The Shield and Sword Analogy – Strength & Conditioning (S&C)

It is great to see over the years S&C become more and more popular with the athletic population in Northern Ireland. Although some great work is being done with some exceptional coaches that would rival any professional set up, we are still way behind the times as a whole when it comes to the bigger sporting nations. Is it a question of funding/cost of the S&C support? Maybe it’s a lack of available coaches? Or is it just a lack of understanding from the athlete or sports coach on the importance of developing the physical qualities to be fit for your sport.

What is S&C?

What is S&C? To a lot of people, S&C means some super training or programming that is just better than a normal programme, a programme that uses fancy exercises and is sport-specific often mirroring exercises that look exactly like the sporting action.

I see this regularly on social media, even just the fact that there is a poorly executed power clean in the video it gets the hashtag “S&C”, despite not grasping the essential point of the power clean and missing the triple extension, only to then go on muddying the water through the rest of the session via exercise selection.

S&C is simple. It is a structured, methodical approach that identifies the demands of the sport, injury prevalence, and highlights key performance indicators that may have a correlation to success, and then prepares the athlete accordingly.

“The goal of an S&C coach is to make their athletes more robust, resilient, and ready for their sport.z”

This all makes sense, particularly when you speak to other S&C coaches where this kind of language is often used, but what about someone who doesn’t yet understand the importance of S&C? Someone who doesn’t care what being robust is, or what increasing their vertical jump may lead to?

The Shield and the Sword

Picture this, you the athlete, are a gladiator in the great Colosseum, your sport is to go out and battle with your foe in the arena.

You understand the sport/battle, you have the know-how and skill to perform but as you are walking down to the armoury to collect your weapons for battle, the weaponsmith gives you a wooden shield and brush pole, gives you a pat on your back and says out you go!

You take hold of your weapons and you march out toward your foe, what happens? Well, on arrival to the middle of the arena you notice your opponent happens to be better equipped, a long steel sword and an iron shield – great!

The battle begins, after some moving around your opponent swings and you use your shield to block, it shattered, not durable enough to withstand the force of the impacts it breaks and now you are limited in your ability to battle. You strike back with your wooden brush pole to no effect, their armour not even dinted and they counter with another strike of their sword and its back to the drawing board.

So now what?

Well, on analysis of the battle it seemed there may be some hope, you clearly understood the dynamics of the sport, the skill was there as you were able to block the strike and move to a great position to use your own weapon, however, your tools let you down because the shield wasn’t durable enough and the sword wasn’t strong enough.

But what if we could re-match in a few months’ time with better tools?

Time to forge.

Strength is the most essential physical quality, it underpins everything else in S&C. It is the ceiling you can work to, increase strength you increase your capacity, Strength training we will refer to as “forging”.

During the forging stage we are creating the strongest materials and shaping our shield and sword, In order to have anything at all to use in the battle, we must first forge.

Forging is general, it is mostly non-specific to the sport and occurs with heavy loads, high-intensity low rep ranges and big rest times. Rest times are very important to allow for the highest amount of central nervous system recovery as possible before going back in under the load. Strength training is a skill, highly coordinated and efficient muscle firing patterns to overcome gravity.

· Heavy compound exercises (Squat, Deadlift, Bench Press, Pull-Ups)

· Barbell, Dumbbell, Trapbar, Safety Bar(Hatfield Bar)

· High intensity/Heavy loads

· 1-6 Reps, 1-5 Sets

· 3-5 minutes rest time

· Majority is non-specific to sport

Months have gone by, the arena is calling. You arrive and go straight to the armoury, excited knowing we have prepared this time and have a durable steel shield and a strong forged sword.

You arrive at the armoury, and the weaponsmith hands you out your weapons noticing they’ve been slightly upgraded. You march out to the middle of the arena to again meet your foe, they’re already there waiting, confident from the previous bout.

The battle begins, your opponent lunges forward with a strike, you raise your shield to block and the force from the strike dissipates, you look at your shield and there’s a crack but it held up well, you swing your sword striking back, the blow does some damage. Things look to be evened up a bit since last time.

The battle continues back and forth, each blow you deflect further cracking your shield and each strike you land only bruising the opponent. After a longer period of time your shield finally cracks limiting your ability to battle and the final blow comes in shortly after.

Back to the drawing board…

So what now?

On analysis again after the contest, we can clearly see again the skill and ability is there to win the bout, however, the limiting factor was the shield eventually gave out and the sword, although could strike back, could maybe be more effective, be it faster or sharper.

Time to sharpen

Although strength underpins everything and is essential, there is another piece to the puzzle.

Deliberately trying to avoid S&C terminology until this point but there is just a brief mention of the Force-Velocity Curve (See picture)

This graph demonstrates the relationship between producing force and velocity, at the left-hand side there is huge force potential but it is not quickly expressed, on the right-hand side there are huge velocities shown but not much force. Then, in the middle is power, just the right amount of force expressed quickly the optimal balance between the two qualities.

Forging must be done, you need to create your sword and shield after all, but forging is done on the left-hand side of the force-velocity curve. Most sporting movements happen between 400-1200miliseconds, it doesn’t matter how much force you can produce if your opponent can express half your force in half the time it takes you, they have the upper hand.

You need to sharpen the edge of your sword and put a point on it.

Sharpening happens at varying intensities, but the key element is moving as quickly as possible and not forcing out tired reps. This requires you to be fresh and well recovered, trying to train for explosive power when you are fatigued is just a waste of your training time.

· Moderate to light loads, Olympic weightlifting and derivatives, Jumps, Throws, Slams

· Plyometric and Ballistics

· 1-6 Reps 1-5 Sets

· Barbell, Dumbbells, Trapbar, Medicine balls, Bodyweight

· Elements of sport-specific movements

After months again sharpening or forged weapons the arena calls, this is the time.

Returning to the arena and heading straight to the armoury, on a mission.The weaponsmith hands you over your tools and you head out to battle.

Your opponent is once again already out and ready, this time swinging the sword around playing to the crowd, so hyped after the past 2 victories you’d think they were applying for the remake of Russell Crow’s gladiator, but this time is going to be different.

Armed with a durable shield built to last against the specific demands of battle and a finely sharpened sword that makes the air around it whistle as you move it, you change your foe, they lunge at you and you deflect with your shield, taking zero damage, a flurry back and forward you deal damage with your strikes, a quicker more explosive lunge at your opponent they can’t react in time to defend.

Trading strikes back and forward you are able and not worrying about your shield you notice your opponent has a pattern of strikes, you explode forward exposing their weakness and land a piercing winning blow.

Victorious in the Colosseum! It was always there to be had, you had the ability and skill to succeed in your sport, you just needed your tools to handle the demands of your sport, you needed to be able to stay in the fight and not fade away when the contest became heated, and you needed to have the ability to explode into positions to expose your opponent when it mattered.

The wooden shield and brush pole didn’t cut it, they weren’t robust, resilient and ready.

Are you the gladiator preparing for battle?

Have you walked out in the Colosseum only to fade as the battle went on? Do you lose your battles by mere centimetres or half seconds?

Are you forging? Continually developing that strong steel shield and sword but lacking that cutting edge?

Are you trying to sharpen something that isn’t strong enough yet?

We have helped amateur and professional athletes forge and sharpen their way to taking the next step and breaking into their national squads, we have supported athletes from major knee surgery back to their sport stronger, faster, and more powerful. We have helped athletes assert their dominance in their sport and stay at the top over years of national and international competition.

The BIA application process starts soon, if you would like more information when we begin our next phase and think this is something you might be interested in, send us a message “Shield and Sword” and we will we do the rest.

Stu