This post has been a long time coming as I see too many people in the industry lacking critical thinking skills when it comes to training, rehab, and ultimately making our athletes and clients better. We shouldn’t be sheep and follow blindly what others are preaching and teaching us. We need to think critically to take the information that we learn at seminars, through reading (online and books), and speaking to other professionals to really try to understand how principles are implemented and how it fits into your philosophy and your system. We shouldn’t blindly copy what others do if we don’t understand the message/principle and how it is applied to each coach’s own individual situation.
Critical thinking skills aren’t being developed in our young professionals and we need to emphasize teaching our assistants, volunteers, interns, co-workers and students how to apply principles and develop a system of training. If principles are understood than creativity will be your only limiting factor…often times exercises are seen without the understanding of how they ultimately fit into the entire program. Don’t blindly copy others without understanding the true meaning. Seek first to understand and then decide if the new exercise(s) can fit into your system, philosophy, facility and if it will fit with your athletes.
Hopefully we here at SBCC allow you to think critically and make you think about what you do, why you do it and how and when you might be able to implement some of the ideas we share with you into your programs.
B
I recently did an audio interview with Kyle Newell over at www.newellstrength.com which has some really good training information along with some other interviews from other prominent coaches.
Check it out here and just scroll down the page or you can download it here.
B
Thought I would share this with all of you from my archives. Many of these numbers were presented by Vern Gambetta long ago so most of the credit goes to him on this one but I did add a few tests and numbers of my own. Click on the GRADING link below.
Shawn
Thank you to my former intern for writing an article about his experience as a strength and conditioning coach in Hong Kong.
Shawn
International Strength and Conditioning Coaching
Andy Martin, CSCS
I recently returned from a trip overseas to Hong Kong where I worked as the strength and conditioning coach for the Winling Basketball Club in the Hong Kong Basketball Association. As strength coaches, adaptability is one of the foremost skills required to be successful; be it to different athletes, different administrations/front offices, etc. I found this to be especially true while coaching overseas. While I am sure that each country has its own special challenges, I believe that some of the lessons I learned may be universal when coaching internationally.
Hong Kong Basketball
For those of us that have had a chance to coach athletes in the US, specifically basketball athletes, we are fortunate to have seen basketball played at a level that has been and continues to be the premier level in the world. In some countries, due to a lack of grass roots basketball programs, the level of basketball is much lower than we are used to in the US. That isn’t to say that young kids in Hong Kong don’t play basketball, in fact it’s wildly popular there, but they are rarely taught fundamentals that we take for granted because we are so exposed to them growing up. Hong Kong normally does not fare well against the other national teams in Asia.
With that said, the players are still very athletic. Some of them had some experience with “working out”, but none of them had any experience with actual sport performance training. So the task became to identify and correct any movement deficiencies, and design and implement training protocols to athletically develop the younger players and protect the health and performance of the older players. The experience as a whole was a wonderful opportunity, and I would not hesitate to go back overseas to coach, but there a number of challenges that I faced during my time there.
Breaking Down the Language Barrier
Before going over, I knew absolutely no Chinese. I still don’t know much, but you will naturally pick up some words/phrases simply from being exposed to the language on a daily basis. Most everyone could speak some English, and nearly everyone could understand English, but any team meetings or exchanges were almost exclusively in Cantonese. Only one player on the team was actually fluent in English, so immediately I was working against a language barrier. Also, I was informed that Cantonese is a harder version of Chinese to learn than Mandarin, so learning the native language was not a realistic option.
If possible, learning the language of the country you will be coaching in is ideal. However when this is not a practical option, try to learn at least the basic words and phrases that you will be using on a regular basis. Learn how to count, and learn basic instructional phrases that you will use during workouts, like yes/no, stop/go, and good job. A large part of the strength and conditioning process is building a relationship with the athletes, and even though you may not be fluent, displaying an effort to communicate with the athletes in their native tongue is a great start to building that bridge.
