In The Lab – Applying Strength Deficit to Mixed Sports

This is a common thread I get with Strength Deficit:

It’s a tough question cause the book is organized to program for sports with very clear needs. An important question we tried to answer based on needs was How much space does the athlete have to work with? An offensive or defensive lineman is working only within a couple of yards’ radius. Conversely, a wider receiver or defensive back can expand out to half the field, a much larger radius. Their demands through the big three: biomotor, bioenergetic, and biomechanical, are drastically different. What Strength Deficit is essentially doing is increasing focus on a particular contraction type, either eccentric or concentric, to meet those demands.

A quick recap of Strength Deficit, if you are not familiar. Take someone’s Eccentric Utilization Ratio (EUR) and form a training plan to meet their needs. For instance, if I have an athlete who needs to be good in a large space, like a wide receiver, I want to increase the deficit to greater than 1.2. We will then program a variety of eccentric focus training methods and try to increase the deficit over time. If this concept does not make sense, you should buy the book ASAP: Strength Deficit.

This is where it becomes hard with mixed sports. Interpretation and needs are not aligned. If an athlete does not have a clear outcome of increasing or decreasing the deficit, the interpretation becomes less relevant. If we have a clear archetype, we begin to realize that the interpretation is an appraisal of where we are in terms of eccentric or concentric strength rather than what we need to do. The mistake often made is the association that the interpretation determines the needs. When we attempt to apply Strength Deficit to mixed sports, we default to trying to force the training to the outcome we think is right. We leverage interpretation over needs. Unless the needs are certain, this can be a mistake.

With mixed sports, it’s a coin toss as to what is more important. I have talked to enough coaches who jump to the conclusion that increasing the deficit is the answer. I ask that a lot, and it always defaults to increasing the deficit. I do not disagree with the logic, but that is not an absolute. We can always make the inference that increasing the ability to leverage the stretch-shortening cycle is mostly a good idea, but that is not a guarantee. There are far too many circumstances, such as increasing someone’s concentric strength or lean muscle mass, to throw out decreasing the deficit. One thing I have struggled with is the idea of ‘absolutes’ with training. This simplistic order of if you see this, do that can be misleading. It is important to have some set of rules around decisions, but that is a very context-dependent dynamic. Strength Deficit is formulaic, but in the context, you can pinpoint the demands and therefore needs of that sport or position.

One of the key concepts I expanded on with the Strength Deficit course was Dynamic Correspondence. Dynamic Correspondence is the residual from our training to actual performance. Think of the concept of general to specific, the idea is that the vector of training becomes more similar to the sport, the closer we get to competition. With training, there is a ceiling of direct correspondence to the sport itself. One issue is that sport is chaotic; there is no formulaic process to training for chaos. Two, there is no way to accommodate every demand for an athlete. This is exponentially more difficult with acyclical sports, with a much larger diversity of demands than cyclical sports. What this breaks down into is that we cannot reverse engineer sports performance with training.

When we have a clear need, it is simple. Have an intense focus on developing the capacity of those needs. When we have a less clear need, we have to develop more things concurrently. Clear needs facilitate a high ceiling for correlated exercises. It makes sense for an offensive lineman to strive for a 500lb squat, a 400lb bench, and a 300lb power clean. Unclear needs to lower the ceiling of individual lifts; instead, have large development overall. It makes less sense to have such extreme development of any exercise. How this applies to Strength Deficit is when your needs are clear; it pushes you to the ends of the continuum with increasing values above 1.2 or decreasing below 1.1. When you have less clear needs, you are more than likely mixed and should push to the middle of the continuum with 1.1-1.2.

Myopic focus is a significant advantage when needs are clear. Certain training styles, like block periodization, that can have a heightened focus on a particular quality, are a huge advantage when the needs are obvious. Block periodization with concentrated focus on a particular quality or contraction type can be limiting to athletes with a more diverse set of needs. Where Strength Deficit can become an asset is to pull athletes that are organically on the ends of the spectrum, with being >1.2 or <1.1, and providing a strategy to pull them towards the middle. We can use a block approach situationally if an athlete needs more direct attention. Otherwise, this is my preference; a concurrent strategy makes a lot more sense. With concurrence, we can touch on various biomotor abilities, such as strength, power, and capacity, or contraction types, including eccentric, isometric, or concentric.

If you work with a mixed sport, I hope this helps clarify some things for you. If you read the book, you understand that this was written for football. I am grateful to everyone who has read the book and has asked such thought-provoking questions.