Matthew Rains Strength & Conditioning

Matthew Rains Strength & Conditioning Co-Director and Head of Athletic Development at AVOLVE Performance

06/11/2025

Linear progression is a myth

Otherwise everyone would be olympians 🤷🏻‍♂️

Athletes will look at their progress in the gym and being able to increase the weight on the bar week to week and see it as a standard for progression, but in most cases they simply increasing the intensity at which they train at or reducing the reps in reserve.

When consistently utilising velocity trackers and timing gates, we see progression in its true form, and it’s a little more chaotic than first assumed, however, gives us valuable information about whether our training programs are actually working or if things need to be adjusted.

Not measuring training consistently, assumes you’re getting better, when in reality you might be beating your head against the wall for months and years on end.

30/10/2025

Band assisted jumps are commonly touted to be an effective stimulus for developing greater speed and contact times.

This little experiment set out to see how much of a difference the band made to not only contact time but also force production for bilateral jumps.

I found that the bands didn’t achieve a dramatic or significant difference in contact times, even performing slightly worse for one athlete, compared to unassisted pogos as well as reductions in force production with assisted pogos.

Now, movement strategies are very unique and we can probably achieve some faster contact times with a few cues which may affect the results (also often resulting in less force and lower jump heights), but, without instruction, it was interesting to see not much of a difference on time spent on the floor here.

There may be a few possible reasons for this result from the top of my head I can think of:
1) repeated jump performance is heavily dictated by coordinative factors - having low exposure to band assistance may impact that ability - more exposure may influence this?
2) reduction in body weight load and landing forces may reduce elastic energy stored and sequential stiffness created
3) Achieving low ground contact times is a complex skill that goes beyond just simply a reduction in bodyweight loading

Or even just luck and needing a bigger sample size (particularly those newer to plyos or trying with single leg maybe have greater difference). Either way, if you’re looking to progress your plyos - maybe a band assistance doesn’t achieve the massive decreases in ground contact times you may expect and can also take away the amount of force we’re looking to transfer in those short time frames.

Keen to hear your thoughts in the comments below ⬇️

22/10/2025

ARE HATFIELDS CHEATING?

Now full disclosure, my bias sits with the Hatfield set up. I’m a fan of them and see them as a nice tool to take away the stability of a lift to maximise the load used and force generated in a particular position.

I’m sure there’s plenty of limitations with this small n=1 study and probably should have tested at heavier loads (couldn’t be assed loading 260kg again) but from this data, it’s probably fair to say that Hatfields will still require you to work hard and will be a good stimulus for force development.

20/10/2025

Here’s a case study of how our testing data highlighted some qualities that needed some extra focus in our initial training block and the strategies we use to develop them.

From our data, we know that you can’t just throw a bunch of plyos on athletes and hope they stick. You need to choose specific option that will stress that trait that you want to develop.

02/10/2025

Plyos can help create force capabilities, positions and coordination skills to help prepare for athletic movements like acceleration, max velocity and change of direction.

In my experience, athletes who report that they need to develop in these positions tend to also struggle with the mentioned associated plyometric/jump movements and benefit from exposure to them.

I like to look at acceleration requiring large amounts of horizontal displacement, generally having longer ground contact times to top speed and requiring greater initial concentric force to overcome inertia.

Max velocity requiring very fast ground contact times, foot recovery, rhythm, coordination and stiffness to be able to handle the extremely fast nature of it.

Change of direction to have big deceleration & eccentric demands, positioning, reactivity and high force capabilities in a variety of short & deeps ranges of motion.

24/09/2025

Does the force velocity curve tell the whole story?

Can the middle build the top?

Some interesting results from my mid thigh pull test yesterday, a true test of maximal strength due to having no velocity, time or much of a skill demand to elicit high forces.

This PB was achieved despite having no exposure to loads >85% 1RM, velocities under 0.6m/s or maximal isometric pushes for over a 12 month period.

It’s a common train of thought that to build maximal force capabilities then we need be exposed to high forces via accelerating heavy loads slowly (like in a heavy squat) - which is absolutely true - but may not be the only method.

High forces can also be created through high rates of acceleration with a variety of masses (including just our own bodyweight)

Heavy strength training will always be a fantastic tool to build high force capabilities, but, as many experience, can have its drawbacks and diminishing returns as you get more experienced with it.

Going from a 200kg squat to a 210kg squat will be marginally performance differences and may take a lot of resources to achieve.

Spreading out your training to cover other high force areas may not only yield continued results in maximal force capabilities, but may also improve much more vital acceleration and velocity based qualities with less beaten up bodies.

17/09/2025

Here’s a breakdown on some of the movement strategies ._ utilised to achieve a crazy 1.634s 10 yard dash (1.644s shown) and take out the fastest time at

It should be noted that these strategies are heavily impacted by the physical capabilities the athletes possesses (not something a cue can always fix short term). Although they are commonly seen amongst a lot of great accelerators, there is no such thing as a perfect technical running model that every athlete be forced into.

11/09/2025

BW calf raises or putting dumbells on your knee for seated calf raises just aren’t enough for high speed athletes looking to improve their plantar flexion capabilities.

The calf can tolerate 6-8x your body weight load and is the muscle that cops most of the brunt during running activities (up to 60%)… that’s heaapppsss.

The ironic thing is, calves tend to be an after thought and get missed a lot in most athletes programs that I chat to when first coming to our facility (usually associated with some pretty low calf strength results).

Loading the calves is just such low hanging fruit in my opinion. From my experience, you don’t even need to do a lot of it to get some great results. A few sets once or twice a week can yield some outrageous results.

10/09/2025

If you’re keen on a free plyo program - drop PLYO in the comments and I’ll DM you the link 💪🏼

Small landing ➡️ Big landings
Double leg ➡️ Single leg
Single effort ➡️ Continuous

Having an understanding of these principles will give you a roadmap of plyometric demands which will dictate will where to start with an athlete and where to end up.

For example, a pogo (double leg, continuous and low landing height) will be a lot less demanding then a triple hop for distance (single leg continuous high landing).

When an athlete reaches these more advanced/end stage plyometric exercises they shouldn’t just remain only doing these exercises. A well rounded plyometric program will adopt plyos from all ends of this continuum to varying degrees of emphasis.

Where abouts and when you put them in the schedule will be heavily dictated by the demands they incur.

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