Functional Path Training

The Road to Success

Rereading The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle. This book is a game changer. On the second read I have found so many pearls of wisdom that I missed on the first read that my head is buzzing. I am so psyched to get to hear him speak in three weeks at USOTC. Bottom line is forget nature, people are not born great, they earn and learn it. True in sport, music, math, you name it. The road to success is down Myelin street. To develop more Myelin requires targeted mistake focused practice in order to be effective. Yes mistake focused, you learn from pushing the envelope, making mistakes and correcting them. According to Coyle “struggle is not an option: it’s a biological requirement.” You must have incredible passion and persistence and a clear vision of the goal, because Myelin street is a rough road with many obstacles. Passion and persistence will help you stay the course, because it takes time. No quick fixes or crash programs, long term commitment. Bottom line is that genetic endowment is a copout, a losers lament. Deep purposeful practice, a spark to ignite your passion in pursuit of a goal and good guidance in the form of coaching or mentoring and you have a chance. It certainly confirms what I have seen in my life and professional career.

Why do it if we know better?

Why is everyone so infatuated with the ham/glute raise and the Russian/Nordic hamstring curls? These are both exercises that I threw out of my toolbox years ago, because I found that they were ineffective and predisposed the athletes to injury. I am not sure what people trying to accomplish with them? They are both training muscles. I prefer to train movements that stress muscles in an appropriate manner for the desired training objective. No doubt the hamstring muscle group are very important in movement, but they do not work in isolation, nor do they act in slow eccentric moments and they work both at the knee and the hip. I hear another buzzword as justification, they work the posterior chain – so what? How about the total kinetic chain and fitting the hamstring in that context? The hamstrings must be integrated and coordinated to be effective in doing their job.

To help understand exercise selection lets look at the three movement constants. Start with the body, which is what we are trying to change and get to adapt through training. The second constant is gravity, an ever-present force that constantly loads the system. Last but not least, the ground where we live work and play. Without applying force to the ground we cannot move. Lets look deeper into the body and look at hamstring function and its architecture that helps to determine its function. In running linear and multi directionally, the hamstrings main job is to decelerate the foreleg and in stance extend the hip, in addition along with gravity it also helps to flex the knee (not it’s primary job). Based on its architecture (the pennation angles within the muscle) it is designed for speed and large amplitude movements. They work in all three planes of motion, not just the sagittal plane. The hamstrings work synergistically with all the muscle of the hip and the leg to produce the required efficient movement. They are like any good team player; they can’t do their job without help.

Now lets look at the specific exercises. The ham/glute raise isolates the hamstrings through a limited range of motion. It works in a horizontal orientation against gravity. No use of the ground and slow speed of movement. The Russian/Nordic hamstring curl basically isolates the hamstring at one joint, the knee through a very limited range of motion. Very slow, almost grinding eccentric movement that places tremendous abnormal stress on the distal hamstring. No use of the ground. Based on basic exercise selection criteria both these exercises fail on all counts.

What should you do? It is very simple, no fancy names, minimal equipment needs, just manipulation of the three movement constants. Lunges and lunge and reach in all three planes of motion with appropriate resistance. Step-ups with both a low and a high box, simple, no frills, integration into he total chain. These exercises train force reduction, force production and have high proprioceptive demand. They involve triple extension and triple flexion at a relatively high speed. Simple, get all the parts working together to produce efficient flowing movement that will transfer into the competitive arena.

Do what Dylan does

Dylan is the two year old son of one of the therapists at Thedacare in Appleton Wisconsin. Just before I was going to do a staff development session this past week I was watching Dylan play in the clinic. It was amazing. He is 28 pounds and he picked up a ten pound med ball with perfect technique. Then he walked across the room carrying it. Then he squatted. Perfect, knees went where they had to go to control himself. Then he climbed, crawled reached and pulled. He moved in all planes used multiple joints, triple extension, triple flexion and had fun doing it. No instruction, no cueing all perfectly natural. This exhibition of great movement has stuck in my mind over the past several days, especially when I get questions about how to how to squat and how to lift. What happens along the way? What do we do to take these instincts away? For me it just reinforces the value and need for free play. Let them be kids. Start coaching them later, much later. Give them movement problems to solve and see how they go about it. Don’t worry about what is correct; let them follow their instincts and basic childlike movement patterns. It reminds of the line in the movie Seabiscuit when the trainer turned Seabiscuit out into the pasture so he could run free and be a horse again. Maybe we need to let out our athletes be kids again, more like Dylan.

