| |
To coach beyond the clipboard means that you are sensitive to the
day-to-day needs, stresses and realities facing your athletes.
It means that although you have a program or outline ready for
what you want to accomplish during a training session, you are
reactive to how your athletes feel that day.
A lot of homework...
Fight with the girlfriend of boyfriend...
Lack of sleep...
Nothing to eat for the past 7 hours...
These are intangible realities that you have to account for in
any given training session.
By ignoring important issues like the ones I just mentioned and
following the 'Vince Lombardi School of Coaching' that requires
every single training session to be a blood, guts, sweat and
vomit kind of event, you are just setting your young athletes up
for injury and over-training concerns.
To be able to 'Coach Beyond the Clipboard', you have to have a
system within which to work, Ohio.
Long-term athlete development systems are complex and involve a
great deal of know-how when putting together.
They entail a progressive system of development that spans many
years and involves many intricate details including sensitive
developmental periods, learning styles and lifestyle monitoring.
The scope of a single article is too narrow to discuss the great
details associated with creating long-term development models...
... But I sure can explain how you can create a system for training young athletes day-to-day!
Let me start with this:
There are a lot of rights and a lot of wrongs, but there are seldom any absolutes.
Due to the natural growth and hormonal conditions of virtually any young athlete, you could successfully argue that ALL training
programs work.
The debate comes in the form of what works BEST.
And more often than not, a lot of that is based on your situation.
So the first question you have to ask yourself, is what's most important to you and your athletes?
I suppose another way of looking at it is what do they need?
My stance is and always will remain the following:
- All young athletes need the basics. They need to learn to squat, lunge, rotate, push, pull, produce force and absorb
force.
- I stick with the basics and build them efficiently. I look at training a young athlete from the perspective of developing
skill. Once a young athlete understands the basics of a particular movement, I progress that pattern via complexity.
When young athletes develop sound skill, you can build on it in virtually anyway - and that is the essence of proper training.
- Mobility, flexibility, strength, power, coordination and cardio-respiratory fitness are all separate elements, but incredibly symbiotic and overlapping. General improvements in any, will lead to general improvements in all. People tend to be thrown off when I suggest that the #1 way to enhance flexibility in a young athlete is to improve their strength. Usable and functional flexibility is based on exhibiting full and complete ranges of motion. A lack of flexibility can often be caused by an overall lack of strength (either systemically or pertaining to
that specific movement).
- Keeping with the point above, I don't categorize my training into 'periodized models'. Periodization is a concept that
simply cannot apply to the modern-day young athlete and requires too much in the way of building 'separate physical elements' at
different times of the year. Think of training as a way to introduce, teach, master and integrate various skills and
abilities into a young athlete and the sports they play.
When working with teenage athletes (14+), I have a set daily
plan that has proven effective throughout the year (weather in
season or out).
It's a broad system within which reps, sets, loads, volumes and
intensities can be altered based on a number of factors including
as I already mentioned, in and out of season realities.
Here's what my 45 - 60 minute training sessions look like:
A) Mobility/Tissue Quality
B) Flexibility (primarily active)
C) Torso
D) Movement Prep
E) Movement Technique
F) Strength (power or strength skill)
G) Warm-Down (generally static-active flexibility)
Depending on the time of year and how my athletes feel that day,
each of those categories take between 5 - 15 minutes.
And as I mentioned, I can alter any part of the elements to fit
the needs of my athletes on any given day.
So what's your system, Ohio?
Do you have a method of categorizing your training sessions and
know how to manipulate them over the course of a year?
I hope I've shed some light on how I do things and inspired you
to create a system of your own.
Next week, I'll start breaking down each of those categories
and explain to you how they work!
Have a great weekend!
'Till next time,
Brian
Brian Grasso Peak Performance Online
|
