I do not know Nick Willis, but he is a current athlete that I hold in high regard both for his accomplishments on the track, longevity and willingness to share his thoughts/lessons learned throughout his career. He posted this on Twitter yesterday, needless to say it really resonated with me: Read more
Throughout the year we’ve had the pleasure of hosting 34 guests on the HMMR Podcast, including coaches of Olympic champions and world record holders. On this week’s podcast we’ve pulled together some of our favorite moments with athletic development coaches that think different. We cover a wide range of topics such as the art of coaching, individualization, circuit training, transfer of training and more with guests Michael Lepp, Jerome Simian, Boo Schexnayder, Steve Myrland, Dan Noble, JB Morin, and James Marshall.
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Play is often disregarded as a form of training, but it is a lost art that can be a valuable tool in developing athletes. Over the past few decades, the rate of play has drastically declined among children worldwide. James Marshall has put this point front and center in his approach to long-term athlete development. On this episode of the podcast Marshall joins us to discuss play and how it can be incorporated into more formal training sessions. Read more
My father was a gardener and I remember the first time he took me to work with him, I was probably ten or eleven years old. As any youngster, I was impatient and full of questions. I wanted to know why this patch of garden had no plants. Why we had to water this area and fertilize another section. Why we had to trim these plants and let others grow. I wanted to know why he didn’t plant all the seeds at the same time. He explained it to me, but I must admit that I did not fully understand it until years later after I had started coaching. The carrots had to be planted at a certain time. The winter and summer squash were different. Some vegetables thrived in the cold of winter and others need the heat of summer. Read more
The Burke Mountain Academy was America’s first ski academy. What is unique about it is not how progressive it was, but how that progressive mindset has stood the test of time. After nearly 50 years it continues to refine its ability to develop Olympic skiers an world-class individuals. On this week’s GAINcast co-founder Finn Gundersen joins us to discussion the beginnings and growth of the academy, as well as his current work in coaches education in soccer and other sports. Read more
As I reflect over the past 49 years of coaches there were some things that were cornerstones of a productive system sport that do not exist today. I hope you all realize that I am not living in the past, but we MUST learn from the past, not repeat it. Here are some areas that I think we could certainly look at and learn from: Read more
Go to the GAIN Network website, scroll down, and download the PDFs of these GAIN White papers. More will be coming over the next several months. I hope you enjoy and find them useful. Any feedback would be appreciated. Also if you are interested you can watch the opening talk of GAIN 2018. Read more
This framework first articulated by Frank Dick many years ago is elegant in its simplicity. Follow this process and you will produce athletes who have a chance to be champions. Please note that the athlete MUST earn the right to progress to the next step. Each athlete progresses at different rates. I will be talking and writing more about this in 2018. Read more
If you want pressure to perform, try working in professional soccer in England. To make matters more complicated, try working with young players and balancing the need for short-term results and setting up long-term potential. That is the challenge Des Ryan confronts every day as Head of Sports Medicine & Athletic Development at the Arsenal Academy. On this episode of the GAINcast he explains the Arsenal approach to athletic development and high performance. Read more
I was musing recently on concepts like “long-term athletic development,” “periodization,” and “adaptation” and I had a thought which I hope carries the idea of “athlete-appropriate” a bit further into the light. Adaptation is the tool we use to get better, but we have to know where we are adapting from and where we are adapting to first. What is are generally missing in our hopeful attempts to accelerate athletic progress with young people is not about the methods or tools, but about the awareness and full appreciation of the deciding factors that permit a coach to know what kinds of training are appropriate with individual athletes and what kind are not. Read more
