Functional Path Training

Venice VB Update

We  just started our third block of the 09 off - season training program. The progress these young ladies have made has been nothing short of spectacular. This is really a special group.They attack their training with gusto,but most importantly with concentration and fierce intensity. They have build a tremendous foundation to move forward. This is the third year in the program for our core group of rising seniors. The progress of this group affirms that training is cumulative. We have been able to incorporate some fairly sophisticated training because they have such a good foundation. I have incorporated the concepts pioneered by French sport scientist Giles Cometti,arrticulated in his book La Pliometrie. Explosive power has significantly increased and will continue to increase. We are just strating on the "Get Fast" theme so we will have to incorporate more intra workout recovery to insure the quality. Another big factor in the step up in the training is the move from training in the parking lot to an actual weight room. I love weight rooms without walls,but a real weight room affords capabilities way beyond what were
able to do outside. These girls are on a mission, it is fun  to be along for the ride. The highpoint of my day and week is when I get to work with this group. They remind of a group I had at Santa Barabara Hi gh school in the mid 19 70's.
 

Problem Solving 101

I learned a long time ago to never judge a book by its cover or its size. This little book (111 pages) is a gem. It was originally written for Japanese school children to help shift them from memorization to critical thinking skills. If you want to sharpen your critical thinking skills this is a must read. I think it should be required reading for doctors. One of my mantras has always been, simplicity yields complexity, this book epitomizes that. Practical, easy to read and even easier to follow and implement.

Athleticism

Athleticism is the ability to perform athletic movements (run, jump & throw) at optimum speed, with precision, style and grace within the context of your sport. In many ways it is easy to isolate out a component of athletic fitness and focus on the development of that component to the detriment of overall athleticism. As athletic development coaches it behooves us to always keep the big picture at the forefront of our thinking. I think Australian discus thrower Dani Samuels (The youngest women to make the Olympic final) sums it up quite nicely: "I think of myself as not a thrower who trains like a thrower, I train like an athlete. I look after my diet, see a nutritionist, do a lot of cross training. It's not just throw and lift, throw and lift, which is (what) the old-school throwers do. I'm an athlete." Getting to see her train on 07 I can attest to the athleticism she exhibits. This is precisely why I think the term Athletic development is a more accurate term than strength and conditioning. Athletic development is about the integration of all components of athletic development to produce results in the competitive arena, not artificial meaningless measure in isolated activities that have little or no carryover to the actual sport performance.

Recognize the Past

A friend of mine sent this to me yesterday. I think the same could be said about Athletic Development methods and concepts.

John Larralde

Just wanted to update everyone on John's condition. He has made remarkable progress. He is out of intensive and in a regular. I spoke to him yesterday for a couple of minutes. He is very weak and still not out of the woods. Thanks for your thoughts and prayers. Please keep him in your thoughts and prayers as he still has a tough road ahead of him.

Kenyon Colleg Swimming

Congratulations to the team and the coaches at Kenyon for their NCAA Championship victories last week. For the men’s team it was the 30^th straight championship, for the women it was their third straight and 27^th NCAA championship. The 30 straight is the longest streak in any division in any sport. That is almost impossible to comprehend. Jim the Steen the architect of all this is truly an amazing individual. His focus and  dedication is off the charts. Yesterday when I called him to congratulate him all he wanted to talk about was what we needed to modify in the dryland program for next and what we needed to do to get one particular swimmer to get specifically stronger. 27 of the championships’ were won preparing in a six lane shallow pool that most high schools would consider subpar. It has only been the last three years that they have been in their state of the art new facility. There is a lesson here, it is not about facilities, it is about people, great coaches interacting with great students turning them into great swimmers.

Job Preservation

A conversation with a friend the other day reminded me of how many S&C coaches are into job preservation. Instead of doing the best job that they can and letting the chips fall where they may they are always looking over their shoulders and doing the bare minimum to preserve their jobs. It is especially prevalent in pro sports where the monetary compensation encourages this. They work hard to get the jobs, get a decent salary and then sit in their office or their pristine weight rooms and wait for the athletes to come to them to train. They design benign programs that do not challenge the athlete because they are fearful that if anyone were injured they would be blamed. The athletes would never improve with those programs, but they won’t get hurt either. They live in mortal fear that someone will question their program. They are beholden to the trainers and the team medical staff because they have not kept up on the research and current practices. The excuse for not learning is that they are too busy working to learn and implement new ideas. If they do learn they gather together with their cronies in a professional organization and pass around the same old worn out ideas, in essence mutual intellectual masturbation.

Frankly, when I look across the spectrum of professional sport and see that many teams have head and assistant S&C coaches as well as two or three interns, then I see players from those teams going off to performance centers where they have no accountability to the club that pays their salary, that reflects on the quality and expertise of the teams S&C coaches. That should not occur! Frankly the S&C coaches are encouraging this by not providing the best programs. Why is it so hard to give 25 major league players an individual program for each day? How many teams do that? You would be surprised. How many teams allow personal trainers to work with their players at the clubs facilities? (Probably less than before, but it still goes on).

