Functional Path Training

Work Capacity - The Concept

Work capacity is the ability to tolerate a workload and recover from that workload. In order for an athlete to improve they must be able to do a certain threshold amount of work. They must be able to work at a level that will ensure enough stress to achieve an optimum adaptive response. If they cannot do the work, they will not improve. Therefore, the goal with this type of individual would be to build a work capacity base that fits the specific demands of the athlete’s sport.

Work capacity falls into the category of general physical preparation (GPP). There are three components of work capacity:

1) The ability to tolerate a high workload – the key word here is to tolerate. Many athletes are capable of doing an occasional high workload but cannot adapt to this workload on any kind of consistent basis.

2) The ability to recover from the workload sufficiently for the next workout or competition. This is closely tied to the first concept. If the athlete cannot recover, then they are risking overuse injuries or overtraining. They will not be able to adapt to the training stress.

3) The capacity to resist fatigue whatever the source. Fatigue is more than metabolic, it is the ability to resist neural fatigue and mental fatigue.

4) It is the refinement of the efficiency and coordination of the cardiovascular, metabolic and nervous systems.

Clearing the Path or Preparing the Athlete for the Path

This post reporting Tony Strudwick’s comments is what prompted me to write this post. http://trainingground.guru/articles/tony-strudwick-why-sport-science-has-lost-its-way

Let’s stop putting inordinate amount of time in clearing a smooth and direct path for the athlete. All it does is set up unrealistic expectations. No journey toward athletic excellence is straight and narrow toward the destination without any bumps in the road, detours or breakdowns. Instead let’s shift the emphasis back to where it should be: preparing a robust adaptable athlete to negotiate any path put in front of them. To quote my colleague Bill Knowles what we have today is a "Medicalization of sport (sports medicine/sports rehabilitation): The process by which sports specific conditions and problems come to be defined and treated as medical conditions, and thus become the subject of medical study, diagnosis, prevention, or treatment."

This has resulted in reducing practice time by spending an inordinate amount of time on nonfunctional injury prevention programs, all of which detracts from what needs to be done to make the athlete better and less fragile. All this work preparing the perfect path is weakening the athlete and detracting from the ability to tolerate an adequate workload to get better. You don’t prepare the athlete for heat stress by training indoors in a controlled low humidity seventy-two degrees temperature-controlled environment or training is a weight room with temperature set at sixty-eight degrees. To get a training adaptation it is necessary to impose a training load that is age appropriate, meaningful and challenging in preparation for the chaotic uncontrolled environment of competition.

I am in no way proposing that we go back 50 years to my college football experience which did nothing but break us down. I believe there is a happy medium. We have gone overboard with our concern for athlete welfare to the point that we are placing them at risk by putting them in the competitive environment without being ready for the demands of competition.  We are being overprotective. Training load must be high, in fact it must at times be an overload to prepare for competition. We need to do a better job of using all the measuring and monitoring tools at our disposal to be prescriptive, not restrictive. We also need to measure what is meaningful and actionable. Just because it can be measured does not make it meaningful. It is time to shift the emphasis back to preparing a robust athlete capable of travel on any road.

Special thanks to Kelvin Giles, Dean Benton, Nick Garcia, Martin Bingisser, John Pryor, Steve Myrland, Bill Knowles and Patrick McHugh for their input on this post.

Training Talk: Conversations with a Dozen Master Coaches

The following post is taken from the Foreword I contributed to Martin Bingisser's new book Training Talk: Conversations with a Dozen Master Coaches. 

Back in 1987, I took a leap of faith. After 20 years of experience as a track and field coach, I moved to a new town for a new job in a new sport as director of conditioning for the Chicago White Sox. I was confident I could handle the challenge, but in the back of my mind there was still some doubt. I had never worked in baseball before, and the profession I had entered, athletic development, hadn’t even existed a few years prior.

After arriving, the doubt quickly faded as I took a look at baseball through the eyes of a track coach. Why didn’t my javelin throwers have the shoulder problems that pitchers did? It was simple: I started looking at the pitchers as javelin throwers in long pants. I took what I knew about preparing the whole kinetic chain to throw the javelin far and adapted that to the demands of pitching. To the surprise of many, we stopped having shoulder problems, and the pitchers became more durable. This was a lesson I was then able to apply many times over in other sports. Don’t look at the sport as a unique activity, instead look at the movements, and connect that to what is being done in other sports. This is a lesson you will learn from the coaches in this book. If they have one commonality, it is the ability to see movement with different eyes and make adjustments accordingly.

