Functional Path Training

True North

Keep your compass oriented to true north – true north is a strong guiding force, no hype, no false prophets, no guruism, and no quick fixes – Just straight facts. What is true north? It is quite simple, nothing fancy or especially trendy, it is the basics. It is fundamental movements progressing to more complex movements as the fundamental movement skills are mastered. It is sound training principles guiding the training. It is training connections, rhythm, coordination and movement problem solving ability. Just the basics repeated in as many different iterations as is appropriate for your athletes. Keep it simple and if in doubt make simpler because I have said many times simplicity yields complexity.

Injury Prevention - A Transparent Process

Injury prevention is implicit in a sound comprehensive training program. The program must address all components and dimensions of training in a balanced manner. (The key here is multilateral unbiased training) Train the athlete in a program that addresses sport demands and meets the athletes individual needs and 99% of injury prevention will be taken care of. Simple in concept but complex in application but it can and should be done.

Youth Sport Today – How We Got There

Where we are today in youth sport today with the “pay to play” model did not happen overnight. This post is meant give some historical context for why we are where we are today. This is excerpted from my new book that I am working on called “Developing Athletes.”

1969 when I started coaching was probably the height of the school based sport system in the US. For many reasons into the 1970’s and definitely by the early 1980’s much changed. Perhaps the biggest change was the gradual erosion of the mandatory daily physical requirement in the schools. There was more time devoted to academic subjects. The first subjects cut were physical education, then arts, then music and then theater arts because they were deemed non-academic. With cuts in physical education there were no longer jobs for specialist physical education teachers, consequently fewer and fewer PE teachers where hired. This quickly affected sports coaching, as the physical education teachers who had been the pool of sport coaches had their jobs eliminated. Schools now had to go outside the faculty to hire coaches. Many of these coaches had no background in pedagogy or any actual coaching experience; it was not long before a noticeable drop off in the quality of coaching in the schools occurred. In addition there was little continuity in the coaching from year to year because coaching stipends were minimal. Certainly it was not long before you began to see the effects in the young developing athlete. Those teachers that had entered the profession on completion of their schooling through the GI Bill were retiring and were not replaced as they retired. Over the forty plus years since I started coaching we have arrived at the point where today only two states have mandatory K-12 physical education and that requirement is somewhat watered down. In sports we are at the point where the majority of coaches in the schools are not faculty members. This has many implications that I will go into detail on later. 

This resulted in the rise of outside sport teams that began in the late 1980’s grew in the 1990’s and has exploded in the new millennium. In basketball, baseball, soccer, softball, volleyball, lacrosse and to some extent track & Field and swimming sports outside the schools has taken precedence. Competition is no longer local but national in scope. Seasons are extended to mimic adult competition seasons with youngsters as young as 12 years old playing 100 plus baseball games a year, competing for national championships and youth world championships.

The Secret – The Way – The Answer

There are no secrets.

There is no one-way.

The answer is that there is no answer.

So stop looking for secrets, stick with the basics and build on them. Don’t look for one way to do things, equip yourself with a variety of tools and methods. Learn to ask smart questions. Follow the words of William James and recognize that "Truth is what works." Find what works for you and keep refining and fine-tuning it to make it better.

Developing Athletes - Art & Science

This whole process of developing athletes is both an art and a science. This is a careful blend, not an either or proposition. In today’s world of rapid change and scientific advances it is easy to get caught up in the science and minimize the art. It is very important to strive to constantly achieve a balance. Coaching practice should be rooted in science, but ultimately it is practice-based evidence that is important. There has never been a sport scientist that invented a new technique or training method, they have only verified or validated, usually after the fact, which technique or method devised by a coach or an athlete worked. We can’t wait for sport science to lead; coaches have to be on the cutting edge of innovation and change. Everything coaches do must be based on sound principles and sport science; it is imperative that we keep accurate and detailed records so that we can look retrospectively at why something succeeded or why it failed.

Strength – Global Considerations

Of all the biomotor qualities strength may the most all-encompassing. There is no form of motion that does not require some expression of force; therefore all sports will derive benefit from sport appropriate strength training. The key here is that it is sport appropriate. The physical quality of strength is the underpinning for the optimum development of the other biomotor qualities.

Because of its importance and ease of measurement it is tempting to try to train strength as an independent motor quality, but it is important to underscore that strength is a highly interdependent motor quality that profoundly interacts with and affects all the other biomotor qualities. It must be trained accordingly and this interaction must be accounted for in the whole training program. The benefits of a sound strength-training program are:

Improved ability to reduce and produce force

Increased ability to express explosive power

Increased joint stability

Significant contribution to Injury prevention and rehabilitation

Training methods from a variety of other sport disciplines have heavily influenced strength training. The most prominent influences have been from Olympic weight lifting, power lifting and bodybuilding all of which are also competitive sports. In addition gymnastics and wrestling have had profound influences on what we do in strength training.

Strength is an umbrella term that incorporates a spectrum of activities and training methods designed to enhance the force requirements of the sport being trained for. Strength is the ability to exert force with no time constraints – it is simply how much force can be applied. The role of strength training is to condition the bones, tendon, ligaments and muscles, to withstand and overcome the high forces placed on them in competition and training.

Purpose

What is the purpose of training?

 

Do you have a purpose to the training?

 

Training with a purpose is doing what is necessary to earn the right to progress to the next step. Each step should have a specific purpose that leads to a logical culmination in improved performance in the competitive arena.

Child Champions – Where are they now?

Trophy chasing and medal hunting at young ages is frivolous at best and harmful to the long-term development of the athletes. Child champions and age group record holders do not have a good track record of long-term success. Undue emphasis on results gives the youngster and their entourage a distorted sense of their actual abilities, value and self worth, which seems to stifle the desire to keep working to improve. The prevalent attitude among age group champions is why do I have to work harder I am already the best. This is a tough one to counter. Then it catches up with them two or three years later when the late developer who has kept working passes them by and now there is a huge attitude problem a s well as a limited possibility of making up for the work that was not done. The competitive life of age group champions is historically very short. Very few go on to latter success. Philosophically it is very important to measure success not just through competitive results but also by producing better people with sport as a vehicle for that. Delight in the experience and the lessons learned, not everyone can be an Olympian or professional athlete.

Connections

Look for connections in the body.

Train to enhance the connections.

Take advantage of the connections.

Connect the training with the demands of the sport.

It’s not the weight room

A beautiful weight room with polished floors, tons of weights, machines that go bing, beep and burp surrounded with walls of mirrors all in a strictly controlled air conditioned environment set at an optimum 72 degrees may not be all that it appears to be. It’s not the weight room it is what happens there that matters. Is real coaching going on or is supervision with everyone doing the same program? It’s not the weight room it is the methodology that is employed there, it is the quality of coaching. Ultimately it is how the strength qualities developed in the weight room transfer to the field, track, court or pool. It is a very comfortable and seductive environment that can be a trap. The trap is chasing numbers that result an athlete completely adapted to the weight room environment rather than fully adaptable and prepared for the demands of the sport they are preparing for. The key is to learn to use the weight without getting dependent on it. The weight room is a step toward a “weight room without walls” where you take the strength training to the track, to the pool deck or to the court. This demands creativity and a deep understanding of the sport the athlete is preparing for. The advantage is versatile, adaptable bulletproof athletes who can apply their strength. Use the weight room as a step in the athletes’ development, don’t abuse it.