I see athletes, young or old, everyday who are not able to perform basic functional movements such as: Squatting, Lunging, Push Ups, and Pull Ups. For the next 6 months I am going to go on Journey of Strength that gets me back to function. On this journey my main goal is to become Functional Fit. I am looking to do basic movements such as Overhead Squatting, Single Leg Squatting, One arm Push Ups, One arm Pull Ups; basically training not old school but ancient school. My goal is to master the ancient art of body-weight training. The ancient art of body-weight training is known as Calisthenics. Not a word commonly heard much in strength circles anymore; and most personal trainers would have trouble even spelling it. The word itself has been used in the English language since at least the nineteenth century, but the term has very ancient origins. It comes from the ancient Greek kallos meaning, "beauty", and sthénos, which means "strength." It has been known from the ancient days of gladiators that the correct practice of body-weight exercise both perfects the physique and develops greats strength. Ever since prehistory, when the fist men wished to develop and display their power they did so by demonstrating control over their own body.
The Journey of Strength is going to use the ancient school of thought and challenge the body with basic calisthenics and progress towards advance calisthenics. An example for some of us would be my Level 1 Push Up Progression:
ISO Hold Push Up
Wall Push Up
Incline Push Up
Kneeling Push Up
1/2 Push Up
Classic Push Up
(Video Progressions coming soon)
Join me on this Journey of Strength. Come in and get tested on Functional Movements and see where you stand and start your training to becoming Functional Fit.
To get a FREE Functional Movement Screening call:
318.869.1600 (Shreveport)
318.323.1613 (Monroe)
Wade, P. (2010). Convict condtioning. St. Paul, MN: Dragon Door Puclications, Inc.
Monday, September 27, 2010
Friday, September 24, 2010
Getting Better or Getting Tired
This will be me getting on my soap box, sorry. This is something I rarely do, but I get frustrated with people who train athletes who have no business training athletes.
Just this week I had a lady come into our facility to participate in our Adult Fitness Program and as we started talking her daughter plays soccer. She mentioned that her daughter is going to this so called "Sports Performance" facility for off-season training. She also mentioned that here daughter has developed knee pain ever since she started training at this so called facility. Starting this week her daughter will stop her off season training program.
The first priority of any Sports Performance Coach is "Injury Reduction". An athlete should never develop pain or get injured while training, PERIOD. There are so many coaches and parents who think that if the athlete is not vomiting at the end of the their training session than there was no benefit. Running athletes through drills without a purpose is not proper training it is just "working out". For an athlete "each training session needs to be strategically placed in the context of the previous workout and subsequent workouts, in other words as part of an overall plan of development to meet the athletes’ needs. Focus on the need to do activities that relate to sport, the positional/event demands and above all meet the needs of the individual athlete" (Vern Gambetta). In other words "Develop a Plan". That plan should come from the Pre-Performance Assessment that measures: Flexibility, Mobility, Speed, Power, Quickness, Agility, Stability and Balance. From the Pre-Performance Assessment the coach should devise a plan that best fits the needs of the individual not the team.
The athlete that I was talking about earlier came by my facility to have a Functional Movement Screening performed.
Here is what I found:
Has instability in the knee when performing functional movement such as squatting and lunging, the knee caves inward, which is a sign of weak hips. We also found out that she has a asymmetry in the right & left sides of her thoracic spine. When testing her active flexibility in her hamstrings she has very limited range motion as she raises her leg. The core assessment showed an unstable core and the single leg assessments showed an unstable knee.
The body is a kinetic CHAIN and when one link is weak the whole chain is weak.
Bottom line is this: When you have someone coach you or your child step back and take a close look at what they are doing. In all probability they are probably just finding different ways to make you/your athletes tired, but are they really making them better?
At Athletic Republic we TEST-TEACH-TRAIN. Our program revolves around this one philosophy "Movement Education".
Do you have a weak link, if so, came into Athletic Republic of North Louisiana: Monroe and Shreveport for a free Functional Movement Screening.
Monroe: 318.3232.1613
Shreveport: 318.869.1600
Just this week I had a lady come into our facility to participate in our Adult Fitness Program and as we started talking her daughter plays soccer. She mentioned that her daughter is going to this so called "Sports Performance" facility for off-season training. She also mentioned that here daughter has developed knee pain ever since she started training at this so called facility. Starting this week her daughter will stop her off season training program.
