A Quick Guide to Strength Training for Athletes with Siobhan Milner, MSc, CSCS

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In this episode, Siobhan Milner (Strength & Conditioning Coach with the Dutch Olympic Team) takes you through a quick guide to strength training for athletes. This episode is perfect for coaches and athletes who may have limited access to a strength and conditioning coach in their own setting.

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About Siobhan Milner:

Siobhan Milner believes we’re made to move. She is an exercise scientist with over a decade of experience working with everyone from Olympians, to premier-league hockey players, to patients with low back pain, to professional dancers, to individuals with cancer and chronic lung diseases. She uses her expertise to help you improve your athletic performance, and prevent, manage, and recover from injuries.

Siobhan is currently a Strength & Conditioning Coach with TeamNL (Dutch Olympic team), training Shorttrack Speed Skaters and the national Curling team.

She also works with several independent athletes, primarily in endurance sports and dance, and with clients seeking her knowledge in injury rehabiliation.

Siobhan Milner is a believer in evidence-based exercise prescription, but also strongly believes that all training should be athlete-focused; specific to their goals, their needs, and their likes and dislikes. Most of all, she loves seeing change in her athletes’ lives – whether it’s at the level of function, pain, or performance.

Are you ready to improve your sporting performance, or change the way your body feels? Get in contact with Siobhan Milner here to discuss how she can help you get the most out of your body.

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Where to find Siobhan:

Website: www.siobhan-milner.com

Instagram: @siobhan.milner

Facebook: Siobhan Milner Athletic Performance & Rehabilitation

Twitter: @siobhancmilner

Tiktok: @siobhan.milner

Important Links:

• • Stay up to date on the Total Performance podcast where you can join Siobhan Milner and guests as we explore the many aspects that come together to build our total performance.

• • Find Siobhan Milner on Instagram, Twitter, & Facebook

A Quick Guide to Strength Training for Athletes with Siobhan Milner, MSc, CSCS

Siobhan Milner: [00:00:00] Hi everyone, I’m Siobhan Milner and this is Total Performance, a podcast dedicated to all things athletic performance and injury prevention. Join me and my guests as we explore the many aspects that come together to build our total performance picture. Let’s get into it. Today I’m going to be talking about self directed strength training for athletes or for coaches who are working with athletes that may not have access to a strength and conditioning coach.

Sometimes I hear of athletes or coaches or parents not getting their own athletes started on strength training because they’re worried that they won’t do it correctly. And while I think for some really advanced lifts or really technical lifts, yes, it is probably better to have someone there with you.

The benefits of strength training are so, so strong that it is usually better off to get someone started lifting than to wait until they have the perfect opportunity when they’ve got the strength and conditioning coach there. [00:01:00] I think it’s also worth knowing that even just having a couple of sessions with a really good personal trainer or some consults with a strength and conditioning coach or exercise specialist can really get you started on the right track in terms of technique anyway.

But I’m going to cover some of the really basic things that I would say you should think about including in your program and some of the things to be aware of, especially in the age of social media. So all different strength and conditioning coaches have a different philosophy about how they set up their sessions.

So the way that I set up mine is not necessarily going to be the way another coach does. And even though I have these quote unquote rules or guidelines for how I set up my sessions, I break those rules quite regularly as well, depending on the athlete I’m working with. So just know that These guidelines, they’re a guideline.

They’re going to make sure that you get everything in your program that’s going to be really important for you to be physically prepared in general, but it’s not the be all and end all. So in general, when [00:02:00] I am starting out with a program, and I’m going to give you an idea of really what the content of a strength training session should look like as an athlete, and this can apply to any athlete because I’ve spoken about this before as well, and sometimes Athletes and coaches put off starting a strength plan because they just don’t know how to make it fit their sport.

But the thing is you do not need to, especially in the beginning, especially if you’re new to strength training. You shouldn’t actually try to make it sport specific. You need to grab the low hanging fruit. Which is getting stronger and more powerful. And if you try to make your strength sessions look like your sport, you’re probably going to water down the strength exercises so much that they won’t actually do the job you want them to do of getting you stronger.

So if you want to get better at your sports skills, of course, practice those skills. But if you want to work on physical qualities to support your sport and those skills, then you get in the gym. So the goal of strength training is to make you stronger, more able to produce force quickly, [00:03:00] more resilient to injury.

And when we’ve already built a certain base of strength and power, which can take quite some time actually as well to be quote unquote advanced in the gym, then we start looking at really specific qualities or movements for sport. And it also depends on what time of the season we’re in. But, in the beginning, as I say, I’m going to let you know some of the things that I really, really focus on.

