DAILY CUP OF JOE: FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE
So far the experience in Russia has been good. We have
gotten great responses from the kids we have been training, so the program we
are doing with them is working. The trip started off a bit rough. It was if I
had landed on another planet. From
having no way of charging my electronic equipment to having to buy a phone so I
could call my wife and employees back home. I have had to go to McDonalds every
day because that is the only place we can get a Wi-Fi connection. But, the
training is going really well, an Igor Larionov is happy….which makes me happy.
I stepped in a situation here where a guy (Igor) wants to
put on a great camp and that believes in everything I believe in as far as training
athletes the way that they should be trained. Athletes need to be more mobile
and athletic and all of the guys we have been training have seen their
weaknesses and are working hard to make those weaknesses strengths. We are
training guys from the OHL, KHL, and NHL who are some of the best in their perspective
leagues.
It’s good to know that there are guys out there that want to
get better and will work hard in doing so. It makes my job a lot easier.
DAILY CUP OF JOE: HELPING THE TRAINING PROCESS
One of the biggest things I see when we make it out to these teams or groups, is the lack of over all work capacity. Work capacity is the length of time an athlete can train for, like going hard for. How long can he sprint for, how long can he lift 255 lbs. for. Kids now a day’s work capacity is so low, it makes it difficult to even get to the complicated stuff they need to be working on. They can’t even get through fundamental type stuff before their ability to continue has been passed.
I think it stems for a lack of wanting to compete and the fact that athletes just don’t want to work hard these days. The overall attitude you get is just poor. I think for the most part, the athletes that I come across are people that do want to do something with their sports careers, but in general the players that are out there have very little drive….it’s really bad.
Where that comes in bad for us, is that we are based off results. When you are training someone, or being trained, it really comes down to what you make of it. We do come across a lot of kids that are willing to do the extra mile but the problem for us is the kids that live within the time that we spend with them. Because we are driven by the time availability of many of our athletes and the parents availability, everyone’s schedules are so crammed up these days, there is no time to do the necessary training these athlete’s needs.
So if we are lucky enough, and I think we are fairly lucky in this, we are able to touch an athlete more than once or twice a week. Typically 2SP trains athletes 2-3 times a week which I think is way above average for companies like 2SP. Athletes only want to live within the 180 minutes that they are trained, so that leaves the other 200 hours a week doing nothing.
What would be a huge help to the training process would be if our athletes took the initiative to train outside the time they work with us. One of the great things we do when we train is introduce our athletes to a large variety of exercises. This not only allows us to work the muscles from all different angles but it gives our athletes a large variety of exercises to choose from when they train on their own.
An example of this is using a foam roller. We encourage all the people we train to use a foam roller as a way to massage their muscles. The foam roller not only stretches muscles and tendons but it also breaks down soft tissue adhesions and scar tissue. By using your own body weight and a cylindrical foam roller you can perform a self-massage or myofascial release, break up trigger points, and soothe tight fascia while increasing blood flow and circulation to the soft tissues.
Myofascial release has also been shown to relieve various muscle and joint pains such as IT band syndrome and shin splints as well as improving flexibility and range of motion. This allows our athletes to heal quicker so they can train harder and make better progress the next time we see them. They can do this at home every day without the oversight of a personal trainer.
A lot of studies have shown that in order to create speed or generate more power these athletes have to be active 4 to 6 days a week, and it takes time to develop but a lot of kids think “I am doing personal training and all I have to do is show up and I am going to get faster”…that’s just not the case, so we try to instill these ideas and fundamentals into these athletes so they use them outside the time we are with them.
DAILY CUP OF JOE: WHY WE CHOSE THE EXERCISES WE DO
A lot of people ask me why I chose the exercises that I do
for the different sport programs that we train. It’s cause kids have to learn how to the basics before they move on to advanced exercises.
A lot of times we will get teams, players,
athletes, or clients that come in and believe they are a lot further along than
what they really are…and let me tell you something that is not the case with
most of the athletes that we come across.
We will get kids that are pushing 500 lbs. on a box squat
that can’t even properly squat their own weight. So they are doing these “BS” quarter squats
of 4 plates on each side when they can’t even keep their heals down and do a
proper body weight squat.
It’s really bad.
Doing exercises wrong not only promotes bad technique but
most importantly promotes weakness. When
we are training athletes, hip mobility and proper hip flexibility are some of
the most important things that are overlooked. Hip mobility and hip flexibility
are probably even more important than squatting extremely heavy weight because
having good hip mobility and great range of motion promotes more power. So,
back to the question on why we chose the exercises that we do…..the things that
make us successful are the simple things that we choose to implement when we
are out training our athletes.
A sumo squat is a great example. It is a very basic exercise
that kids can’t even do right. I think one of the poorest things we see over
time is that we will demonstrate an exercise to our athletes, for example the
sumo squat. The sumo squat is a basic touch your toes with straight legs, feet
shoulder width apart and go down into a squat position and hold ourselves up
with our feet flat to the ground, with your elbows inside of our knees. We’ll
demonstrate the sumo squat to kids and what we will get is elbows outside of
the knees…toes are the only thing touching the ground…the back is flat to the
ground instead of being perpendicular to the surface that they are standing on.
It’s really sick to watch some of these athletes.
You know what this stems from? It’s from kids not watching
sports, they are playing frickin video games all day…..it’s horrible. So I
think a real big part of the un-athleticism of today’s athletes is just having
no knowledge of bio-mechanics of movements….it’s really bad.
YOUR DAILY CUP OF JOE: ANDOVER SPEED TRAINING
We are at Andover High School. Its 12:45. We are getting ready to administer a speed workout to the Andover Football Team. Our main focus of the day is going to be acceleration training and working on their sprint technique. I like every program we put together for teams to have some type of structure to it. We always start with an in depth warm up and get the blood going. We then get into our “A” speed routine which is basically our step over and drive down speed training speed technique. We like to get their heal up over their knee, where we are driving down under the center of our mass, which is our hips.
After that, we are moving into acceleration training which can consist of the “A” skip, or a number of different exercises that we use, followed by a sprint. Following that we are going to our sled pulls today. We chose a 60 yard run, where they will be accelerating 30 yards of that and then top speed phase for the other 30 yards. It’s a full 60 yards with them pulling a 25lb sled. Immediately following that, we will go into a hip flexor routine which is going to help strengthen and stretch out our hamstrings, hips, gluteus maximus, gluteus medius, gluteus minimus. Those are the basic hip extensors which help push off with speed. The better range of motion, the better power our athletes will build up.
This particular team (Andover) has come a long way since we have been training them. We have been working them for roughly 32 sessions. All the sessions have not been the same because we do a lot of different things with these guys. We are also going to do stadiums today on their bleachers . They have about 20 rows that we will have them sprint up in a bountiful way. We have seen quite a bit of improvement with this team. They are a bit undersized but have the ability for speed. Unfortunately they got started a little bit behind other teams, but they are making great improvements.
We are doing 4 sessions today. From here we are heading over to Brother Rice to train their lacrosse team, and then train their football team. From there we are heading over to Troy to work with their football team on speed training as well. Gonna be a busy but great day!