The first priority of any Sports Performance Coach is "Injury Reduction". An athlete should never develop pain or get injured while training, PERIOD. There are so many coaches and parents who think that if the athlete is not vomiting at the end of the their training session than there was no benefit. Running athletes through drills without a purpose is not proper training it is just "working out". For an athlete "each training session needs to be strategically placed in the context of the previous workout and subsequent workouts, in other words as part of an overall plan of development to meet the athletes’ needs. Focus on the need to do activities that relate to sport, the positional/event demands and above all meet the needs of the individual athlete" (Vern Gambetta). In other words "Develop a Plan". That plan should come from the Pre-Performance Assessment that measures: Flexibility, Mobility, Speed, Power, Quickness, Agility, Stability and Balance. From the Pre-Performance Assessment the coach should devise a plan that best fits the needs of the individual not the team.
The athlete that I was talking about earlier came by my facility to have a Functional Movement Screening performed.
Here is what I found:
Has instability in the knee when performing functional movement such as squatting and lunging, the knee caves inward, which is a sign of weak hips. We also found out that she has a asymmetry in the right & left sides of her thoracic spine. When testing her active flexibility in her hamstrings she has very limited range motion as she raises her leg. The core assessment showed an unstable core and the single leg assessments showed an unstable knee.
The body is a kinetic CHAIN and when one link is weak the whole chain is weak.
Bottom line is this: When you have someone coach you or your child step back and take a close look at what they are doing. In all probability they are probably just finding different ways to make you/your athletes tired, but are they really making them better?
At Athletic Republic we TEST-TEACH-TRAIN. Our program revolves around this one philosophy "Movement Education".
Do you have a weak link, if so, came into Athletic Republic of North Louisiana: Monroe and Shreveport for a free Functional Movement Screening.
Monroe: 318.3232.1613
Shreveport: 318.869.1600
Sunday, August 8, 2010
Overcoming the Fear of Failure
Came across this over the internet while doing some research for my radio show, the "Training Table". The search topic was "Overcoming the Fear of Failure". This really it home with me. I see this everyday with my athletes and this is the message I would like to tell them. I did not write this so I have to give credit to someone else, and I would if I knew who the author was.
Fear of failure is one of the greatest fears people have. Fear of failure is closely related to fear of criticism and fear of rejection. Successful people overcome their fear of failure. Fear incapacitates unsuccessful people.
The Law of Feedback states: there is no failure; there is only feedback. Successful people look at mistakes as outcomes or results, not as failure. Unsuccessful people look at mistakes as permanent and personal.
Buckminster Fuller wrote, "Whatever humans have learned had to be learned as a consequence only of trial and error experience. Humans have learned only through mistakes."
Most people self-limit themselves. Most people do not achieve a fraction of what they are capable of achieving because they are afraid to try because they are afraid they will fail.
Take these steps to overcome your fear of failure and move yourself forward to getting the result you desire:
Step One: Take action. Bold, decisive action. Do something scary. Fear of failure immobilizes you. To overcome this fear, you must act. When you act, act boldly.
Action gives you the power to change the circumstances or the situation. You must overcome the inertia by doing something. Dr. Robert Schuller asks, "What would you do if you knew you could not fail?" What could you achieve? Be brave and just do it. If it doesn't work out the way you want, then do something else. But DO SOMETHING NOW.
Step Two: Persist. Successful people just don't give up. They keep trying different approaches to achieving their outcomes until they finally get the results they want. Unsuccessful people try one thing that doesn't work and then give up. Often people give up when they are on the threshold of succeeding.
[IFRAME tag removed]
Step Three: Don't take failure personally. Failure is about behavior, outcomes, and results. Failure is not a personality characteristic. Although what you do may not give you the result you wanted, it doesn't mean you are a failure. Because you made a mistake, doesn't mean that you are a failure.
Step Four: Do things differently. If what you are doing isn't working, do something else. There is an old saying, "if you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you always got." If you're not getting the results you want, then you must do something different. Most people stop doing anything at all, and this guarantees they won't be successful.
Step Five: Don't be so hard on yourself. Hey, if nothing else, you know what doesn't work. Failure is a judgement or evaluation of behavior. Look at failure as an event or a happening, not as a person.
Step Six: Treat the experience as an opportunity to learn. Think of failure as a learning experience. What did you learn from the experience that will help you in the future? How can you use the experience to improve yourself or your situation? Ask yourself these questions:
1. What was the mistake?
2. Why did it happen?
3. How could it have been prevented?
4. How can I do better next time?
Then use what you learned from the experience to do things differently so you get different results next time. Learn from the experience or ignore it.
Step Seven: Look for possible opportunities that result from the experience. Napoleon Hill, author of Think and Grow Rich, says "every adversity, every failure and every heartache carries with it the seed of an equivalent or a greater benefit." Look for the opportunity and the benefit.