No matter the sport, a good coaching philosophy must stay true to the same fundamental truths of coaching. In this book, Martin has sought to discover these truths through interviews with some of the best minds in coaching today. This book is a reflection of Martin’s intellectual curiosity and passion to learn. His probing questions allow you, the reader, to get to the essence of the concepts and training methods.

I am honored and humbled to write this Foreword and to be included as one of the coaches interviewed for this collection. These coaches are an eclectic mix of experts from athletics and field sports, but the one thing they have in common is that they are the best of the best. Together, the interviews provide a comprehensive overview of the process of developing the athlete from many points of view. Most importantly, as I did 30 years ago, each of these coaches has gone outside their specialty and, in many instances outside their sport, to learn and challenge themselves to improve. This sends a powerful message about what it takes to be on the cutting edge.

By selecting coaches that transcend sports and disciplines, Martin underscores the unity of training ideas and concepts. The need to communicate across sports to share knowledge and learn. This collection of interviews features coaches who are thought leaders that have produced results at the highest levels of sport using this approach. None of them is narrow in their areas of interest or specialization. They all go where they need to go to find answers. They all use lateral thinking to connect dots in seemingly unrelated manners. They did this, not by being followers, but by questioning and building connections outside their fields of expertise.

All of these coaches share:

• deep knowledge;
• passion that fuels their drive to learn;
• coaching the athlete, not the sport or event;
• achievement at the highest levels;
• continued learning; and
• strength in getting better at getting better.

Reflect on the ideas expressed here and each of these approaches. Think critically about the responses. Do not take any of the answers as gospel. Use the collective wisdom of these coaches to learn and grow. It may change your ideas, or it may confirm them. Regardless, the benefit will be improved coaching. Keep learning!

Posture

Posture is not a static position. Posture is dynamic constantly changing and adapting to environmental demands in order to efficiently execute the desired movement. It is highly impacted by gravity, the ground and vestibular and proprioceptive considerations. Posture is not a still picture or a static position it is dynamic alignment and realignment of the body to stabilize, reduce and produce force based on the demands of the activity at hand.

Muscle Firing – Where’s the Switch?

"A lot of things weren't firing -- his glutes, his hips, thighs," (Training Guru to the star players – name deleted to protect the guilty) told the newspaper. "I wouldn't say his condition was the most severe, I wouldn't say it was the best. ... But if I were to classify it on a scale of one to 10 with 10 being the most extreme, I'd say he was definitely in the seven, eight category." This is definitely one of my pet peeves. If those muscles were not firing how did this player walk? Let’s get logical rather scientific. If there is an injury the body is very intelligent much smarter than the coaches and therapists who try to intervene by turning muscles on or off. The body will guard and call in substitute, as in most teams the substitutes are not as good as the starters, what we need to need to do is figure how to get the first string back into the game and playing as a team. We don’t do that lying on a training table trying to get individual muscles to fire and then hope we can get them back into sequence. We need to figure out what muscle synergies we can use to coordinate all those muscles to work together as a team. Otherwise it would be so simple, just find the master switch, program the body, turn it on and just like flipping a light switch beautiful motion. Hate to break to the gurus, but there is no switch. We need to understand planes of motion and muscle actions and be able to figure out how to manipulate those variables along with the ground to get the first team players back on the floor playing together. Just remember if they ain’t firing you ain’t moving. It is not about firing it is about coordination and teamwork. Join the team and skip down the functional path to movement bliss. (This is a post I wrote over ten years ago, if anything this thinking is more pervasive now than it was then.)

Functional Training

Functional training is a label for a concept. As with any label it is subject to various interpretations. I originally conceived it as multi lateral training integrating various training modalities (medicine ball, stretch cord, weight training, dumbbells, body weight etc.) to produce significant adaptation in specific performance parameters. It trains all systems of the body while recognizing and respecting the wisdom of the body. The end result is a highly adaptable athlete who is able to perform without limitations in the competitive environment. Contrast this to biased one- sided training that results in adapted athletes who are inconsistent in performance and prone to injury.

GAIN White Papers

Go to http://thegainnetwork.com/ and scroll down and download the PDF’s of these GAIN White papers. More will be coming over the next several months. I hope you enjoy and find them useful. Any feedback would be appreciated. Also if you are interested you can watch the opening talk of GAIN 2018.

Athletic Development - Defining the Discipline

This is my attempt to move beyond strength and conditioning and define a discipline that addresses current reality.

