What effect are you producing for your athletes?

Coaches are all too often judged solely by the results they do or do not produce. While at the pro and college level jobs are based on this same dynamic, there is another criteria that is just as important when it comes to preparing athletes to perform their best.

Coaching Efficacy
Efficacy is the ability to produce a desired effect. And for coaches this is critical as it is our job to create/build/design/support what matters most to or for the athlete, even if he or she disagrees with you.

A few reflective questions that I ask myself going into the start of the week include:

• Is the athlete following the best path right now in order to get the best result?
• If not why?
• What is not working or missing right now in their program that is slowing down their momentum towards personal success?
• Which area(s) need my immediate attention today/this week? (i.e. physical issues, environmental issues, inner game issues, etc.)

Asking yourself these questions will help you to get the best out of your athlete and yourself!

NFL Football Ref

Last week, Jon Reep was announced the winner of the tv show 'Last Comic Standing'. While I did not watch the season series, I did watch the final two episodes. Mainly because Jon is from the same town where my parent's use to live in Hickory, North Carolina, and his final act involved him discussing the NFL Carolina Panthers.

So just in case you missed it and are looking for a good laugh here it is below:

Communicating with your Athletes

Here's a great question to ask yourself...

Are your words counted or are they weighed by your athtetes?

Is your speed training biased?

Are you creating 'Mindful' training sessions?

I recently had the opportunity to talk with Dr. Ron Quinn, an associate professor at Xavier and also well known soccer coach.

During our discussion of young athletes we went down the path of being mindful versus being mindless. Below are four suggestions to help keep your athletes 'Mindful' and challenge their 'Inner Game':

• ask your athletes to tell you what are the similar skills involved in an old drill and a new one you are introducing
• ask your athletes what are the applicable principles of movement mechanics during a known drill
• ask your athletes to relate principles to the objective of an unknown or new skill/drill
• ask your players to relate the skill to a game specific situation

Single Leg Squats and 'Knee Dominant' Exercises

Yesterday I saw a video on what was classified as 'Knee Dominant' exercises. Of the four or five that were presented, two of them were not actually knee dominant at all!

What was even more amazing was that the athlete in the video was loaded with a substantial amount of weight while performing a single leg squat. However, the fact that the athlete could actually perform the rep was not the amazing part. Yes it displays a great amount of strength, but performance based strength is not about the amount of load. It is about generating TORQUE! (more on this topic in a future post)

This is why it is so important for coaches, trainers, and therapists to understand basic concepts of biomechanics. For example, performing a single leg squat off of a box while driving both arms in front of the body as well as the non-loaded leg is not a knee dominant exercise after all. In fact, it is a hip dominant exercise due to position of the center of mass.

Classification of exercises is critical as they have a huge impact on program design!

How to choose the right coach- Part 2

One of the best things to do when looking for a coach to work with you is to setup a block of time where you can go and watch him/her work with another athlete.

Get to the session early, preferably before the scheduled athlete arrives and be on the lookout for the following:

1. Relationship- How does the coach interact with the athlete? Is it more like blind obedience or a partnership?
   
2. Communication- How does the coach speak to the athlete? Is it a do what I say approach? Or are there open questions and vivid examples used during explanations?


3. Clarity- Is the coach speaking in such a way that the athlete clearly understands what is being expected of him or her?


4. Connection- Is there a visible bond between the coach and the athlete? How does the coach motiviate, encourage, and inspire the athlete? Especially during times of frustation?

These are just a few of the key areas to observe when looking for the right coach for you.

With a 27% Chance of making this team would you still tryout?

What I heard today is absolutely crazy! I called one of the young athletes that I work with to find out how he felt he did at his football tryouts today. This young man is thirteen years old and in the eight grade.

This is the first year the school will have a full team comprised of both seventh and eight graders as the school is now only going into it's second year.

One hundred and forty five young men came out for the three day tryout! Holy cow! And of that total, the coach will only keep forty players on the team. That works out to about a 27% chance that each player has of making the team.

Now I can take a number of view points from this point on in this post including:

1. What does a young player have to do in order to get an edge going into the tryouts?


2. How does a middle school coach rule out that many players trying out for the team?


3. What happens to all of those who do not make the team? Are there other sports for them to participate and stay active in for the fall? Probably not.


4. Even for those players that do make the team, there will be at least a handful who will most likely never even see the field.

As I don't want to write a book here, below are a few brief thoughts on each:

1. FOCUS on becoming a good athlete. In other words, in the few weeks leading up to tryouts that we had together, the goal was to not try and make him the strongest or the fastest player on the field. Why?
   
   At this point in his development there is no way for that to happen anyway. Therefore, our goals were to establish a foundational base of bodyweight strength combined with building habits that promote fundamental movement skills. What is the result?
   
   Well now a player who is a bit faster but definitely stronger, more stable, more flexible, and can play low without compromising optimal body position in order to produce power! Most of all, taking this approach has helped to instill some self-confidence which at this level can be the deciding factor often times of personal success.
   


2. Not sure I have an answer here. Over the first two days the tryouts consisted of running long distance, performing a few sets of pushups, suicide sprints, and completing an agility drill for time. Maybe not the best format but it is solid and can serve more to disqualify players than the other way around. ( can be a good thing!)
   


3. Again not sure here either. Yes many of these kids could play multiple sports. However, for those that do not make the team they will most likely not have the sport specific skills in other sports during the same season. (Don't confuse this with playing football, basketball, and then track. These are all different seasons of play).
   


4. Yes it will hopefully be a positive experience for those players who make the team but never see the field. Although I would doubt it as the fun part is all about playing the game!

The main take home point here is yet again the concern for youth sports here in the United States. We definitely have the worlds largest potential talent pool but we have no system in place to help develop these kids! What's worse, our present system dictates for us coaches that we turn away late blooming talent that could one day turn out to be our countries best.

Good luck to all of those players trying out this week. Just making the team means that you beat some incredible odds! Especially in situations like the one I mentioned here.

Choosing the right coach

Now that fall is here and most field sports are well under way, I have begun to receive emails from parents around the country about how to pick the right training company/coach.

Here is my two cents worth:

• For the most part performance and the training process have now become almost a commodity; meaning there are more similarities than differences in the customer's eyes.
• Unfortunately the truly unique coaches and fitness professionals do a poor job of communicating what actually makes them unique and therefore get automatically labeled as a 'trainer'.
• What separates the best is 'how' these coaches/services deliver what they do.

Ask yourself- Does the coach/trainer you work with outbehave the competition?

More on this tomorrow!