Isn’t it funny how we typically look at the feet, legs, and hips when we talk about speed and ignore the upper body, arms, and especially the head and eyes? I’m not going to talk about the upper body (arms, thorax, core…); however, I will dive into the influence of the head and eyes. When …
I often see coaches having their athletes perform “Quickness” drills for way too long. And, they wonder why their athletes don’t “develop explosive laser-like speed.” Simple drills, such as line drills, dot drills, ladder drills, box drills, etc., are excellent ways to train the neuromuscular system to adapt to faster speeds. The proprioceptive system learns …
Many of us are stuck in a world of quick access and immediate results. It’s so bad that high-level collegiate and professional strength coaches are looking at YouTube before a training session to “get more drills.” We are just not being thoughtful enough as a profession to understand why we have to follow a system …
Thoughts on Program Design Here are my thoughts on program design. Please understand these thoughts are not standards, but simply additional concepts that can make your programming more thoughtful. Remember, training is not just a science; it is an art. Program design may be the single most important area when it comes to training athletes. …
How often do we see athletes performing running arm drills in positions inconsistent with arm action during acceleration or max velocity? Actually, quite a bit. The problem is, we have been taught wrong from the get-go. How many times have you heard “arms should always be at 90 degrees”? I am here to tell you …
Know your “stuff” before you preach it and teach it! I just watched a performance coach, on video, teach three different areas of deceleration. I can honestly say, he went zero for three. The bottom line is you have to understand laws of movement and stop trying to change human movement to look pretty in …
How many times have you heard, read, or said “No Pain, No Gain”? Maybe a gazillion? There’s a lot of good and bad with this simple statement. We don’t want aimless pain and discomfort without purpose and without a plan of working through it. But we want to be challenged physically, mentally, and competitively to …
If you want to convince me to have my child train with you, come to me with more than shiny new equipment and a tee shirt. Those are what we call features, and these features are not going to sell me. If you are trying to convince parents, athletes, coaches, you are the place to …
Bells and Whistles Versus Concepts and Principles Read More »
The Coaches “Cueing” Cheat Sheet! Man does it helps when you have a cheat sheet. It allows you to peek to know what cue goes with what mechanics. Take a closer look… Let’s say our athletes are running a staggered stance acceleration for 5-yards. What are some valuable cues? Cue: “Chase Your Shoulders”! This cue …
In typical programming, we want to start using light weights or bodyweight as the maximal intensity. This makes sense in certain aspects of training, especially for strength training. We can gain great performance in lateral speed development by loading early and reducing load later in the training phase. When placing a band around an athlete …