Developing Athletes - Why We Are Where We Are A Personal & Historical Perspective

Here I take a historical look over the past sixty years to see why we are where we are in sport and physical education today. This just scratches the surface but hopefully will stimulate thought and put it all in a historical context.

Announcing GAIN 2018 Faculty

Our faculty is a very special group with a tremendous breadth of experiences and a track record of excellence in their chosen fields. They know how a performance team works, how all aspects of athletic development complement each other and most importantly they understand the process of developing athletes. The faculty and their willingness to share and interact make GAIN special. They know how to connect the dots and still stay grounded in the basics. They completely live the GAIN Mission which is: To focus on the possibilities for enhancing human movement with no limits or limitations and emphasize connections and links between all disciplines in the same manner we emphasize connections and linkages in the body.

GAIN XI is June 12 to 16, 2018 at Rice University in Houston Texas. Apply as soon as possible. For more information & to apply go to  http://thegainnetwork.com/

Who are the faculty?

Vern Gambetta, Founder of GAIN Network, Currently Director of Gambetta Sports Training Systems. Vern brings 49 years of experience having worked with sport at all levels of competition.

Peter Weyand, PhD Professor of Applied Physiology and Biomechanics at SMU One of the world’s foremost experts on human performance, Peter is a frequent source for journalists worldwide on the topic of performance limits such as how fast humans can run. 

John Pryor, Former conditioning coach Japan Rugby, now the conditioning coach for Fiji Rugby and The Brumbies in Super Rugby. John has developed a system for blending speed and strength development based on his experience and incorporating the concepts of Frans Bosch that apply to all sports. He is not afraid to challenge conventional thinking.

Jim Radcliffe, Head S&C Coach University of Oregon, a pioneer and a true master of the profession. In his thirty plus years at University of Oregon he has worked with championships team in a variety of sports. Jim began as a high school coach and teacher who never strays far from the basics.

Martin Bingisser, HMMR Media, Swiss National Hammer Throw Coach, many time Swiss national hammer throw champion. Martin is the founder of HMMR Media, an online coach’s education platform, and co-host of the GAINcast and HMMR Podcast. He is also active as a coach, servicing as the Swiss national coach in the hammer throw, throwing coach for LC Zurich, and fitness coach for GC Rugby Zurich. Martin is a graduate of University of Washington and is a practicing lawyer in Zurich Switzerland.

Grace Golden PhD, is currently is a Senior Lecturer & Program Director for the Graduate Athletic Training Program at the University of Oregon. Her education includes  BS in Physical Education/Teacher Preparation (University of Oregon, 1989), MS in Physical Education/Athletic Training (University of Oregon, 1991) and a PhD in Exercise and Sport Science (Oregon State University, 2007).  She has been Head Women’s Athletic Trainer (University of Nevada-Las Vegas, 1997-2000), Assistant Athletic Trainer (Stanford University, 2000-2001), Associate Head Athletic Trainer (UCLA, 2007-2009) and Clinically focused on lower extremity screening and long-term rehabilitation of ACL injuries, her philosophy and approach are strongly influenced by emphasizing the existing intersections of fundamental movement skill development, motor learning theory, and apt performance programming in active individuals who have experienced lower extremity injury in order to emphasize physical literacy & athletic performance and the potential to prevent injuries.  

Nick Garcia, Athletic Development Coach & Assistant Track Coach, Notre Dame High School, Sherman Oaks, California. An accomplished athlete himself Nick has developed an outstanding athletic development at Notre Dame high school where he works with all sixteen sports. He earned his bachelor's degree and his master's in Physical Education from Cal State Northridge.

Steve Magness is a performance coach, author, and lecturer. He currently serves as a coach to 20 professional runners, is the Head Cross Country coach at the University of Houston and a Lecturer of Strength and Conditioning at St. Mary’s University, UK. As a writer, He just published two books, Peak Performance with co-author Brad Stulberg and The Science of Running.

