Judgement Day is here for trainers who say they train Athletes

Judgement Day is here for trainers who say they train Athletes. 

     So now the true test is coming. All those who say they "train athletes" and claim to get great results. All the summer sessions were NOT the test. The test is coming with their season here. Who built athletes that can last a season and who built good looking athletes that can't make it thru preseason without pulling a hammy? 

There are a few things I have noticed with trainers who work with Athletes. One is that many of them never follow up to see how their client performed. The true test of how good your training system is, is the performance of your athletes during their season. If an athlete gets a non contact injury during the first few weeks of practice, that means you FAILED them.  I say this because if an athlete trained with you two to three times a week for an entire summer, that athlete should be ready for whatever sport they are going to play. If they are not ready and were consistent in training with you, it would mean you did not do your job as their trainer.  

The following questions are some that trainers should be asking  themselves. 

1. Did I train in all planes of motion with my Athlete?  We live in a sagittal plane world and unfortunately many trainers only train and develop strength in that plan. (Bench, Squat, Deadlift, Press, Clean, etc.) Transverse and Frontal plane exercise are often overlooked because they are weak in most athletes and they can't load cool amounts of weight while working in them. I have never had a kid brag about how much weight they could do on a lateral lunge, but let one athlete bench 300lbs its all over the news. 
2. Did you only work on speeding up? Many athletes we see have no issue speeding up, the problem they have is slowing down. I see more athletes pull hammys because they don't know how to work the eccentric muscles. I have noticed that many "Speed" programs only focus on explosive concentric contractions. What about the Eccentric loading phases of your training? One of the things we stress at FLO is slow and controlled movements. We pay close attention to how the athletes reduce forces as much as produce force. 
3. Did you create a balanced athlete or a big muscular walking imbalance? When working with athletes they often have an extreme amounts of muscular imbalances due to the repetitive nature of their sport. Many times trainers will just work on what the athlete is good at and overload an already overloaded pattern. This only exaggerates any imbalances. These athletes normally look good on the surface but have a host of issues and injuries. Working on imbalances will help your athlete stay healthy and stay on the field. (This topic can be talked about for days but we kept it short for the sake of the blog. )
4. Was your focus on MOVEMENT or muscles? Heard a friend mention this in a presentation. He said i train movement, not muscles. Teaching an athlete how to jump effectively and efficiently is way more important than doing a 300 leg extension. Building the muscles that create the movements has its place but teaching the movement should precede the building of the muscles. I often tell people that a "nice body" is a byproduct of great training, not the other way around. Athlete's needs for movement are so beneficial to them achieve their full potential. 
5. How did you tack your progress? If blows my mind how many trainers don't write down their exercises that they do with a client. How do you track any form of progress if you never write anything down. I'm sure some people have great memories but its impossible to track progress without a charting system or some way to take notes. Call me old fashion but all my athletes have a chart and clipboard. Our progress is tracked so we know what we did right but more importantly we learn where we went wrong. 

These are just a few of the questions that trainers / coaches should be pondering as the season approaches. The one only thing that matters now is performance. All the numbers and trainer mumbo jumbo means nothing if their athlete is sidelined due to any injury that could have been avoided with better training. So as judgement day aka preseason approaches, lets see who walked their talk. Because when all is said and done more is often said than done.