While reading
“Body Mind Mastery” by Dan Millman, I stumbled upon a formula in the book that
describes perfectly the philosophy I use when training my youth athletes. The formula is PSP: First precision, then
speed, then power. This was profound to
me because it is exactly the methodology I use whenever teaching new movements
or when wanting to increase performance in pre-existing movements.
Why
Precision first? As an Athletic Trainer for a high school, I see injuries all
day long. I see what causes them and also get to figure out how to fix them. I can assure you that most injuries I see in athletics
come from bad movement mechanics. This is due partially to the fact that many
young athletes are not taught good movement patterns at an early age. They just do the movement for their sport and
if they are any good they will be forced to do the movement over and over. This sets the young athlete up for failure because
later in life when they get bigger and stronger, they will have a bad movement
pattern that can lead to injury in other parts of the body.
At FLO,
we pride ourselves in making sure that our youth athletes are not allowed to
progress to harder movement patterns until they have mastered the basics.
Why
Speed second? Imagine that I give you keys to a race car but never teach you how to turn or maneuver the car. I only
teach you how to go fast. I can bet that when you approach the first turn, you
will crash right into the wall. This is what most of our athletes are doing.
They are going to these “speed schools” that show them how to do everything
fast. This is not a bad thing, except for the fact that many of them were never
taught HOW to move. Therefore going fast will only take them down the road of
injury faster.
At FLO
we teach our youth athletes how to Slow Down and Stop. This helps to increase
their speed because their bodies will learn how to control their speed. There
is a much longer explanation for how this eccentric loading of a movement
pattern will increase the output of the concentric, but that will be a very
long blog. Please contact us at flofitness@gmail if you would like to discuss
that concept.
Why
Power last? Power is a diverse topic. In sports training we equate heavy lifting
with power. We will use this concept to explain why power is last on the list.
When you load the body with weight, ie Barbell Squat, you cement the movement
pattern in. Therefore the more weight you load the athlete with, the more proficient
they will become at generating power in that movement pattern. This is a great
thing because this is how the body was designed. However, going back to the
first point on our list, if the athlete has poor movement mechanics, adding
more weight during “power” training will only exaggerate those poor patterns. Power training is great for increasing sports
performance but it must be done after precision and speed of movement are mastered.
If not, you will once again be setting yourself up for failure.
At FLO
we honestly do not get to do as much power training as we would like. We do
lift heavy but we find that so many of our athletes have restriction in their movement
patterns that we are limited to how heavy we can go. Some may feel we are too
conservative, but in my experience our athletes succeed in not only doing well
in their sport but also lasting an entire season injury free.
Next
time you are working with youth athletes in preparing for their sports season
remember the formula PSP. Sometimes you have to slow down to speed up.
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