Dan Noble Athletic Development Coach at The Hill Academy. He is the owner of Noble Sports & Performance and directs our offseason programming through Hill Performance Training. Recently, Coach Noble served as the Director of Athletic Performance for the Chinese Women’s National Ice Hockey Program. Dan specializes in fostering the development of elite athletes through a process that focuses on mastering efficient movement patterns, mechanics and creating sustainable, adaptable athletes

Bill Knowles, Director of Reconditioning and Athletic Development for HPSports is world-renowned in the field of Sports Reconditioning and Athletic Development. As a specialist with years of experience at the Professional, Olympic, and Elite Junior levels of sport; he specializes in developing injury prevention, performance training and reconditioning strategies for athletes and teams. Bill has lectured and trained staff around the world on his concepts of managing joint compromised athletes in their quest for a return to competition following injury.  He has equally presented an adolescent model of injury prevention and performance for soccer players.  Bill works consistently with the Philadelphia Union Academy in Major League Soccer/USA. Bill has worked with governing bodies of sport such as the RFU (England Rugby), The FA, Australian Institute of Sport, Chinese Olympic Committee, US Soccer, US Skiing, The England Institute of Sport, and the NCAA.  He has trained athletes and staff from over sixty professional teams throughout North America, Europe, and Australia.

Ryan Podell is sports science/conditioning coach for the Indianapolis Colts. Before that he was sports scientist with the Portland Trail Blazers where he was responsible for collecting and managing all training information and data to create more efficient ways to develop players. He earned his bachelor's degree in exercise science and his master's in sports performance from Ball State University.

Ed Ryan, ATC serves The Andrews Institute as the Director of Athletic Medicine providing service on behalf of Nemours Children’s Hospital to the US Tennis Association’s National Campus in Orlando Florida. Ryan served as the 2007-16 USA Basketball Women's National Team athletic trainer and medical services coordinator for all USA Basketball teams. A 21-year member of the U.S. Olympic Committee (USOC) Sports Medicine staff, Ed served as the Medical Director and head athletic trainer for numerous events, including the Winter Olympics, Summer Olympics, Winter Paralympics, and the Pan American Games.

Homayun Gharavi MD studied medicine and sports science at the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen. He is the founder of the German Academy of Applied Sports Medicine (DAASM) based in Regensburg. He developed an innovative elastic sling training system, the 4D PRO Reaction Trainer.

James Marshall is the Head Coach of Excelsior Athletic Development Club based in Willand, Devon UK. Having been employed as a strength and conditioning coach within professional rugby and with several National Governing Bodies he decided to set up his own club. He now coaches gymnastics, athletics and weight lifting to young people in the local area. His special interests are in understanding movement and coach education. A GAIN regular attendee since 2010.

Randy Ballard, ATC, Director of Integrated Performance He oversees the collaborative efforts of I-Perform, which includes representation from the Sports Medicine, Strength & Conditioning and Sports Nutrition units to promote an integrated athletic department that provides student-athletes and teams with programming and resources for optimal performance, athletic development and global wellness. Ballard was integral in the creation of the I-Perform program, which launched in the spring of 2014 with the goal of putting forth a unified approach to student-athlete health, well-being and performance.  Randy is a graduate of Kansas State and has a master's degree in kinesiology from the University of Texas.

Joe Przytula, ATC (AKA Mr. GAIN) is currently the Supervisor of Physical Education and Health at Elizabeth Public Schools USA- the second largest school district in the state of New Jersey. Prior to 2012, he was the head Athletic Trainer and a physical education teacher. He graduated from Montclair State College with a BS in physical education with a concentration in athletic training. He was NJSIAA athletic trainer of the year in 1998, recipient of the Governor’s teacher award in 2008, and NJAHPERD Active Schools Champion in 2018. Joe’s model of athletic development and rehabilitation is strongly influenced by manual therapy, the Gambetta Method, and physical therapists David Tiberio and Gary Gray. He has extensive involvement in improving community access to nutritious food, and engineering walkability/bikeability back into neighborhoods.

Landon Evans director of sports science in the Department of Athletics at the University of Iowa; a strength & conditioning coach for the track & field program; and an active research member with the Virtual Soldier Research program within the College of Engineering. He has also served as the sports nutrition coordinator for the Department of Athletics.

Greg Thompson has been teaching and coaching for over 30 years. He has degrees from Alma College and Wayne State University.  He currently teaches elementary Physical Education at Longacre Elementary in the Farmington Public School District in the suburban Detroit. Since coming to Farmington, he has served as K-12 Physical Education Coordinator and Department Chair.  In addition to his teaching duties, he serves as Acting Principal. His programs have earned two EDEX awards, one for assessment and one for “Rise and Shine”, his before-school exercise program.  In 2014 he received the Governor’s Champion for Health award from the Governor’s Fitness Council. Since 2010, he has been a member of the GAIN faculty. As a coach, Greg has successfully completed the USSF “A” License as well as the NSCAA Advanced National Diploma. He has performed as Director of Coaching for the Livonia Soccer Club and the Dexter Soccer Club.  He is currently with Michigan Rush-Northville as Athletic Development Director.  At the collegiate level, he has worked with Schoolcraft College Men’s Soccer, Madonna University Men’s Soccer, and currently with University of Michigan Men’s Club Soccer.  Coach Thompson was recognized with Madonna University’s coaching staff as NAIA Regional Coaching Staff of the year.