Stimulating Thoughts from http://cathexis.posterous.com/

If you're going to be passionate about something, be passionate about learning. If you're going to fight something, fight for those in need. If you're going to question something, question authority. If you're going to lose something, lose your inhibitions. If you're going to gain something, gain respect and confidence. And if you're going to hate something, hate the false idea that you are not capable of your dreams. Daniel Golston

On the Road Again

Actually I am finally home after being on the road 22 of the last 27 days. That is why I have Willie Nelson's "On the Road Again" as the ring tone on my i phone. It has been tiring but rewarding. The last day of the journey was an opportunity to speak to the coaches at Southeat Polk High School in Des Monies Iowa and in the evening to do a presentation to the school community. It reminded me again of where my heart is, the high coach and the developmental athlete. The coaches and staff were eager to learn. They have the most incredible new facility that is really impressive, but as impressive as the facility was the people were more impressive. It always comes to that - people. Great coaches are the key and they certainly fit that description. Thanks to the Southeast Polk community for making the last day of my road trip really rewarding. It put an exclamation point on the 22 days of making music with my friends as Willie Nelson says. Looking forward to being home and getting caught up, need to focus on preparation for the GAIN Apprentorship that is shaping up to be the best ever. Also can't wait to get back to work with Venice Volleyball.

What is a workout?

The answer is simple with complex implications. A workout means to an end, therefore the means must be reconciled with the end. An actual workouyt is a series of carefully sequenced drills and exercises in pursuit of a specific goal. Teach the drill and exercise, achieve mastery, then move to the next logical step in the progression. The key words here are mastery and progression. Workouts build up to the competition goal step by step. Small baby steps before giant steps. Athletic excellence takes time. The individual workout is the basic building material for the whole system. Plan, execute and evaluate each workout in the context of the goal for the day and the overall training program. Remeber one workout cannot make an athlete, but one workout can break an athlete.

One key to Education Reform

I am passionate in my beliefs that education in our country needs serious reforms or our future as a nation is in peril. This is from today's New York Times editorial page regarding who grades the teachers. I would like to see detailed guided self evaluation and evaluation by peers. I know the teacher whose classroom was next to mine my first year teaching who showed movies four out of every five days was not doing his job. I know coaches who are on cell phones all the time during practice are not doing what they could do. We evaluate the students don't we? Teaching is not easy. To be a dedicated and successful teacher demands the same focus as any other profession.

The other question I have is who teaches the teachers? Who coaches the coaches? This needs a serious look.

New York Times, March 21, 2010 - Editorial

Who Grades the Graders?

While we had mixed feelings about President Obama’s plans for reworking the No Child Left Behind Act, he got it right when he called on the states to create credible systems for evaluating teachers and principals. But emulating the small number of schools that already have those systems will not be easy. It will mean creating a new school culture and redefining not just the roles of teachers, but the roles of principals and superintendents.

That message comes through in a study from the Center for American Progress, a Washington think tank that has recently been zeroing in on this aspect of school policy. The study, by the researchers Morgaen Donaldson and Heather Peske, takes an illuminating look at the evaluation systems used in schools in three high- performing charter networks that educate mainly poor and minority children.

Charter schools run on public money but are often exempt from union contracts that can influence how and when teacher evaluations are done. In many conventional schools, for example, tenured teachers are evaluated only once every three or four years. Evaluations typically consist of one or two short classroom visits. Nearly every teacher passes, even at failing schools, and an overwhelming majority get top ratings.

The charter networks have developed a “culture of accountability,” in which every teacher receives a major evaluation every year. Beyond that, teachers get frequent observations — sometimes even weekly — accompanied by detailed feedback throughout the academic year. Student test scores factor into the evaluation, but the teachers are also rated on planning, presentation and whether or not they reach disparate groups of students by exploring material from different vantage points.

