Functional Path Training

Good for the goose, good for the gander

Come on Bob Bowman, a long time ago I learned that what is good for the goose is good for the gander. You didn’t complain last year when your swimmer was wearing last year’s fastest suit. Is turnabout fair play? Your guy lost, the other guy swam faster – give credit to the swimmer like credit was given to Phelps last year. I could not agree more that the suits have made a mockery of the sport. Why didn’t you threaten to boycott the Olympics last year, you and everyone else knew that the suits had changed the sport last year. Very simply $$$$$. If you and Phelps were not getting big bucks from Speedo you would change suits in a heartbeat!

Preseason Practice – Where Championships Are Lost

Preseason, two or three times a day practice is almost here in American football, collegiate soccer and volleyball. Each of the past three years at close to the same I have posted on this. In my 40 years of coaching and my additional four years of enduring six years of two and sometimes three a day practices as a football player I am convinced that this is where more championship are lost than won, especially in today’s world where the athletes have supervised out of season training. Watch closely over the next month and count the athletes who are actually injured during this time, usually enough time missed to compromise their ability to play in the first couple of games or matches. Why the injuries – very simply from cumulative fatigue probably more neural than metabolic. This type of fatigue is pervasive, slowing of reactions and responsiveness to the ground means that a position or a play the athlete would be able make in a less fatigued state now the movement or play can’t be executed. Basically if you think about it logically the athletes workload has now been increased 50%. What’s wrong with that picture? No one in their right mind would think of going from two hours of training a day to four hours – yet that is what we are doing. Think! Think! Think! ( By the way the same thing happens in Baseball spring training, but the workload is increased more like 150%)

Then add testing to see if they are in shape or mentally tough. Another nail in the coffin! What happens if they aren’t in shape? Do you punish them and run them more to get them in shape? That is traditionally what has been done. The net effect of this is dead legs that probably come back to life in med October when half the season is over and all the injuries heal.

Then there is heat stress. When are we going to recognize that this may  be one of the biggest limiting factors in sport performance. Despite all the research and knowledge in this area, the translation to the field is still in the dark ages. Go watch an American football practice and you will see what I mean. They still have “water “breaks” where all the players run over and gather around the trough like a bunch of sheep. Why not give each player an individual bottle with a properly formulated sports drink and educate the player that they must drink four bottles during a practice. This should be carefully monitored and enforced.

I know that many teams have now gone to taking every third practice off. That may be a step in the right direction but there is so much more that can be done. How are monitoring each layers training load? Some don’t need the break, other do. Isn’t the goal to get the whole team ready for the start of the season with each player in an optimal state of readiness to start the season? Unfortunately this phase takes on the look of death march with the goal survival. I think we need to reframe the whole approach to this phase. Make these teaching camps. This is the last phase of preparation for competition, all training should have progressively built to this point. This is a time to be sport and position specific, to emphasize high quality and intense work. It is time of fine tuning.

Form Running – The Baby Elephant Waltz

Have you ever watched offensive and defensive linemen do so called “form running’ drills? It is the most nonathletic disjointed looking activity you could imagine, certainly the epitome of mindless exercise for this population. I think the players just go through the motions because they intuitively know it has nothing to do with the ability to play their position, it is another task they must complete before they get to the stuff that matters. Various permutations of from running including high knee skips, high knee running and pawing are predicated on having time in the air to recover the leg through in the step cycle – this is the opposite of what a lineman wants, for that matter virtually any athlete who has to change direction wants to do. To be effective they need to play with their feet close to ground in order to optimize their ability to change direction and keep their center of gravity over and inside their base of support. If you are using these types of drills for anyone besides a sprinter, jumper or hurdler in track and field you are probably wasting your time. I have heard the argument that they are good for hip mobility, yes they are, but there are better drills that have positive carry over to change of direction sports.

So what should you do? Jump rope, do ladder drills with short ladders, in short drills that emphasize getting the feet back to the ground with the hips over the base of support. Be creative and imaginative; devise drills that emphasize quickness in three to five second bursts. Drills that promote triple flexion of the ankle/knee/hip – the key to playing low. Playing low is rewarded in multidirectional sports.

Rolling Ropes

David Weck, the inventor of the BOSU Balance trainer sent me a DVD of a new concept he has been working on. It is called rolling ropes, what a great idea. Innovation is doing new things with old ideas and tools, which is what David has done. The jump rope a simple tool that I have let fall to the bottom of tool box used in an entirely different way. Go to the BOSU Fitness web site and you will see some good video clips of the concept. http://www.bosufitness.com/duplicate-of-the-hands-the-tools-the-bosu-effect He has reinvented the job rope as a tool to use without jumping to enhance rhythm, awareness, connectivity and linkage. I have been playing with this the past few days in my workout between exercises and warm-up, I can see where it could be a module within the workout or the last step in a an active warm-up for overhead sports. I will definitely be using this with volleyball and for the swim teams I work with. It is FUNdamental and remember simplicity yields complexity.

