Functional Path Training

A Week or Two Off

Will not be posting for the next week or two. I need some time to digest and assimilate everything I have seen and learned over the last six weeks. Right my little brain is full, no bytes free. Will tweet occasionally.

The Elbow

Steven Strasburg has a very famous elbow and that is all I am going to say about his elbow, because I do not the particulars and specifics. Instead lets talk about elbow injuries in baseball in general. It is clear to me after working on this for many years that it is not about innings pitched, pitch count, or pitching mechanics. All the comparisons of Strasburg’s mechanics are just opinion, there is no perfect model or optimum technique. Despite what my former colleague, Don Cooper, pitching coach of the White Sox, believes certain pitchers are not susceptible to elbow injuries because they are upside down. It is highly individual. There are many ways to get the job done. Are elbow injuries preventable? Honestly I do not know. Over the years (in my opinion) the common denominator seemed to be when someone changed grip and certain pitches that put more stress on the elbow. Another commonality that I have seen is that an elbow injury was usually preceded by a problem at the shoulder (remember the old kinetic chain). I do believe and will continue to believe until I am proven wrong that the source of elbow and shoulder problems is the hip. Hip tightness and weakness. In conclusion I will conclude with a statement from Dr James Andrews after we had three of pitchers out with elbow injuries, two of whom had surgery. His statement to me was that sometimes things happen.

You Can’t Do That

How many times have you had people tell you could not do something? I have and for me I always took it as a challenge. Thank God I never listened to all the people who told me I could not do the things I have done. I truly believe people say this to put limits on people, because they cannot imagine doing the things they say can’t be done themselves. I was labeled stupid more once during elementary and high school years (I have the D’s and F’s to prove it), but somehow I have overcome my stupidity to write a few books and accomplish a few other things. Don’t ever take no for an answer, don’t let people tell you can’t do something. Go out and do it and prove them wrong. They told me we could never do the things in baseball that we did we did with the White Sox, but we did it and it worked. Everyone has been trying to imitate what we did ever since with no idea why it worked. I could go on and on, but when I hear someone tell someone especially a young person they can’t do something, I get my dander up, don’t listen to the naysayers, go out and prove them wrong. That is what I try to do. Everyday try to do something that no one else has done. That is how you become the best at what you do.

Training Stuff – Good, Bad & Ugly

I love training stuff. In fact I have boxes of videos of training stuff that I have collected over the years. I have shelves of books full of training stuff. Some of it is really cool looking stuff and some of it real dumb and ugly stuff. Fortunately or unfortunately I have tried much of this stuff, some worked and some failed. I used to have to work real hard to find stuff. No longer, I can log onto You Tube or any one of thousands of exercise guru sites and find any kind of stuff that I want to see. But does this really put you or me ahead of the game? It is still just stuff. Is my stuff better than your stuff? How can we know?

 

I have given this much thought. I know the stuff that I have used has worked predictably well for the time that I have used it. Why do I know it works? Very simply because 41 years ago when I started coaching I realized that to get an edge as a coach and as an athlete I had to have a system. So I started working on putting my stuff into a context, a system. I tried to find why the stuff worked and why some stuff did not work. To do that I relied on scientific research and what we today call best practice. It was a constant prototyping process, trying stuff, fine tuning it, and trying it again. This is an ongoing process that I continue today. I am constantly working to upgrade the stuff, but always within the context of the sport and athletes I am working with. So what’s the point of this stuff about stuff? In order to make the stuff you do meaningful get beyond the what stuff, know and understand the why, make sure you know the how and when. Then and only then will your stuff become meaningful and lead to positive training adaptations over time.

False Praise – A Slippery Slope

“Good job” or “Well Done” you go to any gym, practice field, pool or court around the world and that is what you hear. I look at the action that was praised and say why? Was it really a good job? Was it really well done?  No it wasn’t, then why do we praise mediocre effort and outcomes? I think I know – it is because somewhere along the way we were told we needed to be positive, to raise self-esteem. This is total bull shitake. Be honest; if it was a poor effort point it out. You don’t have to attack the person that is not what it is about, it is the effort the person is giving. Praise and reward the effort conversely criticize the effort not the person. The athlete knows it is BS and phony, they begin to tune you out when you are constantly giving false praise. If you don’t know what to say, don’t say anything! Be real, you can help the athlete get better if you correct what needs to be corrected with a recommendation of something they can do to improve. That is how you raise self-esteem. You guide them toward their goal, praise exemplary effort and the outcome will follow.

Building and Rebuilding the Athlete - A Game Changer

I found this brochure yesterday in a file. At the risk of being self serving and totally egotistical this seminar series was a Game Changer. It was a Game Changer for me because I had to organize and articulate a system and present to a cross section of professionals in a manner they could use.
Game Changing for the participants because This is the cover of the brochure for the first year. The first seminar was in Chicago at the Airport Marriott in May 1992. We had 56 people in attendance representing a cross section of coaches, athletic trainers, strength & conditioning coaches and physical therapists. The series ran until 2005. It would be great to hear from those of you who attended over the years. I would like to hear what you learned and how it changed what, why, and how you did your work. The cover of the brochure represents a blueprint of the components needed to build and rebuild the athlete, it is still my philosophy today. It certainly has stood the test of time. As you can see I have been doing this for quite sometime and plan to continue sharing and educating for a while longer.