Steve Myrland, District Performance Coach for Athletics, District Wellness Director Middleton Wisconsin School District. Steve is an innovative thinker who can connect the dots like no other. He has worked as an athletic development coach in the NHL and at the University level including National Championship teams in Soccer and Ice Hockey at University of Wisconsin.

Testing =Training & Training = Testing

Testing and training go hand and glove. Evaluation through testing is an ongoing process that will determine the direction and content of training. Therefore it is important to build testing into the training plan. The traditional approach has been to schedule specific days for testing, usually at the beginning or the end of a yearly training cycle. This testing usually consists of criteria tests that profile the athlete with respect to the biomotor capacities in a particular sport. They are usually scheduled two times during a yearly training cycle. I have grown increasingly uncomfortable with this approach. Using testing only two times in a yearly cycle gave me good baseline information, but it did not give me information on the ongoing progress of training that I needed to make the day to day and week to week adjustments in the training to obtain optimum adaptive response.

There is a necessity to incorporate testing into the actual training process on a day-to-day basis. The solution is that testing equals training and training equals testing. At various points in each training session there are distinct windows of opportunity to get feedback as to the effect of training. It is imperative in those periods to look for and utilize the feedback. Build testing in the training. We must keep in mind that training is cumulative so it is important to keep the big picture in mind. Ongoing evaluation enables us to keep everything in proportion and perspective. We need to train all the qualities throughout the training year; therefore we must monitor the progress.

GAIN 2018 - Apply Now

This is the eleventh year of GAIN; it started 2007 with twelve attendees and four instructors and has grown to eighty attendees from all over the world and eighteen faculty. GAIN is a community of professional’s eager to learn and willing to share ideas and information. GAIN is not about more exercises, sets, reps and training methods it is about passionate people who pursue excellence with honesty, integrity and respect to make a difference in the lives of the people we coach and teach.

Who attends?

GAIN is open to Strength & Conditioning/Athletic Development coaches, Sport Coaches, Physical Therapists, ATC’s, Chiropractors, Doctors and Physical Education teachers. Those who attend are professionals seeking career advancement & renewal through a networking experience and who are interested in getting out of their comfort zone.

When is GAIN?

June 12 to June 16, 2018

Where is GAIN?

It is held on the campus of Rice University in Houston Texas.

How much does GAIN cost?

Tuition is $2050. This includes breakfast, lunch and dinner each day, and lodging at Rice University.

Where can I learn more about GAIN?

Go to www.thegainnetwork.com/ or call 941-378-1778. You can also email Vern Gambetta at [email protected]

How do I apply?

Go to https://tinyurl.com/ycu2sesl to apply, submit your application now, enrollment is limited. We will let you know within ten days if you are accepted.

Why do I have to apply? Can’t I just sign up?

Having people apply is part of what makes GAIN special. It would be easier to make it open for anyone to enroll, but that is not what GAIN is about. We are looking for people who are wiling to share and challenge themselves and others to grow professionally. The people in the network with you are as important (maybe even more important) than the faculty experts. The connections and inspiration you get from those around you have a significant impact on the experience.

Who are the faculty?

Our faculty has a a tremendous breadth of experiences and a record of excellence in their chosen fields. They know how a performance team works, how all aspects of athletic development complement each other and most importantly they understand the process of developing athletes.

How does the network work?

The GAIN annual meeting is the beginning. Participants have access to a secure website that offers access to an online forum and library including video of past GAIN Annual Meetings. In addition, GAIN members are eligible to come back each year at a reduced rate.

GAIN 2018 Theme

Connecting the Dots – Back to Basics

GAIN Mission

To focus on the possibilities for enhancing human movement with no limits or limitations and emphasize connections and links between all disciplines in the same manner we emphasize connections and linkages in the body.

GAIN Goals

Provide a career defining educational experience for all involved

Define the field of Athletic Development

Reinforce the concepts that:

Training = Testing and Testing = Training

Training = Rehab and Rehab = Training