Wednesday, January 21, 2009

WHAT IS A REAL WORKOUT?

What is a real workout? Everyone has their oppinion on what works and what doesn't but everyone agrees on one thing, workouts are supposed to be hard. You are supposed to push yourself. If you are really serious about getting better you should get a coach to push you.

How hard can you go? How hard is too hard? There are some basic factors on making sure you get strong the right way.

1. You have to build a base of strength. Can you do 10 pushups with perfect form? If not there's no need to bench press. You have to work from weakness to strength. It takes time and patience.

2. You have to work on speed and explosiveness to become explosive and fast. Have you ever heard about the strongest kid in the school that was never much of a football player? Every school has one. That kid never got out of the weightroom and worked on agility and skill specific work. You have to apply your strength and train your muscles to create power. Being strong is important but it's not enough.

3. Getting a good workout takes mental toughness. Tough workouts are the training grounds for mental toughness. Every coach tries to recreate competition by having their athletes compete in the off season. However, it's just not the same as the pressure of the state finals. Looking at a weight that you don't know you can lift or a workout that you aren't sure you can finish and then having the mental toughness to attack it and win is as good as anything I've ever seen to teach mental toughness.

Take a look at Joe Defranco's idea of a tough workout. Take a look at the grit and toughness in the eyes of the kids he's training and ask yourself if you attack your training like these guys. http://www.strongmovie.com/

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

A UNIFIED APPROACH

When I first came to Snowflake the school sponsored a clinic put on by Bigger Faster Stronger. It was increadible. We were taught the correct techniques of lifting and Mr. Scurran gave us some great advice. I was excited to get into the nuts and bolts of the high schools weights programs.

I like a lot of the BFS principles, especially for high school students. However, there's one thing that is more important than any exercise and that's unity in purpose. It's extremely important in the BFS program that all the sports buy into the same system. Without this unity there's no chance that the kids will reach their potential.

I am going to start working to create this unity. I'm inviting our athletes to buy into the system that will help us be winners. Whatever it might be. We are not as physically prepared as the teams we are coming up against and that can change.

I hope this will be something that will help us reach our potential.