And, if we were going to make this super, super easy, I would say focus on squats, hinges, pushes, and pulls. So, these are exercises that usually fall into the category of being multi joint exercises, which are pretty good bang for your buck because they strengthen multiple muscle groups and they make you stronger in certain movement patterns, not just isolating certain muscles.

So I’ll explain a little bit about what they are and then I’ll give you some ideas about how I also work on warm ups or put in other elements of athleticism into strengths programs for athletes. So [00:04:00] when it comes to squats, it’s not just back squats. It’s also things like split squats. Sometimes you can think of this like, um, quad focused exercises as well, but squats split squats often I will start people on front squats because or goblet squats where they’re holding a Kettlebell or a dumbbell up by their throat just because it helps them get that more upright squatting pattern If you are a very long limbed human, I work with a lot of these here in the Netherlands It is totally fine to elevate your heels in the beginning so you could always stand on Little plates or something so that you can learn to push back into the heels and stay more upright Because one of the things that you want to do Especially if later you are going to end up working with a strength and conditioning coach We want to really get the basics really really strong and we want to see a difference between our squat pattern and our hinge pattern so your hinge pattern is the pattern where The hips get sent backwards so you can think of this like [00:05:00] deadlifts romanian deadlifts Um, I even put hip thrusts and things into this as well because it’s a a glute and hamstring focus so you can also think of it this way that the Squats tend to be more quad focused and the hinges tend to be more glutes and hamstring focused.

So it’s kind of front side of the legs versus back side of the legs. And sometimes what I see happen is people who are stronger in one, so they’re really strong in a hinge, their squats start looking really hingey. Or people who are really strong in squats, their hinges start looking really squatty. So a deadlift should look quite different in terms of your torso angle to a squat.

Doesn’t mean a squat has to be totally upright. It doesn’t mean a deadlift has to be totally bent over. But they should look different. So it’s worth starting exploring those sorts of things. And I’m so sure that you can find it. a lot of good information on the internet as well. I know sometimes it’s hard to sift through it.

Um, but in general, when it comes to squat patterns, we’re usually thinking of just trying to send [00:06:00] our body weight pretty much straight down. And when it comes to a hinge, we’re thinking of sending our hips back. And then bringing them forward again as we come up. So again, really good examples of the squat pattern.

We’ve got the front squat, we’ve got the back squat. Um, even things like wall sits can be really good for people to start with if you want to load them and make sure you get strong. Um, We’ve got split squats, which is when you’re doing a lunge, but you don’t move. So you’re sitting up in a lunge position.

And sorry, what I mean is you don’t switch feet. So you keep one foot behind you, one in front, and then you come down and up in that same position. That’s a split squat. Hinges. Like I say, we’ve got deadlifts. We’ve got Romanian deadlifts. I usually start beginners off on Romanian deadlifts. Just because learning where your back is in space and learning to move from the hips and not the back per se, uh, can be a little bit challenging in the beginning.

And so if we reduce that range of [00:07:00] motion, and with the Romanian deadlift, we’re just going from standing, just taking the hips back to the point. That we can’t really take them back any further and then coming up, eventually you’ll actually go a bit beyond that. But in the beginning, that’s usually where I start people with a Romanian deadlift.

And like I said, things like hip thrust, hip thrust can be one that people can load quite quickly as well. So always looking for the things if you don’t have a coach, what is it that you feel that you can load safely? Because sometimes as well, I see when people are training without a coach. OK, we obviously have two extremes.

We have some people that. Uh, try and load things way too much, way too soon, way too fast. But then we also have the people that without a coach, they don’t really know when to push themselves. And if you want to get the benefits of strength training, you do want to be progressively overloading. So you do want to be either adding some weight over time or increasing the repetitions at a given weight.

Making sure that you’re really you are progressing so like I say some of the really easy ones [00:08:00] to progress in with the squat Would actually be a split squat You could have dumbbells by your sides or you could have do a barbell split squat for the hinge I often find people find it quite easy to progress in the hip thrusts in particular So choosing things that you know that you can load and if there’s things that are feeling tough, technically, maybe a back squat feels tough, maybe a deadlift feels tough.

You don’t have to load those as heavy. You can choose other exercises to really load. So then we also have the push and the pull that I mentioned. So this is usually thinking upper body push, upper body pull. Um, When it comes to push and pull, we can push horizontally, vertically, we can push below us, there’s so many different things we can do, same with the pull, but usually I’m trying to put in at least one push and at least one pull in the program as well.