Rediscovering Recess

I know in school recess was savior for me. Even though I was often picked last (Played a lot of right field) my self esteem remained intact and my determination to be a better athlete grew. More importantly as someone who could not sit still in the classroom I know it calmed me down. I always did better in the subject immediately after recess. It was heartening to watch the PBS News Hour http://www.pbs.org/newshour/newshour_index.html Friday night July 24 feature on recess. It is amazing to me how narrow and backward in their thinking the decision makers in education have become. On this piece they even figured out that recess was a good place for conflict resolution – well da! Frankly what bothered me about this piece was that the play had to be initiated and led by adults. At least it is a start. In another piece on News Hour, Arne Duncan the Secretary of education actually mentioned art, theater and of all things physical education, what a step forward. We need more recess; we need mandatory physical education K through 12. Look around and you will see why. Teachers know this but they are judged not on what the kids learn but on how they perform on standardized tests. We are turning out a generation of dolts who can’t think, are slothful and unhealthy. The solutions are simple, but require administrators and teachers to get out of their comfort zone and push for the change that is needed. Recess and physical education will go a long way toward solving the health care crisis. Right now it is not health care it is disease care, lets teach good health habits when they can be taught, that would be an inexpensive positive start.

SpikeKey Beach Annual

If you have any interest in beach Volleyball or for that matter volleyball in general download the 2009 SpikeKey Beach Annual at http://tinyurl.com/spikekey09 Megan Wallin one of the players that I work with did a tremendous job putting this together from getting sponsors, to layout, to content – it is excellent.

100 Books – Goal Achieved

As regular readers of this blog have probably figured out I love to read. For some reason, not 100% sure why I set a goal last September to read one hundred in the subsequent year. This past week I achieved my goal with five weeks to spare. Now I am aiming for twelve more by September 1. As I look back over the list here are the ones that stand out:

In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan

The Gamble by Thomas Ricks

Talent is Overrated by Geoff Colvin

Strokes of Genius by L. Jon Wertheim

Born to Run by Christopher McDougall

In the Graveyard of Empires by Seth G. Jones

Dartfish

I had the opportunity to go through a day of training in the latest Dartfish software. http://www.dartfish.com I was blown away with the changes they have made. I was an early adopter of Dartfish in the winter of 2001. I actually used quite extensively over the next four years and then got away from using it. When I returned this last spring I found that I had become out of touch with it and needed to be retrained. This last week was my fist opportunity for training with the new version the Team Pro 5.0. It is much more intuitive and practical. There is so much that can be done my head is spinning. I wish I could afford to hire someone to just do Dartfish analysis fulltime, I think it would be that valuable. (This is not a paid endorsement, I also own Silicon Coach.)  I think that one of my biggest shortcoming, as a coach has been my inability (possibly reluctance) to use video. I have relied too much on my coaching “eye” that is way to biased. With what we know  about skill acquisition this medium is indispensible. I am vowing to make use of the power of this software going forward. I also have a channel on Dartfish TV that I am going to make extensive use of starting in September www.dartfish.tv. I need the month of August to get up to speed with all of this.

The Moon Landing - Where were you?

This is a moment I will never forget. Of all places we watched the moon landing in the Yankee Clipper bar in Santa Barbara, California. I was with John Larralde, John O’Malley and Eric Stocking, our version of the rat pack. We used to go to the Yankee Clipper occasionally because they had a girl who could really sing for entertainment and an aquarium with a really ugly frog that was twice the size of any of the fish. I think the attraction that night was the larger TV, it must have been at least thirty inches, black and white. As they say those were the days. When you stop to think about this accomplishment, it was truly amazing. The fact that this was accomplished without supercomputers and all the technology we have today is unbelievable. The personal courage and expertise of those astronauts is something I did not realize at the time.

Walter Cronkite

The passing of Walter Cronkite certainly represents a passing on an era. For those of my generation who grew up with Walter Cronkite he represented a measured consistent approach to reporting the news. In many ways he defined our generation by his reporting of the events that defined the Sixties and Seventies. I will never forget his reporting of president Kennedy’s assassination and the moon landing. He represents a different era. I think he certainly knew the responsibility he had. He told us what we needed to know, not necessarily what we wanted to hear. Remember in his day there was no cable news, only three major networks, what he said carried a tremendous amount of influence. He was one of the first public figures to recognize and speak out on the futility of the Vietnam war, to do that in the climate that existed at the time took real courage. I thank Walter Cronkite for my passion for history. Growing I did not watch much television but I would seldom miss his programs “You are There”  a weekly reenactment of historical events and “Twentieth Century.” Those programs brought history alive. This morning NPR called him the most trusted man in America.  “That’s the way it is.”