Overcoming Facilities/Scheduling Challenges
For the team that I was working with, a number of the players also had regular day jobs. This poses a scheduling problem, since the players will not always have time to come work out, and when they do the times will change from day to day. In addition, our off-court workouts were in a commercial gym, just like a large gym chain in the US. So the issue becomes you may have athletes coming in at different times during the day, and you are trying to put them through workouts while also battling the normal gym crowd for equipment. This is where the “art” of strength coaching comes into play in a big way. Being able to rotate between 1-5 athletes, at different points of a workout, spread out all over the gym, can be an incredibly difficult task. Therefore, organizational skills and the ability to adapt exercises when dictated by available equipment are invaluable skills. Ideally, you would be able to put your athletes on some sort of schedule and have your own facilities to be able to control the workout environment. But when this is not the case, you must be able to make due with the time/equipment you do have and still ensure that your athletes are progressing.
Facing Cultural Opposition to Progressive Training
Chances are if you are coaching overseas, that the athletes have most likely never gone through a progressive resistance training program. At least in the HKBA, players must be either born in Hong Kong, or naturalized as a citizen. This differs from many other leagues in Asia and Europe, where teams are allowed to import players from other countries. The particular problem this posed in Hong Kong was that there was only one real cultural outlook on “working out”. Setting aside the health aspect, most gym-goers in Hong Kong had a very bodybuilding mindset. They were not concerned with muscular strength/endurance, and especially not sport performance, but simply that they had very defined musculature. There were some very strong, muscular individuals, but most showed signs of some pharmacological assistance.
With this being the culture surrounding working out, it is difficult at first to get the players to understand why foam rolling is important, or why you spend 10-20 minutes on neuromuscular/core activation. If it’s not tricep pressdowns or bicep curls, it will take them some time to get on board. This is why an effective strength coach has to be able to educate his athletes as well as develop their program. You have to be able to convey the benefit of the exercises you select as it translates to on-court performance. If you can do that, and get the athletes to understand why you do certain exercises and why the whole workout isn’t spent doing bench press and curls and crunches, then you will have a much easier time getting the athletes to push themselves and really develop.
Adapting to Foreign Cultures/Building Relationships
Coaching overseas is just like any other opportunity in that it gives you a chance to make personal and professional relationships. Especially with basketball, which is probably the most popular sport in the world (aside from soccer), there are coaching opportunities to be had in a multitude of countries. If you can demonstrate that you can not only blend into a foreign culture, but also be a valuable asset to an organization, then you make yourself marketable to teams in any country that may need a strength coach. Coaching internationally can be a valuable and eye-opening experience that I personally feel makes you a better coach because you gain a new perspective on how to deal with athletes. Not just different personalities, but completely different life experiences.
This post is long overdue as I haven’t written anything new in a while. The summer has been going great…busy but great. I’ve been planning on how to integrate a large number of freshman athletes into what the upperclassmen have been doing as well as getting them ready for the rigors of college athletics.
It’s a challenge and a question I often get asked about…”How do you handle your freshman/newcomers?”
It’s not easy to integrate, teach and get newcomers (freshman and transfers) ready..especially when the season is right around the corner. You want them to be ready for the season, but you also want to set them up for future success through properly progressive training that emphasizes foundational training.
There are a number of things that I want to teach our newcomers and feel are necessary to set them up for future success:
1. Teach them how to work hard - kids think they work hard, when in reality they have no idea of the intensity level they need to bring on a day to day basis for success. They say “can’t”, complain, and show discomfort and defeat too easily on their faces. These are habits that need to be changed.
2. Build Work Capacity - the volume of college athletics is extremely high and these athletes first need to know how to work at a high intensity and tolerate the workload so they can perform day in and day out.
