Periodization, Rotational Power, & Shoulder Health w/ Aaron Kellett (SSOF Podcast Ep. 5)

Aaron Kellett1:50

But I suppose the thing that I've come to appreciate, particularly working in sports like cricket and tennis—really similar as well—they're high density competition. And when you are in competition, there's such a high percentage of really specific work because of the nature of the competition you're playing and competing and training in your specific skills all the time. You've got so many specific stimuli going into the system that it just begs a question: okay, if we're getting all of this really specific work through this really high-density competition, or the closer we get to our competition, then what aren't we getting?

And what I'm finding is that it's actually the general work that we're not getting in and around those periods. So it sort of prompted me to maybe flip my thinking on some of this stuff, where actually maybe we've got the sequence a little bit ass about, for want of a better term, with some of these sports. Where we look at what we're not getting from our specific activities—when I say your specific activities, what are you not getting from your sport?—yeah, and let's reverse engineer so that we're actually filling the gaps with our physical preparation work to meet the needs of the stuff we're not getting from our sport.

So at a very simplistic level, rather than going general to specific, maybe we're actually working a little bit more on some of those special strength, special development type exercises and phases earlier in our preparation blocks. And then as we get closer to our competition, or in the context that we're talking about now, as we're getting into our fight camp and the closer we're getting to our fight, maybe that's when we need to be dialing in more of our general work. Because we're getting so much specific stimulus from our specific sporting activity.

James de Lacey4:15

Yeah, for sure. I guess as people get closer into fight camp and closer into competition, it doesn't matter what the sport is, the skills essentially ramp up. Not so much maybe the volume, but the intensity of the skills is what's going to really shine through in that stage. And maybe at that point, adding more intensity on top of that might not be the right thing to do.

But what do you see as I guess the general skills that you would fit into that kind of period? Is it just your basic maybe in the gym, your basic strength work like squats and presses and things like that? Or is there more, or is it more I guess somewhat still specific to the sport but in a general phase?

Aaron Kellett4:40

Yeah. I don't think I'm unique in this, right? And we've spoken about some nuts and bolts programming stuff. You will have all aspects of specificity, from general all the way through to high specificity tasks, filtered through your programming. Well, you should have at all stages of the year, right?

So there's, for me, very very few times in the calendar year where you wouldn't have what someone might identify as a special strength or a more specific type exercise for your sport. But for me, in answer to your question, yeah, it's about recognizing that we might do more pressing, pulling, squatting, lifting, lunging type variations—really general motor patterns—in those closer to competition periods where we do have so much of our high-intensity task coming from our sporting skill, sporting activities.

James de Lacey5:32

Yeah, no, that's a good point. I think it's good to also touch on what you mentioned there is you always have an element of something within the program. You never kind of completely remove things. Obviously when people start coming to design their own I guess training programs for themselves as athletes, they look at—not on purpose, but they look at that block periodization model.

So say, okay, I'm going to do eight weeks of just pure hypertrophy training and whatever else, and then okay, now I'm going to do strength and power. Whereas you mentioned there, you don't want to get too far away from something. You just want to have a bit of everything. Is that the rationale behind doing that?

Aaron Kellett6:04

Very much so, mate. Yeah. And it's really, it's common sense stuff in many respects. If you sort of take a little look in the mirror and think, okay, something that I haven't done for two, three, four, five weeks, the first time I do it, what does it feel like? It always feels rubbish. You feel uncoordinated, it's really slow, it's really hard.

But so it should be intuitive to us that if we stop doing something for a block of time, we're going to be really crap at it when we restart it. And when it comes to sort of physiological qualities or really important motor patterns for sporting tasks, I don't think you want to go through that process again, right?

So let's just keep that stuff dialed into our program, even if it is for one line in an exercise program or one drill in our training plan, just to make sure that we're not losing some of those qualities. Because the old classic, if you don't train it, you lose it, definitely applies.

James de Lacey7:21

Yeah. I think people don't get how little you can really do just to maintain some qualities. As you mentioned, one line. If say you wanted to go through maybe you wanted to add some size as a fighter, you could literally just have one or two lines of power-based exercise within each of your training days, and that would at least give you something that when you start adding size, you're not becoming I guess reliant on this extra muscle mass and become what you call slow and heavy.

