I ran across a copy of the Houston Texans players training manual. It is at:

http://www.houstontexans.com/fitness/images/training_manual010703.pdf

I found it quite interesting and some of the things it said about explosivness reminded me of things I could do to improve my xingyi. For example (page 41 of the manual) talks about:

"Kevin McNair, a respected speed development expert, states, ˇ§You donˇ¦t get speed through the air, you get it through the ground. Speed is down hard, back, and prolonged. Everything is behind the body.ˇ¨
When McNair says speed is down hard, he is referring to the front leg driving down toward the ground. Once the foot touches the ground it drives rearward, propelling the body forward. The longer (prolonged) the foot stays on the ground the greater the opportunity to propel the body forward.
Speed is gained from the point the foot touches the ground until it leaves. The longer it stays on the ground behind you the better. Stride length is increased behind you, not in front of you.

Vertical Displacement
Any vertical lift will force you to spend more time in the air, less on the ground, and slow you down. Eliminate the vertical component and youˇ¦ll increase speed.
Fast runners often appear to run effortlessly. Their heads remain level once they have reached the upright position. The term we use to describe this condition is vertical displacement. Your vertical displacement can be measured while you run. It is the distance that your head moves up and down above and below your standing height. The greater the curve, the more the vertical lift. Minimize vertical lift and you will run faster."

Although they are talking about football, some of that seems like equally good advice for improving one's martial arts explosiveness.

It was also interesting to read (pages 44-46) what the manual had to say about skill development and the fact that it is easy to get yourself into a negative skill transfer situation.

Anyway parts of it make interesting reading so I thought I would post the link.

Brian

Very interesting.

Thanks Brian.

Most definitely.

In many ways this is a great crash course in the basics of being a strong and fast athlete, two valuable motor qualities for many athletes.

There is a feud in the football world, and two camps are as follows: the HIT guys and the more traditional CSCS type strength guys. A thread on this topic would be out of the scope of this webpage i think, but suffice to say that Houston seems to fall into the 'HIT' camp, which usually advocates one set to failure, often on machines, at around a 10RM intensity. Every training regimen has it's pros and cons. Whenever you choose to implement one training method, it is always a matter of what do you gain versus what do you lose or what do you risk. Every choice must be a cost to benefit ratio choice. In this case the deficiencies of the the strength program is made up for nicely by the in depth nature of their energy system work (all the different sprint and shuttles). Be careful. This whole plan seems 1: out of context and 2: geared at the players as an audience. My suspicion is that it's not really the whole story, and that the players don't all train this way while under the tutelage of the strength coaches.

Know this: this program appears to advocate the great use of isolation exercises, machine based exercises, one set to failure, a constant rep range of 6-12 (always 12 for the legs it seems) and denies the effectiveness of plyometrics and olympic lifts. Periodiztion is either lacking entirely or overly simplified. This is all in direct opposition to what most of the best and most successful strength and conditioning coaches believe, in pretty much all sports, including football.