In some of the situations I have seen the S&C coaches work harder and create more stress for themselves by focusing on job preservation, than if they just focused on doing their jobs. I told one guy to stop talking about and worrying what everyone else in the league was paid and just do his job and then his pay would increase. My advice to those of you thinking of going into high profile positions or if you are there now is that make sure you define the parameters of your job. If you can’t do the job to the best of your ability then don’t take the job. Rather than compromise my beliefs I have walked from two high profile sports jobs because they took away my ability to do the job to the best of my capabilities. I could never be satisfied with just preserving my job. Each morning you have to look in the mirror and ask yourself if you can be better today than you were yesterday. You owe that to yourself and those that you work with.

3 R's

In skill learning and observing the 3 R’s are essential. The 3 R’s are Routine, Repetition and Refinement. Establish a routine, a pattern a set time and place to work on the skill. Repeat the skill and then refine your adaptation of the technical model. The later is important because to often in teaching new skills coaches use a robotic paint by numbers approach that results in mechanical movement. Remember the goal is to give the athlete the ability with the new skill to more effectively and solve movement problems that fall in the domain of that skill. Go from stable predictable activities to unstable, random and chaotic activities. Skillful athletes are not mechanical, they are rhythmic and flowing. Maybe that can’t be taught but it can be encouraged. Design progressions that encourage problem solving and creativity. Allow the athletes to express themselves, encourage them to explore the parameters of the skill, find new ways.

More Thoughts & Prayers

John is fighting. He is still in very critical condition. I am sure that all the thoughts and prayers are helping. He is an amazing guy. if anyone can prevail it will be John. Thanks for the thoughts and emails. I have passed those on to his family.

Train for the Game

This article from the New York Times Sports page nails it. Even though this is about baseball this also could be about the NBA and the NFL. As a nation we have gotten away from fundamentals and training for the game. It seems we are into style and flashiness rather than fundamentals. It takes focus and concentration to work on the basics. Contrary to what many of you think I do not dislike baseball, I just dislike the way it is taught (or not taught) at the professional level. I actually watch WBC games when Korea or Japan play. They are athletic, they hustle and they are fundamentally sound.  For the whole article go to this link: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/19/sports/baseball/19wbc.html?_r=1&ref=sports

I selected some quotes from the article that I thought highlighted the differences in the approach to the game.

“They’re the Harlem Globetrotters,” said Weidemaier, who is scouting the San Diego bracket of the World Baseball Classic for the Los Angeles Dodgers. “They’re not flashy or showy, I don’t mean that. But the footwork and timing. They’re going full bore, full speed. They go through every play that needs to be made in the game. They’ll get more ground balls than a big-leaguer takes in a week.”

“Korea has a B.P. routine they use where it’s more about moving runners over and hitting to the opposite field,” said Orrin Freeman, a longtime scout for the Florida Marlins who has watched international baseball since the 1980s. “You watch a major league team in the United States take B.P., and most of the guys are just playing home run derby.”

As Japan and South Korea practiced before Tuesday’s game, Freeman watched from the loge seats behind first base. He saw a distinctly South Korean defensive drill in which any ball that goes beyond outfielder depth draws an infielder deep onto the grass to take a relatively short cutoff throw, in large part because third-base coaches tend to hold runners if cutoff men already have the ball. After South Korea left the field, Japanese infielders took fungoed grounders at almost infield-in depth, pushing their reflexes so the real game would feel easier, not unlike how a hitter might swing three bats in the on-deck circle.

“They work their craft a whole lot more than we do,” Ducey said. “They work on their swings instead of being pull, pull, pull.” Asked how a typical major leaguer might respond to pregame practices as intense as those of Asian teams, Ducey said: “They’d feel like it was overkill — ‘I don’t want to get gassed.’ Major league players, not all of them, but they do enough to get by because physically they’re such gifted athletes.”

“The Japanese, they are far superior fundamentally,” said Ducey, the Blue Jays’ coordinator of Pacific Rim operations. “They take thousands of ground balls a week, not just the young guys, all of them. The Japanese run hard down the line all the time. Koreans, it’s a little haphazard at times. And Koreans are generally more physical, more aggressive at the plate. They’re more suited for our game.”

I remember having a conversation with a former Major League All Star Player turned coach about this after watching the Tokyo Giants work out in 1987 Instructional League. I thought the workout was impressive, he thought it was stupid. He said they were working on things that never happen. I thought that they were being thorough. I guess it is all in the eye of the beholder.  Same thing in the NBA, there are more and more foreign players because they are fundamentally sound. They can shot, have great footwork and know how to play the game. Great piece on the high school player of the year who opted to go to Europe to play on HBO this week. They showed some game footage and he was out of control, very poor movement skills, yet they are still talking about him as a NBA lottery pick.