Functional Path Training

All In

Striving for and achieving excellence as a coach or an athlete in not part time commitment, it requires a total commitment. You must be all in. A partial commitment is no commitment at all. Excellence and the drive necessary to achieve it is not a comfortable proposition. You must be a coach or an athlete twenty-four hours a day not just the three or four hours you are training. A wise old coach told early in my coaching career that you couldn’t be a chump off the track and a champ on the track. Truer words have never been spoken. Being a coach or an athlete is not something you, it is something you are. Nothing more, nothing less!

Make em don’t break em

Are you really a good coach when only one or two survivors of your program run fast and the rest are hurt or cast by the wayside? Development is not a war of attrition, but a systematic process of gradual adaptation to training stress. It takes talent, time, patience, dedication, planning and focus on the process. No quick fixes. Honor and respect for the individual is important. No two individuals are the same. Before we lionize these guys as great coaches take a closer look at their methods. How many did they break along the way to produce one or two medals? It does not have to be like that.

Do we really need them?

Lance and Roger will you please exit stage left. To see each of them featured on the New York Times sports page today was upsetting to say the least. You are both dopers – the media are the dopes for continuing to give attention to all your exploits. Lance says, “Nobody needs to cry for me.” Don’t worry I won’t just go away. Take your Lite beer and ride into the sunset and keep living a lie.  I never bought into the whole feel good story of Lance. No doubt in my mind what he was doing. Everybody in baseball in baseball knew that Clemens was juiced – no need for a positive test to prove it. Let’s stop giving them any attention. If you want to do some good donate to the American Cancer Society. Don’t be a dope and support dopers. When Lance or Roger are on TV turn it off, boycott the games Clemens pitches in, he is a huckster. Roger and Lance we don’t need you!

Fit For What?

Are you fit for the sport or fit for the test? I learned a long time ago that are what you train to be. I know I want the athletes that I coach to be prepared for the game or match not some arbitrary fitness test that gives a meaningless measure that has no relation to the game. I don’t want to hear that it tests mental toughness that is pure bunk. I want them completely prepared for the demands of the sport, completely adaptable not adapted to some artificial measure. Training must be sport appropriate so testing must be sport appropriate. Training time is precious so use it wisely with mindful training methods that are meaningful, transfer to performance and make the athletes better not just tired. Remember Testing =Training and Training = Testing so each drill, each exercise, for that matter each training session is an opportunity to evaluate the athletes and teams progress to achievement of their goals. No need to have some magic “fitness’ test that supposedly indicates their fitness to play. Be confident in your ability to prepare the athlete and get it done.

The Compass

Certainly we all recognize how important it is to have a clear goal – that is the destination. But without a working compass oriented to true north it is difficult to reach the destination, to achieve the goal. It is important that the compass be oriented to true north not magnetic north. Magnetic north can be as much as three degrees off from true north. You must constantly reorient because the compass naturally wants to align with magnetic north. The compass will keep you on track if you have a current map to guide the journey. Even more helpful can be advice from someone who has been there before. They can help avoid detours and roadblocks on the way to your destination. True north represents your core beliefs; the compass and road map help you stay aligned with your core beliefs. The mentor is someone who has been where you want to go. You can’t do it alone, seek guidance from others, make sure the compass is working and have an accurate map. Oh by the way be sure to take time to enjoy the journey.

Red Flags & Dysfunctions

I am tired of hearing about red flags and dysfunctions. Why is something a red flag or a dysfunction? Watch what happens when the athlete gets up and actually moves; it is amazing how many of the red flags disappear and the supposed dysfunctions discovered in isolated artificial movements smooth out. If there is pain they will tell you. If you feel you have to look for red flags do so when the athlete is actual moving. Evaluate movements just like you train movements. Our job as coaches, therapists and ATC’s is to get the athlete moving as efficiently as possible not to segment and robotize. Chances are if there is a deficiency it will scream out at you. A truly functional movement screen will have the body move through and in postures that are similar to the postures in actual performance, executing movements that work with or against gravity. It must give some information on how the athlete uses the ground and how they reduce force and dynamically stabilize. There is no universal movement screen. I believe that you must have a screen that is specific to the movements of the sport or at the very least for categories of sports. For example a movement screen for throwing sports would have different elements than would an evaluation for a running sports. One size does not fit all. Incorporate movements like bending, extending, reaching, pulling, and pushing. This will give you information you can then translate into the training and performance environment. Don’t look for what the athlete can’t do, look for what they can do and use that as a starting point for the training progression. Beware of confirmation bias - you find what you are looking for.

