Get Your Athlete to Pass the Beep Test

Earlier this summer I was hired by a sophomore soccer player to help her pass her beep test prior to the season starting. Short version - she passed. I am here to tell you how we trained in the summer so you can do the same with your athletes.

On Day 1 we went through a movement analysis, the EXACT same one I gave you all for free. Make sure you have Hawkin Dynamics force plates as the assessment has IMTPush, CMJ, and RSI.

*Side note - when I did her initial IMTPush I did not have the Power Lift IMTP rack for our Hawkin Plates. At the time of publication we do have the Power Lift IMTP rack and will be able to use that for when she comes back during winter break**

You also need to have Dashr timing gates for the accel sprint (1/10) and fly 10 (25/10). I have the silver and I have told you why I have those and use them more than the blue. for months now. I have not added my TruStrength device to the assessment, but I will make a new assessment that has the ability to use that for isolated joint testing - stay tuned.

After her assessment we talked big picture. She would be playing games on Monday (sometime two games, and sometimes none if weather was bad), practice two days per week (sometimes 3 days per week) and that would fluctuate during the week. So the plan was to have her lift 3 days per week when she had 2 days practice and lift 2 days per week when she had 3 days practice.

This training cycle was in line with what Dan Pfaff said on his Cheeky Mid Weeky with me about elite sport is more like triage rather than LTAD. For that episode click here.

She needed to get better a soccer (and speed, strength, agility, conditioning, etc…) but the main thing is the main thing - soccer. So, we kept that as the main thing. I programmed 3 days per week lifting with tempo changing over the weeks. Weeks 1-2 was isometric emphasis, 3-4 was eccentric, week 5 was concentric, week 6 was dynamic reversal, and 7-8 was omni contractions.

For those not familiar with omni (I was not familiar with the term until someone showed me this blog from TeamBuildr) but I heard Mike Guadango talk about doing 36 seconds of eccentric work 6 reps of 6 seconds in one set, then doing 30 second isometric hold in set two, then 25 seconds of concentric reps in set three, and then dynamic reversal for 20 seconds in set four.

Set 1 - 6 reps of 6 second eccentric
Set 2 - 30 second isometric hold (or break it up how you want)
Set 3 - 25 seconds of concentric reps
Set 4 - 20 seconds of reps as fast as possible

I had done this with my buddy and kickboxing coach Jesse Swain when we lifted together and when he was training for his pro boxing fight.

**Side note, don’t program things for your athletes when you have not done them yourself**

I knew that we would not be able to get all 3 days in during the week, it was ok, we would do day 3 on the first day of the week when we trained. From a 10,000ft view we did:

Accel sprints on the same day with heavy lifting and deeper angles
Max velo on the same day as heavy lifting and unilateral loading
C.O.D work on the same day as repetition effort lifting day

She goes to a college that uses the power complex so I did not have to worry about teaching her Olympic lifts (we did do Jerk variations and DB Snatch) but I did not have to spend time with cleans.

**side note, I did have other athletes (high school and college) that DID clean from floor and hang during the summer. I can coach it - I just don’t force it**

We did floor power complex on accel days. And RDL Power complex on Max Velo Days. Did DB snatch of jerk variations on C.O.D Days.

All warm ups were a variation of:

JOP matrix
MB throws
KB warm up

JOP matrix was done on the ground or onto a box (if you don’t know what a JOP is read this blog on jump training). MB throws were always chest pass, side toss, or chop. We changed the foot stance each day - athletic base, lunge stance, and SL stance (more on this in my Mastering MB Training book I am writing for Human Kinetics). For the KB warm up we always did some upper body followed by a lower body movement for 4-8 different movements. Similar to this free time saving warm up I gave yall - click here to download it if you did not. 