3. Develop mobility and stability – this is a big one that you never stop working on, but I’ve rarely seen a newcomer that possessed the needed mobility (hip, ankle, t-spine, shoulder) to properly learn movements and the stability (foot, knee, lumbar, scap) needed to perform these movements with precision. Newcomers need to learn how to position their body to perform movements safely and in the most efficient manner to stay healthy and have improved performance.
4. Teach them to be independent - it’s inherent that you as a coach will spend more time with newcomers teaching them every facet of your program, but how much time are you teaching them to be able to do it on their own? You can’t set everything up for your athletes, count their weight, count their tempos, write their weights in and clean up after them…they will eventually have to do it on their own. This goes into the actual system that you implement, but teaching them to be independent allows them to self sufficient which makes your job easier and teaches them how to think and act for themselves.
5. Emphasize doing things really, really, really, really well! – You’ve got one real opportunity to teach your athletes and that is from the start. You’ve got to emphasize doing things PERFECT from the beginning…foam rolling, joint mobes, warmups, core work, landing mechanics, sprint mechanics, lifting technique, and recovery routines. Every time you slip in getting them to do things well from the beginning, you aren’t ingraining solid habits in them. If you teach your newcomers, they will teach and reinforce it to the newcomers when they have been established within the program. This builds a culture within your program.
These are just some of the things that I like to emphasize with newcomers to my program. I believe that if we emphasize the early development, that it will make things easier down the road. When you invest time into these athletes, they will be able to help you teach the new crop of athletes that enter your program.
Once again, sorry for the delay in this post.
B
In this post, we will conclude the series and discuss the last 4 goals of post-season training. I want to point out that some other coaches may call this the early off-season as well and I hope you realize that this is the same time period. If you haven’t read the other installments, check them out: Part I, Part II, Part III
7. Establish mentality of the team for following season
The post-season is a time where the returnees (freshman, sophomores and juniors) have a unique opportunity to lay the foundation of what kind of team they will be the following season. The seniors are gone and new opportunities arise for leaders to emerge and for individuals to step up and accept larger roles for the following season. Typically, there won’t be a large amount of time to practice so the strength and conditioning coach will play a large role in developing the work ethic, discipline and cultivate the message that the coaching staff wants to send as they prepare for the next season. The mentality that I look to establish in my teams is one that preaches togetherness, communication, a high degree of effort, consistency, attention to detail, having a sense of urgency and a positive attitude. These are the things that the team can hold onto during times of adversity and can help mold individuals to achieve more. Do not overlook the importance of this.
8. Establish individual goals for physical improvement
Setting goals in the post-season gives athletes a map of where they want to go. Goals are used to help plan, guide, and motivate athletes throughout the off-season. I have my athletes set goals for themselves and then we meet to go over how to achieve them, to see if they are realistic and what it’s going to take to make the goals a reality. It allows me as a coach to understand where they want to go and achieve and helps me to understand how to motivate each individual athlete and what works for them. Goals can be a powerful thing for motivation and are necessary to facilitate improved performance.
9. Build a flexibility reserve
A flexibility reserve is essentially possessing more flexibility than which is needed to perform regular movements needed for the sport. This reserve comes into play when executing movements that require greater range of motion, allows athletes to perform these movements with greater speed and also gives the athlete more “wiggle” room when it comes to range of motion that is typically lost in-season. Most sport specific movements tend to occur in a shortened range of motion and rarely require the need to get to end ranges. When you perform a high volume of movements (reps from practice, games) and don’t put your joints through their full available range of motion, the body starts to adapt and lose some of that end range of motion. My goal in the post-season is to start to develop a flexibility reserve which is essentially re-gaining any range of motion that was lost in-season as well as start to increase the available range before increasing training volume in the 0ff-season and before the upcoming season begins.
10. Teach movements/exercises that will be performed during the off-season.
Not every athlete is fortunate enough to train at school year round and they most likely will be training on their own with the program that is given to them by their strength and conditioning coach. It is EXTREMELY IMPORTANT that you send your athletes home for the summer or off-season knowing how to perform the exercises you give them. You can set-up an on-line database of exercises or write a description but everybody knows that compliance will be higher if athletes know how to perform the movements that you ask them to perform. Use the post-season period to teach and reinforce proper technique in movements that you will ask them to perform.
