Throughout October and November we posted a variety of content about team speed. With the chance to talk to so many experts on the topic, I’ve been thinking about it a lot myself as well. Below are some key lessons I’ve learned or reemphasized recently on getting athletes faster in team sports.
Just a short time ago, high school strength and conditioning coach was not a job. Now, across the US, more schools are hiring strength coaches. What makes a good program and how can coaches make the biggest impact at the youth level? On this week’s episode NHSSCA co-founder Gary Schofield joins us to look at these topics and more.
Coach Kelvin Giles once said “If your coach:athlete ratio is 1:25 then you are managing a crowd, not coaching.” It’s not ideal, but it’s reality for many coaches. As I’ve worked more with field sports I’m often tasked with working with up to 50 athletes at one time. In such a setting, you have to make concessions as you transition from theory to practice. But with the right adjustments it can still look like coaching rather than crowd management.
Too often we have a concept of how to train for a sport or event and use that as the starting point for the plan. We fit the athlete to the event. That works in some cases, but other times you need to fit the event to the athlete. In no event is that more important than the 800 meters, where athletes come from a wide variety of training and physiological backgrounds. On this week’s episode coach Trevor Painter and former elite 800 meter runner Jenny Meadows join us to share some examples of fitting the event to an athlete, 800 meters training, and more.
Too often we have a concept of how to train for a sport or event and use that as the starting point for the plan. We fit the athlete to the event. That works in some cases, but other times you need to fit the event to the athlete. In no event is that more important than the 800 meters, where athletes come from a wide variety of training and physiological backgrounds. On this week’s episode coach Trevor Painter and former elite 800 meter runner Jenny Meadows join us to share some examples of fitting the event to an athlete, 800 meters training, and more.
We all know of teams can be faster than a sum of their parts. Team speed is about way more than the speed of each individual player. A bunch of average players can truly sync up in extraordinary ways. But whenever I watch such a team play I always wonder how they would fare against a group of faster individuals that sync up in just the same way. We can appreciate the way they work together, but let’s not forget they can still get faster.
Just a short time ago, high school strength and conditioning coach was not a job. Now, across the US, more schools are hiring strength coaches. What makes a good program and how can coaches make the biggest impact at the youth level? On this week’s episode NHSSCA co-founder Gary Schofield joins us to look at these topics and more.
Too often we have a concept of how to train for a sport or event and use that as the starting point for the plan. We fit the athlete to the event. That works in some cases, but other times you need to fit the event to the athlete. In no event is that more important than the 800 meters, where athletes come from a wide variety of training and physiological backgrounds. On this week’s episode coach Trevor Painter and former elite 800 meter runner Jenny Meadows join us to share some examples of fitting the event to an athlete, 800 meters training, and more.
Sprinting on the track and sprinting on the field use the same blueprint. The key differences lie in how that blueprint is applied to a different context. On this week’s podcast speed coach Jonas Dodoo draws upon his experience helping elite players in nearly every sport get faster to explain the impact of the blueprint and the context on how you train speed.
Developing faster athletes for team sports doesn’t just mean training them like sprinters. Both sports require fast athletes, but in completely different contexts. Like anything, developing speed in a new context comes down to how you train and Dean Benton has spent his career trying to unlock the methods that can make his teams play faster. On this week’s GAINcast he joins us to share to discuss the significance of speed, how he defines the key elements of team speed, and his approach to developing game speed.