Obviously what people say, strength training makes you slow. Yes or no. Obviously that's going to depend on how you're going to program it.

Aaron Kellett7:44

Yeah, definitely. And I think the point you raise is really important, and that's something I think we learn over time as practitioners, that the amount of work that's actually required to just keep hold of a quality is remarkable how little it is. It can literally be one activity in a warm-up a couple times, two or three times a week, or one exercise in a program done for two sets or a drop set at the end of a four-set protocol. It's really, it's remarkable how little volume is required to maintain a quality.

James de Lacey8:40

Yeah, it's nuts, even from my own experience. And there's also a thing, it's almost like the set point as well. Within people talk about set points with body weight when you're losing weight and you have a set point your body likes to stay at, there seems to be something similar when lifting. Like for example, I can...

Take how much time off, but I know I'll always be able to come back and power snatch 70 kilos. It's just this thing where that's my set point, and I know. So there's, I guess, there's also that to involve there.

But I want to touch on another thing you mentioned there was being able to do small amounts in warm-ups. So I guess that's been popularized in the past few years as microdosing. And I guess for anyone listening, microdosing is usually a drug reference to do with, I guess, psychedelic drugs. But in this instance is more towards microdosing certain training qualities. Is that something you use with, I guess, your athletes? Or are there qualities that you do or would microdose in particular?

Aaron Kellett9:32

Yeah, in general the answer is yes. And of course it depends on who you're working with. But historically I've always tried to use warm-up time as a way to touch upon some sort of physical quality. And there's two reasons for that. One is that it's sometimes the only opportunity we have to do any sort of coaching with our athletes, particularly in those really dense close to competition periods.

And the other thing is they're just really boring times. They're just career killers, warm-ups, right? I'm really sort of open. We joke about it with athletes. The thing that ends careers isn't necessarily the sport itself, it's everything that leads up to it.

So sometimes it's about just recognizing that actually to get the sort of general warm, that's really easy. Like a jog and they're basically ready, right? Like these are high quality athletes. So rather than sort of filling the time with 13 minutes or 14 minutes of really general preparatory movement prep type of stuff, let's get guys going with some sort of graded progressive targeted work for specifically the qualities like speed and power, these high-end qualities that actually can sequence in really well.

So that, you know, the last couple of minutes you're actually doing two, three, four reps of something really explosive, really high intensity, and really high quality.

James de Lacey11:05

That's a great point. I think especially with some fight sports when they're training sometimes twice a day or at least every day, a lot of them, where do you fit everything else? You got that much. It could work, I think, for the listeners potentially, doing some kind of really basic gym power work, jumps, throws, whatever it is, for 10, 15 minutes before you get out for technical training. That's an easy way to get things done.

Aaron Kellett11:31

100%, like 100% agree that 10 to 12 minutes of work done in a sort of strength/explosive fashion can not only can it be unbelievable preparation for your technical training, because actually all of a sudden you're actually not spending the first 12 minutes of your technical training getting your central nervous system actually up to speed for the task you're being asked to perform. You're actually hitting the ground running on there.

But the other thing is you're actually getting some reps with hitting some of the qualities that the sport may not necessarily give you.

James de Lacey12:04

For sure, for sure. I want to touch on some of these qualities now. I know there are some qualities within cricket itself that transfers well over to fight sports, specifically the rotational power element with cricket, obviously batsmen, especially I guess within all formats of cricket, but even with probably more so within T20 just because people are just trying to bash sixes for 20 overs.

So what's your approach to developing, I guess, rotational power for cricket players?

Aaron Kellett12:29

And throwing. Throwing and bowling and throwing too. Like they're all sort of, for one of a better term, without sort of getting too... these are proximal to distal sequencing events, right? So essentially it's ground up, is the best way I can sort of describe it, right?

So this is no different to striking. So really it's about recognizing that first of this we need to understand that sequence, right? So that is it is ground up. And the other part is that it's somewhat plane specific, right? So some of our general tasks may meet certain parts of the sequence, but we actually need to train the entire sequence really well.