That’s the conclusion to the post-season training tips series and I hope that is was helpful to all of our readers and gives you some insight into how I plan the off-season.
B
In this post, I’m going to discuss the next 3 goals of post-season training. If you haven’t read the previous posts in this series, check them out here: Part I, Part II.
#4. Rehab Any Injuries
This is an important step in the post-season prior to engaging in higher volumes of training. A long season can cause a number of little injuries that can be played through or managed while still trying to compete. But once the season is over, it is vital that these injuries are taken care to ensure that another injury in the same area will not occur again. According to Gray Cook, previous injury is the number one predictor of another injury. That’s why it’s crucial that athletes take care of this injuries so the body won’t compensate and cause another injury.
Having a skilled athletic trainer or physical therapist who knows biomechanics and understands how the body can compensate will play a huge role in rehabbing these injuries. The strength and conditioning coach and trainer or therapist should be communicating in how best to handle the athlete so they can continue to train and work around their injury while rehab is occurring simultaneously.
#5. Build connective tissue strength through higher eccentrics, isometrics and longer duration movements
Muscles adapt faster than tendons and ligaments and for proper long term training to occur during the off-season, the connective tissue needs to be prepared to handle sufficient stress prior to heavier loading. Jumping quickly into adding heavier loads or higher speed contractions in training is a sure fire way to aggravate joints and slow training down. Training is a progressive process and requires the connective tissue to be resilient enough before volume, load and speed are introduced. The most effective way to prepare the connective tissue is through the use of slow eccentrics, isometrics and movements with a longer time under tension.
Slow eccentric tensions are very effective for strengthening tendons because in eccentric movements one can generate greater muscle tension than one’s max in concentric movements. In other words, one can lower greater weight than one can lift. Tension, if not excessive, stimulates tendons to grow stronger (lay more connective tissue fibers and line them up right). The cumulative muscle tension that can be generated in a given number of reps is greater in eccentric and isometric movements than in concentric, or in natural movements (combined concentric and eccentric, with the amount of resistance determined by the concentric movement).
Once the connective tissue has been properly prepared, plyometrics, movement training (linear and lateral) and heavier loads can be introduced (higher speed eccentric contractions that take place in plyometrics, sprinting and agility training place a high load upon the tendons).
#6. Teach proper position of movement skills
Teaching proper movement skills of dynamic activities that will occur during the off-season training is necessary in the post-season. I’ve found that by teaching athletes where their weight should be distributed and how to push into the ground during certain exercises gets them to understand how to better use their bodies and also develops body awareness.
I teach these movement skills through the use of isometric exercises. Some of the benefits of isometric exercise is listed in #5, but they also allow the coach to teach the athletes and fix the athlete in the moment of the exercise, which can be difficult during a dynamic activity. Using exercises such as split squat holds or squat holds can teach the athlete how and where to distribute their weight on their feet, how to position their hips and torso and which muscles are active during the movement. This can help when progressing to sprinting, changing direction and jumping exercises. I think isometrics are underused, misunderstood and hold a lot of merit in making better athletes.
Even superhero's do their iso's
That’s it for now…until next time, I hope I’ve been able to stimulate some thought.
B
In the last post, I discussed the goals of our post-season training and as mentioned before, I will discuss each goal a bit more in-depth.
Goal #1
Restore range of motion that was lost during the season.
Due to the nature of sports and the length of the season, many athletes can lose joint range of motion during the season. Very few sport movements are done through a full range of motion, especially in the lower body. When a large volume of these movements occur during the season (repetitions) in a shortened range of motion, the body starts to adapt to these ranges and become less efficient in getting into the greater positions of extension. It’s important that we as coaches address these issues and start teaching our athletes how to move their joints through a full range of motion to re-establish optimal mobility/stability relationships at each joint to minimize compensations and restore ideal movement patterns before engaging in a more intense off-season program.
