Fundamentals or Advanced Training? I don't think drills are bad but they tend to fail to prove that they transfer as much as we think to believe. Some drills may have different effects on various athletes and various times of development. A drill at an early stage may teach a part but at advance levels may hinder change. Some drills are just physical tools to stretch or strengthen parts of the ev [...]

All training is about improving movement. Training movements not muscles is not my idea that comes from the literature, neurologically the brain does not recognize individual muscles, it recognizes patterns of movement. I think the mistake we make is thinking that training is an end unto itself; training is ALWAYS a means to an end. We have to focus on the fact that we are preparing the athlete to [...]

Is it just my imagination or are we seeing an increase of hip labral tears? Is this another case of more sophisticated diagnostic techniques finding something that was always there? I know this was a big topic at a sports medicine conference I spoke at last year. The surgeons were all discussing arthroscopic procedures used for the surgery. I just have to be a bit skeptical. I would appreciated an [...]

Approach with 8 StepsApproach with 7 StepsWhen looking at speed over the hurdle is to look at the hips as they are the center of mass. We are going to use 8 steps to keep him consistent this year but from a long term approach I don't want to limit his college coach if a few years from now 7 is the new 8. I will review a more advanced hurdler and share what we plan to address in detail later. [...]

I was sent an article written by Ken Mannie, Strength and Conditioning coach at Michigan State entitled Traditional vs. Functional: Balancing the Scales. What is the difference between traditional training and functional training or traditional strength training and functional strength training? Is there a difference? What scales are we trying to balance? Let start with a definition - Functional [...]

This is reprinted from the New York Times Sports page. A friend of mine called my attention to this. His coach Bob Kiphuth at Yale was a pioneer in the application of dryland training to swimming. It is interesting to note in the article that they could not put the long hours in the pool because they did not have goggles and the pools were heavily chlorinated.Alan Ford, Top Freestyler in 1940s, Is [...]

Last Wednesday I had the pleasure of attending the Air Force Academy football practice and subsequent strength training session at the invitation of Matt McGettigan, head Football Strength & Conditioning coach. It was an amazing show. If you want to talk about getting a lot done in short period of time, in short efficiency that is what I saw. Not a minute wasted. This scheduled is dictated by the [...]

I was saddened to learn of the passing of Harmon Brown. Harmon was a real pioneer in both sports medicine and sports science. He was very instrumental in my career. I found it almost ironic that I learned of his passing when I checked my email during a break at a conference at the US Olympic Training center in Colorado spring, a site where Harmon lead so many organizational meeting to get sports m [...]

Terms and phrases barge into our consciousness and are then used and re-used, often imprecisely, until whatever meaning they may have originally held erodes and they are left as shriveled and bankrupt as the word “LITE” on ice-cream containers and beer bottles. As McLuhan observed: “When a thing is current, it creates currency.” That is: an idea becomes accepted simply [...]

Many on this board have been following the training of Nick Newman, an emerging elite long jumper who I've been coaching for the past 18 months. Last year, Nick and I both lived in NY and we saw each other on a fairly regular basis for competitions, testing and technical training. Now both Nick and I have moved and we live on opposite sides of the country. His training has been going great and he [...]