Do you ever feel like your life is about keeping the plates spinning or all the balls in the air?
Do you feel like you’ve got so much happening that instead of being calm and organised, you’re just constantly lurching from one mini-crisis to the next, or running from one burning problem to another that seems equally as important?
For me, it’s less about fighting fires and more about keeping all the plates spinning, which generally means that I have a lot of projects on the go that all need some attention at least once a week… and when one project takes more attention than expected, the others have to fall by the wayside.
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Coaching can be a lot like this.
One minute you feel like you’ve got a great balance between all the areas of your sport that need attention, and the next you’re focused solely on one thing for ages.
My experience tells me that this one thing is usually pain.
Whether you know what to do about the specific injury or not, you end up working around the problem, scaling back training volume and managing expectations for ages.
So, you get stuck.
You’re left focusing on this one thing for months while you wait for your participants to stop trying to push through the pain (denying it’s even happening) and waiting for it to go away on it’s own (again, denial), until they finally resign themselves to getting it sorted out – which leaves you waiting again until they’re back to full fitness.
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This is the point when most coaches start investigating the world of mobility (flexibility, movement imporvement – call it what you like).
It makes us feel like we’re doing something extra to help our participants avoid injury or recover quicker – and it does.
The problem is that it takes TIME.
So, while you’re back to feeling useful again, your participants are stuck spending their precious training time on something they don’t actually like (I know, I’ve asked).
And who wants to PAY to do that?
Exactly. No one.
You don’t particularly want to spend your coaching time faffing about with stretches and the like either, so what can we do to make things more bearable for everyone?
Stop thinking of movement improvement as a separate thing!
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Part of your job as a coach is to get your participants’ bodies prepared for the demands of your sport, which both warming up and movement improvement do.
But these things are not equal.
ALL movement generates heat, but NOT all movement improves joint function.
So, why waste your time doing two things that are actually doing the same job?
Simply by focusing your efforts on movement improvement, you can raise the body temperature and heart rate AND help to prevent injury (or recover from it) at the same time!
I mean, why spin TWO plates when you can just spin one?
Unfortunately, most coaches believe that this alone is enough to prevent injury, but it’s not.
In fact, this isn’t even the FIRST thing sports coaches need to be doing, it’s the second (of five, in case you were wondering)
I’ve outlined all five steps, including strategies and tips in my Amazon bestselling book “The Coaches Guide to Long-Term Injury Prevention Success”.
If you haven’t got your copy yet, I’d highly recommend you head on over to Amazon right now and grab one.
You’ll be amazed at just how much you can do to avoid getting stuck in the waiting/avoidance game once pain strikes!