For Things To Change In Your Training You Must Change

This morning I bumped into a athlete who plays in a sports team I used to train. He told me they've had seven hamstring tears to date and the season is only in round four of twenty plus rounds to be played this year!

He also said 'we do no stretching at all and we're expected to do it ourselves at home'. I couldn't stop laughing!

Can you imagine a sports coach saying 'just do your own skills work at home, we don't need to do that at training' or 'look after your own fitness in your own time' ordo a video review of your performance yourself and tell me how you went cause we haven't got time for that at training each session?? Ain't gonna happen at the higher end of sport...

It's easy to see the belief that skills, tactics, strength, speed and endurance are more important that flexibility, based literal interperation - what's being done.

Let me share my perspective and what I do.

An injured athlete during the competitive phase is a useful as dog shit is for aftershave. In other words, being injured on the side line serves no one, particularly the athlete, with whom there is no sport without. Interestingly, the same can't be said for coaches... but I digress.

My goal is no injuries. I will (and have) ensure training doesn't happen unless my standard, in terms of time and quality, of pre-training stretching happens - period. In my mind, optimizing the athletes' immediate and long term health and performance is my responsibility. The goal of no injuries, doesn't stop with pre-training stretching, as it's only the tip of the ice berg.

Anyone can fuck up an athletes body and get a short term performance imporvement before an inevitable injury happens, thus styfuling the athletes long term athletic potential. Only a select few have the skills and committment to go against the grain, think for themselves, make decision based on their own personal experiences and intuition, thus serving the athletes body and performance in their highest and best good.

But over and above all of this, it's the athlete/s who must take responsibility and ensure he/she receives the balanced preparation necessary to perform at their best every time. This situation is the reason for my 'Athlete Training Day Workshops' each month. They come in and among other things get stretching and massage from me personally, we write individualized programs, they get coaching on strength training, speed training techniques, etc... There's nothing like it!