‘Tis the season once again. The pre-season that is!

There are three aspects of improving speed – running technique, muscle elasticity, and strength! The problem is many coaches and athletes aren’t optimizing their speed strength training with the right program design to reap the greatest benefits in speed and force production.

On July 14th, TrainHeroic took part in the PLAE xLab at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. PLAE’s events are based on different themes. This one was focused on technology. Speakers from UCLA, Clemson, Rutgers, and the University of Oregon talked about their experiences with various pieces of tech - from force profiling to GPS.

At Force Fitness we work to develop all aspects of athleticism with the hundreds of athletes we see each week. Speed, strength, power, reaction, lateral movement, balance, and even injury prevention all go into this equation to create better, more resilient athletes.

Professional sports leagues across the globe look at youth talent in many different ways. Sometimes development programs appear very sophisticated and detailed, while in other cases they seem a lot simpler. At rugby and soccer clubs around the world, kids start in under-7, under-9, or under-11 junior teams and either rise through the ranks in the academy system or get snapped up at increasingly young ages by larger clubs offering the promise of a professional career.

In these sports, physical qualities are important. But in successful countries they’re always secondary to the technical and tactical adeptness youth coaches and scouts look for. They’re typically assessing young talent in the most real-world scenario in sports: the game itself.

So, to a large degree, what they’re seeing is what they’re getting, with technical, tactical, physical, and psychological elements being simultaneously expressed through skills on the pitch as players on both teams try to stick to their coaches’ game plans while dealing with the inevitable randomness and chaos of the game as it arises in a dynamic, ever-evolving system.

A learning curve is defined as the advancement in apprehension of a given subject. Coaching is essentially teaching, so a better understanding of how individuals learn movements and skills is paramount. Furthermore, combining knowledge of how individuals learn and improving your technique of delivering that information creates an enhanced environment geared toward progressive learning, teaching, and - ultimately - performance.

As the strength coach for Ponderosa High School in Parker, CO, I was challenged in the spring by our head football coach to help him achieve his summer goals for the team. They were:

You can lead a horse to water, but he might kill you if you try to make him drink.

Almost every sport requires athletes to move unilaterally – emphasizing one leg, arm, or side of the body more than the other. Most running, jumping (takeoff and landing), and throwing is unilateral. It’s rare for any athlete to generate motion bilaterally using both arms, legs, and sides of their body equally. And when they do, it’s not for very long and usually precedes a transition back to unilateral movement.

And yet in the gym, there can be a temptation to focus most - if not all - of the training we program for our athletes on bilateral exercises.