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