So for hitting and throwing sports, understanding that things like cables and medicine balls and other implements that you can throw are hugely important. They're hugely important because they actually sit in this sort of category, your classification of special strength for one a better term, right? So it's actually they play a bridging role, they play an unbelievable bridging role between some of the slower force-oriented tasks that you might do with your more general type work and you really high velocity specific tasks where you know actual throwing, hitting, kicking, these, the actual sporting tasks themselves.

So they play a really useful bridging role. I think weighted implements are really important, and the literature supports their use as special strength, special development type exercises.

James de Lacey14:05

Nice. Are there any specific go-to exercises that you really like to use that are kind of your bread and butter that you always program?

Aaron Kellett14:40

Yeah. Various plane, various direction med ball throws are always in there. We're always throwing med balls whether it be in warm-ups or in gym programs. We're always flicking med balls around in various planes from various positions.

James de Lacey14:40

Do you have a weight preference on that? Do you think there's a middle that can be too heavy for that kind of work?

Aaron Kellett15:08

Yeah, it can. And there's, I know there's some really smart people looking at sort of the ability to profile some of that stuff. But I think as a coach, particularly in an environment where we're touring a lot, I'm using my eye a lot to understand where is the movement breaking down and where is the speed starting to fall off a cliff from the types of the movement speeds I'm trying to see from my athletes.

So definitely, so with our batters we're generally not working much more than sort of five or six kilos in general. Because, and again, part of that is as a coach I probably use cables for the slightly slower movement speeds. So that when we actually are transitioning using the implements we can throw, medicine balls in this case, we can actually really get them moving and just rip it and really rip it.

James de Lacey15:36

Because I don't have the luxury of hydraulic cables, right?

Aaron Kellett16:10

So those are really useful. In tennis, for example, having the Kaiser cables was really powerful. I wanted to make sure they were in our gym because the ability to really rip those things are great. So I think for fighters, pneumatic cables, pneumatic resistance is brilliant. And they provide instant feedback too.

James de Lacey16:10

Correct. I mean you're looking at the numbers as soon as you're doing them.

That's awesome. Do you ever complex your rotational stuff, for example maybe a heavy cable rotation into a throw?

Aaron Kellett16:40

More often than not, that's exactly how I program it. And to the point where we might stay same plane, same sort of motor pattern, or equally I'll oftentimes use general task trap bar deadlift into a sort of more special strength task. So trap bar deadlift sequence with med ball hip toss, med ball shot throw, that type of stuff.

I like playing around with the different ends of the force curve.

James de Lacey17:16

I like that idea too just for the fact that if you're doing a heavy trap bar deadlift you're using the legs, and you kind of try that, trying to take that feeling over to the throw. It's another teaching tool with that as well.

Aaron Kellett17:16

I agree, and that talks to that sort of that ground up approach, that proximal to distal sequencing. I think that works really well and is part of the reason why I like that approach.

James de Lacey17:41

Can you talk a little more on, you mentioned, I guess, training over the whole force velocity spectrum? For the listeners listening to this podcast now, why do they need to train at essentially different speeds and different loads within their training? Because obviously for anyone listening, force velocity spectrum, essentially high force movements, for example heavy squats, then you've got high velocity movements maybe like jumps, and then everything in between. Is there a reason you like to cover, I guess, the whole spectrum?

Aaron Kellett18:06

So if we look more often than not at our sporting tasks, so let's keep it sort of context specific for the fight environment that we're talking about, right, the combat environment. These are really high speed tasks generally, right?

So how can we raise the performance of that high speed task? So right now you're capped out by your current capacities, right? We can't sort of train faster than that unless we use some sort of external stimulus, right? Some overspeed type stimulus, that's really hard to do and really sort of gets a bit murky, right?

So one way we can do that is actually to bring essentially all of the profile of that movement and raise it and shift it to the right. I don't want to get stuck on the jargon a bit, because that's a black hole. But essentially by training that motor pattern or similar motor patterns at different points on the curve, so we train it really heavy and really slow, and we might train it moderately heavy and moderately fast, and then also train it as close to the speed with a little bit of overload involved, we can essentially raise your physiological capacity to complete the task more quickly, more explosively, with more grunt behind it for want of a better term.