So thinking of upper body pushes, a really easy one is push ups. For some people, when they’re new to the gym, a push up’s actually really hard. So I often start people on dumbbell [00:09:00] chest presses. So it’s like a bench press, but you’re lying on your back with dumbbells, knuckles to the ceiling, sending the dumbbells towards the roof.

It’s pretty much just like a push up, but lying on your back. That’s a really good one to get strong in, to then be able to do good push ups as well. You’ve obviously got the barbell bench press, also a push movement. We have shoulder presses, all sorts of different things that could fit into pushes and don’t necessarily have to be just pushing your hands out in front of your body but could be overhead as well.

And then of course we’ve got pull. So I think one of the things that a lot of people know of for an upper body pull is a pull up or a chin up. But again, can be quite tough. in the beginning. Um, I do start people on these relatively early when they’re athletes, but again, there’s so many things that you might want to get stronger in first things like a dumbbell row.

So when you sit yourself up on a bench, usually you’ve got one hand on a bench and the other hand’s hanging off the side, and then you row your elbow up towards the [00:10:00] ceiling. And release it back down. Can also do things like lat pulldowns. Using machines is really, really handy when you’re new in the gym as well.

Because often the machines have pictures of what muscle groups they’re using. How to use them. And the machines kind of restrict your range of motion a little bit. So if you are a little bit fearful about Doing something wrong, then usually these machines only allow you to move in, uh, or within a certain parameter.

So they can be really helpful as well if you’re needing a little bit more confidence and knowing that you’re getting it right. Those four basics again, just to remind you that I would really make sure I was trying to put in every session or almost every session would be some kind of squat, some kind of hinge, some kind of upper body push, Some kind of upper body pull.

If you are only training one time per week, I would actually suggest that you do the exact same thing for four to eight weeks [00:11:00] in a row, trying to increase weight. If you are training more than once in a week, it depends a little bit on who you are, how long you’ve been training. Um, with some athletes we will do almost the same session twice a week, and with others I will change that session substantially, but It’s more, you need more variety the more advanced you are.

And I don’t usually count people as heading towards advanced for strength training until they’ve been training consistently for about three years. But again, this is a total guideline. I have some people who advance really quickly because they’re already super athletic. Um, they’ve already got good body awareness.

Just be really aware that there’s so much nuance with this and I’m just trying to give you some guidelines and I think as long as you’re being consistent and you are loading or increasing your loading relatively slowly then you’re probably going to be fine. Squat, hinge, push, pull. The other things that you want to think about as an [00:12:00] athlete is things like jumps or plyometrics.

There is a difference between jump training and plyometrics so you probably know jump training in terms of box jumps. Plyometrics involve us coming off the ground and onto the ground again repeatedly. So it’s really like a bouncing motion that we think of with plyometrics or a bounding motion, things like skip rope that that is a plyometric as well.

But usually we want some sort of jump or plyometric training in there because as athletes we need to be able to move quickly as well as with Producing force. So when we do the strength training, we get really good at producing force and we do get better at producing force quickly by strength training as well, but also for getting things like ankle stiffness and really popping off the ground, doing things like jump training and plyometrics can be really helpful.

So as a general rule, we usually start with anything that is explosive or power based at the beginning of a session. So I will often put plyometrics or training somewhere [00:13:00] in the warmup. It won’t be super, super intense. But, it’ll be things that, you know, get us used to jumping, get us used to plyometrics.

Because they can be kind of skillful as well, so it’s just getting used to producing those skills. And also in the warm up, I’ll put in some things that are going to move multiple joints. So, it could be just something that is going to look like What you’re doing next. So let’s say you’ve got some split squats coming up You might do some walking lunges in your warm up because it’s going to start getting you into that Movement pattern if you’ve got a bench press coming up You might do some push ups in the warm up your warm ups don’t need to be super long in fact, I think if your warm ups are taking you more than 20 minutes.

Honestly, you’re probably not warming up effectively. Again, blanket statement, but, um, you know, I see some people taking 30 to 60 minutes to warm up and if it’s taking you that long, you’re probably not actually getting warm. At some point I might do a little podcast on the RAMP protocol, which is a protocol [00:14:00] that we use to design warmups.

