Just as there is Maslow’s pyramid and the food pyramid, coach Tony Holler has developed his own pyramid aimed at performance in situational sports. Tony Holler is a track and field coach and a football and basketball physical trainer. He works at Plainfield North High School. He is also a member of the Illinois Track & Field Hall of Fame and co-director of the Track Football Consortium with Chris Korfist. But above all, Tony Holler is known for being the author of the “Feed the Cats” training methodology.

According to the design of this pyramid, at the base is the first thing we have to create in an athlete: rest, recovery, sleep, nutrition and hydration. This means it’s about being as healthy as possible by acquiring good habits in all of these areas. All of this is known as invisible training. Tony Holler affirms that you cannot advance to the next level without having all these aspects under control.

At the next level of the pyramid is max speed, which also allows you to improve acceleration. This is something to take into account before being able to perform sports specific movements included within agility (third level).

Recapping:

1. As an athlete, first of all you have to create favorable conditions to rest, recover, sleep and eat.
2. Next you have to train to be as fast as possible.
3. And then you can start doing the agility work, sports specific movements, and start reverse engineering the sport itself. Don’t start doing all of this until you are a great athlete after having mastered the previous levels.

Bibliographic references:

• Holler T. [Coach Tony Holler]. (2024). Speed & Strength Training Pyramid [Video]. Recovered from https://www.youtube.com/shorts/mztTbkKXMg4