Follow-up to "The Body is not a Machine."

Marco Cardinale does a great job of going more on depth on the science of all of this. Always great to have some research validation. Thanks  to Carl Valle for calling this to my attention.

http://marcocardinale.blogspot.com/2008/05/help-memy-are-not-firing.html

The Specificity Trap

As an Athletic Development coach you should beware of overdoing specificity; it can be a trap, a one-way dead end street. You may be just adding stress to stress by too closely trying to overload the actual movements of the sport. You can get too specific and lose sight of what you are doing. My role as an Athletic Development coach is to prepare the athlete for the stress of their sport; I can do that in many ways without strictly trying to imitate the movements of the sport throughout training. They get enough of that in practice. There are times in a program to get very specific and other times to be very general. My basic litmus test is this: are the movements that I use in training sport appropriate? I look at it as a three-step process.

Step one – the sport itself, that is the domain of the sport coach, although they may enlist my help here.

Step Two – Stuff that looks like the sport but is not the sport, I do some of this.

Step Three – Stuff that does not have any resemblance to the sport but that will prepare the athlete for the demands of the sport.

Then distribute the work and the emphasis in training accordingly. It is simple and it seems to work. Remember I am simplifier not a complexifier

Experience or Experiences

The older I get, the longer I teach and coach the more I value being around and learning from people who have had a multitude of experiences. One of my mentors, Joe Vigil summed it up quite nicely for me 25 years ago. He said that there are many people who have thirty years experience on their resume, but what they really have is one experience thirty times. I don’t know about you, but I want to be around someone who has had a multitude of experiences, success and failures, wins and losses. Those kinds of people are genuine; they are usually willing to share. Those are the people I want to learn from, not some cocksure know it all that has had one experience ten times with no failures or at least none they will admit to. If you are just starting out in your career as a coach look for someone who has fought the battles, who has had experiences, who has battle scars, find a Yoda, not a poser or an imposter that has all the secrets. Call them up, go visit them, watch them coach and you will see the way and the light so to speak. It is not about glitz and glamour, it is about being basic, honest, true to your beliefs, willing to risk and make mistakes and learn from them. I am so thankful for people like Bill Crow, Red Estes, Sam Adams, Marshall Clark, Joe Vigil and countless others who helped me and shared what they knew and did not know. I hope all of you who are in the formative stages of your career can find people like this to guide you and help you. Even if you are well into your career you always need people like this. I know, I depend on the advice and counsel of many to help me in my coaching and teaching. I look for people who have substance, who are open and willing to share, who have nor secrets, who are not seeking fame and fortune, to share and learn with. May the force be with you.

Mental Toughness, Motivation and Teaching

Last evening I was channel surfing and came upon a one-hour program on this year’s pre-season training of the Alabama football team. I usually don’t watch this stuff, but I heard “mental toughness’ so I decided to watch to see if I could learn what this was. I watched it and still am not sure what to think. I definitely did not learn what mental toughness was. It brought back some real bad memories of my college football days in the sixties. All Nick Saban, the head coach and the other coaches talked about was mental toughness. Over and over they preached it. Then there was the strength coach; all he did was scream, no instruction, just screaming of mindless platitudes vaguely related to mental toughness. This left me cold. I have done my share of screaming, but over the years I learned that when I controlled my voice that the athletes responded and listened and the more I was able to teach. If you scream all the time they will tune you out. I have watched Jim Radcliffe (University of Oregon) with his players, he does not have to scream, he commands respect with his presence, his persona, his knowledge and actions.

 

But this mental toughness thing bugs me. What is it? Everyone talks about it, but I have still not found a good explanation of it and how to teach it. (I know I posted on this last year and got the same old worn out responses). Do mindless drills that elicit fatigue build it? Do punishment runs do I it? Do trite slogans on the back of t-shirts enhance it? I don't think so. I just don’t believe in it. I do however believe in mental discipline and athletic intelligence. Every great athlete that I have seen has those qualities. Mental discipline is having your head in the practice, training and the game. It is being completely engaged and mindful. You show up everyday with a plan and a goal to help you execute the plan. You don’t have to have someone screaming at you for motivation, because the leaders have set out the goals and means to achieve those goals. You just need to put your nose to the grindstone and go after it. Don’t get me wrong I am not some fluffy wimp who lets the athletes run the show. I believe that the coach is a teacher who must be firm and fair, must teach the athlete the qualities that make up mental disciple and praise the efforts to achieve it. That does not mean you need to be any less demanding, you just need to lead and teach. Leading and teaching will enhance mental disciple and increase athletic intelligence. Both of which will give the athlete a chance to excel in the competitive arena. That is all we can ask.