Evolution of Strength Training – A Personal Perspective Over Fifty Years (Part Two)

After graduating from Fresno State I went to University of
California Santa Barbara for my teaching certification. While there I was
fortunate to take a class from Sherman Button on Fundamental of Conditioning.
He was way ahead of his time with the material and concepts that he presented.(
I appreciate that even more as look back at what he taught us) It was a great
class because of his comprehensive approach to conditioning built around weight
training. The two textbooks for the class were especially helpful. Pat O’Shea’s
book “Scientific Principles and Methods of Strength Training.” and “Foundations
of Conditioning” by Falls, Walls and Logan. As a class assignment we
had to design a yearlong comprehensive training program for our chosen sports.
I put together a program for track and field that incorporated all components
of training. It was an initial attempt at periodization, but most importantly
it forced me to look at strength training in a new light. I was now a coach as
well as an athlete. I was responsible for other people’s performance. I had to
teach them skill and have them ready for competition, so I had to pay attention
to the big picture. Strength was only one part of the equation, although a most
important part.

That spring, in my first track coaching assignment, I got
the opportunity to coach one of the best athletes I have ever coached, Sam
Cunningham. He became California State Champion in the Shot Put that year and
also an All American football running back. He was 6’3” tall, weighed 225, he
could run the 100 in 9.7, but by my thinking he was “weak, “ because he could
not lift much weight in the weight room. Yet he had tremendous explosive power.
This led me to begin to ask the question: How much strength is enough? A
question I would continue to ask throughout my career. A question I continue to
ask today.

In the fall of 1969 I began training for the decathlon. I
did all my strength training with Curt Harper, a world-class discus thrower.
Working with Curt we trained on a varied program that involved Olympic lifting
and power lifting. I got very strong. The only problem was that the work in the
weight room was not transferring into performance on the track and in the
field. I obviously had the emphasis wrong. Once again I begin to question the
whole place that weight training had in the program. Three things led me to
modify my approach 1) The writing of Ken Dougherty in his books Modern
Track and Field and Track and Field Omnibook, especially
the latter. In these book he talked about concepts that would latter evolve
into my thinking on special and specific strength. 2) Training for the
decathlon in Santa Barbara gave me the opportunity to train with some of the
greatest athletes in the world. I saw how they trained. It also gave me first
hand exposure to the European methods of training that up until that point I
had only read about. This exposure to the Europeans let me to question the
traditional approach that we were taking. They spent less time in the weight
room, when they did come to the weight room they were not to be as strong as we
were, but they seemed to be able to do a better job of expressing their
strength and transferring to their events. They did fewer exercises and seemed
to emphasize lighter and faster movements. They engaged in more varied
activities like jumping and all types of throws. 3) In the fall of 1971 Pat
Matzdorf, from University of Wisconsin, moved to Santa Barbara to train. He had
broken the world record in the high jump that year. His strength training was very
different than anything I had seen. Bill Perrin, the track coach at Wisconsin,
and a real innovator designed his program. It involved what he called simulation
training, which consisted of specific strength training exercises that worked
on various parts of the whole jump using a variety of methods including weights
and rubber tubing. He also utilized depth jumps in his training. This was my
first exposure to a systematic application of Plyometric training.

From 1969 to 1973 I coached at La Cumbre Junior high school
in Santa Barbara, California. It was first hand experience working with growth
& development in the pre-pubescent and pubescent male athlete. There was
not much equipment or even free weights. The strength program consisted
primarily of push-ups, pull-ups, dips and rope climb. At this age, with the
tremendous linear growth that was occurring body weight exercises were very
appropriate loading. I felt that the key objective was to lay a base of
athletic fitness that they could harness when they went to high school.
Although at the time I felt somewhat shortchanged that we did not have more
weights, in retrospect I was on the right track.

Another key milestone in the evolution of my ideas on
training in general and strength training in particular was the 1972 AAU Learn
by Doing Track & Field clinic in Sacramento, California organized by Fred
Wilt. Many of the top track & filed coaches in the country were in
attendance. The opportunity to interact with them was invaluable. Two of the
“Learn by Doing” stations were devoted to Plyometric training, which was new
and revolutionary at the time. Each evening there were presentations by Polish
triple jump coach Tadeusz Starzynski, he presented the whole spectrum of his
training program for triple jumpers that had produced Joseph Schmidt, three
time Olympic Gold medalist. It obviously involved a lot of jumping exercises,
but it included medicine ball work and some very specific weight training. Certainly
nothing heavy like our jumpers were doing at the time. There was nowhere near
the extent of weight training we were having our athlete do and the weight
training that was done was much more specific. This experience had profound
influence on how I trained my athletes for explosive power from that time on. I
immediately incorporated his concepts and ideas in my own training, as well as
with the athletes I was coaching. The results were a tremendous increase in
explosiveness and speed.