Building the Best Athletes-The Hierarchy of Success Part II
Defining Your Starting Point
3/20/08 11:57:12 AM
Posted By Tony Reynolds, MS, CSCS, YCS II

In part one of Hierarchy of Success we discussed what I call presumptive and reality training.

To summarize, I discussed the importance of identifying an athlete's true requirements for success and using this information to create a "destination". I also showed you 3 exercises I use to tie vertically oriented strength into the horizontally dominant environment typically experienced in most sports.

Before we dig into part two, I thought I would share my 3d Lunge Special Report with you. It is packed with several of my favorite horizontal and rotationally loaded lunge variations.

Check it out here: www.3dstrength.com/Sample2.html

Now, onto the Hierarchy of Success Part II

So far we know our destination. We have a target to shoot for to help ensure our athletes success. However, at this point you still cannot accurately formulate a game plan.

Why? You still do not have a true bearing on where to start?

To create a valid map for success you need both a starting point AND a destination.

So, how do you know where to begin?

Simple…You assess.

You assess or appraise the athlete's current abilities/athleticism. You use activities that mimic his/her environment and you assess how effectively they respond.

I want you to note that I am not telling you to test your athletes. I am telling you to assess your athletes.

Assessing is significantly different from testing and much more important to assuring your athletes’ success.

Let's start with testing.

We are in an industry where testing is used as the foundation for program design. It is used to measure an athlete's potential for success…and it is used to determine progress.

But I ask you this. What does a test really tell you?

For years I have worked with numerous coaches that mandate that their athletes get tested on what I call the prehistoric four:

1. forty yard dash
2. a type of long interval run
3. bench press
4. power clean

First, let's review level one of the hierarchy of success. It’s an indisputable fact that optimized training involves focusing on the things that are most important for an athlete's success.

Spend 5 minutes watching how an athlete “functions”, and you will quickly see that none of these tests truly evaluate your athletes effectiveness in their environment.

Second, how would you modify your athletes training program based on the scores they acquire on these tests?

The truth is most coaches simply wouldn’t change a thing. They would implement the exact same training program they did before, regardless of the results of testing.

More than likely, if they were to implement a change, it would be to do nothing more than to increase the scores on these tests…And this would accomplish what?

Just think about it. A test does nothing more than quantify an athlete’s abilities at doing a certain task. It tells you how much of something an athlete can do. It provides you with a measurement of output.

However, it tells you nothing about how or why the athlete received the measurement they received. It provides no means to understand cause and effect. ie..what caused them to receive the score they did?

To effectively improve performance we need to be able to get to the root of the athlete’s problems.

Simply knowing that they are weak, slow, or not explosive will not provide us with the information we need to accurately define our starting point. We need to know WHY they are weak, slow, or not explosive!!!

This is why you should assess your athletes. Assessments allow us to qualify our athletes’ athleticism. It tells us how/why they perform rather than how much they perform.

It is only once we know how the athlete performs a task that we can compare it to how they should perform it. It is this comparison that provides us with the athlete's real deficiencies as they relate to their requirements for success.

It is these deficiencies that should become the corner stone for program design. It is these deficiencies that should ultimately define your starting point.

The issue is that assessing is MUCH harder then testing. Anybody can time a forty. Anybody can count reps and read the measurement from a Vertec. However, it takes a trained eye and strong knowledge of "kinetic" anatomy and biomechanics to successfully assess your athletes.

I will go more into my assessment techniques in future articles. But for now I will leave you with the most important factor…Posture.

You should constantly assess their posture as they function in their sporting environment and as they train in the weight room. Assess it all the time at everything they do. Every day, every workout, every exercise, every rep. Assess it as they walk into the weight room and when they are walking down the hall. Use the deviations from optimal as your first indicator of necessity.

In Part III I will talk more about program design. But for now I want you to consider this very important concept.

Training the postures that are fundamental to sport will produce a better aptitude for expressing the specific skills of that sport.

That, is optimizing your athletes training!

Until next time…Stay Strong,

Tony

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