Great weekend

Coupl'a thoughts about the weekend...

1. Do any Yankee fans out there feel truly comfortable yet with a 7.5 game lead heading towards September? Still great to take 2 of 3 in that bandbox of a ballpark they call Fenway.

2. On that note, can someone explain to me how Jim Rice was "misquoted"?
http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=4417140

3. I watched parts of the movie Major League on Saturday for the 548th time ("This guy here is dead!" "Well CROSS-HIM-OFF then!") After watching the Yanks on Fox and then on ESPN, isn't there a way one of these networks can pay Bob Euker enough money to make these telecasts worth listening to without putting it on mute by the 3rd inning?

4. I love Saratoga

5. Time to do a little reading and some work. Have a great start to the week!

OchoCinco

Just sitting here writing a few programs on a Friday morning, listening to Mike and Mike in the background (Eric Kuselias and Tim Kurkjian filling in) and I overheard a pretty cool story. As much as I'd rather not give someone like Chad "Ochocinco" props, the wide receiver apparently filled in for an injured kicker to hit an extra point, and follow that up with a kickoff inside the 10 yard line.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFiCRzkDXOU

To me the interesting part came after the highlights though. Kuselias acted quite surprised and Kurkjian made a great point that we actually underestimate how good the top athletes really are. Seriously. He noted that almost all of these great athletes excelled at SEVERAL sports through high school. Ochocinco apparently played soccer. Lebron was an all-state football player in Ohio I believe. Many baseball players were also great basketball or football players.

So the real question is, why do we spend so much time specializing young kids at such a young age now? Have we been force-fed so much propaganda by competitive, off-season leagues that we now believe the only way to make it to the next level is to pay them your hard-earned money to gain the exposure of college coaches and big league scouts?

I had a conversation with a local basketball player recently. I asked him about a teammate of his whom I hadn't seen in a while. The teammate hit his growth spurt at an early age; was much stronger, faster and bigger than the rest of the 7th graders he competed with or against. So what did his coaches do? Made him learn how to play center. No problem here. Well at least there wouldn't have been a problem if he had continued to grow. Fast forward 2 years. The same athlete, plenty of athletic ability, is now too small to play in the post and is apparently a couple years behind on his ball-handling skills. Long story short-word is he "doesn't really like basketball that much anymore."

Can you blame him?

The main goal for youth athletics should be to be as well rounded as possible!

Any thoughts?
Jon

Overcoming Mental Hurdles

Back at Ithaca, as a grad student, I remember having an inter-departmental rivalry of sorts with the Sports Psychology peeps. After 5+ years of studying various sciences I was convinced that physiology, kinesiology and biomechanics was the be all-end all when it came to designing training programs for athletes.

Today, after working with so many kids, I realize this view was shortsighted. The mental aspect of training is undeniable. I feel like I can work with a young athlete for one session and peg, almost to a "T", the type of parents they have; overbearing, supportive, positive, etc.

Some of the best natural athletes I have struggle because they are afraid of making mistakes. They don't want to deal with the negative consequences they associate with making a mistake.
It is my job as coach to make an adjustment in my coaching style to make them realize it's OK to try something new and not be perfect the first time. It's like teaching them to clear hurdles in their head.

This essentially means that each athlete may require a different style of coaching (and probably does). I've heard so many times how coaches use negative reinforcement to "weed-out" the kids they don't want anyway. Really? How many do we leave by the wayside just to get to the select few who were probably going to be successful anyway, just to take credit for them for being their coach?

The same sort of thing happens when it comes to overcoming physical limitations or "ceilings." Sometimes an athlete can be pushed further than they believe they should be. This is not always the case, however. Some athletes need to have the reigns pulled back some (especially with weight training) as they are only interested in how much weight they can put on a bar without worrying about execution. Do you think yelling and screaming and trying to motivate this type of athlete is going to work? Hell no. Take some time to teach them the why's and how's about the exercise.

As important as it is to understanding the mental makeup of your athletes, I still believe it is most important to have an understanding of training principles, anatomy, biomechanics, and the like (I don't care how good you are with brain typing, mental training, etc...without the scientific background you should not be training. Period). However, I feel like the mental aspect of coaching is what separates the average coaches from the great ones.