It’s a raise, activate, mobilize, potentiate. You can find that super easily on Google. But if you’re taking You know, 30 to 60 minutes to warm up, then you’re probably not incorporating the ramp protocol. You’re probably not actually getting super warm. And one of the easiest ways to warm up for your training is to just build up towards what you’re actually going to do in the session.

So doing things that look a little bit like what you’re going to do in the session and things that get your heart rate up as well. So you are actually warm. So we focus on explosive near the beginning. So you might incorporate some little power things into the warmup, but then after the warmup, if you are working on anything specific, like specific jumps, uh, maybe squat jumps or something, if you’re trying to get more powerful, maybe Olympic lifts, if you have.

Um, some knowledge in those, something really powerful, you’d do that then. But again, if you’re totally new and you don’t have a coach, doing something like dumbbell squat jumps, some repeated box jumps, or something, something where you really produce force, some maximum height jumps, those are [00:15:00] really good things to do after the warm up.

And make sure you rest in between because otherwise you’re not going to be super powerful. So we’ve got warm up. Which probably has some pliers or jumps perhaps in it. Then we’ve got explosive work where we’re making sure we rest. Then we usually move into that squat hinge push pull. And then I usually finish with any accessories that are going to be a little bit more relevant to your needs as an athlete.

So this is where you could think, okay, perhaps you’re in a throwing sport, so it makes sense to add in a few more upper body exercises there. So it could be something getting a little bit more isolated because in general we move from bigger Um, Bigger exercises that target multiple muscle groups, big movements towards more isolated.

And then so once you’ve added in a few accessories there that you feel are going to help you with your sport, which are more relevant to your sport, you could always finish with something like core or mobility after. Can be quite good to finish with mobility if mobility is a goal for you, because you’re already warm by then, so it’s [00:16:00] a good time to start.

Uh, getting into your stretching. So this is usually the way I approach putting something together. I think what you should know is that as long as you are consistent and you are working on increasing the difficulty of things a little bit over time, you will get stronger whether or not you’re using machines, free weights, or barbells.

There’s no particular thing you have to use. Um, it can be hard when you’re hearing some of these weird theories that get thrown around on social media. You hear people say things like machines are trash, never use them. Or there’s these arbitrary rules about when you’re quote unquote allowed to pick up a barbell.

But there’s no right and wrong when it comes to which equipment we’re going to use. We use all modalities in both rehab settings and with pro athletes. So pick what you’re most comfortable trying to begin. And like I say, don’t underestimate the power of even like one one off session with a really good coach, strength and conditioning coach, or personal trainer to make sure that you feel confident in the gym as well.

So to recap, have a nice warm up. I usually put some [00:17:00] sort of easy jump supply metrics in there, plus something that’s going to look a little bit like what I actually want to work on after the warm up. Then this would be when we’d work on explosive or power movements. So some really, really easy ones would be something like dumbbell squat jumps.

Some of the more technical ones would be Olympic lift variations like cleans and snatches. Then after that, we usually move into our squat, hinge, push, pull. You can supersede here as well. You could always supersede a squat with a hinge or a squat with a push because a squat with a hinge can be a little bit harder because you’re doing two lower body exercises, but you could supersede a squat with a push and then a hinge with a pull.

Superset just means that, let’s say we’re doing three sets of each exercise. It could be that you do set one of the squat, followed by set one of the push, then you take a minute or two break depending on how hard it was, and then you do that again, squat and then push, take a break, squat and push, that’s what supersetting is.

Then after that. If you’ve still got some time, because I know as well if you’re new in the gym, [00:18:00] maybe you’re needing to be a little bit effective with your time, then you might want to add in some accessories that are going to be more relevant to your sport. So as I mentioned, if you’re in a throwing sport, then it might be some upper body things.

If you’re something like a runner, it could be some lower body things. And then after that, I usually finish with something like core and some mobility, again depending a little bit on your preferences and needs. If all of this sounds super overwhelming, I would say just remember squat, hinge, push, pull.

Even if you go in and you only choose four exercises to fill those categories, and you do three sets of somewhere between five to twelve reps, and you make sure especially that last one or two reps of each set is relatively hard to complete, you will get stronger. If you’ve got any questions about this, don’t hesitate to let me know.

We’re going to be back in a couple of weeks with an amazing podcast about speed training, sprinting, and agility. Thanks so much for listening to today’s episode. I hope you enjoyed it. Just a reminder that you can find further [00:19:00] podcast episodes at http://www.siobhan-milner.com/podcast. And this is where you can also find different ways of working with me if you head to http://www.siobhan-milner.com. Enjoy.