Only one of the of three charter school organizations in the study operates union-organized schools. The other two regard teachers as at-will employees who can be released at any time. Nevertheless, dismissal rates are low for all three, partly because they provide newcomers with extensive supports and work to retain them once they master the job.

Doing this kind of work means reallocating resources. Two of the charter networks, for example, have invested heavily both in evaluators and in administrators who shoulder the burden of running school operations so that principals can spend more time helping teachers and attending to the education portion of the job. Given the high tests scores and graduation rates in these schools, these changes have been well worth it.

Rethinking Strength Training

The classical definition of strength as the ability to exert force defines strength in an isolated laboratory setting, but we need to apply strength to the sport or activity we are preparing for. That definition obviously has no time constraints in how long it takes to exert the force. I think Frans Bosch’s definition of strength, as coordination training with resistance is a step forward. But it needs a bit more qualification to adapt to all situations. I define strength training as coordination training with appropriate resistance. Appropriate is determined by the demands of the sport, the position or event, the qualities of the athlete and any injury prevention considerations. If you are a shot putter or an American football lineman then you will have to overcome significant external resistance to be effective. Therefore your strength training program should be biased toward heavier loading at certain key phases of the training year. Conversely if you are a sprinter or a tennis player the opposite is true. There will still be some loading, but in a very small proportion to the entire training program. The goal is strength that you can use in the actual sport activity, not just measureable strength in a controlled environment, although that is part of it. In both instances though the loading must be systematically varied to enhance coordination, which cannot be compromised if you want the strength gains to transfer.

Coordination implies the ability to reduce and produce force in a proprioceptively enriched environment in multiple planes of motion, at multiple joints all at the correct time to efficiently achieve execution of the required task in the least amount of time. Strength and coordination go hand in glove. The two qualities are more than complementary; they are the yin and yang. The challenge is determining appropriate load, it is more art than science. It is very labor intensive, demanding coaching on every rep and every set so that adjustments in loading can be made. Chasing numbers won’t do it. 1 rep maxes are cool but not an accurate reflection of applied strength gains outside of actual lifting. Maximums indicate trends, not transfer to the sport performance unless you are coaching power lifting or weight lifting.

My frustration starting with my time as an athlete and extending deep into my coaching career was to see a commensurate return in performance from the time I invested in strength training. In many respects this is an endless search, but thinking of strength training as coordination training with appropriate resistance is a giant step forward. If nothing else it will make us more efficient in utilization of time, along with a greater chance of transfer. We need to challenge ourselves in the area of strength training, to break away from conventional wisdom and seek out new possibilities for improvement. This approach has challenged me.

This is Cool!

I saw this on http://cathexis.posterous.com/ March 15, 2010

the real enemy.

The exact point of contact, physical and psychological, between man and his sport. That is where the game is. In the bleeding, broken hands refusing to let go because there's still time on the clock, time for one more play.  That is the test.  This measure of commitment and wherewithal of mind and body.  It is not on the scoreboard or in the victory lane.  Those illustrations exist only to make the game easier to understand from the bleachers, from living rooms, from the outside looking in. Only when we get close do we learn where the the game is truly played.  It is in this intimacy that takes us past the mano a mano, through the obvious battles with gravity, speed, and the elements, to expose the vulnerabilities alongside the victories.  And it is here that we discover one simple truth about competition:  In sport as in life, the real opponent, the only real enemy, is within. "don't let your fears stand in the ways of your dreams"  rick bolton and jim hancock. No Fear, 1995

Style versus Substance

I am at University of North Carolina doing some beta testing on the TrainTrak system with Men's soccer, working with Greg Gatz, the Head of Olympic Sports Strenght and Conditioning here. I have known Greg for over ten years and worked with him on several projects over the years. It is so cool to see a professional like this work. I could not help but think about all the internet gurus and self promoters who can't hold a candle to Greg while we were monitoring the training session yesterday. Looking at the championship banners hanging in the weight room I could not help but notice all the national championship teams he has worked during his tenure at UNC, very impressive. But possible more impressive to me is that despite all this success he is always trying to improve and get better. He is not into self promotion and hype he is true professional who understands and relishes his role as a key member of the support team. I am looking forward to the next two days with Greg.