On accel days we would do sled push or sled sprint paired with accel sprints. These sled pushes, sled sprints, or BW sprints were timed with my Dashr silver 90% of the time. These are the ones she did her pre-test on, so I wanted to keep it consistent. Some days I left the timing gates at my other office, so I used the Dashr Blue at the gym. Fear not, I did a comparison between the Dashr Blue and Silver and they were within 0.001 of each other. The comparison was on myself and with some athletes that my co-worker was training.

On the max velocity days we would alternate between fly 10 and fly float fly. Next summer we will push the fly distance to 15 and 20. Used the same silver Dashr timing gates 90% of the time here too.

**Side note on rest - I found for her the best rest was 1 min for every 10 yard on the build up. So if she was doing fly 10 with 15 build she had 90 seconds rest. 20 build 2 min rest. When I gave her more rest than that her times got worse.**

For C.O.D day we did lateral sled and cross over sled march. We also worked on the 3 step and 5 step change in direction drill from Jeff Moyer’s composition of cutting webinar inside of SCN.

For the power complex from the floor we did CG deadlift as the main movement and we adjusted load based on her Vitruve VBT average velocity speed. This was before I had my convo with Joe Kenn at NSCA national about the positive impact using peak velocity on strength movements and you can read about that here on this blog. For the jump we would do a low DB box jump (6” or 12”) one week, and then a Trap Bar vertical jump standing on a Plyo Mat. We then paired it with a depth drop or RSI drop, alternated each week. On the RSI drop we increased box height each time, and measured RSI again on the PlyoMat.

On Hang Power Complex days we again used Vitruve VBT for bar weight (her goal was nothing slower than 0.50 most days. On heavy days we would allow 0.35). She strapped up to be able to lift more weight and by the end of the summer she was hitting 185 for 3 reps all over 0.35 m/s avg velocity on Vitruve encoder.

**Side note, if anyone who tells you straps is cheating then tell them wearing cleats on the field (soccer, football, lacrosse, etc…) is cheating too because cleats help you run faster and change direction better. Straps ARE designed to let you lift more weight. Use them, properly of course - make sure exercise execution is proper, but let em strap up! This isn’t a USAPL meet - let em lift.**

We did some top off conditioning work for her on days when she didn’t have a game prior to. Some days she lifted in the am and then 8-10 hours later had practice or a game. On these days she did not do conditioning. Her condo was never more than 6 min of work and it was all off feet. It was either echo bike or ski erg. And the protocol was 6 min steady state or 6 min 0:30 sec on 0:30 sec off.

So as you see most of the work we did was max output work, and little bit of max recovery work. We did push the pace of her lifting and her training sessions were dense so she got a cardio effect from it. I knew she was getting a good amount of middle intensity work at practice. This is also where I knew she got more C.O.D and agility work - thus why I put a premium on the no ball accel and max velocity work.

In fact, on the max velocity days we would often create a situation for how she would built her 20-25 yards into the fly. Why? Make it more context of how she would be moving and gradually  increasing in speed on a soccer field. We are working in the weight room to get better on the field - why not add a little fun that way, huh.

For the C.O.D days we did the 8 vector stuff from Elon. Mainly with 5 yard into and 5 yard out out of it. But again, I knew she was doing C.O.D and agility with her team - so I only M.E.D that with her - and if anything really worked on the 180 degree C.O.D and how to attack that turn (for her beep test).

Does this mean we did no lactate work in the weight room? Nope, as the last 10 days approached, we took out some of the lifting and steady state 6 min cardio at the end and put in some circuits to get her working at 4-5 min with 2-2.5 min rest over 20-30 min time. Why? Have her feel like her heart was in her throat, know that she has been there before, be able to handle that suck feeling, and still perform. Sounds like running a conditioning test doesn’t it?

Remember, our job is to get athletes ready to practice and play their sport. If you cannot effect how practice is ran - make sure athletes can handle the work sport coaches will do. After all, that is our job.

If you want the complete lifting template of what she did you have to be a SCN member. I posted it here in the forum. If you are not a member, click here for a $1 trial to check the whole site out.