Who is ultimately responsibility?

What is a coach responsible for? Safety, yes. A constructive learning environment, yes. Progress, kind of?? I can be confident in outcomes on the basis of work completed (that's the purpose of an evidence-based teaching) but the learning curve contains different truths at either end. Near the beginning of the curve, the curriculum holds the key to learning. As we move further from the start, the curriculum holds much less of this power. Mature skills can't be programmed so much as discovered, and discovery is the responsibility of the athlete and not the coach.
The athlete-coach relationship remains vital but it needs to evolve where responsibility is concerned. Too many young athletes become stuck or develop learned helplessness because the coaching environment doesn't facilitate the transfer of ownership and responsibility.
From my point of view there are two separate dimensions to this phenomenon. The first involves young athletes having responsibility for extra-curricular activities such as injury-free. A small homework routine is vital because it signals to the child that they are responsible for more than simply turning up and doing what they're told to.
The second dimension of learned helplessness occurs when coaches fail to teach principles of movement. An explanation of how forces and motion create specific sporting skills provides scaffolding onto which the individual can layer what's unique about them. In the absence of this, children will simply mimic others. They plateau at the level of general competency.
The process of specification is the act of learning and adapting to the unique physical challenge that every body provides. Know your sport; know your body. 'Knowing' is the responsibility of the individual but it is incumbent on coaches to ensure athletes learn this lesson.

Core strengthening 2018, November routine

If you are new to our core strengthening routines, please take a few minutes to read the background information contained with the September routine:

core-strengthening-2018-september

The November routine continues the theme, introduced in September, of circumferential conditioning.  That's sciency speak for using core muscles to oppose gravity when it acts against us from the front, the sides, and the back. 

As always, apply the critical rules:

• be patient and work according to the doctrine of correct shape
• breathe at all times, even if only small breaths are possible
• The core muscles are postural muscles, and the greatest influence on posture is the time between gym sessions.  Move more and be still less

Kindness be with you.

Core strengthening 2018 November - downloadable PDF

The Nordic curl

Hamstring injuries are a common occurrence in high intensity running, and the risk appears to rise with age.  Any muscle can be injured with overuse (too much volume/ insufficient rest) and overload (too much intensity or incorrectly used) but age creates an additional issue, which is tightness.  A tight muscle that is also weak is much more likely to be injured than one that is simply weak or overused.  My strong advice to anyone with tight and weak hamstrings is to regularly 'stretch-stress' the muscle to improve working length.  Exercises that stretch-stress the hamstrings include inchworms, reverse inchworms, and aeroplanes (single leg Romanian deadlifts).  The good news is that stretch-stress doe not require external load - body weight is sufficient.  Stretch-stress exercises are ideal warm-up exercises for gym and sport.
Sprinting is a special case for hamstring injuries because the muscles are loaded through a large range of motion, and a high volume of high intensity work is performed.  Even a comparatively short, 50m, sprint involves ~20 repetitions per leg.  That's a lot of work under maximal power conditions!
Fortunately, the risks can be easily improved and there is one exercise, in particular, that displays excellent efficacy for reducing hamstring injuries: the Nordic curl.  Clips are available below for inchworms and single leg inchworms, which we use with other variations to stretch and strengthen the hamstrings, as well as the Nordic curl.

inchworm

reverse inchworm

nordic curl - no partner needed

nordic curl - partner assisted

group versus individual coaching

One of the more unexpected observations I’ve made as a coach concerns the acquisition of self-responsibility.  Children with a high component of individual coaching can be less adept at taking responsibility for themselves.  Assuming my sense of this is valid, that’s potentially a big problem with a simple solution: strike the correct balance of individual versus group coaching.

Group coaching has significant advantages over one-on-one: the need to be responsible for oneself, and modelling of responsible behaviours by other children.  I hold the view that coaching and teaching environments are not primarily driven by the expectations of adults (teachers/ coaches) but by the conduct of other participants.  This is not to diminish the role of a prescription or of feedback; both are essential, but rather it’s a statement about how important modelling is in the development of behaviour.  As adults we often fixate on the ‘what’ over the ‘who’ when we coach and the desire to ‘individualise’ and ‘specify’ reflects this.  Again, information is king, but what we seem to miss in the prescription process is the role that interpretation and ownership plays in how information is used.

My strong advice to parents and coaches is to seek group participation as a starting point.  Care is needed to ensure group coaching is productive and challenging but it does not need to be over-managed.  It’s more important to ensure all the critical departments are active than it is to constantly massage the group dynamic or over-handle the prescription.  Individual coaching should be used to test what’s learned and sharpen minds and tools; for questions rather than answers.

Run, run, run

Pre-season is under way for 2019 winter sport.  The focus, at this time of the year, is running.  The off-season is an important time to recharge mentally but it’s often also catastrophic for many young people as all the strength and fitness built up over the season degrades to nothing with months off their feet.  The two big conditioning targets in the off-season are fitness and run skills or speed work. 

Fitness tends to be misunderstood.  I am applying the non-specific or general meaning, which is cardiovascular or aerobic capacity.  Cardio takes months and years to grow to a high level, but the good news is that once we are fit it also takes months to degrade.  Fitness reflects time on task, and longevity.  The first conditioning lesson for young sports people is this: you can’t do without simple fitness, and it takes years to grow.  Start now.  Tip: don’t have an off-season.  Play another run sport over summer or run for its own sake.

Most of us have experienced what we interpret as a drop in fitness after a short break but, assuming we were truly fit to begin with, that’s not what’s really occurred.  Work output is a measure of supply (e.g. cardiovascular fitness) and demand.  Whereas ‘fitness’ takes months to degrade significantly, strength and anaerobic capacity degrades rapidly.  A drop in anaerobic capacity causes an elevation in heart rate because what we can’t supply in one system, we must provide for with the other.  The ‘drop off’ in work capacity after a short break is not a reduction in supply (fitness) so much as an increase in demand.  Strength makes movement efficient and less efficiency (via reduced strength/ high intensity work capacity) means a higher movement ‘cost’.

This interaction between supply and demand or fitness and strength provides us with not one but two essential conditioning targets during the off-season: fitness and strength.  Strength can be targeted in two ways: in the gym to make muscles and critical joints stronger or on the field with high intensity running.  The advantage of high intensity running, or speed work, is its specificity; it enhances the very tools we need in the coming season.  Gym work is important, however, as it permits us to deconstruct the engine and rebuild from common denominators upwards.

The effect we can expect from high intensity running is an improvement in running at lower intensities.  As we become stronger, we become more efficient and that means being able to work at high power outputs for the same basic cost.  We find it easier to run!  In so much as how we ‘feel’ when we run is the greatest predictor of the likelihood that we will do it, becoming a stronger runner is a good strategy to support running for fitness.

All the best for the off-season but don’t kid yourself.  Season 2019 starts now.