You can listen to the entire interview, or I suggest going straight to the 4 minute mark….
If you want to be great, you will adopt this same attitude in sports/school/work/life. If you’re an athlete shoot those extra 50 free throws everyday, do an additional 10 sprints every other day, get that extra weight training session in, hit in the cage every day, do whatever it takes….
Train Hard-Train Smart
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The hips need to function properly to maximize athletic potential considering the role hip strength plays in sprint speed, explosiveness, and change of direction. I recently demonstrate a series of exercises to help improve hip mobility. The video associated with this post illustrates how incorporating a mini band into your routine can improve hip strength. Many of the exercises are performed in multiple planes of motion. This is important because many strength exercises are primarily performed in the sagital plane which can lead to deficiencies in the other two planes (frontal and transverse).
Congratulations to Katie (VHS Volleyball) on making Second Team All CIF SS Div I team.
There are powerful muscles in the hip that work to produce many athletic movements. The hips need to be strong and stable to transfer energy during sporting movements such as hitting, pitching, and kicking (soccer). However, the hips can not do their job effectively if they are locked up or restricted in their range of motion.
Hip mobility is extrememly important to help protect the lower back and knees. There is a limited amount of motion that takes place at the lower back, so the hips actually need to be the area where the greatest range of motion comes from in the core.
Shown below are a few simple stretches that will definitely help improve flexibility of the muscles of the hip and enhance mobility of the entire joint.
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This is a follow up to one of my recent posts titled Purely Genetic or Hard Work & Dedication.
In that post, I noted that certain physical characteristics such as muscle fiber composition (type I and type II muscle fibers) is predetermined or genetic. I made that statement to inform you that you cannot convert all your slow twitch muscle fibers into fast twitch muscle fibers and start winning gold medals. However, there is actually more to the story. Type I and type II muscle fibers have different capabilities (type I fibers has a greater aerobic capacity and able to produce less force at slower velocities, while type II fibers have a great anaerobic capacity and are able to produce more force at faster velocities). Now the theory that many of us have heard is that you are predetermined with the number type II fibers at birth (the fibers all athletes want so they can be fast and explosive during sport). However, there are hybrid fiber types that have the capacity to change based on the stimulus provided to your muscle. A well-designed training program (weight, speed, agility, and power training) actually has the ability to change muscle fiber composition in hybrid fibers! Training can actually alter the ratio and percentage of type II to type I fibers that leads to increased strength and power-generating capacity. This really strengthens the argument that great athletes become “great” because of hard work, dedication, and a well-structured training program throughout their entire life.
Every athlete has the capacity to improve based on the stimuli provided to the body.
Source:
Bompa, Tudor and Haff, Gregory. Periodization – Theory and Methodology of Training. Illinois: Human Kinetics, 2009
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I will be holding sports performance training sessions at College of The Canyons track/football field on Sunday mornings. One training group is specifically for baseball athletes. All athletes are also welcome to join other training sessions, either before or after the baseball group. Training sessions will be one hour in length and always in morning. Exact time slots will be determined before the weekend so athletes can plan their schedules accordingly. Cost is $20 per session and athletes are not required to purchase a package of training sessions ahead of time. If you are interested in training or know other Jr. High, High School, or College athletes that are interested in training send me an email or give me a call.
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Congratulations to all the ASAP girls volleyball athletes that were selected to the ALL-SCV Girls Volleyball Team.
Player of the Year
Katie Hank – VHS
First Team
Breena Beckett – HHS
Nicole Delange – VHS
Allison Tolido – HHS
Second Team
Brianna Earley – VHS
Carly Carapella – VHS
Casey David – HHS
Hannah Orlandi – WRHS (new ASAP athlete)
Honorable Mention
Bree Braucher – WRHS (new ASAP athlete)
Jennie Long – HHS
Heidi Brown – VHS
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This post was inspired after reading the Talent Code by Daniel Coyle and Talent is Overrated by Geoff Colvin.
Being heavily involved in the athletic community you hear comments all the time like “This kid was born to play baseball. Her jump shot is smooth and natural. This guy was born to a professional quarterback.”
