Functional Path Training

Training Program Evaluation

Many people have asked for my opinion and/or an evaluation of various programs that are commercially available and very popular. Since I have not been able to observe these programs first hand for an extended period of time and in the spirit of maintaining a positive tone on this blog I thought it would be better to give you the general principles and ideas that that I look for in a program. From this you can draw your own conclusions. These criteria are the same criteria that I use to evaluate and continually upgrade my own training programs. • What is the philosophy of the program? • What are the goals and objectives? • Does it result in being adapted or adaptable or are you creating one trick ponies? • What is the context of each exercise and workout? • Is there a clearly identifiable progression? • Does it train movements and do the movements connect? • Is it manageable? Is it time efficient? • What is the big picture? Is it training or just mindless work that gets you tired? • Is it principle driven? • If it is norm based, where did the norms come from? • How is progress determined? What are the criteria for progression? • Does it travel well or do you need certain equipment or a trainer to implement it? • Are there injuries? If the answer is yes, is there a discernable pattern of injuries? • How much does it cost to be certified in the program? • Are various methodologies appropriately used? For example are power cleans done to fatigue with an Olympic bar? • Is it based on one series of exercises or machines? • Is it mindful or mindless? • Is it age appropriate? • How are people evaluated before beginning the program? • How are intensity and volume determined? • Is it one size fits all or is it individualized? In summary evaluation of an exercise or training program must be dispassionate and objective. Try to eliminate bias. I have the advantage of being able to draw on years of experience, so I have seen what has worked and what has not over the years. Remember that a hammer can be a very effective in the hands of a skilled craftsman or it can be very destructive if used improperly.

Apprentorship – We did it!

The Apprentorship has been a dream of mine for years. When I started teaching the Building and Rebuilding the Athlete seminar in 1992 I always said that I wanted to do something where we had four or five days to get in-depth, learn from other experts, and share among the group. That is exactly what we were able to accomplish. We had great teachers and an even greater group of learners. They shared ideas, asked questions, go frustrated, and got excited. As I said to everyone in the introduction, this was just the beginning of a journey toward knowledge and understanding of how to travel on the functional path. They learned there are many roads to the destination; there is no one way or one answer. They learned how to solve movement problems. The days were very long. We began with Steve Myrland and John Perry leading movement madness sessions at 6:30 AM and we ended formal sessions at 8:-00 or 9:00 PM, but it was in between sessions and afterward that so much good stimulating discussion, sharing and learning took place. We had great presentation by Bill Knowles on Reconditioning and Return to Play, John Perry on Flexibility, Joe Przytula on Clearing the Kinetic to get to the shoulder, Gary Phillips on Recovery, Leslie Bonci on Sport Nutrition, Dan Cipriani on Biomechanics of Function, but for me the highlight was Jack Blatherwick. Jack who was the conditioning coach for five US Olympic ice hockey teams presented on the preparation of the 1980 “Miracle” team, it was awesome. This guy is a gem, I think at the end of the week we all felt honored to have him with us. Last but not least, I want to recognize and thank Steve Myrland, a great friend and professional who kept encouraging me to do this. Without him this would not have been possible –thanks Steve. It was also very cool to have my daughter Kristen attend for two days, she left inspired. I also wanted to thank Chris Poirier from M-F Perform Better for his sponsorship and Eddie Roger from KICS International for arranging the facility and the hotel. Will do it again next year in June, I hope some of you can join us.

Apprentorship Report

We are beginning  our second to the last day of the Apprentorship. It has been a fantastic experience. We start at 6:30 AM and formally end at 9:00PM. This is the first spare moment that I have had time to post.This is an absolutely great group! When we are done I will post about this in greater detail over the next week. This is an annual event,I hope you can join us next year.

Finnaly - Apprentorship Starts Today

Today we are starting the first GAIN Apprentorship. It will be exciting to get started and meet everyone after over a year of planning and preparation. We have a real neat group with a diversity of interests across the spectrum of Athletic Development. This has been a dream of mine for along time. Over five days we will be able to get very in depth on many topics. In addition there will be many opportunities to net work and learn in an informal environment. As time permits I will post on our activities.

Coaching Matters

Obviously I believe coaching matters. I saw two prime examples this past weekend in soccer. First my good friend Juan Osorio is now coach of New York Red Bulls. I watched their game against Dallas last Saturday. With the lineup New York was able to put on the field they should not have been on the same field with Dallas, but because of their technical, tactical and fitness preparation they won the game 1-0 and essentially dominated play. It has been fun to watch the progress of the team. I am sure when they get their two premier players back they will be a contender. Juan is unbelievably thorough as a coach, very detailed and meticulous in his preparation. The other situation was to watch Russia take apart the Netherlands in the second overtime at the European Championship quarter final game. The coach of Russia, Gus Hiddink has to be one of the greatest soccer coaches ever! What he has done with South Korea in the 02 World Cup, Australia in the 06 World Cup and now Russia is amazing. I do not know what they do in terms of fitness preparation but all of his teams get stronger as the game progresses. Go to http://euro2008.castrolindex.com/ to see some great game analysis statistics. The intensity of play is unreal!