James de Lacey19:31

Have you got an example, say for rotation or even for any of it, an example of slow and I guess slow high force, that middle area, and then a very fast one just for...

Aaron Kellett20:02

Well, the example we sort of spoke to earlier I think really applies. So something really high force or, rather than say a trap bar, this is more of a general task. I think you had Greg Morrison a few weeks ago. He's used some really high force isometric types. So you might actually be doing pushing in a rotational fashion against an immovable object. So that would be classified as that really high force task.

And then we might go into a heavier cable rotation or a rotational sled pull, those types of things, where there's sort of moderate speed, moderate force. And then going towards more of a lighter medicine ball rotational throw into a wall.

James de Lacey20:31

That's a really nice sequence. I think there you can work some really high force isometric type tasks through to really explosive. And if you're short on time, you could do that all within like a giant set as well, couldn't you?

Aaron Kellett21:05

100%, yeah definitely. And I think those approaches work really well. Or an alternative way to do is where you have the movement featured throughout your workout. So let's say you might have a 20-minute workout and you've got three blocks of paired or tri-set exercises put together. You might have the isometric right up the front end with another general lower body task, and then you might have your rotational cable or rotational sled pull in with an upper body pulling exercise, and then you've got your high speed med ball throw in with your upper body push or something like that.

James de Lacey21:32

That's a good sequence. So for listeners who are maybe short on time, that's a really easy way to get essentially a short session in but still develop those strength power qualities. You cover the whole curve and you're good to go, I think so.

All right. And I wanted to touch on as well, I guess coming from cricket and tennis you probably had to deal with a few shoulder problems. Now I guess within striking sports is obviously a thing, but even within grappling as well people run into shoulder issues. So just wondering, like your overall philosophy on holistic shoulder health and shoulder training as I guess you could say a prehab thing.

Because obviously many people just go to the gym, they'll do their few external rotations on the cable and then they're sorted. So I guess maybe your overall philosophy around that and how you go about essentially protecting the shoulders as much as possible.

Aaron Kellett22:30

I think the shoulder has suffered from—and this is a gross generalization, right, so I want to make that really clear—but as a general rule I think the shoulder has suffered from being understimulated in the majority of sporting environments. I think we've understimulated the shoulder complex a lot because we've sort of gone with that rehab sort of structure with the way we're going about things. And I'm not saying that those some of those activities, so external internal rotations, some of those motor tasks aren't really important. But I think there's an overabundance of those tasks and those exercises exclusively being targeting your shoulders.

So I think one thing that's important: we have to put some load into that thing, and we can do that safely, we can do that with some strategy and some sequencing, but we've got to put some load into that thing. The other thing I think's really important is we actually put some bulk around it. And I don't mean that we need to become muscle-bound, but I think we need to put some bulk around our shoulder complex, and the only way to do that is actually with some overload and with some stimulus.

So getting really strong in your horizontal pulling is really important. Being able to provide good brakes for your glenohumeral joint I think is really important at the scapular level. So get really strong on your pulls, get really strong on your bench pulls, your dumbbell rows, those types of tasks.

Work overhead. So if you've got some limitations on range of motion, then attack those so that you can go overhead. I think what's happened a lot is we've had an obstacle in going overhead because we've got a range of motion problem, and that causes really crappy movement, and then we put dysfunction on dysfunction and we get injured. So like overhead work is no good because we didn't address the underlying problem, which is we've got a range of motion restriction. So if we address those, then we can go overhead.

So I think that's really important, particularly for overhead athletes, right? And striking, upper body striking, is not necessarily an overhead task, but I've been an amateur jiu-jitsu guy. You're finding yourself in weird and wonderful positions all the time, and you've got to have some integrity to be able to just be able to offset that first little pull.

James de Lacey25:27

Do you think that the whole reason why I guess shoulder training has moved that way is just the fear-mongering around overhead pressing? Because I think that was—I don't know how long ago it was—but it's been talked over and over again about not pressing overhead because it's damaging shoulders or whatever else. But I've seen the opposite, obviously my own experiences, and I've obviously seen the same. Do you have any overhead variations you really like to use then?

