How to Make Strength Training Fun
In 1969, a former pole vaulter named Boyd Epley founded Husker Power: the elite strength training protocol that led the Huskers to national titles in 1970 and 1971. The common wisdom at the time was that weights made athletes slow and cumbersome. Boyd Epley showed the opposite: strength training made athletes faster and more explosive.
So how can pole vaulters implement strength training to become better athletes?
And, more importantly, how can pole vault coaches build buy-in so that their vaulters adhere to strength training programs?
The Pole Vaulter Objective: Madness
Think about how crazy pole vault actually is. Your job as a vaulter is to run as fast as you can at a foam pit, slam into it with a long spring-coiled stick, and then fly over with perfect timing.
This is an extreme event. Vaulters need a certain set of physical characteristics to be able to be successful, and everyone who works on these characteristics gets better at pole vault.
To pole vault coaches: you need to be implementing strength training into your vault practices.
I know what you’re thinking, “Ah man, but the kids hate when I make them do that stuff, and besides I’m a pole vault coach not a strength coach.”
But what if there was a way to make strength training fun? What if your athletes came up to you begging to know what the next strength competition is going to be? In this article, I’ll explain how I think about making post-practice strength training fun for pole vaulters.
The Requirement: Pole Vault Strength and Power
Strong athletes are healthy athletes. A 2014 meta-analysis showed that strength training cut sports injuries to under a third.
Pole vaulters need strong shoulders so that they can tolerate the force of impact from planting at the box.
Pole vaulters need strong knees and hamstrings so that they can run down the runway with a pole in their hands while maintaining upright form.
Pole vaulters need strong back and core muscles to whip themselves inverted and extend themselves over the bar.
You owe it to your vaulters to make them as strong and resilient as needed for this event.
The Problem: Strength Sucks
Problem is, strength training is hard, and nobody wants to do it.
If you do strength training properly, it’s going to be hard and physically uncomfortable.
If the strength training itself is uncomfortable, then how could a pole vault coach make getting stronger enjoyable?
The Key: Make It Fun
The solution is simple: make strength training fun in any way you can. Personally, I like to set up challenges and competitions after practice. Naturally, the challenges will be strength training, but they also will involve some random or unexpected element like,
“Who can do the most pullups with their eyes closed? Now we’ll see who’s really the best.”
“How many pushups can we do as a team in under one minute? Give me your best guess, and we’ll try it and find out for sure.”
Or just a good old-fashioned, “Who here can run 150m the fastest? Let’s time it and see.”
Kids of all ages love these challenges. Sometimes they even come up with challenges of their own they want to do at the end of practice. About an hour into vaulting, when they get a bit bored, they’ll start asking about what today’s challenges are going to be. I’ll tell them to not worry about it and focus on their vaulting, but on the inside, I smile. What are today’s challenges going to be? Let’s find out.
One step up from the strength challenges are well-designed competitions. You have to be a bit more careful when designing these, because you don’t want to ruin everyone’s ego. Nothing is more deflating than having a lackluster practice, then being forced into an embarrassing competition. You, as the coach, need to design a fun, practical competition. It needs to be real strength training that the athletes can clearly see is making them better, and it needs to be balanced and fair so that they have skin in the game.
Here’s an example of a strength training competition I ran recently. I had 6 vaulters: 5 were high-school males, 1 was a middle-school female. We ran a rock-paper-scissors competition to choose teams, then got into the workout.
Here’s what we did in order:
1) Max chinups
2) The PULL-verizer
3) Longest broad jump
4) 100m repeats
For the first challenge, we did max chinups (that’s the version with your palms facing toward your face). These were scored as a team, so the three scores were added up for a team total. I helped spot the middle-school girl so she could do the reps. I lifted her up for the first phase of the chinup, then released pressure and let her lower down slowly for the second phase. Eccentric training like this is a great way for athletes to train pullups if they aren’t able to perform one full repetition by themselves yet.
Next, we went straight into the hardest competition of the day. I call this one the PULL-verizer.
Here’s the idea: one team member from each team does pullups. The other two do pushups. The person doing pullups can drop at any time, and then one of their teammates replaces them and starts doing pullups. The athletes can cycle out as many times as they want, but remember, whoever is not doing pullups has to be doing pushups, and I would make sure to motivate them if they were slacking. The team who does the most pullups after two minutes wins the challenge.
I really like the PULL-verizer for two reasons: first, because it’s a great full upper-body strength workout; pushups and pullups are two of the best bodyweight exercises, and to squeeze a relatively high volume of each in only two minutes is amazing for general strengthening.
Second, and more importantly, because it’s a great team-building exercise. The athletes have a lot of fun timing how many reps they’re going to do so that their teammates can recover enough between sets of pullups. It has a strategic element to it. Say you’re an athlete: if you go all-out on the first set, you’re going to start doing pullups slower than if you were to drop and have your fresh teammate start. Therefore, you have to know your body and recognize when you’re getting tired so you can rotate out.
Thirdly, as a bonus, the PULL-verizer is hard. Some of the athletes weren’t even able to complete one full pullup by the end of the two minutes. It’s a great competition where athletes are motivated to work hard and dig deep.
Next, we went into lower body training, which is arguably more important for pole vaulters than upper body. The third challenge was standing broad jump. It was simple; athletes stood toes at the 50-yard line and jump as far as they could. They got two attempts and the farthest distance, measured from the heel, was recorded. We added all the distances together, and whatever team had the greatest total won the round.
To finish things off, I had to add some speed training. Cardio fitness is extremely important for being able to survive long practices and meets from full approach. Oftentimes at meets, pole vaulters may have only two minutes between attempts and need to be able to take high-quality jumps back-to-back. For that reason, the fourth and final challenge was 100m repeats on the turf. The rules were simple: when I said go, the vaulters ran from the back of the endzone to the front of the opposite endzone. Points were scored by place; whoever came in 1st place scored 6 points, whoever came in 2nd scored 5, and so on down to 6th.
I gave the athletes about 15 seconds between when the last person crossed the finish line to the start of the next rep. We did 4 reps, so it was roughly like running a broken 400m workout.
This was a great way to end the practice, because everyone felt tired and accomplished after completing it.
The Catch: Leadership
Any coach with the best plan can still fall flat if the delivery is not up to snuff. When setting up these challenges and competitions, the coach needs to be confident and stern, but still friendly.
I really like to ask, “Who’s the best at this exercise? Let’s test it and find out.” Asking this question prompts curiosity; the vaulters wonder “Who really is the best? Could it be me?” and then they’re motivated to try. As with any fitness plan, adherence is the most difficult task for a coach. It’s not “what do I need to tell my athletes to do” but rather “how do I make them do it.” High-school kids are quite simple-minded. If you have credibility behind you, and you ask the question “who’s really the best?” they’ll be motivated to show you they’re that person.
However, this is just what works for me, and depending on your specific leadership strengths and weaknesses, you may have to employ a different strategy for your delivery. But in my experience, an indirect nudge like asking a question is always better than ordering the athletes around, and I’ve seen the same in coaches of many different backgrounds.
Building buy-in on strength training may be one of the hardest problems you’ll face as a pole vault coach, and for good reason. Strength sucks. It’s hard, but those who do it get better. The key to building buy-in is to make it fun. Do challenges, do competitions, make doing the work enjoyable. But having the best plan is moot if you aren’t an effective leader. Every effective program needs great delivery. That’s the only way to get the athletes to buy in and adhere.
I hope you found something useful in this post.
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— Jak
