S B Coaches College - Hard 2 Guard Newsletter: Player Development Newsletter

·A Quick Word: Integrated Athleticism

·Interview with Robb Rogers

·Developing Basketball Intelligence

·Work Ethic

This is the dynamic result when athletes put all the elements together at once, the kind of athleticism we saw on the basketball court when Michael Jordan dominated. It’s the kind of integrated package we see in a Kobe Bryant, a Randy Moss, Larry Fitzgerald…Jordan’s greatness was in his ability to integrate all his athletic qualities with his skills, and make sudden, unexpected adjustments in the midst of moving obstacles — monsters like Shaq, for example…In other words, they put all the pieces together at once. That’s integrated athleticism.

Beyond describing integrated athleticism, his main purpose is to discuss the off-season or dry-land workouts of hockey players. He makes three main points:

1. Playing fun sports that are explosive and athletic would be a great way to invest your energy this spring.

3. Compartmentalized training is what the ‘experts’ recommend, because one or another of the compartments happens to be their expertise.

The idea is that you cannot develop athleticism one piece at a time. As a young player, if you focus your off-season workouts solely on lifting weights, you may develop more strength, but that is only useful if you can apply it to your sport. Without integrating the workouts, the new strength may not enhance your performance. For this reason, he suggests cross training in sports like tennis, lacrosse or basketball which feature quick, agile and explosive movements.

Weight training is not bad. That is not his point. Instead, he cautions players not to rely solely on weight training at the expense of other athletic skills. His idea of integrated athleticism is like the argument that I have made repeatedly in this newsletter: when we think of athleticism, we picture explosiveness, but there is more to athleticism than being explosive.

This month’s Men’s Health has an article titled “A Wild Workout for the Real World” that talks about a simple philosophy – “Be strong to be useful” – and 10 essential skills: walking, running, jumping, walking on all fours, climbing, balancing, throwing, lifting, defending and swimming. The idea is to have a “smart body,” which is like the idea of integrated athleticism:

A smart body knows how to convert force and speed in an almost endless menu of practical movements.

The irony is that the natural workouts are much like child’s play. Unfortunately, kids rarely engage in child’s play anymore. Kids now have personal trainers and go to sports facilities to develop the athletic skills that they neglect because they spend all their time in organized practices rather than playing tag, touch football, stickball, jumping rope, climbing trees, etc. Now, rather than learning to evade and change directions by playing games of tag with neighborhood kids as a 5-6 year old, that kid is doing stationary and straight-line ball handling drills and eventually going to a personal trainer who tells him exactly where to put his foot and how to shift his weight. Rather than developing integrated athleticism naturally through playing multiple sports and just playing neighborhood games, kids train these skills.

I was watching a soccer game recently and thinking about a couple grade school friends who were great soccer players. One was a great swimmer in his early days, but quit swimming long before high school. He burned out on competitive swimming and preferred team and contact sports. However, his early years of swimming gave him great lung capacity, work rate, discipline and strength which helped him as he played multiple sports through the beginning of high school and then soccer into college. The other kid was an age group racquetball champion in his youth who went on to become the area’s all-time leading scorer in soccer and eventually a professional indoor soccer player. While other 11 and 12-yar-olds spent all their time playing competitive soccer, he played soccer, but his better sport was racquetball. Eventually, when he gave up racquetball, the quick, agile movements he perfected on the racquetball court translated to an unstoppable force on the pitch. His late specialization did not prevent a professional career.

Now, the quick response is, “yeah, but they are just great athletes! I’m not a great athlete so I have to specialize in my sport and weight train and go to a plyometrics trainer to catch up.” Maybe Kent and Chris were naturally gifted. I never really thought so. I grew up with several future professionals and an Olympian and never felt that I was at a genetic disadvantage to anyone. Neither grew much taller than 5’9; the swimmer had a stronger build, but the racquetball player never intimidated me physically even though he was two years older. They were fast, but not the fastest sprinters in their grade school classes. However, they developed integrated athleticism through their participation in multiple sports, while many other kids stunted their athletic growth by specializing in one sport.

And, the specialization starts with the first author’s third reason. There is money to be made in structured leagues and organized clinics and private facilities. Nobody makes any money when a kid goes in his front yard and plays tag with his three neighbors. So, trainers, coaches and business owners argue for the necessity of this training. A friend told me that a club team was telling kids in his recreational league that if they did not start club basketball when they were seven, they would not be good enough to make a high school team. Sure. When players specialize, their athletic training becomes compartmentalized. When I was young, I played soccer in the fall as my pre-season conditioning for basketball. Now, when kids specialize, they use a trainer who has one specialty to prepare for the season. Rather than developing natural agility, conditioning, speed and more through soccer, kids spend time doing one thing: lifting weights, doing plyos, conditioning, etc. often to the exclusion of other facets of athletic development and often in a way that is not integrated into the sport participation. This does not mean that one needs more sport-specific off-season conditioning, as the skills between sports is fairly common: a defensive back in football needs to be able to do many of the same things as a basketball player playing defense; a volleyball player makes many of the same movements as a basketball player in terms of quick lateral movements and vertical jumps. To integrate athleticism, we need to think more about the movements and demands of sport rather than muscle groups or specific exercises.

Again, lifting weights has its place. Specializing in a sport has a time and place. SAQs have their place. However, the time and place is not pre-puberty when kids are still playing sports primarily for fun and developing the important motor skills which ultimately lead to better sport performance.

