Functional Path Training

Making Shapes

Looking at shapes will give you a different perspective on viewing, analyzing, and effecting change in movement. Look closely at the shapes your athlete must make while performing in their sport. Then look at the shapes they can make. Then look at what they must do to reconcile the shapes they have to make with the shapes they can make. How quickly and efficiently can they change shapes? What is limiting their ability to make the required shapes – it is strength, flexibility, lack of body awareness or something else? With the young developing athletes making shapes is an emphasis. I make it playful and set up tasks that require them to make as many shapes as possible and the challenge each other to change shapes almost like a big improvisational dance. It is very FUNdamental. For the mature senior athletes, I now structure a three to five-minute session of “shapes’ where they have to challenge themselves much like the junior athletes. I find myself increasingly speaking the language of shapes – big, tall, small, round, wide – It has given me a better perspective on reconciling coordination with sport skill. No more robots, just a dance of connected shapes!

Shapes

The essence of efficient movement in everyday life and sport is the ability to make effective and appropriate shapes for the activity. From a sport performance perspective making shapes and changing shapes is a central objective in training. It is a perspective to view movement with new eyes. In training shapes, I have borrowed liberally from gymnastics, dance, and elementary physical education – these are the foundations on which to build shapes demanded by the sport. The actual physical preparation for making better shapes and changing shapes demands a combination of strengthening, lengthening and body awareness work that helps the athletes eliminate any weak links limiting the ability to make the desired shapes. Shape work can be done away from the pool, track, field or court to help prepare the body to make the necessary shapes and get into shapes beyond the normal. Training shapes is another step toward building more robust athletes. I now try to schedule some shape work every training session and I am continually pointing out to the athlete how an exercise we are doing will help make them better at the required shapes in their sport. Learning to speak the language of shapes and shape shifting will make you a more effective coach and develop better athletes.

Making Shapes

Shapes was brought to the forefront of my thinking about 10 years ago when I was working with one of my swim teams. The coach kept talking about getting smaller into the wall and taller off-the-wall off the wall into a streamline. I left the workout thinking what he was really telling the swimmers was to make different shapes. This got me thinking about the whole concept of shapes and what we needed to do to impact the athlete’s abilities to make the required shapes.

What are shapes? Shapes are postures, poses, and positions that enable the athlete to effectively produce and reduce force in the desired skill. What shapes do you need to make? What shapes can you make? How do you reconcile the two? This must be evaluated in the context of their particular sport demands. It usually involves work on body awareness, some strengthening and some lengthening. In my system, shapes are a specific training module. Shapes can be improved significantly with consistent investment of time. In analyzing programs for the last 10 years in volleyball and swimming work on shapes averaged about 30 to 35 minutes per seven-day microcyle. It does not seem like much but over a training year in addition to the individual athletes homework to help them work on specific shapes that they were deficient in it is a significant investment.

To make shapes effective it is imperative that it is connected to the desired movement skill in the sport. The athlete must understand this connection. It is really interesting to see how they enjoy it and how much they do relate to it until it becomes a part of their movement vocabulary. Use video of the desired sport shapes and then relate exercise in the shapes routine to help them understand the connection. For example, the overhead squat for a swimmer is a categorized as a strength exercise but it's more than a strength exercise, it represents an essential shape coming off the wall and transferring into a streamline. It is easy to show this to the swimmer. Now the shape on dryland has transfer for them to the water.

Shapes are FUNdamental therefore it is essential to challenge the athlete to make better shapes and have fun doing it.

Minimalism

You can do so much with so little. Amazed to see people continue to design training programs based on elaborate facilities and equipment. If you know & Understand the basics you don’t need much space or fancy equipment. My basic rule of thumb is quite simple: never let a lack of equipment or facilities limit your training. Use your imagination & creativity and go for it. You can do more with less if you put your mind to it.

Shapes

Looking at shapes will give you a different perspective on viewing, analyzing and effecting change in movement. Look closely at the shapes your athlete must make in the course of performing in their sport. Then look at the shapes they can make. Then look at what they have to do to reconcile the shapes they have to make with the shapes they can make. How quickly and efficiently can they change shapes? What is limiting their ability to make the required shapes – it is strength, flexibility, lack of body awareness or something else? With the young developing athletes making shapes has become an emphasis. I make it playful and set up tasks that require them to make as many shapes as possible and the challenge each other to change shapes almost like a big improvisational dance. It is very FUNdamental. For the mature senior athletes, I am now structuring a three to five-minute session of “shapes’ where they have to challenge themselves much like the junior athletes. I find myself increasingly speaking the language of shapes – big, little, tall, small, round, wide – It has given me a better perspective on reconciling coordination with sport skill. No more robots, just a dance of connected shapes!