Goal #2
Build Work Capacity for the off-season so higher volumes of training can be handled.
Specific work capacity for physical development tends to decrease in-season because the majority of time is spent on developing specific work capacity for sport skills. It’s important that we re-establish a good fitness base in the post-season before engaging in longer training sessions during the off-season where multiples strength qualities are trained in the same session and throughout a microcycle (speed, power, strength, etc.). If an athlete can not handle the stress of training, proper adaptations can not be attained which may result in illness, injury or over-training. Therefore it is essential that work capacity and the ability to handle greater amounts of volume are addressed during the post-season before throwing a ton of volume at athletes.
Goal #3
Reinforce technique in the major primary lifts
During a late season push towards the playoffs, strength training sometimes can be reduced in an effort to try and “peak” athletes for major competitions. This may mean that primary movements (cleans, squats, presses, deadlifts, etc.) may not be trained. Then add in the off weeks at the conclusion of the season, some athletes may not perform these movements for 3-4 weeks. The power-lifts and olympic lifts that constitute many coaches exercise menus as “core”, “primary”, or “foundational” movements need to be re-taught, so that technique is re-inforced prior to heavier loading. These are technical movements that require the coordination and synchronization of multiple joints and muscles simultaneously. They need to be rehearsed and performed on a continual basis, so athletes understand the movements and feel confident with their technique with lower loads before loads are increased. Re-teaching also allows your older athletes to help coach the younger athletes which can be beneficial for team building purposes.
In the next post, I’ll address the next 3 goals.
B
We just completed our first week of post-season training with all the winter sports (M/W Hockey and M/W Basketball). I believe the post-season is an extremely important time to build the foundation for the rest of the off-season. This is a crucial step in the complete off-season program that may often get overlooked. I want to cover the goals of our post-season training in the next couple posts to give some insight into how our program is constructed.
The post-season is the time directly after the season has completed. We typically give 1-2 weeks off from all sport related activities and then will go through a week of testing before beginning training. Post-season training will typically last 3-6 weeks in length depending upon how long the season was, the training age of the group and injuries that occurred during the season.
The goals of the post-season are the following:
1. Restore Range of Motion that was lost during the season.
2. Build Work Capacity for the off-season so higher volumes of training can be handled
3. Reinforce technique in the major primary lifts
4. Re-hab any injuries
5. Build connective tissue strength through higher eccentrics, isometrics and longer duration movements
6. Teach proper position of movement skills
7. Establish mentality of the team for following season
8. Establish individual goals for physical improvement
9. Build a flexibility reserve
10. Teach movements/exercises that will be performed during the off-season.
I want to make sure that these areas of training are covered first and foremost before we begin to work on developing max strength, speed, power and specific conditioning. A good recipe must always start with laying the ingredients out first. I’ll cover each of these in the next couple posts, so please stay tuned.
B
I see myself as a movement practitioner; one that is looking to aid in the process of moving more efficiently. This will hopefully reduce the rate of injury as well the quality of performance. So when I am making a program I am looking to see where everything fits into helping this process best. With all of that being said, I place all movements in a work out with the intention of making better athletes.
To put it in a term that I think that everyone can relate to, I am what they call a functional trainer. What that means for example in terms exercise selection is that I would opt for a ground based position over a seated one. I know I can lift more weight in the more stable seated position (for some movements), but it means nothing to me if an athlete can not optimally press or pull something with out maintaining a neutral alignment.
There are ways I can position my athletes in which I can lift greater loads or in a position with an increased stability demands. Manipulating foot position is simple but effective method that increases the body’s ability to stabilize and thus lift greater loads. This is critical in circumstances with athletes that are looking to increase their strength as well as novice athletes that still have difficulty maintaining a neutral posture during movement. Thus the creation of: Myofascial Line Training.
