1)I was watching a high school football player training today from a program he had written for him. He said he was in a 2 week unloading phase/power phase(?)In addition to bench press throws, he was also doing incline bench press throws, is this a beneficial exercise? He also was doing hang cleans but for sets of 15??? Isn’t that way to many reps? Granted the weight was light enough, but aren’t you only supposed to use at most 3-5 reps for that type of exercise since power out put would decrease and form would break down? The kid was so out of breath by 11 or 12 he had to take a long pause between each of the next reps just to finish the set.
2)When training athletes, since I see so much conflicting data, what percentages should be used and when (ex. in season/off season) should they be used for the explosive exercises such as cleans, snatches, squat jumps, bench press throws, ect. and an optimal rep range for each.
Dave, I think that answer is insufficient. I believe what ought to be said is, “No single training method is the be all and end all of strength training.” Of course there is a right way to train, in fact, there are MANY right ways to train.
I’ve got to agree with the many ways to train philosophy. There are many great strength coaches (King, Polquin, Davies) who get wonderful results from their athletes but take very different approaches.
On one specific item you mentioned, I would think that the incline bench throws would be more specific to footbal than regular bench throws. Afterall if you’re on the line you’re almost always leaning forward when you’re pushing which makes the incline motion a closer recreation and thus more sport specific.
Training someone is more of an art than a science at times. You have to appeal to the client and get results. the methods you outlined looked kinda avearge, but generally if the trainer can validate his methods with good reasoning/studies then, well i’d have to let it fly. it easy for people to criticise, but often if you just ask what they are doing and why they are doing it you might get a good answer. or find out he trainer is a moron.