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Pinnacle Coaching

Frontside Mechanics Aren’t What You Think They Are

April 9, 2026

If you’ve spent any time around sprint coaching in the last decade, you’ve heard the phrase “frontside mechanics.” It’s become gospel. Get the knees up. Minimize backside. Keep everything in front of the body. Coaches repeat it like scripture, and the athletes nod along and exaggerate their knee drive until they look like they’re marching in a parade instead of sprinting. Here’s the problem: the research doesn’t say what most coaches think it says. What the Research Actually Found The landmark study here is Haugen and colleagues, published in 2018 in the International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance. Twenty-four competitive sprinters, 3D motion capture with 21 cameras at 250 Hz, analyzing both acceleration and max velocity phases. This isn’t a small convenience sample filmed on an iPhone. It’s rigorous. The findings surprised a lot of people. Several frontside and backside variables — thigh angle at lift-off, knee angle at

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Stop Guessing, Start Measuring: Velocity-Based Training in Practice

October 20, 2025

If you’re still programming by percentage alone, you’re leaving speed on the table. Percentages are illusion. Bar speed is truth. Many coaches still cling to the spreadsheet like it’s gospel instead of a guide: 80% for 5×5, add weight, rinse and repeat. That’s passable for strength in the off-season, but a recipe for disaster in-season. Athletes don’t show up the same every day. Some days they’re flying and some days they’re barely alive. If they hobble into the weight room sore from games and practices, grinding reps are an injury waiting to happen. That’s why velocity-based training (VBT) keeps winning when you care about jumps, sprints, and actual performance instead of gym glory. We’ve been advocates of VBT for over 10 years now, because it just works. It puts a speedometer on every rep so you can load by output, not mood. Tons of research exists on this, and it

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Focus Creates Success.

October 14, 2025

Focus On One Thing. Most people don’t fail because they lack talent or drive. They fail because they spread themselves too thin. They chase ten goals at once, get halfway to each, and finish none. The human brain isn’t built for constant context switching. Every time you change direction, you lose energy and momentum. Focus is what separates progress from frustration. If you want results that matter, you need to narrow your field. Pick one mission and burn everything else down until it’s done. That doesn’t mean ignoring the rest of your life. It means putting your attention where it counts most. Start by identifying the single goal that will move everything else forward. Maybe it’s mastering your sleep so your recovery, strength, and focus all improve. Maybe it’s locking in a consistent training schedule that becomes non-negotiable. Find the one domino that knocks the rest down. Once you have

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Discipline Is Forged, Not Found

August 26, 2025

Everyone talks about consistency. Everyone wants it. Few people actually have it. And it’s not because they’re lazy or unmotivated — it’s because they expect discipline to show up when they need it instead of training it like a muscle. The truth is simple: motivation is a spark. It burns out. It’s unreliable. Discipline is built. If you want results, create a system that makes action the default when you are tired, busy, or unmotivated. “Discipline is doing what needs to be done, even when you don’t feel like it.” Start with this approach: 1. Win the first decision of the day.Morning is your first rep. Stack an automatic win as soon as you’re up. Make the bed. Drink water. Five minutes of movement. One clean rep to set the tone. You just told the day who’s in charge. 2. Shrink the task until it’s impossible to skip.Overwhelmed by a

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Stop Waiting, Start Doing

August 19, 2025

You’re waiting for the right time.When work slows down.When the kids are older.When the weather’s better.When you “feel ready.” That time is never coming. The people who actually make progress aren’t working in perfect conditions. They’re lifting in garages with no heat in winter. They’re meal prepping in 20 minutes before work. They’re training after a long day when their body says no but their mind says go. If you keep waiting for the ideal setup, you’ll still be stuck in the same spot next year. Action beats thought. Every time. People see the finished product of success on camera and call them lucky. What they don’t see are the years behind the scenes, acting instead of waiting, of doing something consistently instead of nothing. How do you do that for yourself? You train yourself to act in less-than-perfect conditions. That’s how you build a mindset that survives the chaos

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Didn’t Go Your Way? Good.