When we think about training athletes, we need to remember the “natural way” and the idea of integrated athleticism. It is not how fast you can run or how much you can lift, it is the transfer of your workouts to your sports performance. Developing a “smart body” requires more than lifting weights or running sprints, and the answer might be to back off and allow kids more time, space and freedom to play random games and engage in other activities that seem to have no direct correlation to the sport, except when you look at the underlying fundamentals from an integrated athleticism point of view.

This week, I have Part 2 of an interview with Robb Rogers, an accomplished veteran of the performance training industry with over 25 years of coaching experience in the high school, collegiate, and professional ranks as well as in the private sector. Robb is the Tactical Strength and Conditioning Coordinator at the NSCA World Headquarters in Colorado Springs, Colorado. For more information please visit www.sbcoachescollege.com or www.myfittube.com.

BM: Last week focused on vertical power, but how do you develop lateral power? Many basketball players lack lateral quickness and many of the devices marketed for lateral quickness seem to focus on the "pull" rather than the "push." Do you have any tips for players looking to improve their lateral quickness?

Rogers: First of all it is critical that the athlete maintain or improve the ability to internally rotate the hip. If the athlete does too much double leg strength training, then the lateral aspect of the hip and leg become dominant due to the load being absorbed more on the lateral aspect of the calf, thigh and hip. When that occurs, the hip and leg become imbalanced as the medial aspect become relatively weak in comparison to the lateral aspect of the hip and leg. In turn, this causes the foot to begin to become more externally rotated in movement mechanics which will directly impair their ability to absorb force optimally and produce force optimally in a lateral movement or change of direction. The athlete must resistance train the hips and legs with multi-direction lunges and step–ups in order to improve the ability to absorb and produce force in a lateral drill or movement. In addition, lateral core strength and stability will also enhance lateral speed, agility and quickness and help to limit the sway that occurs above the hip when an athlete plants the leg in a lateral stop, acceleration or change of direction movement. The specific movements of the lateral lunge/squat, scorpion or curtsey lunge/squat and the crossover step-up are critical to include in training to correct this problem and enhance lateral patterns.

BM: Finally, "core" training remains another buzzword in performance training. Do you have a specific focus for your core training with basketball players?

Rogers: Core Training is essential for sport performance as well as injury prevention. The glute is the engine and the core is the transmission for upper body movement patterns. Since the upper body is heavily involved in running, jumping and changing direction skills, the core is integral to optimal execution of these movement patterns. The next section of this answer is excerpted from my article “Core Vector Training” which can be viewed on either of my websites www.sbcoachescollege.com or www.myfittube.com.

In training the core it is important that the many vectors of stress and planes of motion be addressed as the demands of sport occur at high speeds and a variety of angles. Training the core in the variety of angles needed is similar to the angles of attack in the combative arts. The attack vectors of martial arts are up and down; diagonal up and down right and left; across the body from right to left and vice versa: and finally straight in, which is unnecessary for core development.

If the core can be trained in these various angles with a variety of implements then it will better be able to withstand as well as transfer the forces needed in preparation and competition. The labels for the various vectors are as follows:

The stances are relatively simple to master as there are 4 basic stances with three levels of difficulty. There is the lunge stance (kneeling or standing), the squat stance (kneeling or standing), diagonal variations off of each of these and the single leg stance. To vary the level of difficulty for each all you do is shorten the stance from wide to narrow. The lunge stance starts out with the foot about 1-2 foot widths wider than or away from the opposite knee. The next level of difficulty is the foot/knee is on one side of a line and the opposite foot/knee is on the other side of the same line. The most difficult lunge stance is the one in which the foot/knee and opposite foot/knee are on the same line, as if on a balance beam. In the squat stance start out wider than hip width, move to hip width and the most difficult stance in order to maintain core stability during a strength movement is with the feet less than hip width. Needless to say, the single leg stance is the most difficult of all to maintain balance and execute pillar core training.

As for modalities used to implement core training the Keiser Functional Trainer is excellent for the constant variety of speeds and loads at any angle and it has a power output reading. Most of us are not so fortunate to be able to afford a Keiser, so substitute some light to medium resistance tubing in order to give resistance in the proper ranges of motion. Medicine balls are excellent in order to mimic the movements in the various vectors and stress the ability to maintain a tall pillar core without arching or collapsing with rotation. The medicine ball can also be thrown to the floor or off of a wall in the various vectors in order to increase the power developed and force transfer through the core. The most stressful implement to use in core vector training is the water ball. The water ball is simply a small stability ball with about a gallon or 8.8 pounds of water. Just get a small piece of tubing and fill the sink with water. Take the smaller stability ball that is about ¾’s full of air and insert the tubing into the sink, under the water and suck start it in order to start the flow of water. Insert the tube into the ball in order to siphon the water from the higher sink into the lower ball on the floor. Keep adding water until about a gallon of water is added into the ball. During the movements the added water will move about inside the stability ball and cause the core to react and proprioceptively stabilize in order to execute the movements.

I received the following email from Vincent Minjares (Point FWD Athletic Development), a trainer and high school coach in Southern California:

Brian - I'm doing a spring development program, and I'm implementing a lot of the DBI stuff. The kids love it, and you can see the improvement in their decision-making. This group was my training group with college and advanced high school kids, and I'm planning on doing it with my high school team soon.

In this Weeks Newsletter...

A Quick Word

Interview with Robb Rogers

Developing Basketball Intelligence

Work Ethic