Functional Path Training

2017 Looking Back

The end of the year is a time for reflection, analysis and recalibration. Each day is special, so do something to make each day special for yourself and for someone else. Family is special; it is too easy to lose sight of this in pursuit of a career. True friends are special – those who are willing to tolerate your mistakes and stay with you during the good and bad times. I am looking forward to 2018; it will mark my 49^th year coaching and my 50^th anniversary of graduating from college.

I am not into resolutions instead each year I try to renew my resolve. I simply want to keep improving as a person and as a coach. I want to continue to honor those people who have helped me and to help others to achieve their potential. I will continue to do what I do not for recognition but for the fact the pursuit of excellence has its own rewards. Have a happy and healthy 2018.

Athlete Development Process

This framework first articulated by Frank Dick many years ago is elegant in its simplicity. Follow this process and you will produce athletes who have a chance to be champions. Please note that the athlete MUST earn the right to progress to the next step. Each athlete progresses at different rates. I will be talking and writing more about this in 2018.

Another Classic Resource

In July of 1986 I flew into Tucson to visit Anne E. “Betty” Atwater, a professor of Biomechanics at University of Arizona, in order to pick her brain about throwing. This was an area where she had done some landmark research on pitching mechanics in the late 1970’s. I previously had the opportunity to work with Betty on the biomechanical analysis of sprinters and hurdlers in preparation for the 1984 Olympic games. In our conversation, she recommended a book that changed my paradigm in regard to strength training and the use of isometric and eccentric work. The book was Tendinitis: it etiology and treatment by William D. Stanish and Sandra Curwin. That book along with a presentation and subsequent conversation with Giles Cometti in1987 opened my eyes to a new vista of developing appropriate strength. This was thirty years before anyone came up the marketing term “triphasic.” The key is to understand the role of the muscle actions and train appropriately to apply them to the sport. Within any movement there are isometric, concentric and eccentric actions – what is vital is to coordinate them all. If you can get a copy of Curwin and Stanish it is worth a read (I have pictured the second edition). Unfortunately, all the work of Cometti in this area is in Spanish

As a side note I regard Betty Atwater, Chuck Dillman and Jim Hay as among the most influential biomechanists of the twentieth century. They were pioneers who were willing to work with coaches. Fortunate for me I got to interact with all of them on several different projects. Their willingness to answer my questions and share was a tremendous help to my growth as a professional.

What Kind of Muscles are You Developing?

My Favorite Books for 2017

Below is a list of the books that I most enjoyed in 2017. It is a varied list. It should be noted that i did not include any fiction, not that I did not have any favorites I just thought the readers would be interested in the non-fiction choices. So far in 2017 I have read 136 books and I am currently reading five of which I will probably finish three before the end of the year. I love to read, I read as a hobby and I read to learn. When I read I just follow my muse and let it take to varied subjects and topics although as you can see by the list I probably come most often to history and biography. Please note I do hyperlink the books to Amazon or any other book seller because I feel that would be profiting from love and passion for reading learning. Read and enjoy!

Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen

Deep Work – Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

By Cal Newport

How to Support a Champion by Steve Ingham

Truman by David McCullough

The Talent Lab – The Secret to Creating & Sustaining Success by Owen Slot with Simon Timpson and Chelsea Warr

Peak Performance by Brad Stulberg and Steve Magness

Churchill and Orwell – The Fight for Freedom  By Thomas E. Ricks

Pep Guardiola – The Evolution by Marti’ Perarnau

Hue’ 1968 – The Turning Point of the American War in Vietnam by Mark Bowden

The Cubs Way by Tom Verducci

Sapiens – A Brief History of Human Kind by Yuval Noah Harari

The Pursuit of Power – Europe 1815 -1914 by Richard Evans

Behave – The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst by Robert M. Sapolsky

The Long Haul – A Truckers Tales of Life on the Road by Finn Murphy

Leonardo Da Vinci by Walter Isaacson

To Hell and Back – Europe 1914 – 1949 by Ian Kershaw

The Push – A Climbers Journey of Endurance, Risk, and Going Beyond Limits by Tommy Caldwell

