Over the course of my career I have used various forms of assessment to determine the athletes readiness to train and compete. Sometimes they looked more like something you would see in physical therapy clinic and other times it was just pure end range jumping, throwing and running tests. I kept searching for an assessment tool that would give then information I was looking for. A few years ago s [...]

Functional training is training. All training is functional, it is just that some training rates higher on a continuum of function than others. If you are not sure how to make your training more functional here are a few tips that should guide you. This not rocket science, I think you will see when you analyze successful long term athletic development programs that all these elements appear in som [...]

If you are an overhead athlete, a thrower, tennis player, swimmer, volleyball player etc. you need to use strengthening exercises that involve overhead movements. This is another myth that seems to pervade the exercise community and has definitely sprinted in to the athletic development community. You need to pay close attention to how you get overhead. You must get hip to the shoulder. Cheat and [...]

I have been pretty hard on what I have called the lost generation of strength coaches. It is time to reveal the method to my madness. I wanted to call them out. Wake them up so to speak, maybe a little tough love. I am not sure they are lost as much as they are misguided. When most of these coaches came of age and into the field of S&C, it was at the time there was a proliferation of information a [...]

This is a list of books that are in my library that I suggest everyone interested in Athletic Development should read.Historical WorksBunn, John. (1955) Scientific Principles of Coaching. New York, New York: Prentice Hall, Inc.Dintiman, George B. What Research Tells The Coach About Sprinting. AAHPER, Washington, D.C. 1974Doherty, Ken. Track & Field Omnibook (Fourth Edition). Los Altos, CA. Tafnews [...]

The focus in the Athletic Development approach is not on the exercise. The selection of the actual exercise is the last step in a multi-step process. In the strength coaching approach it is all about the exercise. Apparently the latest go to exercise is the RFESS (rear foot elevated split squat), an exercise introduced twenty years by Angel Spasov in his tour of the US. I call it the Bulgarian sin [...]

Someone sent me a picture of one Americas promising young hammer throwers squatting an ungodly amount of weight. I was amazed that with everything we know today that coaches are still having their athletes do this. Why in an event that demands high speed coordination are we still training our athletes to be slow? This type of work is roadblock to success, not a building block.This is just one even [...]

I enjoyed every minute of University of Oregon's victory over USC on Saturday night. I had a preview last May during a visit with my good friend and colleague Jim Radcliffe. He spoke about the tempo of practices and some of the changes and modifications they had made. It sure showed on the field. Jim is an Athletic Development coach, he gets the big picture, they use Olympic lifting, but the way [...]

It is certainly not my place to comment on the several high profile injuries that have occurred in the weight room over the past several weeks, I have learned that people are quick to judge without all the facts. What the attention on those injures made me think about is not how many injuries occur in the weight but how many injuries are caused by what is and is not done in the weight room? I do k [...]

“If you don’t test max’s and lift heavy weights then how do you evaluate results?” In essence this was the question posed to me by a “Lost generation” strength coach. My answer was simple – I just pointed to the pool (In this case the sport was swimming).The ultimate judge of an Athletic Development program are the results in the competitive arena. First are the athletes healthy and [...]