With the fall sport season right around the corner, many parents and athletes are thinking about ways to prepare for the season. This preparation can take many forms and iterations, especially if not using the guidance of a trained Sports Performance Coach.
Read MoreOlympic Lifting is an extraordinary tool most sports performance coaches use to develop power within their athletes. Many of us know, sports are chaotic and unpredictable. Nothing is ever played in just a straight line, just like movements and training are never as simple as it seems. In many circumstances, coaches have to make adjustments to the olympic lifts based on athlete’s sport, season, flexibility, mobility and anatomical makeup. The best coaches are able to adapt and make these adjustments in order to optimize an athlete’s training.
Read MoreOne of the most common misconceptions among Olympic Lifting is the danger of its complexity and speed of a loaded bar. Surprisingly enough, Olympic Lifting has one of the lowest injury rates in sports across the world. Let’s dig a little deeper into why olympic lifting is one of the safest competitive sports, and as a training tool for athletes.
Read MoreMindset is everything. In many cases, our bodies can only accomplish what our minds allow for. Meaning, we tend to give up and say “I can’t do this” or “that is past my limit”, when your body is actually capable of more. A mindset may be something you obtain from the environment you are around as a child, but it is also something you can develop and practice.
Read MoreFortunately for us breathing is an involuntary process that occurs in the body. We don’t try to beathe, it just happens. We don’t have to actively think about contacting and relaxing the diaphragm in order to expand our lungs or exhale, and we don’t have to actively think about how we are exchanging oxygen for waste within the lungs.
Read MoreWith the NFL draft going on, one of the hot topics is speed. Do these elite college athletes have the speed required to play in the NFL? The majority of these athletes have spent a great deal of time in the off-season training in order to hone their speed and strength to be in optimal position for this transition. Training for speed entails countless philosophies, methods and modalities. I have discussed our philosophy and methods in a number of articles. One of the methods we have not discussed is Overspeed training.
Read MoreThe sport of olympic lifting is recognized all over the world, as a sport within itself, as well as training tools for athletics. Olympic weightlifting consists of two independent movements that require an athlete to lift a load over head. These movements include the clean and jerk, as well as the snatch.
Read MoreWith fall officially here in New Orleans it is now time for Baseball Showcases and Fall Leagues. During this time, high school athletes have the opportunity to go out and show off their talents to college scouts from the area. These events will afford them the opportunity to show off their speed, strength, athleticism, and baseball IQ. Many of these showcases will take athletes through a battery of tests. Similarly to the 40 in the NFL combine, the 60 yard dash is one of the coveted tests of a baseball showcase.
Read MoreThere are a lot of pieces that get overlooked as it pertains to sprinting. Many of these oversights tend to be due to the fact that the body does them for us. The other reason for many oversights is due to the fact that we as coaches like to focus on the bigger training pieces. Coaches, I included, tend to focus on the big blocks of speed training: technique, strength of the big muscle groups and mobility through our major joints. One of the oversights that I want to address today is lack of attention paid to the hip flexor group.
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Linear speed training is a hot topic in all sports. After all, no matter what sport you play it is beneficial to be fast. As simple of a movement as running is, there are many factors within it that must be taken into account. This is referred to as the kinematics of running. These kinematics include measures of stride length, stride frequency, range of motion measurements at each joint, and ground contact time to name a few.
Read MoreThere are many factors to speed training that are nonnegotiable and typically covered by most or all speed coaches: body position, stride, arm movement. These aspects are common and unimpressive. Any “coach” who has read a book or received a weekend certification can recite these same lines. The coaches that impress me and leave me asking for more are the individuals that act more like technicians. The professionals that are able to breakdown grand movement patterns into finite pieces and analyze the specific movements, and consequences of these movements.
Read MoreWhen addressing speed, agility, and quickness it is important to take movement quality into account. Moving fast relies on that fact that athletes are able to get into an effective and efficient position. However, there are times when this position is unattainable due to structural or functional deficits.
Read MoreThe world around us is changing faster than we can keep up. As a society we are all aware of the COVID-19 outbreak and what it has done to our everyday life and routine. We can’t go to the mall with friends, we can’t go out to dinner as a family, we can’t go workout at our favorite gym and we cannot attend school or even our jobs. Although, there are a lot of things we cannot do, we want to use this time to focus on the things you can be doing.
Read MoreMany of the athletes that I begin working with will have similar, if not, the same goal. They want to be faster. I can understand this goal. Who wouldn’t want to be faster? With a goal so simple and straight-forward, you would think the answer would be the same, simple and straight forward. Sadly, it is not.
Read MoreWith the current public health issue a lot of people are spending more time at home. This likely also means most people are experiencing a decrease in their daily activity. We should not allow this to throw off or affect our ability to hydrate properly, though. If anything, now is a great time to ensure we are properly hydrating.
Read MoreSprinting is a movement that exemplifies physiological traits that are hard to mimic anywhere else. The benefits of sprinting are found in many areas including, strength, power, coordination, and conditioning.
Read MoreAmericans live a lifestyle today that involves a large amount a sitting, whether it be in a vehicle, in class, at work, or while eating. This continuous sitting creates changes within our functional structure. Overtime it is not uncommon to feel tightness within the hip flexors and a lack of strength within the core.
Read MoreWhen you step inside the doors of a new training facility there are many unknowns. You are unsure of the setting, the coaches employed in the setting, the philosophy of the facility, the atmosphere of training sessions and even what music you will hear throughout the session. These are all things you are acquainting yourself with throughout the first session.
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First impressions can have a huge impact on individuals. This experience will help shape how we look at people, the interactions we have with them in the future and the amount of trust, loyalty, openness we allow this person to experience from ourselves. For athletes and coaches, the athletic evaluation process is typically the time that we experience this first impression.
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