Aaron Kellett25:56

I always like, I love push pressing. I love push pressing. One arm, two arms, barbell, dumbbells, landmine pressing. Love it, always using it.

James de Lacey25:56

And then you mentioned about adding some bulk. Is that through only just the pressing, or you're using some kind of isolation stuff as well like raises, rear delts, rear raises?

Aaron Kellett26:32

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, regularly using isolation work. Horizontal shrugging movements, band pull-aparts—these are really important. Yeah, the good old-fashioned lateral raises, front raises, rear flies—I think they're really important.

James de Lacey26:32

Are you also addressing within that any kind of thoracic issues? I don't know if you have a lot of thoracic issues within cricket. I guess most they do. Is it mainly similar things where it's more like stuck kyphotic postures, or is it just stuff in general?

Aaron Kellett27:05

Yeah, I think these are really universal problems we tend to encounter. So yeah, these blocked lack of extension and then obviously that impacting your ability to rotate as well. So those are always challenges for us. So I think that's really important, you build that in.

James de Lacey27:05

Do you have anything in particular that you've found works well for improving that thoracic rotation or even extension?

Aaron Kellett27:34

Yeah, so generally what I'll always try and build in is we'll use, whether it's a foam roller, a medicine ball, always doing some extension over there and using upper body movements to force us on—or essentially to promote those positions.

James de Lacey27:34

Nice, nice. Actually, I wanted to come back—I had a question I just remembered again from the rotational power stuff. I see it quite often and I personally don't like it, but maybe I'm completely wrong on it. And that is, for example, people doing—I think the exercise that does it the most is using the landmine rotation. And they'll do the landmine rotation standing completely still, and the torso will be straight, the shoulders will be straight, it's just moving side to side kind of like an anti-rotation.

The way I like to teach it is purely I want the hips to turn with every rotation movement ever. It doesn't matter what it is, I don't want it to be still. I don't know, is that something that you teach I guess within your exercises to your athletes, or do you find a place for that kind of anti-rotation where you're stuck in place as well?

Aaron Kellett28:30

Yeah, I find a place for it, and the rationale sort of flow is that in a lot of a...

A lot of the rotational output tasks, one of the performance discriminators—if I'll use fast bowling or pitching, baseball pitching as an example—hip shoulder separation is actually a discriminating variable for ball speed. So the ability to actually dissociate our hips and shoulders is critical. So that's where sometimes variations where you're actually intentionally fixing the pelvis or fixing their hips and promoting shoulder rotation can be useful to encourage that understanding, that awareness, but also some of the physical qualities that are associated with that.

But for me that can't be your end point. That's really important, that can't be your end point. So if that's all you're doing then I think you're only addressing half of the performance question. I think what you're describing is really important: actually then going back to a more complete proximal to distal ground up sequence.

James de Lacey29:32

Okay, now that makes sense, that dissociation. I like that concept. I guess Frans Bosch made it popular really from his stuff and I really like that idea. Obviously that's something that I've brought into teams I've worked with and rugby and things, just being able to do something with the upper body, ball play, whatever it is, but maintain speed at the same time, whatever step.

Aaron Kellett30:03

And these rotational tasks, right? So specifically punching, throwing, fast bowling, they talk about upper body lag, right? So the ability to actually be generating force in the direction you're trying to throw with your pelvis, start generating that force, but your upper body is actually—easiest way to describe it—the elastic band is stretching. So that separation, that's creating the stretch that is then utilized later in the sequence.

James de Lacey30:34

That makes sense. That's a nice analogy that one.

I also want to touch on you talk about plane of movement. I guess that comes down to what's being coined as the Force Vector Theory, essentially being able to do exercises in similar planes to whatever it is you're trying to do. Do you want to give me your thoughts on that? Do you think—I mean there's obviously people coming out against the idea that there is no extra transfer—do you find that there is transfer for you regarding doing stuff in certain planes of motion to transfer over to certain skills?

