This was in Seth Godin’s blog today; he calls it the Houdini Technique:
Make easy things look difficult.
Make difficult things look easy.
This is exactly what the training gurus do. They take simple things and make them complex and take very difficult movement skills and trivialize them. It continues to amaze me how people keep buying into this rubbish. Training the athlete is a straight forward process. It is based on principles of adaptation and sound pedagogy. You cannot force adaptation, nor can you make the body do things it is not ready to whether the limitation is from growth and development or training age. Everything takes time. My mantra has always been simplicity yields complexity. The human body has an inherent wisdom. As coaches, therapists and trainers we must learn to tap into that wisdom. Training is not magic, it is not smoke and mirrors. It is sound, directed work with a purpose that is designed to fit the individual athlete. Ask yourself if the athletes you are coaching are surviving or thriving?