All projects have a starting point. A chance to take stock, get the lay of the land, and analyze needs. In rehabilitation and performance this is usually some form of a physical assessment. In order to start with rehabilitation, you have to know where you are beginning from. This is what the assessment process aims for. Read more
There is a lot that coaches can learn from physical education: how to teach, creating a fun environment, organize games, progressions, the value of movement variety, thinking beyond reps, and more. Jeremy Frisch put together a must-read article on the topic last year. But there is one area that is often overlooked: understanding and assessing movement. Read more
Many coaches lament the decline of physical education and physical literacy. Rather than just complain about it, Darren Ritchie has been at the forefront of doing something about it. As head of coach development at Scottish Athletics, he sought to arm coaches with new tools to battle the problem. On this week’s GAINcast Ritchie joins us to discuss how he helped define and build physical competence in Scotland. Read more
Why does the Newtonian, mechanistic reductionist approach that focuses on minutiae and the parts persist? Why not a quantum approach that focuses on relationships and connections, flow and rhythm. The former is comfortable because it allows people cleaner definitions and seemingly straightforward solutions, in some ways it is simplistic because all you have to do in that approach is be a technician. If you understand how all the muscles work, what inhibits, what lengthens, what you need to activate and then what you need to integrate it all fits into a neat clean little box. Just follow the algorithm and push a few buttons and everything is fixed. Read more
Randy Ballard is an ATC who works with Volleyball and Track & Field at University of Illinois. Over the past three years Randy has taken elements of Kelvin Giles PCA (Physical Competency Assessment) and combined into a trainability assessment he calls I-FACTS – Illinois Foundational Athletic Competency System. It is a trainability assessment because it is designed to do just that, determine the athlete’s ability to train – where on a continuum of progression will you find kinks in the amour and adjust training accordingly. It is a reference to determine an entry point for programming training. Read more