Step Eight: Fail forward fast. Tom Peters, the management guru, says that in today's business world, companies must fail forward fast. What he means is that the way we learn is by making mistakes. So if we want to learn at a faster pace, we must make mistakes at a faster pace. The key is that you must learn from the mistakes you make so you don't repeat them.
Although we all make mistakes, fear of failure doesn't have to cripple you. As self-help author Susan Jeffers says, "feel the fear and do it anyway."
Fear of failure is one of the greatest fears people have. Fear of failure is closely related to fear of criticism and fear of rejection. Successful people overcome their fear of failure. Fear incapacitates unsuccessful people.
The Law of Feedback states: there is no failure; there is only feedback. Successful people look at mistakes as outcomes or results, not as failure. Unsuccessful people look at mistakes as permanent and personal.
Buckminster Fuller wrote, "Whatever humans have learned had to be learned as a consequence only of trial and error experience. Humans have learned only through mistakes."
Most people self-limit themselves. Most people do not achieve a fraction of what they are capable of achieving because they are afraid to try because they are afraid they will fail.
Take these steps to overcome your fear of failure and move yourself forward to getting the result you desire:
Step One: Take action. Bold, decisive action. Do something scary. Fear of failure immobilizes you. To overcome this fear, you must act. When you act, act boldly.
Action gives you the power to change the circumstances or the situation. You must overcome the inertia by doing something. Dr. Robert Schuller asks, "What would you do if you knew you could not fail?" What could you achieve? Be brave and just do it. If it doesn't work out the way you want, then do something else. But DO SOMETHING NOW.
Step Two: Persist. Successful people just don't give up. They keep trying different approaches to achieving their outcomes until they finally get the results they want. Unsuccessful people try one thing that doesn't work and then give up. Often people give up when they are on the threshold of succeeding.
[IFRAME tag removed]
Step Three: Don't take failure personally. Failure is about behavior, outcomes, and results. Failure is not a personality characteristic. Although what you do may not give you the result you wanted, it doesn't mean you are a failure. Because you made a mistake, doesn't mean that you are a failure.
Step Four: Do things differently. If what you are doing isn't working, do something else. There is an old saying, "if you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you always got." If you're not getting the results you want, then you must do something different. Most people stop doing anything at all, and this guarantees they won't be successful.
Step Five: Don't be so hard on yourself. Hey, if nothing else, you know what doesn't work. Failure is a judgement or evaluation of behavior. Look at failure as an event or a happening, not as a person.
Step Six: Treat the experience as an opportunity to learn. Think of failure as a learning experience. What did you learn from the experience that will help you in the future? How can you use the experience to improve yourself or your situation? Ask yourself these questions:
1. What was the mistake?
2. Why did it happen?
3. How could it have been prevented?
4. How can I do better next time?
Then use what you learned from the experience to do things differently so you get different results next time. Learn from the experience or ignore it.
Step Seven: Look for possible opportunities that result from the experience. Napoleon Hill, author of Think and Grow Rich, says "every adversity, every failure and every heartache carries with it the seed of an equivalent or a greater benefit." Look for the opportunity and the benefit.
Step Eight: Fail forward fast. Tom Peters, the management guru, says that in today's business world, companies must fail forward fast. What he means is that the way we learn is by making mistakes. So if we want to learn at a faster pace, we must make mistakes at a faster pace. The key is that you must learn from the mistakes you make so you don't repeat them.
Although we all make mistakes, fear of failure doesn't have to cripple you. As self-help author Susan Jeffers says, "feel the fear and do it anyway."
Thursday, June 10, 2010
The ABC’s of Athletics
What are the ABC’s of athletics? It stands for agility, balance, coordination, and speed. Together, these movement skills lay a strong foundation for an athlete’s future success. Between the ages of 7-11 is the most important time for a child to learn the basic fundamental skills in athletics. During these years, their bodies will be undergoing significant physical and emotional development such as; muscle growth, weight gain, body awareness and motor skills.
This will lead to injuries down the road. This can be seen in Little League where pitchers are suffering elbow and shoulder injuries at an alarming rate. Right now women's sports on the collegiate and high school level are experiences an epidemic of non-contact ACL knee injuries.
Proper movement skills include agility, balance, coordination, and speed the ABC's of athleticism. They will lay the foundation for all athletic success in the coming years. It is important to note that children have so-called sensitive periods for learning fundamental movement skills. These periods need to be taken advantage of. Ages 9-12 are probably the most important for acquiring movement skills and laying the groundwork for later athletic success. If proper skill training is not developed by this age it is very hard, if not impossible, to learn later on.