First off, I do understand that genetics play a role in athletics (especially at the professional level – you can’t be 5’6 and be an NFL lineman or a 7’2 middle infielder). Your height, fast twitch muscle fiber composition, limb length (including hand/foot size), some other physical characteristics (tendon attachment, bone articulations, etc.) are genetically predetermined. However, when it comes to athletic skill it is hard to argue that individuals are born with greater genetic abilities to swing a bat, hit a volleyball, or kick a soccer ball. When you start to understand that genes give way to certain characteristics and human physical traits, it is also important to understand that does not directly equate to athletic skill. Humans do not come out of the womb with pre-wired neuromuscular pathways to hit home runs or run the 100-meter dash under 10 seconds.
Athletes become great because of the stimulus provided to them over the course of their life.
Many times what happens is, a child (or usually parent) realizes that they enjoy a sport and are pretty good at it. Now this child starts to enjoy practice and has the motivation/internal drive to improve their skills even more (improve their neuromuscular pathways). Now they live and breathe the sport so much that they spend all their free time watching it on TV (obtaining that visual stimulus to the brain). Maybe the child doesn’t obsess over the sport, but they are given positive verbal stimulus from coaches and parents letting them know how good they are at the sport. All these stimuli strengthen the child’s athletic skill set.
What about the kids that are “genetically” coordinated and fast/quick. (Again fast twitch muscle fiber composition aside for this argument) If you really start to analyze it from an early age, you begin to see that many of those fast kids play multiple sports. They also spend all their free time outside playing with their friends – even if it’s just hide and seek, riding bikes, kicking the soccer ball around, playing hopscotch, or playing on the playground. All these events provide a stimulus to the body and this child becomes more coordinated at controlling their body and improves their spatial awareness.
Was Tiger Woods born, I mean actually genetically predetermined to be the best golfer in the world? My thought is no way! How about the fact that he started hitting a golf ball when he was 2 years old, or that fact that his dad was an avid golfer (that’s a whole lot of stimulus provided to young Tiger Woods). He took golf lessons and played in golf tournaments his entire life – he was preparing his body (the neuromuscular pathways) for greatness.
Let’s begin to look at athletic talent as something more than “genetic ability/potential”. Understand that your body has the ability to adapt and change based on the stimulus you provide it whether it is physical, visual, emotional, or mental. Hard work and deep/deliberate practice make an athlete great, not their chromosomes.
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What a great way to start off the new year. The magazine I write for, World Physique, just announced that they are hitting news stands at Borders and Barnes & Nobles nationwide. Make sure to check it out my featured column next time you’re there!
Train Hard-Train Smart
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The great coaches have goals for their teams/athletes and devise a plan that will accomplish those goals. For example if the goal for a basketball team is to win a championship the coach will put together a strategy for each opponent, teach technical and tactical skills, create a season long practice schedule, and motivate/inspire his athletes. This leads me to my main topic…This same approach (guiding athletes to success) should be taken by strength and conditioning coaches as well. A game plan needs to be in place if the athletes are going to consistently improve throughout the training program. I see too many coaches (many times it’s the head coach because the team doesn’t have a qualified strength and conditioning coach on staff) take the approach “no pain, no gain” or “100% intensity every time”. Of course you want your athletes to work hard, but it should be a planned routine consisting of high, medium, and low intensity days. There should be days were you teach your athletes (low intensity) and days where you condition the heck out of your athletes (high intensity).
Going along the same lines…Soreness is not necessarily a sign of great workout. Anyone can make an athlete sore (literally anyone that knows how to talk – just say “run 100 sprints uphill” or “do 500 push ups and sit ups”). I love to hear athletes say things like “my coach has the hardest workouts” or the “the training sessions are so intense”. I ask the athlete what they did during the training session and usually their response is something like this “first we did a mile run, 100 sit ups, bench press and lat pull downs and finished with the leg press/leg extensions/leg curl for 5 sets. I couldn’t move my legs for 3 days”. There are definitely ways to make the training routine more sport specific. If an athlete only has only X number of training sessions before the season starts, the coach should make the workouts as sport specific as possible. There are times to work on general fitness and conditioning, but make sure it follows your yearly plan. Every training session should follow the game plan and help the team/athletes accomplish their ultimate goals.
Remember “if you fail to plan, you plan to fail”.
Train Hard-Train Smart
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