There’s a lot of pressure on coaches these days, both from the athlete to deliver results, and from the industry to incorporate increasing amounts of technical elements into each session.
Trying to balance what the athlete wants (just get on with the training) with what they need to be doing to improve (drills, mobility, strength etc.) is difficult and at times, can be frustrating for both coach and athlete.
On any given day, athletes will be looking for different things out of their training. One day they might be frustrated when they get to the session and just want to blast out the training, the next, they might prefer to sort out a technical detail, and on another day, they might be feeling quite stressed, and not want anything complex to think about.
When you multiply this by the number of athletes in a group session, it makes the coaches job much harder.
But there’s one little thing that can make a HUGE difference to every single one of your athletes, while at the same time, reducing the stress on you as their coach.
And that’s the knowledge that ALL technique issues are 100% mobility problems.
Bodies move in the best way they can at all times, so if you’re spotting technique “problems”, it’s not something you can fix on a long-term basis with conscious thought and effort, if you want to also avoid injury.
Human beings are pre-programmed to find the easiest way to do everything, it’s a law of nature that the scientists call “The Conservation of Energy”.
Dr. Steve Peters claims that we react with instinct 5 times quicker than with logic, in his book “The Chimp Paradox”. Since movement is an instinct, trying to use conscious thought (or logic) to “fix” what’s happening as an instinct is not only slower, but much more effort than subconscious movement.
This unnatural process, is time consuming and is actually fuelling the injury cycle.
Bodies are designed to move in lots of different ways and the more of these ways we can explore, the better we will move in our given sport.
One of the best times to get athletes to explore these different ways in during the warm up.
Providing fun and engaging activities that require simple instructions, but complex movement, not only raises the heart rate and body temperature, but also encourages better movement through the joints, which will improve your athletes’ technique in a matter of minutes, leaving you more time for the workout.
Warming your athletes up in this way not only improves their technique but also helps to prevent them from injury.
If you’d like to learn more about how to put this into practice, I’m launching my BRAND NEW SMARTT™ Coach Level 1 certificate in the next few weeks, which will help you to simplify your sessions by making small changes to your current practices while making HUGE differences to your athletes.
You find out first when this course launches by registering your interest here