Playing the Long Game
Last week I sent out in our weekly newsletter about how we conduct an orientation for our off season pro and collegiate team. This includes educating our athlete’s on the “why” behind why we do things. It’s to ensure they know every time they step foot in our doors they are improving with the end game in mind.
We’ve been very fortunate to have a large sample size of individuals over the course of the last 5 years to draw a lot of extensive data from. However, it should be noted that not all of this nceccarisly hold universal validity amongst different populations with different training variables. Be weary of those who say they have all the answers.
We’ve concluded from thousands of numbers, taking into account external, internal stress, and long term training ( a single athlete training consecutively for 52 weeks) that certain things work and others do not. We always set the stage by explaining how stress is the greatest training variable and how it plays a role in long term development of individuals.
Stress in the weightroom is seldom the problem for long term development. Most athletes tend to over-compete and under train. This in part is due to early sports specialization. Athletes playing in more games than professionals with the resources of highly qualified trainers and medical staff. Over compete and under trained.
It’s important for coaches (our industry) to get on the same page with parents, skill coaches, and medical staff to moderate (if possible) the volume of stress in which youth athletes are exposing themselves to. In this short clip, I talk about how the culture tells our athletes to sell out when they're young and abuse their bodies. However, when you get older you focus more on “health” to clean up all the damage you did as an athlete.
Performance and health can be mutually inclusive if we work hard as an industry to connect the dots and work together. If you’re a coach, skill trainer, or a coach working for a team, moderating the volume of games, practices, and skills sessions is the easiest way to help facilitate long-term development in our youth athletes.