From the Ground Up Athletic Performance Podcast Travis Mash Episode 52 "Fatigue monitoring, VBT & power production, teaching & involving the clean in athletic development"
On this episode I sat down with Coach Travis Mash to discuss his fatigue monitoring process that he utilizes with his weightlifting team at Lenoir Rhyne University. Coach Mash has founded an exceptional weightlifting team at Lenoir Rhyne University and I routinely see insane numbers posted from his team. Coach Travis begins by sharing his realization that accounting for stresses within his system and from the outside were a major determinant of overall readiness to perform at peak levels. Coach Mash shared the unique challenges that adolescents and young adults deal with in regards to stress exposure and blue light exposure and how those factors may be affecting performance more than we realize. Coach Mash discusses how he utilizes the Velocity of the first days movement, which he typically likes to use a hang clean pull for various reasons. Velocity measures overall speed, Stress is defined by fatigue, which is a loss of ones ability to produce force. When employing this rationale it is easy to see how by having a baseline number for velocity measurements allow for us to keep a pulse on the moving target that is athlete readiness. Coach Mash also utilizes RSI measurement to validate athlete readiness, he shares how he gets a meaningful and useful RSI score. The third piece of the puzzle is a subjective questionnaire that athletes complete upon entering into training for the day. One of the metrics that stood out for me was how Coach Mash calculated the impact of a given workout he took the RPE of the athlete and multiplied it times the duration of the workout to give an impact score. In this first piece of the conversation it was great to see how Coach mash is able to bring together multiple measures to give a detailed view of an athletes overall readiness's and abilities for a given session. This is a major tool for overall athletic development and safe progression of training, athletes abilities ebb and flow based upon an almost immeasurable amount of daily stressors. The more Coaches take into account where an athlete is in the present, the more suitable to days training session will be.
As we discuss Velocity measures and Coach Mash's protocols based upon RSI or velocity measures being lower than normal we are able to see how training can easily be adjusted to salvage a days session and give athletes the appropriate dose. At 5% drop in RSI measurement or Velocity measurement both volume and intensity planned for the day are adjusted between 10-20%. If they measure 10% or greater they do low eccentric bodybuilding and go home for the day at that point the risk exceeds anything you will get out of the training session. The subjective questionnaire discussed earlier tells Coach Mash the why for the anomaly or drop in RSI or Velocity of first movement. We discuss the different ranged of velocity loss that would be employed for the development of strength, power, and hypertrophy. Coach mash shares that he seeks high quality hypertrophy due to weightlifting being a weight class competition. This definitely made me think about he individualized needs in team sport settings where lineman and those in the box may need on zone and skills and more speed based positions may need to stay away from areas that don't recruit the higher twitch fibers. We end the conversation talking about where to begin when implementing the clean with youth populations, how to find the proper set up based upon anthropometrics, and how to vary the clean for the needs of given athletic populations. Check the links below for access to my newly published website as well as Coach Travis Mash's offerings.
From the ground up athletic performance