"More Support for Unilateral Training"- a Facebook Exchange

In the past I've woven good Facebook threads into articles. This is another case of a Facebook exchange turning into an article idea. This exchange began with the following Facebook post from Donnell Boucher, Head Strength and Conditioning Coach at The Citadel.

Donnell posted this quote from Advances in Functional Training and tagged me:
"The desire to continually add external load in the weight room forces the athlete into faulty movement patterns."

I responded :
"The key is as Gray Cook says in "not adding strength to dysfunction". Heavy weights are fine on a base of great technique. Heavy weights done poorly is adding strength to dysfunction and will lead to injury."

Donnell's responded by saying:
"There is no problem with heavy weight being moved. I think what Boyle is saying, and what I believe, is there is a vicious cycle we see more and more today, especially in collegiate sports. It starts early on in training, when strength gains are easily reached due to quick adaptation in an untrained athlete...this leads to a person who has been training for 2-3 years to think that they should set a PR every 4-5 weeks...if they don't, they failed...so to make sure they don't fail, they let technique slip. Now you have a person who started off squatting twice their body weight to power lifting standard depth, over reaching to achieve 3 times their body weight, and sacrificing their depth to do it because it didn't happen fast enough."

I really liked Donnell's thought process. It is great to see a collegiate strength coach in a numbers driven sport like football acknowledging that more load is not the answer.

I added the following to the thread:
"Just remember, a guy who can squat 500 lbs but cant one leg squat with 100 lbs of external load is not "functionally " strong. I know we hate that word, but it is true. I love when guys say they can't do it because they have bad balance."

Donnell's last post was the most interesting. He went on to say:
"I can specifically speak on that argument. After your "ditch the back squat" article, my staff and I took it upon ourselves to go with the RFESS in our personal training...I was shocked at how difficult it was with 135x5 (425# back squat at the time) but knew it was only because I had never done it...after 3 weeks, I was comfortably hitting 185x5 on each side. now, I can rep 225 in the front squat position reverse lunge for x5ea... Starting this past summer, we have become more intensive/involved with the single leg work with our teams in proportion to bilateral work. Viola, back pain/stiffness has pretty much vanished. And, people are fresher, able to handle the frequency of workouts better, most notably during the in-season/pre-season phases (not to mention this past summer speed testing was the best we've seen since I got here in 2007). This is not to say we are lightening loads really, we still get after it hard & heavy...but it is clear as day to me that the rotating between uni/bilateral movements have made a huge difference in the preparedness of our athletes."

It nice to see that we have some college strength coaches who as Steven Covey says "seek first to understand". My point is that you can't say something doesn't work until you give it a legitimate chance.

Thanks Donnell.