Functional Path Training

Building and Rebuilding the Complete Athlete

Interested to hear from any of you that attended this seminar. I started teaching it in 1992. Taught three that year and four each subsequent year until 1996. From 1996 to 2003 I taught twelve a year. It was an attempt to synthesize a large body of work across many fields.It was fun teaching, I learned as much as I taught. Eventually this led to GAIN. There was just too much information for two days and not enough time for participation. This year will be having out 15^th session of GAIN at Rice University in Houston Texas. Really looking forward to it after being online the last two years.

Food for Thought?

When you are planning your training program or evaluating your program, I have found it very helpful to ask the following simple and very basic questions:

Strong for What?

Fast for What?

Fit for What?

Supple for What?

Drill for What?

Ultimately, what are you training for?

Learning the Craft – The La Cumbre Years 1969 to 1973

My first four years coaching were at La Cumbre Junior High School in Santa Barbara California, in the neighborhood where I grew up. I taught Physical Education and over the four years there I coached track and cross country each year as one season each of football and basketball. The photo is collage that a friend one of mine put together the year I was coaching football. Yes, we did wear ties when we coached back then – influence of my mentor. It was a real learning experience, learning the craft of coaching with boys aged 12 to 15 in seventh, eighth and ninth grade. I taught four or five periods of PE and then coached after school at the same time I was training for the Decathlon. Time management and attention management were crucial. Looking back on the experience fifty years later I would not trade the experience for anything. I am still in contact with many of the “kids”. Even though they are all grown up now in their sixties I still call them kids. Been great to see their life journeys and how what we did in sport influenced them and reflect on how much they taught me about life and coaching. It was a great foundation the next fifty years and continues to be today.