GAIN 2018

Don’t miss GAIN XI June 12 to 16, 2018 at Rice University in Houston Texas. Applications open January 1, 2018. This has been a career changing experience for those who have attended. Don’t miss out. Join the leaders in sport medicine/rehab, physical education and coaching/athletic development to explore this year’s theme: Connecting the Dots - Back to Basics. For more information go to  http://thegainnetwork.com/

Reflections/Thoughts from Today’s Morning Walk - December 18, 2017

Training should always be FUNdamental

In the developmental athlete, physical competency development should parallel technical and tactical development.

Learn from the past but don’t live there

The good old days probably were not as good as we old guys like to think they were.

Are we making HRV measurement out to be more than what is there? One physiological measure taken in isolation can be misleading – remember the rush to lactate analysis?

I wonder if sometimes progress is stifled as much by what we know as what we don’t know.

Last but not least as was driving to my downtown Sarasota Office (AKA Pastry Arts coffee shop on main street) after my morning walk I was listening to Louis Armstrong beautiful rendition of What a Wonderful World. As messed up as this world may seem when you read and hear these words you can't help but think better of the world.

What a Wonderful World

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

I see skies of blue and clouds of white
The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night
And I think to myself what a wonderful world

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

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

Is There a There There?

I just bought a book (quite expensive I might add) by one of the current keyboard guru’s because I am always trying to learn and increase my knowledge base and it was highly recommended by a young coach. It was full of marketing, buzzwords, pseudoscience and general mumbo jumbo. In addition, I suspect good portions of it were copied without any attribution or reference to the sources. Think critically. Know your science, know your practice, understand and apply sound training principles and know your history so you can trace the origin of ideas. Good training methodology is not a 21^st century phenomenon. Make sure before you follow someone that there really a there there? Beware of intellect incest, the phenomenon of passing ideas within the same group without any critical analysis. Think!

Sports Biometric Data – The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

Last week I attended the second annual Sports Biometrics conference in San Francisco, it was a good conference with very good information and challenging ideas. I also attended in 2016. Last year my general impression from the presentations and my interaction with the attendees was that data was king, it seemed that everyone was enamored by what could be measured and how. It was as if there was to measure everything that could be measured and then some. This year I detected a slightly different tone. It seemed that some of the presenters and in talking to the delegates that there was degree of skepticism and questioning about the how the data was being used and even in some cases the value of certain biometric measures

Here is my take on the use and value of biometric data in sport after attending the conference for two years and experiencing this up close. It is very exciting to me to think that we can measure and monitor physical properties that we once dreamed about measuring, that is the good. For me the issue is being able to take the data and be able to turn it into actions the coach can use. Is the data meaningful and actionable? Just because we can measure it does not make it meaningful. What about accuracy and validation of the algorithms that are used to deliver the information? So much of the technology is not validated. There needs to be an independent body that can vet the technology and the algorithms. Another issue I see more frequently is: Where is the sport coach in this process? Ultimately it is the coach who turns the data into action, so why aren’t coaches more involved in the process.

Perhaps this will stimulate discussion and help achieve some clarity

Laser Focus Workouts

Focus clearly only on what needs to be done to get training results that translate into competition performance. This demands a laser focus on the training tasks that are meaningful. Eliminate the nice to do activities that make you tired but don’t make you better. Never forget that less is more. Find out what works for your athletes and keep fine-tuning and tweaking that to achieve continual adaptation. Beware of variety and variation for the sake of variety as that is often a slippery slope. Have a very specific objective for each workout that is clearly articulated to all concerned. Everything in the workout should be in pursuit of that objective. At the end of the workout evaluate and debrief – was the objective achieved? if so why? If not why not? Be sure to adjust subsequent training accordingly. Always put the workout in context of the whole training plan, never lose sight of the cumulative effect of training. One workout cannot make an athlete, but one workout can break an athlete.