Can you get the most out of each of your athletes without leaving anyone behind?

To an Athlete...

Alright I'm gonna get a little corny here. Deal with it.

A couple of weeks ago I pulled up behind a car at a stoplight with the vanity plate reading "YMIHERE." It's no question the first time a liscense plate has made me think with any sort of depth.

I got to thinking about what it is I am doing, right now, with my life. What events led me here? What choices of consequence had I made that led me to the profession of teaching kids the basics of movement and sport performance training?

I got to thinking of the days when I was an athlete in middle and high school. I was lucky to have a coach, Lee Taft, who introduced me to the practice of strength training, but more importantly taught me what it was to be an all-around person.

A matter of days later, I was rummaging through some old text books and I came acrossed a poem that Lee handed out to all of us during football season one year in high school. It's fairly corny, simple, but really hits the nail on the head. Here it is:

To An Athlete

There are little eyes upon you,

And they're watching night and day;

There are little ears that quickly

Take in every word you say;

There are little hands all eager

To do anything you do;

And little children who are dreamping

Of the day they'll be like you.

You're the little children's idol,

You're the wisest of the wise,

In their mind about you,

No suspicions ever rise;

Hold that all you say and do,

They will say and do, in your way

When they are grown-up just like you.

There are wide-eyed little children,
Who believe you're always right,

And their ears are always open,

And they watch each day and night;

You are setting an example

Every day in all you do,

For the little children who are waiting

To grow up and be like you.

This made me think back to the years before middle school, when the varsity athletes were exactly what this poem is describing. If you're an athlete, even only at the high school level, you can bet that there are kids out there who would love to be put in your situation.

Do you consider this when you make decisions on a day to day basis?

I was good about my decisions in high school, although there are some things I do regret.

If you had taken into account all people who can be affected by the consequences, before you made your choices, would you still have made the same choices?

Workout Vs. Training

Recently, in one of my bootcamp classes, a question came up regarding the plataeu effect, and why we couldn't just do more and more every day without topping out. I wrote an e-mail newsletter to the participants explaining the difference between training response and an adaptation. It was basic and contained the usual suspects; responses include increased heart rate, ventilation, doms, acute hormonal response, increased systolic blood pressure, etc.. Adaptations included increased lean muscle mass, decreased resting heart rate, increased resting metabolic rate, increased cardiac output, decreased blood pressure, etc.

The point I made to the bootcampers was that adaptations only occur during recovery. Without proper nutrition and recovery time, adaptations will not happen. Period.

So how does this relate to your training program? Well first off, do you have a training program? Or do you just go to the gym to get a "workout". If you are going just for the workout, you are in other words just looking for the response. You feel good when you've finished an exhausting workout, or you've ripped apart your muscle tissue so much you can barely move the next day. You feel like you accomplished something.

But did you?

How many times have you worked out like this only to never see the changes you truly want? I see this with athletes, adults and everything inbetween all the time. People plateau and they just keep going and pushing through, hoping things will change.

So what's the solution?

The key is to have a long range program in mind. Figure out your goals, where you'd like to be. Then find someone to help you map out how you are going to get it done. If you wanted to drive across country you wouldn't just wake up and start driving like a banshee down the road in any random direction would you?

So don't do this with your training!

Your plan should include scheduled low volume weeks to allow recovery. These recovery periods will help you get more work done in the higher intensity workouts while avoiding the plateau effect.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnAg4SGGHjA
Is there really a need to push yourself to the point of wanting to puke in a workout? It's amazing how many people think that's ok to do consistently.

Ask yourself that simple question: Are you working out (looking for a "quick hit"), or training (looking to make changes)?

Youth Fitness?

Before I headed out yesterday morning to train my group of kids, ranging in age from 10-20 separated into 2 groups, I caught a cliff-hangar on the news saying something to the effect of "stay tuned, a report on kids and fitness after this."