August 13, 2025

Words I like: “Doing hard things is an underrated form of self-respect.” You slipped on your diet again.Good.You missed the lift.Good.You’re exhausted, sore, behind on sleep, and wondering if you’re cut out for this.Good. That voice in your head? The one that says you’re failing? It’s trying to give you an out. It wants comfort, not growth. But growth lives on the far side of discomfort. If you’ve never wanted to quit, you haven’t worked hard enough yet. Jocko Willink, retired U.S. Navy SEAL officer and leadership author, has it right. Something goes wrong? Good. Didn’t get what you wanted? Good. Welcome to the forge. Because when you can look a setback in the eye and say “Good,” you take its power away. Now it’s just fuel. Your fat loss stalled?Good. Now you get to build your consistency when the easy wins are gone. You got injured?Good. You’ll finally take

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Stop Losing Players in Week One: How Smart Coaches Keep Teams Healthy

August 11, 2025

No one wins a championship in week one, but you can lose athletes there. Every August I see the same pattern: motivated players, rusty tissues, long practices, and conditioning tests pulled from a bygone era. The result is predictable. Hamstrings bark, groins tighten, and tendons complain. The hard work isn’t the problem. The timing and the dosage are. Underprepared athletes are not lazy by definition. Some of them might be. But others had limited access, some played a different sport, and a few are simply new to structured training. What they share is a capacity gap. The program asks for more than their current tissues, nervous system, and skill execution can provide. You can spot it quickly. Soreness lingers past 48 to 72 hours. Output drops across repeated sessions. Technique falls apart late in practice. Small strains and tendon flare-ups appear early. That isn’t “mental weakness.” It’s a mismatch between

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Building Explosive Power with Bands and Chains

August 1, 2025

Still unmatched after 30 years. I first started using bands and chains back in 2003. Every week I would carry 60 lb of chains into the college fitness center, in my gym bag, hook them up with carabiners, then carry a pair of 100 lb dumbbells all the way to the squat rack, loop 2″ wide bands around that, and squat. I got looked at like I was an alien. I still remember the stare I got from the front desk guy the first time I carried them in. When they heard the chains in the bag and asked me to open it up, I could tell they wanted to ask me what the hell I was doing. Back then nobody knew what bands or chains were, except in a hardware store. But I did. They were my secret weapons. Painstakingly searched out before Youtube or Facebook existed, I found

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Positional Weakness: The Real Reason Athletes Get Injured

July 30, 2025

It’s a common sight in high schools across the country: an athlete posting huge squat and deadlift numbers yet pulling a muscle or blowing an ACL on a routine field cut. How does that happen? The answer usually comes down to positional weakness: being powerful in some positions but alarmingly unstable in others. The worst part is, good athletes are great at masking these weaknesses on the field…right up until they get hurt. That makes it hard to assess their overall stability on the field. Coaches and parents often praise a “big, strong kid,” but that label can mask poor movement quality. Athletes who rely on brute force without control develop blind spots at specific joint angles or planes of motion. Those blind spots are where most noncontact injuries occur. Consider an athlete who excels at the “big basics.” I very often see a kid with monster bilateral lifts who

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Fail. Adapt. Win. Repeat.

July 29, 2025

Failure is inevitable. But that’s not the problem. The problem is how we define it. Every plateau you hit, every lift you miss, every time you screw up your meal plan and inhale a pizza like it owed you money – that’s part of the process. You’re supposed to fail. You’re not supposed to quit. But somewhere along the line, we got soft. Failure became something to fear, not something to use. We worship the highlight reel, forget the grind that built it, and get surprised when real progress requires some bruises. Look, the only difference between the people who succeed and the people who don’t is that the successful ones didn’t stop when it got hard. Everyone wants success to feel like a straight climb. But real growth doesn’t look like that. It looks like two steps forward, one step sideways, a faceplant, then a breakthrough. Over and over

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