LTAD is Becoming Cliché

Let’s look at where we have been over the past seventy years. What has changed? Society has changed immensely; youth sport has become commercialized. There is no longer mandatory physical education in the schools. Then and now child development does not follow a neat linear progression, so-called windows of opportunity for development of various physical is a myth, sport development is all over the place, youth phenoms rarely turn out to be senior champions. We need to stop following recycled eastern European so called LTAD models. They were developed for a different society in a different era. We need to put a concerted effort to get mandatory daily physical education back in the schools, not just for sport development but for general health. Physical education will provide the physical literacy and movement skills base that are foundations for specific sport skills. Let’s stop following the flock, think critically and recognize the current socio-cultural milieu in America and come up with a workable framework that fits our society and current reality. We can do it!

GAIN 2019 – Applications Open

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 11 to June 15, 2019

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

How much does GAIN cost? Tuition is $2150. This includes breakfast, lunch and dinner each day, and lodging at Rice University.

How do I apply? Go to tinyurl.com/gain19 to apply, submit your application now, enrollment is limited. We will let you know within ten days if you are accepted.

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]

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 2019 Theme Building on the Basics – Step by Step

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.

The Good Old Days – Looking Back to Learn & Move Ahead

As I reflect over the past 49 years of coaches there were some things that were cornerstones of a productive system sport that do not exist today. I hope you all realize that I am not living in the past, but we MUST learn from the past, not repeat it.  Here are some areas that I think we could certainly look at and learn from:

Sport was centered in the schools – Therefore teachers were the coaches. Whether they were knowledgeable in the particular sport they had a foundation in pedagogy. Today anyone can coach.

Elementary schools had after school sports – Kids stayed at their neighborhood schools and played. Sometimes it was organized and other times it was supervised. Today you pass an elementary school after school is out and it is a ghost town.

Liability was not an issue – Climbing Ropes, Tramps, Peg Boards were everywhere. All of this has been taken away for “safety” and liability reasons. We are not challenging the kids.

Coaches were the experts – The high school coach was the expert in his or her sport, no special QB schools, you got coaches by your high school coach. Can this be a shortcoming if the coach is not knowledgeable, absolutely, but somehow, we overcame this.

Daily Physical Education was mandatory K through 12 – Need I say more. These PE teachers were also the coaches. They knew how to teach skill and organize, because they did it all day!

Off season Football was track – if you were a football player and did not play baseball you were out for track. You became a better athlete and you learned how to compete.

You played multiple sports – This was the rule not the exception. Seasons were defined so it was easy to do.

No Travel Teams & All Star Select Teams – This is killing school sports

A few ideas from an “OLD” coach; interested in your comments on how we could get some of this back if you think it is important.

What's Behind the Medals

The bottom line is that for a long time our “non-system” has served us quite well. What has happened? The first thing that changed was the erosion of mandatory physical education to the point where today there is only one state that has mandatory physical education K – 12. The most obvious impact is that youngsters are no longer exposed to systematic physical activity. They are no longer taught basic movement or sport skills as part of an organized curriculum. What we failed to notice is that because physical education was no longer mandatory that less physical education teachers were being hired. The physical education teacher made up the pool of trained coaches. Then there came an increased emphasis on academic achievement to the exclusion of physical education. In addition, there were budget cuts due to declining enrollment and tax cuts. Therefore less qualified coaches were hired in the schools. Club sports began to take the place of school sports. These coaches had no educational requirement. Teacher training colleges changed their mission from teaching to research. Title IX put an increased burden on the schools because in many sports it was now necessary to field two teams instead of one. This served to further deplete the pool of trained coaches creating an obvious staffing problem. These problems are a reality in the United States in 2018.

Stuff

Everyone does stuff. What is your stuff? Where did you get that stuff? How do you if the stuff you do works? Is your stuff better than my stuff? Maybe we need to get beyond stuff and focus on the why, how and when. Vern Gambetta, Director of Good Stuff, Gambetta Sports Training Systems