The other coach I want to mention is Bob Williams, Bob coaches middle distance and distance in Portland Oregon. I got to work with Bob three years ago when I was out in Portland. This guy is real quiet, definitely not a self promoter but boy does he get the job done. He is now coaching the high school boy who won the USA Track & Field Junior Championships in the 800 meters as a high school junior! He ran the 4^th fastest time all-time for a junior. His methodology is very sound. He ran for Bill Bowerman and has  stayed true to the Bowerman principles. All you middle distance and distance coaches out there take note, it is not more it is what you do.

Accumulation of Training

I so often hear I do not have enough time to do that. I was thinking about the accumulation of work, little things like remedial work, work on flexibility or a technical refinement. It does not have to be huge amounts of time. Take five minutes a day and do something consistently and see where it takes you.

5 minutes a day

X 5 days a week = 25 min

X 4 weeks = 100 min

X 12 months = 1200 min= 20 HOURS!! – Almost a full day

Make time your friend, not your enemy. Use it effectively and you will give yourself a chance to get better!

More Thoughts on Recovery

Don’t ignore the obvious; take care of the first 98% before looking for the last 2%, that is a huge problem today. Are you athletes getting enough sleep? What is their lifestyle away from training? What is their diet? Are they living on energy bars, supplements and recovery drinks or are they eating real food? You must accumulate a background of training and competition before any sophisticated recovery methods are necessary and in my opinion effective. Hard massage is not recovery, that can cause soreness not alleviate it. Too much time in sauna or a hot Jacuzzi is not recovery, that can draining. It is always personal and optimum rather than maximum. Let’s go back to Bill Bowerman’s  concept of a hard day followed by an easy day. It works. As training accumulates you can go a hard day, a medium day and then an easy day followed by rest. Always think of the 3P’s – Practical, Personal, and Proactive.

Functional Training Looking Back

Yesterday when I was swimming I got this profound thought. Before I share the thought let me tell you what I think triggered it. I have been preparing for the GAIN Apprentorship which begins next Thursday, that coupled with my with my visit with Nort Thornton last week had me looking over some old material from my first several years of coaching and some material from college (1964-68). The thought is that function and functional training was what we all did before we knew any better, before we got smart. Programs were balanced and trained all components and biomotor abilities. We used the body, climbing ropes, pull-ups, push-ups, stairs, Indian clubs, stall bars and medicine balls. Why did we get away from this? Why, because of technology and the reductionism of scientific studies quoted out of context. We got more “scientific” and less pedagogically sound. We stopped training teachers and coaches; we eliminated true physical education and became too worried about the kids self esteem. We moved to Universal Gyms and then Nautilus because they were easier and “safer” to use. I am certainly not anti science, but sports science evolved out of physical education, now you have a generation of sport scientists who grew up in the lab and never were trained first as physical educators, so many of them don’t want to get their hands dirty. Go back and look at Franklin Henry’s research on sprinting done at Cal Berkeley, look at Benke’s work on body comp, those dudes got down and dirty. Look at Pavo Komi who cut open his Achilles tendon and put a force transducer on his Achilles to study forces in vivo or Dave Costill who was a subject in many of his studies. Why have we moved away from that? In sport we have gotten excessively specialized. Forty years ago coaches coached more than one sport. We need more generalists who can understand the big picture. To me that is why we have gotten less functional, we have become too narrow, too focused, to the point where we cannot see the forest for the tress. No doubt we need to understand function, which I maintain that we do understand it. We just need to broaden our vistas, open our eyes. Watch kids play that is functional training. No inhibitions, big amplitude movements, hopping, jumping, twisting and turning.

Recovery

Someone asked me to comment with my thoughts on recovery. In the training process it is during recovery when the training adaptation occurs. There is a unity of work and rest, essentially a yin and yang. It is impossible to talk about training without considering recovery both intra training session and inter session. Inadequate recovery will not allow the training adaptation to occur and this eventually leads to injury or overtraining. In my opinion there has been way to much focus on external means of recovery and not enough on proper planning and training design. I heard one coach of elite athletes in track & field say that he needed one hour of therapy for every two hours of training. That is ridiculous, if you need that much work on recovery, then something is serious wrong with the training! Certainly external means of recovery are necessary and viable if used correctly and timed properly within the training cycles. I think to understand recovery you need to understand the concept of stimulus threshold. Stimulus threshold is the optimum workload necessary to elicit an adaptive response to the particular physical quality you are training. Not maximum but optimum. Then you need to consider the interaction of all the components in training and recognize that there are different times to adaptation for different physical qualities. Once you have done this then you plan the recovery so that the various curves of adaptation will coincide at the desired time. Plan the work, work the plan and remember that after the work the rest is easy.

Leadership

Leadership consists not in degrees of technique but in traits of character; it requires moral rather than athletic or intellectual effort, and it imposes on both leader and follower alike the burdens of self-restraint. ~ Lewis H. Lapham