Aaron Kellett31:41

Absolutely, yes. But that argument I find is an interesting one because where I think the argument's coming from, right—and this is where I would probably agree—is that let's look at it in the context. It's really easy to understand where it's just a one plane, right? So in sprinting they're talking about this horizontal transfer, this horizontal force. It's only horizontal relative to the Earth, right? So actually if you're looking at it from a joint perspective, it's somewhat irrelevant, right? Because it's only about body orientation to the ground where it becomes more horizontal or less, right?

But I look at it's still a sagittal plane, still a straight line movement. If I orient myself horizontally, it now becomes a vertical force. So hip thrust, for example, it's actually vertical, it's a vertical vector. But actually now if I'm standing and I'm extending the hip, that's now horizontal. No, it's the same, it's the same relative to the joints, it's the same.

And so that's why I argue I think sometimes the argument or the debate is a little bit of a moot point in many respects, because actually let's look at the movement in relation to the joints and the direction of force that you're trying to apply relative to the joint, not to the fixed Earth.

James de Lacey32:48

I agree with you there. I mean that one paper that came out basically where they just turn the human up and then everything's vertical. But then as I talked to my professor and a friend about it, Matt Cross and Matt Brearley, obviously they're big in that space, and Matt Brearley linked to a paper—basically it's a simulation paper—and it's the fact that yes, okay, if we go by what they're saying with you turn the human it's going to be vertical force, but when you look at the muscle activation patterns of someone who's bent over doing a broad jump versus doing a vertical jump, you get these huge changes and differences in terms of what is actually producing the force to go that direction.

So if you're looking at in terms of specificity maybe within the gym, maybe there's things that you need to do. If we take speed for example, such as maybe heavy sled drag and stuff, because you're going to get that similar muscle activation pattern in that direction.

Aaron Kellett33:50

I think that is a good point. And because the thing that we actually can't overlook is gravity. So gravity is a variable that we absolutely have to take into account when we're considering the stress we're imposing on the athlete. That's what I get from your description of the discussion with Matt.

James de Lacey34:17

It's an interesting one, it's always an interesting one. And I think potentially in sports that have more of a rotational component it's more applicable just because if you don't specifically try and train rotation in the gym you're just not going to get it. It's just not available in a normal gym program you download from anywhere. You don't have rotation. Very rarely will you have some kind of maybe carry or lunge pattern, very rarely. So maybe that's just something that people might need to look at and address within their program so they can move and maybe lateral rotation, things that are neglected.

Aaron Kellett34:45

Correct. I mean I think even just sort of take a step back and just general daily tasks, right? I think these are also really important capabilities that we want to maintain, right? The ability, a lot of our daily tasks involve these types of movements, right? We may not be trying to do it at really high speeds, but these are really important abilities. It's very rare for us to do something in one plane of movement in our general life.

James de Lacey35:17

For sure. You mentioned you did jiu jitsu then, is that what you mentioned before?

Aaron Kellett35:47

Yeah, I have in the past. Definitely I don't get—I haven't been able to train, been on the road a lot. And that's something, my boy actually, my boy's four and a half coming on, he turns five in July, so it's one of those milestones I've been really looking forward to. Because I think as a parent I think martial arts are really important for young people. They develop so many qualities. So I've been really excited, nice little landmark, turns five and actually start training again, nice, together—not with each other—but we can find him a club and we can get back into it.

James de Lacey36:13

You have to make sure you train otherwise he'll get better than you, that'll happen.

Aaron Kellett36:13

Absolutely happen.

James de Lacey36:39

Oh perfect. Now this has been a great chat, Aaron, I really appreciate it. I hope they got something out of this they can add to their own training. But I mean is there anywhere people can find you, follow what you're doing, websites, anything like that?

Aaron Kellett37:05

Most of my professional contacts and communications are happening via LinkedIn, so if anyone's sort of professionally looking to get in touch, definitely reach out on LinkedIn. I post a little bit on Instagram but generally that's most pics of my kids and videos of my family, but there's a few sort of professional ones in there. But definitely LinkedIn's the platform from a professional perspective for people to reach out if they want to get in touch.

James de Lacey37:31

Nice. I'll put that in the description anyway, so if anyone's watching on YouTube or listening on whatever platform they are, it'll be down there. But thanks for coming on Aaron, I really appreciate it.

Aaron Kellett37:31

Great, James. Thanks for having me mate.