Philosophy Regarding Workouts

I am very guarded about sending out workouts. This is not because there are secrets or I am trying to be a guru who sells everything he does. It is more about my basic philosophy. The workouts that I make up are usually for a specific person, or for a specific team that I have worked with. I know the training age, level of development. I know any physical limitations they might have. I will either administer the workout myself or have some one I have trained to administer the workout. I have posted some examples of workouts on the resource page of the web site www.gambetta.com/resources. Those were posted with hesitancy for the aforementioned reasons. My experience has shown that people copy the workouts and use them with athletes or teams that are inappropriate for the workout design. The result is that people do not improve or even worse they get hurt. Even a generic workout like the workout designed for Outside magazine is not something I am particularly thrilled about doing, but some times it is necessary to illustrate the application of the principles. In the new book Athletic Development – The Art and Science of Functional Sport Conditioning www.gambetta.com there are a fair number of sample programs, but the key here is that they are presented in the context of the principles that underlie them. The old cliché that applies here is you can feed a man a fish or you can teach how to fish. I would prefer to teach how to fish. I think that is what underlies everything I do. If I work with an athlete for a period of time, he or she should be able to coach themselves. If they cannot I have not succeeded. I am always trying to work my self out of a job. I work hard to teach them why they are doing what they are doing. It is always more than an exercise; it is how the workout fits into the context of the whole training program. Those of you that have attended my seminars have learned the why, and in certain seminars the how. This is one of the motivations for the new Coaches Chalk Talk Seminars. They are designed to meet individual needs in regard to why and how.

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Vern Gambetta

Director at Gambetta Sports Training Systems

Vern is the Director of Gambetta Sports Training Systems. He has been the a conditioning coach for several MLS teams as well as the conditioning consultant to the US Men's World Cup Soccer team. Vern is the former Director of Conditioning for the Chicago White Sox and New York Mets. He has lectured and conducted clinics in Canada, Japan, Australia and Europe and has authored six books and over one hundred articles related to coaching and sport performance in a variety of sports. He has a BA in teaching with a coaching minor and an MA in Education with an emphasis in physical education from Stanford University.