I was interested, so I hung around to watch. This is what I saw:

http://capitalnews9.com/content/health/child_wellness_wednesday/478945/make-childhood-workouts-fun/?RegionCookie=12&ap=1&MP4

If you skipped the link, take the time to watch it, it's less than 2 minutes and blew me away.

Now there's a lot of good things about the media; anyone who has a message can get it across in one way or another, whether it be on tv, internet, newspaper, whatever. But with those benefits comes irresponsible "journalism" and reports by so called "experts" who really have no hands on experience dealing with the very issue they are preaching about.

I laugh almost every time I see this woman on my local news. (I heard I actually missed one where she was recommending people do turkish get ups with an olympic bar-unreal).

There are a lot of misconceptions about youth fitness between coaches, parents, and over-zealous trainers. Reports like this simply serve to reassure those who are already way off base. The only positive thing of this story was the quote that "training needs to be fun for kids." Genius.

In 2009 a pediatrician actually said "lifting (strength training) may not be good for bone health." This was being said in the background as our "fitness expert" is teaching a kid how to use a seated leg extension machine. Other "valuable" exercises shown in the video: prone leg curls on a machine, lat pulldown on a fixed machine, a kid on a stair stepper, and a girl on a back extension machine.




So teaching a 9 year old kid to do body weight lunges, or carry a 5 pound weight with good posture, is going to stunt their growth, but these fixed machines are so expensive that they must be good.

The kicker: The pediatrician actually recommends 5th graders to train for a 5k. Even with all of the primary research in the last 10-15 years documenting the evils of distance running for almost EVERYBODY, we're gonna have our 10 year olds train for a 3 mile race. The great line right after this recommendation: "One thing to worry about is repetitive stress, overuse type injuries."

What's the number 1 cause of these injuries? Ask any PT, and I'm gonna go out on a limb and say distance running.

Do they even edit, or do any real research for these reports, or do they just look up "pediatrician" in the Yellow Pages and dial a couple numbers to see what sticks?

It's kind of ironic, but this garbage reporting makes our job of educating parents and kids much more difficult, but at the same time ensures a need for good coaches who will educate themselves to know what's best for the kids.

Anyway, enough of my rant, off to train more kids and kill their bone health. Maybe I'll just take their money today and send them on an hour long run out on route 9.

Jon

Weekend that almost wasn't

They say you can tell a lot about a person by how they react to adversity. In the past this has been a problem for me. I would get angry and defensive in bad situations and I realized how terrible it was for me. So I've tried to work on it. But it's been hard to tell how I was doing as things have been pretty even-keeled and going well for a while.

Then I got on the thruway to go to Brockport

A tractor trailor maybe trying to mark his territory

So it's Friday afternoon and I'm excited for a great weekend with great friends many of whom I haven't seen in over 2 years. About half way into my trip I was side-swiped by a tractor trailor, did at least one 360, and ended up nose down in a ditch at about 45 degrees.

I learned a lot about myself in the minutes after this happened. For starters, it was my first experience with the whole potential "life flashing before your eyes" scenario.

Only it didn't.

While spinning I think I said a few choice words and was fired up when I first came to a complete stop. I got out of the car to make sure I wasn't hurt and to see the damage. And after I saw my front end completely buried in mud, and saw the damage to the panel, a calm came over me.

A year ago there is no doubt in my mind what would have happened. I would have been irate with the driver and I probably would've crawled into a hole, went back home and called the weekend a 'loss'. (In fact, the last time we all went to the same place, my phone got ruined in a pool. And I was resentful for hours, if not the whole weekend. Over a phone.)

But I didn't. I didn't get angry at the driver of the truck (even after he changed his story of what had happened) and I didn't get down on myself. I got pulled out of the ditch, gave my statement, and got back on the road to Brockport where I had an awesome weekend catching up with everyone (it's weird how nobody misses a beat-it's like the last weekend we got together never even ended).

Looking back, the way I chose to react to each situation played a direct role in my own happiness for the immediate future.

So anyway, after an Awesome weekend, it's back to work tomorrow with a long day of training surrounding a baseball camp that I am running. Should be great!

Jon