Look around, get your head out of the sand and recognize that it is our job to get the athlete ready for the rigors of competition by training them to be as adaptable as possible to the demands of their sport. You don’t do that by focusing on what the athlete can’t do and fixing supposed dysfunctions through corrective exercise. All exercise should be corrective to a degree if you use proper progression. Corrective exercise and injury prevention should be a transparent part of a sound training program. I have said for years that Training = Rehab and Rehab = Training. I will end with two questions: If what is going on today in MLB, NFL & NBA is so good then why are preventable injuries off the scale? Is it because we are looking so hard at dysfunctions and prevention that we are compromising training and preparation?

Questions

I think there is a time in everyone’s career when they think they have all the answers. Learning how to say smart things and give smart answers seems very important. I know I have been there. The longer I coach and teach and the older I get the more I realize it is not about having all the answers and saying smart things. It is about having the right questions. I realize that the people I respect the most have the ability to listen and ask very incisive questions that make you think and challenge you to learn. There is power in the question. I think the toughest lesson to learn is to listen to others, respect their ideas and opinions and ask smart questions. I know it has taken me a long time to get there and I am not completely there yet. I do know that 43 years into my coaching career that I have more questions than I do answers. That makes every day fun and exciting because the drive to answer the questions keeps me learning  and innovating.

Optimum Not Maximum - Stimulus Threshold

Optimum training stress is the goal in order to stimulate a positive adaptive response to training. Training is cumulative and synergistic. It is an accumulation of the demands placed on all systems of the body muscular, metabolic, nervous, and endocrine/hormonal. It is also adaptation to the synergistic effect of work demands on all the biomotor qualities. They are all interdependent. There is a tendency to try to isolate a biomotor quality and try to train a quality to the maximum without consideration of the effect on the whole system. This also has a negative effect on the other biomotor qualities.

Understanding and utilizing the concept of stimulus threshold should help to better direct training by seeking the optimum load necessary to stimulate adaptation. Stimulus Threshold refers to the minimum stress necessary to force adaptation. The key is finding the proper stimulus threshold for each quality being trained in order to take into account the cumulative and synergistic training effect. Some careful planning is necessary but using this concept will ensure long-term progress and minimize the risk of injury and overtraining.

Smell the Roses

Yesterday when I was swimming (This is my meditation and thinking time – very quiet & relaxed) I started thinking about how fortunate I have been and what is good about the world we live in. In today’s crazy chaotic world we are bombarded with negativism, bad news and hatred. We don’t have let this be our world; I refuse to let it be my world. We each can create our own reality and influence and be influenced by our friends and families. I choose to focus on what is possible; I choose not to listen to the naysayers. We live in an exciting time of change that offers infinite opportunities for growth. Take advantage of this, look for what you can do, look for chances to complement someone. Take a minute today to reflect on what is good about your life and your world. Take a minute and call a friend or a family member to say hello and thank them for being in your life. You will be surprised by how good it makes you feel.

If you get a chance go on YouTube and listen to Louis Armstrong sing What a Wonderful World. It is!

What A Wonderful World

I see trees of green........ red roses too
I see em bloom..... for me and for you
And I think to myself.... what a wonderful world.

I see skies of blue..... clouds of white
Bright blessed days....dark sacred nights
And I think to myself .....what a wonderful world.

The colors of a rainbow.....so pretty ..in the sky
Are also on the faces.....of people ..going by
I see friends shaking hands.....sayin.. how do you do
They're really sayin......i love you.

I hear babies cry...... I watch them grow
They'll learn much more.....than I'll never know
And I think to myself .....what a wonderful world

The colors of a rainbow.....so pretty ..in the sky
Are there on the faces.....of people ..going by
I see friends shaking hands.....sayin.. how do you do
They're really sayin...*spoken*(I ....love....you).

I hear babies cry...... I watch them grow
*spoken*(you know their gonna learn
A whole lot more than I'll never know)
And I think to myself .....what a wonderful world
Yes I think to myself .......what a wonderful world.

The 3 C’s of Coaching

The importance of communication with your athletes and your colleagues was a recurrent theme throughout the presentations and discussions at the Global Coaches House. The basis of communication is the 3 C’s.

Connect – Get the athlete’s attention.  Know the athlete. Know their attentional style and preferred communication mode. Remember connection is not just verbal, it is non-verbal; body language can send a strong powerful message to connect or disconnect.

Convey – The message must clear, no nuance or hidden messages. Let the athlete know clearly what the message is in a language they can understand and translate into action.

Convince – The goal of the communication is to convince the athlete or professional colleague to act. If the message is clear and the intention is defined this should be a logical outcome of connecting and conveying.

Good coaches use the 3 C’s constantly without thinking about it. They get it because intuitively they know that communication is the cornerstone of successful coaching. It is not what you know; it is how you communicate what you know and elicit the desired action.