Month: April 2021

Programming successive strength, with regards to advancing the athlete, means considering 3 key areas of athletic development.

• Special
• Specific
• Skill

What is Special Strength? Special strength will be the technique for tactical carryover, utilizing any and all maneuvering that mimics the activity or sport.

What is Specific Strength? Specific Strength is exactly that, specific. It is their time spent “on the field” or “under the bar”, as it is this stimulus that will directly impact an athlete’s best performance.

What is Skill Strength? Skill Strength is the stimulus for an athlete to “better” themselves just beyond current potential (ability). This is a strength where an advanced athlete may find it a harder challenge to improve on their skill sets, which is why the other two areas of strength are crucial to allowing long term, performance development.

Phrased metaphorically: Visualize the potential of an empty cup. Special Strength would be the input, filling the cup. Specific Strength would be the input appropriate to the weak points or limiting factors to holding the cup together. Finally, Skill Strength, the fluidity (ability and capability) is to be without any cup keeping everything held together.

Information is robust, in return creating a demand for how to decipher information. For an athlete wanting steady progress, specifically a competitive athlete, this falls on the shoulders of coaches. Now the only question remaining, “How can I qualify a quality coach?”

1. Simplicity
2. Subjectively aware
3. Empowering

Simplicity? You can easily spot a beginner or intermediate coach by their high count of fallacy verbiage. If an athlete’s objective can not be examined, explained consistently and progressively simpler as both the conversation and program continues, then it is a strong possibility there is a lack of knowledge (wisdom and insight), and by default you have a coach that is accessing a lower tier of data that can very easily be found, repeated, and passed on by one click of an internet search.

Tip: A truly tenured coach knows how to provide the information specific to the needs of the athlete or team wanting their best, specific, and highest return, period.

Subjectively aware? True progression of an athlete’s performance requires data that lies beyond one single perspective. A successful program must take into account the individual’s underlying subjective behavior (strengths and weaknesses) to ensure multiple scenarios have been taken into account, and the risk to benefit ratio still remains opportune for the outcome.

Tip: An empirical approach within a training system will allow for a higher value of return on your investment (time, energy, and finance) and will always be well beyond the median of the average level athlete.

Empowering? To many people confuse a motivating coach over an inspirational one. The motivator may have a reputation of getting the job done, however, an empowering coach can start better and finish stronger. An empowering coach doesn’t just provide their own answers, rather, helps an athlete discover how to ask better questions.

Tip: A dogmatic approach to strategy will only provide an outcome that delivers everything an athlete already knows how to perform, specifically with all games before present.

“We do not rise to our expectations, we fall to the lowest level of our training.” Archilochus