As both a positional/team coach and
strength and conditioning coach, I have seen all ends of the spectrum as to
where tradition both helps and hinders performance. The majority of what we do on a daily basis
is deeply rooted in tradition ranging from sport, politics, religion and
work. I think we can all understand how
traditions came about. At some point in
time, there was a need to develop some sort of structure to advance different
aspects of society. With this, we have
developed the attitude that we should continue on with what we are doing
because we have always done it this way.
See where I am going with this?
As much as I would love to talk politics and religion, I am going to
focus on how tradition pertains to sport; starting with training camps.
One of my coaching philosophies is
to embrace tradition without the fear of making change to it. There are amazing traditions in sport that
have been around for years that should be applauded: the postgame handshake,
the HAKA, national anthems, honoring past players and staff, lifelong friends
etc. Having said that, I am going to touch
on one that is the bane of my existence.
Lets use the entire off-season to build you up to begin to feel great,
be strong, fit, agile and all the goodies that go along with what we do to
break you down to feel like shit for the first game of the season. How does this make sense? I get
it, in the past sport science did not play as big of a role as it does today,
so off-seasons were more used as a vacation and very few athletes continued to
train for their sport. As far as I can see, training camps are used
to bring the team together (usually pre-season), determine player positions, individual
roles and depth charts, build character and learn systems. Makes sense right? Here is what I see for the majority of
athletes I work with ranging from novice to elite athletes in regards to
training camps:
·
In
general, teams tend to try and pack 3-6 weeks worth of work in 1-3 weeks. There are rules and guidelines from most
governing bodies as to the amount of time you are allowed to be on-field, but
that doesn’t mean much. Quality is far
more important than quantity at all levels and the ultimate goal for a training
camp should be to prime athletes for the start of the season.
·
Camps
are high in intensity and frequency (2-3 sessions per day) without adequate
rest. Many coaches use training camps as
a way to test and increase physical and mental toughness. This is all good as
long as you are noting and listening to the player’s mental and physical
conditions. A great coach knows when to
push and when to pull back. I fail to
see the rationale behind beating your players to the point of potential injury because
“this is what we do every year” and “this is what the program says.” Injuries are a part of sport and so is
managing them and reducing the chances, especially when you are limited in
numbers and talent. In my experience, many
teams have the mentality that the strongest survive and the cream will always
rise to the top. This tends to work in
countries that have professional teams that are their national sport because sheer
numbers outweigh the need for practicality.
·
Testing
for the sake of testing. Many teams have
a ridiculous amount of strength and conditioning tests that take away from an
already limited time frame. A major
pitfall in our industry is the concern for collecting data over increasing
performance and in many cases the time would be far more beneficial spent
working on technique. If you work with athletes all off-season, you
should know where their strength and conditioning levels are, and use a few
meaningful tests to spark competition and to chart improvements. At the
high school, club and collegiate levels (where the team may not train together
in the off-season) they can also be used for accountability reasons. Having said this, teams still run their
players into the ground with a gauntlet of tests that are not always necessary. At the professional level, you are dealing
with people that are in a career and can be cut if they don’t show up in shape. At the highest level of sport, players are an
investment and as crass as it sounds, they should be thought of in that light. You are also dealing with players that have
gone through many training camps throughout their careers and may not need the
same volume as a newer player or non-professional. Does it make sense to peak
in multi-competition and multi-energy system sports that require you to play in
15 games or more (upwards of 80 games in hockey, basketball and baseball)? I tend to think you may want to peak with
your team when games actually account for something important, like the play-offs.
·
There
should be a balance between collecting both performance and injury data and it
should be used to better your system. If
performance is high and injuries are low, you are doing something right.
If it comes off that I am anti-training camp, I
apologize. I am anti doing shit for the
sake of doing shit because we have always done shit this way! Address the needs of your team, player’s,
systems and how you go about it should be evolving daily. This takes tireless amounts of work! We must be adaptable to the needs of our
teams (within reason) and have the ability to look at what we are doing daily,
learn from it and move forward. I do
believe there is a time and place to grind your players, but it takes a lot
more thought than just throwing a ton of volume at them. If you
don’t believe any of my thoughts, please at least institute recovery practices
on a daily basis to ensure you are preparing for the next daily grind.
This is all observation and opinion based as are all my
articles/blogs and with this, I encourage feedback so that we can learn from
each other and continually better both sport and the strength and conditioning
industry collectively. I am not trying
to change anyone’s thoughts on how training camps should be run, I am just
hoping that people will start to look a little closer at their systems and
realize that sport evolves every minute.
This is the first in a series of
articles on the pit falls of tradition.
I once read a blog from some guy with 2 years experience in the strength
and conditioning fields stating that blogs should only be 1 page, so sorry for
going over.
Yours in Strength,
Joe McCullum
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