpful as we initially learn to measure and document progress. But I think it is important to step back from this narrow outlook, because this view of strength does not serve all of us well, in either the rehab or...
Read more