Fundamental movement skills can be further broken down into four broad categories and for optimal athletic development pick activities that encompass all four areas. These consist of locomotion skills such as running and jumping, non-locomotion skills such as twisting, turning and balancing, manipulative skills including throwing, catching, or kicking and movement awareness, knowing how to move ones body and how to orient it to others and objects.
The big question then is how are these fundamental skills best developed? The answer is easy-through play, especially for children twelve and under. Free play and exposure to as many different sports as possible is the route to take. Free play can consist of such simple games as tag, hopscotch, or jumping rope. These simple games all have elements of the ABC's of athletics.
Also, playing as many sports as possible benefits athletes by exposing them to many varied movement patterns and different types of hand-eye and foot-eye coordination. Not just team sports but sports that encourage total development such as martial arts, tumbling, dance or gymnastics. These types of experiences lead to a large reservoir of movement skills that can be called upon when learning new sport-specific skills or trying to master more advanced movement skills.
This will lead to injuries down the road. This can be seen in Little League where pitchers are suffering elbow and shoulder injuries at an alarming rate. Right now women's sports on the collegiate and high school level are experiences an epidemic of non-contact ACL knee injuries.
Proper movement skills include agility, balance, coordination, and speed the ABC's of athleticism. They will lay the foundation for all athletic success in the coming years. It is important to note that children have so-called sensitive periods for learning fundamental movement skills. These periods need to be taken advantage of. Ages 9-12 are probably the most important for acquiring movement skills and laying the groundwork for later athletic success. If proper skill training is not developed by this age it is very hard, if not impossible, to learn later on.
Fundamental movement skills can be further broken down into four broad categories and for optimal athletic development pick activities that encompass all four areas. These consist of locomotion skills such as running and jumping, non-locomotion skills such as twisting, turning and balancing, manipulative skills including throwing, catching, or kicking and movement awareness, knowing how to move ones body and how to orient it to others and objects.
The big question then is how are these fundamental skills best developed? The answer is easy-through play, especially for children twelve and under. Free play and exposure to as many different sports as possible is the route to take. Free play can consist of such simple games as tag, hopscotch, or jumping rope. These simple games all have elements of the ABC's of athletics.
Also, playing as many sports as possible benefits athletes by exposing them to many varied movement patterns and different types of hand-eye and foot-eye coordination. Not just team sports but sports that encourage total development such as martial arts, tumbling, dance or gymnastics. These types of experiences lead to a large reservoir of movement skills that can be called upon when learning new sport-specific skills or trying to master more advanced movement skills.
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Coach Young Athletes
The How & Whys!
Some wisdom about coaching young athletes;
Always teach them WHY and they’ll understand HOW!
One of the single greatest mistakes Trainers and Coaches make when working with young athletes is stopping the teaching process at ‘how’.
This how you squat.
This is how you run.
This is how you throw.
This is how you change direction
All well and good…But WHY do it only that way?
First and foremost, young athletes are not stupid, and more so primed to learn. They are intelligent people capable of learning and understanding. Secondly, whenever you want an athlete to understand a concept better, teach them WHY the concept makes sense.
WHY is that the best way to squat?
WHY is that the best way to run?
WHY is that the best way to throw?
WHY is that the best way to change direction?
When they understand ‘why’, it breeds a much stronger understanding and relationship for ‘how’.
Some wisdom about coaching young athletes;
Always teach them WHY and they’ll understand HOW!
One of the single greatest mistakes Trainers and Coaches make when working with young athletes is stopping the teaching process at ‘how’.
This how you squat.
This is how you run.
This is how you throw.
This is how you change direction
All well and good…But WHY do it only that way?
First and foremost, young athletes are not stupid, and more so primed to learn. They are intelligent people capable of learning and understanding. Secondly, whenever you want an athlete to understand a concept better, teach them WHY the concept makes sense.
WHY is that the best way to squat?
WHY is that the best way to run?
WHY is that the best way to throw?
WHY is that the best way to change direction?
When they understand ‘why’, it breeds a much stronger understanding and relationship for ‘how’.
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Summer Training
School is out and the summer has officially begin. How are you going to spend your summer: on the beach, on the river, on the couch, in the bed sleeping all day.
The question that you need to ask is WHAT CAN I DO TO BE A BETTER ATHLETE?
The next step needs you to DECIDE WHAT YOU ARE GOING TO DO!
The last and final step calls for action in which you ACT ON WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE!
Dedicate 60 to 90 minutes this summer and feel the difference when game time arrives!
The question that you need to ask is WHAT CAN I DO TO BE A BETTER ATHLETE?
The next step needs you to DECIDE WHAT YOU ARE GOING TO DO!
The last and final step calls for action in which you ACT ON WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE!
Dedicate 60 to 90 minutes this summer and feel the difference when game time arrives!
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